The Bollywood Bustle

          We Indians grow up in a world full of Bollywood exposure. As a kid, I remember those around me saying ‘Phod ke rakh dunga!’ or fancily trying to mimic Amir Khan’s trademark maachis-tongue theatricals from Ghulam, thinking that is cool. Who would deny? We’ve all been raised in a world where Bollywood ‘heroes’ and their gimmicks become trends faster than fashion trends. Last year, we saw umpteen people on streets hang their 50-bucks shades on the back of their collars, as they thought the world would goggle them, as they walk – head high with glory. Remember ‘O-O Jaane Jaana’? - Shirtless males with torn denims: that was the in-thing then! And 90s was not the start of it! I remember my Grandfather telling me how he fancied the Rajesh Khanna bib and tucker back in his days.
Since people see the ‘stars’ grab all the attention from the females with these thingamabobs, they imitate what they see on the big screen. The society associates coolness with what the film stars do. The society follows blindly, and the film stars and directors let new chickens fly out in the bourgeois, for them to chase. Smaller entrepreneurs gain money out of all this by selling ‘Dabangg glasses’ with all their bells and whistles. It’s not just the one section of the society that is affected by this, the community Garba and Lohri celebrations start with folk tunes, but always culminate in ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ and ‘Tu Mera Hero’.
But deep down in our hearts, we all know we’d enjoy being the front-people of that group of fifty that is dancing on ‘Koi Kahe, Kehta Rahe’. Even though we'd want to walk with our noses high, somewhere in our minds, there is that want of being in the spotlight, of being the Shahrukhs of our life stories that we compare to Dilwale, or Irfan Khans in a party where we deliberately want to make the college bully Pappu. There's that instant glamour element to these stars, that everyone catches quickly. Even though it's kinda too much to mindlessly go on streets without a shirt (just a word of advice - not of experience, you're free to try, though!), it's good to hope for a dramatic life - a life full of occasions that'd fit the soothing ballads of Lucky Ali and also the bombastic party songs of Sunidhi. Where's the fun without a little masala? :)

           

Being the progeny of a gynecologist

I don’t know how many of you can relate to this. Most of those who have doctors as parents will sympathize. But all those who have gynaecologists as parents will definitely shed a tear of empathy.

                  My mother is a gynecologist and obstetrician. They are the two meanest branches of medicine, dealing with the complaints of the female reproductive system and yes, childbirth. Hell is real.

       I have often asked her time and again why she picked this particular branch. Her reply never changes- “because I liked it at the time”. How can anyone “like” looking at vaginas, per vaginal examinations, episiotomies and cries of women in labor is beyond me. Nevertheless she started her private practice and I discovered many aspects about this branch that I never knew.

1)   Insomnia is a prerequisite.

If you even remotely need your daily dose of sleep, this is a no-go, my friend. For an OBGY practitioner, sleep is an unheard of treat which he/she only gets on Sundays, and that too, if they are lucky. Untimely deliveries, checking up on the mother post-op, the sheer long duration of deliveries will keep you up. Either you develop insomnia or call Edward to turn you into a vampire. No other choice.

2)   Holiday? What’s that?

          

There is nothing like “time-off”. In the world of sudden labor pains and premature deliveries and missed periods that has put the patient in a perpetual state of hysteria, there can be and won’t be spontaneous family trips or attending weddings and such frivolous business. These ladies have been visiting you since 9 months. Are you going to bail on them on their “special” day? Hell no.

3)   Vulgarity.

           

Now if you intend to familiarize yourself with menstrual cycles, vaginal spotting and cervical scrapings, you need to know there’s nothing vulgar about asking a woman to strip (obviously in the clinic, what are you, a pervert??!) Being resilient to putrid odors and panicky hysterical patients is a necessity. The husband is already agitated. Don’t make it worse.

4)   Family dinners are all about cases.

I have lost count of the number of times when I have been eating biryani while mom gave detailed information about her “patient of the day”. Either these are really stupid or irritating patients who have driven my mother up the wall or some medically interesting cases my mother loved. Ectopic pregnancies, bipartite uterus, superfoetation, criminal abortions, I have heard them all. This is all dinner-table talk. There does simply no “don’t talk about meconium while having your food!” It’s not dirty, it’s medical.

5) You will get “the talk” every week.

            

Whenever my mother gets a case of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease or “ingenious ways of you-know-what that landed the perpetrator with severe injuries you-know-where”, I know she is going to fix me with a beady stare and say the words I dread -“We need to have a talk”. What follows is always a well rehearsed speech on how much she loves me, how she will be there to “handle any problem”, how the opposite sex is composed of “highly irresponsible individuals who will run away and take no responsibility in case “it happens” and  how “you are too small to have to handle all that, if that happens”.

