Everytime I switch on a channel where white-skinned folks appear on the screen, I get a banner that flies across my screen telling me I can log onto some website and complain about the content if I find it offensive. Because these white-skinned folks are always promiscuous and drink and smoke and do all sorts of stuff that's against our Indian culture, right? Even in Wilbury Australia, which is a reality cooking competition. But then again they do cook with wine and sometimes there's smoke coming out of the pans so maybe it's necessary to warn viewers.

There are subtitles with asterisks in the place of words like sex, condoms, boobs, breasts, ass, heroin, cocaine etc and one of those cloud-like things hiding glasses of booze and cigarettes and women's belly buttons. If an actor smokes or drinks in a movie, there's immediately a warning that says these things are injurious to health. These people changed the storyline for the movie "Crash" to such an extent with their editing and subtitles that Don Cheadle's character looked very tame in comparison to what he really is in the movie.

Here I am, a middle-aged woman, sitting in my home, and the world wants to protect me from such offensive things. Meanwhile, the kids go to bars, smoke, drink, watch porn on the Internet and even film themselves and circulate those MMSes, the NCW spokRajeev_Vermarson reveals the identity of a rape victim (at least they didn't show any belly buttons or use any other word on TV) in a newsconference, rapists go scot-free in the country, politicians and MPs travel on the taxpayers' bill and must be enjoying a good smoke and drinks everywhere (wine tasting is an educational experience), MPs watch porn in the parliament etc etc.

In the meantime, small children gyrate and thrust their pelvises and tummies in tune with suggestive lyrics as their middle class parents cheer them on on primetime television, Kareena Kapoor sings about her halkat jawani and being a chamakchallo and Katrina Kaif about Chikni Chameli, both showing more than their belly buttons. Two and a half men airs in the daytime on certain days of the week and new ads and item songs show a lot of skin to keep things warm. Who's kidding whom these days? It's all a dirty picture, with or without the subtitles. For all the censorship we try to impose, neither are we being austere and prim and proper nor are we being liberal. Instead, we reveal too much when there's no reason to and hide when we shouldn't. $^#@ confused bunch of ()(%!