TV News: Tea Minister wins ‘Masterstroke of the Year’ Award for disappearing act

TV news is a satirical take on the behind-the-scenes workings of what is hopefully a fictional newsroom at Shout Wow, headed by its Editor-in-Chief and owner, Mr Shorswami.

Prabhpreet

Published Aug 11, 2026 | 10:57 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 11, 2026 | 10:57 AM

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InJest in a satirical column by South First. Names, places, situations are all fictitious. Caricature by Satish Acharya/South First.

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Shorswami, Editor of Shouts Wow, presented the Tea Minister with the ‘Masterstroke of the Year’ Award for the 13th straight year since its inception.

Tea Minister welcomed the award happily after being hit with a flu of jealousy seeing Gen Z win all the accolades and brickbats.

The latest award was given for the masterstroke of making himself and the House Minister vanish from the People Sabha with the government on the backfoot for violent police action against Jantar Mantar cockroaches.

A disappearing act that was celebrated by ministers who claimed that both could not be seen in the People Sabha despite being in Parliament from 9 to 5.

The latest masterstroke stopped the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas conflict, and US-Iran war. All of which are still going on.

Addressing the award ceremony, Shorswami beamed, “Such results prove that no matter what anybody rightly says, he cannot be accused of letting truth or reality get in the way of his masterstrokes or his followers stroking his ego. And being a serial master-stroker, his strokes include both personal and professional ones.”

He listed a list of accolades with some invisibly shining examples of such spilt tea come tea time. The list went like this:

1. Saving water by fighting a crocodile as a child.
2. Hiding planes behind clouds from enemy eyes and radar.
3. Inventing a washing machine to clean clothes and the character of corrupt politicians the moment they join the tea party.
4. Ability to make every election and political win a masterstroke and a defeat an even bigger one.
5. Winning 240 MPs but having 340 without holding elections.
6. Making reels to reel in Gen Z support and stopping when the mocking didn’t.
7. Unreal use of teleprompters to make reels more real
8. Every death in Pakistan.
9. Every government change in Nepal. Also Bangladesh. Sri Lanka as well. The USA too.
10. Slowing China’s growth by spoiling relations with our neighbouring countries and pushing them closer to the dragon so that they can be a burden on it rather than us.
11. To take the rupee to unseen heights against the dollar and hopefully its maiden century soon. With petrol and diesel way past that line.
12. Using lathis and pellet guns to make apolitical Gen Z vehemently political.
13. Suryavanshi’s every six.
14. Finally making Pappu a gentleman.
15. Doing one better than turning water into wine, teetotaller minister converting fuel into sugarcane juice.
16. Increasing Delhi’s tourism by getting all of Punjab and Haryana farmers to come to Delhi.
17. Looking fairer and lovelier day by day.
18. Being a being but not being a biological being.
19. Completing graduation in Entire Political Science.
20. The only being with photogenic memory.

Even as Shorswami continued to heap praises, the Tea Minister quickly took the spotlight to declare that Shorswami himself is worthy of being awarded for making journalism vanish from TV.

The mutual admiration went on and on and on and on…

(Written by Prabhpreet, an Unsanskari Writer, with a lifelong experience of laughing at things that make him cry.)

(Disclaimer: This is a piece of satire and is fictitious).