A teenager is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma sprayed with a noxious cloud of Axe deodorant.
Maybe I should just say “deo,” because that is how these companies choose to describe their products, no doubt armed with market data that many of their targeted customers lack the attention span or reading skills to grasp the full word.
Since the time Churchill remarked on the weirdness of Russia, it morphed into the Soviet Union and subsequently disintegrated with barely a whimper. The enigma of teenagers remains uncipherable.
I’m sure all of us parents of adolescent and teenage boys have data that could well join us together as subjects of a significant national study that attempts to shed light on a matter that perplexes us:
How is it that the bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste in our sons’ bathrooms don’t seem to diminish despite their purported use? But the Axe deodorant is drained in less than a month.
How is it that a bottle of shampoo that has been standing on the counter for almost a year still feels full, but tubes and jars of hair gel have flown off the same counter and replaced many times?
I have to admit those Axe ads are masterfully manipulative. They have boys aspiring to puberty, and boys who never got over it, spraying themselves. And not just a modest squirt. No-o. They have to mist it up and down and around their bodies so they can walk around like stinkbombs that have women gagging instead of reaching to rip their bodices.
How is it that boys who can crack trigonometry and pooh-pooh their little sisters' worship of Cinderella have trouble disbelieving an ad that tells them that fumigating themselves with cheap perfume masquerading as pheromones will make every female who catches a whiff become a panting slave? Okay, I'm willing to admit that even if they do disbelieve the propaganda, they're still taking no chances.
When I was a teenager, you couldn’t really buy deodorant, at least not any that was made in India. You showered twice a day in the summer and coated yourself with talcum powder to absorb the sweaty sheen on your body. Soap and water were the best beauty products you could count on, we were told. And that made sense: we didn’t have much more than soap and water. Even shampoo was a luxury product until the late 1970s.
Now that soap is cheaper than ever and available in so many brands that you can fill an entire aisle in a store, it suddenly isn’t so cool any more. Even friends who grew up with Rexona think nothing of spending ridiculous amounts of money buying soap from specialty boutiques in malls, where the soap is displayed and weighed (and priced) like premium confectionery.
Nowadays you can wash hands with a drop of alcohol gel and no water (yup! it is supposedly more potent against the H1N1 virus than soap and water). You can stroll like the Pied Piper and be trailed by an army of sexually ravenous females because they’ve just breathed a whiff of your irresistible deo spray. So hey, what moron needs soap?
I demand that soap -- sensible, old-fashioned soap -- gets its due. Hey, teenagers: soap is an underdog. Stand up for it. Don't fall for the propaganda of greedy corporations who are just selling you canned air and depleting the ozone layer faster than you want to deplete girls. And have mercy on your gagging parents.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Fastforwarded Into Fogeyhood
My daughter once pronounced twenty as the cutoff age for someone who is old.
By this count, I've been old for most of my life. Yet I brazenly pass birthday after birthday feeling not a bit older, let alone old. Sprightly as I may feel, when I talk to my children about my childhood, I come across as being positively ancient.
I thought you became an old fogey after you face looks like scratchpaper scribbled with all the wrinkles life throws your way. You walk slowly. You know you’re not far from the end of your journey, and you’re in no hurry to get their fast, so it’s just as well your knees force you to go slow. You wear clothes that belong to a different decade. And when you describe your life, people chuckle as though what you said could hardly be true.
Well, the last of the three hallmarks of fogeyhood holds true for me, so I guess I've entered fogeydom in my forties.
Ancient is what my grandmother seemed to me when she talked about the way things were when she was little. She was probably in her 50s then, and yet everything she said sounded so faraway, practically historical.
Back when I was in primary school, about my daughter's age, 10 paise could buy a few mouthfuls of of paani puri on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, or a puri with a little piece of potato tucked in at our school tuck shop. Getting 25 paise back then made me feel positively rich. If my grandmother saw us trying to haggle up the ten paise to something more generous, she would shake her head and tell us how worthless money had become. Why, when she was young, she could buy a princely amount of practically for that 10 paise.
