Swings & Roundabouts

First there was Blue Peter; then there was the GMTV fiasco; now there are rumours of X-Factor going down the same ‘match fixing’ route. All of this is making me wonder: is this the beginning of the end of Reality TV?

Earlier this year, the presenters of popular children’s programme Blue Peter went on air and shattered a few thousand kiddie hearts when they said they had “faked the winner of a phone-in competition.” Apparently, a technical glitch came up after a phone-in competition was announced and one of the production crew decided to save the day by having one of the girls who was visiting the BBC studios that day to ‘ring’ the programme. This girl pretended to be a caller from London and was then declared the winner.

When the whistle was blown on this operation, everyone right from BBC Children’s Controller to the presenters, apologised for this mess. But the deed was done.

But this was baby stuff compared to what happened over at ITV’s popular morning show, GMTV. From 2003 right until the time the deception came to light in 2007, the show had raked in £20 million or thereabouts, thanks to some fake phone-in contests.

A contestant for these phone-ins has to pay the premium rate, which could be around £1 per minute, with calls lasting upto 3 minutes or so. According to reports, around 62 million good people phoned in on the premium numbers, hoping to win some easy money. Add the figures and you get a rather neat sum. Of course, when the news broke, the presenters greeted the outraged Brit public with suitably apologetic faces and GMTV was fined a paltry £2 mil.

Now rumours have started circling that top dog of reality tv programmes, X-factor. The latest instalment is supposedly rigged. Or so ‘they’ say. Fans of the programme would remember that last year, contestant Ben Miller walked off in a huff (only to return a few winks later) amidst allegations of ‘fixing’. So what is different about this latest season’s offering? Apparently the rigging is being carried out on a much larger scale than ever. When some of the groups turned up for their audition wearing identical gold dresses, it raised more than a few eyebrows. Attendees of the boot camp are crying foul to the media that the finalists have been ear-marked already and it is all a giant charade. Sour grapes? Or the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Even Nigella seems to be faking it. Cognescenti has it that her show is a giant charade: the buses she takes for her shopping jaunts around London are all specially hired for the show, with the ‘passengers’ thrown in. The kitchen where she dishes her new recipes is not her ‘real’ kitchen, but a studio one, situated on an industrial estate in Battersea. Even the ‘friends’ for whom she cooks for are not her ‘real’ friends but ‘invited guests’, most of whom have never clapped their eyes on the culinary queen.

All of which boils down to, surprise surprise, is that reality tv ain’t no ‘real’ after all. Programmes that are supposedly shot ‘live’ turn out to be recorded ones (like BBC’s Saturday Kitchen) or have fake winners or worse. With all the rigging that seems to be going round, why are the public still falling for the whole charade? Personally, I’d rather watch a good pot-boiler or a gripping drama anyday, than a bunch of losers in a glass house, fart, burp, bitch and air their vacuous thoughts dall day long. So I say, it is time to get off the so-called reality television and get on with real lives.

Failing that, you could always live vicariously through Heroes.

As published in Desicritics.org

Now, how can I resist this?

Have you wondered where your English language is from? As in, the type of language you speak is it English, American, Australian or any other. I never questioned the source of mine till very recently. From school, I learnt the English left over from the colonial days. Spelt armour, valour, colour etc with a u, waTer with a ‘t’ and not a ‘d’ well, you get my drift. But thanks to STAR TV and Hollywood, I also learnt some Americanisms along the way I knew about Route 66, pronounced schedule as skedjool, route as rout and could generally follow the plot of an American movie without subtitles.

When I moved to UK, I did not feel out of place as after all, I have been learning English all my life! Till the day I blurted out loud at work ‘where’s the F in lieutenant?’ and caused a mini uproar (‘please don’t swear ….’, ‘I beg your pardon’) of sorts. After my team mates had stopped wetting themselves, they set up educating me in the ways of the world. So I learnt to say ‘leftinent’ and ‘shedule’ and words of similar ilk.

