The Metamorphosis of the Indian Heroine

About the first thing that you probably think is going to be there in this piece is the enormous reduction in consumption of textiles on account of the Indian heroine. You are doomed to disappointment, however, though it is rather difficult to entirely avoid that issue while on the subject of the changing face of the Indian heroine. This piece, however, shall probably concentrate on how most things have come full circle when it comes to the Indian heroine.

There was a time when the heroine could be distinguished from her co-dancers – in one of the inevitable group dance sequences – by the color of her clothing. Everyone in the scene would be decorously clad in yards and yards of saris. Later, the other dancers in the scene used to be more (and more) scantily dressed while the heroine used to be covered by the most yardage (Believe me all those stupid allegations of pandering to the baser tastes were grossly untrue. This was done merely to distinguish them from the heroine!). In a further development, it was found better to distinguish the heroine from the others by having her be the least over-dressed of the lot. Now, however, things have come full circle and, with everyone equally scantily dressed, you again have to identify the heroine only by the color of her dress. In the more up-market versions, you can also identify her by the color of her skin since her co-dancers are normally whites.

In the early days, when the heroine has reason to grieve – either a lost parent or a lost love – all she had to do was weep. Things were not all that easy a shade later, when the heroine had adopted what was called ‘modern dress’. The moment a reason for grief presented itself she had to go out and shop first for the entire ensemble that is required to be worn with a sari – things that had never before had reason to be present in her wardrobe. After all, one has to be dressed appropriately for grieving and whoever had then heard of grieving in anything but a sari? Things have now come full circle again, since it is considered quite possible to be appropriately sorrowful even when dressed in a bikini and, thus, no change in wardrobe is considered essential. Of course the more up-market mode of grief is not to weep copiously but to bury your sorrows in a glass of vodka. That only entails wearing a lost look on your face – a feat that comes easy to the modern heroine, considering the sort of roles she is being offered, since she has that lost look perpetually on her face wondering what she is really doing in the movie anyway.

There are areas, however, where things have changed drastically. There was a time when the heroine was modeled more on the fertility goddess. One cannot go so far as to say that they were positively encouraged to put on poundage around the abdomen but an appearance of pregnancy did not necessarily spell curtains to a career as a heroine nor was it a curtain-raiser for a new career as mother. Now, apparently, the heroine is patterned on the ramp model – not least because scanty dress and excess poundage look really unsightly – and is more arm candy than one who ‘teaches a man what caring and sharing is all about’.

The biggest change, however, has come about in the touching part. The yester-year heroine coldly folded her hands in a Namaste and gave a ‘You Jerk’ look to the man who was rogue enough to put out his hand for a handshake. Later still, a hand-shake was sort of all right but everything else was ‘shaadi ke baad’. Then, she would decorously retire behind a couple of kissing flowers. Now, if the man does not embrace her and “Mwah Mwah” in the vicinity of her ear in the first meeting he gets that cold “You Jerk” look.

Alas! Keeping up with change is nerve-wracking. I have seen too much change within my lifetime and it is very wearing on my nerves. So, the metamorphoses of the comedian, the villain, the baby and the pet dog shall have to wait a long time before they get to be showcased here.

The Metamorphosis of the Indian Hero

Change is always traumatic. And we live in a world that is changing every moment. Though all of us suffer through the stress of change I think the bulk of the trauma is being inflicted on the poor Indian heroes – especially the South Indian version. And, perhaps, trauma is inflicted on us by them in turn! 

Was it merely three-fourths of a century back that the Indian hero had to merely loll back in a diwan and watch the heroine dance? At best, he had to sit in front of a harmonium looking soulfully at the distance (NOT to avoid the distress of having to look at the heroine, I assure you) and sing. Later, it became even easier since he had to sit at a piano and bang at the keys – and sitting on a stool is much easier on your knees than squatting on the ground, particularly as you start aging. Later still the poor chap had to put in the effort of striking grand poses or doing PT exercise while the heroine did all the graceful portions of the dancing. Who could have imagined that the hero would need to match steps with the heroine or even over-match her so soon? 

