Idiot Quadrangle

I was watching the ongoing FIFA world cup when Germany drubbed Australia 4-0. I was surfing through the channels when I realised that the Idiot Quadrangle (How can you tell a 32” LCD screen a box?) has really spiralled up in quantity and has exponentially declined in quality. I was thinking who really can watch channels like India TV,India News, Real TV and the still continuing saas bahu sagas on the prime channels Zee, Sony, Star Plus, and lately Colors and Imagine. It is nauseating to surf all the 225 channels and get nothing to watch. The best I could get was repeat shows of F.R.I.E.N.D.S on Zee Café. I realized that here are only 3 categories of entertainment in Hindi segment. But, still I would like to share this experience of mine with you and the broad classification I did.

The first segment is “You think only you can abuse, B!&@h!!!”. It’s the saga of the Innumerable reality shows in which people sing, dance, abuse, cry and faint and sometimes these all happen at the same time!!! The category which started with Indian Idol and Roadies as flagship shows has now only contestants bitching each other and backbiting. These reality shows have 75% of their content dedicated to “Censor Board”. It can rightly be renamed as the “P.P.P” category as half of the time, the dialogue statements are intercepted with censors. It’s like this: You pee (read B*&%h), You pee pee (read F^&*%&), Pee pee pee (More F words with auxiliaries attached!!!). Also, the age group doesn’t matter now. Toddlers who have just time started growing real teeth have started grabbing limelight. There used to be a time not so long ago, only some 5-6 years ago when being a kid of 8 years was just about family, school and friends. But, now it’s about giving 10 on 10 performances, judges drawing long faces when it’s a 9 on 10 performance… One word for the judges:- (Could you good-for-nothing fellas ever give such performances in your childhood??? I bet you were still wetting your bed at night…). It is now about facing eliminations every week, crying your heart out, parents then accusing and rebuking the show producers and judges of foul play. Every failed personality from Chunky Pandeys to Shilpa Shettys to Baichung Bhutias has become a judge on reality show and has an opinion about things which they don’t even have a freaking idea. Everyone wants his 2 minute stardom as if someone is making 2 minute Maggi noodles(Btw, someone should sue Maggi because even the noodles don’t get cooked in 2 minutes).  There is now a reality show in which ultra modern hot chick battle it out(abuse, bitch and catfight) to survive in the villages among buffaloes and their shit. The roadies in its earlier editions used to be good, but it suddenly became cool for girls to hurl “Bitch!!! You suck..” at each other and it became cool for guys to gay themselves up. Only one word for this category-“Get real, dumbasses”.

The next category is the “Kachhda” category. It’s the category which has given employement to every arts graduate who didn’t have a job. If you are a guy and can speak in a tone which sounds like shrieking of monkeys, then you are in… If you are a girl and you do your make up right, you are in. It’s the category which has grown by leaps by bounds. I am talking about Media, specifically electronic media and specifically Television News channels. Every news is a breaking news, whether it is a dog found dead on the footpath or a movie star talking about his favourite cologne(or co****), no one cares what’s there in news. You present it with a good looking 22 year old who is smooth speaking but doesn’t have a clue about what she is speaking and BANG,,, who have NEWS!!! No news of country’s importance is reported. Now, news channels distort each statement made by celebrities and they do 30 minutes special episodes on that. Just the earlier day, some statement of Abhishek Bachchan was completely distorted and presented in a manner which showed that he was upset with Vivek Oberoi. And, this was screened repeatedly in a show named “Meri Biwi Se door raho”!!! Everything gets a larger than life image, whether it’s a struggling model who can’t speak Hindi,a comedian who is not comic by any standards and tries to crack each joke in a gay manner, a politician who can’t stand Muslims or even a monkey which can give birth to 9 babies at one time (The last sounds the most interesting, trust me). The channels just want bytes, they don’t give a damn about what. One word for them-“BYTE ME”.

And, now comes the last but the strongest, the oldest and still the most thriving category. It’s the “Glycerine category”. I Cry, You Cry, We all Cry!!! The plot remains almost the same in all of these. There are many similarities among all these saas bahu sagas. Anyway, now its not only saas bahu. Now, its saas-bahu-devrani-jethani-mausi-mami-bhabhi and the list goes on.

1.       All the Glycerine category serials have woman centric plots. Everything goes around women, whether its seducing, backbiting, bitching, hatching, plotting, murdering , kidnapping, cheating. The men in the serial are like puppet dolls. They are just there to fill screen space, they just have dialogues like, “Kya?”, “haan”, “na”, “Tum!!!”. That’s all they have to do.

2.       Next is all these stories are shot and based in villages or smaller towns. It is suddenly cooler to be from Agra, Mathura, Ajmer and Jodhpur. The big metros can take a backseat, since either the dialect is Marwari, Bhojpuri or Awadhi.

