The other day, Brother and I were channel-surfing. This was around 11:30 p.m., so we were being treated to visual nuggets of the very best of late-night TV – vampires, monsters, psycho killers, criminals on the run from police, very bad South-Indian porn, that kind of thing.
Anyway, in the quick-flipping, we caught a glimpse of a hand lifting someone’s skirt. Now, that kind of a visual is rarely allowed on Indian TV. Scenes of partial nudity are “suitably edited for Indian audiences”, scenes of full-on nudity are edited out completely. Apparently we Indian audiences tend to choke on our dal-rice at the concept of people shedding their clothes (oh no, wait, we just file PILs and get the damn channel off the air). Also, presumably getting artistic and aesthetic sensibilities offended is something that happens only to people in the Western World.
But I digress.
So, there it was, a close-up of a large hand lifting up someone’s pristine white skirt. The someone in question was wearing it at the time, since her smooth, fair legs were visible under the skirt.
Brother, predictably interested, quickly flipped back to the channel to investigate further. I didn’t mind – I was curious as to how something that could very well be soft porn made it past TV censors.
I got my answer.
You see, the legs belonged to a 10-year-old girl who was standing on the kitchen table in her new white dress.
The hand belonged to her grandmother, who had picked up the hemline of the dress to adjust it.
*goes and sits in the time-out corner with an ashamed expression on her face*