Asha Sachdev and Life Processes II: What A Connection!

My birds and bees article is where this stuff really belongs, but I forgot the Asha Sachdev incident while it was being written. This also gives me a chance to prattle on and on about the Age of Discovery. MY Age of Discovery.

Life Processes II was Chapter 8 (or 9) in our Biology textbook (Central Board of Secondary Education, 1990) while I was in Std. IX in Madras. LP I dealt with respiration and that sort of shit. Oh wait, did I say shit? No. They saved that for the sequel - LP II was dedicated to reproduction and excretion. We always used to joke about how we never got to do practicals on "certain topics" from LP II. (For all you dirty minds out there - we were referring to the reproduction part, we weren't into scheiße videos... yet) High school in Madras in the early 90s was very different from Bombay for me. All of a sudden, girls were off-limits - a taboo, so much so that an especially embarrassing punishment for the guys in class was to be forced to sit next to a girl on her bench because the guys were caught talking in class or something. Our superegos were developing, and this sort of stuff really affected us. To add insult to injury, our class teacher, who was also our Biology/Health Education teacher, (We basically ended up learning the same shit in both courses, and we would have to be tested twice on the same topics every time exams came around. Not that I'm complaining, it was always good to get good marks on Health Education without having to study much for it.) LOVED to take advantage of the awkwardness that had suddenly cropped up between the gals and guys. In retrospect, I think it had to do more with embarrassing us BEFORE we had a chance to embarrass her.

For example, I'm sure a lot of teachers have to deal with giggling and lewd comments when they have to teach sex education. Our class teacher had no such thing going on, because she would call us out and embarrass us before we could even think of commenting on anything she was saying. One trick was calling on male students to draw diagrams of the female reproductive system and vice versa. Another effective one was to misspell terms on purpose - scortral sacs instead of scrotal sacs and mensuration instead of menstruation (Damn, she was good! We were studying mensuration in Mathematics that same year, and that only added to our confusion and the mystery of sexual reproduction!) - but heaven help whoever called her on her spelling mistakes. If guy X stands up to inform her that there are two t's in menstruation, she would raise one eyebrow, give him an evil smile, and say, "Soooo! Looks like you are doing a lot of research on these things, ah? If you spent only as much time chasing studies instead of chasing girls and getting distracted, you would improve your marks by a lot..." Hey, better him than us, and we would be laughing at him, too. Poor bastard. But one warning was enough. She could do anything she wanted in class, write and say anything she pleased, no one would correct her about sexual reproduction EVER. That was the kind of psychological conditioning we went through. No wonder some of us had to resort to certain reference materials purchased on Mount Road sidewalks later on.

During one of these enigmatic classes on the human body's more private functions, she started talking about the female reproductive system and said something about how the walls bleed once approximately every month to get rid of unused stuff, and that don't happen when the egg be fertilized. She explained what happens, and then started a sentence with, "During these days of the menstrual cycle, or periods, women..."

And all of a sudden, the classroom, usually moderately-lit during the hot Madras afternoons, became dazzling bright. I heard choral music and saw a group of Mallu Christian women and men dressed in white robes start singing, Allelujah! Allelujah! Allelujah! I saw the Mallu history teacher from my school in Bombay with his guitar, singing his favourite soft song that had the nonsensical lyrics, "Para roo rah, para roo rah" And a portal opened at the top of the blackboard (right where the apple-polishing kids usually scrawl in the day's date and some stupid proverb or moral or thought-of-the-day). We zoom into this portal to a younger me, about two years younger, watching some 70s Hindi movie (Swarag Aur Narak?) at home with some grown-ups and my brothers. This movie stars Jeetendra, Sulakshana Pandit (I think) as Swarag, apparently, and Asha Sachdev as... well. Jeetendra dumps Sulaksha Pandit for the "classier" (read modern, westernized, and therefore, according to Bollywood, UNCULTURED and BAD. No wonder she is the Narak in the movie.) Asha Sachdev. Jeetu and Asha Sachdev are a live-in couple and are shown enjoying life as Sulakshana Pandit eats the blows of every door. (Dar-dar ki thokrein khaati hai) After a few songs and maybe even a scene at a disco, Jeetu comes back home one day to find Asha Sachdev disturbed. He asks her what the problem is.

