F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

Two lesbians decide to get married, and one of the lesbians' ex-husband gives her away at the altar...A cross-dressing gay dad attends his son's wedding wearing a smart gown....An uber-smart mom kisses her son's friend...A guy falls in love with and marries a woman old enough to be his mother and lives with her happily ever after...A sister plays surrogate mother to her brother's triplets...An elderly couple make out without knowing their adult daughter was in the background...A father accidentally coming upon his daughter and son-in-law making love and after all the embarrassment goes on to give them tips on how to conceive....

Written like this, hashed up in cold blood, it all sounds so gross, so unpalatable. And yet F.R.I.E.N.D.S. is a hugely popular TV series that has captured the heart of millions and won accolades hands down.

There is something essentially warm and human about this ten year long drama(1994-2004). Yes, when seen here, even a lesbian wedding seems emotional and the paternal feelings of a gay dad get transmitted out of celluloid straight to your hearts - and all this while you are laughing your heads off at the awesome comic timing of the actors and the genuinely rib-tickling one-liners they are handed out by their scriptwriters.

Each character has been etched finely and given a very definite form and shape. One thinks sarcasm and Chandler pops into the mind. Ross is Geek to the K. Fashion Freaks are Rachels and Control Freaks are Monicas. If Phoebe is weirdness peronified, then Joey is the epitome of endearing inanity.

It takes the magical combination of superb actors (Jennifer Anisten, Lisa Kudrow, Courtney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt Le Blanc and David Schwimmer) and absolutely top card behind-the-camera crew that makes FRIENDS click for us. Just look at the attention paid to the smallest of details. See how even the bit-part actors get such finely etched roles. Notice how the connectivity never breaks between sequential episodes and yet an individual episode can also be enjoyed and understood out of sync. Hats off!

Of tone-deaf adults and buzzed teens

It took two long years for the Children's Commissioner of UK to realize that the 'Mosquito Teen Deterrent' was against human rights of teen-aged Britons. Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green took his time commenting that the device was 'demonising' the youth, and his time came only after about 3,500 units of the 'demoniser' had already been traded. But shop owners are loathe to get rid of it, for they owe the security of their businesses to these non-adult alarms. And the 'Mosquito Teen Deterrent' is here to stay, claimed the UK Government when it refused to ban it.

I salute you, O Commercialism, for having managed to devour every other consideration, including the capacity to decide what is human and what is not.

Does it hurt you to think that a large population of the teens residing in the Queen's land are being treated with pest-control measures? Are they being, by any chance, confused with a flight of locusts?

However, that is a less relevant query.

Does it matter to those children and teens who are being meted out this treatment?

Frankly, this was where shock set into my system.

The situation where the injured party themselves should have been the ones to register antagonism, they were found gleefully enjoying it all! I found myself actually fidgeting to find incidents of irate mobs, angry slogans and wrathful showdowns where the youngsters participated. What I came across instead were mobile ringtones that were rip-offs from the ultrasonic alarm that became popular overnight - students began to use it to get messages during class hours right under the noses of presbycusis stricken adult teachers! Their message was loud and clear - 'Treat us as non-humans if you wanna, we shall enjoy it anyway.'

Someone please go tell the marketing honchos in charge of selling the Mosquito - they can actually use it as an age-detector in catching the lying mommies and cinema actors red-handed. Why do they need to make money out of such Mephistophelian activities? No, I understand its not their fault. Where else would they find a market where victims are lapping up the products designed to harm them?

Ah! Mother Evolution! Here you were with the gift of the most evolved creature - the human. And here is the new human generation devoid of any respect for your gift!

Double Entendres

Why am I blogging about Double Entendres? Because of 3 reasons -
1. I am semi-non-pachydermatous
2. I am a female
3. I am living in a sex-crazed male world

Now don't you go about getting the wrong idea about me. Being an Evolutionary Biology enthusiast, I am a Life Sciences graduate and post-graduate. I know the importance of what bees and birds do. I am, in addition, quite a no-nonsense, non-squeamish, academic discusser of that three-letter-word-which-should-not-be-pronouned. I know that makes the world tick and while I do not go about cracking the ashleel, maansaahaari category of jokes, I do laugh at some of the more decent ones amongst them.

