The Ya-Ya Sister-Brotherhood

The peculiar 'paavan parv' of Rakshabandhan is upon us. I use the word peculiar because it is one the few Indian festivals which seems to have no strong 'storyline'. Unlike a Diwali or Holi or Janamashtami, where the myth or legend behind the celebration is widely known.

Google search of course reveals there are several possible origins. But honestly, while the Hindu pantheon of Gods has several heavyweight couples (Ram-Sita, Shiv-Parvati), there is no such brother-sister example.

Whatever the origin, there was something sweet about this sister-tying- thread-to-brother concept due to which it has not only survived but thrived. Even as other, more 'religious' festivals fall by the wayside.

Raksha, my foot!
When I was really young I thought it was very cool for sisters to get to tie the rakhi and get 'maal' from  brothers.

The situation was quite ridiculous, of course. A hundred rupee note would be slipped into the fingers of brothers as the brother & sister both smiled into the camera whipped out on such ceremonial occassions. As time went by I was bemused and then somewhat angered by this concept of brothers 'protecting' sisters. Coz there were a number of brothers younger to sisters who needed more protection than the sisters themselves.

But you know what, rakhi is too sweet a festival to get worked up about for feminist reasons. So  sisters now gloss over the protection bit and treat it like an extortion ritual.

Speaking of which the commercial possibilities of the festival are being exploited to the fullest. I especially like the creativity behind the 'kid rakhis' - Pokemon rakhis, Tweety rakhis, even Harry Potter rakhis!

And of course, there's the new and promising business of 'send a rakhi through our website'. More and more bhais and behens are living in different cities - even continents. And more and more sisters wake up 3 days before the festival and realise "post karna bhool gaye". Business can only grow, I tell you!

Another happy trend is Cadbury's launching its special mooh meetha karne ke liye 'gift boxes'. This spares junta from exchanging boxes of ghee laden mithais which lie uneaten in the fridge and are eventually given away to the kaamwaali bai!

Avoid this
Rakhi can however be extremely trying - for those who have no siblings of the opposite sex. And they are inevitably tempted into creating 'rakhi brothers' and 'rakhi sisters'.

This is thoroughly and completely avoidable. Simply because there are too many examples of girls tying rakhis to the boy next door for 15 years before realising "Arrey! I'm in love with this guy".

And needless and endless complications follow. No one plots for this to happen but nature has its mysterious ways. You can't ensure you will feel brotherly or sisterly except to a real, blood-related brother or sister.

So what do you do? I say we also promote same-sex rakshabandhan. Sisters tie to sisters, brothers to brothers. Only kids to their (same sex) best friends.

I know this sounds strange, and slightly kinky. But it's way less kinky than eventually marrying your rakhi brother or sister!

Bhaiyya mere...
Another important function rakhi serves in India: it's a polite way to refuse unwanted attention from a guy.

You don't even have to actually tie the rakhi, just casually mention what day it is and dangle one in front of the guy in question :)

In a manner of speaking - and strictly tongue in cheek - you could call this manouevre: 'Raakshas bandhan'.

Afterthought
Going by that pheku school pledge, "all Indians are my brothers and sisters". Guess sisters will be needing to buy more rakhis.... approximately... half a billion?

Dilwale Dulhania le gaye, aur ab...

After a long gap of 5 years Kajol came back to the screen in 2006. The junta was thinking that she literally disappeared from Bollywood - one of the few actors you wish would make a comeback. Well, that's exactly what's happened. Kajol returned to the silver screen in a Yash Chopra film. Interestingly, it was opposite Aamir Khan - not SRK.

What I don't understand however is the sudden rash of endorsements she's taken up. And that too in a 'hum saath saath hain' style with hubby Ajay Devgan.

First, there was the Whirlpool deal. Then came Kotak Mahindra and Tata Indicom followed suit.

To be fair, the Indicom ad was actually very entertaining. Ajay plays a country bumpkin accompanied by his ghunghat mein dhaki hui bride.