Jeetu: Arrey, hua kya?
Asha Sachdev: I... I... I miss my periods. [sic]
Jeetu (starts smiling): Kya! Iska matlab... iska matlab... ke main baap banne wala hoon!?

...And my 12 year-old, VII or VIII Std. mind tries to process this information:
What the hell does that mean? I miss my periods? I guess that happens when you are pregnant? But what does it mean?

Zoom out of the portal and come back to the IX Std. classroom and the teacher is now talking about menopause and I'm not paying any attention because I have independently made the connection - things click into place. I achieve true nirvana, knowledge. I beam with inner peace for a femtosecond. Then, I realize that Asha Sachdev's character screwed up. There's a difference between saying "I missed my period" and "I miss my periods", and I think Asha Sachdev either said she's going through menopause, or she just plan hates those days when she's not a blood-belching vagina. I shake my head. How can you portray a westernized character if you can't even get your grammar straight? I smile to myself, imagining Asha Sachdev really feel bad about not having her period every day. Wait, am I smiling on the outside, too?

Too late, the teacher finds out I'm displaying a grin, and goes, "What are you laughing about? Maybe you want to come sit with the girls on the first bench and share it with them?"

D-Oh!

Go back to Timepass

Mummy, Papa, Where Do Babies Come From?

I was born in a house with the television always on, as the Talking Heads song Love For Sale claims. So most of what I learnt about life, I learnt it from the television. And this is why, most of my preteen years were spent in confusion. Papa, where do babies come from? an innocent child asks its parent. It's confusing when you use the same word (sex) for the act itself and also for gender. I remember this one time that I was reading about Razia Sultana and some historian talking about how she was a great warrior but was unfortunately of the wrong sex, and was confused.... hmm, wasn't sex supposed to be something else? (of course, at that time I didn't really know what it was supposed to be, and maybe don't really know yet, heh heh) So in all my innocence, I turn around from the book to my mom, who at that point was arguing with the newspaper guy about the bill for that month, and go, ``Amma, sex matlab kya hai?''... and my mom of course turns around and says ``Yehich time mila na tereko poochne ke liye!?''

Hmm.. well I needed answers, and based on what I saw in the movies, and based on my scientific temperament, this is the theory I came up with:

1) Observations show that people in movies have kids only after marriage mostly. This means that the actual act of marriage somehow triggers childbirth. One way I guessed this could happen was that the tying of a mangalsutra around the woman's neck would send some sort of biological signal to the body to start giving birth to kids, one after the other, so that one could have twins that get lost in a mela, or produce three children that are separated from their parents and each other in a train accident and are raised by three different families of three different religions.

2) Sometimes, in the movies, women had babies without getting married. This sort of goes against explanation (1) for childbirth, and my explanation for this phenomenon involved the ``winter break'' films of the sixties and early seventies, right until the Unemployment Movie era came along. This is what happens. The hero and heroine are in Kashmir, usually because the heroine is on a ``picnic'' with her friends, and the hero just follows her to Kashmir so that he can flirt with her and sing the most famous song of that movie (be it Chahe Koi Mujhe Junglee Kahe, Yaaaaaahoooo! or Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle Ka Nata Koi).
Eventually, though, the heroine gets trapped in the snow in an avalanche or something, and ends up with hypothermia. The hero rescues her and they reach an abandoned cottage in the snow, and the hero realizes that she will die within hours if he doesn't give her ``bodily warmth'' (badan ki garmi), so he gets into bed with her after stripping them both, wrapping a blanket around them.
Next scene: It's the morning after, and the heroine (usually someone like Rakhee, as irritating as she is), naked except for a blanket around her, clutching it close to herself, crying into her hands, and from time to time saying naheeeinn, uh huh uh huh! or some shit like that, while the hero says stuff like ``main majboor tha, agar tumhein badan ki garmi nahin milti to tum mar jaati'' (I couldn't help it, if I hadn't given you bodily warmth, you woulda died by now)...

So, I concluded that kids are born whenever people out of wedlock end up freezing their butts off and need bodily warmth.....

