For all my bros: G-spot in(Scent)ives

Myself Bunty. Only day before yesterday, I shaved off my wiry chest hair. I was told waxing it will be like 237 butter knives cutting up my chest. Together. So I did not have the guts to enter Hero Hira Lal Saloon for Menz. Shaving was not as Presto as those razor people make you believe so it took time, and my mother almost broke the bathroom door down banging on it. But not her fault. She wanted eggs from the market for a breakfast of anda bhurji. (She makes it very nicely. In ghee. Proper Punjabi. But let me get to the point.)

I needed a soft smooth chest to go with my image personality image which has developed manifold recently. More development my personality has seen than what developed countries saw in the past 3 years. Combined. So, I broke away all top buttons of all my shiny shirts for a clear view. (Mummy insists on sewing them back, but their popping is no coincidence). Today, I confidently say that I am a complete man of substances. Gelled hair with spikes, jeans with thunder marks on thighs and bullet tacks belt with pointed boots, one chain in neck one on wrist, a tattoo of skull and bones on biceps and finally, a shaved chest. Totally tip top macho with face shined up!

You see, I have become quite a heart throb wherever I go. When I walk past women, any age or stage, they go into orgasmic convulsions. They take deep breaths a couple of times, then start panting with heads slightly tilted backwards, eyes closed, a sudden gust of wind playing I spy with their hair and when the nasal ecstasy ends, they start seeking me with unmatched desperation. Like bees to honey, or flies to motichoor laddoos in my favourite Roshan Sweat Shop.

The first time it happened, I ran home scared, thinking those women were fainting on smelling my socks in the Metro and then coming to beat me up. But the next day itself, I got promoted to Mr. Dewd in my friend circle, with all kinds of mythical stories getting attached to any and all appendages of mine, however unrelated to the nose.  And however unused.

And then it struck me, like a pebble another pebble in a game of pithoo that this was thanks to a manipulative genius of mine. I made an invention. It’s my 20-something life’s most significant secret, so I’m going to tell you in hushed whispers.

I have invented a magical potion to spray all over my body. Yes.

Here’s the story …

One day, a few weeks back, in between enjoying mummy’s favourite soaps and dum aalo I saw all these adverts on TV showing how a single application of a deodorant leads to women falling head over heels, literally, for the guy who used them, even if the guy is still in his tadpole-using-calamine-on-pimples stage. Taking off saris, opening wet hair and all, jumping through windows or even down from high buildings. Only and only because of the guy’s deodorant which tickled their G-spot located deep up inside their noses.

Then, just after the night-long jagran mummy loves to organize was over, an idea descended into my head from the Godly clouds above. I thought to myself, if one deodorant has the power to make women go so crazy, what will happen if I mixed two up? Or even three? So what did I do? I bought Axe and Denver and Wild Horse from my left over Rakhi money. I collected them (mostly gas!) into a coffee shaker till the cans were empty, then did shake-shake to them to the tune of ‘Ketchup Song’. No lyrics needed. Then, I transferred the solution into an empty cologne bottle, an original Huge Bose from Palika. It shone like good whisky. I swear.

And the effects of using just a drop of it? Priceless! Way beyond what you can ever imagine even. And no, it’s not just about women any more.

Hear this!

As soon as Chaubey uncle handed me the eggs, I felt a sudden shiver in the packet which held them. I looked around Tilak Nagar, West Delhi, thinking it must be an earthquake. Or a tsunami. No one else seemed to have noticed. It was the eggs, belly dancing making hoopla rings all 6 of them. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stood back and watched. They came near my chest. I moved back more. They neared. And then, all cracked open instantly on smelling my sexy smell. The chicks, it seems, just couldn’t control themselves. (Mummy was very angry that day, screaming something about 5 bucks an egg and inflation and breakfast and something something.) But me? I was super happy. I just realized how successful my experiment of mixing those deodorants had been. Finally, I drove cutie pie chicks crazy!

