You're watching a Bollywood comedy if...

Bollywood comedies today seem to be giving a new meaning to the Hindi phrase 'na sar, na pair' (no head or tail). This genre seems to be taking slapstick a bit too far. There was a point where we enjoyed watching these 'senseless' comedies as an escape from the tedium of life. But now, it has become mind-numbingly dumb. The list is endless - whether we're talking about 'De Dana Dhan' to the latest, 'Golmaal 3. Sure, they are entertaining...but only if you go with the mind of an 11 year old!

So, you know you're watching a Bollywood comedy if:

• There's an ensemble cast of the same faces which keep getting shuffled around in different movies.
• There are so many plot and sub-plots that the main plot is lost (if there was one).
• The songs make no sense and make the movie even more distracting.
• Everybody hits everyone else for no reason.
• There's a vamp/prostitute who tries to seduce the wrong people.
• The 'good' heroine gets mistaken for the vamp.
• There's a bag of money or some precious jewellery that everyone's after and will solve their respective problems.
• Johnny Lever has a strange and supposedly funny condition that you tire of 5 minutes into his appearance.
• There is a lot of abusive and suggestive language which is also supposed to be funny.
• The men are sexist and the women get pushed around as if they have no real purpose to serve.
• There is lots of furniture broken and cars destroyed.
  
• The movie ends with a chase in which the whole cast gets together, while you're still wondering what the plot is.
  

Bad, bad English!

Disclaimer: The following post is purely subjective and only represents my views of how I see the English language dying a slow, painful death. In no way does it represent my dislike of people who use the terminology below because I am sure they dont realise the disservice they are doing to the language. I certainly do not represent any association that works for upholding the language or such.

Call me old fashioned but the chopped-off, alien language that passes off for English nowadays really puts me off. I can tolerate a little abbreviations here and there, but to completely hack words in meaningless stubs out of sheer laziness is deeply painful. I am probably going to be sniggered at for this post for being a fuddy-duddy (Hah!) but this is my blog, and well, I am going to let it flow. Here are some of the enervating words we come across everyday but they make my head spin with grief - because it's too much to see the language I have spent so much time and effort perfecting, being massacred.

List of the English language's most gruesome aberrations:

LOL: Unfortunately, this very common and very irritating term reminds me of AIDS, SARS and other deadly diseases. It sounds like someone is dying with a very painful, incurable and mentally debilitating disease, which is partly true, because people who use it think it makes more sense than a simple Haha!

OMG: Oh My God is again a very common exclamation, but only if they would say it that way! All we get to hear is oh-em-jee which is like the sound of a chalk screeching on a blackboard to me.

Ma: Not a new term because all during the seventies, Maaaaa was a common refrain in Hindi movies. But, horror of horrors, this has actually come to mean 'my'. And I simply fail to understand the logic behind this. There's no extra effort required in writing 'my' in place of 'ma'. It in no way goes with the English accents we have in India. I would understand a rapper saying this, but a student who hails from UP/Kerala/Calcutta? It simply makes no sense and it sounds ridiculous.

dat: Aaaaargh!!! This 'totally' makes my blood boil! I mean, it's sooooo easy to write 'tht' so why make it sound like a programming language? Same number of words too!

Kewl: Clueless about this one. It's far easier to write 'cool' or 'kool' and it's also aesthetically appealing. Kewl sounds like a cough and cold syrup.

Okies, Babes, Bye-Byes: Sounds like plural diarrhea. Where one would have thought people (ppl?) would have been concerned about making things shorter, they've started adding an extra 's' which not only doesnt look cool, it makes them look like they flunked in English in Grade 3 and joined a vernacular school (which I would totally support).

Um: It seriously took me a while to figure out that this is actually 'am'. Enough said.

The list is endless but I guess I've made my point clear. As we can see from the examples above, it is not really about convenience. Most aberrations have the same or even more number of letters where a perfectly simple shortening is possible such as 'abt', 'tht', 'whn' etc. But I guess this is some kind of rebellion where words are being intentionally twisted to stand apart from the (sane) crowd.

It's not even that people are sending SMSes from mobiles that have just 9 buttons. Almost everyone has a Qwerty keypad or a touchscreen. And even if not that, there's always predictive text!

But then, I guess that the fuddy-duddy inside me talking.

Hindi TV serials...or matrimonials?

