It's World Class!

A weird thought popped up last evening while I was doing something entirely different. Now, let us suppose that this whole world is a classroom and all the countries or continents are students. This is what I think they all are likely to be.

USA- The super rich ones who commute to college in their own expensive vehicles, are obese from overeating junk and nonstop partying and do not acknowledge anyone else in the class. Not very good in studies because they are busy with all sorts of relationship troubles so they have tutors who help them mug up everything. Usually, they have dysfunctional families or their parents are uber cool too, just like them.

Jesus, I need coke and a burger, a Limo and of course a shrink!

Canada- These are upper middle and very friendly. They accept everyone’s friendship, invite everyone to their parties and apologize for mistakes made in the past.

Satsriakal world! Please come in!

UK- Are shrewd and give much attention to detail but are also reserved and discriminating for they focus only on their own target. Have a tough time mixing well with others for they consider the rest of the class to be a petri dish of germs. They usually wear formal or semi formal clothes of more or less the same dull colors to college. They also take up any seat they fancy and refuse to budge.

We really apologize and request you to pardon our impertinence and not consider it offensive so to speak but have we been introduced yet by any chance?

China- These are the shrewdest of all. These students are tech experts and excel in math and computers. They are also very secretive about their motives and are always smiling to keep you confused. They have voracious appetites and can eat anything when they are hungry.

I know what you did last summer!

Africa- These have arrived to college from rural areas and their forefathers were poor, exploited and worked very hard. They are honest, rugged and have certain rawness in them. They have a fire to move ahead in life.

World is a jungle, be a lion not a wildebeest

France- These are the most stylish of the lot. They have rich but busy parents. These students often suffer from depression or anxiety issues. They have a great taste in food and wear awesome perfumes to college but dislike mixing too much and can be painfully curt at times. Also, they eat only well presented food with complicated names and secretly love it when people pronounce those wrong!

Mercy, monsieur but you look stupid in the dress you copied from us

Italy- These are the ones who keep the whole class entertained. Boys flirt usually and girls giggle for no reason. They are not very serious about their future. Also, they come from old reputed families and love to narrate the stories of their very powerful forefathers that no one is interested in anymore yet they can’t stop.

Wanna go for a pizza date? We will have some pasta too!

Russia- These are those tough guys who occupy the back benches. They are laconic, sturdy and are formidable foes but do not disturb anyone purposelessly. Some people accuse them of selling drugs but no one has courage to ask them directly. They are great chess players and their silent gaze can be terrifying.

No reason to stay is a good reason to go

Saudi Arab- These students usually bribe teachers with all the fine things to buy good grades, are very businesslike and brutal. They come from very rich but closed and conservative patriarchal business backgrounds. They love to flaunt their cars and pets.

We will buy you

Germany- Toppers who are amazing in math and science. They are studious, hardworking and hate small talk. These have a dark sense of humor and to see them giggling is a rare sight. Also, these are great with machinery and can fix any issue in that area. They are extremely philosophical as well.

Kant you mind your own business?

Pakistan- These are the shabby ones whose body odor repels others, are rowdy, hypocrites and often end up embarrassing themselves. They often pass nasty comments on women and get insulted yet are unbothered by the humiliation. They always borrow stuff from other students but hardly ever return the items. These are the most hated students in the whole class.

Can you lend us some money??

Bhutan- These are helpful, always smiling and studious students who avoid fight at all costs. They often recite peace and brotherhood prayers yet do not mix much with others in the class. They love to sit alone in gardens and are happiest when left to themselves.

Eat, Love , Pray

India- These are the most talkative ones who love to mix up, invite others over lunch and offer lovely hospitality. These students are skilled in music and arts. Usually, there is much potential but they make silly mistakes because of wrong priorities and waste much of their time on fruitless activities. Most of their class projects are copied from other students. They love street food, movies and cricket and can be very emotionally volatile for they form attachments way too fast. They are the agony aunts of the class and love to dole out unwanted free advice.