Another one comes to mind. It was my 21st happy birthday so I wore my favourite white button down with buttons down to meet some friends for mall-ing around. I reached before anyone else so excited I was. So I thought I will go to the men’s room, wet my gelled hair a bit. Make the spikes afresh. Maybe do susu also. And you know what happened? I was walking to the men’s loo, swinging my hips like a happy birthday boy’s when I hear a strange tap tap sound behind me. No, it wasn’t my heels. I looked back, with my usual style. The board of the ladies loo, ‘She’ with a tiny hourglass female figure, had come off the door as I passed it. It was following me, hungry to be in my arms. The aisle was empty and I rubbed my eyes, for this time I couldn’t believe my own magnetism which was attracting that brass ‘She’. And suddenly, it stuck to me. Somewhere around my belly button. Imagine! A board which only read ‘she’. Not even a real her. What have I invented, man!

Of course, tender aged minds could be reading this so I cannot tell you the effects on real women, of just a whiff of my experiment. But I will end with a message for all boys. Just remember, bros. You don’t need the face or the brains, you don’t need money or cars. Why, you could be toads (those irreversible variety) with an extra dose of warts for all it matters. As long as you smell like a whole pack of agarbatti and 2 types of Odonil combined. Women will simply kiss the ground your incensed armpits walked over. Such power lies in my tiny bottle. Make yours, today!

But shh. It’s a secret between us and the bottle I have named ‘Poten-she’.

By the way, I’m planning to drink it up next! Oh G, sounds exciting already, mummy swear!

[The prompt for today was - Evasive Action - What’s the most significant secret you’ve ever kept? Did the truth ever come out?]

Advert-ently wrong? Honda City’s latest advert

Remember Cibaca Toothpaste? I do. Not the paste’s taste or how it helped make my pearly whites even whiter. I remember, as a child, I used to open the box for the tiny rubber animals that popped out as freebies. Despite the fact that all animals looked like dinosaurs even when they were meant to be something else entirely. Still, till the offer was ‘open till stocks last’, my family used Cibaca. Two members out of four were hooked to it, after all.

And that phase of 7Up challenges? You collected a certain number of those rings inside the metal caps, snail mailed and claimed goodies like magic coins and fancy straws. What a rage it was! I don’t remember drinking that much 7Up, but I do remember managing a museum of ‘collector’s items’, the biggest one in the colony. But Maggi I ate, all of it, for the empty packets got me fish stamps to feel like an unbeatable philatelist.

But today, my perception of the consumer’s world has changed. I view things differently, not because I am no longer a child but also because I am a mother to a child. And when you bring that role in, just about anything in today’s times transforms into a big warty ogre out to gobble up your little one’s mind. This, mostly through the crystal clear high-definition TV sets that make life flash before our kids’ eyes. And most irresponsibly through the strange advertisements that occupy a large chunk of our viewing time.

Today, it’s Honda City’s latest advert ‘Masha Allah – The Greater Drive’, which amazes me and scares me – for its nonsensical premise and its intent to influence my child’s mind, respectively.

[To read more, please click here.]

Eligible, are you Bachelors?

Why I read adverts in newspapers is a mystery. Why I pay attention to sarkari advertisements is a bigger mystery. Here’s one I spotted in ‘The Hindu’ a few days back. (Yes, I read this paper. I already know Duggu’s pet name!) Read carefully, it’s important. What? You are busy looking at the picture? Oh well, I’ll quote it to you here in that case. 

It shows a Mrs. B(h)ennet in a gambhir mudra talking to herself, saying, 

“He wants to marry my daughter and doesn’t even own a house!”

The daughter in question, and this I am sure you must have noticed, is a pretty girl playing dandiya in all her finery. Then, as if out of nowhere, a voice from above, or rather one from GIC Housing Finance, goes on to shower some pearls of wisdom upon your manly coconuts. In typical governmental fashion of ‘simplewordedness’ and simplemindedness the advert talks to the future grooms ...

[To read further, please click here.] 

Periods are not taboo. Period!

