MxMIndia

Tag: Gouri Dange

  • Gouri Dange on a sub-species of consumer that is completely impervious to advertising ammo.

    Naming No Names: We don’t need no ad breaks

    By Gouri Dange

     

    Is there a name for some of us viewers-listeners-readers who simply cannot be bludgeoned into buying products by the advertising industry? While we do go out and buy stuff, and in that sense are consumers, we have grown an internal lock-out mechanism which makes us utterly impervious to advertising of any sort- inyourface repetitive ads, subliminal ones, funny-clever ones, oh-so-Indian mange more kind of stuff, manipulative tear-jerking advertising… none of it seems to stick to us. It’s as if we are Teflon-coated, and all attempts to grab our eyeballs and sing into our ears and play our hearts and seduce our souls simply slide away unregistered in our psyches.

     

    It’s probably genetic, and then again it is probably a defence mechanism that we developed in response to the relentless persuasion that we have been subjected to over the last some years. Ads in newspapers and magazines that come to us with the cover page in the form of some fussy pull-out, fold-in, pop-up flappy strips and straps? They don’t stand a chance. We simply tear off that part, so that we can read without the hindrance of this piece of persuasion.

     

    As for ads on TV, some of us have channel-switching or snack-fixing or loo-going or quick phone-calling down to a fine art. This way, we don’t have to watch the ad world pretending to be oh-so-concerned for our skins, our hearts, our safety, our kids’ education, our old age security and yadayadayada while reaching out to pick our pockets.

     

    Of course, the crafty fellows now have synchronized ad breaks, so if you switch channels, you can avoid being told what oil to buy, but you will have to watch happy families choosing wall paints. And on a bad day, the same ad will be playing simultaneously on three channels, so the message is ominously clear – you can run, but you can’t hide. Well then we always have the option to sprint into the kitchen, fix ourselves a drinky, make bhurji (no, not 1.59 minute noodles) and be back in our seats just as the movie or programme is back on air. I love it.

     

    My least favourite ads are the ones in which children are recruited to sell stuff; for some of us, this borders on child-labour/porn in frilly clothing. And when those come on, I mute the TV and exit the room for that loo break and can abandon a programme or a movie if it all gets too much.

     

    Making ourselves ad-proof has become such a way of life, that sometimes I can be sitting right there, right through a serious attack of advertisements on my TV, and will not be able to recall what product an ad was for, 10 seconds later. Absolutely not a clue, if we’re asked. Zilch, nada, negative, illay, nahi. And if we’re asked what brand of soap-oil-rice-sauce-atta-insurance we use, a researcher would again draw a blank. Nothing. Yes we do eat that stuff, but we simply buy stuff in rotation, and are more likely to buy things that don’t shout ‘pick me, take me, buy me, use me’ or make seductive sounds from the store shelves. So giving us the come-hither doesn’t work too well for a product.

     

    And if we’re sold something that we liked for the first time, but was less than good the second time, we’ll dump it without a second thought or a backward glance. We don’t know the concept of fidelity, faith and loyalty when it comes to stuff that has to be bought and used. We buy what works for us, and will stop buying it when it doesn’t.

     

    Nostalgia doesn’t work on us either when it comes to advertising, so anything that tries to evoke some decade we’re supposed to be all gooey-eyed about, we will simply yawn and go to the loo.

     

    How do we make consumer choices when it comes to buying larger things like cars and computers and such-like? I call my friend Bonnie (everyone should have a Bonnie). Because he knows about these things. And he knows what works for me; he puts himself in my shoes, and gives me advice. He is himself ad-proof! He too only ever buys things that have shown that they work, rather than things that strut on television and preen in print. He ruthlessly throws out goods and services that don’t deliver on promises and rarely gives them a second chance.

     

    And no, this is not an advertisement for Bonnie. Go find your own Bonnie.

     

    Naming no Names is the mid-week column where novelist, columnist and counsellor Gouri Dange presents her tongue-in-cheek view of our world.

  • The host plays mediator at times, completely at ease with himself and his guests, and never harangues. Gouri Dange is very taken with Mr Eye Candy's show

    Gouri Dange: Surprise! The non-Simipering talk show

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I quite like Love to Hate You (Star World 7pm). There, I’ve said it – I actually like something on Indian television. And no, it’s not only about the eye-candy host chap. His cuteness helps, but there’s more to it than just that. I find him a relaxed non-badgery host, almost old-world if I can use that expression, in the way he totally avoids the two syndromes that afflict most Indian TV hosts – which are: a) insufferable peacock preening, b) equally insufferable toadying-to-the- guest.

