All is war in fair

(I apologize for the weak title. The subject, as you will learn
shortly, lends itself to many puns. I just can't think of the best one
yet.)

After years of carving a niche for itself, "Fair and Lovely" found
itself in a Political Correctness controversy in India. The criticism
touched on body-image consciousness and associating negatives with
skin color etc. I was startled. As someone who was was born into a
culture where a fairer skin color was automatically associated with
being pretty, it never even occurred to me to question that. And of
course the "shut your mouth" argument to counter these protesters was
"If White people can get tans to make themselves more appealing, why
can't Indians try to become fairer? What's good for one direction (of
changing skin color) is good for the other."

Anyway, all this is atleast a few years old. Now I'm in India and
watching TV and guess what I notice. Instead of fewer ads for
"fairness" creams, there are more. There a lot more products that now
advertise the glory of fairer skin. "Fairness And now they're even
advertising creams for men! It's wonderful. It just goes to show that
you can protest about Political Correctness all you want, but people
won't stop buying something just because you think it's offensive. The
free market will decide what people want and what they don't want. And
apparently what they want in India is fairer skin.

Keeping up with the TV shows

In addition to the syndicated shows on Star World I am keeping up with the current seasons of TV shows like The Office, 30 Rock on Hulu.com.

Thing is, Hulu is blocked in India. I can't watch these shows at home, even if I wanted to. I say "even if I wanted to" because the network speed at home is pretty low and I'd get really frustrated waiting for the shows to load.

However since our company access the internet through a Houston proxy, this doesn't apply to us. So on certain weekdays I just stay back after the regular hours and watch the shows at work. Simple. The only problem is that the more I wait, the worse the traffic gets and I have wait out the rush hour. So my system might evolve into one where I pick one day, get pizza delivered to work and just watch various shows all night long! Soon I'll have to add How I Met Your Mother, 24, Lost and Heroes, although I hear Heroes isn't that good this season.

LLOYD!!!! (Censorship and syndication)

Sunday afternoons I get to watch Entourage on TV here. If you're
wondering how Ari Gold manages to convey his charm without all the
cussing, you're right to wonder. But then again, I was surprised by
how many non-cussing lines Ari has!

Most TV shows and movies here are shown with subtitles. The TVs don't
have closed captioning since most of the programs are in non-English
languages and most of the viewers watch regional language programs
anyway. So since people apparently have a hard time following
American/British accents fast enough to watch movies, the subtitles
become a must. And along with the usual censoring of cuss words in the
audio, we also get the subtitles censored. What is interesting though
is that the subtitles are censored different from the audio. So we get
to hear words in the audio but they get "bleeped" out in the
subtitles. So when Mrs. Gold tells Ari, "Tell me I am sexy Ari" I read
"Tell me I am Ari" on the screen. Another word that gets dropped is
"Gay". "Gay" is apparently a "bad" word. I don't even know where to
begin with that.

Of course, the icing on the cake is that the word "douchebag" gets
included both in the audio and in the subtitles. Apparently whoever
did the censoring didn't know what it meant. But then again, I'm
reminded of a scene from "The Signs" where the girl who works in a
pharmacy asks Mel Gibson's character if "douchebag" is a swear word
and he responds by saying it depends on the context. I think he would
agree that this context qualifies as swearing. Another odd fact is
that drug usage doesn't get censored.

Also, with all this censoring of words and scenes, we get these
30-minute ad-free episodes shrunk down to fit a 30-minute episode WITH
ads. That itself isn't bad because the networks that shows these
syndicated US shows don't show as many ads as the channels in the US.
So with a show like Friends, I am actually seeing scenes from the
earlier seasons that probably ended up on the cutting room floor of
the rebroadcasting station. On average, I think you miss about 3 jokes
per episode when you watch Friends on WB as opposed to Star World
here.

Lola TV

Channel V has a program called Lola TV. Lola Kutty this
stereotypically Malayali-looking girl who interviews celebrities. At
first I thought it was Shenaz Treasurywala under that make up and was
quite impressed that she mastered the nuances of the Malayali accent
and small expressions. But turns out that it is a new face (to me)
called Anuradha Menon. Anuradha apparently is from Kerala but settled
in Chennai.

At first, when I thought it was Shehnaz, I thought it was quite a
"racist" portrayal but I was won over by the genuineness of the
portrayal. She wasn't mocking Malayalis as much as she was pretending
to be one of them - unlike the mehmood portrayals from the 80's where
every Tamilian was supposed to go - "Ayyo kyaa jeeee?" Of course,
knowing that it's a Malayali girl made even that black mark disappear.

It's a fun program, although, even I find it hard to understand her
accent sometimes. And I wonder how the Bollywood celebrities manage to
keep up with her!

The million dollar arm - update

Turns out the Million Dollar Arm kids didn't disappear into obscurity
like I'd imagined they would. They ended up signing with the
Pittsburgh Pirates.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/11/24/pirates.indians.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

A few notes -

a) When I saw the headline, "Pirates sign two..." I immediately
assumed the story was something to do with the Somali pirates.

b) The URL for the story as you can see says "Pirates.Indians". Now in
case you don't know, there's a team called the Cleveland Indians. So
one could be tempted to think the story was about a trade between the
Pirates and the Indians.

c) Can't wait for these kids to be traded one day to Cleveland so we
can have the Indian Indians. Dots meet feathers. The Universe with
explode.

Scrubs censoring in India

Just found out Scrubs is on TV here. And guess what I found gets
censored? You know when Dr. Cox refers to Turk as "Gandhi". Yeah,
that's out! I just laughed out loud when I noticed that.

The toughest sports quiz ever!

