undo death

          Can anybody show me the 'undo' death button in life?

           when can we finally get a button that lets us undo?..when can have that one chance to 'undo' that moment when death came knocking at the doors of our loved ones, and we weren't even aware of the moment.

            once again, death stares at me in the form of  a lady's 16 year old 'fresh out of school' cool, into college teen son; a lady whom i have known for a good ten years now, a lady which whom  I used to work together, a lady with whom i must have broken bread more than a hundred times in form of shared  of lunches, along with whatever that was currently going on with our lives at that phase.

          Nothing, nothing seems to pacify me....that it was not an uncommon death, that it was just another statistic for mumbai local trains and great indian railways are concerned, that there were millions of such deaths before, and there would be millions of such deaths since...

         I feel like somebody is playing the russian roulette, and one mother has been spared at the other mother's expense.

        I feel the sword hanging above the head, as we send our fresh out of school cool children to learn, and later to earn, let them loose on the platforms from churchgate to virar, and vt to whereever, in those terribly overcrowded trains,  how we even gloat at times, at how we have inadvertently end up teaching  them to toughen themselves at the expense of the railways, just as we learnt ours, when we were sent out by our parents to learn similar lessons.

          A shiver down the spine, when the news reaches u, u wonder, why her,why her son, why at that age, when youth is finally blooming, the age when children are just about to blossom in young strong virile men and women, when u can finally sit back and graze proudly and fondly at your years of handiwork, that is your child. when he is just getting his personality, when he has almost ceased being a tiring brat, to an almost equal or even more in brains, height and compatibility....when then? why so late, does death chose to make his appearance? or rather, why so early?

         At the same time, a small gleam, thanking god to have been spared the ordeal ourselves, and yet the fear of it not happening at our own homes in some future..

        like i said, im tired. of the tension. of the Russian roulette....give me, please give me,  that undo button...so that i can undo useless, futile painful deaths like this.

        Oh great indian railways, please make that button. now right now..so that there be no more statistics in that section at least.

Building bridges

Building bridges Part I

              One thing I have observed is that most of human lives go into breaking old, then rebuilding new bridges. Whether its with friends or family or even with ourselves. Human beings are particularly prone to picking up petty fights over petty reasons, breaking up and then making up again. It somehow comes with the genes.

 I don’t claim to be any different. From as far back as I can remember,  I always have had tiffs with my mother. It was very easy for her to get irritated. If  her friends happened to ask you what u had for breakfast, and if I answered ‘ roti and sweet moong dal’, she would be vexed. Why did u have to say that? Why do they have to know about our kitchen? Or if somebody was ill, and if the neighbors inquired, she would say, “why did u have to answer? What’s ur concern? Are u a grown up?”

Finally I learnt to hide things as much as possible, and always think up a back up answer, where hiding things could only be partially avoided or not avoided at all. It was not that easy to gauge which answers was going the least controversial tags, but it wasn’t that difficult either. I even learnt the art of answering inquisitive neighbors (polite in their eyes) with such ambivalence, so that I cud frame my answers to her, with equal truthful ambivalence. And avoid antagonizing her.

                Actually, the first tiff I remember,  was age at four when I pulled the huge steel trunk under the bed and kept it at such an angle, that she stumble and fall, which btw, she did much to my secret glee, because she did not permit me to play outside with my friends, friends whose parents had no issues  granting their children permission  to play outside.

               Another tiff was in Grade I. I had flunked a Community Living paper. I had got three out of ten, she had rolled her eyes in anger. A glimpse of how things were going to unveil once we reached home from school. “This is the first time”, she thundered, “that something like his has happened in this house, anybody had flunked in any paper”. By anybody, of course, she meant, my elder brother.

That, she was the one who tutored me, that the paper was supposed to be an oral paper, and was changed into a written paper, seconds before the paper began, that she had not prepared me for written exams, that almost all questions were different from what she had tutored me, that spellings had not been taught, was conveniently forgotten in her tantrum. “How did Violet pass inspite of all that?”  She locked me in the balcony,( my brother and sister watching her mad mom eye with an equally fearful awe) while she not only refused to give me daily tea, and poured it down the sink, u’ve flunked, u don’t deserve it..  her reasoning. That was my fall from grace as far as studies was concerned. After that, I was the certified dunce in the family, and the insuation continued for many many years, almost till graduation in fact.

