News meeows - 6

A building collapsed in Mumbai. A most touching and helpless moment was when some rescue workers mentioned how they got calls from those trapped beneath the debris. They could do nothing, they said, until the huge blocks of concrete are removed. I dread to think what those people must be thinking, feeling…what a thin line there really is between life and death.

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Having already written my wry views on the ‘green’ issue, it came as no surprise to discover that 15 Whole Foods stores in the New York area were selling $15 cotton bags by Anya Hindmarch, a London designer. She said, “To create awareness you have to create scarcity by producing a limited edition. I hate the idea of making the environment trendy, but you need to make it cool and then it becomes a habit.”

Yeah, so you carry a bag that says “I’m not a plastic bag.”

Go on, wear shoes that say, “I am not leather”, or lipstick marked, “I have not been tested on your favourite pet”, or flaunt a cleavage with a tattoo saying, “I am not silicon.”

If you are not something, then you don’t have to announce it. But who is to tell them?

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In India, more specially the metros and Page 3 circuit, there is this character called Bobby Darling who gets invited to all the hip parties. The reason? He wants to be a she and has been cross-dressing and collecting money for a sex-change operation. She is in the news now for molesting a male model by asking him to strip. Bobby says the guy, Surjit Jagdish Singh, an unknown aspirant wants to use her to get ahead.

Whatever. The entertainment world is murky, especially the high society. What surprises me is that this guy goes around wearing bizarre clothes and behaving like a silly girl and everyone is indulgent towards the sensitive issue of transsexuals. These same people will turn up their noses at the very mention of hijras (eunuchs). Why? Aren’t some of them also trapped in men’s bodies?

I am sure Bobby has had to face social ostracism, but where are those wonderful ladies when it comes to the less fortunate? Or is this one more of their little playthings – call a different person and amuse yourselves?

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Now, this really got my goat. Why? It was the caption. “Foreign students who have come to the country to study Indian culture interact with streetchildren in Bangalore on Wednesday”. Imagine if Indian students, and there are many in the US, went around looking for hoboes and punks and the dregs of American society to study their culture?