Sunday, May 11, 2014

The Day Everyone Became Boring On Social Media

These are the world's most unusual statements, so unusual that most people trot them out only once a year on social media:

- I love my mother
- My mother made me who I am
- Thank you, Mom, for everything
- You taught me this and that, also about them, and those, and everything, and you held my hand and got me walking and wiped my snot and cleaned by bottom and fed me (maybe not with the same hand) and so I love you and thank you and miss you Mom

... and variations on the same, ad nauseam

Everyone is committing that most cardinal of all possible sins on social media: Being absolutely uninteresting. How annoying it is to have your social media feeds become reduced to a mere template on endless loop! Sometimes it has pictures and yay for alleviating the monotony. I always "Like" those posts.

But a thing like Mother's Day? At one time, it used to be restricted to only a certain demographic, usually of a certain kind of country. Now everyone is doing it because we are all unique sheeple and we have to tell everyone that we are so unique we really do love our mummies.

Fair enough.

Of course, everything on Faecesbook becomes worse because advertisers lay siege to your timeline, never mind how often you uncheck all possible options, but there is fabfurnish and zansaar and jabong all wanting you to buy their stuff for your mummy. Because what mummy needs is a juicer or blender of course . Or an apron. Or table-linen. Obviously she wants something functional because being a mummy means she has to be house-proud and a home-maker, and use your pressies for the good of Everyone Else.

My advice: Don't gift her sharp cutlery. She might end up cutting off your internet cable as punishment for using it to buy her utilitarian shite.

In case I know you, my reader, personally, here's my request: If you ever get to know my spawn -- whenever they appear -- inform them that Mummy hates the concept of keeping a day aside to celebrate relationship roles. And Mummy likes alcohol and books and Nutella and exciting/adventurous experiences. Just in case, you know, they are stumped for gift ideas.

So... Happy Tell-Faecesbook-How-Much-You-Love-Your-Mommy-PS-Pics-Attached Day!


Monday, May 5, 2014

Done in by the dermis: Left out, left behind, Ignorably wheatish

In this day of controversial development indices, why am I, an educated middle-class Indian, left out of one of the most important discourses pervading my country? Why have I no space in India's Pantonepidermis discourse?

First it was Kajol/ Priyanka Chopra/ Yami Gautam/ SRK/ John Abraham/random actors shouting about how important, nay, imperative it is to en-fair yourself, because with 'fair' comes 'lovely'/'handsome'.

Then the en-fairing campaign attacked secret spaces. Like the vulva.

Then the attack came from the other end of the Pantone spectrum: Nandita Das went on to show how being dark is beautiful. (It would help the campaign if there were more faces besides Nandita Das showing how dark equals beautiful.)

And now I and people like me are cornered, hemmed in between fair-is-lovely and dark-is-beautiful.

We wheatish-complexioned folks are left out of India's epithelial discourse. Who is to speak for us? Who is to speak to us? Should we now form our own political party? Our own advertising campaign? Where do we go who are neither fair, nor dark?