Sex, Lies and Videotapes!

The title is not misleading. :P

I was catching up with a school friend on msn over the weekend, after meeting him on orkut after school, and then the movie whose name is mentioned in the title brought back memories. It was way back in 8th grade when the internet had not spread its wings (or fangs) over us and we were totally unaware of the other meaning of the word web** other than the one the spider spins with its saliva. Frankly speaking the first time I was introduced to net was at a friend’s place much later where he had showed the whole group comparison between Pamela’s n Cindy’s bootlicious bodies. After that, had followed frantic calls to people who knew how to clear history of web pages visited.. lol. So before that the only sources of entertainment were cable television and a bunch of books some guys religiously got into school every month. The cablewallah used to show nice stuff late nights but that time we hadn’t subscribed to the cable so like many guys from my class I was left at the mercy of the guys with the books. One of them was the guy mentioned in the opening line. This dude A had a very nice dad (still might be having) and we all used to envy him that time. Now, where on earth you will find a dad who gives monthly pocket-money exclusively for buying porn books? I guess nowhere and naturally we had developed a sense of deep respect for his dad.. he he. So the books would get into the class and the big geography books were undressed from their covers and the cover page models would get draped into them for circulating in the class. During one such session we coincidentally had the geography lecture on and the teacher Mrs. K asked one guy to read a certain paragraph from the text book and till now you must have figured out that he had the other book in the covers and was stumped what to do. It was a hilarious scene but he somehow managed to get the original geography book from the nearby benches. But I still clearly remember the teacher’s face writ with surprise and the guy’s huh-what-happened look when she asked him why he had to exchange the books just to read out a paragraph. So coming back to the guy A; once he had mentioned in class that there was a movie Sex, Lies and Videotape on some channel. So the next day we were quite eager to hear his review of how the movie was and more for the hot scenes but as usual the censors had cut the hot scenes and the foul language was beeped out. A few years back again this movie was aired and this time we had cable but I don’t remember why I didn’t see it. Might be coz I already knew that it was going to be edited before screening.

The censorship is still in but I feel it has grown to a large extent than before. Late night stuff is definitely for adult viewing but the government agencies don’t think that the audience is mature enough to view it. Leave apart the things related to sex, one cannot celebrate Valentines Day fearing the moral police brigade to come and beat him/her. Pubs and discotheques can’t remain open till wee hours’ coz we don’t want any ‘western’ influence on our good culture. My company has now kept 2 separate computers for surfing the internet. Imagine an IT company where 100 people want to check mails or surf but have access to only 2 computers for that. I don’t know whether to frown or laugh at it. Today afternoon I wrote on my whiteboard ‘Restrictions and Attrition go hand-in-hand’. I really have no idea if this will be read by the management but now this is a form of protest thanks to ‘gandhigiri’.. ha ha.

** I really feel happy when I see kids as young as in 1st grade learning and knowing computers. We had been introduced to computers in say 5th or 6th grade and we used to play Packman and Dave on the school computers and used to learn DOS in curriculum. When I was active in a social group for teaching kids a few years back, we had to go to their houses to meet their parents so as to confirm that their school studies were not affected due to our extra-curricular activities. I was literally stumped when a kid aged around 7-8 years hurled some technical jargon at me and told how he was learning to build his own website. But then I feel somewhat uneasy with the access these little children have to sites after getting messages on hi5 or orkut saying that I liked your profile and when their profile is seen it reads age 14-15 and status is committed. I don’t know whether I am still being orthodox in some ways but I feel sad for the parents of a gal aged in her very early teens whose scrapbook is filled with messages such as “Hey sexy gal! Can we go on a date tomorrow?” I just click the ‘back’ button on the browser and say to myself “Which age you are in? Grow up! This is what you have to accept with the developments in technology”. Really I have to grow up or else have to accept that the scene in the lower cartoon is or can be a real thing.