The point being?

“Whatever you say about this new principal”, mom told me, “he’s the only one, and there have been three since I joined the Centre, to actually greet, shake hands with, and hug the children”
Ok sir, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You’re a good guy, I see…

I took advantage of an impromptu sleepover at Sneh’s on Thursday to enjoy their dishTV connection. NDTV was on that day, with a debate about the IPL cheerleaders, whether they should be banned.
“Their obscene costumes appeal to the viler base instincts of the Indian male!” spluttered one of the participants, “And they take attention away from the game! I mean, we want to watch cricket, someone hits a four, but instead of a replay there’s these girls in skimpy skirts!”
Yet another participant said maybe the costumes were a bit…on the invisible side, but cheerleading as such is not a bad thing and not really distracting.
Hmm, I don’t think the guy holding up the “I’m here to watch the girls NOT THE CRICKET” poster shares that opinion.
And besides, said the more sympathetic participant, what about the costumes worn by dancers in Bollywood movies? Isn’t it almost the same? All right, maybe some of the cheerleading costumes are a bit low in the neck and high in the leg….maybe whoever hired them should respect Indian sensibilities a little and get costumes that cover the midriff…..But cheerleading as such, not bad. They do their job well, these girls.
Almost as if to prove a point, a song-teaser of Tashan shows up, with Kareena in hot pants and a tiny sport bikini top thing, grooving away.

“So what’s IPL all about really?” I ask Sneh. Having no cable TV, no Pehla, no jingalala, no dishTV, it kinda blocks me out a bit.
“Nothing man,” she replies tetchily. “Players ke boli lagate hain. They auction off players to all these industrialists and people who have too much money who want to form a team. It’s all about money.”
“So it’s nothing to do with place really?” I ask.
“No” her sis says, “The senior players, they play for their region, like Sachin’s playing for Mumbai, but the other players are sold to the highest bidder.”
Yesterday morning, on NDTV at Sneh’s, I saw something about “Will IPL get better ratings than Primetime television”
So what, really, is the point of having this tournament? Because the whole thing seemed to me like an irrational video game thing. Are we having the tournament just for the ratings? Or for the money? Or what? Once again we see this fragile world built on a shaky foundation of money, cash, moolah, prosperity, that makes this world go round, it seems.
The class (my friends, those I talk to now) disagree. When IPL discussion started I was greeted with a barrage of conflicting opinions… “promotes harmony among the team players, Brett Lee and Sreesanth get along so well now, didn’t you see that” … “Regionality promoted!!” (This was Sneh again)… etc.
Today after tuts a friend got a text, Kolkata night riders had won today. She hadn’t wanted them to win, she said “Shah Rukh Khan overdoes things.”
The mind boggles. SRK now owns a cricket team? O_o

Also seen yesterday morning at Sneh’s, making me think at first “Hey, I wanna audition!” but later giving me thoughts alomg the lines of soul-selling : MTV Roadies 5.0. Now I like Roadies, kinda. I watched a bit of Roadies 4 when I was in Delhi-Bombay year before last, and I kinda liked it. Sneh’s sis later informed me that Roadies was a copy of some other show. I guessed Fear Factor. Which I greatly enjoy. Much more than Roadies, now. The difference between the two? Politics, politics, politics. Who goes ahead on Fear Factor is solely determined by how well they do the tasks. No vote-outs, no conspiracies. On the Roadies episode I watched, their ‘money task’ was to eat various Thai ‘delicacies’. Worms, frogs, locusts, squid, sea snakes. Ugh. For phenomenal amounts. I’d rather not have the money. Really. I mean…(yeah, even on Fear Factor I don’t like the tasks involving eating gross).
The ‘advantage task’ was a Muay Thai boxing match (now that I’d enjoy. Really.). It was only after 6 hours training that the Roadies found out they’d be fighting each other.
“Think about what’s more important here,” said Vijay, the MC, “Your survival on this show, or your ‘dosti’” God, I hated that. The way he said it. Because here it doesn’t matter who you hurt, you just need to get ahead. Roadies seems cool on the surface, all those daredevil tasks, the bikes, but what I couldn’t ever do is the metaphorical grasping hands just to pull the other down, I couldn’t befriend someone knowing I might have to betray her sometime in the near future.
Nihal was the one most expected to get voted out, but in the end, it was Varun who got unlucky.
Nihal grinned triumphantly into the camera. “You might have beaten me up today bacchu, but I did the politics.”

“People say such great things about the youth of India”, Sneh mutters “what to do if the youth is only like this??”
Sigh. Whatever happened to honour?
Money talks. I wish it’d shut up.