Comes to singing, however, one needs to admit that things have become easier. The heroes originally had to sing themselves and tunefully too. Later they necessarily had to lip-synch most of the song since the directors and cameramen had this unnatural liking for close-ups of the face. Once the camera shifted to the pelvis and the six-pack the need to lip-synch has also been eliminated – so the hero can conveniently ignore the entire song for the most part. (A blessing in disguise for the audience as well since if our heroes also started singing, the one last piece of genuine entertainment in the movies would be effectively destroyed) 

The romantic hero, probably, has more reason to be happy – well, depending on the body odor of the heroine, I suppose. In the bygone days, he could only look on the heroine and moon about her from a distance. Later, it became permissible to actually touch the heroine but an inconvenient pair of flowers always got in the way and kissed when he should have been kissing the heroine. That changed too and he was even permitted even to get in bed with the heroine – but only to save the poor girl from dying of hypothermia. Now, of course, if he does not get in bed with the heroine he cannot be a romantic hero. 

All these are but trifles compared to the metamorphosis of the action hero. Gone are the days when the most action that a hero indulged in was to yell for the police in times of danger. First, he had to get bashed up by the villain; on the verge of unconsciousness recollect all the harm the villain had done him and bash up the villain in berserker rage. Later still the fight was more even with both hero and villain exchanging blows with the hero triumphant at the end. Then, it started seeming too less heroic for the hero to suffer even one blow when he was merely facing one opponent and, thus, it took a gang to even land a blow on him. 

What is an action hero if he cannot even fight off a gang unscathed? If the story, unfortunately, demanded that the hero had to be vanquished it had to be by someone attacking him unawares from behind. But is it not ridiculous to think that the hero could at all be caught unawares? So, now the rampant South Indian hero can face up to a multitude and knock them all over without his body being touched by the proverbial finger-nail. 

That may be all right for the ordinary heroes. The super-hero is made of sterner stuff. How can he do something so commonplace as to merely knock out a multitude of gangsters like any other ordinary mortal? If, unfortunately, he has only a gang to deal with, he either decides to fight them off without using his hands or without allowing them to lay a finger on the heroine whom he considerately places between them and him. If the gangsters had the commonsense to bring their guns along, he shows his prowess in dodging bullets while simultaneously shooting with unerring aim and hitting targets at a distance where ordinary mortals would require a sniper’s rifle to even attempt. 

One can imagine the disdain with which the South-Indian superhero looks on the childish Bollywood attempts to create a hero, who can dodge bullets and overtake speeding trains, by using antediluvian Hollywood concepts like extra-terrestrial origin. With the cutting edge idea of a natural born superhero in their backyard if they need to seek abroad for outdated ideas, it must be only because of a colonial hangover. 

Incidentally, I think that the shedding of clothing by the heroine is also because of this superhero nature of her man. With all the powers he has, she probably assumes he has X-ray vision as well thus rendering clothing ineffective as concealment. With her obsession for the hero, she takes no cognizance of the other ordinary mortals around her and discards clothing as worse than useless. 

A piece of advice for any aspiring hero – if in the earliest of movies you have allowed one single opponent to land a blow on you just forget becoming an action hero. If you have been fighting a gang and one of them even touches you, you have lost your chance of becoming a superhero. We just cannot tolerate a hero who can get injured like any other ordinary mortal, no matter how early in his career. 

Alas! There are still some people in India who do not have the patriotism to recognize the heights of power than can be achieved by Indians. Such traitorous mortals do not belong in India – at least in Indian movie halls.

Back to Ad Agonies

The more I see ads the more I wonder at how much the world has changed. All the certitudes of my long gone youth have vanished into mist and the brave new world simply seems too brave and too new for me to recognize.

Just imagine the scientific advances in talcum powders. Once all that they could do was spread a fragrance that turned heads towards to smugly smiling user. The latest advances now enhance character. I mean it infuses the heroine with the determination to drag the reluctant hero along in eloping with her. I am sure that those people are working on the next enhancement that will ensure that the user has the courage to face up to the parents and marry with their knowledge if not their consent. Truly, Science is a wonderful thing.