Tell us about yourself, your parents, family, pets, neighbors and everything about others that you know!

Japan- These have everything, from stationery to notebooks in small sizes. They study a lot for long hours, never miss a single class hence are often sleep deprived.

We have a miniature version of that object you have but it can be seen only under a microscope

Antarctica- These are the most aloof ones, are unfriendly and often absent. Teachers visit their places to find out what’s wrong with them.

Who the hell are you?

 :)

Between the Lines!

Here's what people actually mean when they talk about marriage and match-making! 

• He (some boy) is going abroad on a company tour! He asked me if I wanted anything, such a nice fellow! (I know a family who’s looking for a match)
• I have told his mother not to worry at all! (I want to get this match fixed with you)
• Now you have a job too! (You are fit for marriage, what are you waiting for?)
• Is this house your own? (You people can provide a sizable dowry)
• They (relatives) will meet me en-route this week, they love me so much! (I can arrange your meeting)
• Don’t know what these girls do online all day (Such Facebook bitches can never make good wives)
• Why do you spend weekends alone? (You need to get married)
• Own business is the best; a person is the head after all! (This school dropout boy is in his father’s business)
• I want a healthy girl (Should be fit for child bearing)
• I believe all girls are nice. (They all are same, all do drama…huh!)
• I’ll go with my parent’s choice (Only they can bag the highest dowry!)
• Girls are not that religious these days. (They all have boyfriends… these sluttish social butterflies)

• These days boys meet all sorts of women in offices (Some damned colleague has already love-trapped our son)
• Most of our relatives will arrive from abroad (Make sure the wedding is grand)
• Our son is very particular about hygiene, esp. in food (You will have to cook without excuses)
• I am biker to the core! (I can’t afford a car)
• Our son is very good at heart, though (Our nasty son is a short fuse too)
• I always prefer homemade food. You know, this junk is a slow poison. (I cannot afford pizza-burger for you every other day)
• Our son is a bit choosy (We have alliances lined up at our doorstep)
• Our son is a diamond (Consider yourself lucky!)

Image from: www.dreamstime.com

An Open Letter to my Prospective Suitor!

I request you, my prospective suitor

To kindly read this open letter

Before you mount a docked-up mule

I humbly present these basic rules

Even though we haven’t even met

To stress some points, I’m all set!

Some things are better cleared early

To avoid later an emotional tragedy

Whenever you’re coming to meet me

I can hope, you are prepared already

Now check this list quite carefully

Ignorance isn’t an excuse for folly

So, let us begin with, my dear

I hope doubts will be all-clear

If you wish a girl who is

Like a typical bahu on TV

May you never get to meet me!

I wear vivid hues and short dresses

And roam around in open tresses

I just give a damn to all non-sense

And a good kick to ethnic pretence

I shout on the top of my voice

If get rubbed on the wrong side

I love myself and my make-up

And grooming to stay tip-top

I love click…click… click of my stilettos’

Flaunting funky nails in my peep-toes

I always call a spade a spade

Deception is not I’m of made

Alright, this was one thing

I hope next isn’t this boring!

Now let us move on to a new point

Read carefully with an open mind

Boy, I have my own life, alright

So, don’t expect a coy Indian wife

Waiting for my husband like a dog

Timidly in sun, rain, snow or fog

Frying pakoras as you land and,

Wasting days in running errands

Dissolving in kitchen day & night

With sari draped around me tight

I can’t visit those temples daily

B’coz in goodness lies the key

Nor listen to your sexist crap

I’ll swiftly gift a tight slap

Okay, so I hope this is fine

Let’s jump to another point

You've to respect my parents

If from me, you same expect

Yes! I can handle my money

Down till the very last penny

So please don’t meddle, I insist

Thank you. I can save and invest

Also! No dowry as gold or cars

Or you’ll soon be behind bars

I’ll never come to your rescue

And you’ll reap what you'll sow

Alright dear, now let’s soften a bit

We shall talk of that love shit

If still stuck in a failed affair

Firstly go, and see a doctor

And pay that shrink by the hour

For I’m not a mental counselor

I want someone I can admire

Not one still aflame with ex-desires

No carrying past baggage, I agree

No tears or rants for gone spree

Did I seem like a stone-hearted devil?

