The un-fair advantage

The age old fair and lively ads along with the new ones - Vivel's fairness beauty cream , Emami "fair and handsome" ('the mardon ka fairness cream') , Garnier's new fairness facewash - there seem to be far too many fairness enhancing products in the market which makes you wonder if "fairness" (that of color) is truly important . The answer varies .

In most professions your looks don't matter at all . In certain businesses it may matter as to how presentable you are but certainly not whether you are of light complexion . In professions such as modelling and acting though ( acting in movies not the much forgotten stage acting ) it has increasingly started to become relevant ( if it was nor already so) as to how fare you are - at least in this country . It's sad but true that a fair model is more likely to get a chance to act in a T.V commercial more easily than her/his (it's more her and less his) darker skinned counterpart. It's sad because to some extent God has made it so . To any Indian eye a fair complexioned individual has always seemed more attractive than a not so fair individual with equally blessed facial features - and this is something we can't do much about . That's just the way we see and interpret attractiveness and fairness ranks very high on that index.The Indian pshyche has actually been brought up on such stereotypes and much as we may wish it away it's perhaps going to remain a part and parcel of our outlook in the near future . Guys are still going to talk about the new fair girl in the campus as being more desirable . This explains why there aren't too many successful dark-skinned models around barring a few like Bipasha Basu and Sameera Reddy . And they don't have it coming too easy for them either . One has to stand up against taunts such as "kaali billi " and the likes to really make it big . And you really need all of Sushmita Sen's grace, elegance and smartness to stand up against the ultra- fairskinned Aishwarya to make the jury believe you are better (not to take anything away from Aishwarya- she can still stake a claim to the world's "most beautiful" tag) . The point is in the glamour world you need to have additional gifted features to be sucessful if you are not outright fair and the NRI guy irrespective of what complexion he has is still going to seek out that " fair beautiful" bride in the wedding season . So what is to be done about this bias based on color? It's strange that we don't see much literature on this existing bias. Perhaps people don't feel it as much as I do .

I think only from the perspective of being fair(by this fair I mean reasonable) one should judge a person's beauty quotient not only from her fairness but also other features like the body structure, how she looks as a whole . It may not come to us naturally as we can't just be rational all the time . Sometimes our eyes and inherent desires get the better of us but at least this way we are being more fair than just saying "forget it she/he is dark". Even in the glamor world I think more scientific methods of judging facial beauty like " symmetry is face" should be taken into account rather than just how visually attractive a model is . That will then be the new definition of beauty and later the correct definition of beauty.

But such a suggestion seems contrary to anyone's understanding, I'm sure . The bias is even proven by a recent British research . Seems like we will have to live with the unfair advantage for the foreseeable future

Ishq na kariyo kaake - the real panchnama?

Finally it has arrived - a movie on the plight of bachelors ,particularly software engineers in this great country where the common and often disparaging adage is that if you throw a stone it is likely that you will end up hitting a dog or a software engineer - such is the sheer number. Quantity apart the movie will well capture everyone's attention with its initial appeal to the soul of every bachelor who is distraught and absolutely fed-up with his mundane office-facebook-beer day . He ends up scolding his manager at office more because he doesn't like the work rather than the manager doing anything particularly devilish. The bachelor slangs (the innumerable beeps inspite of which it was easy to make out what the intended words were) further helped in uniting with the frustration of this large community.But here is the catch - he has his friends ,those unforgettable creatures he feels like openeing his heart to after the frustrating day,whose semi nude pics he uploads to get facebook "likes" and ''comments" and with whom he cracks those vulgar jokes over a pitcher in a bar.That's the only silver lining. Yet the "kutta" feels that there is something missing in his life.


