Chiptease

Yes, the title is designed to do exactly that – tease. And no, it has nothing to do with the word it rhymes with. Well, chiptease is the latest entry in the urban dictionary.  What does it mean? You buy a bag of chips thinking that it will be full of chips, but when you open the bag it is barely full, is chiptease. Over promise, but under deliver.No wonder then that nothing weighs lighter than a promise.

Don’t we get chipteased in every walk of our lives? 

Politicians, builders, and advertisers all chiptease us when they promise the earth and the sky. And eventually we realize that all the tall promises were a bagful of air. 

How about going for a guy who promises the least? In all probability, he will be the least disappointing. 

But, why blame others. When it comes to advertising we conveniently dress in hyperbole. Ever wondered how all the girls in matrimonial advertisements are fair, tall and beautiful? By some strange logic most boys are tall, well placed and handsome.

Marketing is all about teasing. The clever jugglery of words and phrases like ‘up to 50% off’ and ‘conditions apply’ are all marketing chipteasers. The moment you close eyes to the ‘Up to’ tag, you are in for a big hole in the pockets.  Large enough for Harbhajan’s balls to pass through. Clarification. I am referring to the ball bearings he made in an alcohol advertisement.

The recent chiptease cleverly executed by master chipteaser Kapil Sibal and supported by his cronies has resulted in mayhem on the streets. Only this time his chicanery was caught by the people and the government stood exposed. Just like Shakti Kapoor in his underpants! The chiptease became striptease. Finally the cameo role was allotted for the mighty Pranab da, the official counselor of disputes.

This decade has redefined more than a few words so that modern writing has become cryptic. The new words become a part of our lexicon only if they remain relevant like twitter and Bluetooth. In my earlier post I had written about new words like sofalize( Socialise from the comforts of home) and coffice( Having coffee in office) but both have become irrelevant due to lack of usage. And English is a funny language. From chiptease to striptease, it is all about relevance and usage.

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Here is my humble attempt at poetry in Hinglish. You will appreciate it only if you have heard the latest Airtel jingle. Imagine the pauses and the drumbeats at appropriate places.

DESH JO CHAHE, DOOR LE JAAYE

Jaise ship ke liye …..captain hota hai

Aise desh ke liye…. neta hota hai, par har ek neta zaroori hota hai!

Koi subah 7 baje arrest karaye, koi  midnight dande barsaye

Koi fascist koi anarchist hota hai , but har ek neta zaroori hota hai!

Koi har deal mein paise banaye, koi many times foreign trips lagaye

Koi psycophant koi communal hota hai, but har ek neta zaroori hota hai!

Koi jhoot bole aur hamein behkaaye, koi silence se hamein pakaaye

Koi grassroot, koi crown prince hota hai, but har ek neta zaroori hota hai!

Koi desh ko bech  khaye, pakde jaane par victory sign dikhaye

Koi immoral, koi 86 hota hai, but har ek neta zaroori hota hai!

Kis kis ke naam par desh roz rota hai, par har ek neta zaroori hota hai.

Madam, madam.......

One Depressed, Another Delusional

PATIENT NAME:Congress

OUT PATIENT SUMMARY: The patient shows clear signs of anxiety, fatigue, and loss of interest with suicidal tendencies.

CVS: NAD

HEAD: Swollen

ABDOMEN: Over-stuffed

EXTREMETIES: Jerky

TONGUE: Slippery

DIAGONOSIS: Subclinical Depression

MEDICATION ADVISED: Prozac 80, Alprax 0.50mg, Restyl 0.50mg TDS

We are unaware of the malaise afflicting Madam, but her party has been diagnosed with sub-clinical depression.

The art of politics is tested in times of dissent. The Grand Old Party is on slippery grounds. Each of them is falling with twice the thud even before the previous runner has had a chance to get up and shrug off the dirt. They are collectively in a firm grip of chronic depression. If you are medically inclined then you must be aware of the symptoms of depression exhibited by each one of them.

