A Time To Reflect

charukesi February 28th, 2006

I came across a very interesting post on the Cheskin blog about China’s window to the world. Food.

In China, food is love. Food represents familial ties and status between people: the elderly and most prestigious guests are always served the first and best parts of the dish. Food represents commitment: business deals and marriages aren’t sealed with paperwork but by the opulence of the dinner banquet. Food represents all that Chinese parents feel but aren’t in the habit of saying: parents will spend without limit on fancy packaged snacks to show their love for their little emperors and empresses. And increasingly, food represents China’s window to the world.

As I read it, I thought about how true all that is for India too… Food - familiar, comforting, love, all emotions good and bad, blackmail, memories, anticipation, longing…

Familiar food is what you miss first when you travel to a strange place. And the hunt for smells and tastes that remind you of home…

Food is the pent up love of mothers who have their sons (and daughters) away at hostel. Or in a different country. All anticipation of visits and activity during the visit revolves around food. I have been living away from my parents, in a different city for over ten years now… When I was in hostel, my mom would cook my favorite food on the day I went home in the holidays. And she still does. That first meal then is the ultimate feeling of being at home. Beta, maine tumhari pasand ka gajar ka halwa banaya hai… Yeh lo khao…

Food is comfort - when the chips are down, I turn to basics - comfort food - food from my childhood and the way mother used to make them… vettha kuzhambu for instance is more than food - it is a warm blanket of childhood memories and being reassured by mom’s nearness… a very spicy and tangy blanket but comfort food like nothing else…

Food is the memory of khichdi during illness and sakkara pongal during festivals… Food is also recipes that I never learnt from my grandmother, flavours and smells that I always took for granted.. that are now lost to me forever…

Food is the mirror to the way a city or a society changes and evolves… It is the way slow and sleepy “pensioners’ paradise” Bangalore moved from the Lal Bagh MTR multi-course lazy Sunday lunch stretching for over an hour of ghee soaked bliss, to vacuum packed, ready-to-eat, dosa-wrapped, flyover-infested cybercity… MTR packed foods…

Food is what people remember from a wedding, that friends meet over, that families go out together for, that crosses borders first… Food is that first sign of acceptance - of another person, another culture, another country… Turning vegetarian for a loved one, Jain Italian cuisine, garam masala in Chiniss, sambhar powder in Maggi…

• Pot-pourri
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charukesi February 24th, 2006

Iam going through a blogger’s block and have not been posting regularly. Sometimes I stare at the screen and wonder whether there is anything at all to write about. This too shall pass. I hope. And then there are these incidents which make me want to write again…

A couple of days ago I attended the happy burdday party of a neighbour’s two year old. That’s right, two years. What all I do for maintaining good neighbourly relations… The party invitation said 7.30 p.m. and I was there at that time. Except there was noone else. Yeah, the burdday kid and her parents and grandparents were, but they live here, so what the hell. Kids started streaming in slowly and soon there was a loud rocking party.

Imagine this, ten kids ranging from 2 to 9, all dancing to aashiq banaya aapna. And singing along without missing a beat. Or a word. Said the three year old to the world at large - you have made me a lover. yeah whatever. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better - or is it worse - it was Woh Sharabi kya sharabi jo nashe me na raha. (what kind of a drinker is he who is not always intoxicated. yeah right)

And proud parents who had walked in by then (fashionably late for a frigging burdday party within a residental building in Vashi, not some page 3 do) smiling and encouraging their children. Move it faster baby, let’s see some more of the thrusting movement. Not exactly but somewhat. But definitely, oh my daughter, she is always dancing in front of the tv, she wants to copy each and evvvvery step and dance just like the heroine. (Or the item girl maybe?)

And the burdday parents lithping thweetly to the cranky two year old (can’t say I blame her) danth kalo betha.

