Sunday, April 15, 2007

The Big Fat Indian Wedding

Celebrity weddings have always made big news. I have never understood people's obsession with the setups, the invitees, the dresses, the rings, which champagne was used, how many coloured flowers were there, what size were the biceps of the bodyguards and how many jobless mindless reporters were present to make it look like a fish market.

I mean face it people, you all may dream about it, but exactly 0.0000000034% of you will actually get to be a part of these weddings ... in any role whatsoever. And that's if you count the reporters as well. The rest of you will have those typical weddings where you try to be different by choosing that unique brownish red coloured cards and the taj mahal styling tents (WoW!). Yet exactly 67.8% of the people i know are just so stuck up on that Abhishek Bachchan - Aishwarya Rai wedding like it was theirs !!! Even my dad, who hardly watches anything substantial on television, was glued to the screen when the low down on the marriage was coming.

I can somewhat understand people's obsession with this couple ... after all u have a woman who probably appears in the wet dreams of most of the male population of this sex starved country and then this dude who's the son of the greatest actor who ever lived on the Indian silver screen (that's all the credit that i'm willing to give him so far... and oh well he acts O.K. so far). But what I just can't understand, is a half an hour special on the marriage ... on prime time television on the top Hindi news .. and yeah I'd like to repeat here ... NEWS channel !!!

The special covered the following events in very shallow detail :
- The groom's dad went to some famous temple to ask god for blessings for the new couple ... and he gave a wedding card .. yes I'd like to bold it again ... wedding card ... to God.
Makes you really wonder ... is god stupid ? I mean if he is the God then he must know that the wedding's going on and wouldn't really be needed to be invited for the wedding ! Quite clearly it's a very juvenile stunt for the cameras .. but hey ! who said common sense was in surplus nowadays !
- Who all the family is inviting and who all are the unluckiest people on the planet to have not been invited for the wedding. I mean Jeeez ! Was the girl who had cancer and then got raped at a hospital in Mumbai really so unimportant and real that they had to put this shit in the slot instead of her ? And It's obvious that the crippling electricity shortages, the farmers' suicides and the whole north east and eastern part of the country which is on the verge of a civil war is really not that consequential as compared to the fact that Shahrukh Khan is probably (mind it .. it's not confirmed .. it's just speculation) not invited for the wedding.
- Some 500 cops will be stationed around the venue.
Now that just infuriates me. I just think ... if these 500 cops could be actually patrolling a city ... and if they would actually be doing their job instead of siphoning money some way or the other to feed their already gargantuan bellies, then the crime in the city would be so much lesser. But then .. I'm just dreaming.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was the fact that this shit was coming on prime time national news. Damn ! I hope they kill some politician soon to get this crap off the air !

What's even worse .. i mean what takes the cake .. is that most people in the country of 1.2 billion people ... have nothing better to think about / talk about / watch / etc.

Fascinating !

I'm off to watch some movie now.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Drive me Crazy

With the latest traffic laws coming into enforcement one really has to wonder what the next set are going to be like. Already talking on the handsfree and smoking while driving are prohibited. This really makes me question how capable or incapable do the law makers actually consider the drivers to be !

I mean the logic behind the handsfree is that there is too much distraction because of it. So let's see ... hmm... i wanna call Santa Claus ... so I'll pick up my phone ... look up on the road .. quickly unlock it and bring up the names starting with 'S' (since most people can do these things without actually looking at the phone) ... look down and confirm if it's on 'S' .. then get back to looking on the road ... then scroll down on the phone and in my memory ... then glimpse down on the phone to confirm if I'm pointing at the right number, then click 'dial' while looking up and then talk away and make my wishes and tell him what a nice boy i've been and that i've been keeping the toilet seat up ... all while having my eyes on the road !!!
All in all ... that musta taken me about 2-3 seconds max of focussing on the phone and not on the road and the traffic. But then ofcourse, one could give a very valid argument that the 2-3 seconds distraction could actually mean the difference between life and death. But then there are so many other things that can cause distractions for that crucial time !!! --- For starters, passengers should be banned from indulging in any kind of conversations with the driver .. even if it includes giving directions as such acoustic vibrations and distortions could mess with the driver's head and cause a pile up as long as the wall of china. Babies should be a strict no no as the driver may be forced to tend to the baby or the child while in the middle of the mission critical process called driving. Besides the cute toddlers may actually tempt the driver to look at them and smile thus causing a catastrophe. Basically, passengers of any kind should just be banned as anything they do (for example talk on the phone to a third person or sing) may cause a disturbance and thus a distraction for the driver.
Next, advertisements in the form of big boards, etc. should be banned as the pictures and the messages actually tempt the driver to look away from the road and focus on them thus again causing the 2-3 seconds fatal distraction.
Being a guy, I would also like to suggest to the courts to prohibit good looking women from walking on the sidewalks or anywhere in the proximities of 'driving zones' as they definitely take focus away from the road and life in general and also risk being picked up by the rapist gangs that patrol the roads more often than the cops.
... and that was just from the handsfree bit !!!

Smoking and driving is another story. I would just like to rest my argument with the fact that music systems should be banned as they have little buttons which require the driver (at times) to leave one hand from the steering wheel (watch out !) and press 'em. Also, all those guys who drive vehicles should have their balls cut off as they have a tendency to start itching at the wrong times and the wrong places and may, again, distract the driver's hands to indulge in some 'unhealthy activities'.

What I'm basically trying to drive at, is the fact that the courts should not insult the intelligence of the population as a whole and should consider them human beings with normally developed brains which are capable of handling minimal tasks simultaneously.

Secondly, they authorities should actually take a driving test for people rather than handing them out like chocolates for Rs. 500 a piece thus ensuring that the person would have enough cognitive abilities to manage chewing with the mouth closed at the same time.

The rest should be trusted upon free will and self regulation which generally rides on substantial rationality with a little acceptable exceptions without which the world would be a boring place and the car insurance companies would go bankrupt.