A new position

The nomination of a certain famous cricketer to the Rajya Sabha prompted a lot of tongue-wagging on timelines. Piyush Kulshreshtha tweeted: ‘Shocking as well as disappointing that to attract cricket crazy masses, Congress has nominated Sachin Tendulkar.' Madhuri Banerjee added: ‘The Rajya Sabha seems to be a joke. People who know about the country and want to change it for the better should be nominated, not popular people!' Vikrant Gupta asked: ‘Should Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Sourav Ganguly have been bypassed?' And from Rofl Indian: ‘The epic Nirma Ad: Hema, Rekha, Jaya aur Sushma… was a brilliant futuristic creation keeping the Rajya Sabha in mind.'

The other member
Also attracting comments was another nominated member, actress Rekha. Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai had this to say: ‘Jaya Bachchan and Rekha in parliament with Javed Akhtar for company. Silsila Part 2?' Vikram Sathaye added: ‘Happy that Rekha is in Parliament! She is an expert in hypnosis and has supernatural powers!' Another journalist, Sucheta Dalal, weighed in with this: ‘We had Pratibha Patil, now Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha! In the Rajya Sabha? Is this candy that the Congress is handing out? It makes me really angry!' And from our columnist Kanchan Gupta: ‘Frankly, if Mani Shankar Aiyar can be nominated as a ‘writer', surely Sachin and Rekha can come in on their own strength.'

Live and learn
These are some of the things Bollywood teaches you, apparently: ‘Songs have the power to teleport you to Europe', ‘Salman Khan never gets married or has kids in the movies either', ‘The hero's bicep is inversely proportional to the heroine's brain' and ‘the minute a guy touches a girl's tummy, she bites her lips.'

The last word
From former IPS officer Kiran Bedi: ‘Sachin will perhaps have to guard against being used by political interests. He belongs to all. He is a silent lone worker, not an activist.'

- Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD DAY Online (twitter.com/lindsaypereira)