In Grade two, there was this particular elocution competition, where I was selected by my teacher, and while I was secretly thrilled to bits at having been selecte from a class of 40 students-  off the rack so as to speak, she was not so happy. ‘Take u for practice on Holidays? She sneered, ‘Ask ur teacher to train u for whatever it is, in school time”. Of course, I didn’t go for practice on Saturday, and had to face the teacher’s mild wrath on Monday.

  She was the one who took me walking to school everyday, in grade three, it was almost time to leave, and I had wanted to pee, so I checked with her whether there was enough time for a leak, she told me there was time, and I quickly took a leak. Two days later, just for fun, I asked her again, if there was time to leave, she told me yes, she asked me why. And I said, nothing. For me it was a joke. She didn’t think it was though. I don’t know what went wrong, she was suddenly all upon me, why? Tell me why? And when I again answered her ‘nothing’, she  flew the handle. This time she became crazy mom.  She started whacking me with a cane, on my legs, hands, yelling ‘out with it, out with it’. all at the same time. Somehow daddy was at home that day, and he wanted to know what was wrong. She was telling him, that maybe I wanted to pee, but I was not admitting it, here she was trying to make me admit it, but I was not helping her help me by admitting it. And I on my part, found it even more and more foolish to admit that I was just having fun at her expense, so kept my mouth tightly shut in spite of the pain,  and finally it was daddy who saved the day…why don’t u believe her?..he  put an end to the matter, but not before my legs were black and blue with the canings!

Fourth grade, when primary school was finishing for good, the students and class teacher of three years were into group crying goodbyes, and though I was happy to be rid of her actually, I had to wring a few tears, so as to not stand out like a sore thumb…Mom made loads of fun of my sentimentality.

Fifth grade, she found my first best friend irritating, and selfish and  using “stupid gullible” me, she though I was terribly unassertive, and  though according to  her, she was watching my back, for me it was just embarrassing behavior that I had to keep covering up, in order to pretend that she had no hostility towards my friend. Of course, squashing ur child’s assertiveness at home in the name of discipline, is not the best way to teach ur kids to be assertive with the general world, but that apparently did not occur to her.

After that I think I got the knack and learnt to avoid pushing her buttons, and where buttons could not be avoided, i.e. my mathematics which I flunked almost regularly, learnt to endure. I learnt to manipulate the environment to just about enough not to antagonize her volatile temper.

Grade seven saw me suddenly make friends with books. Now the English language was my best friend. I spent hours in the school library, burnt the midnight oil reading books, and made my own stories in my head, when there were no books, but she soon  felt that books were interfering with my studies and banned them altogether.

Grade seven also me grow boobs, attain puberty and my first affair. Not a complete affair, but more than less. It started off well, but I soon got caught in the guilt trap set by my peers, and when I ended the affair abruptly, purely out of guilt, things went haywire. Cause the guy simply refused to toe line, and began to stalk. When the stalking started to get unmanageable, I had to turn to her (inspite of my extreme fear at her reaction), and surprisingly she was supportive. In the sense, she did not create as much a scene as I expected. She quickly banished the guy from the home front(he was kinda a family friend).

Grade Eight saw us at logger heads again, when my marks plummeted, and from a respectable seventy five percenter, I became a measly fifty percenter.(though my rank was still untouched). PTA saw her discuss my marks issue with teachers who introduced psychology to her. Well it happens, they told her, at this age, girls and boys lose interest in studies and start taking active interest in each other, it’s a phase, it will pass, they consoled. Mom on her part, was furious, how come I didn’t have such issues when I was 13..she thundered to dad, psychology is bullshit. I of course was silently furious and mortified at being first put in the dock and then hanged without a trial.