It's hard to surf channels without bumping into one TV serial or the other. While they all appear as different manifestations of the same script, there is one thing that quite bothers me about them. The women characters seem to have no other occupation in life except to get married, and after that wear a year's volume of makeup, don all of CTC Plaza's sarees, jewellery etc. and then scheme or become victims of schemes while keeping the aforementioned attire intact.

Why do Hindi TV serials have to be so regressive? Why is a woman's life only about the home and hearth...no matter how lavish it may be? Even in the serials where there is a so-called social message, most of the airtime is spent on wedding songs, mehandi songs, festival songs and so on. And all this happens in slow motion...where core of the plot is always a trivial domestic issue. Where women are shown to be working, they usually have a multi-crore family business to 'run' by sitting pretty around piles of cardboard 'files' (ever heard of a PC?).

Looks like nothing can tear the TV script away from the ultimate aim of getting some witty/attractive/ambitious/rebellious girl married so that she can gradually learn the art of dealing with matrimonial and domestic issues via the machinations of in-laws. Looking at any of these serials, one would come to the conclusion that there is no life beyond the lavish four walls of the house for an Indian woman where all the 'drama' happens. Where is real life?

And what's with the dress code? Even many middle class families today don't expect their bahus to wear embellished sarees, and are quite ok with a salwar-kameez or even a pair of jeans. So why the open advertisement for CTC Plaza and Meena Bazaar?

Even if you argue that most of today's serials are consumed in small towns where the mindset differs, why would we want to propogate that domestic mindset? Why not talk about the way the world really is? There's lots of drama going on outside the home...just tune into any news channel.

Do we really want to continue with a make-believe that nobody really believes in? Look at Bollywood, it's at least light years away from the time warp that Hindi serials are stuck in.

(Pic courtesy: starone.in)

Reservations about women

Today is Women's Day and there is a hullabaloo about the Women's Reservation Bill being passed in the Indian Parliament. But it makes no sense to me. Reservation has never made sense after liberalisation took place in the early 90s. About women's reservation in particular - I wonder how it will bring about any development? Politicians are politicians - whether men or women and there is no guarantee (well, I am sure) that women politicians will do nothing to uplift their kind. Take two of our greatest examples. Mayawati keeps harping on the Dalit issue (which is no issue) and Mamta Banerjee spent half the railway budget on Bengalis.

Whatever makes us think that more women in the government will lead to a better country? Can't women be cunning or hypocritical or corrupt like the rest of the political community? And I am surprised that everyone is falling for this eyewash and hailing the Women's Bill as some kind of revolution. Puhleez! Even the media is lapping it up like crazy. Sorry, but I dont share the enthusiasm. If anything, I have my own reservations about that things will get worse, with uneducated, uninformed and uninterested women using up the quota just to fill up their bank balances.

Instead, we could have announced better education and social policies for women. Educating girls should be our top priority to really make a difference. They should be given social security if there are dumped by their alcoholic husbands or indifferent children.

But instead, we are making a mockery of the whole system and filling it up with whoever gets the reservation.

Reservations should only be restricted to meritorious candidates, whether in the government or in schools and colleges. How does being from a certain caste or religion make one person more worthy of entering an institution than another who is more sincere and dedicated?

As the Bill is tabled in Parliament today, I have a feeling it may be passed by a party that wants to 'look good'. We will soon end up with a bunch of mother/daughter/sister puppets who will be sitting in the government controlled by the same bunch of morons who are messing up our country today.

Why is hockey still our national game?

You might have heard that the Hockey World Cup is being held in New Delhi thanks to the fact that the Indian team beat Pakistan 4 to 1, hereby ensuring front page coverage in national newspapers. But you could easily be forgiven for not knowing.

Here in Delhi, there is no excitement nor encouragement for people to be part of this world event. The only noticeable change for Delhites is the increased security cover around parts of town. But it certainly looks like we are almost apologetic about hosting the event because I haven't come across a single banner which welcomes the hockey teams to the city, and no single ad encouraging people to buy tickets. Restaurants and pubs think its not even worth trying to get crowds to come and watch the matches on big screens.

It's sad that we still call hockey our national game (do today's kids even know that?) and then show it no respect whatsoever. Heck, we dont even pay our players fair compensation. Then why persist in the pretense? On second thoughts, cricket cannot be our national game either - because it's our national religion!

P.S. You can do your bit by watching a match or two. Heard the arrangements are good (thanks to the low turnout). Book tickets here: http://www.ticketgenie.in/app1/Events/pEventGroupDetails.aspx?nEventGPID=17