What’s love got to do with it?
22 Aug 2014 10:41 PM GMT
Delhi has been fantastic per usual. From fattening me up with the sweetest, plumpest mangoes to giving a rousing reception at my gig at the India Habitat Centre. Sadly it’s time to go, and no words can aptly describe how it feels to leave this beautiful city behind. An old Urdu couplet comes to mind, something I’d heard Amjad Khan recite in Satyajit Ray’s 1977 masterpiece Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
These were lines that Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh had written, impromptu, when his advisors informed him about the British administration’s decision to exile him to Bengal.
Jab chhod chalein Lucknow nagari
Kahein haal ke hum par kya guzri
These lines roughly translate to, ‘It is nearly impossible for me to measure in words all that I’m going through now, when I’m leaving Lucknow’. But then, there’s always a next time for me, unlike the Nawab who never got a chance to go back. I, thankfully, am going to be back soon. For my father’s indulgent smiles, for the warm winter sun on my vitamin D deficient back, for the aloo-ka-parantha with a dollop of white butter, for the red velvet cake at Elma’s, for my grandmother’s toothless grins, for the pashmina-meets-ghazal soirees and the dilliwallahs! As they say, you can take the girl out of Delhi...
In other news, this phenomenon called the Ice Bucket Challenge seems to have caught the imagination (and, more!) of Internet denizens. Now, I’m usually one of the last few people to get a whiff of all things viral online. If there ever were to be an internet apocalypse, I’ll either be one of the first to die or I’ll be one of those cockroaches that can survive anything ‘cause, well, by the time I shrug off my invisible cloak of laziness and log in to one of my social profiles and learn about it, the apocalypse would be long over. So, for weeks, these Ice Bucket news items went practically unnoticed.
But, couple of days back, a video of one of my favorite footballers, German midfielder Mesut Ozil, taking up the challenge went viral. And, I couldn’t help but notice. A devilishly handsome, young, successful footballer getting drenched in a bucketful of ice. What’s to not notice? But, why would any sane person do such a thing? To find an answer, I read up about the challenge, and reached a conclusion, which wasn’t much different from the one before Ozil’s video. That it’s utterly ridiculous, and a gross waste of time, money, and something more precious than everything put together-Water.
The rules of the challenge are such that if you’re unable to take up the challenge thrown at you by someone who’s already done it, you must donate money to charity, in this particular case the ALS association. Sounds noble, right? Well, it isn’t. Most people are just filming themselves getting drenched in ice cold water, and showing off their ‘daredevilry’. I don’t see any money going to charity. Just A LOT OF WATER GOING TO WASTE! From parts of Africa and the Middle East to closer home in Vidarbha and the Sundarbans. Can we really afford to indulge in such games? Why not just simply donate to charity? I have seen people in the Sundarbans drink water that’s so yellow that it could pass off as oil.
I have been closely following the Vidarbha issue since the past few years. I’m horrified that I live in a country where, even in its 68th year of independence, people still don’t have enough water for their basic needs. And, I feel ashamed that the rich and famous in such a country are following the American Pied Piper and jumping into the bandwagon. Somebody’s got to stop this idiocy before it’s too late. Not online. For real. Jai Hind!
Malini Banerjee is a snotty single child, mountain junkie, playback singer, Austen addict, hopes to soon finish writing her debut novel, and dreams of singing alongside Buddy Guy.
These were lines that Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh had written, impromptu, when his advisors informed him about the British administration’s decision to exile him to Bengal.
Jab chhod chalein Lucknow nagari
Kahein haal ke hum par kya guzri
These lines roughly translate to, ‘It is nearly impossible for me to measure in words all that I’m going through now, when I’m leaving Lucknow’. But then, there’s always a next time for me, unlike the Nawab who never got a chance to go back. I, thankfully, am going to be back soon. For my father’s indulgent smiles, for the warm winter sun on my vitamin D deficient back, for the aloo-ka-parantha with a dollop of white butter, for the red velvet cake at Elma’s, for my grandmother’s toothless grins, for the pashmina-meets-ghazal soirees and the dilliwallahs! As they say, you can take the girl out of Delhi...
In other news, this phenomenon called the Ice Bucket Challenge seems to have caught the imagination (and, more!) of Internet denizens. Now, I’m usually one of the last few people to get a whiff of all things viral online. If there ever were to be an internet apocalypse, I’ll either be one of the first to die or I’ll be one of those cockroaches that can survive anything ‘cause, well, by the time I shrug off my invisible cloak of laziness and log in to one of my social profiles and learn about it, the apocalypse would be long over. So, for weeks, these Ice Bucket news items went practically unnoticed.
But, couple of days back, a video of one of my favorite footballers, German midfielder Mesut Ozil, taking up the challenge went viral. And, I couldn’t help but notice. A devilishly handsome, young, successful footballer getting drenched in a bucketful of ice. What’s to not notice? But, why would any sane person do such a thing? To find an answer, I read up about the challenge, and reached a conclusion, which wasn’t much different from the one before Ozil’s video. That it’s utterly ridiculous, and a gross waste of time, money, and something more precious than everything put together-Water.
The rules of the challenge are such that if you’re unable to take up the challenge thrown at you by someone who’s already done it, you must donate money to charity, in this particular case the ALS association. Sounds noble, right? Well, it isn’t. Most people are just filming themselves getting drenched in ice cold water, and showing off their ‘daredevilry’. I don’t see any money going to charity. Just A LOT OF WATER GOING TO WASTE! From parts of Africa and the Middle East to closer home in Vidarbha and the Sundarbans. Can we really afford to indulge in such games? Why not just simply donate to charity? I have seen people in the Sundarbans drink water that’s so yellow that it could pass off as oil.
I have been closely following the Vidarbha issue since the past few years. I’m horrified that I live in a country where, even in its 68th year of independence, people still don’t have enough water for their basic needs. And, I feel ashamed that the rich and famous in such a country are following the American Pied Piper and jumping into the bandwagon. Somebody’s got to stop this idiocy before it’s too late. Not online. For real. Jai Hind!
Malini Banerjee is a snotty single child, mountain junkie, playback singer, Austen addict, hopes to soon finish writing her debut novel, and dreams of singing alongside Buddy Guy.
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