You would think, having grown up learning Colonial English, I would have no problems fitting in with the Brits. Right? Wrong! I was under that mistaken impression till I switched on the telly and sat through day-time TV. I did not understand a word and had to fumble along, aided by that marvellous invention called Teletext! I ended up begging people’s pardons every other minute, asking them to repeat what they said. Of course, they couldn’t understand what I was going on about, when in my eagerness to sound less desi, I tried mimicking the accent oft-heard on STAR TV and ended sounding like Buffy gone bad.

For starters, there was the accents – hundreds of them. Geoff Boycott’s ‘crickeet’ and ‘wickeet’ had me in splits when I used to watch the game but now, when I had a lady asking me if the boos would be along soon, it took me a long time to get her. Even after six years, I still get thrown by the odd word: had an interviewer on the phone today (I work for a social research firm) asking me for what sounded like ‘used diaries’ and I was perplexed at the request. Used diaries? Whatever for, went I, till the bulb went on in my brain a good few minutes later, when I realised he was asking me for some ‘youth diaries’!

That is when I came to realise what a minefield the varied British accent is. Most Eastenders seemed to have lost or misplaced the hard ‘t’ that is found in almost every word. If it comes at the end of the word, well that’s easy enough to understand but when faced with a request to get someone some ‘wa-er’, what can one do but blink? Most people in Essex also seem to forget to pronounce ‘th’ as it must, choosing instead to go with the wildly popular ‘f’. Thereby, one sees blokes answering to Arfur or wish someone a ‘happy birfday’. P almost killed us the time he sang about the three Kings and assorted junta who went to Beflehem to see the baby Jesus. We also get a ‘fank you’ for a good deed, even when it is ’nuffink’.

The English, much like the Australians, have this habit of shortening things into something that bears no resemblance to the original word. Thus, sandwiches become sarnies, potato patties become tatties, pinafore is a pinny, the list is positively endless. This is before we even venture into the murky waters of Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Don’t you tell porkies’, admonishes a character in EastEnders. It was a while before I twigged (porky pie ~ lie; hence porkies = lies) – phew! Thus, I have found that I was taking the Michael, Bob was my uncle and on one memorable occasion, urged to ask for the William (the bill!). Who says the Brits have no sense of humour?

All in all, I have often felt the language I was taught all my life in India bears not much resemblance to the one I have been learning the past six years. The advantage is, I can truly say I learn new things every day!

S and I were watching this programme on the telly Wednesday night, just a moving background to the monotonous DIY work we were doing at that moment. The programme was called ‘How To Look Good Naked’ and involved a nervy, newish mum, not really comfy with her body shape and as such, not very confident. How the gay presenter got over her fears and ultimately, made her enough confident within herself that she sashayed down the catwalk in her pink matching bra and pants.

Now, as an Indian watching the show, there were many, many points during this that I gasped and squirmed. At the end of the programme, I was left with this question: how is parading semi-naked in front of millions a fitting test of confidence? I am not saying it takes immense guts to do so but why the hell is that even a requisite to ooze confidence? This is where the show left me flummoxed. Seemed to me, it was a drastic way to prove that someone is the epitome of confidence.

I had always thought that I was a fairly confident soul, capable of speaking my mind and generally able to get me from one day to another without greatly injuring myself. But no way on earth would I ever do any of that the woman did on the show last night. For starters, she had to see herself in the mirror, clad only in her undergarments (do you see a recurring theme here?) – why the heck would I do that on national TV? Confidence or not, is unnecessary. WHY would I parade my bloated, saggy self to the whole of Great Britain to choke over their dinner?

Before you go on the ‘Ohmigosh, she’s a prude’, let me stop you right there. I ain’t no prude but I firmly draw the line at going through the following things – shivering like a leaf in my undies, having a bloke (gay or not) poke and prod me in various places to show me what I’ve got, baring my ‘bedroom secrets’ to the whole world and its wife and to top it all, have the bloke helpfully slot some boob uplightment device inside my bra. No, no, no, N-O!