           I've even managed not to shrivel up with embarrassment at this one.

   

        But having said this, girls are lucky, for they won’t have to explain that “PMS” is a recognized medical condition, and so is post partum depression. There will be nothing you can’t talk about, and little you can embarrass them about. They perform a Herculean task, sacrificing their sleep and family lives for getting life into this world, and quite literally.

             And after having seen how hard they work, they deserve the highest respect. Mothers hire nannies and don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night for their own babies. My mother does that for someone else’s baby.

Chick flicks-a guilty pleasure

First of all, this isn't an article only for girls. In fact, it will probably tell guys why girls everywhere watch these kind of movies. Why sleepovers include a CD of The Ugly Truth, and why we prefer The Devil Wears Prada to Star Trek.

      They are meaningless, they are fun. And most importantly, they always show the girl in a good light. She is this pretty girl with a golden heart; except that life just isn't fair to her. It hands her the perfect guy and takes him away, only for her to realize he wasn't perfect after all, and that the guy she had friend zoned years ago was!

          This is directed especially to all the girls, who have at some point or the other in their lives, sat on a couch with crispies or ice cream, to watch movies that make them feel good about themselves. That make them feel hopeful about life. Yes, this is the widely explored genre of chick flicks…whose very soul is the quintessential sweet protagonist with heart issues, who lives ‘happily ever after’.

            Like all other girls (well, most of them anyway) I started my dose of chick flicks with the Anne Hathaway starrer ‘The Princess Diaries’. The story of a dorky teenager who yearns to be ‘invisible’ who finds herself the princess of a faraway country and her love in her best friend’s brother, it had me feeling all warm and happy. What followed was a truckload of movies with similar endings, i.e. happy. 27 dresses, The Nanny Diaries,50 First Dates The Proposal, Alex & Emma, just to name a few.

          What really had me hooked to these movies was the obvious lack of tragedy and how the girls just somehow seemed to always turn their lives right by the end. Emma quit as Alex’s typist because she thought he loved somebody else, and what followed was Alex changing the story’s ending to be with her! When Sandra Bullock thought she would be deported and had lost her love too, Ryan Reynolds (hunky to death Ryan Reynolds, I meant) did not let her go. When Rebecca Bloomwood went into gigantic debt, her prince-charming saved her. Even if they lost a job, fought with their parents, went bankrupt, suffered a heart-break, lost a friend. Whatever happened, they always got perfect bliss. Now isn't that just amazingly optimistic and encouraging??? Some people read self help books. They write questions to agony aunts in newspapers. Well my counselor are these movies.

     Skeptics might argue that they are highly misleading. They are highly repetitive. Guys often say that these movies set impossible standards for chivalry and love. They paint a larger-than-life picture. True that.

      But the thing to be understood is that girls are not supposed to act on the lines of the movies. They shouldn't set their standards for love, for friendship according to these movies. Now that would be absurd, taking it a bit too far. These pick-me-ups come with a statutory warning! (the warning includes: not applying them literally to your own life, not expecting guys in real life to be like, say Patrick Dempsey for instance, not comparing yourself to Katherine Heigl or Anne Hathaway in what might set of a body dysmorphic disorder and definitely not discussing chick flicks in front of the opposite sex!)

    No, all we girls do is watch them when we are sad, to lift are mood; watch them when we are happy-to lift our mood even further. Chick flicks are like chocolate-you feel fabulous after watching them, but you can’t keep on having them all the time, they’ll make you sick.

    So this guilty pleasure acts like an occasional medicine for us, a reminder of how perfect our lives can be, if we want them to.

Vigilante

        

His was the world of dark.Born into the darkness and raised unto it.He was robbed of the gift of sight at an early age.Born into this world with such a deformity he was left as a child,at the gates of a residential complex.Abandoned by those whom he would have called his parents.Alone in this world with nothing but darkness..Unlike others he chose to embrace it.Made it as a part of him.Lack of sight was compensated by the heightening of other senses.He could sense purpose,detect emotions  apart from his heightened hearing and sense of smell.

As a child, he was raised by the people living in the residential complex.Out of the compassion.Humanity too they would say.They would feed him and provide shelter.Warm roof against the cold rains. But as he grew the people were quickly tired of him and sympathies started to run dry.Providing for such a being no longer a child proved to be difficult.. And he was cast out again to fend for himself.As ever he didn't complain once,but adapted himself.He would scrummage through whatever scraps people left in trash,and slept under an enclosure in rains.

