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Hello there, and welcome to another edition of The Weekly Vine. This week, we cover Zelenskyy’s terrible appraisal at the White House, Europe’s diminishing relevance since the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648, Elon Musk’s ever-expanding universe, Rohit Sharma’s fat-shaming, and our word of the week: Tharoorism.
Zelenskyy’s Bad Appraisal
It is highly unlikely that Donald Trump has ever watched Kanti Shah’s cult classic Gunda, but his diplomatic style certainly seems inspired by transparency enthusiast and the film’s antagonist, Bullah. “Mera naam hai Bullah, rakhta hoon khulla” might as well be his personal mantra, given his love for transparency and disdain for any sort of decorum.
Nowhere was this more evident than on the day Volodymyr Zelenskyy walked into the Oval Office for his annual appraisal, only to realise that the management had changed completely. Gone were the officials who proudly held up Ukraine’s flag, replaced by two tough guys—who, like Walter White’s brother-in-law in Breaking Bad, just wanted to collect minerals. Trump tore into Zelenskyy as though he were an ungrateful, underperforming employee receiving a dressing-down for dressing down, while JD Vance played the ever-supportive bad cop from HR.
It was highly entertaining to watch a diplomatic meeting turn into a verbal fight club, where Zelenskyy’s humiliation went from bad to worse, culminating in him being asked to leave by security.
In Trump’s world, alliances are transactional, and gratitude is not just expected—it is demanded. Zelenskyy’s refusal to kiss the ring, bend the knee, and grovel appropriately led Trump to order a pause on all military aid to Ukraine, just days after their heated confrontation. The move effectively halted the delivery of billions in US weaponry, leaving Ukraine’s defence against Russia uncertain.
If Trump had written his own Gunda-inspired script, this would be the part where European capitals started scrambling. With America’s role in Ukraine suddenly thrown into question, Britain and France rushed to assemble a grand summit—dramatically titled Securing Our Future.
The problem? A post-assassination Trump simply does not care what European leaders or opinion writers—who self-flagellate over terms like liberal-based international world order—think of him. Trump’s view on Europe, and on most other things, can be explained by two popular desi memes: Salman Khan’s Apna Kya Lena Dena and Akshay Kumar’s Paisa Laya? Unless someone is making him richer or praising him, their opinion is moot. And that brings us to Europe’s problem in 2025.
Europe Loses Its Mojo
If you haven’t, I highly recommend watching the BBC’s The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything, a hilarious take on major world events in the Western hemisphere. One standout moment is the fictional re-enactment of The Treaty of Westphalia starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. For those who spent their school years only learning about the Mughals and now have to brush up their history with propaganda-driven box office hits, the Treaty of Westphalia was a set of agreements signed by various European countries that ended the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. Many consider it the treaty that laid the foundation for the modern nation-state, weakened the Roman Empire, and gave Europe just enough time to stop fighting over religion and start colonizing the world instead.
Fast forward a few centuries, and Europe’s power struggles had turned into something resembling a family feud at Thanksgiving—loud, messy, and always needing an outside mediator. Enter the United States, the cool uncle with a black card who paid for dinner and left with the car keys, setting up NATO to make sure Europe didn’t start breaking plates again. The Marshall Plan was essentially a “Sorry For Your War, Here’s Some Money” package, and for a while, it looked like Europe might stage a comeback.
But no. Europe did what it does best—sat back, made grand statements about unity, built an inefficient bureaucracy in Brussels, and let America handle the heavy lifting. By the time the Cold War ended, Europe had settled into its role as a background character in the American-Soviet sitcom. Germany was reunited, France was still making existentialist films, and Britain had embraced its fate as America’s slightly posh sidekick.
Then came the 21st century, and Europe’s global relevance continued to decline. The EU was supposed to be a grand project of unity, but instead, it became a bloated committee where 27 nations argue over the curvature of bananas and what truly constitutes a sausage. Britain, in its infinite wisdom, Brexit-ed itself into economic limbo. France kept talking about “strategic autonomy” while waiting for Washington to act first. Germany, despite being an economic powerhouse, still hesitates to spend on defence, and Italy remains, well, Italy. Meanwhile, Western Europe struggles with mass immigration, failing integration policies, and grooming gang scandals, while the greatest innovation to come out of the continent in recent decades has been its cookie consent pop-ups.
But if one moment truly highlighted Europe’s irrelevance, it was Trump’s “You’re Fired” approach to NATO and Ukraine. Zelenskyy, hoping for a Churchill-Roosevelt moment, found himself in a reality TV show where Trump had no interest in scripted diplomacy. Meanwhile, Europe scrambled to form a coalition, delivering speeches instead of defence budgets. Trump, unimpressed, reminded them—again—that they weren’t paying their fair share.
Now, as China, Russia, and the US flex their muscles, Europe plays the role of the guy at the party trying to make people listen to his Spotify playlist—while everyone else moves on. The EU still debates serious issues, like Parmesan labelling, but as a global power, it’s increasingly just an expensive museum with good food. After all, America innovates, China copies, and Europe regulates. Perhaps one day, it will stage a comeback. Or, like the Holy Roman Empire before it, it will simply fade into the background, a relic of an era when people thought Luxembourg was worth fighting over.
