MxMIndia

Tag: Naming No Names

  • It looks like the media (who thrive on noise of their own kind) has accepted that every Indian famous and otherwise, has an inalienable, constitutional right to make as much noise whenever and wherever he/she pleases, notes Gouri Dange

    [MJR] Gouri Dange: Why this silence over the noise?

    By Gouri Dange

     

    Since the feeding frenzy over the Saif tidbit that fell into the media shark tank is over, one is loathe to bring it up again and create more sites where the moronic incident will pop up on search engines. But there’s one thing that no one asked or discussed anywhere in any medium, earth, fire, water, or air – meaning print, Hindi news channels, English news channels and on the internet: Is it not at all legitimate and reasonable for a person to ask for quiet and decorum in a public space?

     

    As backward and foolish and boorish as the punching out of a diner in the Taj by Saif, is the attitude that he (and crores of his fellow Indians) display when he airily said to the man who asked him and his women and men pals repeatedly to keep it down: ‘If you want silence, go to a library’. (Fortunately he thought of ‘library’ and not ‘graveyard’).

     

    Ha! Is that the only place where one can expect and demand some quiet in this sub-continent, is what SOMEONE should have asked this Nawabling, when the story was being followed so closely. But, typically, all we had by way of coverage is ‘who started it’ and ‘what did the Taj have to say’ and ‘was there CCTV footage or not’, and ‘was Saif’s phone on or off’ and other such nitty-gritty matters delivered to us with such round-the-clock efficiency by every media that there is. But about the fact that he was making enough noise for fellow diners (who are not all gosh-golly about Bollywood) to find him and everyone at his table galling and bad for the digestion, no one said a thing. At least someone could have asked him that prim but significant question that our teachers asked us often: “Is this what your mummy-daddy taught you to do?”

     

    However, it looks like the media too (who thrive on noise of their own kind) has accepted that every Indian famous and otherwise, has an inalienable, constitutional right to make as much noise whenever and wherever he/she pleases. No one asked the Princelet whether he felt free to talk, shout, laugh and horse around in any country outside the sub-continent. I’m trying to think of him and his gang in some toney restaurant in the western world behaving this way in the first place (forget punching out a fellow-patron) and I can’t see it happening. On top of it, the media reports that 48 hours later, when he had come down off his uncha-ghoda, he admitted that he had done something wrong (as opposed to the previous day’s “mummy-tell-him-no…he-beat-me-first” stance) he said something about “We (the royal We) should set a good example as we are constantly watched…etc”. My point is, you should behave well not because you are watched but because your mummy-daddy spent good money getting you an education and some polish. And because other people have a right to be in a pleasant dining situation (outside of a library).

     

    It was only some voices of Facebook et al that were all a-twitter with the right questions on this ‘silence is only in libraries’ school of Indian philosophy.  And about how the same minor-Mughals behave impeccably in public places outside of this great land, where silence and not shoving people is kind of expected of everyone.

     

    One last point that any responsible media person must kindly caution these Beautiful People (various Khans, Aroras, and suchlike) about after such a fracas, is this: don’t get into physical brawls, because you never know, those hair weaves, that botox, the silicon, and the stitches, can all come undone right there in public, and then what a mess there will be to clean up. (And can the media possibly NOT quote a bunch of puranay-paapi ‘vouching’ for each other’s decency and honesty? I mean come on, do we really want to hear about solidarity for Saif coming from sundry blackbuck shooters and hit-and-run-drivers with infamous anger-management issues of their own?)

     

  • 'It's for a good cause and think of the exposure,' they say, but exposure and goodwill don't pay the freelancer's bills, observes Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: The cut-rate client & the new age freelancer

    By Gouri Dange

     

    If I had a rupee for every person who has asked me to do work for free, I would be seriously rich. Earlier it was the print media and book publishers; to that lot has been added players in the virtual space asking you to do them work for free because it will give you ‘reach and exposure’ and your name will ricochet around the internet, and surely that is something better than silly old money, and so on and so unconvincingly forth. I suppose this kind of a thing comes with the territory of being a freelancer.

     

    The freelancer’s position, is at best of times, precarious. A tightrope walk that involves balance, judgement, timing, practice, risk. No safety nets of gratuities, pensions, tenure, medical allowances, and a hundred other perks for the freelancer.

     

    The word freelancer means many things to many people. To the nine-to-fiver stuck in an office rut, it conjures up images of ultimate bliss – working at your own time and own pace. No buses to catch, no ferocious traffic to negotiate, no irritating colleagues. It has the delicious hint of serial monogamy: work at a project, and once it’s over, skip along, on to the next interesting piece of work. And if you come up against a really unpleasant client, you know you only have to stick it out till the project’s over. After that, you never need to see his/her face again.

     

    In fact, some freelancers say that almost as satisfying as getting your cheque on time, is the satisfaction of quietly erasing the client’s name from your phone book: either with a neat line passed over the name and number if you use a phone book; or by that terse command: delete.

