Calling all ex-smokers

'Mummy Jee' Wanted

There was a time when most of the Indian actresses had a permanent fixture in their entourage - the overbearing, ever-insistent and extremely strong headed 'Mummy Jee'. Nobody liked them but they had to go through these influential mothers to even get to say hello to their beautiful daughters. The pretty young things wanted them around to shield their pretty selves from the domineering costars and colourful producers.

"Baby ke liye juice laao" (get a glass of fruit juice for baby) is a phrase that should have a copyright. The copyright-holder is bound to earn millions owing to its overuse.

Baby's (in these cases they could range from fourteen to forty year old actresses) job was to look pretty, do as the director told and get back into the safety of their vanity vans. Mummy Jee would do the rest. From scheduling dates to fees negotiations with the Producers to the contents of the 'straight from the heart' interviews with gossip magazines. They did it all. They even kept an eye on what their superstar daughters ate, whom they met or even fell in love with. Expert puppeteers of the real kind. They pulled strings that moved the whole filmdom. Their single minded pursuit was to secure the stardom, both for their little ones and themselves, for as long as they could hold on. They had seen the arc lights too in the prime of their life. They knew the game way too well to let it get the better of them.

All Divas were chaperoned by a Super Diva Mummy Jee.

Something happened in the nineties. Liberalisation hit India with a stone mace on the head. It flattened the whole landscape. The uneven highs and lows started to vanish. So did the Mummy Jee's.

One by one the actresses started doing away with them. Some who were already big names didn't need them. Those who were getting famous wanted to do what the superstars did, not what interfering mothers told them to. Follwing success was easier than paving their own way. And young starlets had no choice but to do away with the extra baggage as fierce competition poured in from all nooks and corners of the country.

Now there was nobody to tell them 'do this and don't do that'. Everyone followed their heart. Parallel cinema, cross over cinema, potty cinema, lower than low budget cinema, hidden camera cinema, dogma films, films only for the festival circuits, films that will never see the light of the day, films that cleverly escaped the 'A' certificates...a whole lot of genres emerged.

The canvas grew wider.
The players came from far and wide.
No one was to say what is right and what is wrong.
It was a free for all. Everyone got their two hours of fame.

One films. Two films. Three films. Four films. Then most of them fizzled out. Some got married. Some turned producers. Some took refuge in reality shows. Quite unlike the leading ladies of yesteryears who, once they made their debut, stuck around for a long time to come. Well most of them!

Those who chose to listen to the Mummy Jee or had father figures stayed. Others simply phased out.

There was no one to push them.
No one to pull strings for them when they were down.
No one to tell them - this is the way the game is played.

"Lambi race ka ghoda", remained a phrase only for the Long-race horses.

We have done away with the Mummy Jee's coz they told us what to do, were over bearing and highly ambitious for self and their offsprings. With that we have done away with age-old wisdom that comes with experience, a protective shield, a sunscreen that kept you from getting scorched everytime the sun got stronger.

We have traded 'slowly getting wiser' for 'suddenly getting stronger'. So is it with others too. Writers, painters, marketeers, inventors, politicians.Vision and energy of youth has a great potential but to do away with the safeguarding experience of the old will mean re-inventing the wheel when one should be focusing on  the next step up.

Wish we all had them. Anybody you look upto can be the 'Mummy Jee' of you life. Someone who doesn't mind calling a spade a spade coz they have our best interest at heart. I know they make our lives hell when we have differences but at least they tell us where we are going wrong.

The Note Bearer - new story on Oot Pataang

 Here is the new story :)

The Note Bearer

Interpreter of Coincidences

I read these days with an appetite of a blase parrot. The moment any book starts sounding autobiographical, I lose interest in it. Even though I am a lover of biographies, I feel if one wants to write memoirs, they should write them in their autobiography. Not disguise them into novellas, short stories etc. etc.

Tapping into a particular feeling or an incident and spinning a tale out of imagination is what I thought fiction writers do. But these days the more I read, more I sense the lack of imagination. Almost entire volumes are full of nothing but the writers life history.