The Ever-Expanding Muskverse
This week’s Saturday Night Live Update featured Colin Jost joking about Elon Musk asking federal employees to name five things they did this week—easy for Elon, since it’s the same thing: Got a girl pregnant.
Future historians will study Musk’s work-life balance to understand how the human Venn diagram of Rupert Murdoch, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller also has time to produce so many children. On February 28, 2025, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis announced the birth of her fourth child with Musk, Seldon Lycurgus Musk—his 14th known child. Musk sees procreation as his personal solution to the “underpopulation crisis.”
His baby-making escapades resemble a bizarre tech startup: multiple partners, each with a unique “product offering,” funded by Tesla stock and SpaceX revenue. Not since Genghis Khan has one man been so determined to spread his genes far and wide.
Musk’s fatherhood journey began in the 2000s with Justine Wilson, a Canadian author (and the only Musk baby mama not working in AI). They had six children before their divorce in 2008. Then came Grimes, the avant-garde musician, with three children whose names resemble Wi-Fi passwords. Next, Shivon Zilis, the Neuralink executive seemingly committed to Musk’s vision of a next-gen super-race.
And now, a new twist—Ashley St. Clair, a 26-year-old conservative influencer, secretly gave birth to Musk’s 14th child, R.S.C. Musk, in September 2024.
Musk isn’t just having kids—he’s building a dynasty. At this rate, by 2050, Mars won’t just be filled with Tesla engineers and Starship pilots—it’ll be a Musk colony, launching rockets and tweeting memes in low gravity.
Yo Sharma So Fat?
I’ve been a fan of Rohit Sharma for a very long time—for his timing of the ball, for his nonchalance on and off the field, and particularly for his deep philosophical grasp of Voltaire’s message in Candide, when he used the dulcet style of Samuel Jackson to urge his team not to meander in the garden. Now, like every other sports watcher, one has also commented on Sharma’s Madhya Pradesh (a delightful term coined by Mamata Banerjee during a tête-à-tête with a pakoda enthusiast in 2022), yet it was still odd to see a Congress spokesperson reiterate the party’s pro-poor and anti-rich stance by body-shaming the Indian cricket captain.
This led to the usual strawman outrage, where those who once compared Sharma to a popular Mumbai street food (which you can only enjoy if you don’t have functioning taste buds) were now aghast about “body-shaming” a professional sportsperson, and the Congress party swiftly distanced itself from its spokesperson’s statement (at this moment the Cong’s official view is lightyears away from what its members say from time to time).
But what was truly interesting was how Sharma seemed to have joined the long list of holy cows—deities, cattle, and political figures—whom one must not comment on, lest they become the subject of outrage or even threats. While one will leave the highest court of the land to determine the anatomy of a joke or the boundaries of free speech, the debate over Sharma’s girth highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of the true nature of fitness.
Fitness isn’t just about having six-pack abs or a gluten-free diet but about mastering one’s art. The idea that a top athlete must look like a Greek god is one of the greatest myths in sport. Fitness is about performance, endurance, and skill—not how many abs you can count.
Take a look at cricketing history.
Shane Warne wasn’t running marathons, but he was the greatest leg-spinner the game has ever seen, enthralling everyone the moment he walked onto a cricket field. Inzamam-ul-Haq was never winning a sprint, but his batting was pure poetry.
Arjuna Ranatunga looked like he belonged at a buffet rather than on a cricket field, yet he led Sri Lanka to a World Cup.
And it’s not just cricket.
Look at football—Diego Maradona didn’t have a sculpted body, but he danced past defenders like they were traffic cones (when he wasn’t cavorting with the mafia or doing lines).
Sharma’s game is built on precision, power, and endurance. His six-hitting ability isn’t about brute force but about biomechanics—perfect weight transfer, bat speed, and timing. His ability to bat long innings, captain under pressure, and consistently perform across formats proves his conditioning is top-tier.
People confuse “gym fitness” with “sporting fitness.” The requirements of a cricketer are different from those of a sprinter or a footballer. Sprinters need explosive acceleration. Gymnasts need extreme flexibility. Cricketers need endurance, strength, and skill—all of which Sharma possesses in abundance.
The obsession with aesthetics in sport is ridiculous. If performance were dictated by looks, Warne wouldn’t have taken 700 wickets, Maradona wouldn’t have won a World Cup (and humiliated England), and Sharma wouldn’t be one of the most successful batsmen in ICC tournaments.
PS: Team India have vanquished their eternal foes from Oz in the semi-final of the 2025 Champions Trophy, and Sharma is on the cusp of becoming the first captain since MS Dhoni to have led India to more than one ICC trophy.
Word of the Week: Tharoorism
And word of the week this week is inspired by our favourite vocabulary expert: Shashi Tharoor. As Nideesh MK wrote in TOI+(paywall): “His latest book, A Wonderland of Words, cleverly capitalises on his reputation as a vocabulary virtuoso and ends with a promise of more to come. For a man who loves words, there should surely be one to describe his current predicament: all the glamour of leadership without access to the actual corridors of power. Perhaps we should call it Tharoorism— the art of being simultaneously indispensable and inconvenient.”
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Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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