The salesman at the cellphone shop tries to take them for a ride before Kajol lifts her pallu and in crystal-clear English demands the phone with 'maximum talktime'. Because that's what phones are for - talking. Humein bewakoof na samajhna!

It was a good ad because it was built around a consumer insight. Yet, it was interesting - and the celebrity couple had been used well.

Ek ya do bas!
However, if I were Kajol I would stop accepting any more ads... And believe me there will be many more offers. Because the laws of me-too inevitably operate when it comes to celeb endorsements.

The brand manager for some brand of biscuit or chai-patti is gonna see the Indicom ad and go "eureka"! That's what I need to add zing to my boring old brand... Kajol and Ajay Devgan.

And of course this ad will just show the celebs eating or drinking the product and saying "acchha hai". No insight, no effort, no story, no glory.

There's a reason why Hollywood stars act in any old Japanese commercial, but not for American dog-food. At least not in their prime... Listen up, Bollywood!

 After a dozen such ads the viewer no longer remembers WHICH brand the celeb is endorsing anymore. I lost track of Amitabh somewhere after Dabur Chywanprash.

Beauty... or brains?

"If she weren't a model... She would probably have been employed with a software company, ingeniously developing code for a software package!"

That's not a statement one hears too often... but there it is. 26 year old Mashoom Singha is a first class engineering graduate from Mumbai who has just hit the glamour scene. That's her pic.

Mashoom follows in the footsteps of Shefali Zariwala, the babe whose claim to fame - besides the 'Kaanta Laga' video - was the fact that she was a student of Sardar Patel College of Engineering. One of the 'most wanted' tech schools in Mumbai.

So what's the big deal? Don't tons of engineers usually end up doing something quite different from their original course of study anyways? The Elex gold medallist may eventually market credit cards while the mechanical or civil dudes chooses to write software. Why does the odd grad entering the glamour world cause a collective ripple in the engineering student community?

Books vs looks
It all boils down to a well-established stereotype: Beauty and brains do not co- exist.

As in people are either beautiful, or they are brainy (in conventional, IQ terms) Rarely, if ever, do both qualities converge in a single human being.

Folks who clear intense entrance exams to 'most wanted' professional courses are like Pentium 4 PCs. Considering the chip on their shoulders, they ought to bear the same blue sticker: 'intel inside'.

Intel junta are endowed with faster processing speeds and can handle a lot more data than the average bloke. But if there's one thing they generally lack it's drop dead gorgeous good looks.

Why, I wonder? Is it God's way of balancing the universe? Kabhi khushi, kabhi gham. Brains zyaada, toh beauty kam?

As one IITian puts it, tongue firmly in cheek: “There is nothing wrong with the intelligence of girls in our country. It's just the fact that the government does not want us to get distracted so they intentionally select very few average looking girls in IITs (based on the photo they send for JEE) irrespective of their performances.”

Well, well, well. The striking thing is how most discussions on looks - or lack of them - centre on the female of the species. The average female IITian may not be Miss India material - neither is the average male IITian likely to be a finalist at the Gladrags supermodel contest!

But then again, different standards apply. Take a profession where looks are extremely important, such as airline cabin crew. The air hostesses - bar Indian Airlines - will invariably have twinkling eyes, near-perfect teeth and flawless complexions. The stewards will fulfil the height and weight criteria but rarely be outstanding in the attractiveness department.

Nothing even half as dishy as the average waiter in Kashmir. Sigh!

Blondes prefer gentlemen

There are a multitude of theories that come to mind.

Firstly, it could be that those who are born beautiful - especially girls - have less incentive to slog and make it through entrance exams. They have enough opportunities, enough self-esteem and enough admiration from the world already.

Conversely, those who are lacking in the looks department would compensate by trying to gain coveted qualifications.

This works especially well for men. Because women generally look for 'high status' when choosing mates. As researchers Satoshi Kanazawa and Jody Kovar of the London School of Economics point out," More intelligent men are more likely to attain higher social and economic status than less intelligent men".

So even though they may be unappealing looks-wise, an IIT/ IIM/ H1 B visa holder who's 'doing well' in life will have tipped the scales adequately in his favour.