Besides, the mood of this blog is not angry or irritated. Actually three unintentionally rhyming words shall describe my current state of mind well - Bemused (33%), Amused (40%) and Confused [100-(33+40)% calculate for yourself if you are that enthu. We biologists pride ourselves on not knowing much of maths].

So that sets the preliminaries right. Now for a little bit of history.

I recall that as rather raw, green-behind-the-ears 18 year old, I used to go to the Symbi mess to have my dinner with my elder flatmates and their elder guy friends. The express instruction to me and to two others like me was this - 'If possible keep shut before the guys. And if you do open your trap and utter something you are not to utter, you are to shut right back up immediately after I give you the hint to do so.' This instruction had come our way after one or two bewildering (to us) situations when something innocent said by me or the others had got the guys in our group either wreathed with mischievous grins or with devilish glints that said not in words but action - 'Oh Yeah? And then....?'

I guess the male of the species and many of the females reading this blog shall know what I mean. The most innocent sounding words somehow get twisted into having sexual connotations without any apparent rhyme or reason! Why o why? The other day my friend raised this topic, and we got to enlisting a number of these mis-meant strings of letters. I was baffled by the sheer number of words that I came across! Nearly every third or fourth word we speak in our daily lives is not always what it was meant to be. In fact, it was her suggestion that this topic may just be worth blogging about. Abhilasha here goes your suggestion converted into action.

But thing is, I am myself a little unsure what the exact purpose of this blog is. Is it because I wish to bring to the notice of the orthodox literary world that look what's happening to your dictionary? Do I wish to share with other females my feeling of embarrassment covered beneath a veneer of 'Oh-okay-it-happens' when it does happen? Do I wish to rebuke the male species to mind their language interpretation skills?

Don't know yaar! I am, just as I mentioned above, Bemused, Amused and Confused. In that order. And did you calculate the %age of confusion in the blog and in me? And did I use any words here that have unintentional double entendres? Wonder!

Beware the tricking Bunties - busting the bootpolish brigade

"Didi, do you want me to polish your sandals?" My cousin and me were lolling on the walls of the Pyramids mall on M.G. Rd, Pune, when this query was addressed to us in decent accent and impeccable English. No wonder our heads snapped up. Medium height, thin, sallow-brown complexion, long hair, red jacket, yellow pajamas, barefoot, big smile. In forty seconds, 'Anoop' was diligently polishing our sandals while discussing his mother and sister and his village in Rajasthan and his English education in a nearby Convent. We were thoroughly impressed.

He saw that.

Soon as he had pocketed the modest five rupee remuneration, he struck while the iron was hot.

"Didi, shall I ask you one thing? Please don't take me otherwise, but you can see I am carrying my boot polish stuff in a plastic bag. This way I do not get enough customers. Can you help me buy the proper wood box and equipments?"

I was a little taken aback. Not because I don't expect street children to have such gumption, but because this request was ringing a bell! Where else had I heard this story? A similar emotion was playing on my cousin's face. She too seemed to be grappling with her elusive memory. She came out with 'Raghu' just as I cried out 'Bunty'.

Then she looked at me and spoke out her roommate's name while I mentioned my friend's name.
Readers with me so far? No? You may want to follow the link 'Abhilasha idles' in my 'Blogetarians like me' section. There you may want to read her 'Bunty blog' which may cause several of the chunks of the jigsaw puzzle to fall into place.

There is an idiom in Hindi - 'Tu Daal Daal Main Paat Paat'. The one-up strategy. The counter-move. The stuff that happens during evolution between the prey and the predator - something we called the 'Red Queen Effect' after an intelligent evolutionary biologist read 'Alice in Wonderland'.

We are living in a constant state of tussle - to be fooled or to be callous - that's the question. Intelligent charity - the new mantra of people interested in lavishing shiny 1 rupee nickels on traffic signals.

Terror at the homefront

The interesting thing about miracles is that they happen - so opined G.K. Chesterson. Replace miracles with co-incidences and the statement holds true.

