Fair Play?

(First I thought of titling this as In Defence of Sharad Yadav but fearing that I would be lynched by angry ladies peeved over his remark about the dusky skin of south Indian women, I have made it shorter and sweeter)


How many of you actually watch teleshopping shows on TV. Believe me they are really entertaining and informative. They often provide more laughter than sitcoms with their preposterous claims about the products they are touting.



For instance , take this herbal oil with is supposed to make a bald pate bloom with jet black hair. It is reportedly made with herbs from hold your breath Amazon rainforest. No doubt people are venturing into the rainforest to gather the herbs braving dense greenery, poisonous snakes and insects and anacondas that can have you for breakfast and ask for more.



That, is only slightly less preposterous than the Shani suraksha kavach which allegedly protects you from the malevolent eye of the ruling lord of the planet Saturn and Lakshmi and Kuber Yantra that will ensure that riches rain on you.uin a torrential downpour.



In fact that oil has irritated me so much that I am thinking of launching a “Bald is Beautiful” movement which would certainly have the potential to make such fake businesses collapse.

Oh oh, I am going off on a tangent as usual, am I not? What has Sharad Yadav got to do with the hair growing Amazonian oil? As his photographs show, his hair is quite intact though greyed. .

The point is not the oil but the fraudulent rubbish that is peddled by these telemarketing programmes which however mirror the general attitudes prevailing in the Indian society.



This morning, I ran into a telemarketing programme in which a woman who looked as if she had taken bath in water mixed with loads of bleaching powder (She was super white) Was peddling a product called fair look. And the way she tried to make the gullible buy it made my blood boil.

She said men and women preferred fair skinned companions and if you want to have a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse and you are dark skinned you have a little chance in the dating game or marriage market. So one can improve one’s partner prospects by leaps and bounds by using the product which would turn darkskinned people into fairskinned ones within 15 days. Too bad no one knew of the product during South Africa’s apartheid days. If it had been there all blacks could have been turned into whites in 15 days.—no racial divide after that!!

Now to Sharad Yadav. It is this attitude that he was having a dig at in parliament during a debate on a bill. His specific target was Indian male’s fixation for fair skin..Pointing out the contradictions in the Indian mindset towards women, he said that while we are not ashamed to worship dark-skinned gods, we hanker after fair-skinned women.



Then he followed this up with what was pointless stereotyping and crass generalisation but did not deserve to stir up a big controversy. He said south Indian women were beautiful though darkskinned and added a pointless remark which was lighthearted : “They also dance”/



Then all the hell broke lose. TRP starved electronic media went for Yadav’s throat. Arnab Goswami on Times Now was hopping as if he had sat on a heater. Respectable people like Kanimozhi (of 2G fame) described Yadav’s remark as “sexist. TV channels totally ignored the fact that Yadav’s target was actually Indian male attitudes and attacked him for his heinous crime of describing south Indian women as dark-skinned.

Yadav apologised for his remarks but refused to withdraw them, and the matter could have rested there but some minister raised the point in parliament again as if the MPs don’t have anything else to do except to discuss a pointless generalization delighting the likes of Mr.Goswami who had another go at sensation mongering describing Sharad Yadav as “brazen”



I wonder why they didn’t focus on the fact that his remarks were about skewered male attitudes? That of course does not provide good copy. What matters is TRP ratings and these jokers would do anything for it.



But according to the lady selling the fairness lotion on the teleshopping programme even women were fixated with fair skin. She told the gullible men who could have been watching the programme: How do women want their boyfriends, fiancés and husbands to be? If you ask any of them they would say like their favourite Bollywood heroes –all white (the Hindi term she used was ekdum gora).



Now why don’t women’s groups raise their voices against such ads which are actually derogatory to women? Times Now launches all sort of TRP focussed campaigns and once the partidular campaign becomes passé forgets about it and latches on to something new. Why doesn’t Times Now campaign against matrimonial ads in its group newspaper like the Times of India that seek fair skinned brides (Have you ever seen an ad demanding pitch black or dusky skinned brides? May be newspapers should cdarry such ads free).


It all boiled down to barking up the wrong tree. But who bothers as long as it boosts the feminist credentials of some dubious politicians and gives a TRP shot in the hands of some TV channels that are incapable of even spelling INTEGRITY. .

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Fair Play?