On the other hand, conclude the researchers, "Brains are a plus for beautiful women, but they aren't the main attraction.".

In fact women who are beautiful and brainy often try to play down their intelligence. Watch Aishwarya Rai giggling and you’ll know what I mean… How do I conclude she has brains in the first place? Well, I guess she wasn’t into architecture school for fluttering her blue-green eyes!

A bonafide career path
Besides, women have to contend with what Dan Ondrack - a professor at the University of Toronto - calls the "Boopsey" effect: If women are too gorgeous, people assume they are airheads.

So why battle these prejudices? Had Mashoom and Shefali decided to go join Infosys or TCS, can you imagine how much harder they’d have had to work at:
a)Proving they were as smart and capable as anyone else
b)Fending off unwanted admirers.

Whatever their reasons for getting into engineering in the first place, it makes perfect sense for them to garb this chance to opt out. And get paid simply for looking good.

Although I must add, ‘looking good’ on a sustained basis is no mean task. It’s not just genius that’s 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Much the same applies to beauty.

Va va voom involves spending hours in curlers and under blow driers. Painting on make up, panting in gyms. Constantly worrying what to wear and what not to eat. All of which sounds like harder work than using your brains, to some of us…

But given that you’re ok with that kind of thing – and you get the right break – it is possible to have a ‘career’ based on looks. Not just a few years of timepass.

You can begin with modelling, easily get into television and if lucky - Bollywood. And a few years down the line - if you play your cards right – no more do you necessarily fade away.

Former stars – both major and minor – have plenty of earning opportunities. From starting up choreography and grooming schools to cutting ribbons for designer sari showrooms. They make guest appearances in films and much touted 'comebacks' on K soaps. And at the very least, rake in the bucks hawking miraclulous products on late night television.

Which means that the conventional wisdom, which says ‘get a degree, get a qualification’ is not necessarily any good. After a decade as a model and minor actress, can Aditi Govitrikar expect to ever ‘fall back on’ her MBBS degree?

No, because it’s experience – and not mere degrees – that count. The doctors who graduated with Aditi would have racked up.

Marriage as a career
And let’s face it, marrying and ‘settling down’ is also a valid career choice for women. Even those with the fanciest of degrees.

So, beautiful girls who intrinsically know they are ‘in demand’ in the marriage market may choose – and even be encouraged – not to be overly intellectually qualified.

High status (intelligent) men + Beautiful (not completely dumb) women = Offspring with both beauty and brains.

Oprah Winfrey !!!! is she beautiful???.. Good heavens..the woman earning so much .... and got a attractive way of speaking and talents..that's what matters...

Who told Aishwarya has got brains...Boldness, confidence, talent, intelligence etc....she is really highly overrated. On a different note, Aish's taste (going by her long list of weird boyfriends) doesn't give her brain a very good rating. All she's got is her beauty and now that too a fading one. That's why she's doing movies like Enthiran - The Robot with a man equivalent to her father-in-law's age. Either the Bachchan's are facing a financial crunch or for that matter Aishwarya is loosing her mental equilibrium. Without the above mentioned stuffs..even then she had to marry a person like Abhishek to tie up the Bachchan tagline...

Beauty is intoxication and u cant live with that for ur whole life.. Life needs money and true virtue..i.e. love,care and peace...Beauty is all upto ur perception and percentage of ur likings for a particular person and this is a psychological feeling

I believe special attention for those who succeed both in beauty and brains is gratuitous. Certainly people believe it's contrary to the less substantial law of beauty with brains. But according to me if some graduate succesfully creates a magnetic career in modelling it is only germane to laud her for the success but not for the background she shares. As someone pointed out about Shefali, success if often falsely ascribed to them just because they happen to have a portion of their life involved in it. In short the credit is mostly not true.

This reminds me of a bit of a humor I digested during a Biology class in my IXth standard. Once a famous dancer Isadora Duncan approached George Bernard Shaw for progeny because she wanted the offspring to have her beauty and his brains. In his retort, Shaw quickly remarked raising doubts about the result occuring the other way round i.e. possessing his beauty and her brains. (PS: Though it's still controversial whether the female was Duncan or the actress Eleonora Duse it is pakka that both of them were beautiful.)

