Spiltsvilla

At one point in time, my roommate and I used to wait earnestly for MTV Roadies. I really liked the show cos it was like watching an adult’s version of Mr. Bean, with all due to respect to Rowan Atkinson, of course. What I meant to say is that, it’s something that cracked both of us up, irrespective of what went on on screen! Ranvijay was doing this incredible job of being the leader of the pack of these idiots who would always come up “strategies” and “winning partnerships” and whatnot. Just very technical names for backbiting and snobbery and bitching and plotting and lots of bullshit along the same lines. But that fun unfortunately for me, had to end when I moved to Madras cos of the horrible set top boxes.

Splitsvilla, I hear fills up the void that was left behind by Roadies. Before I let the steam out, here’s a short write up about the show from the site itself.

Two dishy men. Twenty sexy ladies. One villa in gorgeous Goa. And the torrid game of love…

MTV brings you Splitsvilla, the newest, sexiest, naughtiest reality show on television. Two steaming-hot hunks get to pick and choose from 20 sizzling-hot girls based on certain ‘tasks’ they have to perform every episode. (Now, now. Behave!) Obviously the ladies are going to go all out to grab their attention. We mean ALL OUT.
It’s a dirty fight to the finish. We’re going to be lucky witnesses to some unbelievable drama, treachery, sabotage, cat-fights, politics, back-stabbing, bitching and scheming. Watch the girls undergo stress, fear, exhaustion, depression. Watch them try to outdo each other with their womanly wiles (flaunt their stuff and how!) as the two lucky guys sit back and enjoy the show.

“All’s fair in love and war”? You bet.
It’s going to be fun. Lots of fun…!

2 Guys. 20 Girls.
ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

No brownie points for guessing that the head of this retarded pack happens to Ranvijay, yet again. Basically, it’s an extended cat fight. Two guys get to watch a parade of women claw each other out and identify the supposed “love” of their lives. This is snap my fingers and say ‘this didn’t just happen’ bizarre. How retarded and emotionally scarred must a woman be if she must even for a split second, consider putting herself through something as degrading and disturbing as this in the name of quest for love. Ok, I’m being idealistic and taking it at face value. Even I put that aspect of this show aside; and agree to be materialistic; they’re still humiliating themselves in the quest of name and fame. I can’t imagine them living with the image of clawing it out with another woman for a man who’s judging to see if at least one of the twenty is the ‘love’ of his life. The more of think about this show, the more my head spins. WTF, seriously!

I remember going to a zoo and seeing signs that encourage people to be kind to the animals and not prod them or throw things at them. This show promotes it self as a kind of zoo where two lucky (I have lots of adjectives for them and trust me, I do not want to use any of them on my blog for very obvious reasons) men prod women who’ll show fear, depression and flaunt their womanly wiles. Sounds worse than a badly maintained zoo to me. The promo shows 2 bikini clad images punching and clawing each other, manga style, to overpower each other and get to a man. In one of the challenges, women roll in mud and fight to win it. If girl on girl action increases TRP ratings, why waste money in producing a new show. Just download some American porn on the internet and air it during prime time. You get to keep all the money from the sponsors. Where are all the women’s lib organizations and the pseudo feminists in the page 3 circle?

Our idea of entertainment is progressively getting scary by the day. With shows like Big boss and Roadies and Spiltsvilla, sadism seems to be the latest fad. It’s the in thing! Then we’ll have school children being awarded stars for bullying other kids and peeing on their own homework.

PS: Roadies is coming out with a special DVD with cheat codes that will help you crack the next audition and give you and edge over others and help you skip a round or something like that. God help us all!

