Blockbuster drama, now playing in a movie hall near you

Image Courtesy - Google images

There’s no one more foolish than a person who goes to watch a movie in a multiplex for the simple pleasure of cinema. The movie is just a means to soak in the liveliness and chirpiness of people who accidentally ended up in the same hall as you. You can close your eyes and sink back on your cushy seat as you tap your feet to the mellifluous symphony of a gaggle of kids screaming in unison. Surprisingly, their parents, oblivious to their progeny’s talents, continue to stare poker-faced at the screen. Just as your attention is diverted by the antics of a certain Bakshy out to save Kolkata from the evil clutches of the Japanese army, a tiny head will sneak in from behind and startle you with, Pappa, potty janaa hai. Overcome by guilt, you will immediately get up and offer to take the hapless soul to the restroom to unburden him from toxins playing havoc in his tiny intestines.

You can learn pick-up tricks from Rakesh Jee on how to negotiate as he strikes a business deal on loudspeaker mode on his phone. If possible, give him an encouraging smile and wave, so what if he can’t see you in the dark! Wearing a neon coloured lipstick helps.

I still can’t fathom why our filmmakers invest so much money and passion in making movies when all we need is a bucket of popcorn, litres of Coke or Pepsi, a cool dark hall reverberating with chatter of merry men and women, to have a good time! It’s so much fun to be seated on time and be able to offer your feet for the stamping pleasure of a bunch of giggly college girls who arrive fashionably late.

Thanks to my many sojourns to movie halls, I now know intimate details about strangers who insist on gossiping with Dolby surround sound. Sometimes when I’m in a genial mood, I walk down and offer them advice on where to procure top quality diamonds at reasonable price and dealing with demanding mothers-in-law by mixing pee in their tea.

I also get to test my long distance vision by reading status updates on mobiles 5 rows ahead of me. Most of them are busy critiquing the movie, pointing out the flaws in the script, the poor editing and pathetic acting skills of the lead actors.

Wow, you have to be really talented to analyse a movie without even bothering to watch it!

Once upon a time I was a fool like you, who’d bemoan the complete lack of consideration many of our countrymen display for fellow movie-goers. I had little patience for people who’d treat movie halls as their own private space, moisturising your hair with their spit as they noisily munched tonnes of snacks and exchanged pleasantries on the phone with long lost relatives. I would experience extreme emotional distress when my loud sobs, empathising with the doe eyed heroine’s anguish (as her sadistic Ma chopped off her finger to teach her errant daughter a lesson), would be rudely interrupted by loud guffaws from insensitive louts. I would often end up trying to shush these specimens and unfairly subject them to my dagger eye treatment in an attempt to reform them. A few times I even had the audacity to wonder why parents drag their toddlers to Adult certified movies and subject them to blood and gore and other hanky-panky stuff? Why does the Censor Board spend weeks on certification when everyone, including movie management, treats it as a RaGa joke?

Not anymore. Thanks to a new me, I never have a dull moment, irrespective of how bad or good the movie is! Because I have little expectation of etiquette from others, I sit back and enjoy the show, on and off the screen. My favourite part is when Sunny Leone shakes her inner booty on the silver screen. I whistle and woot loudly and kick the back of the seat with my heels to express my appreciation. If I accidentally walk in for an artsy movie and discover it’s dull and boring with no masaledar sex scenes, I start reading WhatsApp jokes loudly to anybody who’d care to listen. At a philosophical level, such rude reminders of reality keep the viewer stay grounded, helping them stay uninvolved with the stuff on the screen, all of which is virtual and maya twice removed. I mean, how many villages have the likes of Bipasha in fully made-up splendour, crooning huskily? 
 
Also, I’m seriously considering having another baby, raise him to be a brat and let him loose on all those poker-faced parents whose kids I took to the restroom.

Why be the long suffering bahu of a saas-bahu weepy, when you can choose to be the scheming saas?

Once you become the uncouth nincompoop you’d been dying to change, movie watching will no longer be an agonizing affair. If you can’t change them, become one of them and torture them with the same behaviour they subject you to. As such, enjoying a movie for sheer cinematic pleasure is so last century. 

The serious business of Bhalobasha, the Bengali way

Also published on Huffington Post, India

Image courtesy - TelegraphIndia.com

There are certain words in Bangla that have no equivalent in any other language. Like nyakami, a trait peculiar to Bengali women especially if she’s beauteous and aware of it. Nyakami is her way of conveying to you, she knows that you know she’s beautiful, with maximum effect. A tilt of her head that gives your gaze the felicity of looking at her neck tad longer than necessary. A knowing smile, a lethal combination of innocence and coquettishness, engineered to feel like shrapnel on your heart afflicted by affection of the tingling kind. Emboldened by her playful antics, you make flirtatious advances, only to be rebuffed with - isshh, uff, kee oshobho (how shameless you are). Suitably reprimanded and filled with remorse at misreading her signals, just as you beat a hasty retreat, she will dart you a come hither look that’ll leave you as confused as a deer caught in headlight.

She will make you revolve around her as she blazes like the sun. Only when she’s convinced enough of your slavish love for her, will she let you into the inner sanctum of her heart.