     

    Whether you’re a street performer with a monkey, or a consultant to the financial sector, as a free lancer, you’ve got your worries cut out for you. Your monkey could get old, your audience could get bored, and your monkey unable to learn new tricks; the stockmarket could become unpredictable; smarter, younger, better people/computer programs could edge you out.

     

    There are many other little things too. The freelancer’s work space, initially at least, is usually a tiny desk or even just the dining table and a phone. In the days before the cell phone, the answering machine was the freelancer’s most reliable message taker. If you left the task of message taking to children and other family members or the domestic help, you could be out of business very fast. Messages could be completely forgotten, reported to you as ‘one uncle called’, or as ‘koi Gwazkapnya’ ka phone tha. You would spend the day trying to decipher the code, and an irritated potential client would call three days later asking why you hadn’t returned the call. His name would contain none of the alphabets or phonetic sounds involved in the word Gwazkapnya.

     

    One great thing is that what was earlier was considered ‘unprofessional’ – if a client heard background sounds of cooking or a baby crying or a dog barking – is now seen as multitasking. Today I routinely talk business on the phone while pottering in the kitchen or messing with a pair of garden shears (handsfree, speakerphone, zindabad). If your client asks you what that sound is, you just come right out and tell him/her – you’re making dog biscuits. Or you’re chopping back the madhumalati creeper. And since the need of the hour today is to ‘create an illusion’ – you could cheat a little and give it your own spin: “I’m making Lobster Thermidor” or “I’m working on my Japanese garden.”

     

    Which is the other precarious point. Creating an illusion. A freelancer must today appear to be busy and on high demand, and yet communicate that he/she can take on work. It’s a fine balance. No point appearing over-eager for work, and no point overdoing the busy bit and fobbing off potential work either.

     

    The other hazard for the freelancer is friends, family and neighbours who could roll in and out of your working day with a “You’re free only, na?” For this it is strongly recommended that you don’t wander around in track pants and t-shirt, even if your work involves meeting no one. Dress moderately well, like you would to go into office, and put out the message that you keep working hours. Disabuse them of the notion that freelancing means that you make a few phone calls and emails, and cheques land up at your doorstep by courier. Make it subtly (or amply) clear that you are your own CEO, marketing exec, peon, receptionist, tea-maker and bill collector – all rolled into one. So no, you’re not free only, na.

     

    As for bill collecting. You know you have become a seasoned freelancer when you announce to your client that you take a 50 percent advance – and you get it. Moreover, when your work is done, you don’t have to ‘muster up the courage’ to ask for the remaining fee. You simply expect it. And it comes to you. Here’s a real rite of passage: learn not to be awkward about asking for money. Many clients kind of hope you’ll go away, once it’s time to pay up. Or initially, when you quote fees, they may give you a shocked look and tell you: a) they themselves are making no profit, and it is for a good cause b) they don’t think the work is ‘that much’ – and actually anyone in their office could do it c) if you do this at a lower fee now, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And so on and so forth.

     

    The seasoned freelancer learns that these are all signs of a non-payer-up client. At which point you have the option to smile and say “Sorry, I can’t afford to do this for any less, because my work puts food on my table.” Because this is the actual truth. And it cuts through the elaborate dance of pretending that you’re working solely for the love of books/kids/environment/technology… whatever.

     

    A young tabla player in Pune recently told me that when a show organiser asks him to half his fees, he says: “I would you know, if you would introduce me to your grocer and tell him to give me tuvar dal at half price too.” Sounds crude? Maybe. But works.

     

    One last tool in the freelancer’s tool-kit. Maintain contacts with unreliable inefficient people in your field. Someone who’s been pestering you to give him/her any ‘overflow work’ that you may get. Someone who only likes the idea of freelancing, but won’t really make any efforts. He/she should be bad at his work and undependable. Let’s call him JD (this is a random name – resemblance to any persons dead or alive, etc, etc). The next time someone tells you to lower your fees or to work free for them because they’re giving you ‘reach and exposure’ by ‘letting you’ work for their shiny organization, or a client gives you a runaround for your hard-earned, stick JD on to them. They deserve each other.

     

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

     

  • Perfectly serviceable words are being replaced by silkier ones

    Gouri Dange: Smooth new words for same old fare

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I love the print and TV media advertiser’s smooth transition to silky new words.

    Nothing is ‘free’ anymore, it’s ‘complimentary’. No one wears underwear anymore, it’s inner wear – somehow under has become a crass word. But inner, like inner beauty and inner strength, has a more sophisticated ring to it.

     

    What we knew as a second-hand car, is now only ever referred to as a ‘pre-owned car’. Is this fancy term somehow supposed to take the sting out of not being able to afford a new car?

     

    Everyone’s on to the jargon. Now when you’re asked in a restaurant if you’ll go in for the ‘exec thali’ or ‘open thali’, you have to know that these are the brave new words for the old words ‘limited thali’ and ‘unlimited thali’. In ice-cream parlours no one uses the word scoop anymore. It’s all about single-serve and double-serve. Remember the time there were little ads and banners for shops that would sell ‘novelty’ or ‘fancy items’? No more. Everything is ‘exclusive’ now.