     

    In Love to Hate You (what’s with the ugly title lettering, though?), the host brings on a celebrity guest and an ordinary guest who dislikes the celebrity. The ordinary one gets a chance to speak his/her mind about why they don’t like the person’s work; and what really works about this is that they come up with pretty incisive, convincing and articulate stuff about the celeb that they don’t like. The other nice thing is that the celeb takes all this on board, and defends him/herself pretty ably. And yet, the makers of this show avoid the temptation of letting it all descend into a slanging match (a la TV debates) where the two participants circle each other with low growls, fangs exposed and hackles rising.

     

    The two people, and their host (the dishy one) actually talk, no one shouts, and the camera doesn’t subtly go into those ‘kill, kill, kill’ kind of angles used to cover wrestling matches. For the first time, I see people not interrupting each other, and actually looking interested in the other’s viewpoint, absorbing it, and then replying instead of rubbishing the point.

     

    The host plays mediator at times, completely at ease with himself and his guests, and never harangues. Mercifully, there is no Simipering, I mean simpering, and no Daah-ling-ing of anyone. If he knows the celeb guest well, the host makes that clear in a fairly matter-of-fact way, rather than using that as a chance to create an instant club of ‘us’ness. I like it!

     

    The format allows the ‘hater’ to first mouth-off at the ‘hatee’, without actually facing the hatee. And with very specific reasons (not just ‘your books suck’ or ‘your singing is awful’, but with examples of the suckiness or tunelessness.) The two are then put together, and the hatee manfully (personfully) sits through some of the criticism. Obviously the hatee too is either chosen for his/her maturity, and does not pout and say provocative or defensive stuff back. The hater is sometimes drawn into trying his/her hand at what the hatee does, and sportingly admits that it is hard work! And yet the whole thing doesn’t seem overly rigged in any direction.

     

    There should be a new genre-label coined for shows in which the celeb is put in the dock… it’s not just a talk show, it’s a ‘talk your way out of this’ kind of show, right?

     

    What is astounding about Love to Hate You, so far, is that one actually sees both guests backing down and shifting positions gracefully at times. The host is not invested in making anyone feel horrible, and has not developed cutting-off and putting-down or cosying-up into a fine art.

     

    (Contrast this with the ‘debates’ in which it’s usually Delhi Harpies versus Mumbai Sharpies, all conducted by Ms Hector or Mr Harangue, and you’ll know why I am so taken with this new show.)

     

    And Tears In The Kitchen

    On another note, did I say earlier that I find the combo of food and tears and runny noses on MasterChef (Indian and Oz) unpleasant? Well, that was tame stuff, apparently, now that MasterChef USA is here, with bleeped out words from judges, clanging of garbage pails in which not-good preparations are hurled, and many of the contestants probably back to bedwetting at nights. So now tears, snot and bladder malfunction too, in the kitchen… Please, spare me the drama and let me go next door and have a masala dosa.

     

    There is a new amusing sign that MasterChef is creating a whole new downstream market of buy-buy-buying Indian consumers: People who can’t cook or usually have someone cooking their meals, are suddenly re-doing their kitchens into replicas of the MasterChef sets. There’s wall-to-wall buff steel everywhere, six- and eight-burner stove tops, industrial-sized ovens, knives and choppers with which you can fell a buffalo. Words like claypot, tureen, coulis, hop, are being bandied about with eager-sophistication.

     

    I recently visited one such home, and sat watching a hapless chicken going round and round on a giant rotisserie, stubbornly refusing to get cooked. The host-cook, a man who can’t fry an egg, watched grimly on, while his wife wistfully fingered the take-away menu of the kabab-korner down the road. On my way home, I stopped at the bhurji cartwallah and had the best, made in minutes on a dented tava atop an old biscuit tin.

     

    Naming no Names is the mid-week column where novelist, columnist and counsellor Gouri Dange presents her tongue-in-cheek view of our world. The views expressed here are her own.

  • Gouri Dange on how to eat canapes and other etiquette tips for journos and non-journos at book launches by non-page3 writers.

    Gouri Dange: Rules for book launch attendees

     

    By Gouri Dange

     

    Rules of Engagement – a small checklist, mainly for journos attending book launches of the non-page3 kind.

     

    First, when we send you the invitation, don’t immediately mail back querulously questioning a) the venue that we have chosen/ are stuck with b) the date that we have arrived at after much intricate planning c) the choice of personality who has agreed to read from and release the book. Of course it could have been at a better place, better time, better season, with a celeb you particularly like… and we’re sorry for disappointing you on all scores, but we don’t conjure up book launches by twirling a tinsel wand, we put them together after mental, physical, social and financial contortions of the most fantastic kind.

