With India under the world’s harshest Covid-19 lockdown, human distress was at a peak. At that very moment, a number of pro-government media outlets decided to ignore any real journalism and concentrate all their energies on the media trial of Rhea Chakraborty, actor and former partner of fellow Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who had been found dead in his apartment in Mumbai.

The Mumbai Police treated the death as a suicide, but the media outlets pushed the theory that Chakraborty was somehow responsible. The campaign was illogical, bordering on the surreal, with Chakraborty first being accused of causing Singh’s death and then of consuming drugs.

In this, TV anchor Arnab Goswami was key. This rant of his feverishly asking for drugs perfectly captures the – there’s no other word to use – madness of 2020. But silver lining: at least it got people to laugh.