The denomination she mostly got by with when she was young, the pai, was a museum coin for us. Now, I feel ancient when I give spending money to my children. A rupee buys just a little piece of candy. Ten rupees seems barely adequate but will buy a bag of junk food. I usually end up shelling out much, much more. When I tell my children how getting a rupee was rare treat, their faces flicker with pity and disbelief. (And hey, where’s the reverence?)
"Back when I was little" was just three or four decades away, and does indeed seem far away. It's not just the money. It's describing how I lived.
It's hard for my children to imagine I had no television until middle school, and it was black and white. That when we watched televised cricket test matches, we would crank up the cricket commentary on the radio and mute the television because television was so amateurishly awkward.
It is hard for them to believe that one of my errands constituted knocking on a neighbor's door to ask if she could please chill in her fridge for a few hours the bowl of vanilla custard my mother had sent me with.
Or that we could get power outages that could go on for half a day, and that I would do my homework by the light of a kerosene lantern that was replaced by a car-battery powered tubelight when I was in high school.
That I preferred to use a kitchen knife to sharpen pencils because domestically made sharpeners were so useless and imported ones too expensive. That the first time I finished a whole candy bar by myself was after I went to college in the United States. I'd always shared them with family or friends in India. Or that I once fell off the back of a scooter as it sped down a main road in Jamshedpur, but still didn't get run over because there were hardly any other cars on the road back then.
My children find it quaint that my family used a rotary telephone, which my father still owns. Once, I tried to describe to them what a cross-connection was, and how hilarious these muddled conversations, with strangers shouting faintly in the background, could be. I felt like a time traveller, waving my arms, over-explaining everything, and still getting nowhere: Why my siblings and I used to find these so amusing that we would shout out and call everyone over to cup their hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and listen, how we’d grab the receiver in turns and laugh at what was cutting-edge eavesdropping in my time. How strange it is for them to imagine that we used to book long distance calls ahead, and that telegrams were considered speedy because they arrived in a day.
Then I was thinking today that when I was little, our father and uncles wore trousers most of the time, but most of my older male relatives wore dhotis. I remember my grandfather pleating his crisp, white dhoti and patting the folds down as he sang hymns. There was a whole array of clothes that generation of middle-class shopkeepers and traders wore daily that their children, my father's generation - the westernized young - discontinued wearing. Hand-made slippers. Tailored undershirts in super-thin cotton, with a secret pocket over abdomen or chest to carry cash from the shop. I remember thinking how stylish those garments were, even though they looked dated to us children. Now, they're practically historical for urban Indians.
We live in times when everything gets improved, updated, upgraded moments after it is created. Messages to loved ones reach a split second of being sent. Our children write with dancing thumbs, a digit that clearly was a silent valet to the forefinger in our days.
Amazing as all this seems to us, it’s all going to seem clunky and ancient to our children’s children.
So I suppose it is a just reward, for living in such fast times, that we get to become fogeys before we’ve even wriggled out of middle age.
I felt really grown-up, with the burden of the world on my shoulders, when I turned 20. I've had more birthdays since and have enjoyed each without feeling old. Along the way, I've collected crowns on my teeth and reading glasses, but I've never ever felt that I've become old. The only time I feel old as a stagecoach standing next to a convertible is when I see my children's faces when I tell them about my childhood.
By this count, I've been old for most of my life. Yet I brazenly pass birthday after birthday feeling not a bit older, let alone old. Sprightly as I may feel, when I talk to my children about my childhood, I come across as being positively ancient.
I thought you became an old fogey after you face looks like scratchpaper scribbled with all the wrinkles life throws your way. You walk slowly. You know you’re not far from the end of your journey, and you’re in no hurry to get their fast, so it’s just as well your knees force you to go slow. You wear clothes that belong to a different decade. And when you describe your life, people chuckle as though what you said could hardly be true.
Well, the last of the three hallmarks of fogeyhood holds true for me, so I guess I've entered fogeydom in my forties.
Ancient is what my grandmother seemed to me when she talked about the way things were when she was little. She was probably in her 50s then, and yet everything she said sounded so faraway, practically historical.
