Hey media, why are you giving me that news?

I am a sucker for conspiracy theories. For me, a plot has much more to do than real estate, and scheme even more so. You didn't switch off the office computer last night while leaving for home? Why? Do you want to bleed your company? In effect, do you want them to announce profits were down, and that it is so very difficult to sustain things, and in further effect, no increment come April? There, you have it.

So why am I talking about it? Because everyone else is. You don't think so? You are either an alien or not on social media. Or both. So here's how I read news in the past couple of days. Of course I read a few more news items, and obviously found scheming, screaming, rioting, waiting-to-explode conspiracies behind each, but I won't tell you what I think about them. (Why do you want to know, anyway? Are you plotting against me?)

1. Rupee gets on the slide to divert attention from onions, which got on the see-saw and got stuck on the upswing.

2. The government releases census data on religion to take the heat off the rupee and make people outrage over 14 versus 79 per cent, rather than fulminate the finance minister's age and the rupee-dollar love-hate relationship.

3. Gujarat's Patels enter the fray and begin their agitation over quota to divert attention from everything else, including everything and else.

4. Mumbai cops come into the park and arrest Indrani Mukherjea to give the rampaging Patels and their chief minister, also a Patel, space for a well-deserved breather.

5. Eager to take the blinding spotlight off poor Indrani, a Pakistan-sponsored militant enters Jammu and Kashmir and gets caught after an encounter with the Army.

6. To take the spotlight off all the above, and divert attention from news towards fiction, then of course Venkaiah Naidu announces a list of cities that the government says would be made smarter. There's a expression for it as well — smart city. By which Naidu means Ghaziabad roads will not have moving, bovine-shaped traffic islands, or small parts of the roads will not be left being real islands as the remaining 97.36 per cent of the roads dive under water during rains. Whether only smart people will then be allowed to live in Ghaziabad or Rampur, after the cities become smarter from the time starting now and eternity, is not known, as urbanists fear Ghaziabad and Rampur's population will drop by 86.32 per cent if such a move is implemented. While Naidu is reported to have used the word "smart people", he also understandably did not mean it.