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He dresses like a gay biker boy from the 1970s. He spouts enough annoying, inane clichés about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to cure any seasoned insomniac. Oh, and if you look closely you can see the exact line where his foundation ends and his neck begins.

So what’s the deal with Shaktiman? Did someone wake up after years in cold storage and said, “Hey, you know what? Kids are stupid.”

I caught an episode the other day. Get this. Bad guy with bad wig (that might as well be a placard saying ‘Note: this is bad guy’) is doing something bad to someone.
Shaktiman comes to the rescue. Oh damn. There’s still fifteen minutes on the clock before the next programme starts. Never mind, Shaktibaby looks like he got a plan. He stands there in front of the villain, hands firmly placed on his hips. I’m thinking, maybe he’s going to start shaking to ‘Shake your groove thing’.

Instead, he starts rambling for fourteen minutes about how the villain is evil and how he is here to stop him. Yup. One line and fourteen minutes worth of different interpretations. Oh lucky, lucky me.

Oh and the best part is, the villain stands right there and LISTENS quietly. Hey dumb ass, Shaktiman’s a bit busy right now, run for it, you ninny.

Then Shaktiman throws some bad special effects at villain. Villain dodges. Laughs wicked laugh (So if you had any doubts, now you KNOW he’s the bad guy). Shaktiman throws another poorly designed special effect at him. Shaktiman wins.

Is it over? Ha! You wish. Shaktiman has another ‘important’ message to give. This time to the viewers (huh?). So he begins delivering another monotonous boring speech, while staring deeply into the camera, looking as if his toilet hasn’t been flushed in a while. It’s a wonder his jaw hasn’t dislocated with all that yapping.

Someone just informed me that apparently a kid somewhere decided to ape Shaktiman and jumped off a building in an attempt to fly. An excellent idea. The next time the show airs, I think I'll follow suit.

Reality Check

The government has banned child labour. Bravo. Problem solved. Now the lives of underaged exploited kids will miraculously improve and they’ll all hold hands and merrily skip together over a rainbow, right? Well, our government seems to think so.

I’m not condoning child labour. But I am condemning the way we chose to eradicate it. Now, forcing an innocent small child to slave in a bottle factory or zari workshop is deplorable. And those children need to be rescued. But what about the helpless tea boy whose family of nine back home in Bihar desperately depend on his pitiful income for survival? And who cares about those shy, well mannered little boys on Worli sea face who sell packaged water and biscuits to pay for their school fees?

Quite a few households keep young children off the street by employing them to run errands. And educate them too. I take it this is wrong?

So what is to become of all these child laborers now that they’re free from the shackles of employment? I suppose the government thinks they can kiss away their boo-boos?
By stopping them from working, their problems only increase further. The tea boy and the domestic workers are now homeless. And penniless too. Good job, politicians. You’ve definitely got my vote now.

If a child is beaten, abused, overworked, underpaid, stopped from going to school, take action immediately. But if a healthy teenager wants to pay his school fees by earning a little extra income doing odd jobs, let him.

This topic is highly complex. And considering the background I come from, maybe I’m not sensitive enough to fully understand it. If anyone wants to add their two cents in, please do.

Misunderstood

I speak on behalf of my people. We Parsis, have a serious axe to grind. (After disinfecting it first, of course.)

For some unfathomably strange reason, we’ve been falsely accused of being ‘eccentric’.

Sigh. The world couldn’t be more misinformed. We’re perfectly normal, thank you very much. We just like things to be very, very, very clean. And just because an average sized bottle of Dettol has practically become an honorary part of our anatomy, we’re labelled ‘bizarre’.

Sure we whip it out every so often and meticulously clean the seats in a long distance, moving train using Bisleri water. And sometimes even the people sitting on those seats. But come on, is it so unnatural to want to improve the world by cleaning it up first?

Oh, contrary to popular belief, we certainly do not sterilise plastic spoons in boiling water before throwing them away. Chuhh. We simply wipe it with a cotton swap lightly dipped in a combination of one part ammonia, two parts water.

All this nonsense about us suffering from bouts of obsessive compulsive disorders is truly laughable. What’s so obsessive about aligning all straight objects so that they are placed perpendicular or parallel to the next object in ascending or descending order? Doesn’t everybody?

Here’s another thing. We certainly are not over obsessed with our vehicles. Just because someone lovingly nicknames his 1988 Honda motorbike, ‘Russi’ is no cause for concern. Especially since his neighbour named her 1976 Fiat, ‘Lord Louis Carrington Bradford III’.

And just because ‘Russi’s’ birthday is celebrated with much pomp, and his ‘father’ tucks him into bed every night in their third floor living room after singing him a lullaby, it doesn’t make him ‘eccentric’ in anyway.

Also, the rumour that a certain Mrs Talati throws rose water at everybody who visits her, to avoid bad auras from entering her home, is definitely untrue. What actually happens is she waves an egg over their heads in counter clockwise motion. See, don’t you feel silly now?

