MAYBE YOU LOOK IN THE WRONG PLACES...

It’s not that rare to witness a scene when parents, or elders-for that matter, irrespective of how they are related to some kid, dishing out advice about how much time a kid should spend in front of the TV.

The reason they give for their aversion to the ‘idiot box’ is that there is too much promiscuous or/and sinister activity being aired on TV these days, which is bad for a toddler or  a young boy/girl who has just stepped into teenage.

That’s a perfectly legitimate anxiety on the parents’ part. When harmones are a-raging, watching ways of attracting the opposite sex in seconds could give you pretty nasty ideas, which is bad when at that age you need to have your wits about you and concentrated on academics and character building. so parents are not totally wrong in imposing the frequent embargos on their child’s liberty to watch whatever he likes. Mostly its like “only pogo, discovery, or a news channel”. Sadly there might have been an oversight in this clever plan.

What do you do , when in the middle of SHINCHAN, an AXE commercial is aired, or your kid stumbles across a news being aired about a sex racket on the news channel you recommend? You bubble of security is not as sound as you think it is.. !

And its a very biased assumption that all television does is to corrupt young minds and put ideas about violence and the ‘bad stuff’ in minds of the young ones. I watch a LOT of TV and yes, occasionally I have come across inappropriate content, but I have also learned a lot, and not only through Natgeo and discovery. I learnt that Nokia is from Finland by watching Transformers; I know what and where Harlem is and that people of Indonesia prefer a lot of spices in their food; I perform really well in any audio based  test because from having an experience of watching Star World I understand what people with different accents are saying; I fully understand the severity of 9/11 and its impact on the world because I have seen almost every documentary ever aired about it . And yes, I also know that Shahrukh has an unmarried sister; John didn’t want to commit and that was the reason Bipasha broke up with him; but entertainment is not that bad for the mind as people mostly assume it to be!

By being exposed to such a lot of information people also can develop awareness of what is good and what isn’t. None of my friends use AXE to have the ladies swarming around. They use it because they want to be presentable. And about the people who are ‘influenced’ by the advertisement (generally intersecting the set of people who scream about the ill-effects of television), let’s just say when the top bunk is that empty , just smelling good won’t get you anywhere 

Its still important to guide young people what to watch and what not because the quality of content has degraded. But its a public medium and you can’t expect your filters to be applied everywhere. The storm comes even if you close the windows, if you stop your kid from watching it on tv, he will access it on the net or his friends will tell him about it . What you can do is educate them about some things you want to protect them from and information about why this age is not suitable for knowing about those things.

Inculcate their interests in the right things, so that they don’t migrate to the ‘banned’ channels even when you are not around, there is a lot of good stuff too. And its not just the chemical formula of sodium carbonate that makes them an aware person. Don’t put so many hurdles around them that when they finally break through , you can bet they would try what you stopped them from trying earlier.

Now that’s enough for today, Its time for me  to watch some TV.

Call me an idiot as i love that box!

Cheers!

WHY BLOGS

This blogging industry is not that old..Probably celebrated its 7th or 10th birthday, to be vague. But the boom that it has seen puts our economic growth to shame, even though it does form a teensy bit of a part in it.

People may not be sociable always, but we cannot deny the fact that man is social. He needs to interact, to talk, to share, to listen, to appreciate and be valued. It is his position in others’ lives , that forms the basis of his everyday life – most of his actions, beliefs and his mental makeup.

Social networking sites give you a platform to share bits and pieces of your life on display- what you feel at the moment (not more than 140 characters, including spaces !) , what you wore at a friend’s birthday, what that friend wore and who liked whose outfit..

To people who have more to say than that, who don’t feel its enough just to express your mood in two lines, who like to express their opinions along with the explanation of their origin and bases behind those thoughts, and most importantly who would love it if you had something to say about their views, be it trashing their ideas on a public portal, so that they can prove their point again; or people who just want to showcase their world of talent to others, however small that be; blogs are God’s greatest gifts to them, running a close third after mothers and oxygen.

Its my turf, I am the master of this little space, I decide what can be published where and what is just too simple to be worthy of a space like this.. If this were RUNWAY I would be Miranda Priestly.. This little blog might not be even close to that million dollar magazine yet, but I would always cherish it just the same, its my baby, the product of my imagination,.

Some lunatic who just had to have a paper and pen .. or in today’s scenario, a monitor , a modem and a working keyboard; to be lost in his own little world, would have created blogs, our very own little pieces of paper, only they don’t involve killing of trees or the fact that papers and ink run out..if the space on these blog sites is endless, so are my ideas.

Its going to be tough fight 

cheers!