Grade eight was also when, she felt it was high time I learn house work and cooking. After all u have to get married, and go to another man’s house, and he is not going to tolerate a lazy lump like u..I had already learnt to make tea in grade V( she had created a huge rukus, about wasting tea powder and milk, when I made tea as a surprise for the whole family the first time),but later it became my work, when I learnt it well. She thought that she had done me a favor by introducing me to house work only at age 13, for girls in Kerala, her home town were apparently taught house work by the time they were 10. She also weaned me off the habit of reading newspapers first thing in the morning. Good girls are supposed to prepare breakfast, and lunch, and run the house and not read newspapers first thing in the morning. Husbands and their mothers won’t tolerate a woman who reads newspapers the first thing in the morning.

By the time I had stepped out school and started going to college, I had stopped asserting my self so completely, that there was no need for her to interfere. I toed all her rules, regarding housework, my social conducts and her strict timetables. Time I left the house,  time I returned, etc which left no time for socializing. I also became a loner, though I had individual friends, as I found taht I could not fit into any group. Her strict timings could not find favor with any group. Nor her rules of no movies or picnics, or hanging out in canteens.

When I had turned 18, she as usual, used harsh and spiteful words to badger me to fill government forms, and look out for a job. I was yet to make up my mind, whether to become join the ranks of other working women or stay at home and get married after graduation, but she had already decided that her daughters would be working women (I was the first working woman in the family I must add). Luckily, I got a job, the very first time I had applied. And I was spared lots of tirades in that area at least.

Once I started working, my pent up frustrations started spilling, slowly and slowly. I learnt the art of washing dirty linen in public. I found willing ears in my female colleagues, who were married and were about  5 to 7 years older than me where I could iron out  my irritations. Like when I got my first pay packet and brought home Jams, and cream biscuits and sauces (a luxury in most household in those days) from the pocket money that I got from my pay packet, she was livid… why u cant save, when will u learn to save…if u spend it all on the first day itself, there will be nobody for u if when u have no money. In those days, most times when I refered to her to my collagues, she was ‘that woman’. She was mom very rarely.

As soon as my graduation results were out, she told me “we are looking for an alliance. If u have any boyfriends or like somebody, do tell us. Of course, only if he is of the same caste. If he is from a different caste, u are on your own.” I was about to protest that it was too early to get me married, when she added, “we have shown the horoscope. The astrologer says u have a strong mars. And that if u don’t married by 22, u would have to wait till 30”, and “you have a sister younger than you, if u are selfish, you will end up hampering her chances too”. And that was that.

Once I was married, things turned changed a bit.for the better. My husband was of the opinion, that being a working woman, I should be giving her some token money every month. Which I did. Suddenly we were two adults who could make fun of husbands. Mostly.   Till I delivered a baby. It was almost 18 years since there was a baby in the house, and all were ecstatic. They badly wanted to look after the baby, hubby wasn’t so keen. I had no views either way. “So that you didn’t have to lose your job” they said, “and the kid didn’t have to suffer baby sitting issues”. Only thing was that our houses were so apart, that the conventional system of leaving the kid at mother’s place on way to work, and collecting him back on a daily basis was impossible.  So my child became a weekend kid. Weekends at my place, weekdays at hers. Of course, I did go to her place daily to take him off her hands for about two hours. Initially, it went fine, soon there were complaints. U guys are taking things too lightly, u guys are not toilet training him properly, u guys are not taking up his studies, his weekends seem like an extended picnic, u don’t give him his vitamin tablets(this from my dad), no vitamin tablets he grows naturally (this from my husband)….i was suddenly doing the ‘appease everybody’ dance…listen to complaints about my husband, about my kid, from my mom, listen to husband’s complaints about my dad and mom, in short I was the medium being used by all to have a proxy war. My own complaints, my colleagues were digesting! She had started feeling that I was getting it too easy. I was not being appreciative enough of her efforts, at saving my job. And looking after my baby. She started talking to the neighbors. Sometimes in front of me. ”Never going to offer to look after another grandchild again”. She also was strictly against me going for another kid( I didnt  want to add to the complications either).

One day, I happened to be sitting and talking to her and her friend(who btw, was baby sitting her daughter’s son)..and somehow twice I had to change the place I was sitting cause her grandson kept wandering away. Third time, I was irritated, ”oh come on, let me sit quietly for once, instead of making me play this ringa ringa roses”.. she did not show she was offended. Until we were home. Then she turned the water spouts. “that’s ungratefulness”, she sobbed, “after all we have done for her”.

