Friday, March 07, 2008

For the sake of posting...

Apologies dear readers. I have not been posting anything for some time now. It's not all my fault, you see. I have been very busy in office for the past two weeks - the kind of busy that makes you feel guilty for taking a break to have lunch. But that has not prevented me from blog-hopping and reading most of the stuff around. If you have not already seen it, you should definitely check out Greatbong's latest offering - fantastic stuff. [My boss was so pissed-off when he saw me laughing my heart out while reading this blog that he gave me an additional truckload of work to do over the weekend. Note to self: Never look happy when you are neck-deep in shit]

And guys, in case you didn't know, tomorrow is International Women's Day. For something that started out as a thoroughly communist/trade unionist thing, it has certainly changed its face over the decades. It has become another milch cow for the greetings industry. They quickly realized that Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Sister's Day, Mistress' Day, Girl-next-door Day, etc had their limitations - they targeted certain segments of the population only. With something as generic as IWD, you could target 50% of the human population straight away. And the marketing ploy seems to be working - every day for the past week I am being assaulted with announcement of events associated with IWD and exhortations to gift something to my loved ones.

One particular announcement that caught my fancy was that of a quiz for women being conducted in Chennai called The Quest. There is a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh for the winner! With a prize like that (huge, even by corporate quiz standards) I wish there was some way I could participate, even if it meant cross-dressing for a day. Women make such lousy quizzers that I would have had a very realistic chance of getting my hands on the booty (pun unintended).

It wouldn't have been too hard a job (the cross-dressing), I think, because for the first 2-3 years of my life, I practically went about dressed as a girl - nail polish, bindi and all. You see, all my cousins around me at that time were girls and I had to do so to fit in with the gang. The surviving photographs from those days still serves to embarrass me and also enliven family get-togethers. In fact, my mother constantly keeps telling me that she and my father wanted the first child to be a girl. It went to such lengths that I got gifts meant for a girl from a lot of people even up to my 2nd and 3rd birthdays. To add insult to injury, my sadistic aunts would dress me up in girl's clothes with dolls in hand and photograph me for posterity. It was only when I turned 4 years old and got an AK-47 toy gun for a gift that I was acknowledged to be a male in my family. As Mao Zedong once famously told his comrades, 'Power flows from the barrel of a plastic AK-47'. I guess as a kid he was also subjected to the same cruelties I was subjected to.

Now that I have accomplished the task of posting something, let me sign off my wishing all women and girls a Happy Women's Day. More social, economic and political power to you!

2 comments:

silverine said...

:))

My brother will tell you of a period when I was so anxious to get a sister that I begged,pleaded and cried asking him to wear frocks fully convinced that he would transform into a gal :)) The poor guy says he is still traumatized by that incident :p So I can imagine your plight. Thank god you didn't become one of those Hollywood thriller movie psychos who go around hunting girls due to this exp...or do you? :-SS

Thanks for the wishes. very sweet!

Philip said...

silverine: If we get a couple of guys more in addition to you bro, we can start a support group :p

Girl-hunting psycho? That would depend on your definition of a psycho. :)