     

    When you go shopping for something to wear, get on with the program and use the right words. Never say you’re looking for readymades. That word has been thrown into the shredder. The gushy-mags have changed that word. Now it’s prêt that you’re looking for. Briefly it was ‘off the rack’. But French fakery always wins hands down when it comes to fashion-speak and food-speak. So what our moms used to call imitation and our older sisters used to call fake and we used to call junk jewellery, is now ‘faux’. Remember, faux. And don’t go and pronounce it ‘fox’ and look all gauche.

     

    The French connection is everywhere: now you got to say haute. You can’t call anything ‘high fashion’ now; it has to be haute couture. There’s nothing like ‘fancy cooking’ anymore. It has to be haute cuisine. Take the word cuisine, itself. In English we had the perfectly serviceable word ‘cooking’. But no, that was not good enough – too easy to pronounce and maybe smelt of boiled cabbage or something. So it’s all about cuisine now.  Even if it’s good old dahi-bhaat or taair-shadam, you’re serving Maharashtrian or Tamil ‘cuisine’.

     

    Remember when your ma used to dye her hair? Now we colour, or even more obliquely, we ‘treat’ our hair. We never dye. If you ask for your hair to be dyed in a fancy beauty salon (not beauty parlour, that word’s out and used only by aunties who will wax and pluck – oops, I mean ‘exfoliate’ – in their balcony-turned-into-a-parlour), they’ll look at you as if you’ve crawled out from under a flat stone. You must say: I want to colour my hair. And if you want to clarify that you’re not looking for red and gold tints or anything, but stuff that covers that tell-tale inch of white at your scalp,  then you can say airily: “I’m looking for ‘grey coverage”. And oh ya, salon is so yesterday, it’s spa now. Even a hole in the wall with only a glass door is a ‘spa’, no less.

     

    And these spas now refer to everything, mysteriously, as ‘product’. So it’s never shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer (god forbid you use really ancient and doddering words like vanishing cream or snow or lotion or hair dressing or that pre-historic word ‘pomade’); remember, it’s always ‘product’. And no one’s skin is ever called ‘old’ or ‘ageing’ or ‘sagging’ in ads and in spas. The right word is ‘mature’ skin.

     

    There are two phrases that seem to have no meaning whatsoever, but are such a hit with interviewers and journos. One is ‘personal favourite’. A celeb shares his ‘personal favourite’ recipes with you. A singer plays us his ‘personal favourite’ song. My question is: What other kind of favourite can there be? A favourite is a personal choice in the first place.

     

    The other phrase that defies logic but is a ‘personal favourite’ of so many journos and corporate types is ‘leading from the front’. The last I knew, there is only one position from which you lead – which is the front. Only cowherds and shepherds lead from the back, shouting halyaaa, thirrrr as they direct their flock forward.

     

    But then what do I know? I’m just a mature type who needs to use some product for grey coverage.

     

  • The ads that come alongside your emails are an exercise in refracted reality, remarks Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: Those deliciously bizarre Google ads

    By Gouri Dange

     

    You know how Google watches over your shoulder and reads the content of your emails and sends you what it thinks are appropriate ads on the sidebar? I just love the convoluted logic behind the ads that are selected to send to you. For the longest time, I just didn’t notice them, but once I began to glance at them, it became a most illuminating exercise. There is something so deliciously bizarre in the way the ads refract your reality. Open your emails in the last week and take a look at the sidebar.

     

    It’s like some slightly deranged/overreacting person is keeping a log or diary of your life as it is unfolding. On top of it, this deranged person has the job of continuously coming up with solutions – all sorts of goods and services – to counter what it thinks is the angst in your life.

     

    So, for instance, a couple of years ago an ageing dog of mine began to get epileptic fits. I must have written in anguish to a couple of close friends about this development, and there it was: Google began to urge upon me ads for homeopathy, allopathy, healing crystals and what-have-you for epilepsy. Then I may have mentioned to someone in an email that the vet has said that I might have to prepare myself to have the old dog put down. So now the ads in a rather ghoulish but ever-helpful manner began to become about humane vet services, pet cemeteries, incinerators and other such sombre subjects.

     

    Once you begin to notice the ads, two distinct realities begin to emerge about yourself. Parallel Universes. One is what is actually happening in your life and what you need to do about it, and one is what the Google ad-world thinks is happening in your life and what it thinks are some of the solutions and strategies that you need to adopt with the help of its advertisers and their sparkling merchandise.

     

    Just today, I wrote to a niece saying I need to get a hardship allowance from the government for putting up with the idiosyncrasies of a neighbour. And whadyouknow – the ads on the sidebar became about government jobs, government grants, and properties for sale. So my offhand joke got interpreted as: lady, you need in some way to be connected up with the government, and/or you need to move house.