Yeah start dancing, kid, it is never too early to dance to sharabi songs. So what if we have closed down dance bars. We still have happy burdday parties where kids as young as two are actively encouraged to dance with lewd movements to songs with lewder lyrics. And when you grow up to prepubescence and reach an awkward 14 or thereabouts, we can send you to dance-dance competitions on tv where you can dance-dance in skimpy clothes in front of an extremely interested audience.

Point of rant : do not attend burdday parties of two year olds, even if for the sake of god neighbourly relations. And if you must, then go join them on the dance floor, sitting back and watching can be traumatic…

• Children and youth
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charukesi February 14th, 2006

What did you do when you looked at the ineed image in my earlier post?

Or if you are a smoker, what do you do each time you see a cancer kills ad? Or an ad for cooking oil that shows that healthy young man suddenly collapse with a heart attack?

What will happen to you family after you die? Buy life insurance now…

Pictures of children orphaned in the earth-quake or people left homeless in the tsunami… Donate now…

Michael says, give us more gulab jamuns… A reviewer on Amazon says about My Own Country, Dr. Verghese’s book on AIDS, By about page 250 I began to grow numb from the overload off all the personal stories.

Ads, images, words that strive to shock. To induce fear and goad you into action…

Advertising has always resorted to fear and shock tactics, believing that they hold great value; optimistically believing in a have-knee-will-jerk-will-do sequence of actions… Except, it does not work that way…

I was arguing with a blogger friend who is seeking advertising-gurudom about this… How can that ineed image not move a human being?

People who say they are put off by harsh or shocking images are just looking for excuses… they are anyway insensitive….

I was actually arguing just for the fun of it…

The truth is, after a point, everyone suffers from shock overload… The mind switches off, looks for diversions, and excuses… I do not need to exercise… I do not smoke that much anyway… What will my individual contribution achieve?

How much is too much? At which point do you switch off your mind and say, Enough now… or even in a moment of self-deception, that is not for me, nor about me…

When does fear / shock really work? Can you think of a time when you were spurred into action that way? It would be interesting to think of it…

Look at the AIDA theory of how advertising works - or should work…

What does shock do? Awareness - sometimes yes, sometimes the ad-greater-than-message trap. Interest - certainly. Such words and images are attention-grabbing, as they are intended to be. Desire (or conviction) - I think if you are pre-inclined towards the message or cause. If you are not, then? Action - ideal situation, but how often does that happen?

The ‘inverted U’ hypothesis (just in case you thought I was weak in theory and knew only about AIDA) - mild fear or shock can lead to a change in attitude or behavior, but as degree of fear increases, attitude change or even interest dips. Inverted U.

***
Then what works? Humour, I have found, works - surprisingly. Not necessarily ha ha funny humour, but self-effacing, don’t-take-me-too-seriously kind of stuff can drive home the point much much better than on your face images.

Anti-smoking. Some of the best ads I have seen. No scary skeletons, no threat of the boogeyman looming large. But very effective.

Secondhand smoke kills

This ad for the Cancer Patients Association of India won O&M the gold at Cannes in 2002. Move over Marlboro Country and Leo Burnett.

And one I saw on MTV a long long time ago. A girl is driving down a wide open road, as she sees a young man thumbing a ride. She whizzes past without a second look. As she drives ahead, she sees another young man hitching, this time with a cigarette in his mouth. She drives past, and then reverses as she sees the man in the rear view mirror, and gives him a lift.

Smoking causes impotence

I can’t find that ad anywhere - but here is one that is equally simple. And blunt.