Heart wrenching

Life has very questionably weird ways of getting you to appreciate what you have. That realisation struck me when I least expected it. I didn’t expect to be thankful for what i had in a hospital, cos mostly what i feel there is anger and anxiety. I walked into Stanley hospital, Madras today with the same sinking feeling in my stomach that i experience everytime i enter the place that houses my worst fears.
The corridors had a deserted, deathly feel about them. The walls were chipped and i couldn’t really tell what color they might’ve been when there still was some light seeping in through the disfigured pattern in the wall. Room 405 housed the cardiology department. The board outside indicated that there were 19 patients in the general ward. I tightly clutched my mother’s hand and refused to enter. I saw 3 people with IV lines strapped to their hands, sitting on the floor and eating out of the same packet of rice. Even that rice seemed to be drained of any color. Few other patients were lying down in a corner that had a haggard looking man in an extremely dirty white coat noting down someone’s BP. A nurse was sitting next to him flipping through some files. A little boy was standing next to her shirtless and peering over her shoulder. He also had an IV strapped in addition to a heavy bandage on his bony chest. Another patient was lying down on one of the row cots that had a green sheet covering it. The sheet seemed uncared for and almost cursed. The green was just desperately clinging on to the sheet as if for mere presence. Just then, i saw a dog sleeping on the floor next to his wife and i knew it was not the sheet that was cursed. At that instance, I couldn’t stop the tears flowing down my cheeks. When i realised i had to walk in through the same ward, the tears intensified. My legs refused to move. I was so shocked to see a man treated this badly that the only reaction i could manage was tears. For a minute, i imagined myself lying on that same bed, lying next to a dog on the floor and I knew how lucky i really was.
When i went out in to the yard cos i just couldn’t look into the ward any more, i saw surgical masks, blood containers, stained cotton pads and used syringes strewn about everywhere. I couldn’t stop crying! These are human lives and they deserve to be treated with more respect. What ailing people need more than anything is care. Roaming about in their lungis and having to go out to buy their own food didn’t seem like care to me. More than anything, the infection spread by these improperly disposed medical waste made my skin crawl. I was this close to throwing up. I assure you none of it had to do with prude behaviour.
There were doctors and nurses standing about and chatting the same yard, oblivious. Or maybe, they were also just trying to survive. I couldn’t imagine going back there everyday, let alone fend for my living there. We have our health minister talking about on screen smoking and stars consuming alcohol. Can we please take a moment to prioritize here? What about these people who’re stuck here in such conditions for pure monetary reasons? These people deserve our time, money and respect too! I’m too shocked and tongue tied to even swear. Set aside fame, limelight, votes, power, post, and all that crap, please just look this as a human being. Would you ever want your children to set foot here? It might be cowardly to stand in front of a hospital and cry. But, I just slumped down in resignation!
Ps: the break still holds but i had to get this outta my system

All for the sake of a story??

When I was surfing channels this morning, I caught Headlines Today covering the story of Amit, an employee of Infosys, who allegedly killed his wife and before committing suicide cos he suspected an extra marital affair.
As they couldn’t get either of their family members to comment, they turned to their orkut profiles as a testimony to what a happily married wonderful couple they were. Apparently her profile had a lot of pictures of them together in which they looked very happily married! Apparently Amit’s profile clearly mentioned that he detested liars. So apparently he hit the roof when he found out that his wife was lying to him. And oh, btw, his wife, according to her testimonials, is a very lovable, smart woman. If only he had looked through her profile before deciding to kill her.
Are you frikkin kidding me?!! Is this what our news channels want to base their stories on? A profile on a social networking site! Somebody please stop them..

Ps: the person who was reporting the story mentioned that both the families were very disappointed with the way they were covering the story. Hmmm, I wonder why!

Will this work?

I happened to watch this program on Times Now. I’m glad someone’s brought it out in the open. I think every one who’s studied in colleges in Madras will tell you how true this is.

I studied in a women’s college but went a co-education school which was probably just as bad, if not worse. I studied in a school run by the Arya Samaj. They ran quite a few schools in Madras. Wherever possible they ran seperate schools for boys and girls. In the co-ed schools, there were very strict rules against girls and boys talking. We even used to have separate staircases for boys and girls. In fact, we had separate floors for boys and girls. Till I passed out of school, I only knew a lot of the boys in my school by face and not name.

Its so shameful that all this is being enforced in the name of Tamil culture. I want to know who defines this culture. Its very disheartening to see people who call themselves educationists have such a narrow minded approach in life.

Apparently this was played to the State Education minister who also claimed he was shocked. So, whose court is the ball in really?

I know i’ve been lashing out on hospitals a lot off late. Its only because I’ve had to deal with them and they’ve been driving me crazy!
- The medical profession has been held in very high esteem since time immemorial. But right now, its probably the most lucrative business. Let’s not kid ourselves about it. I don’t have a problem with it cos after all its a source of livelihood. When that fact has been established, treat your patients like customers. Please realise that times have changed. We no longer fancy being treated like we have a pea sized brain. Humor us and talk to us. There’s a slight chance we might be able to comprehend the language of the higher mortals.
- If you can print brochures, call them patient information, and have tables that list the various procedures you have and how much they cost(i have a feeling that this is all the information they’re interested in conveying to the patients), you can also schedule appointments such that they don’t clash. If you have no rooms available for patients, please do not ask people to come and wait for eternity. It is, to say the least, infuriating!
- I understand there’s a dearth of trained nurses. Screaming at them in front of the patients and calling them stupid and incompetant doesn’t do us any good. We want to be able to trust the people who stick needles into us. Do not make that anymore difficult than it already is. Also, if u want to quiz them on their knowledge, do it where we can’t hear you. We’re not interested in knowing how little they know.
- If you can hire managers to run your hospital, you can also train your front office people to at least speak obligingly to the people who’s money pays their salary. Its not a sin to smile at people who’re obviously in distress. Please do not bark at us. We do not have the patience to entertain you. So f*** off and let us be!