Well, there you go. I think I’ve firmly established the notion that we’re just ordinary people like you. We just happen to have quaint little quirks that are quite endearing, really.

And if we weren’t around, who’d make you laugh, eh?

Anyone for takeout?

I must confess, the joys of cooking remain a mystery to me. The kitchen is an unknown, virgin territory that I’m almost afraid to explore. The extent of my ignorance is reflected in the considerable amount of time it would take me to confidently identify a spatula from a back scratcher. Come to think of it, I’m impressed I even know the word, ‘spatula’.

To make matters worse, I’m married.

Needless to say, my lack of culinary skills, have earned me quite a reputation. The shudders, the sighs and even the occasional gasps continue to haunt me regularly at family reunions and dinner parties.

From the outright, ‘But beta, what do you feed your husband?’ to the more subtle, ‘Oh, you like this dish? All you have to do is, mix one teaspoon of oil, chopped up some onions, add a tablespoon of…wait, why aren’t you taking this down?’

My husband, on the other hand, is at the receiving end of countless sympathies, back pats and ‘there there’s’. Never mind, that unlike me, the man actually knows where the kitchen is.

It almost seems like I’ve betrayed my sex. Given women, especially married women, a bad name. I am cursed. With Kitchen phobia, if you please.

I’m told cooking is a woman’s art. The kitchen, her domain. One is incomplete without the other. I might try and argue that the greatest chefs in the world belong to the masculine gender. But I might as well place one arm on my waist and sing ‘I is a big, old teapot’, before I can get someone to agree.

So what does one do? Do I sell out and sheepishly take cooking lessons in my bid to feed my supposedly starving husband? Or do I stand firm and refuse to be a stereotypical wife?

Before you answer that, allow me to elaborate on my one and only cooking experience.

Heat up some oil in the frying pan. Oh wait, not hair oil. The other kind. Phew, olive oil works both ways. Now, gently crack an egg. Oh and next time, crack the shell outside the pan. What the heck, maybe crunchy eggs taste good.

Oops. Forgot the milk. Can I add it now? Can I be a little exotic and add a few cashew nuts, instead? How about strips of coconut? Do eggs turn black before they turn soft, honey yellow? Do I now scrape it off the pan with a ‘spatula’ (AHA!)? Why is there smoke everywhere?

Hmmmm. Anyone wants to order idlis, instead?

Some people are born to cook. Others serve as ready and willing eaters. I belong to the latter half.

My husband, bless him, wouldn’t want it any other way.

No Assembly Required

It started out like any ordinary day. When suddenly, my brain began to furiously pound against my skull. Desperately seeking a hole (ooohhhh found it) and ran off screaming hysterically.

My boss just called a meeting.

Doom. Dooooooooooooom. There go three hours of my life. Three hours that, at the end of it, will seem more like three decades worth of hour glasses have been flipped over. Damn. I didn’t even bring my nail file to work today. Guess that means I’m stuck counting my toe nails again.

And so it starts. Blah blah blah…point number 1….(hehehehehe he said number one)…..we need to move on to the next level…take the creative leap….blah blah number two (hehehehehe stoppit you’re killing me) paradigm shift…macro vision….micro vision…x-ray vision…

We’ve heard it all before. But anal boss insists on repeating it just one more time. Possibly to see how long he can drone on for till someone finally cracks, jumps up on the table and tries to drown himself in a glass of water. And we have a winnnahhh…..

I mean, how brutally teased and abused as a child do you have to be, to subject six perfectly innocent copywriters (If you don’t count us sexually violating Myrtle the stuffed penguin with Bruce the inflated whale and filming it all on tape) to such a perverse kind of torture.

How blind do you have to be to not see the dull, glazed eyes and growing puddles of drool on the floor?

My brain deprived boss, however is oblivious. He animatedly launches into a tirade of forceful gestures and a passionately dull (yes, yes, there is such a thing) speech.

Oh crap…why is he looking at me…look somewhere else…quick no no …don’t make eye contact…yikes…too late.

“Yes, Diana...what do you think?”

Quick…think of a suitably safe answer….

Er…pink nail polish should be abolished? Someday sushi will replace sex? I was a tea pot in my previous life which explains my rather generous behind?

What in God’s name is he talking about?

Dear God, kindly grant me the power to surreptitiously evaporate into thin air and sneak out through a crack in the door. That’ll be all. Thank you. Oh and throw in a nice golden tan too while you’re at it.

His head is bobbing up and down violently….maybe I should just say yes before I get hypnotized and start singing hymns laden with sexual innuendos.

‘Er…yyyyyes?’

BAAM. He violently slams the table in ecstasy. “There you go…that’s the spirit…blah blah blah”

Oh goody…does this mean I get a raise…or better still…a nail file?