Maybe I am really old fashioned.

I am going to outrage a bit here, so take your judgementalism, and go watch a movie with it. I read this today. For those of you who don't (or can't) to read what's behind that link, let me sum it up. A 50-year-old mum gifted her daughter a boob-job voucher for when she turns sixteen. Her daughter is currently seven.

Now, my mum would easily say in her usual practical-sense style that that's what happens when you have kids late, you tend to lose any common sense. (And I am inclined to sometimes agree with her when I see the ridiculous things older parents let their kids do.) But to me this is just a mildly eye-widening piece of news. There are two things here: First, the kid is quoted as saying she can't wait to have bigger breasts like her mum's because they are so pretty. Second, and to more this is more alarming than the birthday present itself, her mum plans to let her watch her next series of plastic surgery procedures -- after having spent more than $800,000 already on them.

Personally, I think that should have been at the core of the story -- that the mother was going to let her child watch a surgery she was undergoing. I don't know if there are rules to stop such travesty from taking place in whatever country this woman lives in but I sure hope so. Because, as you can see, this already pretty child is going to grow up thinking she'll never be beautiful unless she spends a few hours going under the knife every few years. Already, at an age where she is absorbing things like the black hole, she's been told directly that she should do everything she can to look beautiful, by her mother, who looks pretty scary if you ask me.

What does that do to a child? And what kind of a woman will she grow up to be? I remember reading somewhere that girls learn to hate their bodies very early because of what is popular. I don't know what magic ideal my mum passed down to me in my upbringing but I have never hated my body. Mind you, it's far from perfect --  I have never had a day where I had a washboard tummy, even in my good-weight days (which I must gloat, I am back to now), I have never had perfectly defined muscles to show off under short skirts and I most definitely don't have infinitely perky breasts. But, and again here I have my mother to thank, I have never hated my body. For sure, adolescence brought enough insecurity about how the thinner girls were more popular; for a while I would always stand with my hands around my middle, that typical stance teenage girls adopt when they are growing. But I've never had a day of awkwardness when I moved from slips to bras. No hunching over, no weird self-consciousness over new breasts, no strutting pride over them either. Somehow, my mother subliminally taught me that this was your body, be grateful and happy with it.

So for me, to let a child be told by way of action that she isn't pretty or goodlooking as she is, is a huge crime. God knows there's enough trouble in grownup-gaon without the added burden of having to make money to go under the knife every time your face wrinkles with a smile or every time you imagine your butt isn't the model of discipline it used to be. Inflicting this kind of damage is just as bad as this whole colour thing that many people of my country are obsessed with. How many times have I heard and consciously remembered to stop accepting the phrase, "she's really dark but still pretty".

I am never going to say the way you look shouldn't be important. It should be -- it's the world's first view of you, so you better look close to your best when you step out. And maybe Barbie Mum here thinks she doesn't look her best (I'd agree with her) and which is why she's constantly nipping and tucking. But that's no reason to pass that on to your daughter. I just hope she goes the way some kids go and ends up militantly au naturale.

I am not saying anything new. I am just disturbed at that. And this. I have no words for the ruination this set of parents is causing their child. I only laugh at the irony of it.

Strange things that have happened this week.

A.K.A

Unsolicited advice to aspiring poets.

1 Do you use the word 'yonder' in daily conversation? Even once? No? Then don't use it in your poems. Which takes us to point #2

2. Don't try and find a word that rhymes with it. You'll only come up with 'wonder', unless you want to use 'blunder', 'thunder', 'torn asunder'. I thought not.

3. Don't rhyme if you have to cut, colour, spit and polish the idea in the line to fit the rhyming word in.

4. Show, don't tell. Please
'Still rocks.'
'Electric electricity' (!!). Yes
'Silent vacuum'

5. Use "deafening silence" only if the silence is deafening. Don't use it for a quiet night. Or a pleasant enough poem.

6. Shards, angst, the depths of your shattered soul -- all very nice. But if you are still writing this when you are 23 and are not sitting in a padded cell or, at the very least, getting therapy, then stop. Grow up. There's a reason it's called adolescent angst.

7. Use a semi-colon. It speaks volumes. Also of your work.

8. Keep it simple. Even the complicated stuff.

9. Read Jeet Thayil.

10. Read, edit, read, edit, read, edit. Take at least a week to make it right. You may love your first draft but slowly you will come to realise that there is much more that can be done, some more that can be taken away.


And in the 'weird things keep happening to me' department.

Is anyone else getting email that is from "buddisttrains"? What the hell is that? I've got something from them twice this week.

Suddenly, there's almost no money in my bank.

I can't find a piece that I had done on Thayil for Daily News and Analysis. He has been my favourite living Indian poet for a while now.

Update
Is it just me? Or is that word verification thingamejig throwing up real words that are misspelt these days? In the last four days I have - poleez, jinzeng, tranter (not a real word but sounds like one) and djigkle.  Yes, I think about these things. 

