DailyOh! Why Bengal BJP MP wants divorce, to why Prashant Kishor won't have to quit Twitter

Couples can have separate rooms in the same house but can couples in the same house belong to different parties? BJP MP Saumitra Khan says no – a complete sentence.

Khan has promised to send his wife Sujata Mondal Khan a divorce notice because “politics had ended his marriage”. Saumitra is hurt because Sujata has joined Mamata Banerjee’s TMC, a party he belonged to till early 2019. Sujata claims she was hurt because she did not get credit from the BJP for her work. Sujata’s work includes running Saumitra’s campaign single-handedly in 2014 and ensuring he won as TMC candidate.

But Saumitra says if Sujata doesn’t return to the BJP, their marriage loses.

If the BJP wins seats in double-digit mark when the results of the West Bengal elections are announced, Twitter may lose out on one user - Prashant Kishor. That would be no loss for Twitter and that would be no loss for Kishor either because Kishor’s ‘threat’ tweet is carefully worded.

“For all the hype AMPLIFIED by a section of supportive media, in reality BJP will struggle to CROSS DOUBLE DIGITS in #WestBengal. PS: Please save this tweet and if BJP does any better I must quit this space,” he wrote.

“I must quit,” doesn’t mean I will quit. Like we ‘must’ get up early, or ‘must’ sleep on time doesn’t mean we sleep early and get up on time. Even if Kishor meant he ‘will’ quit the space, he can reclaim that space at Tooter. That will be if BJP reaches the double-digit mark. In 2016, the BJP won three seats in the 294-member assembly. In 2020, the BJP has won over several TMC MLAs to top up its tally of 2016.

The tally is rising for the UK too but neither the country nor the countries of the world are liking it. A new, more infectious, strain of coronavirus in the UK has forced India and Canada to cancel flights from the UK. It has compelled Saudi Arabia to ban all international flights because the virus from UK may have reached and colonised other countries too.

So, if you are in UK wanting to travel to India, you can’t till at least December 31. But if you are planning to go to the UK, you can. The question is why would you?

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said the central government is on alert and that there is no need to panic. One lesson from 2020: don’t panic because que sera, sera.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is India’s Republic Day guest, has asked people to cancel Christmas plans and stay at home. There is no stopping the stay-at-home celebrations.

Around 1,64,00,000 people entered the strictest ‘tier four’ measures from Sunday. That constitutes nearly 31 per cent of England’s population. The rest can hold family gatherings on Christmas, December 25, rather than the five days originally proposed. When you are down in the dumps, it helps to look at deeper dumps. So, we dug in to look at when UK had a worse Christmas.

A nearly 20-year ban on Christmas in UK could be lifted only by waging a civil war in the country. Let us tell you more about that.

In 1642, King Charles I agreed to a request from Parliament to subdue celebrations and make Christmas only about fasting and spiritual reflection, not a boisterous holiday. The restriction increased here on. The Puritan government was in power and believed that Christmas was an excuse for drunkenness, promiscuity and gambling kind of activities. Puritans said Christmas was not a named day in the Bible. In 1657, Parliament made it illegal to close businesses on Christmas or attend or hold a Christmas worship service. People rioted over their right to celebrate and Christmas was restored when monarchy was restored in 1660.

Going by how the coronavirus has been spoiling all celebrations since it arrived, it would have been a Puritan had it bothered about being anything apart from an infectious virus. If you too plan to stay in this Christmas and have no one to stay in with, grab a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

The virus is spreading in the UK; the farmer protests in India. As part of the protests, 11 farmers will sit on a 24-hour hunger strike every day. Not the same 11 though. The lot of 11 will change at the end of 24 hours, turning it into a relay hunger strike. The government, on its part, has said it is waiting for the farmers to give a date for talks. The farmers say there is nothing new in the government’s proposal and the only proposal acceptable is that which rolls back the farm laws.

So farmers will continue to sit in the cold, which is expected to intensify over the next few days, and protest. Talking of the cold, today will be the longest night of the year because December 21 happens to be Winter Solstice, just like June 21 is Summer Solstice. Yes, this is what Google’s Doodle is trying to remind us of apart from telling us that the Great Conjunction will be visible today after 800 years.

What is the Great Conjunction? It is the overlapping of planets. The two largest planets, Saturn and Jupiter, will nearly overlap to form a ‘double planet’. They can form what they want up there. What’s important is today we can see they are forming the Great Conjunction, a double planet, from down here.

But what is a solstice?

The word solstice, the Word Of The Day, is derived from the Latin sol, meaning sun and sistere, which means to stand still. That is because the sun takes a pause at a northern or southern limit before reversing direction from its daily path.

In the northern hemisphere, the Summer Solstice occurs on June 21 and the Winter Solstice on December 21. In the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are reversed, the solstices are the exact opposite. From tomorrow onwards, the day in northern hemisphere will start to get longer and raat ki subah will be quicker.

If you have people in life sending you good morning messages every subah subah, WhatsApp gives you the option of ‘Mute Always’. You can use the feature for all kinds of unwanted messages from all kinds of unwanted people.

The year 2020 also taught us to be wary of WhatsApp chats because you never know when your WhatsApp chat could be used as evidence against you in which case. The case that started this wariness was the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. Actor Arjun Rampal, being questioned by the Narcotics Control Bureau in the drug case related to Sushant’s death case, faces an arrest. He presented himself before NCB today.

The actor could get arrested by the NCB if the doctor’s prescription that he submitted to the agency is found to be fake. Arjun claimed he consumed some psychiatric medicines on the prescription of a doctor, which he handed over to the NCB on November 13.

Actor Rajinikanth is supposed to appear before the judicial commission probing the police firing incident during the anti-Sterlite protest in 2018, on January 19, 2021.

Rajini initially condemned the police action but later changed his stance after visiting the site of the protest. In the later stance, Rajini said anti-social elements had infiltrated the protest leading to the police firing incident. So much before the commission was formed; Rajini had investigated the matter by visiting the protest site and had also given his verdict. He can now help the commission reach its conclusion maybe.

The man who hand-held Congress in Madhya Pradesh and most parts of North India left the world today. In his later years, he was seen being hand-held by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. We are talking about Motilal Vohra. Ninety-three-year old Vohra was former MP chief minister and Rajya Sabha MP till April 2020. The long inning came to an end today.

We will leave you with that for today. Be back tomorrow. Also, famers have requested people skip one meal tomorrow in solidarity with them.

If you stand in solidarity with farmers, don’t sit for your meal tomorrow. Which meal you skip depends on which meal you can skip.

See you tomorrow.

Stay safe - both from the virus and its mutant strain from the UK.

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