Sunday, February 1, 2004

ULTA-PULTA
Censored prayers
Jaspal Bhatti

An Israeli religious teacher has composed a unique prayer to help devout Jews. It goes something like this — “Please help me to cleanse the computer of viruses and photographs which disturb and ruin my work.” The rabbi recommends that Jews recite a prayer when they log on to the Internet, so that they are spiritually protected when they enter a porn site by mistake.

As technology develops, I feel new prayers should be invented or the previous ones modified. When cinema became popular, parents started praying, “Oh God! kindly keep our children away from violent films.” Today while surfing different television channels, we suddenly find ourselves in very embarrassing situations when we see female models in minimal dresses perform vulgar dances in remix albums. Whenever I see Kaanta laaga on TV, I pray that my children don’t suddenly come into the room and see what their ‘respected pitaji’ is staring at. Similarly, when my son watches Meri beri ke ber mat todo, he keeps praying “kahin pitah shree na tapak pade”.

Families which own more than one TV set have lesser problems. Mataji can enjoy Aastha channel while the children tune into MTV. But a family having a single set and that too in the living room, certainly needs a new prayer — “Hey Bhagwan, give us strength so that we don’t feel ashamed watching fashion TV together.” Or you can also pray, “May God grant some wisdom to the heads of channel so that they refrain from telecasting rubbish in the name of family serials!”

A long passionate kissing scene was being shown on TV. As my friend Vinod was about to get up in embarrassment, his son said, “Papa keep sitting this scene will be over in another 30 seconds.” Vinod asked his son, “How do you know?” His son replied, “Daddy, I have seen this film thrice.”

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