Back when I was in primary school, about my daughter's age, 10 paise could buy a few mouthfuls of of paani puri on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, or a puri with a little piece of potato tucked in at our school tuck shop. Getting 25 paise back then made me feel positively rich. If my grandmother saw us trying to haggle up the ten paise to something more generous, she would shake her head and tell us how worthless money had become. Why, when she was young, she could buy a princely amount of practically for that 10 paise.
The denomination she mostly got by with when she was young, the pai, was a museum coin for us. Now, I feel ancient when I give spending money to my children. A rupee buys just a little piece of candy. Ten rupees seems barely adequate but will buy a bag of junk food. I usually end up shelling out much, much more. When I tell my children how getting a rupee was rare treat, their faces flicker with pity and disbelief. (And hey, where’s the reverence?)
"Back when I was little" was just three or four decades away, and does indeed seem far away. It's not just the money. It's describing how I lived.
It's hard for my children to imagine I had no television until middle school, and it was black and white. That when we watched televised cricket test matches, we would crank up the cricket commentary on the radio and mute the television because television was so amateurishly awkward.
It is hard for them to believe that one of my errands constituted knocking on a neighbor's door to ask if she could please chill in her fridge for a few hours the bowl of vanilla custard my mother had sent me with.
Or that we could get power outages that could go on for half a day, and that I would do my homework by the light of a kerosene lantern that was replaced by a car-battery powered tubelight when I was in high school.
That I preferred to use a kitchen knife to sharpen pencils because domestically made sharpeners were so useless and imported ones too expensive. That the first time I finished a whole candy bar by myself was after I went to college in the United States. I'd always shared them with family or friends in India. Or that I once fell off the back of a scooter as it sped down a main road in Jamshedpur, but still didn't get run over because there were hardly any other cars on the road back then.
My children find it quaint that my family used a rotary telephone, which my father still owns. Once, I tried to describe to them what a cross-connection was, and how hilarious these muddled conversations, with strangers shouting faintly in the background, could be. I felt like a time traveller, waving my arms, over-explaining everything, and still getting nowhere: Why my siblings and I used to find these so amusing that we would shout out and call everyone over to cup their hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and listen, how we’d grab the receiver in turns and laugh at what was cutting-edge eavesdropping in my time. How strange it is for them to imagine that we used to book long distance calls ahead, and that telegrams were considered speedy because they arrived in a day.
Then I was thinking today that when I was little, our father and uncles wore trousers most of the time, but most of my older male relatives wore dhotis. I remember my grandfather pleating his crisp, white dhoti and patting the folds down as he sang hymns. There was a whole array of clothes that generation of middle-class shopkeepers and traders wore daily that their children, my father's generation - the westernized young - discontinued wearing. Hand-made slippers. Tailored undershirts in super-thin cotton, with a secret pocket over abdomen or chest to carry cash from the shop. I remember thinking how stylish those garments were, even though they looked dated to us children. Now, they're practically historical for urban Indians.
We live in times when everything gets improved, updated, upgraded moments after it is created. Messages to loved ones reach a split second of being sent. Our children write with dancing thumbs, a digit that clearly was a silent valet to the forefinger in our days.
Amazing as all this seems to us, it’s all going to seem clunky and ancient to our children’s children.
So I suppose it is a just reward, for living in such fast times, that we get to become fogeys before we’ve even wriggled out of middle age.
I felt really grown-up, with the burden of the world on my shoulders, when I turned 20. I've had more birthdays since and have enjoyed each without feeling old. Along the way, I've collected crowns on my teeth and reading glasses, but I've never ever felt that I've become old. The only time I feel old as a stagecoach standing next to a convertible is when I see my children's faces when I tell them about my childhood.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Eclipse
A long solar eclipse was visible in Bangalore on Friday, January 15. Since the eclipse was to start at 11 a.m. and go on till 3 p.m., the children's school, like many others, decided to declare a holiday. I can see why. I wouldn’t want to have the responsibility of making sure any of the hundreds of children under my watch did not run out during lunch break or glance out of a window to look at the sun.