By now I started dreading my daily visits. Cause once again, after a long time, I couldn’t be sure, what was going to be an issue and what was not. I did not have the guts  to put an end to the arrangement either. Cause it could be taken as sign of further ungratefulness. I did not want it to end on a bitter note. And more importantly, the kid didn’t want to change his school either. Every time I rang her doorbell, I found myself drained of energy. I never knew what to expect. There was nothing more than polite talks now. The tension of pretence was always hanging around.

Then one day, I was free. Just like that. She had again complained about my husband, I simply handed over the phone to her and asked her to tell it to him directly. She was silent. I did the same with the rest. “All are adults. So do ur own talking instead of making me your mouthpiece”. Things of course got worse. But at least, I was spared the drama. I could breathe a little easy now.

Luckily, I soon got a face saving exit from the stalemate. Mom’s house was getting renovated. I used that excuse to get my son to my house, and then he never went back. But her complaints didn’t stop. Now her new complaint was that he wasn’t visiting them often. She somehow got it into her head, that it was my husband who wasn’t letting it happen. I did not try to change any perceptions. Past experiences told me that it was just going to be counter productive.

Once my son was with me, I too stopped visiting her everyday. It go reduced to once a week, and then to once a month, and then even lesser. When I learnt that she was complaining to her neighbors, and her siblings, about my ungratefulness, it made me want to see her even less. At around the same time, due to financial issues, I stopped giving her any money.

It took her more than five years to realize that something in me had snapped, and that I no longer cared. About anything. Other than keeping up appearances. And that too wasn’t a huge priority.

The emotional distance made me see things a bit clearly too. I now understand some of her actions. Some still seem undecipherable. But now its no longer seems important.

Her expectations too have started falling. Low. Now she didn’t want my undying appreciation of all she had sacrificed for me. She just wants that I come to visit her. Regularly. So that she can remain connected. So that the neighbours wouldn’t laugh at her. For having an ungrateful daughter. She has now stopped greeting me with complaints. The change was gradual. But it has happened. I now feel welcomed. As a person. Not a punching bag. Not a complaint box.

I make it a point to visit her once a week. Every week. She is happy. She does not want anything else. I’m happy too. I don’t want anything else either. We are building bridges again. Brick by brick.

Dear Madhuri,

I would like to have a heart to heart talk with u. now. the Dil se dil tak kind u know. (Not the dhak dhak kind please).

I would like u to know that ive been ur fan( kinda find that word rather uncool but am using it for want of a better word), from time immemorial. I had always watched your songs in chayageet on doordarshan, with open mouths,, when there was no multiple channels and  I didn’t have money to watch ur films.

 I remember first liking u in jamai raja, where u were sneezing away, ‘aachieeeee lagti hai’ in a song while being serenaded by anil kapoor. the sense of fun with which u did the song, the freshness , no words to describe it.

I simply loved the way u sang a totally idiotically crazy song with anil kapoor ‘batata wada’ in hifazat, (both movies,which btw, i saw in  a VCR, a bane for bollywood in those days if u remember).I must admit, that u simply had the knack of making the most inane and stupid ideas of the late 80s and turn it into a box office winner, with ur winsome smile and personality.raja for instance.

Your mujhe neend na aaye, with amir khan, in dil, and the khambe jaisi khadi song with ur pinkkkkkkkkkkk outfit…… ahhhhhhh…those were the days.. (btw, that  movie has a personal memory attached to it, cause that comes second under  total four movies ive seen with my hubby in a theatre.)

And what new can i say about ‘Ek, do, teen’…even numbers could make a song hit if it had madhuri performing on it.

In sajan, u showed the world of how u could shake a leg…not many know that u deserve the credit  for bringing in a  certain sharpness and high voltage speed  in bollywood dancing, which is now seen as has always existed. And .If  it wasn’t for beta, perhaps even today, bollywood would have show dil as a little below the neck, instead of the boobs as u showed us all in the dhak dhak song. Heaving of  bossom became cool only after u showed us how to do it. 