Bridging the language gap between the North and the South: A lesson from a Kannada movie

For those of you who don't know, India is a land of many languages (no, they don't speak ``Hindu''), so not everyone speaks Hindi (of course, if you ARE someone who doesn't know about India, I don't think this page will help you much). Those of you that DO know will know that sometimes it is difficult for two Indians to have a conversation. Especially if one of them is Hindi intolerant, meaning they stubbornly refuse to learn Hindi or they were taught in a school where they could opt out easily and then bully their juniors if they talked in Hindi (alright I'm bitter, so SHOOT me!). What do you do if you are in the following situation:

You recently moved to Bombay with your parents and your sister, after a while are falsely accused of bombing a supercop's car (said supercop stays next door), and are framed, and are jailed and are tortured in your underwear (complete with ketchup on your nuts). You escape, determined to prove your innocence, and after a while, manage somehow to kidnap the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. You think that if you are able to explain your situation to him, and also explain that there is a huge conspiracy against the law by a very well-known bad dude, you will be able to convince everyone else. The main problem: you don't speak Hindi, and he doesn't understand your mother tongue (which happens to be Kannada).

In the immortal words of Dennis Hopper from Speed, What do you do?

What do you do?

Like I always say, I don't really care what YOU do, I'm gonna talk about what Shivraj Kumar does in the movie AK47. A little about this movie before all that. AK47 (1999) was advertised as ``50th movie of [sic] hat trick hero'', said hat-trick hero being Shivraj Kumar, of course. Maybe someday we can also talk about this movie when we talk about stealing producers logos from other people. So, anyway, in this movie, Shivraj's family (including a really irritating Srividya as his mom and the magaaan Girish `Kitply' Karnad as his dad - someday we will also talk about how he revolutionizes the concept of Oota cut in the movie) moves to Bombay, and Shivraj starts college (YAY!!! It was ***MY*** college! The Guru Nanak Khalsa College of Arts and Sciences, motto: The Essence of Wisdom Is Service To Mankind, sidemotto being The Essence of Getting Rich Is Renting The Campus Out To Cheap TV Series Crews, And If We Get Lucky, Some Vernacular Films, If We Are Luckier, B-Grade (College Girl was shot in my college! Amita Nangia gets raped in the classroom I used to learn chemistry in!) Hindi Films, And MAYBE SOME DAY SOME A-Grade Hindi Movie (``Gupt was shot in my college'' was my Int.Ph.D. introduction!)), and walks in during a lecture about the many phases of water :

Prof: Water when heated turns to steam.
Steam when cooled turns to water...
SK: Excuse me, Sir?
Prof: Yes, come in?.... (looks at the note) Oh, new student? Oh! You are from Karnataka?!
(immediately some piano happy-music, as some student in the class - who later frames our man - smiles at him)
Prof: (continuing in monotonous droning voice) Water when cooled turns to ice.
Ice when heated turns to water.
(Brrrrrrringgg....saved by the bell...)
Prof: OK, students, next class.

The students start going down the stairs (and at this point, I remember getting up from my seat in the theater and screaming, ``Hey!! Bhavtosh! Yeh to Khalsa hai yaar! Yeh to mera college hai yaar!'' and applauding as soon as I saw the too-familiar chandeliar on the ground floor) and all that.
Anyway, so Shivraj is eventually framed (for the assassination of aforementioned supercop, who goes by the name of Yeshwant Sinha in the movie, and who in reality is the ultra-cool entity Om Puri - you might remember him from the Jack Nicholson starrer Wolf, where one of his lines is, ``There must be something vild vi-thin!'') and captured and tortured by the Bombay Police (in some weird abandoned warehouse, for some bizzare reason) in his white underwear (white sans a few ketchup stains which are supposed to be blood). One cop kicks him in the balls, and immediately there is an aerial shot of his face, and as he screams, the female chorus goes....``Ammmmaaaaaaaaa.....'''
I don't know how you would do it, but Shivraj escapes from prison (after adorning the statue of the Mahatma with some much-needed clothing, said clothing comprising of the Indian tricolour, which Shivraj originally uses to dodge bullets - according to this movie, *NO* true Indian Police Force officer will fire at anyone who has wrapped the tricolour around themselves), and eventually kidnaps the CM of Maharashtra (who is called Ram Manohar Joshi instead of Manohar Joshi - they didn't want to make it too obvious!!), played by the magaaan (you might remember him as husband of Seema Dev - Kakaji's mooh-boli behen - in Anand) Ramesh Dev. So, we are back to the question: how do you communicate? Here's the dialogue, at least as much as I understood and can show without switching into Kannada mode:

