This piece has been inspired by interesting sort in these times of “Chini Kum” narratives, by creatures scripting ‘virtual’ infiltration narratives into the other kind of LAC – Line of Audio Control. Where else, but on Google Hangouts or Zoom. And where the infiltrators are crossing all lines of etiquette enabling Zoom’s zero-background intrusion protocol, there it tantamounts to infiltration of the Line of Aesthetic Control.

Like the tell-all tales in Donald Trump’s new biopic, Too Much And Never Enough, by niece Mary, these infiltrators, in this season of pandemic where Virtual is the New Real, come in all shapes, sizes and surprises.

Not all lungs are as gifted or garrulous as those appended to the anatomies of the Prattlemouths of Primetime – Arnab, Chaubey & Co – to have the power to drown decibel-ism from the background that the Zoom call may be inviting onscreen, the way a roaring lion outshouts the whimpers or whining of lesser creatures who deign to air their lungs just when the King of the Jungle is jibber-jabbering his jingle.

A portrait of peculiar tribes of Tweeple guilty of infiltrating into Zoom’s LAC. And how!

Of Far From The Migrating Crowd

Picture this. Lollita is on a Zoom call with CEOs, Colleagues & Co, deconstructing and deliberating how jobs have been robbed by recession. Bingo, barging into the background is a floating form of recession – the receding hairline of Lalit ji or Lamba ji.

Inadvertent intrusion, for he happened to be tiptoeing into the other room and was manoeuvring to materialise this migration by ducking down almost on all fours so as not to be caught on Zoom, much like monkeys at a Hanuman Mandir crawling to creep off with your Chanel clutch without being spotted. Alas, Lamba ji or Lalit ji’s bald pate somehow strayed onto screen to stage a guest appearance. Love it or hate it (oops, pate it).

Now, if this had been a scene from the 2014 romcom Khoobsurat in which the heroine Mili (Sonam Kapoor) is having her “Maa Ka Phone Aaya” moment – a video call on the terrace with mom Manju (Kirron Kher) – and just then, the hero decides to stroll into the background and even stray into the video call, Lollita & Co wouldn’t really mind it. Nor would the peers on the Zoom call. For, who minds if peers get to peer at eye candy and who minds flaunting a dandy, as dapper as Pakistani heart-throb Fawad Khan.

Alas, when Lollita is twaddling with colleagues about their company’s fiscal deficits, it isn’t the most opportune moment to expose her household’s follicle deficits.

Or just when Lollita is pontificating on a pandemic webinar about mid-caps or middle-class survival, it isn’t the best of times for the middle anatomies of the migrating population on home turf to raise their heads, virtually. That smacks so much of actor Kajol’s baby bump playing a cameo, where else but in a song in KJo flick Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Best is to be ready for a realistic remedy – of being pushed up against the wall. But if the wall doesn’t boast backdrops as oomph-y as The Oprah Winfrey Show studio or as museum-y as The Louvre, or even as clinically cerebral as a Rajdeep Sardesai and Arnab Goswami news studio – the sort of setting conducive to the “Nation Wants To Know” brand of squeaky screen presence – then the only way to keep creeping ‘n’ crawling populations out of the Zoom backdrop is to migrate one’s screen countenance in sync. When in (Zoom) roam, do as the roamers do.

If facial migration fails, as badly as Donald Trump’s dumb tweets or even dumber histrionics, simply stick your face up close and personal into the webcam such that fellow Zoomers can even count the blackspots on your nasal bridge. After all, in these pandemic times, Zoom-ing is but the only bridge between Tweeple.

The curious case of Zoomers zinging, “Honey, I shrunk the creeps!”

Of Band Baaja Baarat & Beyond LAC

Then, there is the infiltration by Biradri, BFFs, Bulldogs & Co into Zoom’s Line of Audio Control.

Zoom is New Normal’s Banquet Hall and Marriage Palace. From virtual sangeet ceremonies to cacophonous Antakshri rituals to saat pheras saat samundar paar, Zoom is the new ‘Band Baaja Baarat’ stage for the Great Garrulous & Ghee Fattened Indian Family. But it’s not only the Zoom screen that’s staging the Kith, Kin & Canines’ Day Out, as in the shaadi of SpuddyKat (Bengaluru bride Spandika Jayaraj) where a canine in Candy Cane Tie stole the show. Off-screen action may steal the show, too.

Sample this. Lockdown’s Lamba ji or Lalit ji and family are all copiously congregating globally on Zoom for the third wedding of the second brother of their first cousin Larry or Lalli. Vows and wows waft from the Zoom wedding, which has upstaged My Big Fat Indian Dhoom Wedding, as the masked priest prattles, “Till Death Do Us Part … “

Bingo, that very moment the pets of the household – Chihuahuas, Cats & Co – start tearing their teeth into Lamba ji or Lalit ji’s pyjama string (pyjamas and boxers being elevated to the New National Dress of India Quarantining and curiously constituting the casual bottom wear beneath the blue-collared or white-collared elitism or formalism of Zoom conferencing). And the pets ‘belt’ out their own canine chorus driven by similar sentiments stirred for the string, “Till Death Do Us Apart … “

Lo behold, the Big Reinvented Zoom Minus Dhoom Wedding party gets ‘torn’ — between listening to the vows and ‘bow-bows’.

The curious case of Zoom staging 101 Dalmatians.