In fact, with beta u even carried a rather difficult movie on ur womanly shoulders. Not many heroines of the 80s and 90s can boast about such a feat.

And purple  color became so cool, so also heavily bejeweled sarees and cholis,( which was later borrowed by aish in ur other movie, devdas). It was you who changed all that with ‘didi tera dewar diwana’…Though personally, I thot that u did not look like it was ur first love( u seem to have the impression of a lass, who had been there, done that, and hence knew exactly wat to expect from her man), but  you did looked icily cool and totally in control,  in each and every scene in the movie.

I remember being terribly offended when u let the junior artistes rub ur butt, for the koi aaye leke pyar number in sailab…as also of how u even thought of signing a film opposite that baldie aditya ..whatever.

We did get a few duds from you in the form of koyla, and anjam…in fact come to think of it, with most of ur movies with shahrukh khan..(who seemed to have shared a similar fate with manisha koirala too)..was it luminescence cancelling luminescence, I wonder. - dil to pagal hai, was the only exception, but then it was mostly liked for karishma kapoor than u,im sorry to say!

And that when u decided to call it a day. You apparently had decided that u wanted to have nothing to do with the film industry, once u are married and settled down so as to speak. Otherwise u wouldn’t have caught or fancied a certain surgeon from US, when u had the pick of the most rich and famous people in india and Pakistan vying for u.

You remained true to ur resolve. With ur first child. And ur second child.

Till u decided to give films a second chance with ‘aaja nach le’. As an ardent madhuri fan, I was thrilled to bits…until I saw the movie!

Madhuri u were so totally disappointing, when u decided to play safe and not have any hot scenes with any guys, and left the romantic stuff to kunal kapoor and konkana sen, Even your dances, u took great share not to heave ur now married boobs. now how unmadhuri is that???????????/And  hoped the audience would be foolish enough to be captivated by ur back ( and feet) instead

…now how stupid is that?

When we come to see madhuri, we want to see madhuri.

 The darling of the millions.

 The sweet innocent girl, who gave a kind of respectability to heaving boobs. 

who removed the tag of sluttiness from the breast..

 I think what I liked most about dhak dhak  song, was that nobody found u slutty in that song

 even as u were ramming ur huge melons into the audicence’s gaping faces. 

Inspite of it all, U never lost the girl next door attitude. 

All of  the guys would ahve gone home thinking , madhuri is the girl I wud like to take home to mother.

 All of girls, hoped that guys would still think then respectable like madhuri even if they did naughty things like thrust their boobs out for all to see.

But suddenly in aaja nach le, there u were acting more prudish than a  woman in a purdah. The self imposed distancing from the sexy (and how), girl next door…it made little sense. at all. Since u thrived on ur sensuality. Along with the girl next door. They went together. One without the other wouldn’t work. U should have known that.

Now u make a remark, that u don’t want to do freaky friday remake with anil kapoor’s daughter. I find that terrible shortsighted madhuri, and heres where I want to advice u. I normally don’t advice people, but somehow I hate to see my heroin fall flat on her face once again. Maybe u haven’t seen the original, but freaky Friday kinda roles are the ones that are u type now.

U don’t come from an industry, wehre u would not  look cool with an amir or shahrukh.(donno about salman, mite work I think). Cause the industry, is used to seeing amrita singh start with sunny deol, and end her career with dharamdra. Exceptions are rare, and I don’t think that you are an exception.

We do want to see more of madhuri. But we want to see the madhuri who is not ashamed of heaving her boobs at 45, married and two kids to boot. We want to see a madhuri who has romps the screen with her lover what ever the age with a lack of self consciousness that we were forced to witness in aaja nachle. We want a madhuri who would sell a story with her winsome smile and personality, and not what the producers think would work for u.

We want a madhuri who is not ashamed to play her age…who is unabashedly  dhak dhaks

images and conflicts

Images and conflicts.

……………………..

What is ur image? How would u answer this question. How would anybody answer this question? Most of us tend to have positive images about ourselves, good looking, good person, a patriot, a good parent or sibling, or a good child etc etc

When I ask myself this question, the immediate answer that comes to me is, ive no image…I try not to cultivate an image. But on following the thought I understand that that’s just not true. We all have images.

