|
As your mind still spins from
the chooha-chidiya dance, Didi says, in what might possibly
be the most irritating voice ever: To dekha... anek jab
ek ho jaate hai, to kaisa mazaa aata hai!!
Argh, it made me want to stab my eardrums with a compass. Check
this, though: kid finally gets the idea:
 |
Ho
gaye ek! Ban gayi taakat!
Ban gayi himmat! |
The anek ungliyan have combined
to form the fist in the air: international sign for resistance
and revolution. Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing
to lose but your chains! Religion is the opium of the masses!
Engels, fetch me a sandwich!
And you know how quickly revolutionary
ideas spread. Suddenly all the kids are asking: Didi, agar
hum ek ho jaye, to bada kaam kar sakte hai?
 |
|
 |
Agar
hum ek ho jaye... |
|
To
is ped ke aam bhi tod sakte hai? |
Which brings us back to the
mangoes. Didi says they can do it if they work together.
Then she arranges some stones one on top of another, the kids
get the hint and form a human frame around the tree. Quite unneccessary,
because the kid brother scampers up the trunk like it ain't
no thang, shorty.
But
what's the use of all these mangoes, I ask you, if they're only
going to be concentrated in the hands of a few? So the kids
all line up, and Didi gives each of them a mango. Equitable
distribution of wealth, see?
Mmmm.... the sweet taste of
equality and cooperation! And as the kids
eat the mangoes, they turn into these pink, rosy-cheeked versions
of themselves:
Roll
end credits. I hope you have learnt the difference between ek
and anek, because the National Centre for Educational Technology
will be most disappointed if you haven't. That's why, just to
be on the safe side, they played this cartoon approximately
two-and-a-half million times when I was in the third standard.
 |
|
 |
Ek. |
|
Anek. |
See, it's pretty simple, really. Once you get the hang of it,
you can even do your own. Like so:
 |
|
 |
Ek. |
|
Anek. |
That,
my friends, is Ek Anek aur Ekta. Beamed into our television
sets to make better citizens out of us. The images and sounds
still linger on in what Jung would call our "collective
unconscious". Basically, if you watched this as a kid,
you're gonna be screwed up for life.
For
new readers to this site, and for anyone who's been curious
about my long absence from the Internet, please check out the
updated "about" section. There's also a spiffy new
contact page, so get in touch anytime.
|
