Straight from the Heart..

There's a column in the entertainment supplement of Hindustan Times, "Dil Se..", that allows Delhiites to send in their messages to their, well, loved ones, or to the world at large. For many, Dil Se.. is a genuine, heartfelt mode of contact. For me, Dil Se.. has been, for quite some time now, my daily dose of entertainment and anti-depressant. Its what i read to feel worthy when I’m feeling down in the dumps. Just to give you a tiny hint of what’s in there, here’s what you’re most likely to find in there if you flip to the column on any given day.

1.      Hi I’m a 21 year old lonely good looking male boy from Dehli looking for girlfriend who understands my emotions. Wanna make fraanship with me?

Lonely boy.

The fraandship seekers are most popular, probably offshoots of a now dead Orkut movement. A lot of lonely male boys and female girls (and female boys and male girls?) launch their hunt for fraands through this column. More often than not, they even end up begetting responses by other male lonely male boys, and female girls, and..err.

2.      Dear Shona,

Tum jo aaye zindagi mein, baat ban gayi.
I love you
Yours, Shoni.

Just the fact that couples can have rhyming names for each other can be highly nauseating. Having them printed in the newspaper—even more so. However since we can get utterly shameless about our coochie-cooing, we go on and make it public. As a result, there is an awful lot of Jaanu/Jaanis, Champa/Champaks, Sonu/Sonis and other tacky creatures out there to see their names in print. Leads to quite a lot of confusion though. What will Pappu’s girlfriend be called anyway? Lets just not go there.

3.      Dear girl in red shirt, I saw you in metro at Rajiv Chowk station on Tuesday. You were having green chappal and eating sandwich. I really like you.

These are the stalker messages you’d rather never receive. Imagine your disgust when you realise that some xyz sundry creature at a Metro station loved your white chiken kurta and wants to make fraandship with you? (refer 1 above) You’d never even feel like wearing the goddamned thing again. Too bad it was your favourite.

4.      Tumhein jaana toh mohabbat ko jaana,

Varna sirf is lafz ki tareef suni thi.

One message of tepoed shayari is a MUST for every edition of the column. It must be efficiently sickness inducing in everyone, except the sender. It may be a song’s lyrics, a ghazal, or even a sher, but it must never, ever be original. Any attempts to print originals previously had failed (they were on the lines of Roses are red, Violets are blew, Your smile is sexy, And so are you.) So apparently, the scared editors announced a BIG no-no to the senders’ artistic freedom. A welcome move?

5.      Dear Princess,

I am love you jaaan I miss you plzzzz come back

Yours only,

Cute n Wild

While the column effectively proves that Delhiites are highly creative, it also acts witness to what happens when their creativity runs amock and begins to show in the amazing names they choose to call themselves by, for purposes of anonymity. Everything upto ‘Princess’ was probably fine. But what in the world gave birth to ‘Cute n Wild’? There are quite a few of them though, everyday, ‘Spicy Kuddi’, ‘Dildaar Baadshah’, ‘Denim Dude’..you get the gist.


Thats to you just one face of the Delhi I live in—vella people who waste their already limited 200 SMSes on sending through the aforementioned crap. But as long as we’ve got the entertainment going, who’s complaining?