The Real Entertainers

Guest Blog, by David Vaz

The noise in the arena is deafening. The two athletes in the middle of the ring glare venomously at each other; their bodies battered, bloodied and bruised. Separating them is a steel ladder atop which a golden belt is suspended from a hook. Egged on by a sea of fans chanting their names, the men slowly ascend either side of the ladder, every step taking what seems like an eternity. They reach the top and both attempt to knock each other down, firing wild but tired blows at each other’s skulls, their will to go on seemingly fuelled by the strikes. Finally, the larger of the two knocks the other off the ladder and watches his torso fall to the bottom with a dull thud. The triumphant 7 footer, visibly exhausted, detaches the belt from the hook and raises his hands to the heavens as the crowd goes berserk.

It wasn’t long ago when such a spectacle was considered nothing short of barbaric by many. Widely acknowledged to be ‘fake’, professional wrestling is regarded as a childish activity not worth one’s time to watch and certainly not a form of entertainment. After all, who wants to see grown men in their underwear throw each other around and pretend to beat each other senseless. It’s much too violent. And let’s not forget the sexual themes that the women involved with the promotion partake in, not to leave out the mature language used? Certainly not appropriate for one’s child to watch and imbibe. It’d surely be a terrible influence and train their subconscious to become violent in nature.

It’s rather amusing that the same households that admonish against this have televisions which quite frequently air Jerry Springer, the Bold and the Beautiful, Mixed Martial Arts and 300 and their equivalents depending on the country of viewership. Apparently none of the above contains objectionable content and all provide for good, wholesome, family entertainment. People can be a real bunch of hypocrites can’t they? Yes we're talking about the same people that adore Tom Cruise, that worship Lady Gaga, that go bananas over Sunny Leone, that wait eagerly with eyes glued to the local news channel for some sort of verbal or physical confrontation in parliament just for a laugh or two.

Wrestling is so much more than that. Yes, matches are indeed scripted, blows artistically exaggerated, results known and dialogues, confrontations and moves rehearsed weeks in advance.  But then what is acting all about? We all know Gerard Butler doesn’t get impaled by a thousand spears, we all know the contestants on the ‘Bachelor’ know what they have to say during the show the previous night, we all know Ridge Forrester isn’t fortunate enough to be able to sleep with his sister, mother, daughter and grandmother, twice over the course of a week and we all know that apart from Jackie Chan, you’ll be hard pressed to find a single actor capable or willing to take a hit/fall. Wrestlers aren’t just actors, they’re their own stuntmen too. Each and every athlete puts his/her body on the line to get a chance to walk out to that ring and do what he/she does best. There are no cuts, no retakes, no alternate endings. What you see is what you get. Careers and even lives have ended in the ring but a wrestler’s heart will remain strong.

Professional wrestling, admittedly, during its 5 decade odd existence, has undergone several changes in terms of the nature of content delivered to its audience, most notably, during the 90’s, a decade where wrestling was synonymous with sex, drugs, foul language and rock and roll. But one thing has and always will remain the same. The Professionals involved, truly are, entertainers. And to the disbelievers, the doubters, the critics and the cynics; as the Rock, the self proclaimed most electrifying man in all of sports entertainment would say, “It doesn’t matter what you think!”

Money, and what dogs do.

There is something extremely offensive about the presence of dog poop on a footpath. It's not so much the fact that a turd is in itself repulsive - it's more about the fact that we all know what sort of dog the turd has come from. Certainly not the much maligned Indian pi dogs that form the populous of stray dogs you see around the city. These dogs, besides being extremely hardy and well suited to the Indian climate are very clean in their behaviour. They don't do their thing in the middle of footpaths; they choose an inconspicuous location most of the time, a tree in undergrowth or a gutter that has seen worse.
No, the dogs that make our footpaths a living hell to walk on typically belong to citizens. Well fed, pampered citizens who yet manage to bear a striking resemblance to the ten million slum dwellers that surround them in the city. Indeed I will be so bold as to affirm that for a majority of them, were they born under similar circumstances as these unfortunate souls, there would not be too different from them.
Sound like a grandiose assumption? I will justify it.
Bombay's slum dwellers are some of the strangest human beings one could encounter. They live in squalor of a kind that's terrifying in its magnitude. Most of them share their premises with scores of dogs, bats, rats and other vermin. They eat filthy food a few metres away from where the fresh poop from their most recent defecation resides. They practically swim in mounds of wet, stinking garbage. And during the terrible monsoon, they literally do.