Back in school, which was at least 13 years back for me, the chapter called Reproductive System in my class 12^th biology book got the least amount of screen time by the lady teacher and the most number of giggles by the students. Understandable, the giggles! At 16 back in the 1990s, anything bodily was a reason to blush, or duck beneath the desk or make a joke about when in same sex company. But why did my teacher have to rush through 20 pages of one of the most important aspects of the human body? I did not understand it then, and I do not understand it now. What I do understand is, that by skipping, struggling and skimming through that part of our education she made her class of boys and girls think it was something that needed to be dealt with in exactly that manner - hurriedly and insignificantly. And the judgemental silence I got on raising my hand and daring to ask a question about the difference between Cowper’s gland and Prostrate Gland is something that I remember to this day, even if the difference I do not. A few days later, some boys were mischievously passing a sanitary napkin from one desk to the other and snickering, while the girls did not know where to look. I was not surprised. Education had strangulated learning exactly at a time and age when it was most important to pass it on. 

Today, I wonder if the lady teacher’s attitude towards the chapter is blameworthy. Imagine a girl born somewhere in the 50s, when no one used the word sex, no one explained what will ensue on the first night of the arranged marriage to a man you think a stranger and most did not even bother to know what goes on inside their bodies when a baby is taking shape there, even after having 3 of their own. She was probably born in times of cotton pads and secretly washing them, before the men of the house woke up. When abdominal cramps once every month were not to be spoken about but just borne in painful silence. When in certain homes, mothers did not enter kitchens to cook for about 5 days every month, because they were considered impure. And religious festivals and pujas saw menstruating women conspicuous by their absence. Worst of all, stories about girls being made to spend the days of periods in closed rooms, served food like prisoners and kept locked up till the bleeding stopped were not so uncommon in various parts of the country. And of course, all of the above-mentioned came with “logics” that hearsay and certain cultures try to build their castles on.   

And how has it really changed?

Even today, in the name of religion, or family etiquettes, or for the simple garb of decency our chemists still feel compelled to wrap our packets of sanitary pads in opaque black polythene bags or newspapers, just like the fact of menstruation has always been passed down generations in layers upon layers of hush-hush invisibility. And I wonder what good we are doing to ourselves, or our children, by doing that. Pray, what is wrong with menstruating? It’s a biological phenomenon that is essential to procreate. You may want to attribute the birth of your son to God wholly, but the ovaries and the uterus have their part to play too. And talking about it will do less harm and more good – physically, mentally and emotionally to youngsters entering their teens.

Archaic ideas of periods in particular and sex and sexuality in general are perpetuating a tradition of all things clandestine by keeping the parents shy and in turn making the forbidden fruit very attractive. As mothers, often we first hide behind bees-n-birds, then hope for the school or the internet to take care of the rest. The result? Suffocating love meets desperation in parks and metro stations, transforming into porn. And the ‘tch tch’ that follows in decent drawing rooms of very decent people only mean they are missing the whole point that some things do begin at home. Every metallic spring that is repressed recoils, one fine day. And we are not even made of metal, but only plain human.   

I have never sworn by the advertising industry. But I love the adverts various sanitary napkin companies are making. They show free women with freedom to do, wear, travel, sleep and jump as they please, not whispering ones sitting cross-legged in a corner as if their world has come to an end. Thankfully, these adverts have not been relegated to post-11 pm when all tender age eyes are closed to the reality, even though many a home spoke as one against the 'shameless openness' of advertising 'such things'. And then, so many schools have healthy sex education programs targeted at shedding the very tag of stigma that all things sexual/reproductive have come to acquire down the ages. Women can openly buy their Whisper Ultras in super markets and get them billed in full public view, giving the black polybags a pass. Things are changing on the outside and perhaps on the inside too.

Questioning tradition is not necessarily challenging it. It means a first step towards understanding it too. If the traditional or cultural idea attached to menstruation and sexuality is strong enough to withstand the test of time, what do protectors of all things traditionally sacred have to worry about? To think of it, even sanitary napkins now come with ‘wings’. Perhaps, they are quietly trying to tell us something?  

Advert-ently Wrong? Complan's latest on TV

Some time back I came to a conclusion. I realized that there are only two kinds of adverts running on TV – the ones you will never forget and the ones you will not bother to remember. Since most fell into the latter category serving no greater purpose than making you dream of fairer skin and low cholesterol chips, I had relegated them to background scores for bathroom breaks as my favourite TV soaps took theirs. However, Complan’s latest advert made me sit up and take note, and not for a single right reason. Let me explain!

To read more, please click here.

