Publicising Pregnancy

This seems to be the season for pregnancy stories. The most popular one being the birth of the new Prince, baby of Kate and William. If you don't know who they are, I congratulate you for being removed from the mad mass media. The other popular stories were the surrogate baby born to the Badshah of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan. It brought about a lot of discussion about surrogacy and alternate ways of making babies.

Pregnancy and its related issues never got so much attention in India as it does now. For instance, we never knew when or how Amitabh Bacchan had his children or Indira Gandhi had her grand children either. But the birth of  Ms. Aradhya got worldwide attention. I again congratulate all those people who don't know who that little celebrity is. There is a popular television show about a celebrity mother and her kids, called the Tara Sharma Show, all about motherhood and toddlers and teething troubles.

While it is good to get a lot of information about pregnancy, motherhood and so on, what is not needed is blatant advertisements for pregnancy. Pregnant or expectant mothers and young women might need this information in the form of books or videos and they just need the right access to it. Is it really nice to stare at a bare pregnant belly button, I don't think so. Its nice to shop for trendy, fashionable maternity clothes. But do you really want to see models who are pregnant. Leave the woman alone, atleast when she is pregnant and stop telling her how she should look.

It is now considered cool to bring out all the craziness of a pregnancy. You can see it in social media or even the new age books, written by the new age mothers. I think this is as bad as hiding and suppressing information relating to pregnancy, which was  the norm 50 years ago in India. We do want to remove the myths surrounding pregnancy, but do we want to make a comedy about such a personal experience. It just transforms what is an almost spiritual experience to a gross bodily function.

In my own personal experience, my idea of pregnancy changed after I had my child. I used to avoid looking at pregnant women, somehow thinking that they might collapse any moment. Now, I just treat them with a lot more courtesy and respect. I think the whole tradition of 'valai kaapu' or 'baby shower' makes a lot of sense. It is a beautiful way of letting people know that the woman is expecting and needs to have her loved ones near her. It is a way of celebrating the woman and making feel beautiful and happy. Some families have two such functions during the period of 9 months. I now understand the need for it, anything that will cheer up the mother to be.

Car owners and Neighbours

As I write this, I am able to hear the repetitive, jarring music that accompanies some cars as they back up. Thankfully, I am lucky enough to be able to hear birds chirp loudly, even though it is getting to be ten in the morning. In most neighbourhoods, all you hear thesedays is uninterrupted car music, right from 6am to 10am. Outside my own house, I can see the drivers wiping the cars till they gleam. People wash their cars religiously in my neighbourhood, rather they get their cars washed every morning. I think this is a ritual that symbolises the power and position of a person in society. It is as though by having clean cars, they are prepared to face the day, and have their ammunition ready. The cars are clean and are waiting to be driven. But where are they going to drive these cars? On roads built by corrupt politicians which are full of pot holes, puddles and garbage.

There is so much pomp and show that goes around this in-animate thing called the 'car', that it makes for a good topic for my blog. The endless noise that accompanies a car when it is being reversed needs special mention. There is a cacophany of noise outside my house as SUVs try to reverse out of the narrow street.  Some people like to announce their arrival or departure by honking in front of their gates, or they have this loud music to indicate that they are reversing their car. Instead of slowing down ahead of a curve, people would start honking as they approach the curve. This has become such a habit that the habit has now become the rule.

Almost every house that has a car and a driver, would have it parked right in front, in the morning. At times it would be obstructing traffic, just because someone is alighting or getting into the car. The driver and the car would be parked for half an hour in front of the house, just waiting for someone to get ready and get into the car. You are just expected to drive around the obstruction if possible, without driving into a ditch or just honk to show that you too have to use the road. If  only people walked a kilometer everyday just to pick up their cars, I think there would be a drastic reduction in lifestyle diseases.

