Sellophane

My mom and grandmother are in the other room watching television. Other than the irritating and eternally disturbing sounds emitted by the weird K-serial that they are watching. I do not know get why they like it so much.

Well, actually I think I do..

The heroines in there serials are surprisingly (well maybe not that surprising) like the women that society would dish out as the ideal woman. Truthful, God-fearing, Liable to sudden spurts of "goddess-like" cranial abilities (liberally dressed with devotional music) that is more often than not succeded with a dash of her nauseatic pati-vrata-ness. Not to mention the evil witch like creauture who is diabolically attractive (the heroine is often plain, dark so on and so forth), supremely crafty and often undoubtedly arrogant.

Now the question arises why would anyone want to watch something that seems like a truck load of rotten balderdash. The answer is quite simple as it is intellectually numbing. Women who watch it like my mother and my grandmother are the ones who can identify with such a situation. But more shockingly they want to, and their imaginations allow them to do so.

According to my rather tattered Reading Gandhi (yes, valorizing that man is part of the DU curriculum) guide he is known to have said, "As nature has made men and women different...True, they are equals in life, but their functions differ. It is a woman's right to rule the home, man is the master outside it. Man is the earner, woman saves and spends. Woman looks after the feeding of the child..." It's this opinion that in embedded into our hegemonic conditioning of the mind that leads to the birth of such serials.

This valorization of the "INDIAN WOMAN" who cooks, cleans, fights domestic battles with caustic rage and is at the same time an inch above the unstoppable barrage of glycerin-induced tears that has appealed the most Indian minds. It's not very different from the parallel load of Balderdash that is trashed out onto through the likes of star world and zee cafe- why we have the eternally confusing Bold and the Beautiful (weren't you married to her and you? huh? What? Somebody switch it off) and of course it's mutated offspring, The OC, Fashion House..other names thankfully fail me. My point being that even though the K-serials belong to the same genre of trash as the above specimens they are different on one very important level.

The characteristic aegis of sellophanated morality.

I mean what's with that? Reminds me off that joke.

Dad, what is sex?
Son, in India we don't have sex, we have love
Really, but dad someone must be, look at the population?!?

If one can move away from the strangeness of my friends sense of humor one will notice the truth in this ironic reflection. I mean what is with this shroud of morality? Who cares if Shilpa Shetty kisses Richard Gere, it's not like you would not jump to the opportunity if it presents itself to you. What's with the banning of FTV? Whose morality is it tainting? What is with homosexuality being illegal? Are you really going to put Karan Johar in jail if he goes live and says 'I AM GAY' ?

Aargh, ramblings...I must stop..