We didn’t watch the eclipse. I tried to find out about safe ways of doing so. But where to get the special lenses needed to view this extraordinary phenomenon? I read in the papers that glasses were on sale at Gangaram’s and Sapna Book House for not much money. But I decided not to get them. You can hardly buy pure sweets uncontaminated by food coloring, even in premium sweet shops. Polyester fabrics are passed of as silk in this, the heartland of Mysore silk sarees. Should I trust my children’s eyesight to the promises of a book store that these plastic lenses would definitely shield young eyes from damaging sun rays? I decided to brave the empty chatter of ignorant TV reporters to get our visuals of the eclipse.
My quiet neighborhood was eerily quieter. The silly chipmunks hid somewhere and stopped their endless squealing. The warblers fell silent. And the crows broke into an angry chorus, not unlike the TV pundits on Face the Nation, around the time of the eclipse’s start. Then, they too disappeared.
After the eclipse, my daughter and I played badminton outside. The yellow shuttlecock pinged off our rackets like Tweety to our Sylvester. No real birds braved the last couple of hours of daylight that day.
I remember a really long eclipse years ago in Calcutta. My parents shuttered the windows and sealed shut the curtains with safety pins so that not a chink of harmful sun rays penetrated our home. You were supposed to take a shower after, and throw out all the drinking water at home and fill the containers afresh.
Those were pre-television days, so my brother, sister and I occupied ourselves with board games and went through sheets of playing Hangman. We knew the eclipse was over when we heard boys from a nearby slum bang doors and shout from the streets, "Grahan daan, grahan daan," as they waved baskets over their heads. In Hindu mythology, eclipses are caused when the demons Rahu and Ketu try to swallow and consume ("grahan karna") the sun and the moon, but are foiled by the gods. The alms these street boys tried to cadge off us was some kind of ransom money. I miss the fanfare and mystery that went with eclipses. Now, they're scheduled to the exact second and reported like a cricket match.
We didn’t watch the eclipse. I tried to find out about safe ways of doing so. But where to get the special lenses needed to view this extraordinary phenomenon? I read in the papers that glasses were on sale at Gangaram’s and Sapna Book House for not much money. But I decided not to get them. You can hardly buy pure sweets uncontaminated by food coloring, even in premium sweet shops. Polyester fabrics are passed of as silk in this, the heartland of Mysore silk sarees. Should I trust my children’s eyesight to the promises of a book store that these plastic lenses would definitely shield young eyes from damaging sun rays? I decided to brave the empty chatter of ignorant TV reporters to get our visuals of the eclipse.
My quiet neighborhood was eerily quieter. The silly chipmunks hid somewhere and stopped their endless squealing. The warblers fell silent. And the crows broke into an angry chorus, not unlike the TV pundits on Face the Nation, around the time of the eclipse’s start. Then, they too disappeared.
After the eclipse, my daughter and I played badminton outside. The yellow shuttlecock pinged off our rackets like Tweety to our Sylvester. No real birds braved the last couple of hours of daylight that day.
I remember a really long eclipse years ago in Calcutta. My parents shuttered the windows and sealed shut the curtains with safety pins so that not a chink of harmful sun rays penetrated our home. You were supposed to take a shower after, and throw out all the drinking water at home and fill the containers afresh.
Those were pre-television days, so my brother, sister and I occupied ourselves with board games and went through sheets of playing Hangman. We knew the eclipse was over when we heard boys from a nearby slum bang doors and shout from the streets, "Grahan daan, grahan daan," as they waved baskets over their heads. In Hindu mythology, eclipses are caused when the demons Rahu and Ketu try to swallow and consume ("grahan karna") the sun and the moon, but are foiled by the gods. The alms these street boys tried to cadge off us was some kind of ransom money. I miss the fanfare and mystery that went with eclipses. Now, they're scheduled to the exact second and reported like a cricket match.
Friday, January 15, 2010
On Learning the Language of the Gods
I have had few words to write of late. I have been learning to speak Sanskrit, a language so magnificently rich and dense with meaning that anything I write looks impoverished and has me leaning on the Delete button constantly.
An extraordinarily patient neighbor recently began teaching a 10-day spoken Sanskrit class to a dozen students. Her class is part of a city-wide blitz by Sanskritam Bharati to popularize the language and blast the myth that it is boring and outdated. Apparently, 108 (an auspicious number, indeed) similar workshops are being hosted around Bangalore.