The comforting hug of his girl at the end of his tiring day,long talking hours about the unimportant happennings in the day which his guy friend would give a shit to listen to and the element of sex which he always wants to explore (though rightfully that has not been shown as the sole purpose of his need for a relationship). But does the dog deservedly get solace through this?Is the movie too biased towards highlighting a guys problems without particularly understanding what a girl may want

Well every man to his mind. The relationships start just as most relationships do - with music in the background and fragrance in the air."Rajjo" and Neha's relationship is the quintessential boy-girl relationship in urban India. The girl and guy want to be together,the guy is a little wary of the comfort level of his friends so the girl befirends his friends, moves in with the guy (the guy should not have hastened into this though) and everything is rosy till the first two months after which the girl wants the world to have just 2 people (him and her) and the guy finds out that there are other things on this planet like his old friends,beer and Sachin's centuries. Then begins the struggle.The girl asks the guy to spend all the time in the world with her at the cost of most other things. The guy gives in at most times because he finds this first experience of his something he cant live without. Then come concessions after concessions till he cuts himself off from most things that he enjoyed (before he met this seemingly dominating women) including changing the way he dresses up. The girl as has been depicted is unrelenting in her demands. She wants to make this guy an object that gives her the sense of importance she craves for and not getting which she constantly complains to the extent of questioning his rationale of handling over a million rupees to his father for investments. The guy is in a soup (in a worse state actually). He has no one to tell his feeling of unhappiness to. He feels trapped in this desolate dungeon where even the weekends have become a liability because most of it goes in "babu" appeasement. He feels emotionally exploited when he sees that his Babu feels a sadistic pleasure in seeing him beg for her return after she lies about her spending time with "chiraag". His misery continues till one day he just decides "its not gonna work", the first time he does that in reponase to the millions of such threats from his girlfriend dearest.But is that all thats there to the story - a poor guy emotionally tortured to walk out of a relationship? Well not quite. The depiction is seemingly biased. Nothing has been said about the guy's willingness to spend time with his girlfriend after the initial days.He always wanted to run away. He seemed happy doing it. "Babu" at some level seemed justified asking him for her time. And wasn't she well within her right to expect Rajjo to share all important decisions like giving major investment money to his father? (just as an FYI) Agreed "Babu" was unrealistic in her demands on Rajjo's availablity but seemingly Rajjo made no attempt to clear the air upfront by keeping "babu" in the loop about a lot of things including their Goa trip. This story was the most typical urban relationship that was depicted.Unfortunately the girl was depicted as being overtly possessive (which is still okay) and vehemently demanding (which is a bit over the top, typical girl friends are not particularly that).

Rajjo and Babu

Vikrant - the macho urban male ends up having a so-called affair with an up-market fiercely independant Delhi babe who seeks that her individuality remains untouched in matters of sex,boyfriend choosing and her life in general. Vikrant plays the understanding friend for an unusually long time because of the inherent goodness in his heart and of course somewhere deep within he liked her and somewhere deeper within the evil sexual elements were waiting to burst out. He tried his best to play the understanding man but right from the start it never looked likes things were going to work out. He gave it his best - hats off to him - but why blame the girl? The couple were just plain incompatible. The woman needed to mature more and tone down her free spirit - something only age could have controlled while Vikrant should have stopped playing the out-of-the-world understanding guy that no one really can be - except those that don't really bother much as to who their girl hangs out with. This was failure that was just waiting to happen

And liquid - well my heartfelt sorrow for him. The jovial ,fun-loving ,manager-scolding guy was such a breather . He almost instantly depicted what you and I would at some stage want to be - carefree. But sad he fell in love with a women who plainly had no respect for his emotions. He opened his heart out but she was blatantly one of those selfish kinds who never bothered to see what the other was going through as long as her codes were written, her parlor bill was paid and her house rent was taken care of.She was wicked and there are no second thoughts about that.Her double standards were evident and she should not have entertained LIQUID the way she did especially when Abhi (poor guy even got slapped) was not comfortable with her going out with anyone else. Liquid was unlucky and definitely got the shorter end of the stick. But he should have known better when to pull out of this seemingly loss making investment of time. He alone was responsible for himself being emotionally raped the way he was. But good that he was back to his original self at the end of it all.

Then a nice happy ending with the bachelors returning to where they started - a typical bollywood movie at that. But these guys will eventually love and be loved and probably marry and have children.How will they be handling things then? The truth is love is more complex than people generally think and it really needs mature souls ,not people freaking and frolicking like the humming bird. Love is based on a deep understanding of one's needs first and then the partner's needs and on tremendous compromises. It is the compromises that make love what it is. That's where it derives its strength from not from the delusional "night in shining armor" expectations. Chances are that at some point in the future these blokes will get a hang of it and be ready to make those daring compromises so that the "patta" is after all more enjoyable than it has been depicted

A refreshing topic to make a movie on though . 8/10 from me :)