The lost art of seduction

[1]

Hamare zamane mein ladki patana national occupation nahin tha. Boys girls ko stalk karte the, aur pyaar ho jata tha. But these days boys are having trouble pataoing girls, especially since stalking is no longer an activity they can engage in without a trip to the local thana. Hamare alert TV channels sensed a business opportunity here and they first engaged Ashmit Patel and now Kashmera Shah, promising girls ki barsaat.
Ashmit Patel, along with one Natasha, used to run a stud farm (SuperStud — School of Flirt on UTV Bindass) last year. Together, they would wash, groom and train studs to chase, grab and return with happily gurgling girls.
Since there were 13 studs, they had to beat each other, always at the same game — the art of seduction. But if you watched even one episode of that show, it was clear that all, except for one, were imbeciles. In fact, if the 12 so-called studs were marooned on an island with a dozen girls, within seconds the girls would cut themselves up and their dismembered body parts would swim after sharks screaming, “Mujhko kha lo, please.” I mean, won’t you do the same if all a boy could do was jabber about papa’s business, sing besure songs or tell jokes?
Stud-giri, I tell you, is very problematic, because the first rule of being a stud is that boy should not have a single thought in his pretty head. Ab Ashmit ko hi le lo. What do you think he is thinking about when canoodling with girls on national TV? Uff! Let’s fatafat banish that scary thought by turning to loud Kashmera Shah on Steal Ur Girlfriend (Channel V).
On this show, as on all other shows, Ms Shah comes semi-clad, screeches about pyaar and lau, grabs a whimpering boy and then they both proceed to trick a girl into saying “I love you, laloo”.
The episode I watched had Mumbai college boy Akshay who had been in love with his classmate Vanshri for two years but hadn’t had the courage to even say Namaste. But once he got into Ms Shah's van, and they began plotting how he would go from “Hello! Who are you?” to “Janu, where are you?”, sweet Akshay drew courage from the slightly cuckoo Ms Shah and her busy crew that went about installing cameras, mics and bichaoing jaal for the girl.
Bus, phir kya tha, with the help of teekhi mirchis, vada pao, chai and paan, Vanshri was humming along with Akshay in a tent that had been flown in from Saudi Arabia.
Girl was hooked and life looked good. But meri pant mein ek ant hai. Everything on this show looks staged. The girls seem to have been pataoed earlier but recorded later. Oh! How I miss those stalking days. Everything was so simple then.