A lot of Western-educated Indians pooh-pooh Sanskrit as being too fuddy-duddy. Given that many Indians have a natural predilection for snobbery and being holier-than-thou, I thought Sanskrit would have great snob appeal. But it is not the Louis Vuitton of languages one would expect it to be.
Sanskrit and Hindi have a reputation for being difficult to get high exam scores in. Hence a lot of returning NRIs who give their children names such as Aishvarya and Agastya come back to steep their children in Indian culture but opt for French as Ash and Gus's second language in schools.
Hindi and Sanskrit at least open windows to Indian culture. But French…? It’s a language only important to ze French. I hate to think of legions of Indians shutting themselves off from the wealth of their linguistic heritage and laboring through years of French at school only so they can finally order butter-soaked food in Paris in an accent that still won’t get them the attention and respect of insufferable French waiters. As some of my French friends themselves would say with hands tossed to the heavens, “Pfffffffffffff!”
I’ve always been curious about Sanskrit. I love the sonorous rhythms of its shlokas, and the compound words that are composed of lots of words coalescing together. Each Sanskrit word is like a gem with many glinting facets of imagery. Like other Indo-European languages such as Latin, Sanskrit has root words through which other words are created when certain affixes are attached to them. Learn these endings and prefixes, and you’re a wordsmith! And Sanskrit isn’t finicky about word order in a sentence, so you can say “She writes a blog” and “Blog she writes” and be perfectly correct.
Having sipped a bit of the language of the gods, I can understand a teeny bit of the powerful poetry of its shlokas. Let me share an amazing shloka that hit me in the face this week:
Samudravasane devi, parvata-stana-mandale.
Vishnupatni namastubhyam,
Paada-sparsham kshamasva-me.
My translation:
O goddess, draped with oceans, and with mountains for breasts,
I bow to you, O wife of Vishnu. And pardon me for touching you with my feet.
This is a prayer to be said to the earth goddess as you wake up in the morning, before you set your petty feet on her glorious body.
An extraordinarily patient neighbor recently began teaching a 10-day spoken Sanskrit class to a dozen students. Her class is part of a city-wide blitz by Sanskritam Bharati to popularize the language and blast the myth that it is boring and outdated. Apparently, 108 (an auspicious number, indeed) similar workshops are being hosted around Bangalore.
A lot of Western-educated Indians pooh-pooh Sanskrit as being too fuddy-duddy. Given that many Indians have a natural predilection for snobbery and being holier-than-thou, I thought Sanskrit would have great snob appeal. But it is not the Louis Vuitton of languages one would expect it to be.
Sanskrit and Hindi have a reputation for being difficult to get high exam scores in. Hence a lot of returning NRIs who give their children names such as Aishvarya and Agastya come back to steep their children in Indian culture but opt for French as Ash and Gus's second language in schools.
Hindi and Sanskrit at least open windows to Indian culture. But French…? It’s a language only important to ze French. I hate to think of legions of Indians shutting themselves off from the wealth of their linguistic heritage and laboring through years of French at school only so they can finally order butter-soaked food in Paris in an accent that still won’t get them the attention and respect of insufferable French waiters. As some of my French friends themselves would say with hands tossed to the heavens, “Pfffffffffffff!”
I’ve always been curious about Sanskrit. I love the sonorous rhythms of its shlokas, and the compound words that are composed of lots of words coalescing together. Each Sanskrit word is like a gem with many glinting facets of imagery. Like other Indo-European languages such as Latin, Sanskrit has root words through which other words are created when certain affixes are attached to them. Learn these endings and prefixes, and you’re a wordsmith! And Sanskrit isn’t finicky about word order in a sentence, so you can say “She writes a blog” and “Blog she writes” and be perfectly correct.
Having sipped a bit of the language of the gods, I can understand a teeny bit of the powerful poetry of its shlokas. Let me share an amazing shloka that hit me in the face this week:
Samudravasane devi, parvata-stana-mandale.
Vishnupatni namastubhyam,
Paada-sparsham kshamasva-me.
My translation:
O goddess, draped with oceans, and with mountains for breasts,
I bow to you, O wife of Vishnu. And pardon me for touching you with my feet.