Dry Mouth, unexpected silence and fatigue: Dr. Man-Mohan Singh- He cannot speak or take action even when a daylight robbery takes place right under his nose.

Drowsiness, slurred speech: Essam. Krishna – He is awake only when he is shaking hands with Ms. Hina Rabbani Khar. He shook hands with her for so long that he ended up with a dislocated shoulder.

Epileptic Seizures: Mr. Bigvijay Singh – On days he forgets to take Prozac, he sacrifices all virtues on the altar of power.

Acute mania: Mr. Manish Tiwari - Power is an aphrodisiac and it seems he took an overdose of Prozac leading to extended arrogance.Side effects of this drug result in verbosity and loss of humility.

Flip-flops, megalomania: Mr. Clever Sibal – He refuses to take his daily dose of Prozac. No doubt he thinks that all the brickbats he gets are bouquets. So he keeps shoving mud in the eyes of a nation semi-blind with sleaze.

Delusion: Mr. Rashid Ahlvi - He imagines a foreign hand which is forcing and mobilizing people to come out on the streets.

Sweating, Blurred vision: Ms. Renooka Chowdhary - When the nation is debating the method and means of Anna, she tells Arnab to go and watch Peepli Live, implying that the present outpouring on the streets is media created, and that Anna is Natha of Peepli Live. God, someone please tell her to stop wiping make-up from her ostensibly botoxed forehead. 

FOLLOW UP: Patients condition to be checked frequently. Optimal level of medication should continue as withdrawal of medicines might lead to suicidal tendencies.

As imagined by a delusional neurologist.

We all know that Jan Lok Pal is not a panacea for all evils. The anger spilling on the streets is not only against corruption. It is against scheming ministers, lack of communication, rising prices, political arrogance, lack of leadership, lack of opportunities and uneven distribution of wealth.

While Congress is depressed, the major opposition party the BJP is delusional. They wish to ride on the wave of angry citizens. They are simply fishing in troubled waters. When the time comes to act in the parliament, they will make sure to thwart a strong bill. Who wants to axe his own foot?

The Congress’s weakness is BJP’s strength. In reality they are two sides of the same coin. If the Congress is suffering from depression the BJP is suffering from delusions of smelling an opportunity in unstable polity. And with both parties in the sickbay, the nation is on the streets.

(This is a satire as imagined by the writer.)

It All Adds Up

OF A, B, C, S and P's


There are three kinds of people; those who can count and those who cannot. No points for guessing that I belong to the second category.

And I thought my misery was over after school. No mathematics. No tension. But the A’s have come to haunt me again after decades of peace. As a child, I was most anxious about my mathematics grades. Being realistic, I never hoped for an A+ but a decent B+ was always a face saver. 

I agree that it is idiotic to compare a nation’s report card with that of a child, but the comparisons are compelling. The downgrade of US economy from an AAA on long term debt to an AA+ has taken me down the memory lane. To add to my agony the ratings agency, Standard and Poor’s sounds like my strict math teacher Sister Paula. Anything below a B+ warranted a piercing stern look, “You need to work hard, my child.” And anything below C was a clear signal for an ominous parent-teacher meeting. In school a mathematics downgrade, meant work harder. Interestingly for the US too, it essentially means work harder - less spending and more earning. 

 Not many would be aware of the musical group, ‘Blood Sweat Tears’ which popularized a phrase, ‘what goes up, must come down’ in their hit song Spinning Wheel. Yes, it must and it does. Poor Obama, his fiftieth birthday made history. In one stroke Standard & Poor’s stripped Amrika of a seventy year old exalted AAA status. Obama’s optimistic ‘Yes we can’ has become ‘Yes we might’.  And the irony is that the S&P President, in the eye of storm is – Dey-vein Shaar-maa an Inn-di-haan. 

To be fair to the US I would love to know the accountability of these rating agencies like S&P, Moody’s and Fitch etc. I mean with weird names like Moody’s, how the hell does one trust their ratings? Yankees, please do not take offence, but it is a fact that average intelligence levels of Americans has arguably been B+, but as providence would have it, they have enjoyed AAA; life and ratings both. Regardless of being poor mathematicians, every equation in their life added up brilliantly! So far!