Less than 2 hours ago (my post in the Gupshup C box shall bear me out), I was bemoaning the lack of inspiration in my amateur career as a blogger. And now here I am, an inspired individual, feeling that familiar upsurge to put words on a web page. That's co-incidence for me. On second thoughts, a more apt quotation would have been 'One often gets what one wants.'

They say inspiration strikes you from unusual sources - it fairly takes you off your guard at times. Well, they couldn't have been more accurate in my case. Surely enough, inspiration to write a blog after a more than a month long hiatus is something I owe to something as uninspiring as a cockroach. Okay, not just a cockroach - hundreds of them to be frank.

Now before I proceed I consider it my holy undertaking to warn my delicate minded readers (er, are there still any left in this literary world of gore and sinew?). What follows is a tale of simply unpalatable violence and written in rather poor taste apart from being wholly useless and without any morals at the end. Proceed at your own risk. Though I do hope you do. Proceed, I mean. After all so many cockroaches paid for this piece of blog with their lives.

I hate cockroaches. Nobody exactly loves them, but I simply dislike them, abhor them, detest them. They are an anathema to me. The only other thing the hatred of which can hold a candle to this hatred is my hatred of lizards. So when I landed into my friend's house for an extended vacation, the presence of several roaches in the kitchen as my chummy flat mates did not appeal to me in the least.
I made up my mind as to my next mission in life. Just like the W.H.O. has made it its mission to eradicate the polio virus once and for all, I decided to do just that with these hideous pests. Breaking News - 'Roaches were soon to get locally extinct from my friend's kitchen.

The first step was to study conditions. Don't snicker. If you think cockroaches can be done away with without proper planning, you've got another think coming. Roaches have outlived dianosaurs - so you can imagine what tough customers they are. Now where was I? Oh, yes. The conditions.

My friend's extremely busy schedule, her maid's stubborn decision to fulfill the cleaning rituals as sketchily as possible and the roaches' inherent resilience against extinction - all had combined together to help the pests build up an impressive number. This part of the research was instrumental in my giving a small demo to the maid on how to be a more comprehensive cleaner - after all I wouldn't be there all the time.

The next item on the agenda was to make a careful demographical study of the population with special stress on behavioural patterns and age class distribution. Which niches did the devils occupy? Well, there was hardly a place in the kitchen which they did not occupy - the sink, the refrigerator, the cupboard linings, even inside the large cooking vessels that are not used regularly. Besides hi-jacking my friend's kitchen for their living quarters, they also had the temerity to use it as a the outside of a Gurudwara where kadaah prasaad is always available. And being the health-freaks that they are, they even utilized the tiled kitchen walls and floor for regular walks.
Carefully timed surveys at meal times and between meal times helped me do the population survey. The head count was impossible to take, in the wake of their overwhelming numbers and the general problem in differentiating one individual from another. But I did get a general idea as to their number. They were infinite. There were several adults and many children, too. Yours truly not being an expert on cockroach sexology, gender determination was another poser.

Not exactly covering myself in glory in the above task, I was still far from disheartened. I had the bigger goal, the bigger picture in mind, viz., to kill, to destroy, to annihilate, to disembody the entomologist's Lucifer.
The next logical task was to get an anti-cockroach spray. There I was not disappointed at all. Whatever spare time my friend manages to have, she devotes it to the killing of these unhygienic creatures and for this HIT spray bottles are always at hand in the house. These canny beasts invariably give her the slip by hiding here and there, simply waiting for the deluge of the spray to die down. Its not her fault. A software technologist cannot compete with a budding ecologist in killing roaches.

Anyway, so here I was, with all the preliminary studies done, all the required material gathered and just the task to begin.

The task began with gusto. In my present status of bachelorhood, it is the cockroach that brings out the housewife in me. I pick up the broom, the dust pan and the cleaning rag without any visible signs of disgust and can make several kaam wali baais become envious or appreciative depending on their constitutions.
The cockroach also brings out the hardened professional killer in me. The general respect and kindliness toward all life forms that had made me take up Biodiversity in the post grads recedes to the backbench in these moments and my baser self takes over. The self that revels in death by violence.

