My Articles (contd...)

Midnight’s Children?

Some lives are connected in a way that scarcely meets the eye. Infact these ways rarely see the light of the day or are seen by those not directly connected to the lives in question. The connection is not as complex as the last sentence suggests. It is actually far more complex than that. At times the connection is so peculiar that one of the parties concerned: a connectee, himself is unaware of the bond.

But the tie is very much there, intertwining the two destinies like a twisted pair cable: one around the other and the other round the one. This was a good opporunity for using some of my newly acquired(?) French: but having had the thought after putting that down (an afterthought?), I will say it now- one around the other and vice-versa. Voila!! (That’s two!!!). Take for example, your run of the mill The Prince and the Pauper kind of stories. This is the case of a bilateral, bidirectional and hence bijective kind of a connection where each is influenced by the other. Such cases are full of poetic justice in the sense that both parties have the consolation of having caused exactly the same amount of distress to the other. Being such a hideous concept and above all having a romantic edge to it, the subject has been dealt with in considerable and- one might add- laboured detail by Bollywood and other sources of infallible knowledge.

Carrying the sense of poetic justice, described at the beginning of this article, a little forward, we shall discuss the other twin of the bijective connection. Decidedly distressing and poignantly picturesque, such a connection is not the comfortable symbiosis characterized by its twin. It is quite a parasitic relationship in which the carrier is always under attack by the vector. And the sinister part is that the vector has no idea of what it is doing to the carrier. Usually the vector is unaware of the existence of the carrier.

I hear voices questioning the veracity of the above statement. The objective “How can A exploit B and be unaware of B’s existence?”, the intellectual “This is clearly a contradiction: check your premises”, the factual “The guys hopping mad”, the sympathetic, “One would have thought such diseases affect only the genius. Poor guy, he could barely scrape past being classified a retard.” Voices as these frequently cloud out the truth, but not this time. Truth shall prevail. It will come out like the sun before or after the storm, I forget which. Not that it has any bearing on the fact that truth will infact be known.

Somebody once said, “A picture is worth a thousand words” (my art teacher did have a couple of thousands of not so glowing words about the pictures I used to draw: but that’s beside the point) and accordingly I am going to give you a picture where such a relationship does exist. Yes, ye of little faith, open your eyes and see the light. As a perfect example of this relatoinship where one party while being unaware of the other’s existence, not only harms it but almost drives it to the point of extinction, I present Salman “Shirtless” Khan and your truly. Hush! Followed by guffaws. Now indignation. “I never heard such rot before.” “Salman wouldn’t even know if this bugger exists.” “Bloody name droppping @#$#@$.” To this I only have to say Q.E.D. This is exactly the point I was trying to make. I do not contest the fact that bare bodied Khan is not aware of the entry in the municipal records that announces the arrival of my being in God’s world. (It would seem not being a black buck or a pedestrian on the streets of Mumbai has its advantages.) I merely state that despite his apparent and obvious ignorance of the existence of the apple of my mother’s eye, S.K. spares no trouble- including blank calls, black eyes, and dire consequences, to ruin my love life. Silence, stunned but shorter this time, and laughter, much louder than before. “Salman! Does he have a dearth of women that he would consider inrerfering with this non-entity’s life?” “I am waiting…” “Yeah right! And my Dad’s superman: only he wears the underwear inside.” Giggle giggle, hem hem, haw haw, ha ha, HA HA…

To this, like before, I can only say, exactly my point! Does that pedestrian crushing, shirt tearing black buck shooting, obscene mass of muscle have a dearth of silly women? Why the hell does he have to go woo every single female I have eyes on? Sorry about the outburst: just a case of pent up fury forcing its way out.

Lets look at it objectively. Perhaps some explanation is in order too.

Cut to circa 1994. The year when Indian beauty stepped out from behind the veils and into the limelight to dazzle the world with its sparkling display. The year when yours truly entered his teens. The year when Aishwarya Rai became the queen of the world and and my heart. Not that her newfound kingdom had me enchanted, for I was smitten from the days of “Hi, I am Sanjana. Got another Pepsi?” Slowly but steadily she had come to occupy most of the space in my heart, the rest being devoted to its unromantic circulatory obligations.

I watched with an avid interest as she rejected a whole bunch of suitors, led my Mr Hot Male Sabir Bhatia himself. I knew then, that this was the genuine woman of substance, the lady who was the lamp- of my life. With each passing day I grew more and more confident that she wouldn’t fall for the male equivalent of a brainless bimbo. And then it happened. My goddess fell, and for the worst specimen of the male of the species. You guessed it right, she said “hum dil de chuke sanam” to the simian Salman Khan! The guy who cant talk, cant act, cant do anything right- apart from, may be, take off his shirt (I wouldn’t be too sure of this either, who knows why he doesn’t wear one?), is a disgrace to the human race in general and the male sex in particular.

How could she? My tender heart broke. I cleaned up the space she had once occupied and returned it to its erstwhile owners: the aorta and the cross pulmonary artery. I had loved and lost- and lost to the most hopeless competitor in human history, someone I would consider eligible for a ‘Doodh Bhaat’ in an IQ test.

I put that down to the eccentricities of women. Thought she would have felt protective towards such an obvious moron and hence had taken on the responsibility to help him grow some wits. Of course I was quite off the mark there, as history tells us, and the bugger went on not only to break up with her but also most of her. Since I had already decided to have nothing to do with the affair anymore, I did just that: nothing.

Meanwhile, insignificant developments kept occurring in my life. I had, by this time, successfully cleared the tenth and the twelfth standards and was at the receiving end of a technical education when ‘she’ decided to enter my life. Well she didn’t exactly walk in to my life like the night, to take a cue from Lord Byron, she kind of danced her way into it. For the first time that I saw her was in an ad for some television. I don’t think the ad quite achieved the result it would have, had a less enchanting model been used. I can guarantee that right through the ad none of the male viewership would even remotely have cared what product was being sold- let alone what brand. Katrina Kaif had stolen my heart. She was beauty itself, oozed oomph and had just the right amount of brains- not too much and not too little. She was the love of my life, simple. So much so that I sat through the entire two and odd hours of Boom, to show the world how much torture I was willing to undergo- all for her sake.

As she sashayed down the ramps in numerous fashion shows and appeared as ‘Goddess’ on Channel V, I began to give her the same place in my heart that I had once given to Aishwarya. But then, this was not to be. Sadist Salman of the bulging biceps and busted brains had other ideas. After having completely wrecked my previous romance, he came back to play the villain in my current one. I recently learnt from trusted sources that Mr Spoilsport is going to marry Katrina.

Having presented all the evidence, I submit that the only conclusion that can be drawn from these is that Salman Khan has some kind of a connection with my life. And this connection cannot exactly be termed a genial one. Now I am not sure if Salman is aware of this or has the mental faculties necessary for reaching to this conclusion, but it certainly seems to me that he deliberately picks the women I am attracted to.

However, I have thought of the perfect plan to hand out my own bit of justice. Justice that’s so poetic, it should be sung. Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby profess my love for Mayawati…