Peculiarity TV

It was a fine afternoon. I was sprawled on my bed listening to my i-pod when all of a sudden the earphones were brutally yanked out of my ears by some wicked force of nature. I leapt up, a colourful expletive at the tip of my tongue and ready to jump the plank- when it was frozen midway instantly at the sight of the mighty 'force' itself.

It was none other than my precious grandmother- in her eighties and still very much alive and kicking, especially with her scorching rebukes and the authoritative leash over the family.

“Erm, daadi did you want something?” I asked tentatively.
“I want to watch television,” she replied haughtily.
“Ok, so why don't you go ahead and watch?” again I asked tentatively.

“Hah, and why must I, the oldest member of this house, have to subject myself to the petty entertainment provided by a stupid box, and that too, all by myself?” she was glaring at me now.

“Erm, because you want to?”
Oops, wrong reply. The intensity of her glare was now enough to turn me into a kebab.

“Your parents are never home and you're always busy with that idiotic thing with tentacles [I scratched my head at this part], why can't you understand how sad and lonely it may get for a poor old lady in here?” I looked around in search of the sad and lonely old lady, but didn't find her anywhere. But that infuriated her even more. “Oh, just come and watch the stupid TV with me for God's sake! Or I am reporting this as negligence towards old people, you hear me?…”

Oh I heard her. Which was why I was there sitting next to her on the living-room sofa afterwards, stiff and scared out of my mind, as she continued to speak, “From here on, you will be my guide. I don't understand most of the programmes they show these days. I have no idea how they are supposed to entertain if people don't understand them. How stupid…” she pressed the first remote button while talking, which eventually took us to BTV, our very own national channel.

Here, we were presented with a sight that left us speechless. They were airing a live cricket match and it was the break between innings. The screen was dominated by a renowned wig-wearing commentator who seemed to have a pretty eccentric (erm) fashion-sense. Try picturing this: he wore a royal blue suit, with a candy-floss pink shirt and a canary yellow tie with huge black polka dots.

“My God,” I gasped. “What's he wearing on national television?”
“Why do you say that?” Daadi asked, “I find him quite charming. And colourful, too.”
I gaped at her. “Then I must say you have a very twisted taste, Daadi.”
“Well, I did end up with your Dada,” she shrugged.

I decided not to comment on that. Instead I took the remote and changed the channel.

The next was yet another Bangladeshi satellite channel where they seemed to be running a movie review on a recent hit Hollywood movie. The narrator was saying, “…By breaking all previous records the Toilet chhaaga has now become the number one hit movie all over the world. Here a girl named Billa falls in love with a bhampire who one day leaves her to blah blah blah…” I simply stared at the TV. My daadi, however, burst into laughter, “Lavatory movies are blockbuster hits? What has your generation come to, hahaha! And what in world is a bhampire?”

That was pretty insulting. “I'm sure that's not what it is daadi,” I barely managed while she still laughed. “The narrator dude has a serious pronunciation problem…”

We switched to a new channel. It was a cooking program where the ladies, upon completing the course, were busy devouring it and asking, “So viewers, we think this dish is super-delicious. Don't you?”

“How on Earth am I supposed to know when you're the one gobbling it all up like gluttons? What are you, stupid?” Daadi screamed at the screen. “And what's that? Koi maachher dopeyaja? Even teenage village girls know how to cook that, what are you doing wasting our time with that on TV shows?”

I hurriedly changed the channel. A TV commercial threw itself at us with its colourful dancers who sang: “Ek shabane kapor kacha, shei shabane gosol”. Daadi was aghast, “Now they are giving us weird hygiene suggestions! What is wrong with this thing?”

Again I changed the channel. A drama scene unravelled before us where the heroine was proposing to the hero: “Apnere amar hebbi jotil lage. Ashen line mari!” Daadi didn't say anything this time. Instead she took off her sandals and attempted to throw them at the screen. I hurriedly changed the channel again. A Bangla cinema fight scene started in all its dhishoom-dhishoom glory. “Gimme that!” Daadi snatched the remote away from my hands and pressed a random button in her fury.

This particular channel had some sort of fashion show going on where hordes of shirtless burly men were cat-walking around all over the screen. I waited for the imminent channel-change.

One minute passed. Two minutes passed. It never came.
“D-Daadi!” I stammered
“What?” Daadi replied innocently.
“What do you mean what? You can't just ogle shirtless men like that!”
“Why not? This is finally something interesting.” Again the perfect innocence.
“You're EIGHTY years old for crying out loud!” I literally shrieked.
“Exactly. Should as well see all the goodies before I die, don't you think?”

