So what do you do when you have to take meals alone, a routine you despise and not used to ?
Call up people ? Well with yours truly in a land across seven seas where 99% of her friends, family did not choose to reside (of course, she was the one who moved out), and the expenses of frequent long distance calling, let us rule this one out.
Don’t think about being alone over a meal and invite over some imaginary friends for lunch and dinner ? Again yours truly is not as stupid as she looks. Drop this!
Better still, join unknown people over for meals or invite them over to join you ? Umm.. She is too lazy to randomly talk to anyone. If they don’t like what’s in her tiffin and sneer at her for eating stuff which they think is full of hocus pocus, she wont like it.
So missy devised a way out of this uncomforting situation. She found the ‘n’th usefulness of a television. She started watching television series, soaps, serials, etc to keep the humanly cycles going. On the flip side she does not worry about being alone for lunch or dinner. She looks forward to it. On the down side, she gets addicted to everything she watches. Gets totally hooked on to stupid stuff for that instant.
So delving into the matter more and even deeper, I was a person of principles once. I never watched any serials/soaps/series back home on principle. I used to find most of the serials stupid and senseless, unless they had some backstabbing, revenge or reincarnation involved. You got to believe that it needs extraordinary imagination to think up something like that.
Now as I had prohibited myself from following any Indian serials, I could not watch any English series either. This did depreciate my sense of humor amongst friends when they would be cracking famous jokes from friends, referring to characters from ER, heroes or OC. When they would be busy rofling I would be left wondering if they needed any serious medical help. This also affected my ability to start conversations on any damn topic with most of my female friends at hostel. Girls used to follow all 9-11 shows on star plus even after coming away from home by taking updates on phone everyday. I used to be the only loser who knew nothing from that particular area of research of the female psyche.
(I hereby admit that I have followed one particularly uninteresting serial for my roomies‘ sake, given mom company while watching the longest running serial in Indian television’s history and watched a few episodes of friends and x-files with my brother as a kid.)
So I abstained from all these ‘things’ on principle.
As torturously explained at the beginning you know how things happened for me.
Not having a TV was not a deterring factor here. Thanks to broad bands and wi–fi networks here, things work like a stroke of a magic wand. Online viewing is so fun. I make my plate ready and in the mean time shows get streamed. I enjoy my food laughing about stupid things, situations, funny friends, there lives, secrets, and many such trivialities. I am happy about good things happening to them, sad about their stupid fights, and admire their human qualities.
I have finished watching FRIENDS, Heroes, How I met your mother (which is still on btw), Sa re ga ma pa – little champs (I have still stuck to my principle in a way, if reality talent show is considered a series).
Right now I am watching House MD (he deserves a special tribute and a dedicated post!!). I am totally addicted to this one. House’s character being inspired from Sherlock Holmes (my childhood hero) is one of the reasons. But House is unique in himself. His arrogance and sarcasm is incorrigible. And so is his medical knowledge and diagnosis. I think I should control my feelings about House in this post.
So moral of the story is, this is the purrfect case of Majboori ka naam Gandhiji (When in discomfort you do something, you least expect yourself to do). But I am not complaining. I plan to shoot down every wee-bit interesting serial available on the net. If you have any suggestions drop in a comment or mail me. In return you get a free meal with an awesome company (me !! duh..) in your side of the world (I take the pleasure of thanking people personally) and have a nice chat about the series you suggested (unless the series you suggested completely revolted me :P) .
Now you know why the misleading title 😉
~nightflier 🙂
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