1989: It was the earliest days of television in India. Certainly in my small town the fist signals were broadcast over our black and white tubes around that time only. As a child after the evening news every day of the week used to be defined by the program that would follow on the prime time slot. Of course I was never aware of this term then. And one of the days it used to be the day of "Mr. Yogi". I dont remember which one it was, because every day back then was non-working for me. :-)
Television was such a novelty in those days. We had a wooden case, custom built for the one we had. Some people would even put blue plastic screens on their TV sets in an attempt to add a third colour!
We would have dinner while watching the NEWS. It used to be devoid of any videos and sound bites and composed entirely of the news reader in closeup reading at a uniform pace from government preapproved scripts.
Yes! Television in the subcontinent has evolved from single channel half hour news bulletins to gigantic proportions now, but those were still "the" days. :-)
Mr. Yogi is not the cartoon series Yogi Bear as some of my friends here in Belgium would imagine. It was a television serial in which a freshly "USA returned" eligible bachelor attempts to find a wife by interviewing girls with different sun-signs one after the other.
"Hello! Y. I. Patel" in a subtle questioning tone with an awkward accent was the standard way that Mohan Gokhale would introduce himself to girls. (He played the typical NRI to the hilt. Indeed a very fine actor he was.) And all the girls would invariably answer "I don't know!!" to that. It was hilarious. And we eagerly used to anticipate that moment in every episode.
So sunsigns have been ubiquitously present in my life since the early days. In fact I ended up having an overdose of it. India is the land of the mystics in more ways than one. Everyone you meet, puts a new spin on everything. There are sun signs (based on the first letter of your birth name) and there are moon signs (based on the time and place of your birth and the position of the stars.. I think) and apart from the daily newspaper horoscope section there is Tarot, Feng-Shui, Vastushastra, Palmistry, Numerology etc. and then you have the Peer-Fakeers (mystics) that abound with their totally indigenous form of deriving at predictions without any external aids whatsoever. What's funnier is you don't even have to go looking for them. They would literally shout your future from across the street and if your unsuspecting grandma likes what he has to say and is reasonably believable about her young grandson, he'll earn a Rupee or two.
To top it off, I have been quite confused about what sign to follow while reading the horoscope sections in the newspaper, as for the first few years of my life I only used to be "Pearl", which made me a Virgo. So I would happily read the Virgo section and try to decipher the code of the future. It was a different issue altogether that the horoscope for Virgo in the English newspaper was sometimes be in complete contrast with what "Kanya" had to offer in the Hindi one. Then I became "Feroz" in school along with staying as "Pearl" at home making me a Sagittarian. So I now had to read a set of four different predictions (2 each in Hindi and English).
I think the editors realized my plight so they tried to make a simplification and switched to the 'real' moon signs based on the date of birth. But alas! That was not to be. There are different ways of arriving at the moon signs. According to the Indian system, I ended up being a Scorpio and the English one made me an Aquarius. This added up two more. Aha... you would think that would be the end of it. No, it continues... With "Made in China" gaining significance we had Feng-Shui and then there were Tarot readings as well as the numerology ones. Some weeks I would draw "the clown" card in the Tarot reading making me impervious to any mishaps and my Aquarius prediction would be to "stay extremely cautious while driving" with my numerology prediction being out of tune with both and commenting about compatibility with people with a net sum of "4".
So to simplify it, out of all the choices present to me and all being 'statistically' proven, I would just pick a horoscope for myself for the day and then a sunsign (after having a quick glance over all of them. ;-) ) No denying they could be a great morale booster sometimes.
Never mind that all sunsign and moonsign calenders are atleast 350 years out of sync so if you think that you are a scorpio, if you were to correctly follow the lunar and stellar patterns you would end up being a libran. But we are not being scientific people while reading horoscopes, are we?
So, coming to the point now. The upcoming movie by famed Bollywood director Ashutosh Gowarikar who has given us movies like "Lagaan" and "Swades", "What's your Rashee" may end up having ridiculously oversimplified the feminine character and giving way to stereotypes in turn irking the "capricorn" feminists ;-) (They seem to be furious about how 'capricornians' are portrayed in the movie). But being based on a great TV serial it may finally end up having a good message and its heart in the right place. (No comments about the acting prowess of the guy playing Mr. Yogi)
These days my mom is worried about finding a suitable match for me and has all sorts of reservations about her name not starting with "S" or her not being born in April, (don't ask me the reasons.. I don't know either). Besides ignoring that for an Aquarian-Scorpio-Virgo-Sagittarian with a celestial number of 5.5 (yes there are different ways for calculating that too and mine come out to be 4 & 7) like me, it would be pretty hard to define the befitting criteria to finding a suitable match in the first place, she also seems to be ignoring something critical about the match-making process.
So, I may eventually use the movie in a tounge in cheek way to remind her that like Mr.Yogi finally fell for the thirteenth girl he interviewed who turned out to be an orphan whose rashi was indeterminate on account of her date of birth not being known, I too am oblivious to the stars and the signs. And most importantly its not about the name or the date of birth and the position of the stars or the looks or the money or religion or race or xyz. Its about that crazy thing called "Love". :-)
So, I may eventually use the movie in a tounge in cheek way to remind her that like Mr.Yogi finally fell for the thirteenth girl he interviewed who turned out to be an orphan whose rashi was indeterminate on account of her date of birth not being known, I too am oblivious to the stars and the signs. And most importantly its not about the name or the date of birth and the position of the stars or the looks or the money or religion or race or xyz. Its about that crazy thing called "Love". :-)