No one gives money for free to anyone

I love the advertisements that the government prints in the newspapers, or makes posters out of. Not the life-size-so-unlike-life ones of smiling faces, glowing halos and hands joined. Those seem fake - the flawless skin, the supplicant’s pose and the halo, all. I like those textual ones which can double up as moral science teachers. Like how a baby needs mother’s milk till 2 years, or how life without paying income tax is like a painting without colour. Plain in design and simple in both thought and language, these adverts seem to come from mills which haven’t seen too much technology as yet. No big words, no fancy graphics just ‘Last Date for Filing’, ‘Remember’ and ‘Beware’ always printed in bold to catch your sleepy minds unaware. Something almost endearing about them, as they instantly take me back a few decades to the ‘rukavat key liye khed hai’ chart paper used on DD once upon a time, every time they went figuring out why on air is no longer on air. 

Here’s an advertisement I spotted in TOI a few days back. 

Isn’t it sweet? Much to my husband’s amazement and my son’s fascination, I stuck it to my fridge and wondered why this one really impressed me. Apart from the fact that I can draw that graphic with my right hand, answer all the questions it pops at me and not find a single grammatical error, what caught my attention was the moral at the end of the story – 

‘Remember … no one gives money for free to anyone’

Indeed! How insightful! Just who in the RBI thought of this excellent quote? Look how true it is:

If there is one shop where the registers (and bells) don’t stop ringing, it’s the Department of Worship. I have seen many notes-worthy temples all across the country, only to wonder still – is God material crazy or does man know of no other way to please Him? Jewellery, gold bricks, silver ornaments, wads of cash, sheets costing lakhs, metric tons of ghee and milk or a meal-for-10000 on the house, these are just some of the goodies in God’s coffers. When it comes to the Divine’s pleasure man is oozing generosity and no, he’s not doing it for nothing! A wish list here, a marriage proposal there, an entrance exam round the corner, a property deal a week later; man needs God and certainly more than God needs the Usha fan spinning on His head, donated by the kirana shop man with his name rightfully printed on its blade, in bold red. 

No one gives money for free to anyone. Not even to God!

Wedding season, and out comes the packet of glittery envelopes that carry what we call Shagun – blessings in green for those tying the knot or their parents, whoever came first! We put inside what we got ourselves, or expect to get when our own Lucky gets married. So slip in a pink grand, a one rupee coin, tie the golden thread and don’t forget to cello tape it. While ‘congratulations’ is small case, make the from Mrs & Mr. bold and clear. Once done drinking, start eating. Fruit tikki mini-dosa chaat (slow down, have to have dinner too!) continental Indian Chinese halwa pudding ice cream chocolate sauce paan and there, paid Rs. 1001, ate 3001 calories, burped twice in the process, farted only once and we will surely have a better caterer for our Sunny’s wedding, ji, such quality is not becoming of our class at all. Burp!   

No one gives money for free to anyone. Not even on their grandest occasions!

Not even Diwali bonus to the maid, no! Sari or suit or money with fruit, in decreasing order of desirability, is given with much fanfare just so she knows you are the best memsahib she can get and remembers it until next Happy Diwali. You better not gossip about me, suna? But just generally speaking, did Mrs Sharma actually get the whole of her legs waxed? Let it be, sannu kee! So you like the sari or not? Colour looks good on you. No one can give a better one. I went myself to Tilak Nagar and got it for you. Will you just water the plants before you go? I know you are getting late but you see the gardener has not come today. Aur haan, just a cup of tea for me, please, the market was so tiring you know! When do you wear the sari to show me? Oh! Just take the dry clothes off the line as you leave, will you? Come in time tomorrow, please! 

No one gives money for free to anyone. Not even on Happy Diwali!

From the coin to the beggar in the name of charity to the minimum Rs. 5001 to the eunuch for a son’s birth, nothing is given for free. One for feeling like a do-gooder and ensuring a place in Heaven (which may have been bought in the 1st paragraph itself) and the other sum for ensuring the son gets home a better sum than the neighbour when he gets married (in the glittery envelope or on 4-wheels). Even neta ji knows that support may come for free but the vote mostly needs a little greenery! 

No one gives money for free to anyone. 

Perhaps Pappu’s Pappa wished for something too, 
When he got Pappu a Pajayrow, and a trip to Singapur.