The Unscripted Reality Show Called Dating

Mainstream media has often held up a mirror to society and demonstrated its power to influence viewers, either consciously or subconsciously. In this write-up I will present a list of notions that the middle-class urban teenagers have about love and dating where they often believe in an idealized version of relationships.

I hope you are ready to leave your logic aside to empathize with the people who believe in “Bollywood version of true love!” Now before I move onto the effects of popular culture on dating, let me first shed some light on the portrayal of love in media.

• Squint at First Sight: The phenomenon of “Love at first sight” in a Bollywood movie is as believable as Narendra Modi’s claims about maintaining secularism in the country. Let’s just say the pretty Bollywood heroine also known as “the damsel in distress” has probably had a few shots of tequila and is as clumsy as ever. She suddenly falls down and her man in shining armor picks her up and stares deep into her eyes and steals her heart away. Honestly, I’d probably turn squint if I kept staring into somebody’s eyes for so long (unless it was my oculist of course)!
• RIP Friendship Mode: The symbiotic nature of the portrayal of these relationships on television and Indian culture is exemplified in this stage. I’ve been through this often and lost too many guy friends! This stage is usually a direct implication of the “friendship eventually waters down into love” notion. I call it watering down because there have been times when you start hallucinating about those weird feelings in the pit of your stomach (which possibly have occurred because you ate more than you could digest at an Indian wedding).
I remember, once my 13-year-old little neighbour came jumping into my room like an over-excited rabbit and told me that he had a new girlfriend. For once, I wasn’t surprised. I asked him who the girl was and he told me she was his classmate who looked very similar to him and how their friends had started teasing them, so he wrote her a note that said “I luv u” (he actually showed me this note and I made a mental note to teach him some spellings that evening). She blushed and ran away. He was grinning at me like an idiot when he said “hasli tar phasli na?” I took my time in assimilating this bit of information and thought to myself: “This is just great, now this 13-year-old kid has a girlfriend who looks like his sister”.
• Saree Fallacy: The arena of adolescent romance in the 1990s reached its “saree fallacy” stage when millions of couples in India were divinely inspired by the song “Tip Tip Barsa Paani”. This lasted till 2000 when suddenly many men had imbibed Akshay Kumar’s claptrap of unbuttoning the first few buttons of their shirts unveiling what could only be described as “hairy and hideous” or even women who wore translucent sarees. The custom of wearing a saree and looking sexy still prevails but it makes reality extremely comical, for example if I were to run in a saree to avert the love of my life from leaving, I swear to Goddess Aphrodite I would fall into the muck before I even started running. And although I would still make it to the airport, I can guarantee when I see him there, he would just give me an exasperated look when I say “What? You are supposed to hug me now.” Lesson I would learn: Mucky was NEVER the new sexy!

Implications

• And the reason is YOU: “This isn’t working anymore, and it’s not you but me!” I have heard this as many times as I have heard people grumble about the heat this summer. Relationships today have an expiry date, some last for a day, the others for a decade. The most amusing part is the reasons for a break up. The first and the most inconsiderate thing I do when someone breaks up is that I ask them “the reason”. If you are a How I Met Your Mother Fan, you would know that Ted Mosby loved girls who loved Star Wars and believe me, my heart almost broke when I realized I had never watched it. In my head I had already married Ted, but after that particular episode, the divorce papers were looming in all my fantasies. Reasons for a break up may range from:
  1. You hug me too much,
  2. You dress like a hippie,
  3. she likes the band one direction,
  4. I am sorry I realized I am a lesbian!
• Awkward Friendships: People loved Chandler and Monica in Friends and many drew inspiration from this couple. The direct implication of the RIP friendship mode is that many teenagers or even adults end up dating a very close friend, but then life happens! Love turns into hatred, friendship ends horribly, things get awkward and you lose two most important things at the same time: friendship and your confidence.
• Pit of Passion: We all love dark, dangerous and mysterious people. The passion quotient when it comes to bad romance is extremely high. Have you seen “Sleeping with an Enemy” or even “Mr and Mrs Smith”? If you have, then you will know exactly what I am talking about. Nowadays the number of abusive relationships has increased because often the bad boys and girls seem irresistible and alluring. But then again, bad romance is a pit of passion that you fall into and just can’t get out of!
• Travelling for Love: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge mass-produced a generation of people who wanted to travel just so that they could meet their soulmates. If you are travelling to find a person you want to fall in love with, you could meet too many people and confuse yourself or end up meeting all the wrong ones. Travel for a better reason!
• Dating the Alter Ego: The Dark Knight fantasies are still alive inside our hearts. Too many DC and Marvel comics sell the idea of how a man transmutes into a superhero with the help of a simple mask. In the real world too we can be who we want to be (secretly) with the help of the world wide web. Online dating is a rage when you are in the teenage. Just be very sure that the guy or girl you are head over heels for isn’t a 70-year-old creep looking for some galvanizing experiences.
• Waiting for the Perfect One: A long time ago a friend of mine and I had made a stupid checklist of the qualities we wanted in our “dream man”.(Confession: I was too jobless at the time and she was bored.) But then again I hadn’t discovered just how uncomfortable I get when I meet someone perfect. Bollywood, for instance, has a plot where the girl describes her dream guy to her friends, and just when she is about to give up on the idea of her dream man, she meets him and falls in love. On the contrary, I remember meeting someone who was exactly the way I wanted him to be, he was my very first crush but whenever I met him I acted completely dorky. When I think about it now, I realize even I wouldn’t fall for myself if I act like the way I do when I meet perfect men. To tell you the truth imperfections in a guy helped me converse with them easily. A perfect man scares the hell out of me, I get nervous. The perfect one is one that you can be your most imperfect self with. If you are waiting for a perfect man you will only transform into an old lady with a 1000 cats even though you’ve earned enough money to conduct your own swayamvar.

