Teleshopping and TV Commercials

Watching TV with me is a pain. I can never watch a programme for more than 30 seconds. I switch channels so much and so fast that we have changed our remote control umpteen times. From what you might have fathomed by now, I have an innate love for mokkais. I love watching Teleshopping. It fascinates me. I love commercials. It’s sacrilege to mute them! So I thought, why not write a point-by-point walk through of “TV with Lady Kedi” for the benefit of the human kind.

I have two things to enlighten you on: one, the incredible world of Teleshopping. I say incredible because it promises to make your life incredible. We will run through all it has got to offer. Two, the utopian world of commercials. Everything is perfect here. So perfect that it makes you envy, empathize and sigh wistfully only to realize that the world doesn’t function like how you thought it would.

Have you ever once paused on a channel when Teleshopping is going on? If yes, you would know about the Sampurna Nazar Suraksha Kavach. It’s a small blue bead strung like an amulet. The promo starts with a fat lady with a big bindi and bright saree, unsurprisingly over jeweled, exhorting in loud voices the miracles of the suraksha kavach. The camera pans to a witness, who claims her husband’s business was flailing when someone suggested that she make him wear an amulet. The gay amulet wearing husband then exacts that his business looked up the moment he started wearing the kavach. The highlight of the visual is the representation of the nazar – red laser rays not different from what we used to draw in school. Here is what I mean:

 

The host then goes on about how Yogis from the Himalayas prepare these beads by chanting arcane mantras. What price to pay for it? Just Rs. 2375/-. Interested people please to be seeing this and this.

Others see this to fully understand what I mean. I could not get the badly dubbed Tamil video. Please make do with this.

If one teleshopping product awes me, it has to be the Nicer Dicer. It’s a vegetable cutter that makes vegetable cutting seem so easy! I can forever see how it goes chak chak chak. The commentary behind does get on your nerves with too many wow’s and oooh’s and aaah’s, but this is still a beauty. Please someone get me this for my birthday! It’s just Rs.1999/-.

Here is the English version of the video.

There is this other product they have to offer: the lipodress. This “dress” makes you look thinner however flabby you are by compressing to bring you to shape. I do not want to go into any more details here. If you are interested, do google Lipodress. Be sure no one is behind your back.

That is all I have to offer on teleshopping. My next love, commercials, is not altogether a different story. If teleshopping makes you believe that their product will make possible the impossible, the commercials too do the same. Only, they don’t make explicit claims. Take the Surya – Jothika Sunrise ad as an example. The whole concept has little to do with coffee than to showcase the pair’s fabulous chemistry on-screen. They play on the already created mentality that coffee and tea are associated with happy young couples very much in love. So every time we see such an ad, we go Aww. I love those for the same reason – modern micro fairy tales.

Another absurdity people lap up: the concept behind every deodorant commercial. A skinny adolescent with a waxed chest sprays on some deo, and what happens? He is surrounded by pouting girls in revealing clothes ready to er, succumb to his wishes. This phenomenon has now extended to hair gels, men’s shampoos, shaving creams, men’s razors…any of the male cosmetics available. Girls are not that dumb, you know. But I have to accept, we are dumb enough to see these commercials with our mouths wide open. Falling for a guy that shaves his arms and does his eyebrows is another story altogether.

I have never been able to distinguish one bike from the other. Cars too. I can differentiate a SUV and a car. That’s how far I can go. I know that Pulsar looks a little fatter than the rest. The rest consists of similar looking bikes which I can only identify by their name tags. It doesn’t make things easier for me when all these commercials are very similar too. All of them typically involve driving into a storm, on a mountainous terrain, jumping of cliffs and a small kid shouting daddy or a slender female looking on invitingly.

The last category of ads are the extremely stupid ones. So stupid that they make you laugh. Like the Bingo ads. If you have an affinity to mokka jokes like me, then you would thoroughly enjoy these. This one is classic, especially the Take it Raasaa at the end.

Before this post becomes excruciatingly boring, I will stop. Please comment and list the funny, crazy, whacky, senseless stuff you see on TV these days. Lady Kedi would love to spend all her time watching those.

Happy April Fools’!

All of us are weary of April Fools’ Day. It has been done to death. So this year, instead of poorly orchestrated pranks, false alarms and lame “Happy Birthday” wishes,  I have compiled a list of the most foolish occasions internationally being celebrated that could well be clubbed with April Fools’. Here goes:

Answer your cat’s question day (Jan 22^nd)

Why should we celebrate this day?  So that our cat’s questions don’t go unanswered, of course! Just imagine leaving your fancy feline to its own doubts, contemplating on the questions life doles out to it…shudder, you just have to answer those for your cat! Now, how would you know what you should answer? Celebrate “Cat answers Mistress’ Question Day”!