I am guilty of it too. Hence I stopped a few weeks back.

I decided to take a break. Go away for a bit.

I went to visit my mom-in-law who lives in a place which is smaller than a small town but bigger than a village. A place called Baripada in northern Orissa. A place where eve-teasing is still unheard of, people pick their daily vegetables from their kitchen gardens, sweets are made of pure milk and no place is more than a ten minute ride away.

Blissful co-existence prevailed. We talked about everything under the sun except alcohol, smoking and sex. It is so much fun to find out how your husband grew up and what he was like as a child. We talked and talked. She about the past and me about the future. I couldn't be at loggerheads with the woman who raised the man I so love. She spoke of the time Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and it was Rathyatra time. They were hooked onto BBC radio day and night. 

I had loads of time at hand. I explored the house and its belongings.

Guess what I found on the table??? A book that my husband had bought before we got married.

'Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri.

I smiled to myself and remembered how I had stopped reading the book halfway. Too much detailing and no feelings is what I had complained. Writers who are busy observing (so that they can pen down the specifics) often fail to get a grasp on how it feels, is what I thought. The fact that it was written by a beautiful woman who won a Pulitzer at 33 and was much loved around the world fueled my shallow dark side which I rarely admit to.

Here it stared at me. Daring me to finish it.

I picked it up and got down to it. All my ego aside.

My heart sank. The 103 year old lady Mrs. Croft kept harping about the 'man landing on the moon' episode in one of the stories named 'The Third continent'. Mrs. Croft also gave a detailed account of how she heard it on the BBC radio. 

This was uncanny. I had heard the same details from my mom-in-law just a day before. "What a wonderful backdrop it would make for a story", I had thought when she recounted whatever she heard on BBC radio sitting in Rourkela in Orissa, India. Not much different from the narration the century plus lady at Massachusetts Avenue had given in 1969 in the book. Here goes my story idea. Pooof!!! "You Jhumpa Lahiri", I growled.

It was the last story in the book so I gave this coincidence no more thought and started looking for other books in the house. Ma said there were many in the loft, now covered with a white sheet. Standing on a stool, I rummaged through the stacks. I started picking out the books by their sizes as they were higher up and I couldn't see the names. I chose three. One the size of a pocket dictionary, two the size of leisure reading paperbacks.

Got down and dusted them all.

The first one was 'The New Testament'.

Second one a pale green 'Mountain Trailways for the Youth' - A daily devotional book for young Christians.

Third 'Spring in the Valley' - a daily devotional book

I missed a beat.

This was a Hindu household in middle of absolute nowhere in the most unassuming part of the country.

Ma said my father in law loved to read about all religions. He was into learning Arabic as well.

That was not the reason I missed a beat.

"What a wonderful backdrop it it is for a story to find books for various religions in a Hindu household", I would have thought if I hadn't finished reading 'The Interpreter of maladies' just a day before.

'The Blessed House' is the seventh story in the book.

Twinkle (who is a Hindu) keeps finding Christian artifacts hidden in her new house she has just moved into. One day a poster of Jesus. Statue of Virgin Mary the other day. So said the story.

The three books which I had just dusted, looked me in the eye and told me that Madam Lahiri had been here too. I was late. 

Despite my defiant grudges I admitted that she is a wonderful writer.
Yeah yeah...and she is pretty too!

Stop messing with my newspaper frontpage

Front Page Rage 
There are 29 more pages to a newspaper. This is a sincere request to all advertisers and Brands to please leave the front page alone. These gimmicks every morning are taking away from the essence of reading a newspaper. The whole experience of reading it gets hampered when we the readers look at the front page and go Grrrrrr.....

News we can get from TV, Internet, SMS, Word of mouth etc. but we buy newspapers (sometimes upto 8 of them on weekends) for a totally different reason. Please don't spoil it by making the front page your battleground for innovative (which more often than not are not so great anyway) ideas.

The whole world is yours, including the rest of the pages of the supplements. Please use them. Spare the Front Cover. Please!!!!!


Please click on this link and like it if you agree with the above. I would want the advertisers to know how wrong they are in doing so.