I can imagine consuming a chocolate which will make you look as though you fell face down into muck after you do so. A chocolate that, if you take your attention off it for a few minutes, would make it look as though you scrabbled around elbow deep in slush to come up triumphantly with a chocolate wrapper. I can even imagine such a chocolate finding a market despite all this. But, never in all my dreams, had I ever conceived of the possibility that someone would believe that such a chocolate would find a market precisely because it does all this. And, apparently, it does find enthusiastic buyers! Ah! Me! Where is the nearest cemetery? I am too old to live!

The ad that really tested me, however, was a recent dish-wash liquid ad. There is this lady doctor coming home and her husband bids her Happy Anniversary with a sumptuous spread cooked by him. There you have this doubly miraculous man – he not only remembers anniversaries but also wants to make his wife happy by cooking a feast – and what does the wife say? Shed tears of joy and murmur sweet nothings? Reality Check: “Now my kitchen is bound to be a disaster area”!

Next – surprise, surprise – the husband has even cleaned up the kitchen (Note to married men: Kill this man where you find him! He has no right to set the bar so high!). At least now a happy wife? One overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of her husband? Reality Check 2: “What? With an ordinary dish-wash liquid, my dear expert? That leaves a lot of germs – etc. etc.” Quite the sort of health lecture the husband was thirsty to hear in appreciation of his efforts to make her happy on their wedding anniversary.

What I will never understand – and will be glad to have clarified – is how this expert wife had that ‘ordinary dish-wash liquid’ in her house in the first place? Or do we believe that the husband went out on purpose to get that liquid avoiding the proper liquid that the expert wife had so thoughtfully provided near the sink?

I always knew I was shy a few marbles upstairs. After this I feel that I do not even have two to rub together!

Disclaimer: Any perceived gender stereotyping is all to the credit of the ad, please! After all, when the woman says ‘My Kitchen will now be a disaster area’ and all, the natural presumption is that the kitchen duties in that household have normally been the responsibility of the lady – and I make no value judgments about that!

If you liked this you may like to check out the index of other posts of this genre or read a selection of similar posts.

Straighten up or die

They know I made a promise to attempt every contest this year and seem bent on defeating me. They know I have a fractured bone in my right hand. They also know I am away from my trusty desktop and reduced to sneaking desultory pathetic looks at a networked world passing me by from an itinerant cousin's laptop. So they bring in a contest at the last moment and, to make things doubly sure, they ensure that it is about hair again knowing full well that I diligently search for signs of it on my scalp with a magnifying glass in vain. Sneaky I call it! Can I let their nefarious designs succeed?

The world is always on the lookout for complicated solutions. As far as I know most people's hair needs to acquire a certain stature before it gets a good look at the world and decides to curl up in a fetal position. The simplest solution, therefore, is to cut your hair very close to your scalp. (About 1 mm should do) Presto - straight hair. (No! This is not my own sneaky way of getting everyone to look like me! You just cannot because I am unique!)

Human beings are irrational and, therefore, I do not expect them to adopt the commonsense solution outlined above. Thankfully there is another workable option. If you do not have Havells switches at home all you have to do is tell your busybody son to wait till the hair straightens before he knocks off the electric appliance while you are doing the St.Vitus' dance with your husband and maid to the tune of "Shock Lagaa". (If you do not have straight hair, you might as well be dead. What is a little thing like the risk of electrocution?) If you are unlucky enough to have installed Havells and are unwilling to change to a more useful brand, you will be reduced to ringing doorbells till you find one that will do the trick for you. Meanwhile, your habit of ringing the doorbell and saying, "Shit! You too have Havells!" is unlikely to endear you to your neighbors.

As an aside, I am actually surprised by this straight hair business. In my youth, the most frightful face a woman exhibited (Other than her normal one, I dare not say for fear of  losing all my readers) was with her hair in curlers. Now it seems to be all straight hair!