Or, you can do this.

Appreciate a dragon day (Jan 16^th)

How many times have you seen a crowd of dragons and marveled at their collective grace? How many times have you thought of these fire-breathing wings-batting flame-spitting creatures as beauties? Then you just have to celebrate this day!

Furriesonline.com suggests you to celebrate by doing the following:

• Study about dragons and their significance in different cultures.
• Write your very own story about your very own dragon.
• Draw your very own dragon. Tutorial here.
• Watch a dragon movie.

I suggest the following:

You are a possible schizophrenic. Please go consult your shrink. Sorry to burst your bubble, but DRAGONS DO NOT EXIST.

Bad Poetry Day (Aug 18^th)

This is your chance to win lose the Montreal International Poetry Prize. While you are at losing it, why not lose it with panache? And that is why you should write bad poetry. How would you know it is bad? If your poem satisfies all or most of these conditions, you can be assured that your poem sucks.

• Do not adhere to any specific rhyme scheme. Or pattern. Or any regularity whatsoever.
• Let not any of your sentences make sense. Utilize your freedom of expression to the maximum and construct verses that cover a gamut of topics, within a strophe.
• Invent your own words. When Roald Dahl can do it, so can you!
• The longer, the better. The more mundane, the more pathetic. And pathetic is what you want your poem to be.

A sample,

The Three

Anya, Manya, Ponya

Live in Kenya.

They dance like fools,

In the pool.

They play with a pin,

And toys which make a din.

They sleep like a log,

A jolly life –

Like a butcher,

Without a knife.

Don’t Step on a Bee Day (Jul 10^th)

Damn, how often this happens! You are walking on the road, lost in thoughts. A sudden squelch. And you’ve stepped on a bee! It’s writhing in pain. It’s wings have come off. With a last wrench and wriggle, it dies. It dies. These bees! Why do they have to keep crawling on the road when they can fly? Why don’t bees fly? Why do they always find their way under my shoes? Why do they make me a bee-killing psychopath? Remember, don’t step on a bee on this day. It’s too easy to. You do it always. Mark your commitment to a bee’s healthy happy life by celebrating this occasion.

Name your PC Day (Nov 22^nd)

Another thing the world learnt from India. Superstar named his taxi Latchumi. As always, he set a trend. People then just had to name their houseplant, their cell phones, their bikes and their computer was no exception. I call my laptop Latchumi. Mark of respect for the Superstar you see. Also, mark of being dumb, useless and out of work.

Read in Bathtub day (Feb 9^th)

Waitees! I do not have a bathtub. What do I do? Pity you missed out on the whole essence of celebrating this day. Never to worry – just read. Preferably where the bathtub is closely associated with. Popularize this concept. In a few years we can all celebrate “Read in the Bathroom Day”. No, I’m not going to go into details here. Family web site.

Zipper Day (Apr 29^th)

Your maanam kaakum zipper. Have you ever once taken a moment to revere it? The only time it gets acknowledged is when its gets stuck, broken or un-zips on its own accord. We shout profane curses at it. Observe a minute of silence this year for all the zippers you’ve used. They deserve it as much as a martyr’s death does.

From the top of my mind, here are a few more that are more in line with life in Chennai and well worth celebrating,

Lungi day – Celebrate Tamil Nadu’s official dress. Couple it with ara-drawers. Shout with a beedi in your mouth. Sit on your haunches. Yes, girls too.

Filter Kaapi Day – For me, this is heaven in a cup. Smoking hot heaven. Let us celebrate over a cuppa!

Vada poche Day – For those of you who think this is Spanish, see this.

I should probably write a separate post on “Aaniye pudunga vendam”, “Enna koduma Saravanan idhu!” and my favourite “Vada poche”. For all the times this refrain has sounded in our mind’s voice during extremely apt situations (like flunking an exam you’ve studied hard for, getting slapped by a girl you proposed to), it is only fair that we celebrate it. Plan an event and Lady Kedi will be there for the occasion.

Though vada poche is my favourite, there is a strong contender we cannot ignore. This time its bajji. Please watch this video.

No, he is human despite his ursine countenance.

Vetti Scene Day – Vetti Scene is a phrase oft used by the youth of Chennai. For the uninitiated: Vetti essentially means jobless and Scene signifies anything boastful. The speciality of “vetti” is its wide usage. Examples: vetti dog, vetti pechu, vetti vela, vela vetti and so on. It describes my life in a nutshell. What more reason to celebrate!

Mama-Machan Day – It literally translates to uncle – brother-in-law day. It’s the Tamil equivalent of the English dude. We don’t say dude because most people here say dyood. I believe this blog’s readership constitutes primarily of young people. Hence I will not go into explaining how relevant calling others Mama, Machan, Mapla or Dude is.