PS: My heart’s bleeding that I’m missing Rahman in Madras when I’m in the city. Talk about bad luck

WTF

This is not about any one thing in particular. Its just about a few things that happened over the last one week!

- I’ve had to deal with the worst auto drivers in the country. If you have any doubts, I’m talking about the ones in Madras. They will NEVER have any change! They also expect you to walk around with two heavy bags and find someone to give you change if you’re not interested in paying them any extra money. They will also tell you that Egmore Station to Anna Nagar is 13 km! On which planet??

- Why are hospitals interested in knowing what my monthly income is? As long as I pay the money they ask for and fill out the endless forms and stand in the long billing counter queues, how should it matter to them? They anyway charge everyone the same fee. As ridiculous as it may seem, we all pay the consultation fees before we see the doctor anyway! This is certainly not doing wonders for my phobia.

- How does it make any difference to you what my religion is? How come your “computers” always (I’ve tried this in more than one hospital) never have the facility to leave this column blank.

- You can walk the entire length of the train and not find a dustbin! When you ask one of the railway employees, they will ask you to chuck it out of the window.. Eureka, that’s something no person would’ve ever thought of! Also, I’ve resigned to the fact that crying children are attracted to me and will keep crying through the night when I’m in the same coupe!

- This has never happened to me before, but the train I was travelling in to Madras (Kacheguda Express) actually had a power failure! There was no batter back up, so every time the train stopped at a station, the compartment would be pitch dark. People who boarded the train much later in the night, actually had to wait till the train moved to find their seats.

On a brighter note, I’m in Madras for a week and its actually not so hot here now!

PS: This is what Google has to say about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!

WTF

It first started with the “Mumbai Molestations” as media referred to it. Two women were groped and pinched in public. The media was out in full force to make sure that justice was served to those two women who didn’t even want to press charges. I was wondering why those women didn’t seem interested to register a case. These were educated women, who were just out to have a good time with their spouses. Has the society become so insensitive to them that they just wanted to pretend like it never happened?

When I was reading up on the internet about this incident, I came across this link. Someone had raised a question on Yahoo Answers about it.

“Mumbai Molestation Case, whose fault?”

the best answer chosen was

“Those Girls! They wearing short skirts and hanging around with Silly Looking NRI boyfriends! No doubt this was gonna happen!”

WTF! The next day, I tuned into Aahaa FM online. The morning show run by Chinmayi was on. People were calling in to express their views. This one moron that called up said that these women were in a hotel, in a discotheque on new years eve and that they asked for it. He went on to say that these are the kind of women who probably drank and smoked with the men around. Apparently these women are not in a position to ask for any kind of respect or regard. Once again WTF!

Whoever gave these self-righteous men the right to judge women? Since when did short skirts and partying on new years eve meant asking to be groped? Please spare us the bullshit about women asking for attention by wearing revealing clothes. So what are you trying to say? That if we’re covered from head to toe, you’ll totally keep your emotions in check and worship us? Why is it that the first question that pops up when such a thing happens is about the woman’s conduct? Lets say that the women were in fact wearing revealing clothes, does it give them the right to treat them like this? I mean, I just don’t get it.

Last night, I was walking back home at around 8′o clock. My street is quite safe and is well lit. I was talking to my mom on the phone. This jerk who was on a scooter tried grabbing me. Before you ask, I was appropriately clothed. In fact, I was totally covered ‘cos it was chilly. I turned about and almost caught his collar, but he sped away. The 2-3 people who were on the road then, turned, glanced at me fuming, and got back to whatever they were doing. I could’ve cursed him and yelled insults till I was blue in the face. He would’ve still gotten away scott free.

When I still fuming, I read this on the Chennai metblog this morning. When Shriya wears hardly any clothes and pushes Rajni away with her chest, we have no problems. She can be paired up with a man more than twice her age on screen and that will not spoil our culture. Wait a minute, I’m a little confused here. What the hell is it that we’re claiming to be our culture? Did the provocative dress suddenly become a problem ‘cos she was sharing the dias with the Chief Minister? Shreya’s offered an apology cos she doesn’t wanted to get sucked into this bog. Is she being smart or is she failing to defend herself? I’m sick to my stomach.