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Big brother’s watching!

How dare you dance in Ban­ga­lore? says enraged Big Brother (BB).

If Big Brother’s been watch­ing over us way­ward cit­i­zens in Ban­ga­lore, can he but not make an appear­ance in Chennai?

How dare you kiss in Chen­nai? BB is enraged.

Though I’m not doing much of any of the two, I am still won­der­ing “What next?”

Imag­ine, feel­ing like a crim­i­nal because you kissed your husband/boyfriend on the dance floor? Or that you were caught danc­ing at a club? Caught danc­ing? Cheee!

Wel­come to Chen­nai and Ban­ga­lore. South India’s most hap­pen­ing cities…

I am think­ing of what our cre­ative Big Broth­ers will think of:

- A law that orders us to eat only INDIAN food at restau­rants (i.e. if they don’t pass a law before that ban­ning eat­ing in restau­rants alto­gether so peo­ple start cook­ing at home and spend­ing more time in their well done-up kitchens).

- Or one that does not allow you to hold bf/gf/hubby’s hand while walk­ing in pub­lic places (Though more men will get affected by this! Have you noticed the num­ber of men who hold hands?!). How­ever, I digress. Make sure you walk at least 10 metres away from the per­son you’re with. This will of course, make it impos­si­ble to walk in a place like Forum or Garuda. Even­tu­ally, peo­ple will stop flock­ing there. And then the places will become peace­ful and empty. What a bril­liant idea! I think BB is onto some­thing here.

- Or one that will put sen­sors in our houses so we are back and in bed by 8.30. Good model cit­i­zens, uphold­ing Indian cul­ture, I say. Watch tele­vi­sion. Oops sorry, cable­wal­lah on strike, but I am sure you’ll find another more pro­duc­tive occu­pa­tion. NO, not that though!

- Or one that says you can only make babies on Mon­days, Thurs­days and Sun­days. Actu­ally, make that Thur­days and Sun­days only. (This might also actu­ally bring down our pop­u­la­tion dras­ti­cally ;) Though, as a result of keep­ing every­one home (no kiss­ing, no danc­ing, no eat­ing, no walk­ing around hold­ing hands) peo­ple might just stay at home all the time being good Indian cit­i­zens and clean­ing their cup­boards (any­thing but THAT, folks!). What a scary thought, that.

I am really won­der­ing if any of these smart folk pass­ing these very smart laws are watch­ing music tele­vi­sion these days? I am not sure some of those moves are legal…

So, my fel­low cit­i­zens in Chen­nai and Ban­ga­lore, get your act together. Stop kiss­ing, danc­ing and indulging in other such ‘un-Indian’ activ­i­ties and stick to what you do best. Mak­ing India the world’s most pop­u­lated coun­try of the world in the next 10 years.

For­get the streets and infra­struc­ture going to the dogs. For­get fly­overs which take THREE to FOUR years to build (and con­trac­tors who run away). For­get the road before my freak­ing house, which has been under repair for the last nine months (while peo­ple have deliv­ered mil­lions of babies!).

For­get the fact that it takes the united force of the Big Broth­ers a total of 15 years, thou­sands of panel dis­cus­sions, and sev­eral gov­ern­ment changes to decide what kind of a mass pub­lic sys­tem the city needs. Mean­while, watch the city dis­in­te­grat­ing before your very eyes. It’s harder and harder to get to work (or get any­where for that mat­ter). But don’t worry about these or any other insignif­i­cant mat­ters of life. Law and order issues? No prob­lems! This is India after all. Every­thing take time, no?

What is impor­tant, model Indian cit­i­zens is that you don’t kiss and dance. That is the bot­tom line of all that is IMPORTANT and CRUCIAL to being good cit­i­zens. So fel­low blog­gers (and whoever’s read­ing this) get your lips off your neigh­bour, hus­band, wife or wher­ever they are planted and your legs off the dance floor, please. In fact, don’t even try doing a jig in the bathroom.

Be scared, be very scared. You never know where they’re track­ing you now…

Discussion

9 Responses to “Big brother’s watching!”

  1. I was once asked to get off a park bench by a fat cop in Ban­ga­lore because I was sit­ting with a friend who hap­pened to be a girl! We did get offended but we did not want to put our­selves down to his stan­dard and resist so we qui­etly walked away.