     

    Of course, given that dabbling in real estate is urban India’s new religion, the ads for rent, sell, buy, beg, borrow, steal apartments come fast and thick anyway, whether you mention this subject in your mails or not. ‘Luxurious 1 bedroom apartments’ are being peddled all the time.

     

    But my most favourite interpretation-misinterpretation came from a flurry of emails that were flying amongst some 11 fellow writers. The subject of our emails was the less-than-professional behaviour of a publisher soliciting our writings for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I hadn’t been paying attention to the ads that Google had been wildly generating in tandem with our mails. Once the matter was sorted out in our favour, someone sent around mail saying let’s get together soon, toast each other and have chicken soup on the menu. Heading the list of ads that day was one for ‘poultry slaughter lines’. All those hot and bothered emails that us renegade writers had been exchanging, translated in the mind of Google to this reading: the one thing that would solve all our problems was if we got ourselves a fully-automated chicken beheading, skinning and dismembering machine!

     

    And why not. Perhaps I’ll get one anyway. May come in handy.

     

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

     

  • There is something so touchingly innocent (kind word for daft/gormless) about some authority that bleeps out offensive words, but is totally oblivious to the risque, shall we say indelicate, nature of the entire script of some of the American serials we're watching, observes Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: The monkey manning the bleep machine

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I wonder who is in charge of bleeping out words on Z Cafe and a few other channels. Didn’t have it before. Now it’s on. There is something so touchingly innocent (kind word for daft/gormless) about some authority that bleeps out offensive words, but is totally oblivious to the risque, shall we say indelicate, nature of the entire script of some of the American serials we’re watching. Which leaves you feeling like a 10 year-old-kid who incredulously and amusedly watches as his parents carefully spell out ‘s-w-i-n-e’ and ‘y-o-u-r-b-l-o-o-o-d-y m-o-t-h-e-r’ in the middle of a nasty fight with each other.

     

    I mean you can bleep out words all you want from Two and a Half Men or $#*! My Dad Says, and have a sentence going something like this: “Oh dableepmn, I thought she was nice and slubleeputy, but she didn’t want to fbleepk around, so what the hebleeepell, I’ll just have to use my iflatbleeepable dobleeepll.” But it is still clear that much of the humour is generated by constant and casual reference, to acts like sebleeeepx and masturbleeeeption, body parts like brbleeeepsts, bubleeeptts, penbleeepses, asbleeeepoles, and suchlike. Interestingly, one word that passes muster (probably because the bleepers don’t know what it means) is ‘kiester’, which means backbleeeepside. Kiester is used left right and centre, quite unmolested by the bleep. However, when anyone uses ‘ass’, it is cleaned up with the refined replacement ‘behind’.

     

    It’s intriguing how the subtitles are cleaned up too. Sometimes there is the use of the good old asterisk ***** and sometimes words are delicately replaced. So for some reason when the character is saying ‘pervert’, the subtitle primly uses ‘deviant’. Ba*ls becomes ‘guts’. Sl*t and bi**h becomes ‘witch’ (yes, I’m not making this up as I go along; I sat and noted them down). Homo is fully bleeped out, and in the subtitles it is replaced with the more politically correct ‘queer’.

     

    On Comedy Central, there is a smudge and the Cc logo pasted over ‘offensive’ images like someone smoking. Again, the story itself that day (That Seventies Show) may be all about two women desperately enjoying their smoke, and even my dogs understood that, but noooo, we’re not grown up enough to actually see them lighting up their ciggies. Ah comeon, really? I mean really? What crableepp.

     

    But let me not protest too loudly, in case someone decides that this is ALL inappropriate content for our innocent and pious country with its faiu-thousand year tradition peopled only ever by selfless heroes, brave women, and wide-eyed children and utterly functional families. I can’t even say that last phrase with a straight face, but hey, it’s a great delusion-illusion that we feed ourselves when we talk sweepingly about how ‘The West’ is soooo bad. (But of course we do our damndest to see that our children go to college there and then earn nothing but daallerrs for the rest of their lives.) But I digress.

     

    A serial like Nurse Jackie goes unbleeped, because the monkey with the bleep machine hears no gaali-galoch. And yet…and yet…take a look at the content; it would make all toes – pious as well as non-pious – curl. The woman works in a hospital, is addicted to drugs – uppers or downers or something. She buys her stash from some guy in a restaurant (who routinely meets her, they hug, he slips them into her pocket for everyone except for some reason any cop to be able to see); she hides them in her shoes, she hides them in the light fixture in the lift, she hides them in the cookie jar at home. Firstly, this serial needs to be bleeped for stupidity – why is she buying stuff from someone when she has a whole hospital full of it? Or am I missing something – is it cocaine in capsule form? We are never actually shown this Psychedelic Florence Nightingale taking the stuff or ever looking at least briefly a little happy. Secondly, for reasons never made clear to us, she is unfaithful to her husband who slaves away at home with the kids. Why this grim, sad-eyed chick has this back-story is not clear, however many episodes you watch. Whenever I catch her, she’s just loitering in hospital corridors or getting into some storeroom for a moment to herself and her demons, you’re supposed to understand.