The ownership of cars has got nothing to do with parking space. The fact that you don't have a parking space is not uncommon. So any space outside the house, on the road, in between road junctions can be used. There are drivers employed just so that parking spots can be reserved for the owner. The driver's work is to ensure that no one takes up the strategic spot on the road, in front the house that 'belongs' to the owner of the car. And so this is how crazy the car owning public look to a fellow car owner. You can imagine how it looks for the thousands who don't own cars and have to put up with this everyday.

A weekday morning

It is a weekday morning
The children are not to be seen playing
The roads are filled with people keen
On doing things that keeps them going
From one day to another, without knowing
Why they are doing what they are doing
I spend my time drinking coffee and looking
At the bustling traffic outside, thinking
"I am not like them. Am I?'
I know I am probably worse, just afraid

To join the rat race
Knowing that I cannot survive
Cannot take in all the pain, all the strife
That goes into the making of a normal weekday morning.

Everlasting Effervescent Heroines

Continuing my previous post about 'everlasting heroes', I must mention the 'everlasting effervescent heroines' too. This description is especially limited to Indian movies. Heroines or the female lead actors in Indian movies are the casualty of the chauvinistic film world in India. Most heroines may be intelligent, talented and accomplished young women in real life and yet they start their career playing the chirpy, bubbly roles that the audience supposedly asks for. All leading actresses, whether it is Deepika Padukone or Priyanka Chopra or Katrina kaif, become famous for their over hyped, glamorous, frivolous roles on screen. Once they hit the magic age of 35, they just disappear from the film world. Some of them, if they are lucky, come back as 'comeback queens' or appear in television ads. The best example of a 'comeback queen' is Sridevi but we have to wait and see if she gets any more 'heroine' roles. Even Sridevi had to play a number of squeaky, chirpy roles before she established herself as a star in Hindi cinema.

It is a pity that the modern young woman of today is yet to be portrayed as someone who is in search of her own identity. She is lost trying to find the perfect man to complete her life. In order to make breezy entertainers like 'HJKJ" or "KBKBKBKB" or our heroines are shown as independent, headstrong girls up to the point at which they sing their first duet with the hero. They appear in modern outfits to show how modern their 'outlook' is initially. But by the end of the movie they graduate to more modest outfits to show how committed they are to their heroes. We do find this kind of stereotyping in the west, where actresses like Julia Roberts are typecast in the role of the romantic heroine. But atleast Julia Roberts got some chances to show her acting potential by playing different roles after she became a star (Pelican Brief, Mona Lisa Smile, Eat Pray Love, to name a few).

Women face many challenges in their daily lives, whether it is in managing their family life or facing harassment in public spaces or finding their foot in the corporate ladder. But Indian directors seem to think that the middle class working woman's struggle is not really attractive and cannot be packaged along with designer labels. I wish they realise how wrong they are. Go to any mall and you can see that the maximum sales is made by working women who wish to spend their disposable income on non-essential items.

A few movies like 'Wake up Sid' (hindi) focus on the dilemma women face about their professional and personal life. If the woman is interested in a career she is shown as being extremely dominating and stubborn. Very rarely do you see the actresses play subtle roles of strong determined women.With movies like 'Kahani' becoming famous, I hope we find many more talented actresses like Vidya Balan who give a bold new face to the Indian heroine. I am glad that Vidya Balan was chosen to be the one to be representing India in the Cannes Jury team. I hope it gives her more offers from directors with stories centred around strong, independent women.

Everlasting Action Heroes

I read a hilarious review about new tamil movie called 'Singam II'. You can read it here. It got me thinking about action heroes. When I think about action heroes, the first name that comes to my mind is, our own, one and only Superstar Rajnikanth. He is the evergreen action hero. He has not aged a day beyond 35 in his movies. Even now people are waiting to see him come on screen like a warrior. Even Amitabh Bacchan has had to accept a few roles where he looks his age, I think these are his roles in the movies, 'Black' or 'Chini Kum'. Amitabh atleast has accepted that he is older than 50. But with Rajnikanth, there is no way he will be seen on screen as a man older than 35.

