Emotional atyachaar

For Indians, daily soaps are all about drama, bizarre stuff and plots and intrigues. Most Indian daily soaps are pathetic. If you are a civilized, literate person who has a brain, you would never understand these shows. I don’t watch these daily soaps; I read the newspaper for the updates.  

Recently, at school, we were discussing on daily soaps. That’s when I thought of this article. I visited my nani’s* place recently, and she is addicted to these daily soaps. 6 to 10 in the evening she is glued to the television. I really got a headache looking at those shows. God knows how people watch these shows.

The worse of the lot are Hindi shows. What I mean to say is, for TRPs, they turn their female protagonists to houseflies! Isn’t that really stupid?

Well, I might criticize these daily soap addicts, but I really love one of the shows. It is a really different show with a new concept. It’s a bi-lingual show. It has both Marathi and Hindi. It’s called Kahe diya Pardes. I absolutely love that show! I love criticizing daily soaps but this one’s really awesome. What I mean to say is, there are few good daily soaps as well, where there is minimal drama, the makers have common sense and the shows are relatable.

This article is basically an attempt to express my dislike towards the daily dramas. When I use the word “drama”, I mean it. I just want to spread the message that some shows show all sort of nonsense and we shouldn’t encourage this nonsense. Acting is an art. So the 5 most irritating things about daily soaps for me are:

1)    Bizarre creatures: This is basically the addition of supernatural creatures. Addition of gorillas, naagins, nevlas, daayans, **tigers, ghosts, buffaloes, etc is included here. This is kind of stupid as it makes the show from a show that is supposed to be relatable to a Conjuring-kind-of show.

2)    The three repetitions: When a dialogue is “crucial”, it is repeated thrice. There is no wall in their houses which produces echo. Where does that come from? Also, when these sounds repeat, the family members’ faces are shown. They always bear the same shocked expression. If you click a picture each time the repetition takes place, it’d be the same each time.

3)    Change in scene: When the male protagonist is going to tell his dil ki baat ***to the female protagonist, the scene suddenly shifts to what his mother is making for dinner. I mean, who will show an interest in that? (Some foodies like me might)

4)    Stuff devoid common sense: This includes all the stuff like the bahus**** and saas***** going to bed with a dollop of makeup, characters coming back to life, fake marriages,rebirths,characters not aging etc.

5)    Women are shown weaker: In most shows, women sit at home decked up in 24 carat jewels. They have little say in house matters. They are practically jobless and all do is plot against each other. There are few women who work in shows though, like Gauri from Kahe Diya Pardes.

Thank you for reading this article, hope you enjoyed!

P.S.: These are my views. I do not intend to hurt anyone’s sentiments about daily soaps.

 

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*nani's - mother's mother's

**naagins, nevlas, daayans - snakes,mongooses,witches

*** dil ki baat -(here) that he loves her

****bahus - sister-in-laws

*****saas- mother-in-law

Brain tumour

7.00am.: I wake up. It is a Monday morning and like most of the other people, even I hate waking up this early after a chill-out Sunday.'

7.05am: I don’t feel like getting up so decide to get a bahana to miss school. I tell maa* that because of an over dose of maths, I have been detected with a brain tumour. Even a bit more of maths can make my brain explode and meri jaan ko khatra hai**.

7.10am: Maa refuses to let me miss school as she knows that I am playing a prank. I ask her if she has been reading Sherlock Holmes books because I never left any clue for her to solve that one.

7.45am: I am ready for school and arrive at the bus stand. The bus surprisingly reaches in time.

We sit in our bus and have fun with this girl who is really hilarious. We refer to her as “sleeping beauty” as she sleeps in the bus all the time. She is a very humorous character. She says that her brother sleeps 6 hours as he sleeps from 12 to 5. She thinks Shahrukh Khan is “beautiful” even after telling her thousand times that the word is “handsome”. In the midst of this, I see our bus attendant throwing a piece of wet paper off the window.

I tell her to not do that. She looks at me as if she has been constipated for a few days and just ignores me. I am telling this thing to her for the second time. I am really annoyed and tell her that Narendra Modi will put her in jail if she continues to do this. She ignores. I guess she doesn’t know what jail is. A teacher sitting beside her tells her, say sorry to her. She apologises. I tell her to apologise to the nature, not me. She shows her attitude again and just sashays away, telling the other teachers about the “girl who talks a lot” (me).