     

    We writers, forced to be our own marketers and PR persons, are constantly trying to find the fine line between sending you the invite well in advance (so that you can plan to come or send an underling), but not sending it so early that you will forget about it. So do not expect us to play secretary to you. Do have the grace to mark the day on your own, in your own calendar/similar device.

     

    Another constant see-saw that we are trying to work is this: We writers-in-launch-mode realise that your Blackberry gags at attachments, so our anxiously designed elaborate e-invitations end up irritating you. This is why we put the gist – place, date, time – in the body copy of the text. Surely that is considerate enough? So desist from writing to us in an offhand way from your wretched devices instructing us to put it all on SMS format for you. Wish we could pander to your every whim about what format you would like the invitation in, but deal with it, whatever format we send you.

     

    If you really do intend coming to the event, stop groaning about traffic and distances. Keep the address with you – either on your phone or scribbled on your palm (the body part or the device), or on paper or in your head. Do not, and this bears repetition, do not call the writer half an hour before (or five minutes, even) the event itself, and ask for directions. And really, this is just not the time to provide a fresh insight into how the venue and day is all wrong and that parking is such a b***h in your city, and all that jazz. We writers do not personally arrange for your city roads to be so lousy.

     

    Once the event begins, it would be nice if you would switch off your phone, and also not keep a fake engaged look on your face while you jab SMSes on your keypad. Really, we don’t want just your bodies there, we want your minds, such as they are, present and participating.

     

    Some of you also tend to ask questions in the interactive part of the reading/launch, that are only a verbal vehicle to tell people who you are and how you’re so good at what you do. Stop. Just stop. Go do it somewhere else.

     

    Remember, it’s about the book. So questions about finances, advances, and other intricacies of the book business can perhaps be asked of us on our email ids, but certainly not at the book launch. You are more than welcome to ask and tell about what you liked or didn’t like about the book. But asking after the health of my wealth? No.

     

    When it is time to buy your copy and get it signed from the writer, do not leak out of the door empty-handed. Maybe you don’t want to wait in line for a signed copy and that’s fine. But do buy a copy. Oh well…what am I thinking…you’re the Press, you don’t buy.

     

    At launches where there are canapés served, please do not eat the nice part and leave the toast behind on the platter. (This is a well-documented occurrence.) This causes the waiters to walk about with just the dry toast pieces on a platter, and less canny guests end up having to eat those; they then become moody and sulky and tend to leave without buying any books.

     

    And this one is for non-journo attendees: Do not walk up to us writers after the launch and ask things like “But where’s the media? No media?” This may come as a shock to you, but a) journos don’t show up for most launches – their story is usually that ‘evenings are hellish at the office’ b) you may have not read them, but we do have reviews and interviews out there; it’s just that you may not see a real live journalist at our readings/launches c) it really is more important for a book to have actual readers present than the media, whatever anyone tells you.

     

    Lastly, journos, non-journos, listen up: If you did not attend our reading/launch, do not appear on Gmail chat or SMS two days after the event saying ‘How did your thing go? It was when?’ The answer doesn’t really matter to you, and we both know it. Our fingers can tap out only that many things in one lifetime, and telling you ‘the launch was awesome’ or ‘missed you there’ or some such thing is a waste of taps, which we want to save for our actual writing.

     

    Naming no Names is the mid-week column where novelist, columnist and counsellor Gouri Dange presents her tongue-in-cheek view of our world.

  • Gouri Dange on how the Dilliwallahs far outshine the Mumbaiwallahs in talkshow lung power

    Gouri Dange:The Tower of Babel-Babble

    By Gouri Dange

     

    It’s not my mandate to talk about the news channels (that is ably done elsewhere on the MxMIndia site), but I couldn’t help snorting my coffee, at the alacrity with which one of the channels tried to cleverly throw in a new coinage, when The Slap incident happened.

     

    Speaking urgently into the camera (you can see the glee on their faces – after all, they’ve got some easily spreading news, lurid angles, lots of scope to whip up opinion polls and to repeat the incident frame-to-frame, this-and-that angle through the day), one newsperson (oh please, let me just use newswoman) used the word ‘Slapgate’ to label the incident. I mean comeon, “Slapgate”? Grow up, and grow away from the pretend-American phrases, please. Even the Americans don’t us the something-gate label for scandals or shocker incidents anymore.