3.       The third similarity is there’s always a “Ghar ka bhedi Lanka dhahe”. There is always a person in the family who has plans to kill or injure the main protagonist.

4.       There is no doubt some kind of will or treasure or property or company involved in the family feud: “Money hai to Honey hai!”.

5.       Pregnancy in the plot always brings doom to the family. It is never happy to see a baby arriving. There has to be some kidnapping, some melodrama of next heir, illegal child issues, some miscarriage. No one cares about the baby, not even the screen mother. Each character is involved in the hotch-potch around the baby.

6.       All of the serials have exotic sets,it is like every family has some palace to live in. All women even sleep in designer saris, have heavy jewellery in each scene, have to look like plastic dolls in each scene.

7.       There has to be some sort of extra marital affairs to create new twists. Whenever the story becomes far stretched like elastic which generally happens after the first month, they throw an extra marital affair to spice things up. It always generates a new villian with a devilish background score to him/her.

8.       There’s always a “Aha! I got You” moment, when the female protagonist catches the villain red handed and reveals in front of everyone who were duped by the villian.

9.       Some sort of electronic proof is always there to stand testimony to this “Aha! I got You” moment. Some MMS, SMS, video, phone recording.

10.   Lastly, every crucial scene has extensive camerawork. The close ups are shown in every direction possible. The faces come like, from right, then from left, from top and from bottom. The faces freeze and turn black and white. And it is always accompanied by a typical background score “Ta!Duh!” . It is similar to what happens when a newbie starts making powerpoint presentations and adds custom animation to each slide with custom sounds like “applause” , “camera shutter” and “breaking glass” coming in background.

One word for this segment:- “Ye bacchha mera nahi hai!!!”

I guess I have made my point crystal clear. There is another small category too under the tiltle ‘Miscellaneous’ and that’s what I prefer nowadays on TV. But, I will stick to writing about the big 3 and not elaborate on the ‘Misc’ since it has already become a long post.

I am still clueless guys!!! Help me out….