This is a prayer to be said to the earth goddess as you wake up in the morning, before you set your petty feet on her glorious body.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Reason #9: It's Not the Cosmopolitan City Everyone TellsYou It Is
The most remarkable places to eat at and hang out in Bangalore are still the unremarkable-looking places with a distinctly small-town flavor, places that have earned their fame by doing what they do exceedingly well.
I’m thinking of Koshy’s, Brahmin’s Café, Coffee House ... where you get served a quick masala dosa and an honest cup of coffee by waiters in crested turbans and cummerbunds. (I haven’t forgotten MTR. I’m trying to. Yes, I’m not embarrassed to admit I don’t care for MTR. See my September 2009 post to know why.)
Or Gangaram’s and Blossom Book Shop, where a guy who’s dusting books can walk over to any part of the store and pull out the exact book you want … something the more polished-looking staff at Crossword and Landmark are at a loss to do, even after eyeballing a computer listing of their inventory.
These are the modest places that make Bangalore feel like the gracious descendant of a cantonment town it was before information technology companies sprang up like warts.
Ultimately, it’s all these little signature places that make the city distinctive, and are in danger of becoming extinct as nouveau Bangaloreans buy into their self-generated fantasy that they’re Silicon Valley (instead of Silicon Halli) and need the upmarket shops and international franchises they’ve seen in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur to make them feel they live in a swinging place.
You can find cookie-cutter franchises like Gloria Jeans Coffee and Hard Rock Cafe in any city in the world. But if you had one day to spend in Bangalore, you’d want to spend it wandering in Malleswaram, not UB City.
A huddle of IT workers drinking Australian beer at a pub does not make a city cosmopolitan. Neither does the trickle of expats from a dozen countries forced to follow their jobs to India and lamenting that this city’s hyped resemblance to Silicon Valley begins and ends at their swanky office campuses.
Bangalore is a reticent town forced to rip off the jasmine in her hair, push out cleavage and throw on some brazen lipstick because out of town people have come courting. I hope the old Bangalore has the courage to re-assert itself.
I’m thinking of Koshy’s, Brahmin’s Café, Coffee House ... where you get served a quick masala dosa and an honest cup of coffee by waiters in crested turbans and cummerbunds. (I haven’t forgotten MTR. I’m trying to. Yes, I’m not embarrassed to admit I don’t care for MTR. See my September 2009 post to know why.)
Or Gangaram’s and Blossom Book Shop, where a guy who’s dusting books can walk over to any part of the store and pull out the exact book you want … something the more polished-looking staff at Crossword and Landmark are at a loss to do, even after eyeballing a computer listing of their inventory.
These are the modest places that make Bangalore feel like the gracious descendant of a cantonment town it was before information technology companies sprang up like warts.
Ultimately, it’s all these little signature places that make the city distinctive, and are in danger of becoming extinct as nouveau Bangaloreans buy into their self-generated fantasy that they’re Silicon Valley (instead of Silicon Halli) and need the upmarket shops and international franchises they’ve seen in Dubai and Kuala Lumpur to make them feel they live in a swinging place.
You can find cookie-cutter franchises like Gloria Jeans Coffee and Hard Rock Cafe in any city in the world. But if you had one day to spend in Bangalore, you’d want to spend it wandering in Malleswaram, not UB City.
A huddle of IT workers drinking Australian beer at a pub does not make a city cosmopolitan. Neither does the trickle of expats from a dozen countries forced to follow their jobs to India and lamenting that this city’s hyped resemblance to Silicon Valley begins and ends at their swanky office campuses.
Bangalore is a reticent town forced to rip off the jasmine in her hair, push out cleavage and throw on some brazen lipstick because out of town people have come courting. I hope the old Bangalore has the courage to re-assert itself.
A New Year - Already?
I apologize for my absence and promise to write more regularly. Yes, that's me writing lines on the board a la Bart Simpson.
The end of a year and the beginning of the new one are intimidating. You're expected to evaluate your milestones and make a pious list of promises for the new year. I wasn't ready to end 2009, and I wasn't ready for 2010.
