Let's get Real, Let's Vote

Welcome to the reality, the new reality of vote. Who’s the Best dancer? Who’s the best singer? Who’s the best cook? Who should stay on the show? Who should go? Who should get the award and who shouldn’t. Who should make you cry or laugh? Should the terrorists be punished or let go? Do you think the girl was raped or is she framing the popular guy? Should kissing scenes be allowed in Hindi movies or not? Hell, who will win maximum votes in the upcoming election? Send in your votes to *****. You may also win a prize if your silly, nonsensical biased opinion gets maximum votes. It doesn’t get any worst than this.

Voting on TV shows, in newspapers, on radio by far beats every other in thing or talk of the town. Poor Britney. Swinging the other way too couldn’t get her as much Indian attention that voting gets. After the daughter in law and mother in law serials anything that has the Indian public’s attention are shows which involve voting. Specially the singing and dancing ones. They have more drama queens than any other Indian soap.

‘Baa’ can get as old as she can. Be reborn, travel through time; very soon undertake an intergalactic space adventure to see if she has any great grand children in any other galaxy, ‘to boldly go where no grandma has ever gone before’. But at the end she isn’t real right?

In ‘reality’ she could possibly be 20 years younger to the character she portrays in the serial. They’ve even started voting contests to decide which character can stay and how the story should go ahead. That saves the director, casting director and the writer a lot of trouble. They can spend this time in searching for more places that supply glycerin since there are many other serials using it and new channels with new series are coming up everyday, or more college going or even school going girls to play daughters, sisters, daughter in laws. These could get pregnant at some point in the serial although getting them pregnant in reality is considered an offence.

Here are some examples that get votes coming in like a flood:

‘Meri maa last ek mahine se nange paav ghar se mandir chalke jaa rahi hai. Agar aap chahte hai ki unka aur aapka beta yeh competition jeete toh vote kijiye. Vote karne ke liye …..Shayad bhagwan unki prarthana sun le aur mujhe number one bana de’.

‘Agar aapko lagta hai ki meri (out of tune) awaz ne aapko khush kiya hai toh mujhe danger zone se bachaaye, vote karein’. ‘Sirf usse hi vote kijiye joh deserve karta hai (and that’s me).’

‘The girl was raped and brutally killed while everyone stood and watched. Do you think the Indian public is apathetic? Send your views at….’

‘Do you think the court was right in punishing Mr. XYZ who’s considered a terrorist? SMS Y or N space your NAME to ….’

However the men, women, children, all in all, the people in the reality shows cry for real or at least we think so. Ailing grannies and grandpa’s dragged from their house to the stage, really busy parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, even neighbors who have nothing to do with the contestant come and cheer for them and definitely cry a lot for them. Even the judges shed those occasional crocodile tears. The able but otherwise jobless judges who are made to look like monkeys (no offence to the Australian team) cant do anything but sulk about the whole thing and wonder what kind of talent is emerging out of these shows.

The midnight rant

1:30 am. Me and two of my friends leaning against our bikes and chatting as the rest of the world is in a lights out mode. One of them, someone whom I’ve come to know recently, is as good with the smokes as with his machines. As he lights up another one I look at him and wonder how the only thing that I’d love to see that smoke come out of would be my motorcycle’s exhaust and not my mouth/nose. Then again given the recent emission norms and my inclination towards ‘mother earth’ I feel this one’s lot less polluting and try to stay away from the area of its coverage.

The conversation is about bikes …well it’s always been that. People find it hard to understand how a bunch of guys gang up till late nights and talk about machines that just take them from one place to another and are a monthly expenditure in most cases. Girlfriends are jealous and surprised but not worried , that their guy runs away to meet another guy not because he swings the other way but because he wants to discuss how his bike swings the other way when accelerated too hard. They end up feeling neglected due to the lack of SMS and phone calls that their boyfriends would otherwise die to send or make.

We rant and curse the motorcycle makers for not making an all round bike. Though it’s a good strategy to make a bike that looks good and just about that so that the ‘Indian’ masses (who these vendors count as fools who judge a book by its cover and are right to a certain extent) will eventually buy it without worrying about how it performs, it's dampening the enthusiasm of guys who want their bike to do a lot more besides looking good.

We talk about this bike that we’re really interested in buying. However there is no clear opinion on the performance front and hence we are confused as to how it will perform. One of us who already has a ‘faster’ bike suggests that we go for the bike that he has and he swears by it. We scratch our heads, butts and in some cases armpits too indicating we are not that convinced about it. After much brainstorming, we come to a point that we should wait for the performance figures to come out and then do some planning.

The car makers have realized that there is a breed of buyers who want cars that perform when pushed to their limits and not just give GOOD mileage and this has seen the advent of the likes of the Hondas, The GMs, The Skodas and so on. Civic, Octavia, Swift, even the good ol' fiat premier padmini performs. However the same has not translated to the bike world. The country hasn't witnessed anything like it after the Yamaha RD 350 and the RX 100. The current lot seems to perform, they have the bhp and they have the cc's too. However they lack the design, the aerodynamics, and the flare that their performing four wheeler contemporaries bring with them. The one's that have managed to look good have done just about that.

The confusion these days is not whether I’m in love with a particular girl or whether I’m in love with my current girlfriend. We already have that figured out. Somehow the new machines that the country is witnessing lately has put us motorcycle enthusiasts in a lot of confusion. One is a blonde the other is a brain. One has the looks the other has the performance. Like the perfect girl, we’re not yet close to the perfect bike in terms of our standards.