First things first.
What is Maggie: Maggie is the staple food of all the bachelors of India. Its one of the first 'ready to eat' thing to strike the Indian market. Easy to cook, its tasty too and even healthy @ Atta Maggie.
Who is Bhim Sen: Bhim Sen is the name of one of the most loved Hindu Gods @ Hanuman. But to be context specific bhim sen was also the name of the guy who used to sit at the nestle counter in my college, Thapar - Patiala. And his speciality was Maggie for which he charged I guess rs. 14 ??? Don't remember really.
Who is Arjun Singh: He is Indian HRD Minister. He doesn't have hair on his head but has a characteristic moustache. Recently he has been in a great controversy on the Reservation debate in India.
Now about the relationship they have. You may think that its pretty contrived, but everything and everyone is connected somehow. Like the friendship networks on Orkut !
In my college there was something that happened every year. There were two magazines, and later on there was only one. And in the edition which was published near the end of the academic year, many final year folks will write their heart out in some sort of 'goodbye college' kind off articles. They will write about their friends whom they will miss all their life, lecture halls where they used to sleep, hostel rooms where they used to fight, TV room where there used to be stampedes during cricket seasons, but one thing that was mentioned always was that 'I will always miss bhim sen ki maggie'. Now I used to hate this so much, how does every one mentions bhimsen ki maggie, is it fashionable to mention it or something ? I am sure people who had not eaten that maggie more than 10 times in their entire lifetime in thapar used to mention it in their good bye emails.
But now I realize that it actually represent something. And that representation is what matters. After all as they say, its not the words that matter, but the meaning behind it.
And same is the case with Arjun singh. He has been the biggest villian of all the upper caste folks revolting against the reservation all over India. (Well all over india minus - tamil nadu, no one raised a finger here) But Arjun singh is just a representation. Its not Arjun singh behind it, its the congress govt., not only the congress govt., but the UPA govt., and really not only UPA, but the whole political structure of India. Arjun singh represents everything that is bad and wrong with Indian politics for the people revolting against reservation. So if Mr. Arjun singh, you are reading this blog entry ( yeah, there is a probability of everything), then you must realize that its not you whose effigies are burnt but of all the filthy politicians of India. Because YOU represent them.
Just as bhim sen ki maggie represents "all the memories of my college" !!!!
Some related thoughts ..
One of my team mates came from US to India. He is an american. He wanted to see some hindi movie, and we took him to 'Rang de Basanti'. Now I thought he should have some back ground to this movie, other wise he won't get a thing. We started telling him about Indian freedom struggle, bhagat singh etc. and he didn't get a word (Why do we Indians think that every one in the world knows about the history of India, that it received independence on 15th August ... ). Anyways the guy was not getting anything and he said, 'hold on hold on, just tell me that at what point in the movie does the hero and heroine START SINGING AND DANCING AROUND THE TREES'. I was flabbergasted.
'Singing and dancing around the trees' is what represents the bollywood, for that matter represents kollywood (tamil) and tollywood (telugu) too.
When ever you meet an israeli, you talk to him about palestine.
New Zealand just represents another cricketing nation for us.
Brazilians start kicking around in their mother's womb.
Chinese eat snakes, and japanese work 25 hours a day.
Every russian is the member of KGB, and every Afghani a terrorist.
And this is the best, I am sure in some porn infested part of the world, people think that 'all indians are taught kamasutra in their school'.
This is all about representations, everything.
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"This is all about representations, everything"
Interesting theory... but did you ever think why this is the case (may be you have)... all of these representations are the mental images that are formed over the period of time in ones mind... the source which leads to those image formations happens to be Media 99.99% of the time in the form of internet, news etc etc... these images becomes stronger by little dosage of same news over time... for example:
1) Bhim sen maggie: People who ate it for 5 times had something about that maggie in their mind.. but magazine article (media) actually reinforced that image and same ppl go on mentioning it when they move to final year...
2) "Brazilians start kicking around in their mother's womb." - Well have u ever heard about brazilians other than in football.. well i guess rarely... but whenever Brazil comes up the first thing that comes to my mind is that Brazilians babes are hot ;).
3) Indians have certain image of pakistanis in their mind... but most of that image has been improvised by media... there are certain set of ppl who might be like that but in-general from personal exp. i know pakistani ppl are really nice and totally opposite of the above image (i got little off-track here) but u got my point :)..
So, I feel we need to go beyond these representations and see things for ourselves... only then we would be able to have proper and right representations of ppl.
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