I didn't get to sit with my computer and myself for several weeks, and then I felt I had to start the new year with a bang that just wasn't exploding with the right degree of gloriousness in my head. Yes, it's easy to postpone writing and then miss it intensely like the phone call you didn't make to your darling.
Truth be told, I have been without a wife (ie., no household help, since our housekeeper went on annual leave.) I steeped myself in Christmas -- sang dozens of off-key carols, decorated a beautiful 7-foot tree that brings a smile to my face every time I walk into that room, baked more than 200 chocolate chip cookies with the help of my lovely daughter (and proud to report that most of them have been gorged), hosted visitors, said my goodbyes to friends moving overseas, got a car fixed up (got carried away and threw in a coat of paint). I guess I am ready to start a new year, even if it got here sooner than I expected.
Since I was still laboring through my gripe list about my lovely Bangalore at the end of the year, I shall finish it. So, here goes. And oh, Happy New Year.
The end of a year and the beginning of the new one are intimidating. You're expected to evaluate your milestones and make a pious list of promises for the new year. I wasn't ready to end 2009, and I wasn't ready for 2010.
I didn't get to sit with my computer and myself for several weeks, and then I felt I had to start the new year with a bang that just wasn't exploding with the right degree of gloriousness in my head. Yes, it's easy to postpone writing and then miss it intensely like the phone call you didn't make to your darling.
Truth be told, I have been without a wife (ie., no household help, since our housekeeper went on annual leave.) I steeped myself in Christmas -- sang dozens of off-key carols, decorated a beautiful 7-foot tree that brings a smile to my face every time I walk into that room, baked more than 200 chocolate chip cookies with the help of my lovely daughter (and proud to report that most of them have been gorged), hosted visitors, said my goodbyes to friends moving overseas, got a car fixed up (got carried away and threw in a coat of paint). I guess I am ready to start a new year, even if it got here sooner than I expected.
Since I was still laboring through my gripe list about my lovely Bangalore at the end of the year, I shall finish it. So, here goes. And oh, Happy New Year.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Smells Like A Scam To Me
A perfume company that claims it makes unique perfumes out of people’s individual DNA now says it has created a fragrance from DNA extracted from Michael Jackson’s hair.
Really?
Not that I’m the slightest bit interested in smelling Michael or finding out what his signature scent could be like.
But I’m curious to know: Was that hair from somewhere other than Michael’s head?
Also: How did they get an authentic sample of Michael’s hair? Did a barber’s assistant secret away a fistful as she swept the curls scattered on the floor after a trim? Did a girlfriend or boyfriend snip a lock or maybe yank a hair out as Michael slept?
Now I also remember reading that a leaked copy of Michael’s autopsy report said he was completely bald, so this so-called hair from which this fragrance was concocted could be from a wig that most likely originated from hair shaved off the head of a pilgrim in Tirupati.
Turns out this company even has an official source for all the authentic hair it derives its celebrity fragrances from, including Elvis's. A man called John Reznikoff has the largest collection of genuine celebrity hair. I never was into collecting coins when I was little, and I collected stamps half-heartedly, perking up when I came across stamps issued by places that had nothing to write home about, like Lesotho and Papua-New Guinea. Why didn’t I think of amassing a collection of human hair? It’s portable and its DNA doesn’t degrade even after a person is dead.
I checked out the website of DNAfragrances.com to see if it was an actual company. They’ve got fancy pictures of mysterious-looking women draped in yards of billowing silk and velvet, and suitably flattering copy.
“As a woman this fragrance says I am. This is me. I no longer wear hand me downs. My genetic code is created from my heritage. I am connected to kings and queens. I dictate what is good for me. It is the history of my soul that announces who I am through My DNA Fragrance. I am exclusive.”
And then, instructions on how to send your DNA so you can have your own perfume: “You simply take a special sized Q-tip swab and rub it on the inside of your check” – yes, a true Freudian slip.
I’m jealous. How come I never thought of such a cool business idea. This sounds like a business I could run capably and collect some cool cash, all in the time it takes me to sing The Little Drummer Boy with every Ra-pa-pum-pum as I lick envelopes shut at the dining table. Just get people to Fedex a check for $99.99, to receive Brad Pitt’s DNA fragrance. Then, get a vial and fill it a little bit of cheap drug-store perfume, dilute it with tap water and send it on in a special box.
