A Smile in the Gaudy Age of the Grotesque

There was a television show once — one I greatly enjoyed through its three seasons — called Bo Selecta. It was a sketch show that took its antics to ludicrous levels of stupidity and sometimes, that’s fun. The ‘celebrity masks’ used on the show were pretty damn grotesque and one of the most grotesque ones was the Kelly Osbourne mask (and character too in fact). There was one particular sketch where the Kelly Osbourne character was trying to pimp some show and suddenly takes on this bizarre cockney voice and says something like, “Look kiddies, we got aww yow five’ritz (all your favourites... duh)!!”

I laughed then...

I sure as hell wasn’t laughing last night when IPL “commissioner” Lalit Modi seemed to be saying that at the IPL opening ceremony, considering the “entertainment” in store for ticket-holding suckers. Some sources told me that the Deccan Chargers management organised the opening ceremony. Unconfirmed rumours of course, but regardless, an opening ceremony there most certainly was. And amid the ceremony were “aww yow five’ritz” comprising Lionel Richie, UB40, some stupid parody act called Bjorn Again and the truly Godawful (there really is no other word) Deepika Padukone. *shudder*

Who, it must be asked, would organise a the inauguration of a tournament of Twenty20 — a game that’s meant to be 21st Century fast, loud, brash — and invite the first three clowns to perform? And then think it’s a good idea? What percentage of the audience actually wanted to see Lionel Richie, UB40 and a joke act from Australia pretending to be Swedish? Padukone on the other hand, was just a joke. Spinning around sluggishly to some frankly foolish Bollywood songs and some Black Eyed Peas stuff. And calling Navi Mumbai “Mumbai”. Good one.

(Call that nitpicking if you will, but to me that’s like some punk act I once saw claiming that Leeds was their favourite place in London, England)

The theme of the whole event however, was what baffled me the most. I had heard somewhere that the IPL (or maybe one of the franchises were supporting the UNAIDS programme). The curtains (?) around the stage that were inflated at the start and floated skyward and hung there and acted as a projector screen (I’m not kidding) seemed to resemble a condom cut in half. Then, each of the eight franchises were represented by what looked like large inflatable penises with their logo on them. Finally, the stage was surrounded by these people in what to the best of my understanding resembled chef outfits with a white triangular hat (that looked like a piece of cheese).

Actually a better comparison would be Ku Klux Klan outfits, with that piece of cheese on them. Now one can only assume that these people — going with the analogy — were supposed to represent sperm cells. So you got the penises, the condom and the sperm cells running around everywhere randomly lighting up in all sorts of different colours (with some LED set up). I don’t know what that’s supposed to represent. Maybe a message of how every sperm is special and so you shouldn’t masturbate? Mr Modi, care to clarify?

But as with everything in life, there’s always something positive to every negative and believe me, you’d be real hard-pressed to find anything positive in thousands of grown up men and women pretending to be sperm cells. But, here goes. One particular segment of the silhouette of a drummer on a curtain (that condom from earlier) as he drummed away was rather good. Laser Man was the BOMB!! I love lasers and that performance was some unequivocally mad shit. It’s dawned on me now that it’s pretty rude to call those Nu Klansmen “sperm cells”. I think I’ll call them “little chefs” henceforth.

Lionel Richie came on at the end and performed one song called Lord-knows-what... oh yeah, Dancing on the Ceiling. That’s the one. Now these little chefs were positioned in straight lines from the stage over to the boundary. So if the ground was a cycle tyre, these little chefs formed the spokes. Got it? And they had to do some obscure dance where they were swaying from side-to-side while doing jumping jacks. This, to me, was more than just ill-conceived choreography. I’m doing my best not to underplay the profundity of this.

The cycle spoke thing for me, was a metaphor for life. In life, as those little chefs demonstrated, you are expected (seldom for some, regularly for others) to fall in line and dance to the beat of someone else’s drum. Painful job or relationship perhaps. And sometimes, you’re even expected to do so while dressed foolishly. Painful job that requires you to wear a chicken suit (or a normal suit and tie for that matter). Savvy?

Every now and then somebody comes along, who falls in line, dresses foolishly as told and dances to someone else’s beat... but does it with such a massive grin on his/her face that it really makes you stop complaining about trivialities. Most of the little chefs were just going through the motions, while wondering how many bedsheets they could make from their costumes. A couple of them, whom I dubbed “happy little chefs” were really getting into it, jumping around all over the place. If behaviour or body language was in fact a window to a person’s feelings, their vigorous, energetic and really really happy movements told me that person’s face must be home to a humongous smile.

And suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that they may have been playing sperm cells in a macabre skit also involving a giant condom and eight penises. The little chefs lighting up randomly now seemed quite cool. They had a job to do and were doing it, some with a hell of lot more enthusiasm than others. They were on the world’s stage after all. Their happy jumping jacks took away all the incredulity, irritation and disgust I’d been harbouring until then. Sachin, Warnie, Ganguly, Dhoni, Padukone and Richie all got pretty robust rounds of applause and cheers from the crowd. I saved my loudest applause for the happy little chefs.

Bring on the cricket!