How are these images formed? I guess they start getting formed from day one; they are formed through the senses. The early people in our lives help us give shape to our images. I.e. if ur mom says that u are a plucky kid, then u sort of start being more plucky than usual just so that u remain true to that image. So did is your initial pluckiness, which made your mom call u plucky in the first place, create ur image as a plucky person, or did ur mom’s comment help cement the image? I think the comments, the understandings, the imbibing  ie everything external, creates the image. 

 

Again, does the mind, also work in pruning an image so formed from other’s opinions? Like for example, if I stop to think, hey im not so plucky as mom felt, then does that effect my future actions and thus my image? I think it does.

So can we safely say, that the human mind creates an image of himself, by taking stimulus from the environment, and tweaking it to what he finds most closest to truth, as he sees it?…he can of course stop at the first instance, i.e. not tweak it at all, but accept the image given to him by others at face value.

The more and more I think of it, the more I feel, im on the right track.

I remember my somebody telling me once, that somewhere at age four, when all the kids in the family was asked, what they wanted as gifts, he was the only one who asked for a bar of soap, for his father’s shirt which had a spot. Of course the whole family found it very noble, and since then self sacrificing nobility has been his image.

When I say image, I meant that there are two images actually.

One image is the way u perceive yourself as being in the world, and the other image is the image of how the world sees you. Of course both images will never be the same. After all images are always created from external and internal data fed into the brain, and since the same data cannot be fed into different minds, two images of a particular person can never match with a 100% accuracy.

Which brings me to conflicts. I believe that most conflicts are nothing but clashes between images. The image created by you about u and the image created by another person about u. When they more or less match, the conflicts are less. When they match very little, the conflicts are huge

Last week, I have this peon at work, who has  created this image of being a very efficient person,  he has decided that he is so good at his work, that he is as good or even better than me, at my work, and his image does not take a beating, since he does not know the extent and  exact nature of my work, as he has never done it, has never got the opportunity to do it,  and when he interacts with me, he interacts with his so conceived image. I of course don’t see him that way at all. I can surely see that he is good at photocopying, without messing it up, at delivering files and letters without losing it on the way,  i.e. he is competent at what he is supposed to do, but that does not make him competent to do my work. Here the images clash.

So, when he tells me that we can fax the draft signed copy of a letter, while the final copy remains unsigned, I lose my temper. Don’t teach me my work, I tell him sharply. He is terribly hurt. Now I can understand that he is hurt. I can even understand that he has a right to sulk. Nobody likes their wonderful ideas to be squashed like flies. But what I cannot comprehend is  the depth of his hurt, did my remark warrant such a huge hurt?

I am now interested in this guy. And the reason for his huge hurt. I remember, how when another peon had misplaced a file, he had commented, “that’s why I don’t let the other guy do it..how so ever tired I am, I do these kinds of work, cause other wise my work increases. Now I have to correct the mess he has created”.  He had in fact helped me create an image of him in my mind. By giving me the first data. That he is efficient. Than the others. Till then, I had not noticed that he was any more or less efficient than the others. It was his statement that made me create the image of him in my mind, and since I had not found anything contrary, I have mentally ticked the image as correct.

I discuss last week’s incident with my colleague. She tells me, the last boss had sort of kept him on his head. Which is why, he is so swollen headed. That made sense. An already inflated image kept floating by an authority figure helps in inflating it further. She also tells me, that when his wife happened to call at work, her voice over the phone seemed to suggest that he had given her the impression that he was a huge thing at work, and not just a peon, who existence does not make much difference to the scheme of things at work.

Here lies the crux. When you have created an image, based more on untruths, than truths, then it becomes very difficult to live up to it. I.e. if u happened to climb a mountain once successfully, but u project to the world that you are an old hand at mountain climbing, and that there is nothing that needs to be known about mountain climbing, that you do not know, then the image is more or less, going to be unwittingly tested often.

Which is what’s happening with my subordinate……each action of his is based on his inflated image, that he is more than capable to handle my work, and when I sometimes show him his place, he is deeply wounded. Cause in his eyes, that’s not his place, its way below his place.In his eyes Im being grossly unfair to keep him at that place. 