Forgive me for being so boring / naive, if I was suffering from some serious body issues post baby (who am I kidding? that’s a permanent state of mind where I am concerned!) I’d rather work on it by doing something – anything – else. Join the gym (which the woman did, after the bloke chose some hip track suits), sign up for some mummy-toddler club, get a personal shopper to help buy clothes that fit you, rope in your mates to give you some quality, non-mumsy time…. anything other than having to pose about in the buff. Drastic, methinks.

I went through some crippling bouts of depression, post-baby (and the MIL visit!) that wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t have any decent friend or family around me to prop me up. So I slowly confined myself to the four walls of our house, wearing some absolute eye-sores and generally feeling sorry for myself. Had I been home, surrounded by friends and family (which this woman no doubt was), I would have been dragged willy-nilly out into the Big Bad World and made to face it. I don’t know why this woman’s friends and family were standing around, wringing their hands, in a rather helpless fashion. What the hell was the hubby doing anyways? Why wasn’t he wooing the daylights of his wife till she felt sexy again?

If you think ranting about a bit of an undie show is a bit much, even for me, the best was yet to come. The once shaky now yummy mummy posed in the buff (‘the shots will be extremely tasteful’) prior to walking down the ramp wearing nothing but her undergarments. And her mum and mate in the audience went ‘ooh! she is soo confident!’

Good grief!

I felt like banging my head at this point. We talk about women’s lib, suffragette and Girl Power and then say parading about half-naked on national telly epitomises confidence. Maybe I am a prude, after all. A prude tightly holding on to her clothes.

March 18 is Mothering Sunday. The day that is dedicated to British mums. After Valentine’s Day, this is the next big day in the calendar of the card shops, florists, cake shops and restaurants.

There is a never-ending supply of such ‘special’ days – Mother’s day, Father’s day, Grandparents’ day, Mother-in-law’s day (I am not making this up!), Sister’s day, Best friend’s day – the list goes on. I am sure there’s a person in Hallmark who is paid a huge amount of money just to come up with these special days.

At first, the whole concept of having a specific day to think of members of your family or friends and visit them, etc. seemed ludicrous to me. I could not understand the need for such days. As I got to know the British way of life more and more, however, I could see that, in a weird way, it makes sense – for them. After all, they live miles away from their family, literally and figuratively and need special days to spend time with them.

Why this concept is taking root in India is a question I cannot answer. I live a continent and thousands of miles away from my family but am up-to-date with what’s happening in each of their lives and vice versa. I certainly do not need a Mother’s day to ring and talk to my mum, send her flowers and chocolates. She’d probably collapse in disbelief whilst my grandfather would shout down the phone at the strange Western notions I was picking up. I am sure this is a familiar situation for many of us.

Which is why I am not joining the mad throng to the florists to make a beautiful bunch of mum’s favourite flowers or booking a table at her favourite restaurant. What I am doing, at the same time, is saluting all those desi mums around the globe.

Whether in India or elsewhere in the world, they are bringing up their children the best way they know how. Take a look at some of these mommy bloggers’ websites and you will see them chock full of love. The love for their children, their wonder at their little miracle’s antics, their joy in their little ones, their fears, their tears, their feelings – it will be real hard for one to glance at these pages and turn away from them without delving deeper.

I chanced across one such blog from a link on one of Sujatha’s posts and was hooked real soon. From there, the crazy world of mommy bloggers was just a click away and pretty soon, I had bookmarked more than a handful of them and was visiting them regularly to find out the latest installment of Winkie’s world or the Brat’s antics or Tara’s shenanigans.

That was how I discovered that little Anirud likes to stand on his mum’s pots and pans and take a peek at the World of Dining Table. It was how I learnt what a great experience having a baby brother was, to Winkie. That was also how I discovered how helpless the Mad Momma felt, even as she awaited her second C-section so she could see her Baby Bean for the very first time.