In Hollywood too you can see such evergreen heroes in movies like 'Indiana Jones' and 'Mission Impossible'. Tom Cruise, Harrisson Ford, George Clooney. Tom Cruise still manages to look like he did when he was in his thirties but the other two have played a few roles where they show their age, like in 'Descendants' and 'Six days, Seven nights'. Jackie Chan is the internationally famous action hero who never ages.

In the case of Tamil movies, you can see that many actors try to follow the footsteps of Superstar and try to remain evergreen heroes. Thankfully, the audience is a little more selective these days. Popular actors like Suriya, Vijay and Vikram are struggling to remain at the top. Kamalhassan has appeared as a father in few movies like 'Mahanadhi' and 'Avvai Shanmugi'.  In the Hindi filmworld too Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan act in repetitive roles of angry young men or righteous cops or supermen. According to me, once an actor starts getting roles of the 'action hero' he is surely getting old or he has hit the magic age of 35. That is the reason why all the directors try and cast him in roles that don't make him look any older than 30.

My only problem is that it is very difficult to imagine Shahrukh Khan or Amir Khan or Vijay or Suriya as a college student. Its difficult to see them act silly and act like they are lovestruck teenagers.The older the hero, the younger the actress who is paired with him. Recently the movie, 'Billa II", a typical action movie, was made with the lead actor Ajith showing off his grey hair. That was the only redeeming feature of the movie.


What I am trying to say is that it is a pity that these talented actors who have potrayed sensitive roles in their younger days very rarely get the chance to play their real age on screen after a point of time.Any hero who plays the role of a father or a middle aged man gets cast as a character actor and is very rarely considered a 'rising star' in Indian movies.

It is unfortunate that Indian movies rarely show heroes as fathers and also as strong and powerful men.  People say that Indian movies commodotise women and they are never given equal importance as men. I think that films in India commodotise men too. We do not have enough directors and actors who are ready to go out of the mould and experiment with different roles for men.  Why have actors, when all you need is young, beautiful, nimble footed dancers. 'Action' sequences are also choreographed movements which are strategically placed to entertain and attract the audience attention.

On a scale of 1 to 10

Would you mind rating my blog? I really want some feedback, except for the stats I receive from Blogger I have no idea who reads my blog, other than my own family.

So this is the new rating system practised in India. I thought I would just use the same. 

Rate the blog between 1 and 7 if it is Poor
Rate the blog between 8 and 9 if its Good
Rate the blog 10 if you love it or it is Excellent

I have been answering several customer satisfaction surveys in the last three or four years. Car companies, home appliance manufacturers, phone companies. Customers are expected to use only these words to express their opinion about the service level, it is either good or bad or excellent. What happened to 'Average' or 'Must Improve'?

When I answer these surveys, the thing that comes to my mind is education, grades and the performance of students which are graded similarly. Every intelligent teenager who is completing school is expected to get above 90% but it is only the lucky ones who get 98.99% and get into the best colleges. What happened to being happy with anything above 90%?  Cut off for medical or engineering college seats is always in the 98th or 99th percentile.

Coming closer to home, I am very impressed that my daughter gets an A+ in her tests. But guess what, there are children who come home crying because they failed to get 25 on 25 in their tests. Even the grading system has not eliminated the pride and prestige of a 25/25 or 100/100. Children who study well in class constantly aim for getting full marks, irrespective of the subject, and are very disappointed if they get anything less than that.  What happens to the majority of the children who can be called the average performers, do they get any attention in class I wonder? It is a replication of the grading system that I used above. There are only three categories for appraising performance in tests, these days.

This obsession with perfection in scores or awards or titles continues in people as they become adults. They forget that there is something called 'average' or 'can do better' and feel very bitter if they don't get what they want. I hope we don't use such rating systems in real life. I was kidding when I said please rate my blog. I really don't care.  I am doing this for myself and a little for others. I haven't received any comments on my blog this year and that does not make any difference to me. Saying this, I think I will rate my blog a 5/10 with a lot of scope for improvement.