Now comes the killer option. If the above does not work run an excursion train to come and take a look at me. Frightful sights are supposed to make your hair stand on end. If you also want me to sing (Scary movies always depend on banshee screams to enhance the effect) that will cost you extra. Results not guaranteed - after all your hair may well be used to worse sights in the mirror. (When I say 'your' I do not actually mean you, you know - it is someone else among all the others who come here)

Now, if none of these work and you still have hair left after trying all these out, you could even try Sunsilk!

If you liked this you may like to check out the index of other posts of this genre or read a selection of similar posts.

Cinema, Serials and the concept of Goodness

At the very outset let me make it clear that if you are eagerly looking forward to a diatribe on how cinema and serials promote vulgarity and violence, I must reluctantly bid goodbye to you and wish you all the best in finding such pleasant pastures. My interests lie in a totally different area of influence and I talk of the influences on my growing years – so the movie concepts I refer to may be dated.

Let me first get rid of one of my other pet ideas before I get to the pith of my issue. The villain in any film has such loyal henchmen that even when they find their boss on the verge of ruin they are willing to put up their hands and be counted – by way of holding a gun to the hero’s screaming wife/girlfriend/mother and seeking the hero’s surrender. The hero, however, has sycophants who seem eagerly poised to turn on him given the slightest excuse – a trumped-up charge or a night with his girl-friend (in absolute chastity, believe me!) and the entire neighborhood pounces on him with almost unholy glee. Cinema, therefore, taught me that if you want loyalty from your companions, it does not pay to be good.

The villain hatches diabolic plots and chortles in glee as they succeed in their nefarious intent. The hero does his brainstorming with his friends, hatches an elaborate stratagem to breach the defense of the villain, disguises himself in a moustache (and wig, if the budget permits) and does an elaborate song and dance in the villain’s stronghold. After having enjoyed the hero’s (and heroine’s, in later days) performance, the villain casually unmasks the hero. After that, the hero has to rely upon his bludgeoning skills to get himself out of the mess. With great reluctance one has to admit that, even if the hero’s dai-kilo-ki-haath wins the battle in the end, the villain leaves the hero in the dust when it comes to the brains department.

This question of the good being lacking in brains is not restricted only to the hero. Take Baazigar – one of the movies that catapulted Shahrukh Khan to superstardom – for example. SRK’s father forgives and takes back the villain into his good graces after having once been deceived by him. Then, presto, he signs off on a General Power of Attorney in the villain’s favor and is reduced to penury. Amazing that a businessman can repose such absolute trust in a known villain merely because the businessman is a good man! (Psst! If you hear of the fingers of Mukesh Ambani or Ratan Tata itching to sign a General Power of Attorney please do let me know. I am willing to take my chances even if I lack the necessary qualification of having deceived them once before)

I do not know from where movie-makers got this idea that an IQ in three digits and goodness are mutually exclusive characteristics. Maybe they have always been unable to distinguish between goodness and naiveté.  To be fair, however, to Baazigar one needs saying that the villain shows a similar lack of brains in signing a general power of attorney in the hero’s favor later. Or maybe a long non-villainous life had stultified his brains!

If you are evil, you cheat. If you are good, you get cheated. That, in sum, is the world-view of our movies. I am glad to see that this tradition continues in the serials of today. (Well! Not exactly glad but it is nice to see something familiar somewhere, if you know what I mean). The amazing manner in which the good fall all over themselves and enthusiastically fall into the traps of the evil is a sight for sore eyes. I have never yet seen a good person in a serial who I have not wanted to strangle on sight for sheer stupidity. (Oh! By the way, I do not watch serials normally. It is just that when guests come around, serials sort of thrust themselves into my ken)

Is it then surprising that when a person finds that his IQ is in excess of 100 he gives up all hope of becoming a good person? Can you really blame even those with IQs less than 100 striving to hide that fact by acting bad? After all, how can you blame anybody for preferring to be feared for being bad rather than to be held in contempt for being foolish?

The Revenge of Women

I am telling you, guys, there is a conspiracy against us. Wake up soon or you will suffer for the rest of your lives. I know! I know! You guys think it is all a paranoid fantasy. Let me put the evidence in front of you and, then, see if you think whether it is I who am fantasizing or it is you who are living in a fool’s paradise.

