Songs

Twelve years ago, during my first visit to India, I was in a deep love affair with Siamese Dream, the first LP by the Smashing Pumpkins. That period of my life was an intense stew of emotion that found a welcome partner in the searing chords and raw lyrics of the album. It seemed that, with each track, I became more aware, more sensitive, more alive. Many nights I went to sleep listening to the worn tape on my walkman, the latter half of the songs piercing my grey matter as I drifted into sleep… These days, I also find myself deeply ensconced in a recurring tune; but, Billy Corgan this is not. These days the voice inside my head no longer reflects upon moody lyrics but echoes over and over, “Bob the Builder, can we fix it?!? Bob the Builder, yes we can!!!” Yes, maybe more than anything, does this represent how my experience in this country has changed from one decade to the next.

For the uninitiated, Bob the Builder is a claymation children’s cartoon from the UK that airs in the US on Nickelodeon. I had actually heard about the series from the parent of a boy some two years older than Kaia back before Kaia was even crawling, and we were living in Seattle. Prophetically, he asked me, “have you heard of Bob the Builder?” When I said “no”, with the smug grin that often comes from first-time parents of children only slightly older than yours, he replied, “oh, you will.” Funny, but I never imagined that Bob and I would first meet over 90 degree weather and triple filtered beverages. Sometimes we cannot stop the powerful locomotive of fate. Especially when it comes charging at you with the full steam of product lines and marketing strategies that slap the visage of all the cute characters on anything that a small toddler can grab. Inevitable indeed.

One of the crutches that I succumbed to prior to moving here from Japan was the purchase of a region-free, portable DVD player. It is actually a rather nifty little device that also plays VCDs, which makes it really useful considering that you can buy just about any movie here in India in VCD format for about $3-4. The quality is not as good as DVD, and the special features are not there, but it works. As it were, Bob the Builder has made his way onto VCD, and with the price being what it is, there was little to lose. Except, of course the previously silent moments in my head.

If you know Kaia, then you know that he has long had a fondness, check that, obsession, with all kinds of moving vehicles. Busses, cars, taxis, motorcycles, tractors, bulldozers and, of course, diggers. In the last month his interest in construction vehicles has spilled over into stationary machines like concrete mixers. Sometimes I don’t know what to make of it all. In the other times, I act the fool and encourage his fixation and introduce him to videos like Bob the Builder where the diggers, bulldozers, tractors, steamrollers, forklifts--and yes, concrete mixers!—not only perform their assigned tasks, but also talk and make jokes! What chance did the little guy have? No, soon thereafter the claws of synergistic marketing were into him and, naturally, myself and now we sport a good number of the Bob the Builder action figures, not to mention a growing library of board books that claim to be educational, but offer little more than a reinforcement of the characters in cute positions and poses. There’s probably an analogy between this and the sugar laden breakfast cereals pushed on kids somewhere in all of this, but that’s for an article in another time.

Part of the issue that has enabled this rapid adoption of ‘all things Bob’ is that these items can be bought here in India at a fraction of the price that one would pay in the US, Europe or Japan. For example, while the suggested retail price on all the books is printed on the cover for the US and UK (about $6.99), the worn price tag reads Rs 110, or about $2.45. So when you can buy three for the price of one, certain limiting checks can often abandon your better judgment. This is an awareness that only comes from living in a place for an extended period, traveling through an area where your home currency has significant purchasing power only makes you giddy as you calculate what something would have cost you at home. So, after one month here, I am still a ‘calculative buyer’ and what has it got me? “Scoop, Muck and Roley, with work to do, Lofty and Wendy, join the crew”, just like the song says.

Why I Love this time: watching Kaia rifle through the books in his bookshelf, tossing dozens to the ground and then sitting in the center of the mess, picking up each one and turning the pages while babbling the words he is supposedly reading.