     

    So while someone is really busy with the bleeper, really absurd as well as soul-destroying messages march right through. What dumbleepery.

     

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

     

  • Simply uncorking your memories does not mean that you're a story-teller, admonishes Gouri Dange in 'Naming no Names'

    Gouri Dange: Writing a novel? Who isn’t?

    By Gouri Dange

     

    We are in the midst of an epidemic – an overabundance of unimaginative, thinly-veiled autobiographical pretend-fiction: how I loved and lost in IIT; how I lost and loved in JNU; how I was Cinderella in med college; how I was Cinderella’s ugly sis in IIM, and on and on and on.

     

    My uncle, his neighbour and his neighbour’s sister and her brother-in-law and their cocker spaniel – they’re all writing a novel, it looks like. Ever since Arundhati wrote about ordinary things happening in ordinary places and their far-reaching impact, all of us Indians have come uncorked with our stories.

     

    Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no snob who believes that English fiction writing is the exclusive turf of the chi-chi haw-haw strata. Or that fiction has to come from the deep tortured insides of a writer. I don’t care about the distinction between high brow and low brow and middle brow and no brow. Everything is narration.

     

    What I find (as a reader and as a book editor who reads the works of hundreds of hopefuls) is that too many aspiring Indian writers in English are totally mired in autobiographical material. Again, nothing terribly wrong with that, all writers ‘mine’ their minds and lives. Why, however, a lot of it is unreadable is that many writers are simply unable to take what happened to them and universalize it in any way. The autobiographical never makes the jump to the kind of writing/narration to which other people can relate and in which they can hear echoes.

     

    If the memories and incidents from the past came with any kind of emotional/social/intellectual insights, these stories might have held some interest and become publishable. This is not the case. There is nothing touching or instructive or engrossing or revealing in any of the strings of episodes that a lot of people choose to simply prattle on about.

     

    So much unpublished guy writing (called lad-lit, like chick-lit) is about life in school or engineering college hostel, and monotonously tells you about the adolescent crush on another boy, or the English teacher, the smoking/drinking experiment, or goes into excruciating and baffling detail about the physics lecture. It often boils down to nothing more than those ‘hey remember when we were in college…” kind of reminiscences that are ok when you’re sitting around with four friends, but does not make the cross-over to being readable literature, frankly.

     

    It’s the same with a lot of young (and old) women writers, who are putting in a lot of hard work, no doubt, in telling stories that no one wants to hear. That’s because, again, the stories simply don’t ‘travel’ from the writer’s life, to touch the life of the reader.

     

    The minute you say this kind of thing (as kindly as possible) to a person who wants to be published, sadly, the response is something like: “Oh everyone can’t be a Rushdie.” But I’m not talking Rushdie here at all. I’m not talking about ‘classes’ versus ‘masses’ kind of distinctions. I’m all for more easily accessible writing, but if you’re writing fiction (and not just your autobiography), it has to grow horns, a tail or two, some sharp nails, some moments and nuances in the content as well as in the way you tell it. Or else it’s just canteen (or kitty-party or chai tapri or board-room) chit-chat trying to pass off as fiction.

     

    Sometimes, people write down stories or incidents/anecdotes from their life to better understand the past and its impact on the present. It is therapeutic, perhaps, this exercise. And I’m all for it. However, this does not necessarily automatically transform it into a piece of writing that is accessible and/or of interest to anyone else. For this kind of self-examination to turn into fiction of any kind of wider appeal, much more would need to go into it.

     

    The art and craft of writing is definitely more demanding business than simply uncorking your memories and theories, is what I’m trying to say here to all of you (us) working so hard and hoping so fervently to be published. Self-absorption and contemplating your navel are rarely the right tools to become a good writer, frankly.

     

    There are so many avenues for people wanting to talk about their pasts or their presents, without having to do the complicated hard work of fictionalizing and universalizing the story. There are blogs, and chats or diaries or amateur, informal writers’ forums.

     

    There is a Marathi sentence that I always find very touching when people use it: “Mala kahi sangaychay” – ‘I have something to tell’. This is a universal impulse – but that doesn’t necessarily make it literature. Hemingway put it wonderfully: “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”

     

    If you can do that, you are a writer.

     

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

     

  • Yawny soaps, tepid Hitchcock, but a riveting Javed Akhtar.

    Gouri Dange: A Random Harvest

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I honestly tried, the other day, to watch a random Hindi soap. I first hid the remote, so that I was not tempted to shout in Marathi “shyaa kay rubbish” and switch channels. So I hung in there. While I watched the crumpled drama unfolding, I also noticed the way they put together a sequence even now, in most soap opera shoots. Which is that most of the actors have no idea what the script is or what episode they’re shooting for. The director or eighth assistant director is put in charge of extracting (yes, like toothpaste from a finished tube) reaction shots from one actor. The seventh assistant director is getting another actor to deliver lines, of course without anyone in front of him/her to give appropriate reactions. “Sab editing mey ho jaygega” is the assurance that is given. And there you are, watching the results – just a series of close-ups and chopped up shots that are supposed to make up a scene.

