The 'I'm a Toilet' theory

I'm a toilet.
So are you.

I have this comparison playing around in my head. Sometimes, it makes so much sense, it stinks up my peace. A friend of mine once said that one's bathroom was their second chapel. So true. You're finally relieved and VERY happy. I vaguely remember reading a newspaper article that talked about a study which said that most people find their bathrooms relaxing. And why not?

Consider a bathroom. It's attached to your room. It's solely yours. You're not bored no matter how long you're in there, sitting on the loo, staring at a blue tiled wall in front of you, counting the fishies on it (like I do!). Day-dreams, random lyrics, bits of poetry surface within the comforts of your little bubble. It's your bathroom. YOUR space.

Now, consider a bathroom in your house. One that you share with your family. You walk in and the floor is wet. You sit down and you stare at someone else's towel on the hook. Not two seconds after you settle in, your brother asks for his toothbrush. Before you know it, someone's yelling at you to get the hell out.

Shift focus to the college bathroom. Yes, the one you don't sit on. The one that stinks. The one you can't wait to get out of. The one that has a long queue outside. The one you hate for being so used.

Now let's take a look at the most popular toilet in the country. The one that unites us in spite of the diversity. The Great Indian Public Toilet. Not only do you not want to be inside one, you refuse even to walk anywhere next to it. You would rather risk your life by getting through in between two BMTC buses but you wouldn't go a mile around the public toilet. Bloody over-used stinker of a place, huh?

Now, how is it that we are toilets, you ask?

You let one person inside, he is happy, you are at your cleanest.

Couple of break-ups later, everyone has an issue. The watery remains of your history and the imminent arrival of a rival constantly irks the one in you.

If you're open to all of the campus, God help you buy a Domex manufacturing unit.

But there is no redemption for the public toilet. None.

The (In)eligible Bachelors by Ruchita Misra

Estimated reading time: 6 hrs (if you are me)

This is one of those books that all girls can generally relate to. It makes you laugh, cover to cover, and it is a good, light read and is very suitable for train journeys. It's a reasonably good story but flawed somewhat. There are some typos here and there in the book and the confusion between "lose" and "loose" sticks out sorely. 

I'll give it to you that it is absolutely hilarious but at some level, the story seems unreal. One cannot exactly connect to it. You are engaged in the flow of the story but there is no intensity in it. 

One of the things that it clearly depicts is the drama and desperation of the arranged marriage obsessed Indian mother, and of course, love can be found and one can live happily ever after. Essentially, this book fulfills the requirement to be deemed as chick-lit. It makes you laugh and it gives you hope. Most of us may wind up with Anshuman but we'll all find our Aditya :) And for those of you who don't get the analogy, watch Jab We Met!

Cheers. 

Dark Grace and Painful Perfection

When you're done watching Black Swan, you'll feel the need to shake your head for a couple of seconds to try and re-arrange the mess inside. While the story is, in fact, very multi-layered and meaningful, the narrative keeps confusing you and throwing you off track. Whether the story was meant to be told in a chaotic manner, one cannot tell but it is quite difficult story for a lay-person to digest.

More important than the structure of the story is the message that the film is trying to give. Let's first go through the story of The Swan Lake, for those of you who don't know. This ballet that Natalie Portman is supposed to perform, is about a princess trapped in the body of a swan. She can only be released by love and this "love" is in the form of a prince. Unfortunately, the evil twin sister of the white swan- the black swan, seduces the prince and he ends up falling for her. Heart-broken, the white swan commits suicide, therefore finding freedom in her death.

Portman (as Nina Sayers), is in pursuit of the black swan inside her. She cannot understand how she may be free with her performance and at the same time, be perfect. Through the rest of the movie, she's torn between meeting the demands of her director to bring out a powerful and natural performance and her own obsession for being perfect. We see how the stress takes a toll on her in a series of schizophrenic delusions, where she visualizes her own body being ripped apart in a gruesome and bloody manner.

When you reflect on the movie, you realize that her delusions are results of preceding events that have caused her stress. She is under the impression that her understudy is out to sabotage her role as Swan Queen. The director mentions in between that it is only she who is standing between herself and the performance. She has another delusion wherein she murders the understudy but sees her own face on her.

Eventually, we see that she's stabbed herself. She has literally eliminated herself as the obstacle on her path to glory. She pays with her blood to achieve her perfection. So what is is this story trying to tell us? That we shouldn't push a person to madness and let them handle things their own way? That you'll end up making a lot of enemies, fight off your own mother and other well-wishers in your pursuit of absolute perfection? Is it a comment on the hardships of show business? Or is it a parallel to Swan Lake itself? We are our own evil twins, capable of destroying ourselves. What brings us down is the lack of confidence in ourselves, our weaknesses and the way we easily give in to societal pressure.

The fact that it is complicated enough to make room for multiple interpretations deems it eligible to be a piece of art. But the drawback is that the complexity of the plot has resulted in a somewhat unclear narration of the story.

In case you're in the mood to introspect and give your mind some work, this movie is worth watching. If you're sensitive to blood, it's not going to be a very pleasant movie to watch!