Bottom line

In the medieval times when Bollywood depicted the “no touching, only seeing kind of love” on screen but even in those days off screen romances were just as scandalous and bold as they are in today’s era. The real shift of trend has been in the previously “western approach towards transitory relationships” which was just limited to the high class and the upper middle class, now this approach has percolated down to the middle class since we all have access to television and new media. We all want to go to restaurants on dates, dress up for them, meet perfect people! But in the end what matters is that when two people start dating they spend quality time irrespective of the place, their appearances and maintain that bond no matter what. Like George Burns once said: “Love is a lot like a backache, it doesn’t show up on the X-rays, but you know it’s there.”

[Rutika loves bantering about uncanny things and binge on Bollywood movies and sitcoms with a rapacious appetite. You can find her rants on (http://duchessofbanterbar.blogspot.in/). She is a feminist who finds eating food amorous enough and so avoids eating men.]

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Engendering violence- Boko Haram

The purportedly “Islamic revivalist movement” undertaken by the Boko Haram in Nigeria has been one of the problems has emerged in the International limelight recently. The rise of extremism by Islamist groups is often an implication of Western Oppression of the Muslims. Increasingly alarming is the rate at which we “casually” use the term third world country when we talk about India or even Africa for that matter. A pejorative term which now more than ever highlights the impact of western imperialism on our own language.  Violence in any society is engendered when an entity feels misrepresented or even underrepresented, and in turn victimized. But then again violence inflicted upon the innocent cannot be justified with this particular corollary. Another point of argument pertaining to the Boko Haram and its ideological inclinations put forth by many influential voices in the Muslim World is that they are “completely contradictory to the teachings of Islam. The common proposition that every religion propagates tolerance may seem idealistic but is well established and proven by many religious fundamentalists.

Now that both sides of issue are cleared let us look at how the theoretical framework of violence actually works. (My intention in adding this portion is that we need to study violence, to understand its implications)

1)Using coercion and threats

2)Using intimidation

3)Using Emotional Abuse

4)Using isolation

5)Minimizing, denying and blaming

6)Using Children.

7)Using economic abuse

8)Using gender privilege

-Out of these, atleast three to four means for inflicting appalling levels of violence have been utilized by the Boko Haram. Their intention is to ban western education,  promote the idea that women are mere instruments of reproduction, are generally opposed to the idea of girl child education. To sum up its stated aim is to establish a medieval style caliphate in north Nigeria. Their claims of establishing a new “Islamist” regime are contentious.

The International blame game is on now where the western media blames the Nigerian Government for its loss of regulation over these extremist groups or even its institutional failures. The process of Democratization need not always include steps by the West to impose political models on variant societies(Unless they are willing to ingest them), their role could be limited to demolishing obstacles to modernization and democratization from within these societies.  While the Nigerian government is busy defending itself, about 200 Nigerian school girls have been kidnapped, the Boko Haram is releasing videos about threatening to sell them off. Truth be told the lack of media coverage is a fretful issue.

Bloggers Note- I chose to write about this because I was befuddled when I saw the amount of space allotted to this issue in our own Newspapers. While the elections and the Narendra Modi: Mamata Banerjee verbal but ‘ animalistic’ exchange covered almost one fourth of the newspaper page, this issue was allotted a small column. I think we would rather live outside the bubble than inside a political zoo  filled with unamusing jesters.  If you want to be a part of the movement please don’t hesitate to like the Facebook page, here’s the link https://www.facebook.com/bringbackourdaughters

Depletion of the Bozone Layer

Keyword- Bozone Layer is the substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.

I went to a friends place to borrow one of her books. She told me that her cousin was visiting. So now the most basic rule of starting a conversation with a stranger was to talk about the weather and I did, I spoke about the increasing temperature and how I wished it could melt body fat. And for the first time she spoke "Totally,  I need an air conditioner wherever I go!" I immediately replied "Don't you think that it'll make things worse?" She looked at me indignantly and retorted"And how is that?." My friend, a very sensible lady said "Haven't you ever heard of global warming?" Her response was "Who cares about that?"


I couldn't help feeling disappointed. Honestly all we did during our Environmental Studies lectures in school was dozed off or built hideous figurines out of cardboard sheets. NO ONE payed attention to the sustained gibber of our equally nonchalant teachers about Sustainable Global warming, Ozone layer depletion, Water Harvesting yada yada. The truth is this subject should have a very practical approach, infact most of our subjects should. If Value Education and Environmental Studies could be studied through books then wouldn't we all be amiable and ecologically sound creatures.

Nature Trails would replace Reality Television, egalitarianism would replace feminism, negotiations would replace wars, and everything would be just picture perfect.  I just skimmed through my Contemporary Issues Text Book and couldn't disregard that conversation that I had with my friends cousin. While I was reading the chapters I concluded that we need to primarily treat the rising level of ignorance and then think about the CFC's, think of ways to prevent rational warming and then Global Warming and most importantly devise measures to deplete the Bozone Layer around us.