Ep 67- Seema Goswami, IPL, Missing, Salman Khan & More

The Awful and Awesome has a lot in store this week. A special treat for all book lovers is Rajyasree Sen’s interaction with Seema Goswami, author of ‘Race Course Road’, followed by a discussion on the IPL, Salman Khan, ‘Missing’, and Russell Crowe’s genius.Starting off with the book, Goswami’s past work experience with ABP and Sunday Magazine is reflected in her approach towards politics in this fictional political thriller, which starts off with the assassination of Prime Minister Birendra Pratap Singh, and goes on to answer the questions -- Who was behind it? Who will become the next PM?Although fictional, Rajyasree finds the characters mirroring many Indian politicians and doesn’t hesitate in naming them. According to her, these characters are obviously inspired by real-life personalities -- there’s an Arnab, a Barkha Dutt, and there is definitely, definitely a Mamata Banerjee. Sen feels that the book surpasses other thrillers by dealing with themes like the invasion of privacy, the treatment of women in politics, and the role of media.Moving on, we have our dear own Abhinandan Sekhri joining Sen. The ‘Awful and Awesome’ duo makes it a point to discuss as much of ‘awful’ as ‘awesome’ and comments on the glamorisation and commercialisation of cricket, which Sekhri does not even consider a sport (thank you, IPL!). The grand opening ceremony with performances by Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandes, and Mika Singh are not spared, with Hrithik Roshan being the only one praised by our hard-to-please reviewers. If all this isn’t enough, there are two awards -- ‘the most stylish player award’ (Gautam Gambhir seemed as disgusted receiving it as Sen and Sekhri felt discussing it), and the ‘Star Plus nayi soch award’ (what does that even mean?). Abhinandan had one answer to all this, “We just fuck up everything.”Further, Sen and Sekhri have both had their own shares of torture this week, watching ‘Midnight Sun’ and ‘Missing’ respectively. The former has nothing to offer except a cliché teen story where nothing bad happens