I travelled the world and somehow landed-up in the furthermost corner of it: Australia. This blog is about politics, culture and media as seen from a global-Indian's perspective.
On my 26th birthday - six years ago - I hit rock bottom.
According to the “plan”, I should have finished my studies, gotten married, travelled a bit, and had my first child by then. Instead, I was still stuck in Mumbai, single as hell, and had been struggling for two years to get a good scholarship to cover a masters somewhere outside of India. Obviously, there was no child in the picture (much to my parent’s relief I might add).
It was then that I first considered the possibility that I may never get married, never have children, never travel the world and never do that blasted masters in some vague liberal arts subject that I so dearly wanted to do. After all, just because I wanted those things didn’t mean that the Universe in any way felt obliged to give them to me.
Funnily enough, it was between that birthday and the next that I finally cadged a scholarship to an arts master’s programme, got my first passport stamp (to Switzerland) and most importantly: met Sid. How far could that baby be?
Six years afar it seems. On my 32nd birthday today, I can finally say that yes, I have finished my studies, gotten married, travelled a fair bit, and yes, yes, yes, I am the mother of a two-month old baby girl.
In my entire life, I have never been able to finish reading a food review. Sorry Naresh, sorry Iain, sorry Guy (the food reviewers that I worked with) - not even yours, not even the ones that I may have joined you for the food to.
It is not because I don’t care for food. I do. I really do. Bad food upsets me. Bad service upsets me. Bad ambience upsets me. Which is why I was permanently upset in London - the food quality was so poor in general.
Today, while reading a review in the toilet of a seafood restaurant Dimitri’s by some Mr Michael Harden in the latest Melbourne Weekly, I finally figured out why.
It is because most of the review is just gibberish to me.
Here’s a line out of the review. “There will still be the superb spakonita made with wild greens, the semonila-dusted calamari served with auso aioli, French toast made with baklava and the brilliant gigantes - large tomoatoey baked beans served with poached eggs, loukaniko sausages and feta, all examples of the modern Greek approach that owner Jim Karabagias does with intuitive flair.”
To begin with, I find my comprehension hiccuping four times in that one sentence - at “spakonita”, “auso ailoi”, “gingates” and "loukanikos”. And each time I hiccup, my interest in the review falls a few notches unconsciously. (In all, I hiccuped nine times in the tiny half page review).
Besides, even when I do recognise all the ingredients I find it tough to imagine them together - French toast made with baklava? Now there are people who can simply put unlikely ingredients together in their minds and conjure up the taste. They are usually contestants in MasterChef. To the rest of us, the words describing the dishes are simply gibberish until we actually taste them. And if we can’t imagine the taste, how will be know that we will like the taste?
The only time a food review comes to life for me is when something goes wrong with the service - the staff is rude, or the food comes too late or the bill contains an unexpected charge. Because human F-ups are something we all can relate to.
The problem is that food reviewers want to bring to you interesting new restaurants offering interesting new foods in interesting new ambience. But newer the foods, ingredients and atmosphere, the more I hiccup, and the more I lose interest.
Here's why I can't agree with High Commission of India, London's, demand that BBC apologises for Top Gear's offensive portrayal of India on their 90-minutes Christmas Special.
If we don't give others the right to make fun of us, we must also give-up the right to make fun of others. And I dearly don't want to lose my right to make fun of the British: their terrible food; their inability to hold down a drink (evident in the all the puke you see on the streets on Saturday and Sunday mornings); the Katie Price-inspired fashion that dominates Picadilly Circus; the quixotic British train system that breaks down at the mere mention of snow, rain or autumn leaves; the famous British bureaucracy and the mad Prince Charles.
Remember, if we don't want the British to laugh at the Top Gear episode, we have no right to laugh at this scene from our own beloved Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham.
This, after the British Government so kindly allowed us to shoot half our film in their country!
Besides, here's something I don't get about stereotypes? Is a depiction still a stereotype if it is true?
