Clarion call as ‘Angry Brides’ casts a spell
by
Neville Parker |
How the anti-dowry brigade is gathering steam, Neville Parker writes
With the advent of ‘Angry Brides’ we knew it wouldn’t be long before realisation dawned on the better half about the scourge of dowry practice and what they should be doing about it. As luck would have it, this new online game, which is spoofed from the original ‘Angry Birds,’ seems to have opened the eyes of many a suffering damsel in India.
Empowered as many of them have become by the game, after happily throwing a cooking pot or a slipper at the man of the house for making unreasonable dowry demands, women-folk are now getting armed and ready. From recent utterances in the mainstream media it is clear that anti-dowry brigade is gathering steam. To get a handle on this new development in Indian society the Mumbai Spotter’s roving correspondent, Nitin Coolwale, decided to trot down to the ramshackle offices of the Suppressed Women’s Society (SWS) located in a nondescript part of Mumbai. The place was alive with shouts of ‘Long live Angry Brides,’ ‘Down with Dowry,’ and some explicit slogans, which cannot be mentioned in these columns, being raised.
The SWS members were brandishing rolling pins, assorted pots and pans, even broomsticks while dancing around the oval table in a joyous celebration when Coolwale walked into the meeting room. On spotting him they suddenly fell silent.
“Who are you?” growled the chairwoman, one Madam Prestoji. “If you’ve come to ask for dowry you won’t get out of here alive,” she boomed, waving a 5-litre pressure-cooker with both hands. “No madam,” Coolwale said quickly. “I’m from the Mumbai Spotter and my readers will be interested in your comments on this new game ‘Angry Brides.’”
Madame Prestoji was livid: “What readers? What comments? We only know husbands who’ve been hounding us for dowry. Now we are armed and ready to take them on. Not a paisa will exchange hands.” She put the heavy cooker down and picked up a potato-peeler instead.
“Tell me,” she asked, poking the peeler in Coolwale’s direction, “are you married?” “No madam,” he replied meekly. “Why not,” she probed furiously, “you are old enough. Older, I should say. Are you angling for a more handsome dowry from your prospective father-in-law?”
“He is,” a squeaky voice piped up from the back of the room. “He looks like a confirmed dowry addict, you can smell them a mile off.” Another, more insistent voice chipped in: “His bald pate suggests he hasn’t got his bird yet, he’s still hunting.”
Madam Prestoji seemed to warm to this line of thought. She put down the peeler and picked up the cooker again. “The only dowry-seeker we appreciate is a lame one,” she shouted with a note of finality in her voice.
Members of the SWS were, by now, well and truly roused. “Long Live Angry Brides!” they chanted. The game seemed to have cast a spell on them; they brandished their weapons and advanced menacingly. As Coolwale wrote in the next morning’s Spotter, “This was the point where I forgot to tell them that I was indeed a widower, it was also the point where I forgot the readers of the Mumbai Spotter, for the events that followed are still hazy in my mind.
“Amid shouts of ‘Long Live Angry Brides,’ I recall dodging the flying broomstick as I leapt across a chair heading for the exit. The potato-peeler whizzed by my head and fell on the floor making a clunking sound, but I knew in my heart of hearts that the cooker could never reach me as I bolted from the room…,” he wrote.
Oman Tribune |
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