Teachers are `powerful'

A well-behaved three year old returns to school after falling ill for a few days.

Since his digestion abilities took a beating over the sick days, the boy prompts his teacher exactly at 11 am, that he needs to use the toilet. So what's the big deal about a toddler alerting his teacher about this? The deal is: a school help or ayah must accompany the kid to the toilet and do the needful.

The teacher is irked. She summons the father and demands an explanation for the child's `outrageous demands'.
Her grouse: ``We hardly have a few toilets in the school. We cannot let your child alone use it everyday. Please ask him not to use the toilet here during class hours!''

The child's father is astounded at these ridiculous allegations against his three year old bundle of joy. After all, he had paid a hefty fee for these very things - clean toilets, good grooming, sufficient attention to the child! He gulps his anger and sends his wife over for a chat with the teacher. This is an elite school in Chennai, something everyone around assumes, is a passport to great life, education at its best and blah blah.

His wife fumes at the teacher's behaviour, but makes it the next day to school, for a similar lecture.

The child is told not to go `number two' in school back home. And he understands.

The next time his aunt asks him if he likes his school, pat comes his reply. ``No Number two in school.''

Teachers, are powerful! Three year olds have no right to keep using their school toilets! They `better' control their bowels.

Uh Oh!

After about a month of being on sick leave, nothing excites as much as the day you're returning to work.
That feel of being...normal, is so relieving!
What if the day wills otherwise, and throws you back into the spiral of ...problems! First, you set out of the house, and have to rush back because there is this gnawing dermatitis. You discover it has spread on parts of body you least expected it to.
After suffering a day, you want to revert to your dermatologist. She insists on seeing you again. But when you land at the hospital, she's not around. The nurse informs that the doctor fell ill. ``Could you please try tomorrow?''
The next day, you realise that the doctor, has been hospitalised. Whoa!
 I want to get back to work. And after four weeks of becoming bed-bound, and home-bound, the last thing I want is this.
But yeah, I wish the doc a speedy recovery, irrespective of my skin troubles.

Mahi shows way, bye the bye

It's been over a week since Mahi Way, the Yash Raj sitcom ended.

And for once, I loved the way a weekly soap ended! So unlike Jassi who was abused with a disappointing makeover, so unlike the ocean of serials we get bombarded with - shaadi, dulhann, jewellery, glycerine, phamily...joint family...

That clincher of its one liners! ``Khud se milke khushi huyi...'' (happy to meet myself/inner self whatever)

Thank God it did not quite end in the `happily ever after' (read married) style. Cleverly packaged old story. But a story narrated well. And so unlike Yashraj known for its chiffon clad heroines against snowy mountains! So unlike a banner that prided itself on doe-eyed beauties instead of real thinking women! Waiting for more from the banner.Chak De and Rocket Singh spelt hope...and so did Mahi...

Pic courtesy: Sony Entertainment Television

Five ways to sell your sitcom soap

Wanna make a TV sitcom and don't have that best-seller brainwave? Don't just worry. Here are five essential spices you add to that real boring elongated shots inundated daily soap on TV. It's been a couple of years since Kyunki... left TV, but the rules only got modified.

1. Have a cute looking, bright eyed kid breathing innocence. Avika Gor (Balika Vadhu) is passe. Kids rule just about everything on TV - soaps to sops, reel to reality shows! Comedy, tragedy, anchoring...they're goddesses, school kids, or sometimes merely accessories in a crowd of characters, but have them you must.

2. Cling on to that....`Cause'. You may use your soap to load oodles of glycerin, glorify the new villain-protagonist to hilt, show violence in just about every frame to get eye-balls, but just go ahead and mention generously before the episode begins, that `this serial is to depict ....cause', ideally about women or children.

3. This is a rule you dare not ignore. Always always always, begin your soap outdoors, Agra, a village, slums of Mumbai, the fields of Punjab, anywhere rustic and real enough. But do that only for the first few episodes. And quickly make sure you shift the protagonist to a grand haveli, a rich family, between oppressed household women with heavy make-up. Glorify everything opposite of the cause, but just mention that, for posterity's sake if you must.

4. Have five episodes of tears and one episode that hurts your nerves less - a dash of comedy. Never mind even if the comedy is drab.

5. If one episode of a sitcom has monologues of what the heroine/ hero wants to do further, no harm in getting them to repeat similar lines in the next episode too. After all, stretching those scenes is what matters! Of course, this must be with the all-necessary metal-beats that make it look like an epic war scene, while all you do is focus on the heavily made up heroine's eyes, or hero's boots. Now, that's a lesson as ancient as Ekta's soaps.

Pic courtesy: Rainbow Skill