On the Tamil DD network, I see this dial-in sports quiz program once
in a while. It's gotta be the toughest sports ever made. The questions
on the show are all over the board, cover cricket, soccer, Olympics,
racing etc. When I say soccer I mean leagues from various countries,
players etc. Maybe it's because I was never into soccer but I wonder
how many Indian are aware of what the guy is asking.

This is a typical quiz -
http://sportsquizzard.blogspot.com/2008/02/dd-podhigai-bsnl-sports-quiz-16022008.html

It's just amazing that this guy is so on top of his game (no pun
intended). And embarrassing that sports is one thing I think I'm good
at, but I realize that it's restricted to American sports.

The anchor has a very funny style. He borders on arrogance but really
is just impatient. He takes calls from the viewers and when they're
wrong, he waves them off with a wave of his hand. He acknowledges the
hard questions and is genuinely amazed when someone answers them. All
with a squint and a smile. I mean, you never see his eyes! Good show.
I'll watch more of it, if only to improve my knowledge of world
sports.

My "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit was entirely different from your "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit.

It's amazing watching English (Hollywood) movies on TV here. For one there's more cussing. I know what you're thinking, how is there more cussing on an Indian channel than there would be if the movie were shown on TV in the US (where presumably everyone is morally corrupt). I guess culturally certain words have different levels of offensiveness.

For example I keep hearing the word "bullsh**" and for that matter "sh**" on TV here. And then they bleep out "a**" and "bit**". (I'm bleeping them all out to avoid any controversy.) I stared at the TV the first few times I heard it and now I'm just used to it.

Almost all English movies get automatic subtitles here. It's like they figured the average Indian can't understand the dialogue which is spoken in these movies. That's fine, because it's mostly true. But yeah, what confuses me is when I'm watching the movie and hear a certain word by see a less offensive version of the word on screen. "Less offensive" is relative of course because it depends on what is considered offensive in India. Hilarious.

Last night as I was watching "The Mummy", I noticed the runtime was much shorter than I expected. As the movie was playing I started noticing that they cut out a bunch of scenes. Now you're probably thinking "There's nothing offensive in The Mummy." Well they took out almost all the scenes with the Mummy. The regeneration as Evelyn reads the words from the Book of the Dead. The absorbing of the organs from the grave robbers. Even the scene where his jaw opens really wide to swallow up Conners' plane. It's almost like the Indian airing of the movie didn't get the rights to the CGI scenes in the movie and so they just showed the scenes with real actors in them.

MTV India

Get this, Cyrus Broacha and Nikhil Chinappa are still on MTV!! These two have been on MTV for about a decade now. I'm not a person who believes that a couple of years in a hot field (modelling, VJing, etc) ages you by 10 years but come on. Cyrus is fat and looks like a creepy 30-year old who still hangs out with the undergrads at a college. And Nikhil looks scrawny. You're telling me MTV couldn't find decent talent to replace these guys? That's just sad.

Perspective: Not always your friend.

Jenny Finch (careful, links show some pictures in bikinis) is a very attractive softball pitcher. Danica Patrick is a very attractive racecar driver. But what do you get when you put them next to each other? Results aren't great. One looks like a freakish beast and the other looks like a mouse.

There's an ad on TV for Airtel Digital TV - I think this link should work. This ad is on TV all the time, in every single commercial break and is really getting on my nerves. But yeah, it's a decent ad, it does the job. But what always cracks me up is the part when the guy actually reaches home and a very sexy-looking Kareena Kapoor opens the door. He is stunned! His wife (played by Richa Pallod) peeks from behind the door and invites him in. At that point, where you see both the women in the same frame, you're immediately struck by the contrast in their frames. Atleast in this case Richa doesn't look quite so bad, but Kareena looks like a monster next to her! That's really sad because Kareena is actually a very beautiful woman, but I actually do get scared of her each time I look at that scene.

Subway in India: Main sauce

The original plan was to eat with my dad at Subway. Except, the last two times I was in Hyderabad, something or the other kept coming up and I kept missing it. So it was going to do this in Pune.

I had to pay Rs. 10 to park my scooter in the first place to get into this place! What struck me as I looked at the menu was the all the sandwiches were 6" ones. They do have footlongs but they're hidden somewhere in the menu, I had to search for them.

I ordered a Panner Tikka sandwich. It's made similar to the chicken sandwich, where they have seasoned pieces of Panner in small cups and they microwave them and put them in the sandwich. Another thing I learned is that most people just add all the fixins on their sandwiches. Makes sense, Indian being cheap would ask, "What can I get for no extra charge?" and go ahead and add everything they can.

After added the veggies, the guy asked me, "What sauce sir?" So I asked him if he had any Chipotle sauce. He said he didn't. So I was looking at the sauces and he says, "Would you like to have some main sauce sir?" I looked at him, "Main sauce, what's in the main sauce?"
"It's main sauce sir. It comes with the sandwich."
"Yeah I know, but what's in the main sauce."
Now it was his turn to stare at me.
"Sir, with the Paneer sandwich the regular sauce is the main sauce."

This was rapidly turning into an Abbot and Costello routine. Finally I looked at the sauce and it was green in color. "Do you mean MINT sauce?" I asked him.
"Yes sir."
"OK! I'll have some of that."

"OK sir, any more sauces?"
"What do you have?"
"We have Southwest sauce."
"What?? I just asked you if you had Chipotle sauce."
"Yes sir, this is like Chipotle sauce."
I didn't want to argue anymore about how the name of the sauce is "Southwest Chipotle". So I just asked him to pack it up. Interestingly he packed the two halves of the footlong in seperate packages. Like it was inconceivable to him that any one person would eat the whole footlong.

Hmm, maybe that's a sign.