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.