Lament Of The Science Student

I thought eleventh grade was supposed to be a break after tenth! How much can a HUMAN being study?? I am 2 subjects down, and I am still dying. I think it would be a lot easier if the adults involved in my life would take a few steps back really.

School work, homework, work galore,
Not to mention work some more.
How can I balance it with other things?
Can I BE a good student who dances and sings?

The adults in my life confuse me all the more
Schoolwork seems like the most boring chore.
When at home it’s like I’m in cuffs…
When do I find the time to practice dance and stuff?

Our chem. Teacher says “Study ONLY chemistry”
Our bio teacher? “ONLY Biology”
And while they both agree our workload is immense,
They both still say “Don’t get tense”.

At home my parents will take over.
And I feel like running to take cover.
They say “It’s just a few hours…work with zest”
And then they’ll say “Don’t get stressed!”

As if school wasn’t bad enough,
Dance classes are just as tough.
They say “Practice a few hours at leisure…
It will help take off some of the pressure!”

Everywhere I go there are one or two
Confusing me about what exactly I should do.
I think I’d sooner join a cult,
Than ever completely understand an adult.

Oprah Plays Patronising!

All eyes were glued to Star World prime time; when Bollywood’s very own Aishwariya Rai sat through an interview with world famous talk show host – Oprah Winfrey. Snippets of this great interview were showing on TV for weeks…warming up Indians all over the world to watch the “word’s most beautiful woman” take a big step for women all over India. This grand event, turned out to be 15 minutes long.

Oprah’s long introduction to Bollywood’s contribution to the World’s Top Ten Most Beautiful Women focused on Ash’s looks, her looks, and…oh yea…her looks. So, Ms. Rai’s claim to fame was – you guessed it – her beauty. Now, that being said, why Oprah wanted her to be the spokesperson of Indian women and to talk about the lifestyles of Indians today is beyond me. However, one does expect a certain amount of intelligence from a former Miss. World. Frankly, I don’t think she made as much of the questions she was asked as she could have. If it were Shobha De, Shabana Azmi, or Nandita Das, Oprah would have had a real conversation to deal with.

The first thing they talked about was how weird Indian movies are. It was “What’s with the songs? Just as things start getting intimate, you burst into song!”. The much awaited “My living with my family…is SUCH a topic!” led to nothing. The questions asked could have started interesting conversation, but none of them did. Ash put a pink sari on Oprah, sounded like she was putting on a fake accent, and that was the end of it. By the end of the show, India sounded like this faraway and exotic but backward country!!

Ash wasn’t the entire part of the show. There were people from Iceland, and Poland, and Saudi Arabia, sharing a little bit of their culture with the American audience. There were some really interesting things that were beginning to come up. But somehow, Oprah always seemed to bring it down to the stupidest of things. The first thing she asked to her guests was what the views on sex were. When Ash seemed like it wasn’t something that was discussed so openly, Oprah brought up the Kamasutra! The woman from Iceland was talking about how girls at age 15 do it, and how common it is to sleep with someone the first time they go out. She said “It’s not a big deal, everyone does it!” and Oprah proudly goes “Well, everyone’s doing it here too!” HAHA! So funny. Not that I am asking them not to be open about their lives, but glamorising it at the detriment of someone else, is a different thing altogether. They made it seem like being private, or even conservative, was a bad thing.

Oprah sounded patronising towards everything though. She seemed to turn up her nose at everything that was remotely different from anything American, and everything else needed her stamp of approval. The only complementary thing she spoke of was how this one Muslim woman, broke stereotypes in the Middle East, and divorced her abusive husband, getting custody of both her children. That should have been such an inspiring and feel-good story. All Oprah made of it was this: “Wow…we are so lucky to be American women. We should be truly grateful that we are American and can mould our own destiny”. OMG. The irony is that on all her more serious shows, she picks up the biggest perversions, and talks of how common they are IN AMERICA!

She sounded extremely American-supremacist. She is an influential woman no doubt and intelligent, but she came off very narrow, dismissive and provential in that episode. I couldn’t help but lose a little bit of respect for her that night.