You have to hand it to the Americans who are bravely trying to laugh off the downgrade blues. The comic chat show host, Jay Leno quipped, “This is how bad our credit is now. President Obama just asked China for another loan and they won’t give it to him unless his mother-in-law co-signs.”

Coming back to my struggle with numbers  a research says that math ability is inborn – either you have it or you don’t. Thank you researchers for easing the load of guilt I carried for years. But any downgrade hurts. The latest one of the United States has already caused me a substantial loss on the stock market. I hate this. Why should their follies and their report card affect my life? A sneezes, B catches cold, C lands in the hospital, and D almost dangles between life and death.  We are one big family where economics is concerned.

 At the end of the day it is the ordinary people who have to pay back the huge debts some governments picked up. All of us have to collectively pull our socks to survive or Sister Paula might give us a good spanking for the downgrades.

The Changing Face

Legendary Charlie Chaplin sans his trademark Moustaches

Peter Parker is dead. A new younger Spiderman is going to sling his web and fight crime. It is just not a new teenager climbing Manhattan buildings but Miles Morales is half-black, half-Hispanic American who saves the world after the death of Parker at the hands of the Green Goblin. Making Spiderman black is keeping with the new trend and times, it is said. 

I smell either political tokenism or an attempt to reach out to wider audiences rather than starting a new trend. The only colors I can associate with Spider man are blue and red.

But hello? Isn’t the new trend about the fair and lovely man? Yes, the fairness obsession has transcended barriers and is haunting men. Back home  Shahid and Shahrukh, are endorsing fairness creams for men. And whatever happened to the Mills and Boon ka tall dark and handsome hero? The machismo of M& B hero was directly proportional to the rugged features, a scar on the face and day old stubble.

The tall and dark has given way to fair and short brigade led by Ranbir and Imran who are ruling the roost. The thick bushy moustache too has given way to day old stubble. Not that I adore hirsute characters but why the notion that a face with moustache does not reflect the urban face of globalised India? 

I guess, to each his own but I grew up watching Kamal Hassan with moustaches in” Ek Duje ke liye” and sans moustache I fail to connect with him. The joke goes that the earth did not revolve on its axis but on Rajnikant’s single strand of moustache. And wasn’t Rajni saar looking weird minus moustache in Robot? No wonder the earth shook after the release of Robot.

I remember when I was a teenager, several friends had huge crushes on Ravi Shastri and Anil Kumble. Okay do not screw your noses in disgust, Shastri used to be a dude once upon a time before ravages of time blew his hair and moustache away. Both sacrificed their moustaches perhaps to become a part of the international scene where cricketers and international sportsmen are mostly clean shaven.

Ha, ha…. I just imagined Obama and Beckham in a bushy moustache. 

Have you noticed that none of the legendary super heroes have sported a moustache? Now that I rack my brains, not many Indian mythological heroes sported a moustache either. Beards yes but moustaches, no. However, the urban super heroes like Spiderman and Phantom are happy to use the razor daily. But the angry young ones who dare to defy the system and thrash the baddies do not shy away from a moustache a la Robin Hood.

And of course, our very own Chulbul and Sing-ham pasted thin moustaches since they were thrashing baddies.

Coming back to the fascination for white, it is sad that advertising professionals are forcing the fairness obsession on men, when the world is downgrading the ratings of most ‘fair economies’. We know that the malaise runs deep when a Namrata Randhawa aka Nikki Haley, the Indian American Governor of North Carolina lists herself as ‘white’ in her voter registration. Political convenience or colonial mindsets, you decide.

The scales however are slowly tilting towards yellows and browns. The whites have had their time under the sun. Time to unshackle the white obsession and upgrade the brown ratings!

Wake-Up Call

Normal delivery? Nah! This blog was born after much melodrama and suspense. Let me share how it came into being. No, I am not spinning yarns about Adam and Eve or dishing out scintillating details regarding birds and bees. I am simply rewinding the writing reel. Slide by slide.