RD: (very poliltely) Are you a terrorist?
SK: (very controlled) No...
RD: Naxalite?
SK: (controlling, but losing it slowly) No!
RD: ISI (for those of you who don't know, that's the Pakistani Intellegence, or so they tell me)?
SK: (loses it completely!) NOOOO!!!!!! (RD is taken aback, and SK repents and starts to cry and starts to speak in a heavily accented Southie, in English followed by one sentence in Hindi)
I yam an aardinary man. Yake mamooli yinsaan! (blah blah in Kannada, explaining in metaphors how he was framed... this is a long dialogue)

RD: (after SK's outburst, still very polite, smiling now) Bete, mujhe tumhari bhasha to samajh mein nahin aayi, lekin tumhari bhasha mein jo aasha hai woh samajh mein aayi. Chalo, main tumhari madad zaroor karoonga! (which basically means: I didn't understand your language, but I understood the hope in your language - which is bullshit he just used hope because it rhymes in Hindi with language; being a politician gives you some talent at bullshit speeches, I suppose - I will definitely help you)...

See how it works? Next time YOU are in such a situation, don't forget to be calm first, then totally lose control, start crying, speak one sentence each of English and Hindi (heavily laced with a Diga accent), and then switch to your life story but in Kannada... don't forget to explain it all to someone who doesn't understand Kannada at all, preferably Ramesh Dev, or better the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

How to build your own cheap android

So, let's say for the sake of argument that you have to build your own android (not the OS, but any humaniform robot), how would you go about such a seemingly mammoth undertaking? Well, this is how the costume designers and ``tech'' (sic) people associated with Space City Sigma (a cheesy 80s TV show on Doordarshan, many of whose episodes were ripoffs of old Star Trek episodes) went about it:

Recipe: Android
Name: Shakti

Materials required:

Human (whole, no inner or outer body parts need to be removed) - 1.
``Futuristic'' costume (viz., coloured clothes possibly resembling Indian Army uniform -- in Spandex?) - 1 set.
Oblong sticky plastic thingie - 1, about as big as human's ear.
Pencil - One (HB).
Paint - At least one shade, preferable three (primary colours preferred), small quantities of each.
Brush - At least one.
Makeup - small to large amounts, depending on episode.

Method:

Use the pencil to trace the semblance of wiring and circuitry onto the the oblong sticky plastic thingie. Paint over some of the lines using the brush and any combination of the paints. Stick sticky side of oblong sticky plastic thingie onto human's cheek, just below the right eye. Make sure thingie fits well and gives semblace of actual circuitry seen inside human's skin (I guess this rule is not so hard and fast, otherwise these people would have followed it).
After the sticky thingie seems to have dried, add some makeup on the human face. Serve lukewarm, garnished with synthesizer music.

One thing necessary for this recipe to work is that the human in question show some signs of having a half-robot body, which may or may not include what is thought of as robot behaviour - rigid body movements, an emotionless face and voice and some serious deadpan dialogue delivery. But the big shots at Doordarshan had the perfect men for the job (Shakti Singh, playing Shakti the android), and they picked the best. In fact they didn't have to work much on him to make him convincing. He already had a deadpan (what Subroto would call plywood, hence Kitply, but that is a Trademark name reserved for Girish Karnad's acting. What is the secret of V.I.Ply? The secret is Bond. Phenol Bond.) dialogue delivery, and underplayed the role majorly. His body movements were naturally rigid and unhuman, resulting in an excellent portrayal of a rudimentary android. What was the problem with Space City Sigma then, you ask? All the actors and actresses in the show shared his acting ``talents''. Speaking in robotic voices, they underplayed and sometimes included violent bursts of ham acting, the captain (Captain Tara, played by Krishnakant Sinha) had a plywood face and dialogue delivery that would force even sharks to sleep, their alien nemesis Zakhaku (engineered by the technicians by coating some human's face with a lot of shit) was more good looking than some of the men and women in the show (including the aforementioned ship captain). All this made for some very entertaining and hilarious viewing.