I strongly propagate clubbing April fools’ with a few or all of these occasions. Please suggest alternative things that we could do to make these days more fun and um, senseless!

PS: This post was supposed to be written in collaboration with Low-funda-boy. But he backed out because I made references that his hero TR resembled a grizzly. Also due to his general laziness.

Hate this on Facebook

I do not have anything against Facebook. I am neither an extremist who denounces social networking nor a Facebook junkie who needs to spend 10 hours stalking online profiles. Nonetheless, I cannot stand the people belonging to the latter category. Out of joblessness, here is a countdown of ten things that I find meaningless and equally irritating on Facebook.

10. Un-tagging Photos

Granted everyone cannot look good every time a photo is taken. But photos in which you look horrendous are always more memorable. They are a lot of fun to see and recount. Plus, everyone is sick of looking at your 100+ photoshopped poses that would have been your claim to fame. Pity you don’t get paid for all the modeling you’ve been doing.

9. Random “like”s

So you did not get paid for your photo shoot. But hey, 354 people have liked your photo! If that doesn’t make your day then what does. The icing on the cake is the comments:-

“Hey you look cute ya”

“Beautiful photo di”

And the omnipresent “Awesome pic” which cues that you should comment the same on the photo of the person who commented on yours.

The like option for every comment does not make things better. Or simpler. Next to attention seekers with atrociously photoshopped/picasa-ed faces, this option has given rise to attention seekers of a worse kind: Whose comments get the maximum number of likes?

People call me jobless!

8. Love digging your nose, then Like this!

Facebook has also given rise to a number of sleazy sites that list an even greater number of dumb scenarios which you can “like”. What useful outcome, you may ask. Just letting the world know more about me, they will say. Who wants to know, I ask. Profile stalkers and people who have crushes on them, I answer myself.

7. Professor Lykeet’s Research Group on Facebook

I will never understand this. Just when I was getting convinced that this Professor in a leading American University was just the person I’d like to work with, I noticed in the corner of his official Research Group website – a smallish chicklet urging me to like his work, on Facebook! I have not gone back to that page ever since.

6. Happy Birthday Mommy

Why would people want to wish their parents on Facebook when:

They must have met them just 2 minutes ago, in all probability when the parent was yelling at them to get off Facebook.

They live together and the whole world knows about it.

The parent in question never checks their Facebook account and has to be notified by the son/daughter that they have been wished on Facebook.

Here is a sample:

The extent people go to show their parental love.

5. Wilting crops and dying fish

It is best that I do not get started on this. Just five words – “I don’t give a damn”.

6. Daily Horoscope

The most irritating application people can ever use. These always talk about lost love or your waiting soul mate. And they flood your wall. Just so people using it get on your nerves to the largest extent possible, they tag you too. So you get “Warne’s Fire Ball” or “Astrologer Anita’s Prophesy” and get your very own photo of a “Friendship Tournament” – your “best friend” being the person who has “liked” your updates the most.

5. Arbitrary Statuses

People love to kindle your curiosity. Gossip gets around faster that way. What better way to do it than a random meaningless status update that does not make sense to anyone? Typical examples:

“Eeeee”

“Brrrr…”

“So happy!”

Sure comment fetchers, these.

4. The Update Glut

Certainly you know that person who has to keep updating all his life’s happening? From traffic in Thiruvanmiyur to a dead rat on their terrace, the world should know what’s up with them. In the case of a very un-happening day, they resort to animated gif images and slightly funny YouTube videos to keep the waiting crowd updated.

3. Hokey-Pokey

What these pokes signify will remain an eternal mystery to me. Maybe I am not sophisticated enough to understand their relevance. The last time I saw people poking each other was on Love Aaj Kal. I did think it was cute, but I don’t seem to be able to draw parallels between all the anonymous pokes I get and what Imtiaz Ali showed me. Anyway, I try to play along and poke the pokers I know.

2. Reply S’il-Vous-Plait

This was one of the things I liked about Facebook. Liked. Of late, people start an event for any reason! These should drive home my point:

1. E-mail? What’s e-mail?

I cannot imagine not opening my Gmail account the first thing when I come online. I thought this was normal behavior, until I started spotting conversations like these with increasing frequency:

Attention seeking disorder? But isn’t Facebook’s raison-d’etre to pander to attention seekers? Please enlighten me, you Facebook folks!

Mr. Right = Mr. Impossible?

Now that a cousin has declared that he has taken up atheism and will not be specific about even the nationality of the girl he is going to marry, my Mom has come to believe that it is incumbent upon her to prevent me from doing the same. Of late, she grabs every opportunity to emphasize her stand, especially when I comment within her earshot that I find some guy cute.  A typical conversation goes like this:

En di, US laam pona edhavadhu vella kaarana love pannida maata la?