     

    Some freshly-minted words and phrases after such an incident, do catch on. For instance, it was the easiest thing to caption the whole Slapping Incident ‘Why this kolaveri, kolaveri, kolaveri di?’ (kolaveri, for those who aren’t caught up by this gone-viral-on-internet song, means ‘murderous rage’ in Tamil). From A list channels to chota-mota papers, anchors and sub-editors instantly thought of asking cheekily (albeit unoriginally, as it turned out): Why this kolaveri…

     

    But some slapped-together phrases simply don’t make the cut. Chiefly because they don’t roll off the tongue well, though the newswoman concerned did a valiant job of spitting out all the awkward consonants of the word ‘Slapgate’as effortlessly as possible as many times as possible. The Hindi channels lovingly tossed the word ‘thappad’ around all day and well into the night. I didn’t watch MTV, but surely it was a landmark day for them, when their original One-Tight-Slap had suddenly become an official form of protest. The word ‘Slapgate’ didn’t hold, however many times the lady tried to use it with her expert guests also because the incident was dying down in spite of best efforts by mostly the electronic media and the usual suspects in Mumbai to keep it alive. Even TV channels faithfully moving the incident to other geographical locations, with various grassroots heroes putting their foots into their mouths while being asked for their reactions, didn’t quite help to keep the fizz and the buzz going.

     

    Never mind the various body parts – faces, palms, feet, and mouths. I am so through with watching that other body part – the Talking Head – on TV. And on Indian television, the heads rarely do much talking; they are only ever shouting heads. Some of them in fact seem to be trained and threatened by their handlers (their party, or their social organization) to keep saying whatever they want to say as if speaking into a dictaphone machine. No amount of attempts at interruptions, even by anchor people known to have PhDs in the Art of Interruption, can dam the flow of some of these shouters. It comes from the sad fact that they know how it is on Indian television. That if they pause for breath, some other geezer/geyser will instantly begin spouting, so they must say their say, without any of the natural rules of dialogue or debate being used.

     

    And in this, I think the Dilliwallahs far outshine the Mumbaiwallahs. In sheer lung power and in the tenacity, to go on talking over anything else being said. The Mumbaiwallah expert-panelist tries, but makes the fatal mistake of stuttering or trying to take an eloquent pause after making a point, only to be completely drowned out by shouting voices, who are not responding to him, so much as upchucking the words that are left in their stomachs, before the anchor begins screaming for a chance again.

     

    The important thing seems to be to not stop talking. So remember, Mumbai people, if you’re on one of these programmes, ‘Jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya’, is the rule on Indian TV debates. Learn better breath control, never stop to clear your throat, and don’t make the fatal mistake of pausing to bleat some rhetorical question to the audience like ‘Don’t you agree?’ You’ll just give away your time to more able shouters.

     

    When we were very little, we played this game that one kid recites Jack and Jill on top of her voice while the other hollers Mary had a Little Lamb. The effort was to make your opponent forget her track and begin to inadvertently recite yours. I find the ‘discussions’ on prime-time Indian TV much like that game. At the risk of being stamped phoren-lover, I would much rather watch something being discussed on western television even if I have no particular interest in the subject, than watch and listen to the Babel-babble, even on relevant subjects, on Indian TV.

     

    Gouri Dange is a Pune-based counsellor, novelist and columnist. Naming No Names appears every Wednesday

  • Naming no Names, the mid-week column where novelist, columnist and counsellor Gouri Dange presents her tongue-in-cheek view of our world.

    Gouri Dange: The Media Menu Card

    Talking of paid news, it’s interesting to see how it all works. Meaning the modus operandi. Not just the big-ticket paid news where political parties and heavyweights slip big bucks to large newspaper and tv corporations.

     

    I’m talking about the mere-mortals path to godhood via the media. Well if not godhood actually, at least the pay-your-way route to your five-minutes-of-fame. Everything’s on sale, going by Media Menu Cards that doctors, lawyers, academics, business people, sportsmen, performers et al have been getting via email over the last couple of years. They are sent by big papers and small, national as well as local and some tv channels too.

     

    Here’s a sample menu card, with the cunningly worded introduction.

    Dear So-and-so

    Your contribution to society is a matter of pride for us. It would be our pleasure to feature you and your achievements in our paper. Your valuable opinions are also solicited on matters of importance in our city. Please contact Ms X or Ms Y (note, they are interchangeable, the first is a journo and the second is an adgirl from the publication) after going through the contents below.

     

    Page 3 package

    Rs 4,000/- + taxes for parties

    Our Deliverables : Your presence at any Page 3 event, and/or your and your spouse photograph.

    Rs 8000 + taxes (photos to be provided by you) for family wedding

    Our Deliverables: Event will be reported, pictures of you and any important guests will be featured.

     

    Opinion-maker package

    Rs 8,000 + taxes
    Our Deliverables : Your views solicited and quoted in stories relating to your field of operations.