The Wedding Crashers

10th of June started as a regular day. It was a Thursday and most importantly a weekday, so I had to pull myself out of deep slumber, or rather had to be pulled out, at 7 am. I had to rush to the station to catch the 8 am passenger train which would take me to a small town, called Muri located on the banks of Subarnarekha river lying on the border of Jharkhand and West Bengal. The place has a beauty of its own because it is bounded by small hillocks on all sides. Also, the place has a bridge which stands testimony to the plight of government in Jharkhand. The bridge is over the river Subarnarekha, which has dried to a small millimetre width stream of water. The bridge connects Jharkhand with Bengal. One half of the bridge which lies in Bengal is made of concrete and is newly constructed. The other half lies in Jharkhand and is still made of tin and iron scraps from the yesteryears. It has not been renovated since the 50s and the Jharkhand administration doesn’t even give a damn about it though it is one of the main routes connecting Bengal. Why will it give a damn? It has better work to do. Its politicians are mostly interested in the tug-of-war for the position of official leech who can suck the most blood from the state. Who can pull off a greater scam is the only thing on their mind.
Anyway, I guess I got swept by the emotion of neglect and corruption in the state. This is not a post about the rascals. This is about 3 characters- My mom, my dad and me. I would rather call 3 idiots(Sorry Mom & Dad, but even you won’t argue with me that we didn’t come out as fools on this day). So, where was I??? Hmmm. After learning how Alumina hydrate gets calcined at my summer intern in Hindalco, I came back to home by 7 pm. Dad was already home which was unusual, since he never comes back from office before 8 pm. I was at once ordered by Mom to get ready. I replied, “For what?”. Mom answered, “Didn’t I tell you that we have to attend a wedding reception of son of your dad’s colleague?”. I replied in negative. She told me, “I have told you atleast 10 times before, but you hardly remember a thing. Do you even care to listen?”. Most guys or girls of my age would know that by this age its of no use arguing to the Sonia Gandhi of household. If argued upon, you would end up just like Shashi Tharoor who couldn’t control his twittering mouth. I just tried to hold up the last flag of protest saying that I didn’t know anyone at the wedding and that I would get bored as hell, but all in vain.
I went to take a bath after the hot and humid journey and was ready by around 7.30 pm. But, as is always the case with ladies, they would take atleast 2 hours to dress up. And trust me, the dressing time doesn’t decline with age. It’s the same with every sister, friend, aunt, cousin of mine. All the ladies would take atleast 30 mins to decide the dress. I don’t think guys even take that long to decide what they are going to wear in their own wedding!!! But, that’s not all. The fairer sex would ask someone in vicinity that which dress would suit them better, as if the person would care. The truth is however that by that time the ladies have zeroed upon the dress, but they just need to get someone’s approval to go ahead with it. If you choose the dress which they haven’t picked, you would find a small frown forming on their make-up laden face.Atlast,by hook or crook, they would force you to pick the dress chosen by them and will get falsely satisfied on their own choice. Then half an hour goes for matching jewellery, half an hour for some damn accessories and make up, and the last half hour for dressing up. After that, all of them have a final glance of satisfacton in the mirror as if God himself was at work. I firmly believe God would have committed suicides so many times after seeing his gifted natural beauty distorted with artificial chemicals and cosmetics and being transformed into such a ghastly figure, that by now if some woman goes out without any make up God gets a jolt of surprise and thinks, “Is it some new make-up Lakme has come up with?”
I guess today I am deviating from the topic too much, only because these are topics on which one can go on and on. So, by 9 pm, we leave for the wedding with the gift on which was written “ Best Wishes To Noopur and Saibal From K.P.Roy & Family”. The venue was written “MECON hall” on the invitation card. We knew only one MECON hall in Ranchi, so Dad thought it won’t be necessary to contact his dear colleague enquiring about the venue. We reached the place in some 15 minutes and went inside the reception hall.There was no nameboard outside showing the names of the bride and the groom. My parents proceeded to the reception stage where the bride and the groom were standing while I preferred to stay back in the seating area. They all smiled and shook hands and then Mom handed over the wedding gift and the bride accepted with a huge grin. I am sure her face muscles would get cramps after the all time smiling exercise undertaken at the reception. The photographers requested for a photograph and all four of them stood smiling side by side as if they had known each other for decades. When my parents were returning to the place I sat, my dad looked around in search of his colleague but couldn’t find him or any of his colleagues. I suggested that its already 9.30, so either most of them would have left or they would be in the main dining area.
We advanced to the snacks/starters area, and helped ourselves with some snacks and starters. But, there was no one to be seen from dad’s office. My dad’s colleague is a Bengali, so we expected some Bengalis around. But, we could only hear Hindi and some Marwari being spoken. Dad felt suspicious because there was not a single soul whom we knew. Then, Mom transformed into Sherlock Holmes and made a startling revelation that the groom’s mother had told my mom that the groom was rather tall, atleast 6 feet. But, the groom with whom my parents had shared photospace with their Close-Up smile was rather short. We advanced to the main dining area, and to our disappointment saw that the whole wedding was a Marwari wedding and there was no one whom my parents knew. We had obviously made a huge mistake, we had come to some other reception, had even gifted the couple and my dear parents had themselves photographed with complete strangers. Then I realised that what the Indian weddings have become. No one knows anyone , but still smile as if they are long lost relatives. I suggested that we just have dinner here itself as not a soul would care and mainly because I was dying of hunger. But, my parents still had their ideals intact. For them, it would have been shameful. For me, the only difference between both weddings was the change in cuisine, since I didn’t know anyone in both weddings. We followed a hasty retreat from the place and my dad asked a passerby about where was MECON community hall situated. He answered that it was on the next right turn and that this was MECON reception hall. A mistaken identity of place can screw your whole evening.
At that instant, my eyes went to a small rectangular LED screen, similar to the ones found in railway stations. The LED was displaying a moving message, “Thank You for coming. AtoZ caterers.” And then came the final stamp on your idiocracy. The LED displayed “Welcome to reception of Rajeev with Alka”, which solved the mystery and raised the curtains from this mistaken identity crisis of ours.
The story doesn’t end here. After this, Dad suggested that we just give the concerned Bengali couple,cash as Aashirwaad since their gift was already given to the mistaken Marwari couple and obviously we were not going to ask them to return it. Hence, I have to go in search of a stationery shop at 9.45 at night to buy an envelope.Now, I don’t think anything like this has happened to any of you before. But, I swear you just want to get out of this as soon as possible when you get to know what fauxpas you have committed. Also, you would never find the shop you want at the most crucial time.We found everything from tailoring shop to grocrery shop to mobile recharge to medicals to even cycle repairing shop. But, it was not before some 15 minutes search of the colony that we found a small stationery shop that was going to get closed. At least, God favoured us here because we were just in nick of time. So, Dad slid some cash into the envelope and then we proceeded to the right destination. There we rechecked 3 times before entering and asked 2 passers-by that whether we were at the right wedding or not.
So, in nutshell guys,

• Recheck the venue before going to any reception/wedding/house-warming or any social gathering of this genre.
• Firstly, meet the person who has invited you rather than rushing to part away with the gift.
• Carry extra cash and extra envelopes with you in case of emergency.
• Check for the nameboard or signpost outside the venue.
• Lastly, Don’t write the name of the recipent of the gift. I still wonder what will the mistaken couple (Rajeev & Alka) think when they see the giftcard shouting Noopur & Saibal in bright, red calligraphic letters.
• And if you fail miserably in all of the above, just have your dinner silently in the wrong ceremony and then steathily get out of sight before someone spots you!!!