       In such a rainy night,as he crawled beneath the night guard's empty shed ,he sensed presence of unknown people in the vicinity late at night.Half wondering who it could be he followed the sounds.Presence of strangers was not uncommon,but at this time of night it was suspicious.He could detect malicious intent in those men.They marched up the steps of the building silently.He scrambled on after them keeping a safe distance.  Suddenly  a scream pierced the silence of the night.He rushed up the stairs,falling and flailing.The men had broken into an apartment and were attacking the residents.In he jumped into the fracas,lashing out at every evil doer he could sense.He knew every man residing in the building by his sound.The man who was constantly engulfed by vile fumes was to his right,the lady with the high pitched voice was screaming her lungs off behind him.He attacked everyone else.The thieves bewildered ,injured and scared out of their wits made haste to flee.Sensing them to be gone he stopped,panting breathing heavily.The residents looked upon him with equal fear,wonder and gratitude.He could smell fear on them.They made a move,as to offer him something as a token of their gratitude.But he backed away,not wanting any of that gratitude and retired to his previous place.

The next day the news spread throughout the residential complex of his heroic act.People marvelled at his instincts and praised him.They came from afar with their offerings.Shy in presence of so many people he holed up himself in the debris of the construction.People would leave their offerings,food,some scraps of cloth for the cold days. But still they would be afraid.He could sense it.He would come out only after they had left,snatch the offerings and return to his hiding place.

            With the passing days,acts of his heroism grew.Whether it was saving a girl from being assaulted late night by gang of drunks or almost killing an abductor who tried to kidnap a child.His fame spread far and wide and the crooks thought twice before entering.The word spread about the guardian of the premises and the thieves kept their distance from it.Still he wouldn’t come to terms with mingling with the people showing gratitude and cowered in his hole when they came.The residents built a permanent living quarter for him. They started providing him with food. There was also a small number of people who resented him. Who considered his presence a filth,a degradation upon the otherwise upscale society ,his acts of heroism not with standing.  Voices were raised by these few again and again shouting for his ouster but they were drowned in a majority who loved him for his deeds.

One fateful day,he sensed presence of evil.An unknown person had just entered the premises.Every hair on his body stood straight at the mere passing of this person.He could sense that something was amiss,he couldn’t know why.So he followed that person,maintaining a safe distance,hiding whenever he could, to go undetected.He was spotted by a resident,one of the few against him who ordered him to back off as the person was known to him.He retreated but his instincts told him otherwise.

He started shadowing that man again.Unknown to anybody the man had a weapon concealed on him .The man moved towards the children's play ground.He withdrew the weapon,a revolver and entered the playground.At once the atmosphere was rendered with shrieks and screams of the frightened children. .And the man took some children as hostages in the abandoned clubhouse.The vigilante started running towards the clubhouse at once,mustering all his strength.Somebody yelled at him to back down,this was a matter for the law enforcement agencies.Ignoring the pleas,he approached the area.It was a dark place,with almost no lights.But that didn't matter to him.He was born in darkness.He belonged to darkness.Relying on his superior hearing he entered the clubhouse through the back door.As he proceeded he could hear the sobs of captives to his right..He turned right in the corridor.He sensed a giant shadow of an object blocking his path.A disused pool table had been upturned and was used as a barricade.Crouching past it,he entered a room.

      He sensed the children’s presence and the man’s.Preparing for a strike he waited till the man was far away from the children.As he heard the man’s foot steps die away  he quickly sprang upon him.Shots rang out.The man shrieked as a devil,the devil in darkness took form and descended on him,cutting and ripping him.The struggle brought them near the room.And in a desperate attempt to save his life the man fired shots blindly in the air ,hoping to strike his target.The room lit up as each shot was fired.But alas,although the bullets missed the vigilante,they struck the children,killing  two of them.The vigilante stopped,horrorstruck by the outcome.He smelled Death,deaths of innocents.The man was dead too,but he had taken his toll.

That day was a black day for the society.They mourned their children lost.And joined in the few blaming the vigilante.They thought maybe the police could’ve better resolved the situation without his interference.Now everyone was against him.They wanted him dead,but couldn’t bring themselves to shed blood. Finally they decided to use a humane killer.And after capturing him and holding him captive they injected him with it.The humane killer brought on a painless and quick death..His body,stiff from the onset of death was thrown alongside the huge trash can where the truck came to pick it everyday.

 Inspite of darkness in his own life ,he had brought light in others’ while he lived.

True to his nature,he was Man’s best friend.

-Jyotirmay Khebudkar