     

    Conference reporting package

    Rs 5000+ taxes (local); Rs 8,000 + taxes national; Rs 10,000 + taxes international. (with photo to be provided by you)

    Our Deliverables : When you attend a conference as a speaker/delegate, it will be our pleasure to report your contribution to the proceedings.

     

    Hospitalization

    Rs 5000/- taxes

    Our Deliverables: Successful emerging from surgery or illness will be reported, along with pictures (our photographer will be sent).

     

    …and so on and so forth, you get the point! There are these packages offered foreign trips, awards, donations that you make, stuff that you publish, charitable visits that you undertake to cancer-struck kids and slums…all of it can go up there as news, if you tick the right choices in the Media Menu Card.

     

    That last one is my favourite – I mean I had never thought of coming out of hospital as news, unless you were a loved leader, or a jailed corporate type pretending to be ill, or had climbed Mt Everest and were in hospital for exhaustion. And one would imagine that the ordinary person wouldn’t particularly like to be shown wheeled out of somewhere. But it looks like there is some valuable brand-enhancement to yourself by being hospitalized. Go figure! Perhaps the hospitals involved are also being contacted as we speak, for their frontage to appear in the papers, at a price. But hell, everything is on sale, so why not!

     

    While I haven’t been offered this Media Menu Card myself (what, I’m not a potential news-client? My money’s not good enough for these people?), I and other book writer friends have been offered similar menus, by bookstores. Not the ordinary corner bookstores that invite you to actually talk about book; and not the ones where I have launched all my books without paying a penny. But a few other new entrants, that go by lofty names. Their ‘bill of fare’ goes something like this. On an ascending scale starting from Rs 8000 right up to Rs 25,ooo (this was last year, perhaps the rates have gone up in a year), you are offered packages like:

     

    > venue

    > seating

    > sound

    > f&b (tea and cookies for 40 people)

    > art work for invitation card

    > invitation to our databse

     

    Write out a larger cheque and you can get
     

    > media presence

    > venue

    > seating

    > sound

    > f&b (tea and cookies for 40 people)

    > art work for inviation card

    > e invitation to our databse

     

    Then come options where you pay for the book to be stacked on the cash counter. Perhaps they haven’t thought of it yet, but they could easily offer you a package in which a stack of your books accidentally falls on people’s heads.

     

    And then come the more expensive add ons that maketh or breaketh your book, they say:

     

    > Your book banner up for 4 weeks in our store

     

    And the crowning glory that is within easy reach if you’re ready to fork out more mullah:

     

    > All of the above facilities for your book, PLUS it is placed on our bestseller list for eight weeks running.

     

    Somebody pass me the antacid, this menu’s a little too rich for me.

  • Naming no Names, the mid-week column where novelist, columnist and counsellor Gouri Dange presents her tongue-in-cheek view of our world

    Bride and, well, prejudice

    Every week, my least favourite life-form in the media changes. It’s confusing, with so many creeps and monsters to choose from. Not anacondas and sting rays and the rest of those. I mean humans.

    This week I watched with pissed-off fascination as those bridezillas, western and Indian, obsessed on their wedding. While they fume, fret and squeeze their parents dry so that they and everything around them looks fairytale etc on their wedding day, the merchandizers sponsoring the shows and the channels showcasing their anxieties and fears laugh all the way to the bank.

    When the western bride shows first appeared, it would have been funny, were it not so grotesque, to watch a grown woman steam rollering even the groom, let alone her parents, in her consuming need to live up to the fantasy in her head. Now it’s the Indians who are out-Shining everyone in the bid to be the reigning Bridezillas of the world. Helped along, of course, ably by anyone who has a stake in their delusions of grandeur – skin, eyes, nails, hair people, body sculptors, designers and tailors, jewelers, caterers, decorators, wedding card printers, photogenic priests, hired white guests, photographers, honeymoon packagers, planners, et al.

    Casting is simply not a problem, for these bride TV shows. All you need is a dullish looking girl, with even duller wits, and there’s your heroine! Of course it’s big business. The industry, estimated at $11 billion a year, is growing at 25 percent annually. And this does not count jewellery sales, which are growing at 7 percent annually, and are projected to reach $280 billion by 2015, is what we are told.

    At the risk of carbon-dating myself as a relic of the ’80s, I ask: Does anyone remember a time when such weddings were only something that the rich and famous indulged in? And the time when the average Indian simply got married; they didn’t have an ‘event’ which needed to be ‘managed’? The wedding was not at a ‘venue’. A local ‘badminton hall’, or a modest and pleasant wedding hall was booked for the day. The girl changed her sari once or possibly twice. Guests dressed well, but did not spend a month’s salary and man hours on what they would wear.

