Don’t get me wrong.

There is one amusing ad making the rounds of the idiot box just now. Its subtext is completely out of kilter with its own original intent. In trying to persuade the Indian metrosexual to take to a fairness cream, it unintentionally pokes fun at two desi demigods: cricket and people born with safed chamdi, preferably from abroad.

In it, the pretty girl busses the metrosexual businessman because he has apparently used the product with positive results. In the process, she pointedly ignores a star Indian cricketer as well as two white skinned colleagues of his.

Kya yaar, Doni?

Curl up in bed with a good book.

This morning, Ujwal was desperately looking for old issues of The Reader's Digest. I asked her why. The reason startled me. A Grade 8 student of hers attending an ICSE school had been asked to write a book review. The condition was the book should not be a "classic". Ujwal was trying to help her find a "book digest" that was appropriate to her level and that she could manage to read over the weekend and write a review of. This is unconscionable sadism on the English teacher's part if you ask me. An 8th grader who probably reads only school books, that too under extreme duress as likely as not, and spends her leisure avidly watching the Idiot Box and gossiping about Hritik Roshan and Salman Khan should not be asked to write a book review. To be a book reviewer, you have first to be a book lover and a book reader. When she was here this summer, I listened to Avantika blithely complaining about having to read Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro and the review she had been asked to write in school. When I ribbed her about Ernest being the greatest American writer and a Nobel Prize winner no less, she didn't seem overly impressed. If you must teach a contemporary 8th grader writing skills, please teach her how to write a better SMS, text message and email. If you must make her write reviews, please ask her to review the latest soaps and movies. I could go on and on foaming at my mouth on the subject. Instead, I will direct you to my earlier pearls of wisdom cast here: http://tinyurl.com/4votxp.

P.S.: By the way, for people like me who actually curl up in bed with a good book (my latest is Girja Kumar's BRAHMACHARYA Gandhi & His Women Associates), there is actually such a thing as a book specially printed sideways to make it easily readable in bed. http://www.bedbooks.net/. The only catch is, they have at present in print only "classics", maybe of the lapsed copyright kind.

She was there for the doll after all.

So Kajoj throws her famous “I refuse to pose for pictures” tantrum again. http://epapers2.mid-day.com/midday/scripts/epaper/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&eddate=9/6/2006. Big deal. Maybe, she doesn’t like her privacy invaded in public spaces, huh? Maybe, she isn’t partial to seeing her mug on the idiot box and the rags every other day. After all, she’s so thoughtfully sparing about how often she shows it on the silver screen. Even once in a blue moon would be a gross exaggeration. And, this time it wasn’t she who was supposed to be in the limelight. It was the Kajol doll (along with the Hrithik and Priyanka dittos). Both the stars did not show up. Kajol did. She even cut the cake. So why all the bitching? We don’t need to see her picture to know what she looks like, do we? I have a suggestion for the media folks who find it difficult to abide by Kajol’s bossy, bossy ways. The next time you see her, just ignore her. That will teach her who the real boss is. By the way, I once saw her mother (Tanuja) chatting away with the fisherwomen in the Grant Road market loudly lamenting the unavailability of fish roe just when she had guests coming for dinner. This was some years ago when she had started doing 'character' roles in the movies and Kajol was just getting into the heroine mode. Tanuja had no starry airs about her. None at all, as far as I could see.

Elaine’s exclamation points.

That’s why I enjoy Seinfeld so much. Not for Jerry – who frankly comes across to me as a wimp with a nasal whiny way of speaking (listen carefully to how he says “I know”), albeit a reasonably successful one. Not for George destined to fail for as long as he lives. Not even for the bizarre Kramer. But for the unwittingly insightful Elaine. Among the priceless lessons she taught me is the one on exclamation points. http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheSniffingAccountant.htm. The fact is there’s a surfeit of them in the world. So let us not add to the congestion by using them recklessly and indiscriminately – on the idiot box of all places. The other day, I had the misfortune to be in a room where people were watching a soap called Virasat on a home theatre video screen. Every single time a character mouthed some inanity, the camera used to switch to show the expressionless mug of his or her companion. A sort of a muffled thud (the idiot box equivalent of Elaine’s exclamation point) would then come on the sound track as they cut abruptly to a still closer close-up of whoever was facing the camera. Avantika reminded me that they do it on The Bold and the Beautiful too. I guess Elaine’s logic for her generous sprinkling of exclamation points in her edit of Jake Jarmel’s book (“Well, I felt that the writing lacked certain emotion and intensity.”) is a cousin once removed of the logic soap directors, editors and music directors employ for the kind of sudsy style they adopt. Hype it up! Sock it to them, dude! They’ll just lap it up, boss!

