Yeah toh bada toing hai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF8k1rSfmp0&feature=related
Res Ipsa Locquitor (Ref: my previous post)

Add that up

Inspired by Bird's blog, I wanted to share my pet peeve ad of recent times: have you seen these Max New York Life Insurance Pension Fund Ads? I've seen two of the series so far. In the first one this (fairly old) guy is being scolded like a kid by a harassed wife, for being out the whole day without telling her where he was. Apparently, the guy was playing truant with his buddies, and went off on a drive from Lucknow to Kanpur or some such. Then the voice-over proclaims that this life of ease will be yours on retirement if you invest in their pension fund.

The second Ad of the series shows the same wife slaving in the kitchen while the hubby sits comfortably on the sofa looking at a wedding card and telling his wife that they will be going to Calcutta soon for a wedding (it turns out this is the wedding of a friend's neighbour's colleague's daughter). The point being, you will have enough time and money to waste/spend after retirement if you invest in the advertised pension fund.

How bloody insensitive!! And yet, how bloody typical..So the man deserves a break after years of slogging it in the office, whereas the woman (who is portrayed in both ads as totally hassled) continues to slave it out at home. Obviously whoever made that ad never even thought about the plight of the woman- in any case, home-makers dont get to retire do they? They dont get to put their feet up, and just relax, because now that the hubby is home all the time, they can share the work-load. Or now that they have enough money, they can hire domestic help. Obviously not, that's downright blasphemous! And so, talking about the life of ease of the man, while at the same time showing the woman as working away is no big deal- it obviously did not even occur to those making the ad.

I was just wondering what the ad would look like if the gender roles were reversed. Make an ad showing the woman chilling in front of the TV, while the man runs around getting dinner set up. And the voice over proclaiming: invest your household money now so that you can chill when your husband retires. I wonder how that ad would be received.

But you know you cant really blame the ad makers. The invisibility of household work has been a constant theme in most feminist critiques of the gender division of labour. We dont accord economic value to house work; we don't have the idea of community property in India; and yes, if you dont cook for your husband, that's a ground for divorce since it amounts to cruelty (I am not saying it, the honourable the Supreme Court is). I am sure many of us come from homes where the Dads chill on Sundays and the Moms end up doing more work, like making special food etc. I also know that most women home makers would feel terribly guilty if they were asked to relax and chill out while the other members of the family took care of the house for a day (or in the case of my Mom, would shudder at the mess she would have to clear up once we were done with playing house!). But to put it up in an ad that talks about leisure for the "man of the house" just shows the level of insensitivity we as a society accord to our moms/wives.

The problem with ads like these, as Bird points out, is that we are socializing the next generation, as well as reinforcing the views of the present one, with the same idea of gender roles and identities. This idea that doing "outside" work, entitles you to privileges, whereas domestic work is just duty; that it is ok for the man to chill when there is work to be done around the house; that since a homemaker has not "worked" her entire life, she has to continue to "not work" even when the man gets to chill...all of this gets doubly reinforced by ads like this. Of course, since we are an enlightened society, we do, by and large, let our women do "outside" work , as well. It's never an either/or situation, though it can be a neither/nor one for the man!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!

Just sent boss mail meant for boy (there should be a law against reply all...really there shud!!)....do you think he'll mind if i steal away early in the morning and send him my resignation when I am safely in antarctica?

The mail is liberally sprinkled with unparliamentary languge...but not the F word thankfully...it is cribby, whinny, come back soon i am bored kind of a mail (boy is currently in blore tormenting a new generation of mooters)...oh and it also cribs abt work boss asked me to do.

In addition, boss has TMI about power politics between my maid and me. He also knows abt a failed matchmaking attempt (you who were one part of it know who you are). It also makes disparging remark abt boss's second in command and calls him by disrespectful nick. I was going to, but thankfully did not, make ultra disparging remark abt our super-boss, which if it were made public, could get me into serious legal trouble...the arundhati roy kind of legal trouble....

On the plus side- i havent mentioned boss, nor cribbed abt him, nor used his nick (tho he knows what it is and from what i hear, doesnt mind). It is also not a particularly mushy mail, so there is very little, though still some, cringe-worthy stuff for outside eyes....

Come to my aid guys... give me suggestions to hack into his account and delete the mail.

the zoya factor

Read the Zoya Factor this weekend (my weekend that is: Tuesday/Wednesday-dont ask, long story!). The book had lots of week points but was very high on the feel good/ warm fuzzy factor so I would recommend it highly.

The story is cliched- well not the basic storyline, but how the plot develops, the characters, etc. I also couldn't really connect with the protagonist. She seemed a tad bit dumbish, and not even in the cute scatter-brained type of way. And the writing itself was a little bit contrived- you know the strained type that doesn't really flow?

That said, the book does draw you in. Its chick-lit, unabashedly so, and it uses the cliches of the genre to good effect, creating many of those giggle-out-loud moments, or the big-smile-plastered-on-your-face-though-you-dont-even- know- it's-there situations. And like i said before, it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling. Perfect lazy sunday afternoon read. One review I read said that the book makes you want to fall in love all over again. Well I wont go as far as that, but I know what the reviewer meant...