I just the hope the number of people with this casual mentality reduces. I guess the constipation just finds its way into their brain. Just fix your system and get these constipated thoughts off your mind! Your system might be yours, but this country is OURS.

 

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*maa- mother

**meri jaan ko khatra hai- my life is in danger

The hideous red spot

One little red spot changes the lives of many people. We all get that red spot, at least once in life. We feel like punching our own face to get rid of the spot, and sometimes actually do it. We feel like just bursting or cutting it, but do not actually do it.

We think we look hideous with the red spot, but we forget that beauty isn’t just outer beauty.

It must be tough for you to guess what this red spot is, but it is really easy to guess it. It is a pimple.

For girls, pimples are a big deal. We girls try all sort of awkward stuff to get rid of that one red spot. We put our own saliva on it, we use toothpaste, Lacto Calamine, face washes, remedies that some random relative has suggested and sometimes the stuff we do is so awkward that we ourselves have no idea what we are up to. In fact, I have seen girls cover their throughout the day to cover that little red spot. They don’t even uncover their face to eat their lunch! Is fasting going to erase the pimple? I can’t imagine a single day without food. Besides, I would never sacrifice my food for a PIMPLE. Food should not be sacrificed for such a small red thing.

Apart from this, I find the society’s reaction to this whole pimple thing very stupid. I got a pimple on my nose recently. One of my friends asked me, “Aastha, what’s that on your nose?” I replied, “What do you think it is?” She answered, “A pimple.” Why do these people keep asking us and keep embarrassing us about this small one thing? Don’t you ever get a pimple? Getting a pimple is a normal thing! Everyone gets a pimple; it is the truth of life.

Looking at the society, sometimes I feel that a pimple can change your life. But the truth is that it depends on you how much you allow it to change your life. Don’t let that red spot take away your smile. Always remember that if you are beautiful on the inside, your outer beauty doesn’t matter.

Let pimples come and go. But you keep smiling forever. 

Literate or educated?

6.30 a.m.: I rise. It’s the first day of school after a month-long break. I am really reluctant to wake up as the scrappy sister didn’t let me have my “beauty sleep” and *usne usme bhang dala. I wish I was a **pandit, at least I could tell her that what she has done is a ***ghor apradh and ****usse iski saza milegi.

7.30a.m.: Surprisingly, the bus arrives in time. I thought the fact that school’s starting so early might just be a hoax, but really, we have school!

8.30a.m.: I reach school. I meet old friends, make new ones and the classes start. We are all back to the same old school routine.

10.30a.m.: I must admit that one of the reasons I go to school is to eat other’s tiffin boxes. We all share and eat, so we have a seven-course meal each day. I really live for eating and not eat for living.

11.30a.m.: Its Hindi class. While reading about Mahadevi Varma’s experiences with *****gillu, a boy suddenly looks up and claims to see a lizard. Another boy rocks his chair to see whether there is actually something and falls off. Everyone bursts out laughing. The first boy tells us he never actually saw a lizard but did it for fun. Your good old Hindi teacher gives him a gentle pat on the shoulder and tells him that tomorrow she will hit him with a ******belan and will say it was a joke.

12.30p.m.: Its lunch time. I eat how much ever I possibly can.

3.00p.m.: It’s time to go home! I enter the bus. One of my buddies in the bus tells me about her vacation. We have a lot of teachers in our bus. Our bus goes on the wrong side of the road to drop a child!

I am dumbfounded. So many teachers, who impart education, can’t educate the driver or bus attendant about what’s wrong? They educate us; make us understand life and they don’t understand such a basic thing that’s wrong? The driver and bus attendant don’t have enough common sense to know which side of the road they are supposed to drive from? I don’t complain, because it won’t really matter.

A school bus, a bus of a temple of education, a place where people go to become “literate” is taking the wrong side? What if our bus crashes? What if we have an accident? The school will be held responsible!

I guess I now understand why “educated” and “literate” are different words. All these people have basic education, but their level of literacy is still at zero.

Not all educated people are literate.

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*usne usme bhang dala- she disturbed it

**pandit- Hindu priest

***ghor apradh- grave offence

****usse iski saza milegi- she will get punished for this

 *****gillu- name for a squirrel 

 ******belan- rolling pin