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for me, the most pleasurable part of watching TV is the ads. my vacation is evenly split between my bed and in front of the TV watching ads. so i could probably tell you through an academic study of ads, when the indian IT went mainstream, how indian sexuality has evolved over the years etc etc. i adore indian ad-sense. the release of a new ad is always a time of great excitement for me, almost like the childhood games of hide-and-seek played from under beds and behind cupboard doors. my sister watches out for me, and my co-mediawatcher buddy calls me at odd times to inform me when a particular ad is on some channel.(my other TV obsessions are Simpoo Singh and Lola Kutty. but more about them another day).

of course i know admakers are the footsoldiers or rather the mataharis of hypercapitalism. they seduce us into salivating for objects we don't need and into spending money we don't have. creating illusions of hunger and want is what they are supposed to do and if they must manipulate our finer sensibilities, so be it. i am smart enough not to have any money to spend, and if some fool wants to consume, i am okay with that. as long as the ads make me chuckle/laugh/shed a quickie tear in 30 seconds, i say bring it on.

but i draw a line at their unimaginative attempts to coopt our sacred symbols for consumption. and i don't mean pop-icons like stars of bollywood and cricket.

as an example, some time back, Rediffusion-DY&R created an 'express yourself' campaign in a series of many. it uses the same distinctive A.R. score that has very much become a part of the urban aural landscape. the visuals however are unoriginal and offensive. as words like 'one dream can change the world'/'two (fingers) can win a world war' roll underneath, images of Mr. King's 'i have a dream' speech and Churchill's victory image appear on the screen. now wait a minute - Martin Luther King and Churchill pitching in for Airtel? i am not sure if they were the kind to have made money out of product endorsements, let alone lending their names to a telecom company.

one could say this ad went beyond narrow corporate image-building to the higher purpose of rousing people to speak up (for what is not clear). if the theft of images of 20th century history was to inspire people to greater participation in the public domain, that ad failed. the ad did not get the india with cellphones to call up the prime minister's office to ask why farmers were killing themselves in vidarbha and andhra pradesh and karnataka. no, urban india still continued fixing up appointments for a cup of coffee in the evening and not much else.

i think i am writing this because i am part of that impotent india with cellphones. all i can do is protest against being manipulated by a telecom company into believing that if i made my impotent calls on its network, then i would have done my bit. (dayymn. and i was thinking of posting something funny.)

here is
the ad.



as you must have figured by now, i have just discovered youtube and the 'blog video' function on the bottom. i can't even imagine what the world is going to be like in the next five years.