    Another inci­dent in Madu­rai!
    I whis­tle a lot, most of the time I am whistling a song that I have recently heard or songs I’ve heard in the church. My dad used to whis­tle but he gave up after I started :-)
    One morn­ing before we started lec­tures in uni­ver­sity, my fiends and I where stand­ing out­side the class and chat­ting. I as usual was whistling some tune. I did not notice a lady walk past until she called out towards our group. I did not know this lady and thought she must have been a vis­i­tor lost in the cam­pus. A friend next to me went to help her find her way. She send him back say­ing she wanted to speak to me. She was not very polite when I did go meet her.

    Lady: Who are you whistling at?
    Me: Do I have to whis­tle at some­one?
    Lady: What is your name?
    Me: I say my name.
    Lady: Which depart­ment are you from?
    Me: Math­e­mat­ics.
    Lady: Shame on you that some­one study­ing math­e­mat­ics is whistling.
    Me: Guess I should study Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture just to be allowed to whistle.

    I walked away after this and did not bother to speak to her. Later I found out that she was a lec­turer from the Tamil department!

    Posted by stewills | October 5, 2005, 4:57 am
  2. And to think peo­ple in D.C. are post­ing about boink­ing in the men’s room while clubbing…or shirt­less Thurs­days at the Green Lantern. My, my, my.

    Wash­ing­ton Cube Was Here. #40

    Posted by WashingtonCube | October 5, 2005, 11:30 am
  3. sense­less, to say the least!

    Posted by shub | October 5, 2005, 3:11 pm
  4. Is it that bad in Ban­ga­lore? We all look to it as a refuge. In fact, a group of us are mak­ing an escape there Fri­day night. You’re the first per­son I’ve ever heard describ­ing Chen­nai as ‘hap­pen­ing’. It may be hap­pen­ing, but like this arti­cle notes, mostly in all the wrong ways…

    Posted by Prince Roy | October 5, 2005, 10:46 pm
  5. Yeah, and I guess BB doesn’t watch a lot of music television.

    Con­sid­er­ing the law of aver­ages, it makes per­fect sense — keep­ing sex (or any­thing in its name) off the streets (and soci­ety in gen­eral) only increases it’s amounts in the house­hold, lead­ing to the awe­some pro­duc­tiv­ity of our country.

    I’m telling you, the plan­ning com­mi­sion should stop all the “One is Fun” non­sense and spon­sor strip joints accross the country.

    Posted by Doorknob | October 6, 2005, 5:08 am
  6. Its absolutely freaky to see how many guys hold hands. I’ve seen it go to the extent of even bee­ing called cud­dling in some cases. No won­der firangs think we are a very gay friendly society ! :)

    I guess the root of the prob­lem, as with the case of the dance bars, is that BB believes that this knee jerk reac­tion solves the ‘prob­lem’. Traf­fic acci­dents late at night will be non-existent because peo­ple can­not stay up late par­ty­ing now. Yeah ? Tell that to the dum­b­ass lorry dri­ver who rammed into the side of Madras Sap­pers a while ago (or the build­ing next door, I forget).

    This gives the politi­cians and the moral police the feel­ing that yeah, we have solved the prob­lem. In the mean­while, they can con­viniently ignore infra­struc­ture, rape, crime, fat cor­rupt cops and politi­cians, harass­ment and a whole vari­ety of other issues.

    Posted by Vigvg | October 6, 2005, 12:55 pm
  7. Just a test

    Posted by MadMan | October 7, 2005, 7:08 pm
  8. Anita, I have one on sim­i­lar lines for my week­end humor post :-)

    Posted by thennavan | October 8, 2005, 7:11 pm

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. […] We flew out of Madras after work last Fri­day, overnight­ing in Ban­ga­lore. As much as I love the Leela Palace, I have to say stan­dards have notice­ably slipped since last year, while rates have more than dou­bled. I still main­tain that it has the best beds in all of India, indeed of any­where I’ve been in the world, but it’s prob­a­bly not worth the price any­more. And Ban­ga­lore, when did the Moral Author­ity take over? What’s with all your clubs/pubs shut­ting down at 11:00pm? Things are bad enough in Chen­nai; we all look(ed) to Ban­ga­lore as a safe refuge, a place to where we could flee once the sanc­ti­mo­nious hypocrisy became too much to bear. But I guess Anita is right, the mad­ness has infected even the most cos­mopoli­tan city in South India. This made the get­ting to Goa even better. […]

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