With or without the helpful advice of the older generation, us mums (and some daddy bloggers too!) are grappling with this furiously changing world, trying to do the best for their children. Some, like Yours Truly, work full-time; we leave our children with strangers for most of the day. Others choose to stay at home to bring up their children.

Some of us are lucky to have a choice in the matter, whilst others are unlucky enough to have to go with the flow. But whatever we might be doing, we are all mums, who love our children no matter what and who expect nothing but their love in turn.

Thanks to the wonder of the blogosphere, us mummy bloggers now write about our children, our lives and ourselves and share our fears, pain and joy with the rest of the world. Our readers become a part of our lives, so much so that the readers are quite eager to know what happened to the mommy blogger’s second scan or if the child has thrown off its tummy bug.

MIL fears, relocation, child’s first day of school, school exams, second baby, sibling rivalry, you name it, we blog about it. By doing so, we manage to weave a wonderful web across the globe, a lovely network that helps us in our times of need, thanks to which we are never alone.

So, on this Mother’s Day, let us stop for a minute to pat ourselves on our backs for what we do all day, every day. Here’s to all of us mums out there -

Every year, in November, this spotted, yellow teddy bear with a patch over one eye makes an appearance in the UK. He goes by the name of Pudsey and is the mascot of the hugely popular fundraising event known as Children In Need. As its slogan goes, every penny raised will go to the needy children of UK.

Members of the public take up the actual fundraising. High Streets might be littered with people with the collecting pails. Teens wearing wacky outfits and standing in the cold with a bucket in hand are a sight that will be seen all over the country on that day. If your town is really lucky, Pudsey might even put in an appearance!

The actual scale of this has to be seen to be believed. I am not talking about a few kids here and there trying to collect a few pennies. Huge organisations donate large sums of money. There are events held locally, proceeds of which go towards Children in Need. Most offices have a ‘come dressed in your regular clothes’ day, whereby employees pay £1 for the privilege.

Schools tend to take it a step further, try and make a fun event of it, so it is enjoyable for the children as well. Little P’s school wanted me to send in a teddy bear or a stuffed toy with him to school today. Which is why, the good folks of Brentwood saw me lugging a life-size teddy bear up the cardiac hill that is Queen Street. I tried telling him that taking the teeniest bear will give him an edge over the other kids when he takes part in the ‘My teddy bear and me’ race. Would he listen? Nah!

He could also go to school, dressed in his jeans and tee, paying a pound first, of course. The Ursuline down the road had given the choice to the girls – they could just dress up in pink and have a fun time, letting their imagination run wild. As I was huffing and puffing my way past, I was swiftly overtaken by this huge pink bunny and a spangly outfitted fairy. Looking at her skimpy outfit made me break out in goose pimples!

The grand finale to the day’s fundraising drive is the live show that takes place at the BBC studios in London and in other big cities like Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Belfast. Pop acts, cast of local mega serials and other assorted celebs shake a leg or belt out a song, all in the name of charity. The lineup is usually impressive – popular girl band Girls Aloud opened the night’s proceedings in London followed by McFly, Ronan Keating, former Spice Girl Emma Bunton who pirouetted on stage, along with her other Strictly Come Dancing mates, putting their newly learnt dancing skills on display.

Cast members of Coronation Street, Holby City and Hollyoacks also donned the greasepaint and tights to perform live on stage as well as the cast of West End production, Sound of Music.
Terry Wogan was at the helm this year too, ably aided by Natasha Kaplinski and Fearne Cotton. Together they urged the viewing public to dig deep and donate. Throughout the show, hundreds of people were in the studio, manning the special Children In Need telephone lines and those willing to part with their cash could ring the line and pledge the money. The amount of money they manage to raise every year is staggering. Last year, it was around £18 million pounds.