Ok, so the Top Gear showed street dogs and Indian men pissing on the streets of Mumbai, long queues in front of Railway ticket counters, they talk about tourists in India getting the trots (or diahorrea), the dangerous highway between Delhi and Jaipur. But aren't they true depictions of our lives. I can't remember a single day in my fifteen years in Mumbai (or 22 years in India) when I didn't see street dogs and men pissing in the open. And yes, public toilets in India are a shame. I challenge the High Commissioner of India to England to use the public toilet at Kurla Terminus in Mumbai. These are not generalisations, these are the realities of living in India. It is just that the Top Gear depicts them in their standard cheeky style.
The Top Gear team also showed the lively street stalls and enterprise of Mumbai (in fact, Clarkson and team come sloppy seconds against the dabbawallas), Delhi's glitterati in their incredibly expensive cars and the beauty of the Himalayas.
The show hosts also constantly make fun of Britain. The whole exercise shows the British products as awful and poorly constructed, and themselves as buffoons in the garb of Britain's representatives. And they are happy to make fun of themselves. (In fact, over the years, they have made more fun of Britain than of any other culture, country or people).
If I do have a quibble, it is this. Their's jokes - whether on us or themselves - were so contrived. The Top Gear humour is at its best when it is spontaneous and full of surprise. But over the years, the character of the three hosts has become so fixed and the dynamics between them so predictable, that one can foretell the result of all their pranks before they have played themselves out. That is just bad television.
If we must protest, it is over this. That even with all the chaos, crowds, surprise, and fodder for humour that India provided them: Clarkson, Hammond and May couldn't really give us a genuine moment of spontaneous humour. We deserved better!
It was sort of fun when Kareena played the exuberant, irrepressible, rebellious (read: zany) Geet in Jab We Met in 2007. But the success of that film led to an avalanche of bordering-on-mad heroines, almost all of them coupled with long-suffering but essentially sensible heroes.
Think Aditi from Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na (2008) who Wikipedia describes as "a highly aggressive, impulsive girl. She abuses. She scratches." In other words, zany.
Think Aaliya (Deepika Padukone) from Break ke Baad (2010). She was loud, unpredictable, smokes, get drunk and is generally impulsive. In other words: zany.
Think Dimple (played by Katrina Kaif) from Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011). Again bold, mischievous, impulsive and good at keeping her hero in a permanent state of alarm. What's that word again: yes, zany.
And then there was Tanu (Kangana Ranaut) from Tanu Weds Manu (2011) who was practically bordering on psychotic, as far as I am concerned.
And now, there is Kareena Kapoor in Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, due to release in February 2012, threatening us with her "zaniness" again if the trailer is anything to go by.
Apart from extreme loquaciousness and boundless boldness, the heroines' "zaniness" also tends to include smoking and getting dead drunk at some point in the film (give or take a few films). Luckily, our long-suffering hero is always near by to rescue her when she passes out. Rebelliousness doesn't include rescuing yourself, it seems.
Our hero, in contrast, is sensible, responsible and generally good at toeing the line. This, we are supposed to see as repressed. Our heroine's zaninesss, then, is really about releasing the inner Marlboro Man in the hero. So while our hero rescues our heroine from drunken scraps, our heroine rescues him from life itself. (Also for some reason, it is a role Imran Khan is determined to colonise, playing it in four of the five films I mentioned above).
In most parts, I don't mind the zaniness, except in three respects.
First, why is it that so many rebellious heroines seem to have no careers or jobs. Geet, Aditi, Dimple and finally the horrifying Tanu: none of them showed any interest in gainful employment. They were all just waiting to get married, hoping to bag a guy through their exuberant personality alone. Between Aaliya and Kapoor (in Ek Main...), one wanted to become an actress and the other a hair stylist. Obviously, careers like law, IT, journalism etc are not zany enough.
Second, zaniness and all is fine but I do mind watching smoking as somehow being emblematic of rebelliousness. It is a generally accepted as a harmful and somewhat disgusting habit and is becoming increasingly unfashionable in the West, from where we picked up the notion that it is fashionable in the first place. In fact, I can't remember the last Hollywood Rom-Com, in which the heroine smoked. Do we always have to remain a step behind the West all the time? Can't we just buck the trend for a change.
Third, after so many films, zaniness is turning into a bore.
Let's hope, Kareena Kapoor, who started the trend with Jab We Met, will bring it to an end with Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu.