Pona pathukalam Ma.

Adhuku illa, avanoda culture laam namaku othu varadhu. Enna dhaan love pannalum Indian payanaa pathu love pannu!

Seri Ma.

Indian na kuda, non-veg illama pathuko. Aparam unaku dhaan kashtam. Naa solradha soliten.

Hmm seri.

Pinna Brahmin payan dhaan. Tamil payana irundha dhaan relatives oda laam nanna pazhaga mudiyum. Unakum Hindi laam dhaan onnum theriyadhe!

Seri!

Iyer na best di. Thatha paati laam onnum solla maata! Elders blessing romba important in life!

Hmm.

Mukyama, love panrathuku minadiya gothram ketudu di! Ore gothram na anna mari, theriyum la!

Yeah ok.

Apdiye vathima na romba sandhosham. Vadama kuda ok…aana…vathima va pathukoyen…

Whew, seri.

Payan poorvigam very important! Kumbakonam, Thanjavur elaam romba aacharam di.

Neeye payana pathuden Ma, pesaama.

Naan dhaan paaka poren! Aanalum love pana pora nu vechukoyen, idhelaam just consider.

So much for giving me the choice and the freedom to love someone!

As an extrapolation, here is a flowchart of how I should go about (or how my Mom will go about) choosing a groom for me.

No surprise if I die a spinster, eh?

It all began…

…when I googled Sudhish Kamath a couple of years ago. I loved his humour and wanted to see how he looked. My curiosity was piqued even more when one of my classmates in Alliance Française was his colleague at The Hindu! To see her answer his calls and talk to him led me to imagine him to be some kind of a Chandler Bing. So yeah, I googled him. Only to find his blog. And the “He says, She says” column. And I was hooked. I meticulously stalked Textual Overtones. Read many of his reviews over and over. As apparent as it seems, I had a major crush on him. This went on for quite a few months by which time he started making That Four Letter Word. His blog was not updated for a long time and his reviews only occasionally appeared in The Cinema Plus. It was natural that I lost interest and gave up stalking his blog.

Fast forward to when Google Buzz was introduced. I was interning in IIT that summer, along with a few guys from NIT-Trichy. I always had Gmail open along with MATLAB. It so happened that a classmate had posted the famous Deviance post from Chutneycase on gBuzz. I warily opened it to get rid of the unread count. I ended up reading Coconut Chutney for the next few hours. And again, my curiosity was piqued. Who was this girl? She must be 20-ish. She wrote smart. She did not sound wannabe. And importantly, her writing had an earnest feel to it. After a few google searches, I got to know more about her identity. From then on, Chutneycase was placed beside Sudhish’s blog in the Lady Kedi hall of fame. I showed the NIT guys the blog. In return, one of them said he had come across a better blog. Better than Chutneycase? Bah! I scoffed. What’s it called, I asked him. “It’s called…umm…wait, I’d rather send you the link.” It turned out to be Krish Ashok.

Unlike what you may expect, I was not much impressed by what he wrote when I first saw his blog. I did not like its name. For me jalsa and jilpa were words used by KD boys. Add gilma and matter to it and you could remotely empathize why I did not like what I saw. Moreover, his latest post then was “Kentucky Fried Creation”, which I thought was too long, too sarcastic and too full of pictures. I made the mistake of judging him by that one post. After a few months, I came across Jalscifi on Facebook. And after that, I almost deified Krish Ashok. I suggested anyone who’d listen to me to read his blog. I even showed my Mom what he wrote about his wedding (and she was not pleased). What started out as adulation morphed into a full fledged crush once he started Parodesy Noise. I know he is over 30. I know he is happily married. I know that he doesn’t even know that I exist. But then, a crush is a crush. Happens a lot when you have never had a boyfriend.

Before I digress further, I should probably account for why I took up blogging. It’s simply because I got bored of stalking other people’s blogs. Partly because I don’t know how good, or how bad I am at doing this. Maybe Lady Kedi will be read a lot. Maybe she’ll give up later. Hypothetical thoughts apart, there are three people behind the screens who have convinced me that I should blog all the time I kept vacillating. Firstly, low-funda-boy for hyperbolizing my writing skills enough to get me started. And to Karthik, to have always given me the much needed push every time I had a block (which was almost always). The blog name was his suggestion and I would have never named it anything else. Then thanks to Scarecrow, for listening to all my stupid ideas, helping out with the design and for believing I’ll be good at this. Now, just watch this space and wait for KD posts. Lady Kedi will tend to disappoint. Up to you to put up with her!