The Nuisance I was

Each one of us has special memories as a kid. It is basically accompanied with lots of loud cries, incessant tantrums and scolding. But, still its one time of life when you did not have to worry about the world and life was simple.

Few will disagree with me that they did not have a fascination for trains when they were kid. And like most of these Anytime “Poo and Pee Producing” Machines(APM’s), even I was hell bent on getting one of these trains to our home.

I guess it was one of my first journeys on this enthralling invention of James Watt that I had undertaken to see my relatives in Patna. I was accompanied by my mom, dad and my elder sister who is around 7 years older to me and hence was in mid school. On the other hand, I was in pre-nursery and on that night was debating with my dad that an Elephant is stronger than a Tiger and hence can’t be defeated as my father had tried to cook up some African Safari story to make me go to sleep. But, as is evident from my case above that I could not swallow this underestimation of elephant’s strength and as a result of which my dad had to replace the elephant with a jackal after his futile attempts at making me sleep. After enjoying my 8 hours of sleep, I was considering the train as a nice alternate home as it had no finger wagging teachers and no semi-Medusa like principal whom most of the infant crying specimens never dared to look into eye. However, when we had almost reached our destination, my mom broke my daydreaming and brought forward this stark reality that I had to go back to school and we are in this train only for half an hour more.

And as you can guess, I immediately resorted to the golden last option “The incessant sobbing and loud crying”. This is only what 3-4 year olds can do and it generally works well for attaining short time goals. My mom thought I was hungry, as most parent think when kids cry. So, my boohooing rewarded me in form of a Cadbury Dairy Milk and I was more than happy to go to school afterwards. But, some drama of mine was still left and that came out in form of me wanting to take this train to our home and then wanting to use it as a ride to go to school. When my dad reminded me of the Fiat Padmini we had at home, I came out with the agreement that the Padmini had no toilets and the train had. Also, we can sleep in the train and not in the car. You can see that I was generally good at coming up with reasons which had no counter argument and I can tell you that I am still good at that. Anyway, my dad told me that the train did not belong to us and we cannot take it home. But, I think I did not receive his statement well because I responded with the golden resort again. This time, I was just distracted with another story of some tiger’s heroics. I guess it was one of the topics with which you can distract kids who are dumb enough to think that a train could be used as ride for going to school.

After successfully parting from the train which was miraculously just 1 hour late and not one day late, we four proceeded to our relatives’ home in Patna. I was too happy to meet my cousins, both elder sisters, one 7 years older and the other 5 years older and this happiness was mostly derived out of the Uncle Chipps packet they gave me (Lays and Kurkure had not arrived, guys). I may sound like a kid whose liking and love for others were based on the presents they gave, but what do you expect more from a 3 year old who can’t even spell “LOVE” .My life revolved on toys, cars, chocolates , stories and playing with the other good-for -nothing devils. To top it all, my mornings generally kick-started with using my tear glands more than any other organ of the body since I had to go to the structure of brick and concrete, my parents referred to as “School”. I just hated going to school since it looked more like a prison than a second home. Also, I think I did that just to attract more attention towards myself than my sister. Yeah, I agree I was a self centred, selfish piece of Anytime “Poo and Pee Producing” Machine (APM), but which kid isn’t. Hmmm, so I was happy to meet with a big packet of Uncle Chipps rather my sweet doting cousins but they were too busy in pulling my cheeks and then meeting my parents and my sister. So, I thought with my peanut sized mind that lets not break the news to them that my bladder was inflating with the cold drink they had just offered me. I guessed that my interference in their Utopian world would break this perfect image of happy faces around. So, I let my bladder take over my brain and I felt the bed beneath me becoming wet and cold like the glass I had in hand. The next thing I remember is Mom’s big eyes looking at me and scolding me that why did not I speak. So much for thinking about their Utopian world, Huh!!!

Anyway, this unexpected pee episode didn’t do much damage to much of my reputation as a very obedient and sweet kid. Seriously, adults don’t have any idea what the child is thinking. They just see the big innocent eyes but don’t see the devil which just wants to extract more and more advantage of adults. They didn’t come to know of my secret pee breaks which nourished the flowers in my aunt’s garden. One day, I was caught gardening these plants with my special care which came more from the bladder than the heart. I was scolded and slapped but again I scored with my relentless power of lachrymal glands.

The next few days were generally spent on eating, playing, watching TV , sleeping and innumerable repetitions of this routine. There was no more abrupt leakages from me neither on the bed nor in the garden, hence my mom was at peace. There was more action, but I guess I would leave these for the later posts.

Signing Off...