Or a ruthless bitch- sarcastic and evil?

If so, read between the lines, boy

I’m a dignified lady and not a toy

Or a living doll you can with play

Or a half-wit moron without a say

I won’t allow to be taken lightly

Even if male-egos are hurt slightly

Because I love my respect no end

Liberated and ambitious too, I am

So, if yes! Let’s party and cheer!

Else, to our own ways, dear.

Image from: www.favim.com/image/219926/
Bahu- daughter-in-law
Pakoras- Snacks

D-I-Y Indian TV Soap Kit !!

Of late I have been thinking about the patterns that repeat themselves endlessly like a broken record. In this post I have tried to analyze Indian TV Soaps (Hindi), their characters and what messages they actually give out, directly and indirectly.

So, ITVS can also be created if you want one! Like LEGO blocks, we can use the ‘Do-It-Yourself TV Serial Kit’ presented below to create the structure and then waste our time in filling details. These blocks are basically characters, themes, situations and endings that will help you weave a serial. Let’s begin!

Block 1- The Girl (Protagonist 1)

1.       Type 1- The girl next door.

• Is always praised for her extraordinary beauty (she is very average btw).
• Belongs to a lower-middle class family with everything gone wrong- a drunkard father, an evil landlord, a gambler brother, a sister who gets pregnant before marriage and a brooding mother who spends time praying, cooking or stitching old rags.
• Is the sole earning member and still manages to look as if straight out of the spa that Kareena and Madhuri frequent!
• She is the moral police of not only her own family but of her entire mohalla/chawl.
• She works during the days and at nights, bores moon, wind, sky or her God’s idol to death, blabbering about her ‘sapnon-ka-rajkumar’!
• Is endowed with all the possible virtues.
• She wears stylish salwar-suits of latest designs even if her family has to line up for free food.

2.  Type 2 - A rich brat who races on busy roads half-drunk, visits gyms, clubs and takes pleasure in dictating her servants and creating scenes in parties. She has busy parents who do not pay her much attention.

3.   Type 3- She is a timid and non-working middle class girl who has grown up with a single goal in mind- marriage. Interestingly, she always stares at the floor and blushes without apparent reasons.

4.   The girl is always a graduate. Nothing is shown about her academic life.

Block 2- The Boy (Protagonist 2)

1.     Type 1- He is rich brat who has just returned with a foreign MBA degree and is all set to skyrocket his father’s empire.

• Belongs to a combined business family with same-aged cousins, docked-up aunts and men who discuss only office work at home.
• Is smart, arrogant, heartthrob, a great driver and classy but alone and desperate but still frowns upon relationships and romance.
• He has refused many good matches from high-profile families for some unknown reason despite tired of being single.

Type 2- He is the male version of type 1 protagonist of block 1.

• He is usually unemployed himself but fights for the rights of everyone from street vendor to a beggar child and is seen hunting for job in casual clothes.
• He works as a mechanic, salesman or a right hand to a bigwig.
• He is full of manliness, love for his mother and all imaginable virtues.
• He lectures everyone against domestic violence, corruption, drinking, smoking and blah blah blah..!

Type 3- He is a middle class boy who has no dialogues in the opening episodes. He spends his time in collecting aashirvaads of all the elderly he can spot, helping the blind cross the roads, saving stray pups from rain and making random street kids laugh.

Block 3- Their Meeting

1.     Type 1- Office

• The girl works/joins the office of the boy and they fight over everything and even pass the Sundays cursing each other.
• The girl works as a personal secretary, sales girl or as a staff member but is a loudmouth and gives the boy (her boss) a good dressing down and a lecture on Indian-ness and sanskaars, every time he asks her to work.
• They are the only ones who are available to go for a business deal to another city but find there is only one hotel room free! Where the f*** are advance bookings??
• They stray and come across a well furnished home, opened and abandoned and spend night giving each other strange glances. Mobile batteries and signals mysteriously fail in such times.
• Or, the boy spots her in a temple where she prays frantically for an hour daily for a husband or a single goddamned clue about her sapnon-ka-rajkumar.