 

Venus is a man and Titty has no tits

Here's my contribution to the burgeoning posts that you can find online about  Malayalee names.
Specifically, Malayalee Christian names.  I can already hear M saying it's not like Malayalee Hindu names are all that much better. I agree, but he has a family friend named Swingly (a lovely old gentleman, I might add) and a sister-in-law named ....erm.... Titty (not so old, not so lovely and not tittacious at all). Damn, that was going to come later but I couldn't resist.

Whereas all I have is an uncle named Ambili, which I am told, is a woman's name. Well, my argument is this -- how can it be a woman's name (Ambili means the moon in Malayalam) when every piece of song-writing and literature refers to it as Ambili Maman (the Malayalam equivalent of Chanda Mama)? Someone explain that to me, first.

So anyway let's get on with life. My first brush with slightly bizarre, i-will-hack-my-family-to-bits-when-i-grow-up names was in class 12 when I had a classmate called Lovely. The fact she was indeed lovely and continues to be (maybe there is something to that theory about the person actually growing into the name), gave the parents no right to name an innocent babe the first thing they thought of when the priest rushed them at the baptism ceremony.

 But she had a horror story to narrate. To add insult to the injury of her name, she said she knew a family that had twin girls. Guess what the deliriously joyous parents named them? Loveme and Kissme.

Have you recovered? Some smelling salts? No? Ok, let's move on, shall we?

Now, in a class full of names like Lincy, Jesme, Rijo and Gentle, why do I take particular notice of Lovely, you ask? Simple. The list I've just rattled off and other similar names, I completely and compositely ignore because they don't mean a thing. Really, if you haven't already figured, I have other things to do with my time than dawdle with a bunch of names that actually came from some corner of imagination that is so remote that it can be classified as belonging to another solar system all together. So I have no issues if you are called Blessy, Jomi, Rilli, Petsy, Eljo. Because all they are is sounds.

But I am dreading the time when Loveme and Kissme get to their teens.

Another kind of naming tradition that utterly confounds me is naming a boy with what is obviously a girl's name. For example: Venus (godDESS of love and beauty) GodDESS, godDESS as in female equivalent of god. Venus lives in my building and is a father to two girls. Yes, I said father.
Or Kim (Usually short for Kimberly). Kim is a man I know - through my husband (Hi, M). Unless he was Rudyard Kipling's protagonist of the same name Kim just doesn't sit right on a man.
What about Tess. Nice name, harmless. Calls to mind a relatively simple child-woman with gorgeous red hair and a big smile. (It's my mind and my Tess has a big smile.) Yes? Well, no. Tess is a neighbor in my parents-in-law's neighbourhood. Tess is also the husband of another woman named Lovely.

I know how hard I struggled to come up with a name for my kids. I wanted the names to be meaningful, beautiful to the ears, something that they'll like when they grow up. And I wanted my daughter to be named for my beloved grandmother. So when I come across absolutely impossible names (a friend swears there is someone called Golden Fruito but I doubt her sanity) I wonder what the parents were thinking. Did they want their kids to grow up to be psychopathic murderers? Was it an active ploy to kill any chance of a social life the kids might have had? Were the children conceived in a rash of get-back sex? What, what, what?

I think my  husband's been having me. As in I've been had by my husband. Oh come on, taken in. Meaning strung along. Pah. Go wash your brains with soap.

I'll tell you why: He tells me a story of a man who was so sick of common names that he decided he'd name his kids something absolutely no one would want to name. So he named his daughter Virus. Yes. V I R U S. As in the thing that causes some kind of illness. No, I am not kidding. Yes, I am serious. For you doubting thomases, send me an email and I'll give you my husband's phone number.

Virus.

Jaded?

Maybe it's because I am in the news business that nothing seemingly touches me any more. I mean July has been tumultous this year, (funnly enough July has been that way for the past couple of years as well) to say the least. Tomato fever, Puja Chauhan, Kafeel and the Bombing Mess (seriously, what was he thinking), a 24-year-old who went out on a picnic with his girlfriend and was killed by scum while they left the woman tied to a tree, monkeys irritating the crap out of Bangaloreans, earthquake in Japan .... among other things. And personally, finishing a month in with my current paper, ordering furniture for the first time in my life and a false pregnancy alarm. It's been like a kaleidoscope spinning crazily. But through all that I've just gotten up, thought about issues like when I'll lose weight and when I'll get to go to Chichen Itza and such. I've cooked, shopped, smiled, visited friends, partied and well, basically lived life. And at the end of few days I think, why am I relatively unaffected by all that's happened.
Really, it's worrying me. I used to be the kind who had at least one cause to call her own at any point in life. From saving water and hugging trees to donating blood and writing away body parts to science. Everything. These days I just take care that I do these things in my life and not actually go out and preach. Why? Will I lose friends if I do? Or have I learnt to live and let live? And if I have, is that such a good thing?
The only thing I seem to be doing this year is talking a lot about the things that are happening. Like everyone else. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. Talk.
So many opinions. But I just can't figure out how to do something for someone so that it makes a difference.