     

    Anyway, all this is old hat, and the one soap that I used to watch that looked like real people and real situations and real interiors (Ladies Special) and good composite shots with several actors actually in the same frame, was summarily pulled off the air a while ago, reconfirming that I live in a bubble.

     

    So then I took hold of the remote again, and pressed the ‘i’ button on it – i for information about this particular soap. Here is the information provided by the channel, and now you tell me, does this not merit jumping to the next channel:  ‘Vijay stops Jay from being reckless and she realizes that Moniya will eventually hurt Uday’s ego. Uday threatens Moniya into coming for a drive. Moniya is getting bored and is expected to spot Akash.’  (I swear I am not making this up – including the first confusing ‘she’ in reference to said Vijay and Jay.) All I could say was huh? and switch channels.

     

    There was Alfred Hitchcock Presents on FX. I watched a full episode, and I may be committing a big crime here by saying this, but it was rather boring and flat. This is the second one that I watched, and I was disappointed for the second time. There were simpleton-set-ups, trite dialogues, and predictable endings. To top it all, Hitch himself appears at the end, and where earlier he would add a grim note and send more shivers down your spine, in these episodes he further dilutes the effect by making some joke about the episode or the victim. No fun… whatever happened to the episodes that would leave you so frozen in fear that you would not dare put your foot off the sofa to get to your bedroom, when it was done?  But of course I loved the lighting, the B&W faces, the Classic American diction that was different from today’s American mumble.

     

    On I wandered randomly, without much hope, to be rewarded at 7.30 pm by Classic Legends on Z Classic. Javed Akhtar talks about some of the greats of Hindi Cinema (this time it was Bimal Roy). And what a raconteur he is. I am told he speaks from memory and not a written script at all, and I believe it. Firstly it is such a pleasure to hear good Hindi (after a day of listening to the chuckleheads on FM Radio in your car speaking the idiot-version of ‘chat-pata’ Hindi). And then there are his insights, the stories, and those little particular things that he points the viewer towards, before showing a small clip that illustrates his point. It is as if he shows you that one pivot of the entire film that he is talking about, that one crucial well-oiled piece of machinery, on which that film rides. You have been up until then unconscious of it, but what he tells you about it and the clip that he chooses to show – they give you that ‘aha’ moment; you recognize why you have been so involved and moved by that particular part.  For instance, he spoke about the forlon foghorn of the boat scene in Bandini, and when the clip is played, you say to yourself, ‘of course, I know how this sound makes me feel whenever I have seen it!’ A programme like this sets off your own memories and associations, as all legends must and do.

     

    I have only one crib (or perhaps three) about this programme. Why such a generic and vague sounding title ‘Classic Legends’? Why the cold set which looks like Javed Akhtar has been plucked out of his own sitting room and placed in some large desolate half-warehouse  half-disco during off hours?  And lastly, you have to listen to the programme at a fairly high volume (prompting others around you to smirk about you going deaf etc) because the last three words of each sentence are simply not audible, or are severely shortened/eaten up. Given that Javed Akhtar’s every word counts, I feel slightly cheated.

     

  • Does my watching television as leisure activity signal my lack of intelligence or did the telly reach out and extinguish my intelligence?

    Gouri Dange: TV, that exhausting hyper child

    By Gouri Dange

     

    Someone once said: the best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure. Oh well. I watched television recently for long hours, and now I am in a dilemma. Chicken and egg kind of dilemma. Does my watching television as leisure activity signal my lack of intelligence or did the telly reach out and extinguish my intelligence, whatever little there was of it?

     

    Because now I’m walking around in a daze of altered reality. For instance, I can’t watch a bird on a tree any more and relax into the moment because, fresh from my TV-watching stint, I’m expecting it to look up and chirp and trill: “Back after this leeetle break” or “Kahin pe mat jaiyega, milte hain break ke baad!” And if earlier I could identify this bird, now I dully wonder if it’s a Crested Shahrukh, or Huffing Arnav or a Rambling Rajdeep or a Ballistic Barkha or some such. I’m also looking at the bottom of my window, searching for those meaningless headlines, or daft messages from viewers (prime example: “All da politishens shud b deported b4 this country can b clean”) crawling right-to-left while the main frame has the bird doing its thing.

     

    This is because watching television has forced me to function in the jargon, the time-slots, the sound-bites and the visual constructs of TV-land. The overwhelming features of TV seem to be advertisements repeated till you are seriously sick, promos of other programmes, and a hundred other interruptions to the programme that you want to watch. I have whined piteously about this before, but I have to say it again. Somewhere along the way TV has taken away your dignified right not to be shouted at, not to be interrupted, and not to be told-sold the same thing again and again, all in the span of half an hour. I mean, even the heart-in-the-right place ads asking youngsters to vote… even those are repeated so heavily that instead of taking their advice and voting, those youngsters that these ads are meant for are likely to run out for a drink.