Therefore your initial draft would have made more sense than the one which now appears in it's place.

An engineering degree, especially from Mumbai University , doesn't always imply intelligence - often it is about donkey's labour.I don't mean to degrade the genuinely talented people here (even though their marksheets may often say otherwise), but that is just the way it is.

Supermodel Cindy Crawford (Revlon, Omega etc) was in the Chemical Engineering program of Carnegie Melon University, when she started modeling. She withdrew from University and jumped into it fulltime. Today she is not only a supermodel, but a successful businesswoman also. She herself manages her stuff...including business.

'Bursts of genius' alone do not imply intelligence. But Bursts of genius is exactly what the world needs. The Theory of Relativity was just a burst of genius and so were many of the great inventions/discoveries.

Between, there ARE girls who are beautiful and smart. I think the reason that beautiful girls don't end up being smart is that they are way in over themselves. If parents teach their children that looks are not very important, even beautiful girls can become smart. And smart beautiful girls are the best people to be(friends) with.

I think that just getting into an E-school does not certify your level of intelligence, especially with mushrooming private Engg. colleges. You just "buy" a seat in these colleges. If a good looking girl has got brains also then she can very well decide what profession to choose from the available options..modeling or the tech career. But if she has just got brains and no looks then she has to make a career for herself.

With the education system we have in India, where we have to decide our career/profession right from class 11 or just when we get into university, sometimes one can make a wrong decision. The comments like "girls with both "beauty and brains" reserved for arranged marriages" and "arranged married girls are more loyal" cant be universally applied like Newton's Law of Gravitation.

Comments by girls abt themselves like "I have a decent face and i do recieve a lot of undue attention but when it comes to work, I'm not exactly Angeline Jolie..." are prospective case-studies ;-) ;-)

With regards to beautiful women there goes a Biblical proverb "A beautiful woman without good sense is like a gold ring in a pig's snout." 

Some people confuse correlation with causation. Arranged marriages are good, not by definition, but by correlation.

There are examples from spheres of life that demand "real" intelligence like Shereen Bhan. Ahem!

Regarding the funda of good looks, I guess most of the girls in the glam industry with good looks these days have attained them artificially except some women of those days like Hema Malini and if those girls have actually taken the effort and the money to attain those looks I guess their focus would have been the glam industry initially itself and so it is unlikely that they would have actually done all the studies which they claim they would have done had they not entered blah blah blah.

The good looking ones are always complimented for their looks from their childhood even if he/she also happens to be intelligent which eventually may lead them to a profession which involves showcasing their beauty. But the average looking ones either have to impress through academics or else no one is going to give him/her the required attention hence they concentrate more on studies and anything to do with the glamour world they simply dont cos they dont have the required looks.

But what's the big deal. Some people make money by coding, testing and documenting and then there are people who make money by dancing or for that matter showcasing their looks. Besides i am sometimes really amazed how such stupid girls are passed off as pioneers of women liberation. This Shefali chick "confessed" in a magazine that she liked to read porn - blah blah. A little more then we all need to know. Are females like Deepal Shaw and Mallika Sherawat  liberated? Excuse me! I think its some fat bald marketting guy who's actually counting cash by selling off these so called liberated women!

I don't know wat's the big hassle, if a girl can manage a first class and a software job (many non engg students can also, but its still decent), she should be praised for she dared to be unique, for eg, Ramgopal Verma happens to be a engineer, Mani Ratnam an MBA, Shekhar Kapur even studied CA, but they are hardly doing what they learnt. Even Brad Pitt measured in journalism.

I don't intend to discredit intelligent AND good-looking females/males doing their engineering or such supposedly brainy course, but in my opinion, courses like engineering or architecture do not implicitly imply that the people doing them are intelligent, especially with the quota system in place. So this is not a case of sour grapes.:-) 

And there you have the question once again – especially relevant if you are a woman: Should you cash in on your dimaag or your derriere?

It’s a beautiful dilemma...