2.     Type 2- Rescue

• The type 2 boy is hit by the type 2 girl that is followed by a brawl followed by true love!
• The type 2 girl is rescued by the boy (he goes there to deliver something) when she is being harassed (before she could be raped) by some rich brats in a club or party.

3.     Type 3- Suicide

• The type 3 girl is depressed over a broken engagement (usually because of dowry issues) and is all set to kill herself but gets hit by the boy’s  car or is saved from drowning and then spends a good 15 minutes in his arms, ogling hungrily at his six packs.

Block 4 -Mothers

1.     Type 1-The boy’s mother is a rich b***h.

• She spends more time playing cards and in kitty parties than at home is also the epitome of snobbery.
• She looks like his elder sister and/or like a living jewelry exhibition.
• They address each other like college friends.

2.     Type 2- She is really homely but evil can come in any form.

• She makes the life of her bahus miserable.
• Coaches her unmarried daughter to trap a rich boy.
• Brain-washes her son against everyone.

3.     Type 3- She is a cancer patient or waist-down-paralyzed.

•  Her last wish is to see her bahu and eat kheer made by her.
•  However, she miraculously recovers after bahu does her seva, leaving the doctors as well as the viewers perplexed!

4.  The girl’s mother comes in only one type - she is a tired, timid and extra-sanskaari woman who is forever shuttling between siddhivinayak and home in cheap cotton saris and certainly a mangalsutra. She is unnaturally kind and makes the boy feel the love behind maa-ke-haath-ka-khaana when he comes to pick her daughter up for a date. This is true 99 % of the time; you can add more variations.

Block 5- Fathers

1.  Type 1- Girl’s father is an upright professor or government servant.

• He is, at some point, framed for corruption.
• He is totally against bribes.
• He does puja regularly.
• He is later saved by his daughter.

2.  Type 2- He is a drunkard but good at heart! He drinks day and night because of a tragedy he suffered decades back and is saved by his daughter.

3. Boy’s father is either a stinking rich businessman who is uninterested in his or anyone else’s family life or he is a retired man who reads newspapers the whole day in a corner and takes a break only when bahu serves him tea with utmost servility.

Karva Chauth in progression

Block 6- Themes and Frames

• They fall in love and one fine day arrive wearing garlands at boy’s doorstep.
• The families are against and the girl is taunted for everything- her family, no dowry, her cunning and manipulation.
• The girl or boy, whosoever is poor, is lured by a blank cheque to get the hell out from the life of his/her partner by that partner’s rich father. No points for guessing, he/she tears the cheque apart and dashes out of the room.
• They spend half of their energy and time to bring delinquent siblings on right track.
• The wimpy boy who disappears after leaving the girl’s sister with a baby-bump is pulled out from his hiding and is made to marry the pregnant sister in a temple- all alone by the protagonist.
• There are only two major festivals- Holi where romance and weird confessions happen in a drunken state and Karva Chauth where ladies dress themselves in whatever glitter they can lay their hands on. 
• Issues have strange issues- babies are swapped, born half-dead, stolen, unaccepted, doubted or lost but everything is set straight after maa begs before God in her ‘jholi-faila-ke’ style.
• Bhabhis only taunt and do make-up.
• Kids are always seen sketching something in the background.
• Domestic helps have unquestionable loyalty.
• The truth that the boy has a second wife/concubine/ girlfriend emerges only on Karva chauth night.
• The girl adopts his illegitimate child with much love.
• The bahus always lock horns for ‘tijori-ki-chaabiyaan’
• The girl can jump any queue esp. the temple ones.
• She can bring anyone to the moral path just by giving one lecture.
• The girl cooks and does puja-path to impress her snobbish saasu instead of talking a way out.