     

    Only on TV. No other medium is that presumptuous. Imagine a newspaper trying to chop up a report or a feature with a print ad popping up in the reader’s eyes at every other paragraph – would you not immediately throw such a publication away, stop subscribing to it, or keep it only to wrap dirty things in? If newspapers can have ads bunched in the Classifieds or specific pages, where those interested can go and browse, while the rest of us can avoid having things sold to us, then why not TV? Guys, bunch your ads at the beginning or end of the program so there is a chance that people will go look at them.

     

    Interestingly, after 26/11 (which marked a high point in hysterical reporting), news channels, especially the English ones, have cultivated a more sober, quieter tone. Less like children having a blue fit and more like adults having a conversation. All much more sophisticated and ‘responsible’ sounding than the pre and during 26/11 manic hysteria that they were all free to luxuriate in. Something has happened. While these channels and their star yellers did at that time behave as if anyone criticizing them for the way they covered the attacks and aftermath was committing high treason, they seem to have realized that they need to come down off their high and sober up. How this was change effected overnight is an interesting speculation. Lobotomy? Daily dose of tranquilizers? Homeopathic meds in the water supply? Or perhaps a crash course in voice correction and modulation to look and sound less like avenging ghouls and more like humans. But this chatty thing too is all part of the act of ‘acting out’ the news. My grandfather, when TV first came to India, was appalled to see newsreaders smiling at the end of the newscast. He thought it was terribly forward and insolent of them to smile at viewers. Deliver us the news and disappear, was how he and people of his generation liked it. What would he make of all the banter and bonhomie act of the newsgivers today, I wonder.

     

  • Undercover Boss is the stuff of modern-day fairytales

    Gouri Dange: Head Honcho’s Day Out

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I don’t tear up (fancy word for cry foolishly) watching anything on TV or in the movies usually. Close friends sit around pulling on their box of tissues even while watching TV ads, for godsake, and I usually smirk and talk loftily and alliteratively about manipulation of the mind by the media and other such airy stuff.

     

    Weepy Indian soaps, saas-bahu dramas in Hindi and Marathi, I catch only by accident when my finger touches the wrong buttons on the remote; and when I then see a screen-wide shot of large reddened cow-eyes, mascara fake lashes shimmering with tears, I only guffaw and cringe.

     

    But here I am, sniffling after every episode of Undercover Boss. Why, oh why? People around me ask. But they’re quite touched too, I can see.

     

    First a little about the format: in each episode (on BBC Entertainment) the CEO or owner of a big corporation goes on to his shopfloor or into the field, incognito as an entry-level employee, spending one week doing the rounds with ‘lower rung’ staff. He changes his appearance, and since the corporations are huge (45,000 employees, etc) and have far-flung operations, none of the staff that he interacts with are likely to recognize him.

     

    The explanation given for the accompanying camera is that a film is being made on entry-level workers. The boss works in various areas of the company operations, at different locations. This way, he gets to interact closely with the lower and middle order in his corporation.

     

    Invariably, his 7-day outing is an eye-opener for him, one day at a time. The episode is dotted with poignant as well as really funny interactions, as he gets to see and work the system himself. He himself is often bad at doing what they do, invariably needs help, and is sometimes declared unemployable by the supervisor he may be working with!

     

    He meets employees who soldier on in spite of serious health or personal issues, he sees some of the absurd outcomes of his own policies, made far away in corporate settings. He is, to use a cliché, humbled by his own people as he goes along with them on their daily rounds.

     

    At the end of his week undercover, the head honcho returns to his corporate HQ, and calls a handful of the employees who he feels are doing a particularly good job under trying circumstances. He first reveals his true identity to them, much to their shock and amusement, as they recall how frank and ‘themselves’ they have been around him, when they thought he was just a newbie. He also calls in a few link-men in the chain, who need to change something in order for some policies or attitudes or daily circumstances to change for the better.

    The hard-working, cheerful, resourceful employees are then rewarded with promotions, or bonuses, while some employees are given training or better working conditions. Sometimes, the boss will step right out of the groove and help with a personal problem, or even better, turn the person’s coping skills into something of use to the company itself.

     

    For instance, one employee who undergoes dialysis every week, and yet works hard and happily, is also given time off to volunteer at a hospital which is something he wants to do – here he becomes a shining example of the benefits of positivity and good work.

    A simple ‘go-cart’ may be given to some employee who legs it from one building to the other far too many times a day in a large factory compound. More budget allocations are made, as the Boss learns experientially, that his operations just cannot always be about maximizing profits and minimizing down time. When he communicates this to his Board, you can see some faces thaw, some faces tighten; it is very interesting to see those reactions too.

