the seemingly trivial..

Have a copious collection of stamps. For us kids at that time, philately was accessible and expedient, and it seemed to be a cinch.

I grew over philately in college. The next hobby I fell upon was collecting mugs - specifically beer mugs. I had thought this was a suave thing to do as wasn't a hobby that every typical teen had. Albeit, I was a tad late in finding out that getting beer mugs isn't as easy as going down to a pub and buying beer mugs.

Unfortunately it dubiously bestows upon one as a bibulous teen.

I guess family friends who came over home and logically presumed that if I was collecting beer mugs I would be drinking beer. In a manner of speaking the logic would be, if you stay too long with a horse you start smelling like a horse. If you smell like a horse you are a horse. People often suffer from the dubious distinction of dyslexic perceptions.

No matter how credulous it may seem, but if you keep hearing drivel you will believe it to be true. Take for instance Television soaps; I happen to see a discussion on whether television soaps reflect reality. The question posed was are TV soaps reflecting reality, as these soaps being aired on Indian TV depict some fracas or skirmish between daughter-in-laws and mother-in-laws. These soaps portray the inordinate lengths each go to vindicate some eccentric cause or the other. The reason this topic drew a discussion is on account of the increasing viewer-ship of these soaps. I mean these viewers would be empathizers with the programs for ratings to go up which got our conspiracy theorists thinking is this empathy on account of a reflection of the actual reality in the environment. In other words are the daughter and mother-in-laws at loggerheads in real life.

To this, one of the panel members, an eminent actress turned producer of TV sops commented. "We are in the business of making profit. We make programs that make profit." What she means is making profits means giving viewers what they want. The producers don't filter the real from the unreal - I mean that is democracy but a tad irresponsible.

I was in a similar disposition, I chose beer mugs as a hobby, but what got in the fore was whether I was imbibing any of the alcoholic beverage.

Coming back to my beer mugs, the final dregs was when a friend had the bright idea to present me with a poster.

It went something like "20 reasons to drink beer".

Out went the Beer mugs, the poster and my hobby.

Now, I just twiddle my thumbs.

The crux is I was censured but who censures the otherwise trivial