So: here's a joke and there's a recipe (for disaster?). Try out both: if you laugh at the first, you deserve to eat the second.

Okay. The joke. From Late Night Channel V: when a woman says``not tonight, darling, I have a headache,'' does she mean: (a) I'm through with you; (b) I have love bites and they're not from you; (c) I genuinely have a headache. (Now for the joke): the best answer gets a year's supply of Crocin! The two male veejays laughed so hard, they developed headaches. After this unsolicited promo, the manufacturers will definitely donate them 365 tablets.

Now for the recipe: from an episode of Nyaya last week (DD Metro). Take three eggs, plop them into a bowl and get your young son/daughter to beat them gently. When he/she has spilt half this mess onto your kitchen floor, add threespoons (table, tea unspecified) of sugar and beat harder (the eggs, not the child). Chuck in some flour and give it a good twirl. Voila: at the end of this cooking lesson, the characters in the serial produced a chocolate birthday cake. If you manage to do so too, then you couldn't possibly have followed the instructions.

Honestly, why do veejays crack such, pardon the expression `sick' jokes? If they believe their viewers' sense of humour is this puerile, they're not gonna have many left soon. And why do serials make a cake you can't possibly bake? The latter exercise was meant to illustrate how mother and son `bond' on his birthday. Couldn't they have been shown bonding in some other way -- like hanging up streamers?

But then again, why blame just Nyaya for a lack of verisimilitude? In Saans (STAR Plus), `Ajit-sir' as Priya Neena Pillai insists on calling him (if she marries him, will she be known as Ajit-madam?), asks his wife for a divorce because he nurses no ambition for bigamy. She consents. Thenshe rushes over to Papa with the news. Hold on, Papa says, don't sign on the dotted divorce line. Already have, replies daughter with a haughty air of rare accomplishment. You're making a big mistake, beti, big mistake. We have been separated for 10 years, how can it be a mistake, asks bewildered daughter. Because the day is not far off when you will grow old and need someone to look after you, warns Papaji. Who else will do that but a husband?

A husband who has not laid eyes on his wife for over a decade, is going to drop everything, except his pants, and rush over to the wife's sick side? Uh-huh. Who ever writes these story lines, deserves to, well, fall sickeningly ill.

For those who want know whether Priya and Ajit will indeed become Sir-Madam, wait on: last week, Priyaji gave her reply in letter (and sealed it with a kiss?) when the camera froze.

Onto something much worse. It is called Maya and it was on DD1. As a public service broadcaster, it has a duty to inform, educate and entertain. In thisinstance, it revolted. So distasteful was it, that your mouth soured along with your mood. Raghu is with his mistress. She serves him an ultimatum the way they sometimes do food in a busy dhaba -- by flinging it down in his face.

Leave your wife -- or else. The camera lazily pans from her harsh expression to his hardened one. Raghu decides kill Sita (who else could she be but his dutiful wife?) and make money out of it too. Aha, life insurance. Raghu with Sita. Now the camera wakey-wakies and gives you a series of quick close-ups of her astonished face and his smiling one. He's sorry he's been such a cad.

She can't believe it. He asks her if she desires him (yes, desires); he asks her if she thought he ever desired her....These dialogues. You are about to retch all over the screen, when you find them picknicking, alone near an empty swimming pool. I am so happy, today, that I wish I could die, Sita proclaims. Loving husband Raghu grants her wish. Shoves her into the pool.

Watches her drown. So do herchildren. Episode ends. An advertisement replaces it offering prizes worth Rs.40,000. If this isn't nauseating, what is?