What makes the people of Britian part with so much money year after year and take part in this event so enthusiastically? I have thought long and hard about it and all I can say is, the tag line ‘every penny goes to a needy child in the UK’ is the key. After the Oxfams and other assorted charity outfits that collect money for far-flung places, a homegrown one, for their own suffereing children, strikes a powerful chord in the people’’ hearts, making them give and give, year after year after year. And give they did, to the tune of £18,300,392 on the fundraising night last Friday.

Well, charity sure began – and ended – at home!

Last Sunday, self and family decided to make one of our infrequent trips to the metropolis (i.e. London) and see what’s happening in the world beyond Small Town, UK. We got off the tube at Tottenham Court Road, neatly avoiding the dodgy laptop salesman-type blokes, Subway markers, bag ladies and other assorted features of hamara London and made our way down Great Russell Street. Of course, before any actual exploration can occur, pit stop is a must.

So, we parked our collective butts at this dinky little cafe and proceeded with the main event. I was less than half way through my falafel, when I heard these beats. At first, I thought I was hallucinating and it was merely my tummy making louder than normal rumbling noises. But very soon, realising that I wasn’t the only one hearing things, I decided to explore things further.

Walking towards the British Museum, I realised that the drum beats sounded louder and louder. Peering in through the bars, I almost fell of in surprise – the blokes banging on for all their collective worth wore dhotis, Shiv Sena-type kurtas and had huge tikas on their foreheads – desis!! Now my interest was really piqued and I ventured further, with family following closely behind.

That was when we came face to face with this massive banner bearing the words ‘Voices of Bengal’ with an orangish Bengal tiger next to it. On closer scrutiny, we learnt that there was an exhibition-in-three-parts happening here and the dhakmen were all part of it. So we stood with the multitude of desis and phoren-looking people, all set to enjoy the show.

The dholakmen had gathered in the huge forecourt in front of the museum and from the look of things, had been going on at it for a good while. But they showed no sign of stopping or even slowing down. Bam, bam, bam they kept on, prancing up and about, pirouetting and generally creating magic. The beats were really beautiful and made it impossible for your feet to stay still. After listening to them for about half-an-hour, we felt compelled to move on but they still carried on.

As soon as we entered the museum, we saw this black bust of Rabindranath Tagore and went in to discover Tagore’s sketches. I never knew till that minute that Tagore was an artist – the sketches on display were really good and in pristine condition. They were also showing this short tele-film on Tagore, made by Satyajit Ray. Entitled ‘The Art of Peace: Paintings by Tagore’, the exhibition was a very personal insight into Bengal’s illustrious son.

After roaming past Egypt, Rome, Greece (with a brief halt at the Parthenon) and Africa, we made our way to the fourth floor, where the Myths of Bengal exhibition was being held. This was also a mini-exhibition, giving details of Durga Maa and her various avatars, navratri and so on. The content wasn’t too heavy so as to turn the patrons away and not too light that it was airy-fairy. As I went around looking at the dolls, I was introduced to Manasa, the Goddess of Snakes. There was a Satyavan-Savitri type story written on the walls, where the Goddess kills someone only for the wife to bring him back. I never knew that we had a Manasa, Goddess of Snakes! So, it wasn’t just the angrez who learnt new things about the desi culture that day!

Finally, we desceded on to the main Great Hall where a pleasant surprise awaited us. There was this massive image of Durga Mata that was being constructed from straw, clay and other assorted stuff, right before the very eyes of everyone passing by. When I saw it, it looked 95% complete – I learnt that it will be completed on September 27th, after which it will be passed on to the Bengal Association where it will be the chief part of their Durga Puja celebrations.

Apart from these, there were also events such as regular talks and discussions being conducted everyday on a wide variety of topics such as Tales of Bengal, Curse of Kali, Making Shola Pith decorations as well as short films on the Devi.

The ‘Voices of Bengal’ exhibition is organised by the London Camden Bangladeshi Association and is on for most of October. It is definitely worth a visit.