Pointless posts
A particularly pointless post…
What’s with Tamil cinema? No, let me correct myself! What’s with B-grade Tamil cinema? Most of them are stupid love stories made with unrecognizable actors with totally contrived situations and even more contrived fight sequences! Like the one that was playing some time back on Jaya TV. Hero and heroine are in love, but they have never seen each other. They run around the city playing hide and seek before landing up on the same train. The minute they see each other, they hug and kiss and live happily every after! And before you ask, I didn’t waste time watching. You know the entire plot in less than 45 seconds of the climax scene. That way, I must admit the story is conveyed with incredible effectiveness! Change channel, one more love story with an equally nonsensical storyline. Boy meets girl and falls for her. Girl’s father is the villain. You see, he wants the boy to first get a job and then ask for his daughter! Oh the scandal! After much argument, tears, running away, coming back “Kaathalukku Mariyaathai” style…dad says ok! And they live happily ever after!
No matter how many times you change channels and to which language, you’re met with much the same bullshit masquerading as love stories. Makes Mills and Boon romances seem like they deserve the Man Booker! Oh! You don’t know what they are? Good for you! Means you’ve never been corrupted by impossibly perfect heroes and heroines. Practically every Mills and Boon has the same plot, and the same set of characters. Just the names and places change. Let me enlighten you! Heroes are always tall, dark and handsome. They are dashing princes of a feudal era, or self-made millionaires, or hotshot executives. They are uniformly over 6 feet in height with straight dark hair and a regal demeanour. And did I tell you they are also sensitive, amazing cooks, don’t mind babysitting and changing diapers? C’mon! Of course it’s not possible! But you’re supposed to suspend disbelief people! Who asked you to use your brains? That’s meant for lesser mortals!
Oh! The heroine? Sure…here we go! She is not more than a couple of inches above five feet in height. You see, our publishers seem to have a problem with tall heroines? Perhaps they are too intimidating? They have jobs of course! A secretary, or a clerk or maybe, if she is particularly talented, a receptionist. She is shy…terrified more like! Of the hero of course. He’s Mr. Perfect after all. Demure, submissive and whatnot! She may or may not be dumb. But if she really is intelligent, she never uses it against her man. You see…we want our women to be traditional, yet modern!
The plot is quite simple really! Complexity is too difficult for our minds to grasp. Boy meets girl. They hate each other at first sight. After much fighting, the heroine trips over (or meets with an accident, or chips a nail) and hurts herself. And our dear Mr. Perfect is around to nurse her back to health! Now, what stupid woman wouldn’t want a man to wait on her hand and foot? Hell! I would! I’d even feign illness so he pampers me! And bingo! They fall in love. About 50 pages later (overcoming obstacles posed by jealous ex-lover, villain of an uncle, inheritance, etc etc.) they walk into the sunset holding hands!
And what happens after that? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It’s a romance novel dammit! Not a tragedy!
My sins against gender stereotyping
What do you do when you are completely out of ideas? Crib and cringe about writer’s block? Let your blog hibernate like I did for almost 2 months? Yeah! Or you could pick up a random tag from somewhere and write on it. Seriously, whoever invented these nice tags is a godsend for lazy bloggers like me. The one I am going to take today is IHM’s. To quote her in her own words…
So here’s a tag – Please list at least ten things you have ever wanted or done which your gender is not supposed to.
Before I start, I don’t subscribe to any of these stereotypes of gender and truly believe that no job is purely a woman’s or a man’s. Anyway, here we go!
1. I hate pink. I don’t understand why women love that colour so much. Reds and oranges are so much better, as are the more earthy brown shades.
2. I am crazy about bikes and cars. I don’t own any of the fancy ones, just an Activa. But, for me, performance, mileage, power…all these are important, if not more important that looks in a vehicle.
3. I love watching cricket. I am an armchair critic. Since I hate physical activity of any sort and wouldn’t move my backside for sport, I don’t play it. But watching…love it!
4. I am passionate about politics. I have my opinions. I study politics (both the international and the local variety) with a detached interest. I truly believe it gives people an insight into human psychology.