Phostinoshti is yet another term that is peculiar to Bangla and Bengalis. It is a Bengali’s way of having an aphair (affair), without doing much about it. Just like the revolution that he plots from his armchair, hoping to change the world without lifting his finger.

If there’s anything that a Bangali is more passionate about other than phish, phootball and phriends, it the business of prem-koraa (sweet lovin’). The grooming starts at a very young age. While the young male prefers spending his youth doing adda on a rock, his female counterpart is busy showering love on mankind. For her prem-kora is a day job, along with chaan kora, ranna kora and kaaj kora (bathing, cooking and working), exactly in that order. 

So, when the Bengali male nurtured on Horlicks, Kalmegh, fish-head and Ishabgol decides to woo the nayika of his dreams, he engages in 'phostinoshti’. This consists mostly of thinking he is having an affair without actually having one. Poetry and Rabindra Sangeet feature at the top of activities, some holding of hands, exchange of coy glances, stolen hugs and loud sighs to express helplessness. All through this, neighbours will be told 'o amaaar bonner moto' (she is like my sister). Not suggesting incest, but to just convey there is no actual phostinoshti.

A True Welfare State (Cows Only)

As disturbed as the saffron brigade that advised me to wash my mouth with Harpic, and go back to my motherland for daring to compare cows with women, Cacofonix my guest blogger has decided to repent on my behalf. In this post he comes up with cow welfare schemes that'll show the world how much we cherish our four-legged Mom. 

“Each cow will have a 12-digit unique identification number". The aim of this scheme is to establish identity of cows, their security and provide them benefits of health schemes.” 
 
Indians have really nailed it when it comes to quadrupeds. Okay, the cow is holy there, and the cow knows it. They have generally been roaming around with an air of insouciance all these years – on the streets, in the fields, in market places, through narrow gullies, jumping over cow catcher grills at IIT hostels. Pooping anywhere they liked. Mooing anytime they pleased. But now, the administration has taken up their cause, like never before. Because, the cow is like their mother. Can be a tad confusing because human mothers have two breasts and cow mothers could have several – it is hard to tell how many. But that’s another matter.

Critics of the government machinery, who just don’t understand Indian heritage, have been shouting needlessly from the rooftops, saying that cows now enjoy greater legal protection than women. What they don’t get is the fact that this is one territory where India has trumped the most advanced country on earth, the US. I mean, the US sulked when India sent a spacecraft to Mars (the second time after the one sent up in 3500 BC, just read the frigging Vedas), but they are having a hard time now on what to do for their Jersey herds to be one up on India. The White House has approved funds for developing an upgraded version of unique IDs that will carry the complete biometric profile, lipid profile, BMI, political affiliation and dietary options in a microchip that can be etched like a wafer on a neck piece – how fetching! The better off bulls will get color options for these tags, maybe purple, black and magenta, hanging from Swarovski encrusted gold chains.

Why Cows Deserve More Protection than Women

Also published on Huffington Post, India.

Image courtesy - Google.com

It is now safer to be a cow than a woman in our country. Thanks to the over-zealous saffron brigade enforcing laws ensuring her safety and long life, they are also the more empowered lot. While the Fadnavis government was busy earning brownie points, passing motions to ban consumption of beef, Haryana government went a step ahead and covered itself with cow dung by taking a historic step deciding to issue unique identification numbers to its indigenous cattle. While women in Haryana will have to live with desi names like Saali, Nikammi, Kalmunhi, and beatings from their men, cows will be anointed with cool 12 digit names, entitling them to free healthcare benefits. Moov over Jaat bois, Haryanvi gais are the new beefcake in town.

Cow slaughter in Haryana will now attract a rigorous imprisonment ranging from three years to 10 years and a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh, while girl child slaughter and rapes will continue to be a socially acceptable norm. Mumbai girls have ditched their pepper spray for beef steak to shove it into the mouth of anyone who dares molest them, since consumption of beef invites a stricter punishment than treating women like a piece of meat.

Before the unreasonable gender of the human species goes around blaming our Netas for pandering to the cattle class to gain political acreage, while they have to master the art of using pepper sprays, martial arts to keep horny men at bay, I’d like to present my arguments as to why it makes more sense to protect cows than women.

Every Cow is your Maa, hence every Maa is a cow. Like every dutiful Maa, her love is as pure and pristine as her milk. She’s not only the milk of humanity, even her poop and urine, as swachh and holy as her heart have medicinal properties. You can glug cow urine to cure yourself of cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis or any other disease you may have incurred as karma for your past sins. Once cured, you can use the extra supply to replace environment unfriendly Phenyl and swab your floors clean. RSS has developed a cow-urine-based soft drink called Gomutra Ark. The drink is a "healthy" alternative to Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other soft drinks, which are part of a wider problem resulting from corrupt Western influences. Cow dung on the other hand is fuel cum fertilizer cum purifier cum sanitizer cum skin tonic cum tooth polish rolled into patties and can be safely hailed as the Elvis Presley of excrement.

Even your biological Mom cannot claim to be so udderly useful!