    Not any more, though. Like Woody Allen says, life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

    The invitation card, as one of the shows on TV lovingly showed us, is the first indication of the shape of things to come. It is often bulkier than your local restaurant menu. These cards definitely have more zari work, silk, tassels and sequins on them than any piece of clothing that many of us possess. In fact, you could wear one of them around your neck, and carry it off as a piece of jewellery. Some people even produce little booklets – complete with Indian miniature paintings, shlokas, minor treatises on vedic rites and other fundas about the auspicious and holy act of matrimony… all in a more-Indian-than-thou kind of font, that was at one time used by royal calligraphers when kings bestowed citations on people they wanted to honour. Sometimes, the invitation card is not a card at all – but a CD, complete with clips of the bride and groom and their families inviting you; there could also be a little audio-visual bio-pic of the bride and groom, running you through their first baby steps, taking you on a tour of all their achievements in school, college, work – a mini-movie of sorts!

    In these bride-busting-papa’s-bank shows, when I watch grown people talking seriously into the camera for 10 minutes running about the relative merits of wearing Ostentatious Orange over Fussy Fuchsia, etc, I have this one thought: if we put even one-hundredth of the energy that goes into the making of a wedding, into what goes into the making of a marriage, there would have been much less aggro in our families.

    However, there are early signs that, in some circles at least, this psychedelic dream may not be for everyone. Already, in some families, it is becoming retro-fashionable to have a traditional but quieter wedding.  The kind in which the bride’s and groom’s parents didn’t have to quietly sell off their retirement home, and can feel proud that the education that they gave their girl child has trickled down into her psyche, so she doesn’t think that marriages are made in Bollywood.

    Perhaps someone will then do a retro-show on TV – and call it the Small Slim Indian Wedding.

  • Naming no Names is the mid-week column by well-known novelist, columnist and counsellor, Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: Dealing with journos hungry for quotes

    Do you really want to be that rent-a-quote person?

    They’re polite, of course. And young. And completely unaware of how tiresome they can be. The phone call goes something like this: “Hello, I’m writing a story on thisthatandtheother, and I was hoping to talk about it to you.”

    At first, in the early years, you feel quite pleased to be called up in this way. You drop what you are doing, and whisper urgently to anyone who is sitting around you, “It’s The Press, they want My Opinion”.  People around you immediately go dead silent in deference to this Moment – it’s almost as important as if you were invited to address the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Republic Day. [The woman who works in my house says that Republic Day is when there is good circus to watch on TV (the parade) and Independence Day is when all phaltus go on doing bud-bud on TV, and Budget Day is when some ‘chassmister’ (erudite looking person in glasses) gives you the bad news about fuel and vegetable prices so that your idle boozard husband can tell you that you need to pick up a few more dirty-dishes-doing jobs to stay ahead of prices.] But I digress.

    So, in the early years of being contacted by journos to give them ‘expert quotes’, you are inordinately happy to oblige. You proceed to hold forth on your subject, while the journo at the other end furiously scribbles or keys in as you speak. The rude shock comes a few days later when you ring up 60 friends and tell them that you are being Quoted, and not to miss reading the relevant article that day. You have made these calls before you have opened the paper and actually read your quote. Three things can now happen. A) The journo who you waxed eloquent to for 20 minutes has simply not used your quote – either she didn’t understand a word of what you spoke or there was no space for your quote. B) Worse, she may have misquoted you comprehensively, where you end up sounding like an envious whiney loser who hates everyone else in your field; as a bonus, she has got your name wrong. C) All your pearls of wisdom have been used, in fact what you spoke constitutes the whole article, but you have been given no credit. Your name is not mentioned at all. It is as if this article was born via immaculate conception.

    A few such incidents, and you get older and wiser pretty quickly. You’re at the next level of the rent-a-quote market. Someone calls, and you first get a good sense of what this journo is going to be saying in his/her article first. Then you carefully choose your words, keeping it all very very simple, and hope for the best. You are also now smart enough to request:  can you please call and read out or email me what you’re quoting from this conversation? This way you can clarify, I said ‘intuition’ not ‘tuition’ and other such things. But there’s nothing much you can do about being described by the journo as a music listener who “bubbles over with names, when asked about her favourite musicians”. Or being described randomly as ‘unputdownable’ or ‘peripatetic’ or ‘intrepid’ – all favourite journo adjectives. Makes you sound like some wandering pest.