5. I am a gadget-freak. Mobile phones, MP3 players, stereos, cameras…name it! I love it. Especially the cameras. I find the old point and shoot cameras too childish for me. I want a DSLR. In fact, some of my best photos were taken on an old analogue SLR in college. In black and white!
6. I don’t particularly love babies. Sure, I like naughty kids. But, the minute they start crying I lose patience! I’ll probably be a terrible mom or an impatient one at least!
7. I am incapable of feeling shy. Embarrassed yes. But shy? I don’t seem to know HOW!
8. In general, I find excessive jewellery irritating. I do buy accessories and stuff though. Just for weddings and the like.
9. When it comes to off-colour joke, I am neither embarrassed nor confused. I understand most of them, however subtle and sometimes people need to be careful around me to avoid random misinterpretation by me! In fact, friends watch their words and carefully complete sentences because they never know when I will erupt in laughter.
10. I am more tech-savvy and computer-literate than most men I know. Despite my obvious dislike for hardcore technology, I am quite adept at using it to suit my ends. In fact, I learnt XML just be to able to tweak my Blogger template.
So there! Ten random “guy facts” about me. I won’t tag anyone. If you are reading this, you know I’d like to know more about you! 🙂
The hunt is on…
Yeah…you read that right! The hunt begins. Actually, it began quite some time ago. I just haven’t gotten around to writing about it yet. Every month, the hunt goes something like this. Dad downloads an excel sheet with details of “boys” in it. Yeah! Once again, you read that right! Excel sheet. Easy to filter out you see? Tech-savvy IT professional that he is, he finds it the easiest way to weed out those he considers unsuitable for his darling daughter!
Before you ask me, caste criterion is already fulfilled. The list downloaded only contains details of Iyer/Iyengar/Madhwa Brahmin boys. Other castes are filtered at that stage. At this point, the excel sheet contains roughly 950 entries. The first filter to be applied is gothram. Don’t get me wrong. Not the gothram of those famed caste-based khap panchayat-ordered honour killings. This has something to do with which cowshed my ancestors belong to. Don’t ask me the logic. I fail to understand and will not argue the point. Frankly, it’s a waste of time. Anyways, to get back to the point, after filtering the inappropriate gothram, he is left with roughly 800 entries.
Next is age. Those younger than me and more than 5 years older are automatically disqualified. I am not a cradle-snatcher and don’t fancy younger men you see. And, the five-year limit is decided in consultation with parents for reasons ranging from financial to balding before I do! Again…waste of time to argue! This filter brings the number down further from 800 to roughly 550. Then comes income. While I am not a gold-digger and am not looking for someone with a six-figure monthly salary, the idea of not being able to afford my monthly beauty parlour pampering routine due to financial issues is rather off-putting! So, someone with appropriate salary levels is required. This filter narrows the choice from 550 to roughly 250.
At this point, you begin to think that finding a “suitable boy” is more difficult than going to the moon for a weekend away. But, it’s not over yet! Appropriate salary levels do not guarantee education. And most men are put off by my multiple postgraduate degrees, or intimidated by it. You see, not everyone is jobless enough to do the same thing twice! For a man to be ok with my education, he himself must have been jobless enough to take up graduate study at least once in this life, if not twice. This filter reduces the sample size from 250 to roughly 200. That’s not bad actually, given that an MBA is rather easy to get nowadays and people seem to think of it as an essential rather than as an added qualification. So far so good!
If you are thinking that it shouldn’t be difficult for me to find one of 200 people, wait till you hear the rest. At 5 feet and 9 inches, I tower over most Indian men. This implies than only men who are taller than 5’9” are eligible. This is where most of the filtering occurs. The sample size that was previously a decent 200 comes down to a rather difficult-to-choose-from 40. Of the 40 left, Dad allows me to look at each of the individual profiles to decide if they must call. Now, I must admit I have expectations that are not easy to match. To know more, you should probably click to read this! While that post was a bit of an exaggeration, it’s true that my expectations are quite high! This translates to 3 shortlisted candidates out of 40. 5 if it’s a particularly good month. Of the 3, one only wants a Vadama Iyer, another wants his wife to quit her job after marriage and the third has just found a soulmate 30 seconds before mom’s call! So…that leaves me with zero!