The bigger impact of the book on me has been that I've decided to write a chicklit of my own. Big Feet and I are collaborating on it, with music advice (yes, it's that kind of book) from mem. We have the basic plot line figured and we plan to use the next couple of days (yaay, holidays!!) to get the outline down, and who knows, maybe even a chapter or two??

So, here's to our first million!

Trade-offs

Interesting posts by Alice and M (yes guys, I cyber stalk you!!) which got me thinking abt what I want from life, et al. And I realised that, though it is an unpopular sentiment (:-) ), I actually like what I do, and wouldn't want to do anything else- that is, this job is good for now, but I know I will move on sooner or later- but the general career choice stays. I like being in academics. I like being paid for thinking, and for expounding ideas and- call it megalomania or idealism- for hopefully making a difference, somehow, sometime, somewhere.

And even this job has been an amazing experience. It's definitely been the steepest learning curve of my life, far out-curving 5 years of lawschool and a year at Yale. Its given me amazing insights into our legal system. Sure its been disillusioning and disheartening to see what our judiciary is really like, but all put together, its been a lavish seven course food for thought meal.

Other bits are not that good. The bureaucracy in this place is grab-your-head-and-bang-it-againt-the-wall frustrating. The librarian--oh well-dont get me started on him...And the boss. He can make me want to scream and/or burst into tears at his attacks of craziness, his obdurateness and his sheer bull-headedness. Also his complete lack of sense of time....He can also be fairly scary because his reactions are unpredictable....

That being said, he is a great boss in many ways too. He gives us a free hand around the place. We are free to come and go as we please. We can work on whatever we want (unless he really wants us to work on something in particular, in which case he will try to manipulate us into thinking that is exactly what we want to work on!!). And above all, he is funny, witty, liberal (which came as a shock to me as my previous experience of him was anything but...), passionate about his work, and very very intelligent.

So anyway, I get to work on what takes my fancy, generally at the pace I want, with fair control over when I come and go, get a great house to live in, no commuting time, and a wonderful wonderful location (albeit in a dead city).

I still get up in the morning ever so often and think- is this what i want to do for the rest of my life? not because I dont love my job, but because it comes with a subsistence level pay check...So here is the trade-off. I can do what I love doing, with fair amount of control over my life, but with very little money to control it with (and boy does lack of money pinch!!!), or I can sell my soul (which is what a corp job would mean for me) and be rich but hate every minute of it.... who is to say which is better?

Tell me...

...is it abnormal to still mourn a relationship that ended two years back?? to miss someone you knew for all of one year, however close you might have been??

and tell me, is it terribly, abnormally, freakily, inexcusably wierd to personify, to use terms like 'relationship' and 'someone' in talking about a dear departed, sorely missed and deeply mourned laptop?

inculcating good habits

iro·ny (noun) : (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

Well, my story for the day falls somewhere between the tragic and the comic...So I switch on TV to watch the news- or what passes for news these days...maybe it's just me, but I just cant see the national importance of Rajesh Talwar's daily routine in jail...so anyway, there's a break and ads come on. First off is this ad where a woman runs to her neighbour's house screaming, 'have you seen my daughter? She hasn't been home since last night...."

Before the neighbour can respond, neighbour's 7-8 years old daughter pipes in with words to the effect, "oh, she must have run off with some guy'- adding lots of daily soap mirch masala in the statement...

Voice over: Is this what we are teaching our children...Let us inculcate good habits in them....

Next shot: same kid sitting on her mother's lap watching Sita defy Laxman's diktat and step over the laxmanrekha only to be kidnapped by Ravan. Voice Over: Ramayan, Ek Achchi Aadat...(if you haven't figured it out already, this was ad for some new-fangled version of Ramayan on one of the channels...)

Hmm..so where do I begin?? I cant seriously believe that the people who made the ad didn't see the irony of the situation...Mem's theory is that this must have been a very disgruntled set of ad agency people who had a bad day in office and decided to screw the client...well, I hope that's true, because really it'd be terribly sad to live in world where we teach our daughters that it's better to be kidnapped than to run-off on your own (how can u even think of exercising choice or volition and all that???)....that if you decide to think for yourself instead of bowing to the superior knowledge of some male schmuck who knows better, and if you step out of the boundaries set for you, then bad things will happen to you...You will get kidnapped, people will have to fight wars over you, and regardless of how noble and decent and not-at-fault you are, you will have to prove your "innocence" through ordeal by fire. Yes, I can see why this is much better than the daily dose of rot we see on TV!!

This is the second time I've come across such a stark irony of deeply inculcated patriarchal beliefs...first time round, it was the first day of crim class, and Ramu was teaching us the difference between actus reus and mens rea. He took two examples one after the other to illustrate his point. The first was theft, which the indian penal code defines as: . Whoever, intending to take dishonestly any movable property out of the possession of any person without that person's consent, moves that property in order to such taking, is said to commit theft.

Second, he read out section 498: Whoever takes or entices away any woman who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of any other man, from that man, or from any person having the care of her on behalf of that man, with intent that she may have illicit intercourse with any person, or conceals or detains with that intent any such woman, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both

As we lawyers fondly say: Res ipsa loquitor....

Ramu of course missed the irony.