When looked at from a compassionate viewpoint, it seems very sad. Yet while pitying them, there is that chord of revulsion that is struck in all of us. For these people surely don't need to live in this Kafkaesquely regressive manner. For the same  the slumlord (typically a local politician) demands, they would get a pucca house, (even if it is a  chawl) in a more remote location like Mira Road or Nalasopara. Which would afford them a much more dignified and hygienic living.
Yet they choose to live in the filth that is the centrally located slums.  They seem to be willing to endure what should be termed a subhuman existence just because of the fact that city living affords them an income convenience that might have otherwise been more difficult.
What has made them this way? Sadly, it is the very Indian idea of money-worship. Money is so important, that one may compromise one's dignity, one's principles, one may compromise one's very being just to have more of it. Have a look at our  richest billionaires - the word 'philanthropist' is practically alien to them; I doubt they even know how to spell the word. In some cases, this is a family legacy. After all, the 'great' Dhirubhai Ambani once stated that the only thing important to him in life is his 'business' . He didn't need a hobby or a target for benevolence, he never felt enough was enough - Oh no! He had made his fortune all by himself and he wanted every single penny of it.
In many ways, Indian culture views money not as a means but as an end. If you have made your fortune, that's where it stops.
This is the bond that connects the slum dweller in Dharavi to the rich man on Pali Hill possessed of a troop of St Bernard's who mess up the footpath on my road. They both see money as the end. They are both willing to endure all sorts of disgusting conditions, physical and moral, to make that money. And once they have it, they don't give a damn. For law, for order or for improvement of the world around them. As a matter of fact, they never did.
One, you see, is the owner of the dogs. The other is the servant that walks them. 

Too much testosterone

A point about my beloved hometown is starting to irk me. This point has always had the capacity to irk; however, now it has come to the fore  and is causing me to no longer be the cheerful spreader of sweetness and light I am known to be. I speak of the nasty presence of too many of my own species (men) wherever I go.

As I was heading to St Andrew's church for mass yesterday, I passed a group of people, presumably returning from their walk on Bandstand promenade. I felt an sudden, unexpected surge of annoyance that made me look back to determine its cause. Then it struck me; the entire group of twelve people was composed entirely of men. That some of them were (rather ironically it may seem to outsiders) holding each others' hands while ogling at passing girls is beyond the scope of this post. I will go into it another time.

Why is a group of twelve grown adults, merely going for a walk (not a game or anything  else remotely virile) composed entirely of men? That too on a Sunday, a day you'd think they'd want to get away from their male-dominated work places? It's beyond comprehension in a normal city. Alas, in Bombay, it is easily explained. You see, for every 1000 males in the city, there are a mere 866 females. And in the migrant worker population, this number drops to 153. What I saw was a mere manifestation of this unfortunate trend. A manifestation that does not occur only occasionally. Try going to Bandstand on any Sunday evening. For every member of the fairer sex, you are guaranteed to see ten penis-possessors.

If it is so easily explained, then why is still so irritating?

Firstly, it is an eyesore. Secondly, it is extremely unsafe for more balanced but smaller groups of young people, for couples or even for the occasional girl gang. Testosterone ridden males, starved of good physical and social relations with women and only each other for company tend to spend most of their time talking about what they do not have. And when they see something their tiny minds consider provocative, they often react like rabbits in the mating season.

Thirdly, and most importantly, it is a constant reminder of a much deeper and bigger problem - a cultural one. Ours is a society which revels in its penis preference. One does not have to comb too far through a newspaper to come across a horrific female foeticide in which both parents play an equal part. Dig a little deeper and you find cases of abandoned baby girls; if the abandonment is injury enough, the place that is chosen(generally a dustbin or a railway station) is insult served up in copious proportions. And of course, there is that which all of us are immune to by now: the staple dose of rapes, molestations and brazen Indian arrogance from authorities who claim that 'dressing' actually has a part to play in it all.

The ideal way to deal with this nasty state of affairs is a long term project - one of mass education and exposure in the proper sense of the words. But at any rate, given the diversity we are so proud of in this country and the large numbers of subhuman vote banks that can be manipulated to do the bidding of any corrupt power, this project would likely see tangible results after at least another three generations. And that's being optimistic.

In order to supplement this idealistic strategy, something more concrete needs to be done. Something even a subhuman can understand and appreciate; something centred around money. I can think of a dozen welfare schemes to promote the girl child. I'm sure you can, I'm sure our lawmakers can. I'm not talking about quotas or reservations, I'm talking about solid monetary rewards for producing females. That it may inherently be flawed to have a scheme that promotes one sex over the other and encourages 'choice' is a point worth debating. Nonetheless, it is flaw I am ready to bypass. It will anyhow be a long time before Indian couples start terminating male pregnancies on account of the monetary benefit girl chidren are going to afford them. And we can deal with that eventuality when it is closer at hand.