This drama repeats month after month. Sometimes, twice in the last year, there is one soul who is brave enough to actually agree to meet me! Heaven help him! Any wonder then that a year on, I am still single? Mom says there is an “Aayirathil Oruvan” waiting somewhere for me. I am thinking it’s closer to being roughly 1: 10826! 😛
On writer’s block and assorted things…
It’s been one of my longest blogging breaks to date. Not that I am proud of it, but for some reason, I find myself unable to sit down and pen my thoughts with any degree of coherence. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. But there are some random thoughts floating around in my head that I am trying extremely hard to verbalise.
First things first, what’s this hype about Valentine’s Day? Practically everyone I knew asked me what I did for V-day and practically nobody believed me when I said I went to a temple with family! I mean, what the hell? Why can’t I not go out with someone, just because it’s Valentine’s Day? The same people who are perfectly willing to accept that I am single on the 364 other days of the year, are unwilling to believe exactly the same story on V-Day? And people say I am a cynic! Sigh!!
Then…reactions to my previous blogpost. No, I don’t really want to start a school to teach men anything at all. Personally, I can’t be bothered. I leave the teaching to the mummies. And that was supposed to be a bloody joke!! Someone actually linked to me (no, I refuse to link him back) stating that the worst advertisement for feminism is a feminist! Guys!! Where is your sense of humour? Maybe I should just take sanyas and go away to the Himalayas to meditate!
Finally, I moved my backside to change my blog template. The current one looks (I hope) a bit more colourful and cheerful than the black and white one I had previously. I changed it after lots of people, from both the real world and the virtual told me my template did not go well with the title of my blog. Apparently, the template was too dull. So, here it is…my new template! Do leave a comment on what you think about it!
And now, is time to shut up and publish. Enough incoherence already! Until next time….so long!!
Of bloggy birthdays, adieus and au revoirs…
Where do I start? What do I say? I typed out words on Microsoft Word three times, and deleted them three times. Because, I don’t know where and how to start. October 16, three years ago, I put down my first words on a blog. It was then called something else, hosted somewhere else. Not once, did I imagine that this would become such an important part of my life. I never imagined that I would reveal so much of myself online, to complete strangers. Nor did I imagine, I would find so many people who think and feel like I do. The journey started three years ago, and doesn’t look like it will end any time soon. Belated happy birthday to my baby, my very precious writing space…a space of my own…as it was once called.
Speaking of journeys ending, I have something to say. To someone who’s been in my life for barely 10 months, but whom I will never forget in all the years to come. To J, who will know this is about her if she is reading it. So will a lot of other people, if they know both of us. On Friday, before she left, she said adieu. I didn’t think much of it then. On my way back home, I reflected. Is it really adieu? Or is it simply au revoir? Is it really that easy to say adieu and leave, as if nothing happened? As if that part of your life doesn’t exist? I think not. It’s always only au revoir.
Never goodbye; just…until we meet again! Because, I have learnt, that life always comes a full circle. That what goes around always comes around. Because people never really leave. They just go away temporarily, only to come back when you least expect it. As a poet (please let me know who, if you know) puts it,
“Ab ke hum bichde to shayad kabhi khwaabon mein milen,
jis tarah sukhe hue phool kitaabon mein milen.”This is true for practically anybody we meet. Friends, colleagues, ex, even those we meet at a railway station or on a train. We never know when or how we might run into them again. So what if I won’t meet J at office again? So what if that part of the journey of her life is ending. It is, after all, a matter of time before our paths cross again. The time taken might be a day, two days, a year or ten years. But, our paths will cross. While we wait, I just want to say this to her. It was great knowing you. I know we will stay in touch, but I will still miss you. No…scratch that! We will miss you, speaking as I am on behalf of many others who know her too, but aren’t jobless enough to write blogs! I know I will. So, J! Until we meet again! Au revoir!