That concludes our cooking class for today. Before we say goodbye and go for a commercial break, LET US NOT FORGET ANOTHER MAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN YINSAAN (who starred in many Delhi-produced TV shows and some TV movies, and now can be found floating somewhere in the backwaters of satellite TV soaps, denied his shot at the throne of Arbitdom) who was on this show: he went by the name of Earth Command, and he is the GREAT Lalit Parimoo (credited as "Lalit Parimu" on the show). You might have seen him in Himalay Darshan, another 80s TV show, and we will soon refer to one of the episodes of this show when we talk about taking care of your livestock in the 21st century. Right now, let's take a break from Hindi stuff (don't want people to complain that I *only played Hindi and English music on the excursion*, you know what I mean? Or DO you?), and visit the South. Our next lesson is about bridging the gap between the North and the South.

Update, 12/09/2011: Found this link. Thank you very much for the screenshots! For one thing, Shakti doesn't look as terrible as he did in my imagination! ZakhaKoo still looks like a piece of shit, though.

The art of tactfully changing the subject: A lesson in diplomacy

Tired of people asking you uncomfortable questions? Worried that answering these questions will affect your relationship with them? Well, here's some advice that might help: switch subjects. If done tactfully, it actually works. Either that, or you can tell them on their face that you are uncomfortable about answering the question. I guess that works sometimes....
But if you are still interested, let's go into the first piece of advice. Changing the topic. Let me give you the best example I know of.
The movie: Namak Haraam, a classic film from the '70s just before (or maybe during) the era of Unemployment Films. Why "classic"? Thanks to two magaan yinsaans. No, not Amitabh. Not Rekha. Rajesh Khanna? Oh hell no.
Story in brief: Class war comes between two close friends (jigri dost), one an industrialist's son and the other a son of the streets (if you can ever imagine Kakaji in a convincing role as the son of the streets, without that toothbrush moustache he had in Aaj Ka MLA Raam Avtar!). The motto of these movies was "the good guy is the dead guy", so the good guy was always Rajesh Khanna, developing Lymphosarcoma of the taint. Side effects may include perpetual 4 o'clock shadow, shawl overgrowth and the tendency to stay annoyingly cheery. I'm talking about movies like Anand, Amar Prem (well he didn't die in it, but he was in love with Sharmila Tagore, which is just as bad), Aaradhana, Safar (as Subroto quoted Javed Jaffrey, ``Kakaji Safared so much in that movie...''). But Namak Haraam is different because (like Anand) it had Amitabh Bachchan, and (unlike Anand) he didn't have anything to do with Bengalis. And it also had this great scene that I'm gonna talk about.
The industrialist father orders his men to beat up Somu (Kakaji's character), because the latter has been screaming Union/Strike from the tallest tree. The deed is done, but the son (Amitabh Kya-Yeh-Aapka-Final-Answer-Hai Bachchan) finds out. He's mad at the dad, and if you are a dad, you don't want your son (especially if he's the Big B) to be mad at his dad. The father is played by a magaaaaaaaan yinsaan (literally, I guess, it would translate to great human, but that's not it at all!) - Om Shiv Puri. My brother and I refer to him as Genda Murgi (Genda - Rhino, Murgi - Chicken), and if you have seen him, you will know why. Anyway, so he's in the old office, which is dominated by this huge model ship (jahaaz) protected by a glass case.
Amitabh (aptly named Vicky, since he's the stereotypical Hindi movie rich kid) walks in, angry (yeah weren't those the days he was called the - suppress laughter - Angry Young Man?) at what his dad has done, and demands to know why his friend Somu was beaten up.... What would you do in such a situation? Well, here's what OSP does: calmly and very thoughtfully strokes the glass case, and says in a very intimate voice, ``Dekho yeh jahaaaaaaaaaz'' (See this ship)... and in that soft voice, continues to inform AB that the ship is a gift from Indonesia, constructed entirely of cloves.
Amitabh repeats his question.
OSP asks his son to look at the ship (dekho bete, yeh jahaaz) again, this time including the fact that the ship, the clove-sailors, the ropes, the oars involve delicate craftsmanship.
At this point, it would have been apt if, without waiting to ask Om Shiv Puri, ``Is that your final answer?'', Amitabh had bashed the glass case and the ship into tiny bite-sized pieces of clove, ready for inclusion in garam masala. We are, however, denied the spice-raising pleasure.
As I said, a lot of tact is required if you are trying to change the topic. OSP seemed not to have it in him, but don't let that tiny detail bother you. Your son ain't gonna be another Amitabh, right. So, go ahead, anytime you are in a situation where anyone asks you an uncomfortable question, reply with ``Dekho, bete, yeh jahaaaaaaz..'' We do. That was our mantra in the late '90s. It's also the name of this blog, in case you haven't noticed.
Not convinced it will work? Oh well. Can't say I didn't try. In that case, you can always go for the second technique. This method was employed quite efficiently by Naseeruddin Shah's character in Maalamaal, the Bollywood version of Brewster's Millions. What would you do if you were given thirty days to spend Rs. 30 crore, but were required to keep the reason for the expenditure (viz., you inherit ten times as much which you will immediately use to build a whole housing colony for your jhopadpatti friends) a secret from your best friends - and, cleverly including, any girl that might at the end of the film become your girlfriend? Here's what Naseeruddin Shah does. He spends the money as best as he can. Satish Shah and Poonam Dhillon (his friend and his soon to be girlfriend, in that order) keep asking him why the hell he's bent upon wasting his new-found wealth away.
Our friend Naseeruddin (who, in a movie two years prior to Maalamaal, immortalized his irritation over his crippled hand with the words - yeh haath!) doesn't use the dekho bete, yeh jahaaaaz routine. Instead, he simply and frankly tells the questioning friend and soon to be girlfriend that he will not feel comfortable discussing it with them, and all this with just one word: ``Pardaaaaaaa!'' (curtain)...
So go ahead, knock yourself out. Now you know how to deal with people (this from a person who feels really comfortable listening to robotic voices telling him what button to press, and visits online stores instead of having to deal with people and smiles and Hellos and Have A Good Days).
Our next lesson will be on how to build a cheap android.