    Some journos send you a list of questions to reply to by email. This may sound better than having to gabble on the phone and then get thoroughly misquoted. However, the level of detail required from you in replying to these questions would surely be the equivalent of writing the entire story yourself, and also perhaps could be that PhD proposal that you’ve been postponing writing.  Too much hard work.

    Some of them will pop up on Gchat and say the following: Hiiii….I need quotes from celebs, psychologists and young people on ‘Long distance marriages: Is it workable or a recipe for disaster?’ …need the quotes along with high res images in 3 hours. Can u help pllleeez??”  Your only option is to quietly log out.

    Here’s another double-edged thing about being quoted in newspapers and magazines, though. Whatever garbled version of your quote appears, the lay reader immediately takes you very seriously and your stock rises dizzily in your field. However, colleagues tend to go nudge-nudge and deduce that you are rather idle and/or have friends in the Press and are a bit of a Quote Bank. So it’s a bit of a toss-up – to be quoted or not to be quoted?

    If you choose not to be, then here are some ways to duck out. Tell the journo to call you four hours later. They’re usually plugging in quotes at the last minute, and it is likely that they don’t have four hours, plus you sound busy and important. So you’re safe. Or come up with something exotic. Huff and puff on the phone and say you’re climbing Kilimanjaro. The poor dears will hurriedly get off the phone so as not to cost you roaming charges.

  • Naming no Names is the mid-week column by well-known novelist, columnist and counsellor, Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange’s Naming No Names: Cheeni kum!

    “You mean you don’t watch the cookery shows and competitions on TV????!!!” – people ask me, using up their entire quota of question marks and exclamation marks for the month. Well I do, sort of, but here’s my problem with them, and why I can’t watch any fully from beginning to end: First, the Indian food shows. The Indian shows invariably have self-consciously decorated kitchens as the background (the usual backlit shelves, phalanx of shiny knives, matchettes and muddlers, bubblegum pink walls, and suchlike). In front of this kitchen from kitschland is prancing (or trying to look as if) a fattish johnny stuffed into some garish shirt, trying hard to keep up the amusing chit-chat while clanging spoons and vessels together. There’s nothing to endear these chaps to me – not the maniacal chopchopchop of a Yan of yesteryear, or the lithe handsomeness of a Bourdain, or the extravagant booziness of a Floyd. Besides the nameless Indian chaps, there are the brand-name Indian cooks, smiling fixedly into the camera and serving up, what else, jazzed up versions of tandoori chicken. I tend to switch channels when I hear ‘adrak-lasan-pyaaz, pyaar sey bhuniye’. Then there are those non-cooking Indian food shows, in which hung-over-looking beefy chaps (always in khaki shorts) bumptiously muscle into dhabas and thelas and then turn around and wax eloquent into the camera. No fun. On top of it, when some of them snigger about the spelling or the naming of some of the dishes, and make the busy street-vendor stop what he’s doing and look foolish while he unsuspectingly explains what ‘Tandoori Manchurian’ is (stale, overdone joke) to the camera, I want to hurl a plate of instant noodles at them. (But my previous TV took its aakhri saans after going through a long melodramatic deathbed scene, when I threw a dibbi of sindhur at it; so chucking noodles at the new one is a serious no-no. It’s written in the manual.)

     

    As for the phirangi food shows, here’s my problem: either the person actually has adenoids, or speaks in that breathless way, to indicate shock and awe at the wondrousness of the food that he’s handling (it’s usually a Brit affectation); plus nowadays, with Indian food going places, they’re always going on about some aromatic ‘masalarr’ as they call it, and there’s cumin in everything. Or then it’s that lady who’s been named after the English word for kalonji seed. You know her, with the jaunty tilt of her head and the saucy positioning of other body parts served up for the camera on a plate. Ya, ya, I know guys reading this will say “jealous, jealous”, but honestly she’s a coy bore, and has a cloyingly heavy hand with the cream and butter and chocolate. The only thing I like about the western cookery shows is the big warm kitchens and the lush gardens that lie beyond that. But I get insanely jealous of this and switch channels.

     

    And then there are the chef championships. Again, my problem is that there’s far too little food and far too much drama. Call it OCD, but when I see contestants crying and wiping their noses in tension and despair, I want to say severely, like my ma used to (during traumatic chappati-making lessons): “Stop snivelling, wash those hands, and only then go near any food, you big cry baby.” On top of it, the Indian version of Masterchef has you go right into the humble homes of the aspirants and you know that they have far too much riding on winning this competition, and it gets all too sentimental and saccharine for my liking. I mean come on…food mixed with tears? Not a winning combo for me. (The least appetizing of all of this of course is the commercial breaks – currently there’s that daft girl going on and on about her phone working even when the lift shuts; how life-defining is that!) Again, there’s also too much non-food paraphernalia – immunity pins and aprons and t-shirts to be won, rather than actual food to be seen on screen. But here too I love the locales where the competitions take you – I mean cooking out in the open in Central Park while people row slowly past on boats or walk briskly by! Just for that I may cry my way into one of these shows, and teach everyone a thing or two about Indian masalarrs. Or I may indulge in that stab of envy and switch channels.