• Advertising
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charukesi February 10th, 2006

A few things that have been disturbing me over the last week or so… random, casual lines heard or read, images that make me shudder every time I think of them, attitudes that make me despair… they pop up at inconvenient times, little imps that dance in my mind, those morsels I have not been able to swallow or throw out…

Just finished reading Dr. Abraham Vergehese’s book My Own Country (picked this up based on a faint memory of something I had read on Uma’s blog ages ago) and the after-taste refuses to go away. The book is a doctor’s account of facing and fighting with AIDS deep inside the bible belt of the USA. I found it a humane and honest narrative of the early years of AIDS from a doctor who is involved, compassionate and finally finds that he is living with the disease too, not in exactly the way his patients are but the disease takes over all his waking and sleeping moments…

Here is a line that got me thinking… Gay may have been what he did but it wasn’t who he was… ( a patient’s sister)… What a person does only a part of what he really is - how many of us are able to separate the two this way?

I keep reading reports about misconceptions about the virus and the disease, stigma and basic ignorance… More than twenty years after the disease first reared its head, the stigma remains… Like one of Verghese’s patients who saw himself (and his wife) as innocent victims who had been infected through a blood transfusion. And by extension, other victims not so innocent…? got what they deserved…

***
From a link ammani forwarded me a long time ago…
That to me is like is stealing someone’s baby and claiming adoption. Nothing wrong with it at all, but do not say it is your baby — that’s insulting the kid and hiding your inability to produce one yourself .

And then says the author, (The above para has been altered to avoid more comments from my ‘holier-than-Thou’ readers)

And that is the altered version. Read the original version…

‘That to me is like is adopting a kid. Nothing wrong with it at all, but do not say it is your baby — that’s insulting the kid and hiding your inability to produce one yourself.’

Oh, the inability to produce a child… here we go again… do adopt a child, nothing wrong with it (thanks) but don’t call it your own… yeah, right.

And this is not in any treatise on adoption or child bearing. These are lines thrown casually and callously into a review of the movie Zinda by journalist Sudhish Kamath who writes for the Hindu. Like there is not enough prejudice in the country already against adoption…

I know this was a long time ago but this post on caesarean deliveries on Sujatha’s blog and some of the comments on the post put me in mind of this again… (no specific reference to any one of the comments here)

***
And finally, the nightmare of development agencies, well-meaning and clueless donors… There, I have cleaned out my cupboard and conscience at the same time…

[through gizmodo]

I am thinking about the glut of old clothes donated during the tsunami relief efforts and about the 100 dollar laptop (much as Abi and I agree to disagree on our respective faith in leapfrogging development)…

• Society & Development , - Public health
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charukesi February 8th, 2006

Been spending a lot of time at the Kala Ghoda festival, soaking in culture in small digestible bite-sized pieces… As I walk around the stalls on both ends of the road, I wonder about the way popular Bollywood has come to be accepted as part of the arts… Has it always been this way?

I have been exploring the Kala Ghoda area on my own, at my own pace (given that my foot is still not in group-heritage-walk shape). College, library, art gallery, museum, theatre…

I stop often to think about how beautiful that part of Bombay is, especially at night, when the frenetic commercial activity of the day has wound down and the streets take on a calm sleepy look…

***
And here, on the Kala Ghoda Gazette : reflections on Umrao Jaan 1.0 and 2.0

• - Cities and places
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charukesi February 6th, 2006

Some images from the Kala Ghoda festival…

A hundred kids + two bright red tents + many boxes of waterpaints and crayons. Akanksha volunteers. A camera. A set of anxious and guiltily relieved parents. Two hours of rollicking fun.

Theme for the day: dream city…

Venue : the big red tent…

The children’s section is entirely being managed by Akanksha this year; the older Akanksha kids teaching and working with the other kids who come everyday to Kala Ghoda… In turn, the kids at the workshops having a blast, creative juices and water paints flowing freely and mingling with the red carpet inside the tents..

Outside the big red tents…

From the first day’s workshop where the kids were asked to dream about themselves, their lives and future. This is Akaknksha’s fifteenth year and their theme for the year is dream…

Here is a kid whom I met on both days; the first evening she stood by the stage all through the dance performance of Nritarutya and the next day, found a red chair for herself right in the front and settled down comfortably to watch the show, keeping time on the red ball in her hand and smiling happily throughout.