The OR gate: A Hindi filmi demonstration

The very first TP article, regurgitated and remodeled for your viewing pleasure:

(Once again, if you didn't get it the first time or maybe you came directly to this page somehow, we are demonstrating the OR gate in LOGIC to you people, so that you can get a start on your simple digital circuits and all that.)

The following example of Boolean logic in Hindi cinema is brought to you by Subroto. For those of you who don't know what an OR gate is, it accepts two inputs and returns a "True" if at least one of the inputs is "True". The truth table for the OR gate is as below:

Input A	Input B	Output
0	0	0
0	1	1
1	0	1
1	1	1

This particular example is from the movie Paap Ki Duniya (for those of you who haven't seen this movie... shame shame, paapi shame, for those of you who have, high five!). Let me remind you of a song from this movie:

Main tera tota, tu meri maina
Maane na kyon kehnay?
Phoolon ke jaisi teri jawaani
Jaane kya jaadoo chalaye...
Mera dil tota ban jaaye,
Kaisa mithu mithu bole haye!...

(this is a cover of a Marathi song which shares almost the same sentiment.)

Now, if seeing those lyrics doesn't remind you of the tune of that song and doesn't immediately bring up the picture of Neelam and my man Chunky Pandey dancing together in Ghat dress in some garden at Observation Post (which is a sort of park in Aarey Colony, Bombay, and is the place where most ``OUTDOOR SCENES'' in the 80s were shot, it was a time when people didn't have to rush off to Switzerland/Belgium/UK/USA/Maldives for filming song sequences for a movie which claimed to be patriotic and INDIAN), then nothing ever will.

