Kishore Singh: Hot and not happening

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Sighing dramatically, and speaking in the colloquial vernacular, my daughter said, "I should fall down a well and drown." A lot of things had been troubling her in recent weeks "" the looming half-yearly exams, career choices, college possibilities "" but none could possibly have driven her to such despondency. "You should take a break," I fussed anxiously, "not wake up at five in the morning to study tomorrow." "Oh that," she waved a listless hand, "that's all right "" what else would I do anyway but study?"

That had me foxed, but wanting to get to the bottom of her depressed state, I asked her what was wrong. "I'm a hottie, right?" she asked. "You're a sweetheart," I agreed, "the best, the sweetest..." "But a hottie anyway," she insisted. "Yes, okay," I hesitated, "you're a hottie, whatever that means." She gave me a despairing look, "What's the point of being a hottie if you don't have a boyfriend?"

"You shouldn't bother too much about all that," I said hastily, and to make sure her mind was occupied by other things, added, "Maybe you should wake up at four instead, you know, and study a little more." Seeing she wasn't convinced, I pointed out, "You're young yet." "I'm sixteen," she wailed, "over the hill."

A few of her friends who were younger apparently had love interests, which is why she was so hysterical. "Have you seen Shweta?" she shot at me, and without waiting for a reply, pattered on, "Who would have thought she would ever have a boyfriend! And not only that, he's among the upcoming hotties of Noida." I was beginning to get a sense of hottie "" but an upcoming hottie? "He was all weird earlier, such a nerd," my daughter explained, "but now he spikes his hair and is almost cool."

Besides Shweta, Mohini and Astha also have boyfriends, and Ekta's mother actually knows her little girl is dating a boy. The girl group's Facebook and Orkut chatrooms fly with gossip about who was seen with whom, or had a spat, or are not talking or, horrors! have broken up.

"Even my country cousins," said my daughter, "have boyfriends and girlfriends." "No," I said, my interest piqued, "not them." Of course, they're not country cousins, not really, that is, but clearly my daughter was offended that a Big City girl had been beaten in the romance stakes by her peers who had pipped her where it hurt most. "My cousin in Ahmedabad," she almost cried, "he has a girlfriend." "He's a smart boy," I said of my sister's son. "But is he a hottie? No!" she exclaimed. Another cousin in a boarding school had a girlfriend in Delhi who waited loyally for him to return every year. "Even my cousin in Jaipur," she wiped away tears, "has a significant interest." "How do you know all this?" I asked, appalled at this laxity in the young of our family. "Because I'm such a hottie," explained my daughter, "everyone thinks I must be dating somebody, so they tell me about their love interests while I," she wailed, "have to pretend to have one."

"Actually," she said, "it's amazing why we three hotties," she named two other friends who, it turned out, didn't have any special friends in their lives either, "don't have boyfriends. Perhaps," she mused, "boys like really dumb girls." "That's not such a nice thing to say," I scolded her, "maybe boys prefer girls who are homely and not hotties." "Whatever," waved my little girl, "or perhaps we just have naturally higher standards." As she went off to a corner to sulk, I did a little war dance. As a hottie with high standards, she wasn't going off anywhere in a hurry.