E-Paper
Witerati | Of unfruitful feuds & fruits of labour
The onset of summer is seeing matters turning ‘pricey’, from humble childhood fruits to unfruitful feuds of fading Bollywood divas Zeenat vs Mumtaz & Co.
That childhood is a lost country is driven home the most when it comes to seasonal sights, sounds and smells one grew up on.
Take summer fruits, for one. Perhaps, the King of Fruits, the Aam (mango), is the one that has survived childhood days best (not getting into the survival of the other AAM here). So many other ubiquitous fruits have been lost to our progeny, our future generations.
That the digital life has plucked away some sensory experiences connected to seasonal fruits became pretty obvious when a packet of a familiar fruit arrived recently. Loquat.
That the Loquat, also known as the Japanese plum, arrived on BlinkIt and with an astronomical price tag than what childhood had known, was a telling statement in more ways than one.
Childhood could never have imagined gaining armloads of Loquats or their poorer cousins – shahtoot to shareefa -- plonked in armchair comfort. Getting a taste of loquats, jamuns and the likes entailed a bit of workout of our limbs. Scaling the towering lanky limbs of fruit trees, that is.
Fruits of labour. Literally.
Childhood could also never have imagined these humble fruits coming with mind-boggling price tags. Humble fruits that had seen days of going begging, even being trampled under uncaring feet in their descent and droppings. On to the bylanes of childhood, into the arms of Summer.
Our progeny’s childhood may not only be unfamiliar with those workouts for fruits of labour, theirs is a generation whose vocabulary may not even include certain fruit names. Theirs is a generation whose vocabulary better recognises jalapenos than jamuns.
Hard to swallow, having to tuck into childhood fruits that now come with fancy price tags, from ₹200 to 1,000.
Sample the makeover of the humble shareefa of childhood into a slice of exotica – on Naturals ice-cream cones or elsewhere.
So much for transformed situations.
To live-in & let live-in
From situations to situation-ships, summer is seeing others acting pricey, too.
It’s old hat that situation-ship has many votaries among the Gen Z, it is becoming their way of life.
But that live-ins have a vocal advocate in a fading Bollywood Diva may have come as a bit out of the blue, if not as a total surprise.
Yesteryear leading lady Zeenat Aman recently raised many an eyebrow on the social media by openly instagramming in favour of the flavour of the times – live-ins.
So far so good.
What triggered a slugfest was when among the raised eyebrows was a thinly pencilled relic of a brow belonging to a fellow faded Bollywood heroine.
Yesteryear actor Mumtaz didn’t take too kindly to Zeenie ‘baby’ having her day out on Instagram, sounding a with-it and “cool aunty”, as Mumtaz put it.
Sticky situation, surely.
Mumtaz taking potshots at Zeenat’s disastrous marriage may not have been becoming, since relationships or situation-ships come riding a personal philosophy.
Feuds and femme fatales go hand in hand. Saira Banu and Mukesh Khanna of the “Bhishma Pitamah” fame, too, jumped into the slugfest.
Strangely, the slugfest has begun to bear uncanny resemblance to a poll battle. What with Mumtaz, Mukesh & Co’s pontifications smacking of the tone and tenor of a ruling party, and Zeenat being made to sound like an opposition party.
Moral policing and moral judgements are certainly not new to the Indian DNA.
But what it all boils down to is that it’s more a case of difference of opinions riding generational divide. At a time when more and more of Young India is subscribing to situation-ships, this tirade by old schoolers Mumtaz, Saira, Mukesh & Co smacks of dissenting perspectives of the older generation.
This “holier than thou” hullabaloo is nothing more than an unfruitful exercise of moral policing.
The curious case of learning to let live-in, if not live-in (oneself).