Anyway, this movie stars Pran as the honest and God-fearing (Main sirf bhagwaan se darta hoon kamine!) inspector and Danny Dengzongpa as Pasha (thanks, xzintax) the daaku (dacoit). Chastising Danny during a pre-credit standoff, Pran posits that its just his bad blood and bad environment that have made Danny bad, and that he [Pran] thinks even a child born of bad blood can be brought up to possess good character. Danny scoffs at this, and in order to prove his point he switches his newborn son with Pran's (A similar stunt was pulled by Prem Nath in Dharam Karam). brings up Danny's son with all the love in the world, while Danny teaches the tricks of his trade to Pran's son. The latter kid is being chased by the cops during his crime of initiation, and cue opening credits, zooming in on the kid's feet, and then zooming out to show a fully-grown Sunny Deol. Predictable 70s montage. Danny's son (the one growing up with Pran) grows into the great and unforgettable Pandey, who also becomes an inspector (that's Inspector Vijay to you douche bags!). And, of course, Sunny Deol, even though he is a petty thief and all that, grows up with a conscience.

So that in the final confrontation scene, Pran delivers a lengthy, laboured dialogue showing Danny the error of his ways. Pran's testimonial of his peer-reviewed twenty-five-year research goes something like this (please try to imagine Pran delivering these dialogues with his eyes slitted to show he means business, like he always does, with every other word accentuated by a shake of his head):

``Achcha khoon agar achche mahoul mein paida ho, to woh hamesha achcha hota hai. Uski misaal main khud hoon!
Achcha khoon agar gande mahoul mein bada ho, to woh hamesha achcha hota hai. Iski misaal hai mera beta, Suraj!
Ganda khoon agar achche mahoul mein bada ho, to woh hamesha achcha hota hai. Iski misaal hai tumhara beta, Vijay!
Ganda khoon agar gande mahoul mein paida ho, to woh hamesha ganda hota hai! Iski misaal tum khud ho, Pasha!!!...''

Let's tabulate this set of inputs (two inputs: Khoon and Mahoul) and the output and example in each case, to generate the Paap Ki Duniya truth table:

Khoon (Blood)	Mahoul (Environment)	Grows up to possess	Example from Paap Ki Duniya
Ganda (Bad)	Ganda	Ganda character	Danny
Ganda	Achcha (Good)	Achcha character	Chunky (YAY!!!)
Achcha	Ganda	Achcha character	Sunny
Achcha	Achcha	Achcha character	Pran

See a pattern here? Of course you do! It's just the OR gate... who said you don't learn anything from Hindi cinema?? Where else would you see an inspector teaching the intricacies of Boolean logic to a daaku in the Chambal valley? ("Yeh nishaan hum sab par dhabba hai. Aao isey mitaakar Pasha banaa dein." Remember that PSA?)

Obviously, Danny doesn't give a shit about Pran's gates, and therefore is sent to Hell's gates by the three greats, at a totally unacceptable cost: Chunky is collateral damage. THIS IS NOT FAIR!!!! I WANT A REMATCH!!!

Thanks to Subroto for reminding me of this situation and for comparing it to logic.
Now that you have learnt some logic, want to learn some diplomacy? Want to learn to tactfully change the subject? Wait for the next post.

Note: The above example is only to illustrate the OR gate, and it does not necessarily mean that whatever Pran claims about the blood-environment relationship is true. For example (this example comes thanks to Ajay Negi), consider the movie Dharam Karam, starring Raj Kapoor, Prem Nath and Randhir Kapoor among others (The first thing that pops into your head when you hear the name of this film is probably the song, Ek Din Bik Jaayega. The first thing that pops into *my* head is the routine that ended: "Hanh?! Aur ek lakh ka char guna?" "ANDA! (Egg)"). This movie also employs the pre-credit infant switch. Randhir Kapoor, Raj Kapoor's son (in the movie, obviously) grows up under the able guidance of Prem Nath, while Prem Nath's son grows up under Raj Kapoor's sad ``What you sow, you will reap'' guidance, and in this case, Good Blood + Bad Environment is still Good, but Bad Blood + Good Environment is Bad (actually, this is true in most movies of the exchanged-children genre - the Good father always keeps wondering why his son is such an asshole, and it ends up he's not his son after all...), therefore this can't be an OR gate. It just is a nature vs. nurture assumption that Bad always begets Bad, no matter how much Boolean logic and/or electronics you know!

Dekho Bete, Yeh Jahaaz

Welcome to the new location for The Timepass Pages, which will slowly but surely be migrating here as and when I have the time and inclination to move them... and who knows, maybe I'll have some new articles in the near future. But if I don't, and you ask me about them, my answer to you is, as always, "Dekho, bete, yeh jahaaz...."