No, I am not taking out a neon-shine knife from my pocket and stroking my chin or palm with it meditatively. Neither my eye has an unwholesome glint in it. Relax. All I am engaged in is opening all the cupboards one by one and emptying them of utensils and the odds and ends of a kitchen. This the den of the Mephistopheles. I believe in going to the core of the problem at once.
Several roaches were shocked out of their pleasant interludes by my simple act of jerking open the cupboard doors. 'What the heck!', I think one of them said to the other. I ignored their chattiness. We professional killers are rather the strong and silent variety. Down came the spray of HIT, hitting the chappies squarely. Some were blown away by the impact of the jet force. They landed and commenced writhing. With one swift stroke of the broom, I swept them away. They were no more important. Important ones were those that were escaping. Running pell mell wherever they could go. I worked both my hands - one holding the HIT bottle and spraying accurately and the other holding the broom and swatting, again, accurately. Five minutes later I was standing triumphantly amidst the corpses. So must King Ashoka have stood after the Kalinga Battle. Only I was feeling no remorse and not even the slightest inclination to turn Buddhist. The triumph any way did not last long. I discovered amongst my victims several that had only been stunned and were now wriggling their legs in an effort to recuperate. Not possible with me around! Another vicious spray of HIT and several bangs of the broom on the floor apart from my occasional stamps of feet on the unlucky arthropods ensued with satisfactory results.

The same procedure was followed with all the other cupboards. It became impossible to know what colour the kitchen floor tiles were. Um, ok. That was an exaggeration, but it sure did become difficult to walk on the floor without treading on what had been cockroaches. The kitchen floor was thus duly cleaned with an indefatigable spirit.

My eyes, trained for the last few hours to register all moving objects from the corner, suddenly detected motion. Lo! A number of roaches, rather panicky after the massacre of their brethren, were huddled along the kitchen slab and walls, above the cupboards. Some were even walking up the walls, trying to reach the ceiling. Not to be undone, I pulled a chair in and stood up. The antic of HIT in one hand and broom in the other was repeated, this time a little higher in the air. This time it became difficult to discern the colour of the kitchen counter. One of the corners of my eyes caught some roaches struggling in a spider web up above where wall met ceiling. Spiders, featuring rather low in my estimation, went several notches up in that one moment.

One more round of brisk sweeping and scrubbing followed, after which I gave a great sigh of relief. I had won. I had won!! My retina registered movement yet again. Ah. Here was one survival, trodding weakly along. I impinged him with the HIT spray, my reflexes by now trained into the 'spray at sight' order of my brains. The creature wobbled. I persevered. The last roach of the kitchen took its last gasp.

My mission was over. I relaxed before the idiot box. Somewhat co-incidentally, they were showing 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' on cable. As I watch the movie and type this yarn out, I am wondering if several hundred ghosts of roaches shan't haunt me tonight. I hope not.

SHUT up spitting SHIT

These comments were directed at MPs from Bihar. ‘Dung-beetles’. ‘The Ganges of Corruption’. ‘Rotten Brains’.

When it comes to criticizing Bihar, I am one of the Biharis who have generally been ahead of people of other states, at times. Yes, the average Bihari is rather lazy, likes to shirk his duty whenever he can, is a little silly several times, and shrewd whenever he can grab unearned money.

Does that justify the above poison pen comments?

No.

Many sensible readers of my blog may mention that this is merely a political statement, aimed at vote banking. And that, my friends, is the actual cause for concern. The fact, that statements like these can win votes elaborates the fact that the average voter in Maharashtra agree with the Thackreys!

Some weeks ago, the author of ‘City City Bang Bang’ for TOI wrote something like this – ‘Statistically speaking, more than 50% Maharashtrians do not conform to the views of Raj Thackrey. We are happy to hear that. Do we bother that nearly 40% Maharashtrians do.’

During my five year stint at Pune, Maharashtra, two separate incidents sort out as glaring examples of the same.

We were a group of nine girls in a flat, eight of us being from North India, five of those eight from Bihar. We were stopped in the midst of celebrating a birthday party by angry yells from our next door neighbours.

“These shameless north Indians,” spluttered ‘auntie’, “you have no manners. You have not been brought up well” and words to that effect.

Next day, ‘auntie’s’ daughter, who was about our age, came to us smiling. “Don’t worry. I understand. If I had been sent to a hostel like you and wouldn’t have the pressure of guardians, I’d have freaked out like you guys!”