     

  • Introducing Naming no Names, an all-new mid-week column by well-known novelist, columnist and counsellor, Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: Most art reviews leave us feeling weak & witless

    Introducing Naming no Names, an all-new mid-week column by well-known novelist, columnist and counsellor, Gouri Dange.

    Dange is a brilliant writer (disclosure: MxMIndia only publishes brilliant writers!). And exceedingly funny.  But it’s not forced humour. Her simple, middle class-y view of life and everything around it will be evident from her observations of the strange and often pointless stuff we see in the media.

    Without much ado, presenting Gouri Dange. The column: Naming no Names. Every Wednesday, on MxMIndia’s Journalism channel:

     

    Most art reviews leave us feeling weak and witless

     

    Why does one read reviews? To get a little glimpse of what to expect when you read, view, or listen to creative effort, right? Works fine with most reviewing. For instance, a music review will clearly tell you that a singer was in peak form and reminded you of his illustrious grandfather in the rendition of his Bhairavi. A book or film review will tell you what works and what doesn’t, at least for the reviewer. A dance performance will be reviewed in terms of the dancer’s grace, rhythm, expression…you get the point.

     

    It’s the art reviews that stand quite apart, leaving most people completely flummoxed not to mention gobsmacked. Take a look. I swear I am not making any of this up – I couldn’t write like this even if there was a gun held to my head:

    “For this artist of course colour is almost another type of vessel – rather than just a vehicle, it is a protective continuum for a soft and vulnerable molusk-like feel that she besets her canvasses with. The motifs of chaotic profusion resonate against the happenings of frontal development that bring functional ethos to a standstill.”

     

    Now in this mindblowing welter of words and ideas, it may be nit-picky of me to say this, but molusk is not spelt right. But what’s a little misspelling in the midst of all this gobbledygook? I mean somebody please, please tell me what frontal development is…and what, pray what, is the functional ethos that has been brought to a standstill? And how does one beset the canvas with this so-called molusk-like feel. I mean, did this writer go to the same kind of schools and colleges that we did…or is there some secret institution that teaches you to write gibberish, especially to review art.

     

    There’s more priceless twaddle:

    “Interestingly known more for her impressionist zeal the paper works in this show reveal that the artist is busy shedding its primary historical role as a representation of the object in favour of the dynamic engagement of physical form in real space. …The whole symbolism unravels in essence as a container for visual but in-depth illumination in thought.”

     

    When I read bits of this out to an art historian and curator friend of mine, she laughed, and then cried a little at the sorry mess that masquerades as art reviewing. She tells me that all contemporary Indian art reviews in the newspapers and magazines are full of gormless gabble of this kind.

     

    P G Wodehouse would have had a field day if he read any of these. Remember his favourite piece of inanity: “Across the pale parabola of joy…”?

     

    Ever the anxious language lover, not understanding what I’m reading used to eat me up. I had then taken to reading these sentences out loud over and over again, hoping to tease the inner meaning out like I do to extract a tick from inside the dog’s ear. All I got was a headache and a bit of a stammer.

     

    Here’s some more, from another place:

    “The function of colour in her palette is like a mooring of moments, of deeper shades or shifts that create a vortex of lines around the contours of a heady sprinkling of forms to the articulation of a surface and the evocation of more than a fleeting shadow. Full dense volumes in tiny notations oscillate happily with solid forms. The complex tensions between the parts and the whole that animate these spellbound paintings are all around her.”

     

    Spellbound paintings? Again I quibble, but can we at least have the grammar go right when talking bunkum?

     

    My question is, who is this stuff written for, in the newspapers? Must be for the aliens amongst us. I can’t see real people read this and call out to their spouse or sister: “Hey we must go see this show, it has cartloads of functional ethos and oscillating notations… come, let’s hurry there now“!

     

    And the other thing I am just dying to know is whether reviewers who write like this, talk like this too? Meaning writing claptrap is one thing, but actually mouthing it with a straight face, can they do it? You try it – try reading that molusk excerpt out loud to someone in your home, with a straight face. Guaranteed to bring the house down.

    This confirms one theory, that the word vocabulary has an Indian origin. It comes from: voh-kya-boli-rey?