And that’s why we are in conflict. Whenever it reaches that point. My image of his, and his image of himself will never match.

Three smug men

Three smug men

           Channel surfing, caught an episode of the Auditions for MTV ‘Roadies’.

Actually,  am totally unaware of what roadies show is all about, I think its something about men and women bikers, and the various tasks(for want of a better word) they perform while on the road, and the one by one, participants keep tumbling down like green bottles till the last one left standing wins.. Apparently, it’s a craze with the youth of the nation, but my interest in this particular program perked up only when one Ashutosh Something won another reality show ,the big boss thing, and thats how I got to know that his initial claim to fame was winning the roadies show. (So, in a way, it was Ashutosh who kinda gave the 15 minutes  fame to the Roadies show, and not the other way round, as those three smug men would want the whole nation to believe. :P) 

Two brown bald men with goatees, and one Shankar Mahadevan look-alike. The judges in teh audition.

All three grilling a nose ringed chin pierced young girl.  This seems fun, I thought with glee. The discomfiture of the young bimbo was a treat, exactly the way,watching somebody slip over the proverbial banana peel, is. They booed her for being a proud vain childish bimbo. She thought her audition went well!

          I wait with bated breath, as they start tearing the next participant apart.  The three men apparently want to know her opinion on skimpily dressed women in pubs, and whether the girls have the right to dress skimpily in pubs  or molesters have the right to molest them. Our roadie  girl aspirant seemed to be of the opinion that dressing should always be modest, and never provocative.

         And before I knew it, the three thirty something guys were down the throat of the twenty something girl. The till then seemingly funny men are now perfectly menacing. "Its mentality like yours that creates molesters, all three holler at her, all at the same time, in the same breathe. She is slightly flummoxed, tries bravely to make the guys see her point, but the men are unrelenting. So, do u mean women should wear burkhas in pubs, they demand, and if somebody is dressed in a bikini, she is asking for it? Everybody has a right to dress the way the want..they emphasis, there is something known as dignity of dressing .....How can u even say such a thing, being a woman and all that, u know its women like u who make molesters out of decent guys like us...

Somehow I now find the boorishness offending. That is, I m offended for the participant. More than the questions, it’s the attitude of the smug men, that’s offending.

sorry goatees,  i simply don't buy that argument that its people like her and thoughts like hers that create molesters.. you cant walk away from the responsibility of not becoming molesters just because somewomen think that all women should be modestly dressed always. Not because their thinking is right, but because your absolving yourself of the blame is at fault. There should be more motivation for not becoming a molester than that. If you think women should be able to throw away the shackles of years of unprogressive up-bringing  and conservative social norms just like that on your show, then how difficult should it be for you to not  verbally attack women who  somehow aren’t able to rise above thinking that women who dress indecently should be attacked…after all, in the final reckoning , isn’t it the same prejudice?

       Or is it, that the men seem to think that being on the other side of the table, gives them the right to browbeat the participants and beat up their self esteem to pulp. Or do they justify their boorish behavior with the argument that the participants are auditioning for a tough road ride and should be tough people. By tough, do they mean tougher than them? If so, then doesn’t it mean that the participants are more qualified in toughness, than those three smug men, and hence logically should be on the other side of the table? Does the show's format give the participants an equal and complete opportunity to be boorish to the smug men too? If not, then  where does that leave our three smug men? sissies?

I want to ask a few smug questions of my own to the smug guys...

so will it still be okay if your mom or kid sisters go to pubs in bikinis when they know that most of the guys would be ogling and touching themselves at the expense of their kid sisters? Or would they be totally supportive,  if the said females take the freedom to dress too far and start walking naked on the streets? would they still talk of dignity of dressing( or undressing for that matter) Where would the smug guys draw the line?  in short, can they walk the talk? I dont think they would. After all in their eyes, its only a road show audition. But then why the big show of political correctness in such a politically incorrect manner?

I call it quits, I stop watching the show.

PS.  When inspite of myself i catch some other episode, some other day ...i learn that the bimbette has been selected, cause the judges found her proud, childish, a bimbo and yet interesting!  well, NOW i  know what the show is all about! :P