August 2007.

The emotional fool that I am, I penned a heartfelt piece after my only son left home for college. Friends being friends, appreciated the article and in a fit of delusion, I mailed the piece to the Times of India. Hope bloomed. I was the first to wake up, sprint towards the door to grab the newspaper each day.  Over time hope diminished, life took over and I forgot all about it.

A few months later while I was vacationing in Kerala when I received a call from a friend. “ Your article is in today’s paper.”

Yes!

Remember when Shah Rukh motivates his ‘Chak De’ girls he says, “Yeh sattar minute tumhari zindagi ke sabse keemti hai, yeh tumse koi nahin cheen sakta? Those six hundred fifty odd words catapulted me from a perceived contrite homemaker to an acclaimed cerebral writer. Funny! As if having extra grey cells was a preserve of working women. Dolly Bindra is a working woman. So?

Anyway, I was a woman who had shot her literary bolt. Having tasted blood, my fingers danced on the keyboard like a women possessed. Unfortunately, other than my letters to the editors, not a single word got published. I had no literary moorings but the trigger for enthusiasm, if any, was the appreciation I got for that one article that reached a million homes. Naturally, dil wanted more.

Slowly my prized newspaper cutting was reduced to a piece of yellow parchment. The thought that many would have eaten bhel puri with grimy chutney on my article at various road side stalls added to the disappointment. The inner voice said, read more write less. As a result writing sustained, albeit at a slow pace; only for sanity sake. But I never mailed any of my articles to newspapers or magazines.

August 2010.

The house was swarming with relatives who had thronged to meet my brother and his family on a visit from the US. Just after dinner the phone rang. It was from the Times of India, Gurgaon office. A girl named Pooja was on line.

“My editor liked your article in his mail box and wants to meet you tomorrow morning. Can you make it?”

Of course! I can come right away to meet your editor in any corner of the world, is what I wanted to say. I was that gob smacked. Which article was she talking about?

The family huddled like Dhoni’s men. As if one meeting and tada….the editor will vacate his seat, bend on his knees and say, “Where were you all these years? In my entire career I have not met anyone as gifted as yourself. We are firing Jug, Bachi and Shobha…even Chetan. Henceforth only you will write for us.” It was as if I had won a gold medal or a Miss India title. My date with destiny was near and everyone chipped in.

“CV,” said my son. “Mom do you have a CV?”

“No.”

“What if the editor wants hard copies of your articles?”

Poor husband went out at night and managed to get some prints. My sis-in-law pitched in with her precious inputs on my CV. Suddenly my six year old niece raised the mother of all questions. “Bua, what will you wear?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does,” was the chorus.

Finally it was decided that I should wear black trousers and a white top. Worst fears came true. The trouser did not fit. My mom strained her eyes to alter the dress much after midnight. “I could manage only half an inch. It’s a matter of few minutes. Hold your breath until the meeting is over. This is where your daily pranayam comes to rescue.” Only my mom can come up with witty ones in tense situations.

Next morning was all about ‘All the bests, do well, don’t be nervous’ and all that crap which makes you even more anxious. The supporting better half that he is, my husband took a day off and went along with me to the editor’s office on the MG road.

To my surprise the receptionist said, “Madam, the editor is not in. He is in Delhi. There is some misunderstanding.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I got a call from this office.”

Flustered, I called up the editor.

“Who? Oh.. …..yes.   Sorry, I am busy today. Why don’t you mail a few short pieces and we shall see. Not more than two hundred words. We don’t have space, you see.”

I couldn’t see anything. I was holding my breath. Remember the trousers? And most awful was facing the expectant faces at home. What will I say? That my meeting was so inconsequential, the editor forgot? As reality dawned, I wanted to slink away like mist.

When I broke the story at home my brother came up with the idea of starting a blog.

“Call it Freebird. No word restrictions, no editing, no running after newspapers,” said my son. “Your own space. Fly free. Soar Higher.”

And Freebird was born.