     

    Undercover Boss UK episodes are restrained, and I hoped that the US ones would not be simplistic and manipulative; luckily they are not. Now you’re free to call me a Hopeless Romantic, but what slays me each time is the profoundly shaken look on the Boss’s face, many times during his undercover week. The other thing that has me reaching for someone’s tissue box (I don’t own one, perhaps I need to, now) is the changing look on an employee’s face – from guarded, restrained listening, to a shy child-like slow flush or grin. This changed expression comes up when he/she realizes that someone has watched them closely as they do sometimes mind-numbing jobs (either monotonous, or plain icky, including non-flushing toilets), appreciated their work, and is following up with not just a perfunctory pat-on-the-back, but with change and rewards. There are also often frank and forthright apologies from the Boss for being blind to many things in his own company and his people.

     

    When everyone in an interaction becomes a little more human, I tend to come undone. Of course, the program has QUITE a few ad breaks, and that becomes the Brechtian device that alienates you nicely, so that you never get too caught up and carried away, fortunately or unfortunately.

  • Indians are rarely seen as part of the script in most sitcoms, romcoms, detective serials, and courtroom or medical dramas, grumbles Gouri Dange.

    Gouri Dange: Where’s the Indian guy?

    By Gouri Dange

     

    I have a question. The Indian diaspora in the US amounts to some… wait, let me Wiki it… ok, here it is: “According to the 2010 US Census, the Asian Indian population in the United States was 1,678,765 in 2000 and grew to 2,843,391 in 2010, a growth rate of 69.37 percent, the highest for any Asian American community, and among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States.” (Now ‘fastest growing’ meaning the existing ones are having babies all over the place, or more of our compatriots are joining the hordes there? My statistics-challenged mind is not able to figure that one out. But I digress.)

    The point that is noteworthy is that in spite of this sizable presence, Indians are rarely seen as part of the script in most sitcoms, romcoms, detective serials, and courtroom or hospital dramas. Now why is that?

    Before Indian readers instantly start getting all grumpy about this fact and talk about poor representation and discrimination and all of that, I think we Indians have a hand in this invisibility too. It’s because of the way most Indians are seen to live in the US. Indians by and large (and getting larger) stick to their own kind, work hard, and are not seen as people who hang around coffee shops named Central Perk or shoot baskets with colleagues or sit at the bar after a long day in the courtroom.

    The overall impression (partly right, partly wrong) is that they work long hours (take a look at ‘Asok’ from the Dilbert comic strip), scurry home or to an Indian restaurant or to a theatre showing a Bollywood movie or to an Indian wedding (synonymous with a Bollywood movie most times). This is why Indians perhaps simply do not form part of the script or landscape of American TV shows. And I rarely or never see an Indian name in the crew credits either.

    The only famous Indian who appeared once on Oprah pouted and neighed her way through the whole show in a hilariously wannabe accent, in a forgettable appearance some years ago. And of course she showed Oprah how to wear a sari. Now if that isn’t typecasting ourselves…

    As for fiction characters, there is Apu on The Simpsons. He is predictably the owner of a grocery store and has eight children. (Again, I’m not COMPLAINING here, I am just pointing out how we are perceived.) Hilariously, one scene particularly sticks in my mind: When everyone is making sand castles or other fun stuff on the beach, Apu is industriously making a replica of – what else – The Taj Mahal. And when someone knocks it down inadvertently, he takes great umbrage and cries out in bitter outrage: “You have desecrated our National Monument, you fat American!”

    Only recently has an Indian girl called Priya been worked into the Big Bang Theory (Z Café). But already we know that her mother would kill her if she knew she was seeing this boy.

    In the hospital comedy Scrubs (FX, Star World, Z Café) too, very few Indians are visible, though we know for sure that in real life, US hospitals are stacked high with Indian doctors. All you see in Scrubs, at the most, is a frightened looking sort of Indian-sub-continent intern as part of the backdrop. I also recently spotted what was supposed to be a Sikh doctor sitting with senior doctors Kelso and Perry on an episode of Scrubs, but he was wearing something like a maroon lacquer box with a thin border of tinsel on his head, which they were trying to pass off as a turban. Strange.

    The series Becker had the Ted Danson character in New York refer to an Indian only once – when he returns home and hears – what else – a blaring radio with a Hindi song, and shouts out down the stairwell: “hey Asian guy, turn it down, or I’ll call Immigration.”

    Friends has never had an Indian in it (someone correct me if I am wrong) in spite of the fact that it is set in New York, and none of the six friends could possibly live in that city without tripping over one of us Indians.

    Knowing the American propensity to be oh-so-fair-and-inclusive (the latest is the so very PC thing of saying Happy Holidays and not Merry Christmas, because in a racially mixed society someone may burst into tears for being included in a Christian greeting, apparently), I’m surprised that there aren’t more Indians on American TV and films, even as incidental characters. However, perhaps they steer clear of it all, given that they don’t really know the Indian in their midst at all.

    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 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.