For those who are not into celebrities because they want to celebrate themselves, I’d have them Fedex a strand of their hair, an unwashed sock, a soiled tissue or some nail clippings – just about anything, even a half-sucked lozenge they’ve spat out, and send it with a cheque for $99.99 (limited special offer). Then, I’d get a vial and fill it with a little bit of cheap drug-store perfume (something with a desperate name, like Voluptuous -- which is cheap-perfume-code for Fat Loser), dilute it with tap water and send it on in a special box. Anyone who’s into this kind of self-worship is too dumb to smell a scam.
And I’ll actually be doing them a favor. They could be wiring their entire savings account to some Nigerian cheat who’s emailed them to inform them they’ve just inherited a few million dollars from a Liberian warlord and just need to quietly send their bank information to the widow.
Instead, I'll have given them a two-for-one deal in which they learn an essential lesson in financial prudence, and discover the god/goddess sleeping in their armpits.
Really?
Not that I’m the slightest bit interested in smelling Michael or finding out what his signature scent could be like.
But I’m curious to know: Was that hair from somewhere other than Michael’s head?
Also: How did they get an authentic sample of Michael’s hair? Did a barber’s assistant secret away a fistful as she swept the curls scattered on the floor after a trim? Did a girlfriend or boyfriend snip a lock or maybe yank a hair out as Michael slept?
Now I also remember reading that a leaked copy of Michael’s autopsy report said he was completely bald, so this so-called hair from which this fragrance was concocted could be from a wig that most likely originated from hair shaved off the head of a pilgrim in Tirupati.
Turns out this company even has an official source for all the authentic hair it derives its celebrity fragrances from, including Elvis's. A man called John Reznikoff has the largest collection of genuine celebrity hair. I never was into collecting coins when I was little, and I collected stamps half-heartedly, perking up when I came across stamps issued by places that had nothing to write home about, like Lesotho and Papua-New Guinea. Why didn’t I think of amassing a collection of human hair? It’s portable and its DNA doesn’t degrade even after a person is dead.
I checked out the website of DNAfragrances.com to see if it was an actual company. They’ve got fancy pictures of mysterious-looking women draped in yards of billowing silk and velvet, and suitably flattering copy.
“As a woman this fragrance says I am. This is me. I no longer wear hand me downs. My genetic code is created from my heritage. I am connected to kings and queens. I dictate what is good for me. It is the history of my soul that announces who I am through My DNA Fragrance. I am exclusive.”
And then, instructions on how to send your DNA so you can have your own perfume: “You simply take a special sized Q-tip swab and rub it on the inside of your check” – yes, a true Freudian slip.
I’m jealous. How come I never thought of such a cool business idea. This sounds like a business I could run capably and collect some cool cash, all in the time it takes me to sing The Little Drummer Boy with every Ra-pa-pum-pum as I lick envelopes shut at the dining table. Just get people to Fedex a check for $99.99, to receive Brad Pitt’s DNA fragrance. Then, get a vial and fill it a little bit of cheap drug-store perfume, dilute it with tap water and send it on in a special box.
For those who are not into celebrities because they want to celebrate themselves, I’d have them Fedex a strand of their hair, an unwashed sock, a soiled tissue or some nail clippings – just about anything, even a half-sucked lozenge they’ve spat out, and send it with a cheque for $99.99 (limited special offer). Then, I’d get a vial and fill it with a little bit of cheap drug-store perfume (something with a desperate name, like Voluptuous -- which is cheap-perfume-code for Fat Loser), dilute it with tap water and send it on in a special box. Anyone who’s into this kind of self-worship is too dumb to smell a scam.
And I’ll actually be doing them a favor. They could be wiring their entire savings account to some Nigerian cheat who’s emailed them to inform them they’ve just inherited a few million dollars from a Liberian warlord and just need to quietly send their bank information to the widow.
Instead, I'll have given them a two-for-one deal in which they learn an essential lesson in financial prudence, and discover the god/goddess sleeping in their armpits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