Another incident was when we once rode wrong side up into a one-way street. The traffic police stopped us, arrested – yes, there is no softer word, arrested us and detained four of us Biharis in the traffic police station. Any word uttered in Hindi did not appeal to him. He wanted nothing short of 500 bucks. We girls had been on a shopping stint and had perhaps about twenty rupees in all between us. Things remained at a stalemate like situation. He wouldn’t budge and we couldn’t budge.

Finally, two hours later we were allowed a phone call. Which we made with alacrity, to the only Maharashtrian flatmate of ours. She came in thirty minutes. She spoke to the policeman in Marathi for about five minutes. After paying a hundred rupees as fine, for which we were given a receipt, the four of us walked free again.

I do not want to mention the number of Chemistry and Botany lectures that bounced above my head because they were given in Marathi in my college. There is no point in mentioning that when in a group of Marathi students, I always laughed late, if at all, depending on if a translation of the joke came my way. It shall be useless to mention the several travel concession and hostel admission forms I was unable to fill because of them being in Marathi only.

But there is a point in mentioning this – even today, when my CSIR fellowship comes to Patna University, it mentions the name of my Pune college and the address is still that of my hostel in Pune. I know that tomorrow if someone else from my department is called for the Shyama Prasad Mukherji fellowship, they will perhaps remember my name for I have been, till date, the only student from my department to be called for that same fellowship.

I am not the only example of such irony. There will be hundreds of people like me. People who work there, have bought houses there, have lived in there for ages and ages and given the state the best years of their lives.

For what?

For being called ‘dung beetles’ and being the possessors of ‘rotten brains.’

Interesting.

(The author of this blog has often been accused of possessing a Marathi accent while speaking Hindi, has a large number of Maharashtrian friends and is well-liked amongst the lot for knowing passable Marathi. My dear average Maharshtrian – respect your language and culture. I agree it is worth it. Be proud of it. But come on! Stop being an Australian Cricketer about it. Er, did I mean Arrogant, when I accidentally typed Australian Cricketer? By the way, my knowing Marathi is not the only reason why my friends like me.)

That indestrucible thing called 'Rebecca'

What was Daphne Du Maurier thinking of when she penned 'Rebecca'? I'd give my eyeteeth to know that! For rarely has a reader come across a character that is, in the truest sense of the words, larger than life.
One of the most striking scenes of the book that impressed me was when the second Mrs. de Winter tears up and burns a page bearing Rebecca's handwriting and signature. The last scrap of paper to be destoyed was the one bearing the masterful 'R' of the Rebecca! Now that's indestructability for you!
Indeed, Rebecca is death's answer to life. She is the embodiment of death's win over life. Any spirit can take a crash course from her on how to haunt effectively. 'Cause, haunt she did, not with absurd ghostly manifestations, but with just that - her Spirit.
Am sure a stray reader of the book is bound to comment that half of Rebecca's haunting comes from the attitude of the second Mrs. de Winter's inherent mousiness and of course, Mrs. Danver's fanatic devotion. But tell me, do, isn't it the all-round praise of the dead Rebecca that makes the narrator, this second Mrs. de Winter more and more unsure of herself? What is the cause of that all-round praise? Rebecca herself. What is the cause of Mrs. Danver's adoration? Again Rebecca herself. It is she, Rebecca, who was so impressive in life that her imprint cannot be removed even after her death.
I am amazed at myself. I am, normally, a conventional admirer of goodness. Loyalty and truth appeal to me as a rule. But there is something infinitely attractive about the glaring immorality and garish rebellion of Rebecca. So immense is the power of her personality that coming from her, even the bad looks beautiful.
The credit surely goes to Du Maurier. How can she create such a strong personality without letting that character ever get to the fore of story-telling, is something that makes me want to take my hats off to her. Or perhaps that is the secret? By never letting Rebecca tell her story herself, and by throwing the circle of torch-light on her from different points, she shows to the reader a character never in full, but like a jigsaw puzzle. More bewitching, more enchanting.
The best lesson for amateur authors trying to tutor themselves in characterization. That's Rebecca, apart from being so much else!