Prime time blushes

By Akshay Sawai


My mother and I were watching Masterchef Australia on TV the other night. I was having a staple, Masterchef Girgaumtype Maharashtrian dinner. I went to the kitchen to keep the plate. When I returned, the images on the television were of a gyrating stripper.

My mother was trying to change the channel with barely concealed desperation, rapidly pressing buttons on the remote. Masterchef had ended. House MD had begun. With shots of a stripper. Rivetting stuff when you are alone.

Awkward when there is a parent in the room.

It doesn't matter if you are old enough and have kids of your own. Sexuality on television when mum or dad are in the room remains a discomfiting situation for most Indian men.

In college we had a young teacher who taught us English for a few months. "Who are censors? They cut out all the good parts in a movie," she once told us. Normally, you want the good parts. Normally, you hate the censor board.

But when there is a parent around, you love the blessed censor board. It is your saviour.

One day in the '90s, Doordarshan announced it would show Robert De Niro's Taxi Driver. I was excited, and in a rare moment of camaraderie with my father I recommended he watch it too.

I didn't anticipate a film about a taxi and rebellion to have that much objectionable content. Some profanity maybe, but nothing that would make you want to disappear in the womb of the earth and resurface on the South Pole.

I was wrong. There was an almost-fellatio scene in the film, among other things. The couple of minutes the shot lasted I prayed to the censor board and cursed it as well and perhaps also chanted some Hanuman Chalisa. I decided to never again watch an English film with my father — not even Tom & Jerry.

What if there was a scene of little Jerry growing up and humping warm cheese? Family elders too feel uneasy at such times.

In our school days we once gathered at a friend's house to watch Nights of Terror — ostensibly a horror film. The friend's grandfather joined us.

But the film was thinly-veiled soft porn. A nervous silence, occasionally broken by giggles, hung over the room. Finally, the grandfather gingerly got up and left the room, and we collapsed on the floor in relief and laughter.

Experiences like these are valuable. They teach people to think on their feet. Like the time another school friend hosted a smut screening when his uncle was sleeping in another room. Midway through the film, the uncle appeared.

His nephew jumped up, grabbed a rag and pretended to scrub the TV screen. Right. That's what you do when you invite friends home. You wipe the TV.

Over time, one develops an instinct to anticipate naughty scenes in a movie or show and either change channels in time or flee the room.

For example, if the shot involves a couple gazing into each other's eyes and the saxophone starts playing, be sure they are going to be at it soon. It's your cue to casually walk away from the TV, and send a prayer the censor board's way.