[click for larger image]

***
Cross-posted on the Kala Ghoda Gazette in a slightly different version here and here. Check out more pictures and impressions from the Kala Ghoda festival there. I have also covered a couple of contemporary dance performances that were part of the weekend menu…

• Children and youth , - Cities and places
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charukesi February 4th, 2006

The Kala Ghoda arts festival begins today, showcasing the best in arts that Bombay has to offer… And covering it live, well, almost live, will be an enthusiastic bunch of bloggers writing for the Kala Ghoda Gazette. The Kala Ghoda Gazette is the latest in the list of collablogs conceived of and managed by serial collablogger Peter Griffin; read more about the Gazette here. Expect previews and reports, podcasts and photographs and more…

Dina has a short and interesting piece on the Kala Ghoda area and the arts festival…

Also check out the contests being organized by Peter through caferati; the SMS poetry contest and the Flash Fiction contest…

So, head now to where the action is…

• Pot-pourri , - Cities and places
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charukesi February 2nd, 2006

Uma at Indianwriting has this posted an email she received from someone in the US… I found much in the mail objectionable but this sentence particularly got me thinking - The number of overage unmarried Indian girls in the US is quite large. And there is nothing the parents can do about it, which causes them considerable anguish.

And then this brilliant sentence from Shoefiend on her fact or fiction - Approaching their late 20s, my cousins were still unmarried – earning their mother the collective sympathy of friends, relatives and even the occasional stranger. Like products close to their expiry date, they were nearing the end of their shelf life and people were wary of taking them home.

When exactly does a girl / woman reach that expiry date…? What is this overage that makes parents wring their hands in despair and get ready to sell their product, I mean daughter, off at a bargain deal?

Is it when she starts losing her youth? And when is that…?

Is it when she is touching terrible thirty? And she flinches every time she sees herself in the matrimonial ad described as a “girl”…?

Is it when the woman decides that she has had enough and refuses to submit to any more bride-viewing and bargaining?

Or is it when she is nearing menopause and it is clear that even if she marries then, she will not be able to serve her raison d’être, viz. child-bearing?

And when do men become overage? Do they have an expiry date too? Do mothers of unmarried overage men attract the same kind of sympathy?

Why is it that the tick-tocks and the chimes of the woman’s biological clock alone are so loud and clear that they reach the ears of friends and strangers alike? I wonder…

• - Gender issues
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charukesi February 1st, 2006

When was the last time news made your hands tremble?

Hmm, let me see now… Was it when I first heard about Raveena Tandon’s lost dog ?(on the front page of the Times of India) Or was it when I read that Indian couples are now quick to wed, quicker to split? (again on the front page of the ToI).

And if you have quite recovered from the trembly hands and mopped up the spilt coffee, get ready now to feel the news. Uh?

Times TV is now finally on air after a long spell of promotion and promise of news that is different and relevant. Yeah, right. As different as Emraan Hashmi’s next movie in which he claims to have a role that is challenging and different.

TIMES NOW will create the second generation of TV news in the broadcast space. ”Its vision is to expand the space by being relevant to the urbanite who is culturally aware, trend sensitive and brandcentric. With a focus on involving the consumer more closely in the news experience, the channel’s unique programming wheel blends the urgent news needs of the urbanite, says the impartial and totally-unconnected-to-the-Times-Group publication Economic Times.

I imagine this conversation on the morning local :

Commuter 1 : Hey, did you feel the news last night?

Commuter 2 : Oh yes, I did… wasn’t that something? My hands didn’t stop trembling…

Commuter 3 : *Spills coffee from styrofoam cup*

Commuter 4 : *Flashing understanding smile at Commuter 3*

I know how you are feeling… I tried so much to be the involved consumer in this second generation TV news wave. But I was so busy mopping up the coffee from the couch…

*Sighs and elbows her way out at Dadar station*

• Media Matters , - Television
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