Static from the mind's radio

There's a TV show sponsored by a product called Chakola's Fairness Oil. It's a comedy, interspersed with clips from film songs. I can't understand much, because it's in Marwari Hindi - though Ramesh says it's very well-written. For me, the laugh comes every time they say 'Chakola's Fairness Oil.' First, Chakola sounds like a joke-name. Second, I'm used to the obsession with being fair-skinned, to the fairness creams advertised everywhere. But fairness oil? What's that? (My old cook's daughter, Raji, rubbed turmeric into her face once a week. When she turned up in the kitchen with her yellow face it always gave me a fright. Some people put talcum powder on their faces, which makes them look dead.)


We saw the beginning of a Hindi movie on TV. It was called Mann, 'mind', but it was a re-make of An Affair to Remember. In the beginning, when the passengers are boarding the ship, a 'comic' figure - not part of the original! - makes a pass at the heroine. He tells her,

We go together as though I were the chaddi [under-drawers with a drawstring] and you were the naaDa [the drawstring]!

What can one say to that but chi chi, and turn away.


We saw the wonderful Bagh Bahadur (1989), directed by Buddhadev Dasgupta. Pavan Malhotra plays a traditional tiger dancer. When a travelling circus brings a real tiger to the village, no one wants to see his dance. In despair he puts on his tiger body-paint, and dances into the tiger's cage, and is killed. It is very powerful. And it was broadcast after midnight, on the dull government channel, Doordarshan. In order to see good Indian films in India, you must be an insomniac.


A friend with a family coffee plantation in the cool hills of Coorg told me: You know in Coorg they have elephant menace: if you have a jackfruit tree, or a papaya tree, or bananas, the elephants come right up to the house and eat them. One friend of ours, an elephant came up to his house, and they burst [fire]crackers to scare it off. Then about four in the morning the elephant became very angry, and it came back and destroyed his car - broke the windows, and crushed it and rolled it over, and went away.


We renewed the property insurance on our house yesterday. The policy is called Standard Fire and Special Perils.


Another cliché from Hindi movies:

Doctor (speaking to anxious relatives outside the Operation Theatre): I've done all I can. What the patient needs now is not medicine (dava) but prayer (dua).