I'm like ...

I find young people in urban India using "was like" and its various cousins to hide the gaps in vocabulary and/or memory in the firm belief that it's the hep thing to do. This is probably because the sloppy young Americans they watch admiringly on the idiot box do so. In advertising where I work, a lot of young copywriters and art directors do it all the time. As I'm neither their parent nor their teacher nor their boss, I tend not to correct them. But I go like "Yechhhhh!" inside every time. Read what others are saying: http://www.barbarafeldman.com/was_like.html.

Professional hazards.

Actors are such hoaxes, don’t you agree? Not their fault. It comes with the job. They’re ‘role acting’ on stage, when the cameras are rolling, even in real (not only reel) life when they talk to the gossip rags, to give just a few examples. It happens to all of us, come to think of it. See the stuff ordinary folks like you and me do on camera. Think of the way they dress when they go to watch cricket matches. Think of the way they raise their hands and sway to music in the television tamashas and call attention to themselves in the idiot-box debates. At times, one wonders if the theme line of actors from all walks of life should not be “Watch my lips”? (Excerpted from an old BBC Radio 4 program: BUSH: “Watch my nose: no new taxes.” / QUAYLE: “Er ... Mr President ... That's meant to be ‘Watch my lips’.” / BUSH: “No, Dan. If they watch my lips, they'll see that I'm lying through my teeth. Watch my nose, no new taxes.” / QUAYLE: “Er ... Mr President ... Your nose ... It's getting longer!” http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/90q3/bushl2.html.)

Offshoring’s latest offshoot. Fat of(f) the land.

Just yell “Cease and desist, dude!” if you’ve read this hush-hush outsourcing joke before. “The United States is rapidly outsourcing obesity to India and hopes to shed as many as three trillion pounds of unsightly cellulite annually, President George W. Bush announced today.” Sounds too devious to be his brainwave? Listen to how he explained the diabolically clever plot to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee: “most of the millions of jobs outsourced since [I] was elected President were extremely sedentary”. “In the long run, the weight loss more than makes up for the job loss,” is the President’s unrepentant justification. According to the writer of this exclusive story who is no other than the irrepressible Andy Borowitz: “Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam recently said in a nationally televised address that India was ‘in the throes of a Supersizing epidemic,’ adding that ‘the time has come for the Indian people to decide whether or not they want to look like Dick Cheney’.” Wonder how I omitted seeing this not-to-be-missed telecast. Oh, to be an idiot-box addicted couch potato! http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive.asp. (Please look for the 7 April 2004 article: ‘U.S. OUTSOURCES OBESITY TO INDIA’.)

Talk the talk. Banal is cool.

Where do celebrity (a former Miss India) and non-celebrity (starving farmers) suicides rate on a scale of zero to 9? Going purely by the media coverage of the events, I don’t have to tell you the answer. Pierre Bourdieu’s On Television, published in English in 1998 at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky soap opera on the American Idiot Box, deals among other things with the ratings game. For this French sociologist, anthropologist, philosopher and champion of anti-globalisation, television is the “space for narcissistic exhibitionism”. “Talking heads” inhibit this space on talk shows: the “fast thinkers” who spout sound bytes on demand, banalities mostly, and dominate the “slow thinkers” who cannot match their pace. His analysis helps to explain why, despite all the information available to us on television, we aren't getting any smarter Just switch on any of the “panel discussion” shows to check out the truth of this observation. Read a review of On Television: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_2_29/ai_77609490. Learn more about Bourdieu (1930 -2002): http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm.