MystiqueSpeak

How I Met Your Mother Season 5 Episode 1, for those who haven't already seen it.

OR, Kyunki it's over.

Yes, it's over.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, the longest running Indian TV show, is, as of today, terminated.
Ekta Kapoor has fought hard, but even the court seemed to think 8 years was too much for Indian audiences.
My reaction? I cry. With sheer relief.
Not that i watched it, but for god's sake, 8 years! In 8 years, characters have lived and died and been reincarnated using plastic surgery. Ugh. For 8 years, Indian audiences have suffered. This is their salvation.
But for those who actually LIKED the show, now there's a void. No more KSBKBT. Whatever shall we do? No more Tulsi, no more.....i don't know any other characters. No more glorious joint family story to take us away from the world.Now we have to go worry about our own problems.
Sigh.
We see now, all over India, the stress of PKSS (post kyunki stress syndrome). It seems to primarily affect housewives and other women.
SYmptoms include sobbing, staring blankly at the TV, and remniscing about kyunki. some may believe that the characters actually exist.
Last year, FRIENDS was terminated. The whole world cried at the thought of no more Ross-rachel fights, no more Joey and Phoebe, no more Mondler. Can we make a comparison here?
Absolutely not, because Friends was actually Bloody Good!
So what do the victims of PKSS (post Kunki stress syndrome) do?
They mourn for a while, and would have switched over to Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki. But that's packed up too.
Void.

PS: I'm NOT comparing Friends with saas bahu shit.

Most creative professions have their little challenges, the dark horses, the Everests......the little hates...like Ami on Miami ink hates having to do fairies, I think advertisers must detest doing ads for sanitary pads.
Periods are a pain, period....okay, full-stop. You'd think it's easy to get used to, seeing that it's inevitable and happens every month....but it's not. Fact remains that we hate it and everything about it. Hate PMS, Detest the cramps, and loathe the ickiness...
Therefore, when we're in a state where violence seems rational, we really don't want to see the happy-happy pad ads, all SO untrue.
Most ads seem to say, use our product and you'll be comfy doing anything, playing soccer to climbing gates to running through sprinklers.
Not true. comfort lies not in the brand used, It lies in yourself....
So.."Have a happy period"...??
Not possible. Not even probable. Tolerable, maybe. Happy, no. Not unless your product can stop cramps and PMS and everything else we hate about this monthly show of blood. So keep dreaming.
I wonder if the girls in the ads have their period when the ad's being filmed......
Anyway. No biggie. just the "have a happy period" REALLY pissed me off.
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hmm. mess mess everywhere.
now reading: 100 years of solitude, finally.
now feeling: sick. no prizes for guessing why.
now wanting: sleep. and satisfaction with life.

Sneh messaged, she was pissed after watching the news, about "this guy who murdered his daughter. It'll be the hot topic of discussion tomorrow anyway, so I'll tell you then..."
Not satisfied, I went to hunt TOI archives for what turnes out to be a week-long series of articles about the murder of Arushi Talwar.
One really starts to wonder where the country, in fact the world is going.
Girl found murdered, Domestic help suspected for many reasons. But prime suspect not to be found. At least three days later, a retired officer steps into the case and finds corpse of prime suspect on terrace.
How'd he get there? Prominent bloodstains on the stairs, near the cooler, everywhere. One wonders how the police managed to overlook this, and now I'm wondering the same thing that the TOI is, why wasn't a dog squad brought in??
Oh dear, police transfered here, there, everywhere, out of Noida. Is this a police force or a bunch of......My god, What's happening to us??
I'm in shock, I'm horrorstruck.

Quote TOI, May 19th.

"Many questions remain unanswered in the Arushi murder case: Who put Arushi’s mattress on the terrace, even as the police could not find the key to it? Who had the keys to the terrace door, which had to be forced open by the police? Where is Arushi’s mobile phone, which is reportedly in use even after her death? If she did die a day before her body was discovered, who called her friend from her mobile? Why was the flat, in which the murders took place, not sealed and the forensic team not called in immediately? Arushi’s post-mortem report mentions a ‘‘whitish discharge’’ on her body. But the forensic team has not preserved a sample of it. With every senior Noida police officer having visited Arushi’s home after her body was found, why was only station officer A Nanoria found negligent and shifted to the police lines? "

Why, indeed.

Then we find that she had been killed a whole 18 hours or so before her body was discovered. Someone had carefully slit her jugular vien and her carotid artery. Someone had clearly thought this out.....

And finally...in a stroke of God knows what.....they finally arrest the father. And this is what shocks me, hurts me the most......makes me lose all hope in mankind.....How can a father kill his own child thus?
And why? Because she found out he was having an affair....because she told him she didn't like it......he just.......eliminates her?
What's happening, what's happening to this world.....with no emotion, no love, no....

Oh god.....It's horrible. Just horrible.
And what's even more horrible is the incompetence of the police....apparently they shot their mouths off, saying this could be solved in just a few hours, and then failed to see their most important clue.....

How, how is this happening??
Sneh's right, this world is bastardizing itself.
Aarushi Talwar, may your soul rest in peace....................I pray for you....

“Whatever you say about this new principal”, mom told me, “he’s the only one, and there have been three since I joined the Centre, to actually greet, shake hands with, and hug the children”
Ok sir, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You’re a good guy, I see…

I took advantage of an impromptu sleepover at Sneh’s on Thursday to enjoy their dishTV connection. NDTV was on that day, with a debate about the IPL cheerleaders, whether they should be banned.
“Their obscene costumes appeal to the viler base instincts of the Indian male!” spluttered one of the participants, “And they take attention away from the game! I mean, we want to watch cricket, someone hits a four, but instead of a replay there’s these girls in skimpy skirts!”
Yet another participant said maybe the costumes were a bit…on the invisible side, but cheerleading as such is not a bad thing and not really distracting.
Hmm, I don’t think the guy holding up the “I’m here to watch the girls NOT THE CRICKET” poster shares that opinion.
And besides, said the more sympathetic participant, what about the costumes worn by dancers in Bollywood movies? Isn’t it almost the same? All right, maybe some of the cheerleading costumes are a bit low in the neck and high in the leg….maybe whoever hired them should respect Indian sensibilities a little and get costumes that cover the midriff…..But cheerleading as such, not bad. They do their job well, these girls.
Almost as if to prove a point, a song-teaser of Tashan shows up, with Kareena in hot pants and a tiny sport bikini top thing, grooving away.

“So what’s IPL all about really?” I ask Sneh. Having no cable TV, no Pehla, no jingalala, no dishTV, it kinda blocks me out a bit.
“Nothing man,” she replies tetchily. “Players ke boli lagate hain. They auction off players to all these industrialists and people who have too much money who want to form a team. It’s all about money.”
“So it’s nothing to do with place really?” I ask.
“No” her sis says, “The senior players, they play for their region, like Sachin’s playing for Mumbai, but the other players are sold to the highest bidder.”
Yesterday morning, on NDTV at Sneh’s, I saw something about “Will IPL get better ratings than Primetime television”
So what, really, is the point of having this tournament? Because the whole thing seemed to me like an irrational video game thing. Are we having the tournament just for the ratings? Or for the money? Or what? Once again we see this fragile world built on a shaky foundation of money, cash, moolah, prosperity, that makes this world go round, it seems.
The class (my friends, those I talk to now) disagree. When IPL discussion started I was greeted with a barrage of conflicting opinions… “promotes harmony among the team players, Brett Lee and Sreesanth get along so well now, didn’t you see that” … “Regionality promoted!!” (This was Sneh again)… etc.
Today after tuts a friend got a text, Kolkata night riders had won today. She hadn’t wanted them to win, she said “Shah Rukh Khan overdoes things.”
The mind boggles. SRK now owns a cricket team? O_o

Also seen yesterday morning at Sneh’s, making me think at first “Hey, I wanna audition!” but later giving me thoughts alomg the lines of soul-selling : MTV Roadies 5.0. Now I like Roadies, kinda. I watched a bit of Roadies 4 when I was in Delhi-Bombay year before last, and I kinda liked it. Sneh’s sis later informed me that Roadies was a copy of some other show. I guessed Fear Factor. Which I greatly enjoy. Much more than Roadies, now. The difference between the two? Politics, politics, politics. Who goes ahead on Fear Factor is solely determined by how well they do the tasks. No vote-outs, no conspiracies. On the Roadies episode I watched, their ‘money task’ was to eat various Thai ‘delicacies’. Worms, frogs, locusts, squid, sea snakes. Ugh. For phenomenal amounts. I’d rather not have the money. Really. I mean…(yeah, even on Fear Factor I don’t like the tasks involving eating gross).
The ‘advantage task’ was a Muay Thai boxing match (now that I’d enjoy. Really.). It was only after 6 hours training that the Roadies found out they’d be fighting each other.
“Think about what’s more important here,” said Vijay, the MC, “Your survival on this show, or your ‘dosti’” God, I hated that. The way he said it. Because here it doesn’t matter who you hurt, you just need to get ahead. Roadies seems cool on the surface, all those daredevil tasks, the bikes, but what I couldn’t ever do is the metaphorical grasping hands just to pull the other down, I couldn’t befriend someone knowing I might have to betray her sometime in the near future.
Nihal was the one most expected to get voted out, but in the end, it was Varun who got unlucky.
Nihal grinned triumphantly into the camera. “You might have beaten me up today bacchu, but I did the politics.”

“People say such great things about the youth of India”, Sneh mutters “what to do if the youth is only like this??”
Sigh. Whatever happened to honour?
Money talks. I wish it’d shut up.