• 

• Businesses are ruined overnight and the very next day, the mansion is up for auction.
• Protagonists always have their identicals or lost twins who arrive all of a sudden after their marriage.
• There is always a temple in the hospitals where the girl throws herself (literally!) and cries or even threatens God and inside the Cardiac-line begins to jump and the machine just beeps and beeps leaving the doctors amazed!
• There is only one coffee-shop, one movie hall, one mall, one eatery, one bar, one school, one college, one temple, one police station and one subzi-mandi in the entire city where the characters keep bumping into or end up spying each other.
• The caged parrot ‘mitthu miyaan’ to which the girl does her ‘dil-ki-baat’ is only for a few episodes for he dies of boredom shortly!

Block 7- Endings

Just like ‘main samay hoon’ of Mahabharat and Paro’s ever burning diya from Devdas, Indian TV soaps are as perpetual as time itself and run from Qayamat se qayamat tak! So, there are only time leaps but no endings.

Some Issues- On a Serious Note

• A woman is considered a poor mother if she has a life of her own and a circle of friends. She is frowned upon if she does not cook or does puja all day.
• The mother-in-law always prays for or demands a grandson and never a granddaughter.
• Not wearing sindoor or mangalsutras are big issues
• Women who are doubted upon are frequently slapped by their husbands to bring them on ‘moral’ path.
• Most protagonists are okay with domestic violence.
• A delinquent girl is divorced or kicked out but her husband who fathers many illegitimate kids just utters one apology and is back.
• Women are forced to accept illegitimate kids.
• A club hopping woman is perceived as a slut and a man-eater.
• Dream-interpretations, nonsensical hawans and strange superstitions are encouraged.
• Women leave homes only when they are beaten and harassed to extreme.
• Parents send them back like an unwanted parcel, after a lecture on patience and virtues.
• The type 2 girl (rich brat) is forced to be a typical Bhartiya dharampatni and is dragged into mundane household job by her husband- it is, shockingly, a happy ending.
• Women are slapped and excoriated openly, even in front of their own children- very usual and normal.
• Despite coming from extremely sanskaari families, men have many liaisons and affairs.
• The ‘other woman’ (usually a model or an actress) is publicly slapped and disgraced for trapping the innocent protagonist but no one questions the man.
• The girl obliges whenever the boy is in a romantic mood.
• The more taunts and insults she bears silently, the more worthy and homely she is considered.
• The girl’s family behaves like servants in front of her in-laws.
• Most protagonists become full-time housewives after marriage and are shown asking the boy for money and giving a complete hisaab to him or his dictator mother.
• Random peer-babas foretell about the tempests about to arrive. Extinguished puja Deeyas always mean a death in a family and they give women enough reasons to shed non-stop tears.

(In the above scene, the illiterate girl Gopi is raped by her husband Ahem on Holi as he is high on bhaang. This nothing but marital rape)

I wonder how we are presenting women through these serials. I agree that the times and the trends are changing and many TV shows have strong women protagonists who are shown going against the flow but after a few power-packed episodes these themes do emerge and the entire show becomes a usual drag. I think it is high time to experiment with new concepts and ideas, to look beyond the horizon and think outside the box. 

Gawd!!

This Cute Pic is taken from- ibjennyjennyanimalphotography.blogspot.in

'Tasted' Sample!!

Saw this yesterday!!

Sample tasted in a labouratory!! Awesome ;)

Beep-beep, Beep-beep SMSsssss!

I received an SMS message from a friend. It was funny with an amazing sense of humor, some thing out of the box. So often we see messages full of new ideas and angles from which people can look at the things or give a tweak to the too well-known words that they make us smile & laugh out loud, or sometimes push us into a pondering mode, but certainly leave us marveling at the creativity displayed by its author.

We tag punch lines, advertisements, fashion designs etc. for their utmost creativity, but for me the SMS messages are the height of creativity. In case you have missed on this, just spare some time and go through the SMS messages in the newspapers, or closer home, in your own mobile, and check for yourself!