Judgement Day?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I am tired of Jade. Tired of seeing her carefully school face showing remorse peering at me from every street corner. Tired of hearing her well rehearsed apologies 'I am not a racist but I can understand why you would think so'. Her well oiled PR machine is working overtime to clean up her tarnished image and I, for one, am tired of being played like a banjo.

Jade is using the 'tu queque' argument someone accused me of, to excuse away her actions. She keeps saying what she did was wrong but is repeatedly pinning the blame for it on her upbringing, her social class, her parents and anything else she could think of.

Couple of other 'interesting' repercussions of the BB row are Danielle losing a £100,000 modelling contract and worse, being dumped by West Ham footballer Teddy Sheringham, the same man she slept with to win the Miss Great Britain crown last year. Of course, Danielle doesn't know that she ins't a WAG anymore. Jo, on the other hand, didn't have much of a career to speak of since her S Club 7 days so doesn't have much to lose and is carrying on as before.

Whilst I have had my fill of the Jade Baddy Saga, I feel Danielle and Jo, who have said more racist comments and have egged Jade on, deserve to take on the blame as well. It was Danielle who said 'I thought you were going to punch her' after Jade's pronouncement 'you are stuck up so far up your a**e that you can smell your own s**t' and even said 'your mother would be so proud of you' and even called Shilpa a dog. Jo has generally been nasty and while I cannot remember what pearls of wisdom she dropped, she has been coming across as the type of person I would cross the road to avoid, purely for my own personal safety.

I was watching The Wright Stuff earlier on Channel 5 (young P's down with chicken pox - hence am cooped up at home!) and today's panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said something that seemed real sensible to me. Jade was the 'expert' on the show today and after 30 minutes of 'yes I can see how it will be construed as wrong, but I wasn't the only one' and many rueful shakes of her head, Yasmin adviced Jade to use the next three years to get a proper degree and.... well, we never heard what as Jade butted in, prattling about the same old stuff and made Yasmin gave up what she was trying to say. But I can see where she's coming from: one of Jade's biggest reasons for being such a bully is that she learnt those at her mother's knee. Well, she's in her mid-twenties now and cannot blame Mum for teaching her every wrong thing under the sun. It is time she learnt few good things on her own, especially with two young children to raise. Yasmin's advice strikes me as an exceptionally sound one, as well as her view of it will take a long time for someone to change their views (the racist or the bullying sort) and will not take place in the span of three short days, as we are seeing in Jade's case.

Education is the only way to open people's minds to the world out there. Respecting others' differences and not feeling threatened by them will only come with time. Britain today is as multi cultural as it gets, a fact that threatens many, many people. One of them decided to show their distaste by spitting in front of me as I was out for a walking with my little one and shouting 'Go back home!' Another one did his level best to push my husband on to the rail tracks by catching hold of his shirt fronts and yelling 'You bl***y Paki!' As more and more Asians come to the UK as skilled workers and as more and more jobs are being sent to the subcontinent, the ire of the locals who perceive us to have cheated them out of their jobs is on the rise.

Being different always makes us fair game and this is true none more so than in our own country, which is as widely diverse as it can get. State, language, religion, social / economic strata - we have innumerable things seperating us from another. Try to imagine the case of a Madrasi amongst a group of Hindi speaking Bombay or Delhi folk. Attire and accent are just two of the things that are causes for mirth. My telugu neighbour still speaks to me like I were from a planet many light years away rather than from a nearby state when she speaks of the 'customs and traditions of Nellore' (my husband is Telugu while I am Tamil). Couple of my tam-bram friends changed their minds about me in a hurry once they heard of my own mixed parentage.

While I do not rue the loss of their so-called friendship, I rue our own penchant to divide ourself so neatly. Even after paying with our own freedom for celebrating our differences hasn't stopped us from going back to doing the same. What is needed for us to look at one another as just people, instead of 'Jain, rich, gujju' or 'Hindu, Tamil, padayachi'? When will we stop judging one another? Isn't it high time we changed our outlook for the better?

Posted by DesiGirl 10:51 am 2 comments    

Labels: big brother, british, channel 4, colour, goody, india, jade, racism, racist

Celebrity Big Brother: Kya Scene Hai!
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

A bunch of has-beens trying to give their sorry careers a kick up its backside so they can give it a much needed boost if they were to be rescued from oblivion - this is the state of the inmates (so they seem to me!) that take part in reality shows like 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Here!' and its evil twin 'Celebrity Big Brother'. Most times, you never recognise any of the so-called celebs, save for the presenters and ratings generally plummet after the opening night. [Aside: Channel 4 must have paid the people bucketloads of money to stand outside the BB house and scream their guts out - I really cannot imagine any other way by which so many honest folks could be persuaded to stand in the cold in Herefordshire day and night and exhibit their lung capacity.]

This year is no exception - two former so-called singers from two bands best forgotten, an ageing filmmaker no one knows, a cheat beauty who slept with one of the judges to win the Miss Great Britain crown and couple of Americans were all part of the lineup - joining them soon enough was 'Big Brother's First Family' (as host Davina McCall pronounced them!) - former regular show inmate, loudmouth Jade Goody, her mouthy boyfriend and lesbian mum. In order to spice things up, they threw in our Shilpa Shetty in. In the beginning, it was said that she would be urged to flirt with the male inmates and be involved in a romantic situation. When fewer and fewer people turned in, they decided to ditch the softy-softy approach and pull in the ratings by pitting the catty Danielle, intelligently-challenged Jade and looking-for-an-excuse-to-release-a-single Jo O'Mara against la Shetty. Shetty was coming across as this beautiful, composed character and what more could incense a trio of thickos than that?

So they have been goading her, calling her names, Danielle showing her knowledge of geography by commenting something about China and India and ‘I am so dumb I can’t even spell my own name’ Jade carrying on in her trademark style. Their biggest advantage is that to a non-English person, they are virtually ununderstandable - they could be prattling in Yiddish, for all Shilpa knows, so strong is their accent. Maybe that's why la Shetty has taken to simply bawling her eyes out, waving the white flag at every opportunity and sobbing on Cleo's shoulders. But she showed everyone that underneath it all, she has some sharp claws when she shut Jade up with a well-aimed 'Your only claim to fame is this show. What does that say?'

This issue is seriously getting out of hand, with House of Commons entering the picture for some strange reason. Even Gordon Brown, gallivanting about in India, has commented on this ,Third world debt, greenhouse effect, inter-country relations, Iraq etc, aside. The only sane voice in the middle of all the brouhaha seems to be Shilpa’s mum, who's reported to have said, "I hope that she will be able to handle the situation. It is a game and there is a life beyond that. I understand her emotions but I really hope that she is not going to get too affected by this treatment that is being meted out to her." Well said, mum!

The only ones to come out of this laughing is Channel 4. From the brink of disaster, by means of some canny tactics, they've made their show the talk of the town - sponsors threatening to pull out, Ofcom's investigation, hue & cry about racism all translates into ratings; ratings that are slowly going through the roof. Welcome to the new era of 'anything goes' - where ratings is the only thing that matters and target ratings would be achieved by hook or by crook.

Posted by DesiGirl 7:49 pm 0 comments    

Labels: BB, big, Bollywood, brother, celebrity, goody, jade, sheringham, shetty, Shilpa, teddy, WAG