A homophone that could have possibly backfired!
It was that time of the year where my family decides to get together and celebrate a festival. I am that kind of a person who likes spending the festive times with friends rather than family.
One of the major reasons why I hated the family get-togethers was it was no longer a “Happiness Sharing” time rather it was too much of a “Comparative Research” time. That is the time where every member of the family brags about their sons/daughters so-called accomplishments and compares it with their relatives.
Most of the times the conversation would be like,
“My son scored centum in his board examinations. How is your son studying?”
“My daughter is going to pursue her masters in the US. What does your son/daughter plan to do?”
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These kinds of conversations keep going on and on and on that when you finally walk out of your relatives’ house you would be one hell of a demotivated guy and would consider yourself a douchebag.
Unfortunately, during one of the Diwali times, a family get-together was organized and I couldn’t skip attending it. I tried all the trick to stay away but every move of mine turned out to be futile. The get together was organized in one of my cousin’s house and we were there on time.
The usual chit-chats, gossips, banters were flowing freely and to my surprise, it was different than the usual get-togethers. After a heavy meal, to avoid drowsiness, a few of my relatives started talking about random topics. They finally started discussing television series. Excited by the topic, I was listening to the conversation with complete involvement.
A couple of uncles’ and aunties in the group started discussing a television series named: “Porn Stars” (That’s exactly how I heard it) which gets telecasted in the History channel. They were not talking about what exactly happens in the show rather they were simply adding adjectives to describe how good the show is. I was taken aback for a second. Yes, I was already an adult when this conversation happened but still, there were too many kids and known faces in the room and I started to feel uncomfortable. I was wondering when my family became so modern to open up this kind of topic in a public forum. I was even wondering if this is going to be some kind of talk about sex education which a matured adult should talk about to a growing-up youngster. When these many things were running through my mind and when I was trying to get some clarity about things happening around me, one of the smallest kid in the room jumped out of joy and shouted, “Yay! I saw it yesterday. It was awesome.” Now my confusion grew exponentially. To add to this confusion, they even mentioned, “In this show, the heroes are a dad, his son and grandson. It’s their family business.” I was like, “What the hell is happening?”
At this point, I started suspecting everyone around me. I thought they are playing some prank on me. Probably someone had gone through my browsing history and have taken the initiative to publicly shame me. I even saw few of the faces around me to check if this was a prank but everyone seemed to be so serious with what they were talking.
Now all eyes turned to me. They started asking me if I had ever watched this show. I never knew what this show was all about but in general, I was perplexed and didn’t know what to answer.
“Do I tell them that I haven’t watched this show but I have indeed watched a few porn or is it some kind of a trap?”
I wanted to put on a “Good Boy” image and hence decided to tell them all that I haven’t watched it. The moment I said this, they all recommended me to watch it.
This took me to a flashback. A few months prior to this conversation there was a Tamil film released which was censored with “A” certificate. When a bunch of our cousins decided to go to that movie, the very same family was against it saying not to go but now everything has changed. They recommend me to watch an A-rated TV series, talk about that show in a public forum etc. That was indeed a massive change.
After creating all these confusions, they went on to take a nap. I slowly pulled myself out of the room and went down to make a call to one of my friend. I briefed him about the entire conversation and was exclaiming how modern my family has become.
That’s when he told me, “Abey Chutiya, it’s not PORN STARS, it is PAWN Stars.”, He briefed what the whole show is all about.
That was one hell of a conversation and I lauded myself for the very first time to have remained quiet during a confused state.
Disclaimer: All events written down in this article are entirely fictional and any resemblance to any character alive or dead is unintentional and regretted.
