31st, August 1997

Model Chanchala who appears on our Mirror cover this week displays a creation by Sonali White of Haddai. Chanchala's hair and makeup was by Ruwani of Ramani Fernando Salons. She was photographed by Mettasena.

Contents The word by Chunky Monkey Pssst! Pets aplenty

The Word

by Chunky Monkey

"The game's afoot, Watson," I muttered out of the corner of my mouth, simultaneously adjusting my deerstalker, playing my violin idly and cocking an observant eye around the room. (Anything can be accomplished with time). Dr. Watson looked at me with a bemused eye. "What game are you talking about, I'm deciding whether to order garlic or butter naan ?" I snapped back to attention and realised that we were actually sitting in the air conditioned comfort of Shanti Vihar. Handlooms lay under the glass of our table, and decorated the high ceilinged dining room where families were tucking into paper thosais and sambols with relish. I narrowed my eyes. "Exactly what I said Watson. The dog did NOT bark !" With a sigh, my dining companion handed the menus back to the most truculent waiter I have even encountered in my life and said, "That means he'll have the paneer keema , with butter naan and I'll have the wade with the vegetable curry." Busily I rolled up my sleeves and went to work, loftily observing "You're learning quickly, Watson. Once you eliminate the obvious , what remains, however improbable is the paneer kheema".......

Actually the Chunk is a huge fan of Shanti Vihar's inexpensive, efficient and delicious home delivery service. A couple of weeks ago while organising a dinner party Chez Chunk , one was able to order food for ten people for less than two thousand bucks. Not everybody who use scaterers wants the higher end of the market, and Shanti Vihar's veggie wonders look good and taste even better. More power to them and pass the masala...........

To the British Council last Saturday to check out 'Oddities', an evening of British comedy by the likes of Pinter and Stoppard, by a new company called 'Absurd Inc'. Highlights for moi included a subtly acted out extract from 'Another Moon Called Earth', which highlighted two talented newcomers Maheshi and Harean (last names not provided). One particular theme seemed to link all the disparate pieces and that theme forme was ......the art of the salacious, the motif of the gigolo, Prostitute, whore, whatever you want to call it, from the Men For Sale Club in the opening act "Special Offer" (which drew uncomfortable titters from the males in the audience), to the mysterious position being applied for in 'The Applicant', to the 'visitor' who visits the ennui-prone wife of the history buff in 'Another Moon', the pornographer in 'The Interview' and the hooker in 'Request Stop'. Pinter's oblique and skewed thinking was at times treated a bit too abruptly, and all in all this kind of thing seems best suited to an instinctive and less analytical viewing. In other words, don't probe too deep, just enjoy the surface tension. Whining electronics, unbelieveably psychadelic cycle shorts and a sense of Dada pervading the atmosphere...........

Late at night while suffering from a bout of insomnia, the Chunked One switched on one of those channels with all the Hindi film clips, in the hope of finding some suitably mundane video to fall asleep to. Instead he came across an infomercial , one of those insidious pieces of ersatztelevision that adopts the format of a talk show in order to sell you something for half an hour. The underlying thinking behind this probably goes along the lines of "If we repeat ourselves enough times , some stupid schmuck out there is going to break down and call us with his credit card number."

The life saving miracle being featured on this particular piece of Must See TV was a small fitness machine, being strenuously upheld by a guy called Jake. Jake had the physique of a small Rwandan mountain gorilla and had obviously been a construction worker from New Jersey before his present in carnation as fitness guru to the working classes. The working classes themselves were represented by the audience of the "talk show" Jake was hosting.

They were the kind of tame , bleached, blonde and stone washed zombies who are so unemployed that they resort to appearing on informercials so that they can make enough money to go home and watch more informercials instead of going to work.

So anyway, Jake bounds on in a testostoronal frenzy and starts trying to hype the viewers to buy the fitness machine.This involves repeating the phrase "Get Fit Don't Quit" once every three nano seconds. He then brings on a FITNESS EXPERT from some university. This FITNESS EXPERT then proceeded to answer such intellectually demanding questions from the audience as " We all know why we should exercise , but why ?" Duh. After twenty minutes of this mush, my brain was jelly. Let's hope no-one in the Sri Lankan ad agencies get any bright ideas about creating local infomercials.

The suicide rate is high enough in this country already........Terminally groovy tracks that are picking up in clubs and on radio : "New Pollution" by Beck, from the excellent "Odelay" album, I believe; Chemical Brothers mentally cool track "Block Rocking Beats" ; and the new Will Smith track , the gimmicky but undeniably bouncy "Men in Black". Defenders of the universe indeed. Hmph.................

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