Consumerism: Lifeu Ishtene!

Once upon a time, when softee ice-creams used to cost all of five bucks, I remember working hard at coaxing my dad into taking me to the ice-cream parlour near my place, so I could have one on my jobless Saturday evenings. I remember begging and pleading and even pulling his cheeks sometimes. Then, we'd go- mom, dad, bro and me, four of us on one bike!

I don't remember how we grew up or why we stopped having softee ice-creams. I don't remember the changing prices. Today, we walk into a showroom on a whim, to maybe buy a new TV and we end up buying a washing machine and a refrigerator instead. Over-priced shopping websites lure you with "vouchers" and "coupon codes" and in ten minutes, you're spending money you don't even have. Everywhere you go, all you have to do is swipe, or enter a little pin code. When you're not handing over cash, it doesn't even feel like you're spending it!

Today, I was coming back home from yet another pointless shopping trip. I was dazed, to be honest. There was really nothing going on in my head. Just as I was reaching home, I saw a little family on a TVS 50. Oh my God, it still exists, I thought, when the noisy vehicle jerked to a halt across the road from me. The little girl standing in the front may have been about 6 years old. She was chubby and cute, and she was wearing a glittery little dress that made her look sparkly under the dim street light. The father had undertaken the Herculean mission of kicking the scooter back to life while the mother sat behind him saying "Bye, Chinni!", every time the engine seemed to work. Each time the mother waved good-bye, as if to leave the girl and go away, the child burst into peals of laughter, understanding their little joke.

There I was, witnessing a family on a TVS 50. I don't know how perfect they actually are, but at that moment, there was excitement, there was love and there was a bonding between them. An Indian middle class family with so many things left to buy...

The last time I had spoken to my father, it was about the matter of a new pair of shoes. The time before that, it was about the elevator service-man's fee, the time before that was about the new laptop, the time before that was about car driving lessons. I realized somehow that money had clogged our system. I haven't TALKED to my dad in ages!

Well, the softee ice-cream is probably all I really want in life. It costs ten bucks now but I want my dad to refuse it to me, just so I can pull his cheeks again and take him ALL the way to that ice-cream parlour.

REVOLUTION 2020 by Chetan Bhagat- Worth a read? Find out.

Chetan's 5th book and it's as good as ever! I took exactly 5 hours and 45 minutes to finish it (with a lunch break, loo break, call-your-sweetheart break and a call your-sweetheart-again break).

We're all pretty familiar with the way he writes- first person narrative, extremely funny and a not-so-flowery language. Me being me, I felt the urge to underline several lines in this book but did not do so because I did not want to put the book down to fetch a pencil. This isn't his own story and he's simply narrating someone else's. He was just okay when he did that in One Night @ the Call Center, I could connect better with The 3 Mistakes of My Life, but Revolution 2020 was completely magnetic! I just kept reading and reading and reading!

There are many elements in the story that make it realistic. Being a veteran love guru, I know it takes just about 3 hours to narrate a sad love story. Which is true in the case of this book- the story starts at 3 AM and finish at 6. I also know that the narrator, especially if it is a guy, doesn't get into too many details and that is where we see Chetan's skill as a writer. He keeps the flow going, supplies necessary details without over-doing it. He has really put himself in the head of his character and has really done his research on Varanasi very well.

Just one sentence in the entire book seemed a tad bit unrealistic: on page 170, Mr. Bhagat, you write "She wore a mauve chikan salwar-kameez". Probably the only error in the whole book, according to me! I'm not quite sure a guy would KNOW what mauve is, let alone recognize or acknowledge it!

There are many other things that I want to talk about but I'll pick out only two other lines. 

Page 219, "She sensed the tension in me." Now, given the context and where Aarti's head is located, you don't want to use that sentence when a slightly pervy urban teen is reading it!

And I love the way you choose your words: Page 243- "Everyone spoke highly of the stupid pink paper" is extraordinarily funny. It completely does it's job in telling us how Gopal feels and also eases the tension a little. That's what makes your writing realistic.

There's also a pattern with your books, eh? All of them have numbers in the title: FIVE point someone, ONE night @the call center, THREE mistakes of my life, TWO states, revolution 2020 (hey, come to think of it, I didn't think of cricket at all!). Also, barring the call center story, why do all your books begin with a medical situation? Ambulance, suicide attempt, counsellor and hospital hang-overs? That's it! Why do you have a hospital hang-over?

Oops! My review has turned into a letter for THE Chetan Bhagat now, has it? But then again, people are always more interested in other people's conversations... Other people's lives. That's why most of us like it when Chetan writes his own life stories- how he first fell in love, how he got married and all that. We all enjoy being legitimate voyeurs. You see, nothing keeps us more engaged in a book than details about the writer's cartoon covered underwear or loathing for DisCos.

Even out the numbers between your stories and other people's stories, Mr. Bhagat. We want to know more about YOU. Have your kids asked the famous "where do babies come from" question yet? Did you say belly-button? Tell, no!

Love, 

Smart South Indian Girl you'll never have the chance of falling in love with and who was smart enough not to take engineering and THEN become something else.

P.S, the name is Abhineeta.