I didn't answer. Shirtless men still kept cat-walking and Daadi still kept watching. I, on the other hand, kept sweating profusely and cursing John Baird for ever inventing television. Whoever named it the devil's box had no idea how very right he was. Sigh.

By Kokoro

Lingo of the coooool

Hearing the kids of today rambling on, frequently leaves me saying 'Beg your pardon?', because its hard to understand what they are saying. It's a different lingo, much like the ones used in the 60s when everything was groovy, full of karma, bringing the revolution of peace. But with time the language has progressed and has become much more confused. It's a word where a totally bad dude is considered to be a totally cool and good dude. It's a world where a bomb is something very favorable. 'That movie is so bad. It's the bomb.' I heard one fellow exclaim, right when I was buying tickets for it. Obviously I didn't see the movie and it went on to be the biggest hit of the millennium. It's the fault of today's language. Or is today called tomorrow in the lingo of the cool? Everyone hates being outdated.

Lingo of The Cool's Purpose
Shakespeare felt that the limitation of the English vocabulary stifled his power to express thus he went about making new words and coining phrases, never heard of before. This gave him a wider variety of words to choose. Of course when I made up words for my English Essay, they gave me a zero. So the world doesn't spin that way anymore and kids know that. Knowing that, kids have decided to have their own language, twist the words to fit any meaning they please and it all escapes us and we end up understanding nothing when we eavesdrop on them. Those damned teenagers know that once we stop understanding them, they can take over the world and type the news in their language so that we don't get anything and live the rest of our lives as slaves. Or something of that sort, to that context.

Incidentally some quarters feel that the purpose of the lingo is because cool teenagers find everything cool and since the only word to describe 'the cool' is cool, they have this whole lingo which has live a billion synonyms for the word 'cool'. For example, radical, radi-cool, bomb, boss, deadly, bean cool, dope, illin', icy, etc. They all mean cool. Not surprising there are also a lot of words for marijuana and hardly any synonyms for encyclopedia or studying. Those teenagers scare me, I tell you.

Block Parties Need Bomb Phrases and Senseless Words
Every once in a while a teenager is required to make a reply with a phrase, mostly containing derogatory words. Its cool, like techno and high button shoes with belly bottoms where in our days. But some of these phrases are just plain hard to understand. For Cer means seriously. When someone asks you to 'Get Bent', it means they are telling you to 'Get out'. Oh but it doesn't end there. Before when we saw something disgusting, we would say its disgusting, girls would say 'Ewwww' and the real men would say 'That doesn't disgust me at all. I think its cool.'. But nowadays something disgusting is met with the phrase 'Gag me with a spoon.' We'd rather choke you with a rope, but whatever. And when something is 'In the mix', it means that it is cool. Well, it did back in the 80's but that's just another word for cool. Coincidentally, these same people coined the word 'wannabe', apparently as a method to describe themselves. Its not really smart to make up dumb words and phrases.

You think that's all the bull-ha that you can take, but wait good fellow, wait till you hear all these stupid words in circulation. A head-banger, one who stands at rock concert, moving his head in an up and down motion, because he can't play any instrument, doesn't have a girlfriend or a life and can't sing for a penny, is actually known as a heavy metal fan. Yes, he must've been hit one too many times by heavy metal. K-Rad means radical whereas K-Fed means someone who is a loser(not really, the latter). Juicin' describes a steroid user, Killer means really cool, Mad and Major mean cool, mental means stupid, 411 means to get information and Oh My God, the list is endless and makes people writhe in anger and anguish, gathered from the mighty stupidity of it all.

Gibberish
It's all gibberish really. It's a complete waste of time, like a sign of misspent youth. Like how such wannabe cool people cannot speak a sentence without using the word like. 'Like I was at a party and like people came and like we dance. Like there was mmmusic and we all like had a ggood time. Like you know? Good time? Like..' That is not how to speak unless you have speech impairment and I see no reason to over pronounce the sound of every other word. The Lingo of The Cool is actually a thesaurus for the word Cool, since everything is cool for this generation. 'Hey see that gooey stuff on my shoe? Isn't it cool? Yeah its rad. Its major, man its bangin'. Like it's so cool, its like mad cool and man crazy cool, like mental cool…' Lay off the doobie is my last thought.

By Osama Rahman
Source http://www.inthe80s.com/ glossary.shtml