Let us take the movies first. Time was when the hero just sat in front of the harmonium and it was the heroine doing all the dancing. A wee bit later, the hero had to strike majestic poses while the heroine danced all around him. A bit of PT exercises became necessary thereafter. Now do you really think that the hero can just flap his arms around and be considered a great dancer? Not on your life!

So, what has that got to do with what I am saying? Look! There are more women in media and, presto, the hero has to have great dancing skills. Coincidence? Don’t be naïve! You think that it is the movies and has nothing to do with you? Well! When was the last time you found some guy wind-milling his arms and jerking his feet around when the mood took him and found the girls drooling all over him? If you need a Hrithik Roshan in reel life, you need a Salsa class in real life. Get that through your thick heads!

Ever wondered why you suddenly have started to go to the gym and found yourself looking anxiously at your belly to see if you can spot any signs of a six-pack? Could you have caught your dad doing it? More likely that he was patting a well-padded belly fondly and the only six-pack that interested him was beer! So what, the generation gap has substituted a fondness for beer with a fondness for treadmills? Nonsense! If you say that you will also say that you actually enjoy the process of waxing your body to remove hair! Guys, get real!

The previous generation had the best of life. A bit of hair oil and shaving cream about summed up their cosmetic needs! Now you can’t do without styling gels for hair and a whole cornucopia of shaving accessories. If all the girls will run after the man with the best deo what would that leave you holding? So, there you go, having to de-odor yourself. Time was when a tanned skin was macho. Today they tell you to use a fairness cream for men instead of one for women when you had not thought of using either.

Guys! Arise! Awake! Women are avenging themselves against us for all the eons when they were put in a position of having to maintain themselves good-looking while we went our way merrily. If you do not take a stand now, you will never be able to make it. By the time you find yourself using ‘Veet for Men’ in the bathroom, with your wife loudly complaining outside about how long men take to get ready for an outing, it will be too late!

The Lament of a Woman

I just do not understand all this trivial discussion about the problems that women have in balancing work and home. Child’s play, let me tell you, compared to the main time-consuming issues that confront us women. Issues that confront us the moment we wake up and do not let go till we get to sleep, if we can get to sleep.

Wake up in the morning and you have this hideous bird’s nest on top of your head. About the first thing you do is to check the pillow to see if there is the fine layer of dust on it – the dreaded ‘D’ word - dandruff! Better you do it than some stranger on the streets with a scalp camera looking to scalp people like you! Uh! Oh! Time for the anti-dandruff shampoo! Now, do you have a sufficient stock of that hair-conditioner around? Can’t show your head to the world with lifeless hair or, God forbid, split ends, whatever they be! You just cannot imagine the number of problems that strands of dead protein can get into nor the amount of effort that goes into making that self-same dead protein look alive!

Never realized the number of life-threatening problems that your face can go through! Some say seven some say ten but, how many ever they be, they have all got to be addressed. Do you really want to go around with damaged skin? Of course not! Unless your skin is fair it has got to be damaged, right? So, on with the moisturizing soaps, moisturizing creams, face washes, fairness creams and the rest. Oh! Peel off that facial layer first! To think that our parents were naïve enough to think of vitamins as something to ingest! Without the use of vitamins all over their faces, no wonder they look wrinkled. (Signs of old age and not of vitamin deficiency? What nonsense! They never even heard of anti-wrinkle creams and claim that at sixty-odd, wrinkles do appear. Excuses! Excuses! )

Till not so long back, that was about all the problems I had to tackle in the bathroom, except the periodic depilation (sounds more scientific than hair removal, doesn’t it?) of the armpits and the legs and those creams for the feet that keep them from developing cracks. But Life does love throwing curve-balls at you, doesn’t it?

When I do wear those sleeveless dresses of mine I had always admired the play of color across my arms. The slightly darker tan, up to where the sleeves usually are, tapering off to the lighter tan above seemed very pretty to me. How was I to know that that was gauche and, if I did not have an even tan all over I would be shunned by society? Much as I’d like to say snootily that, since I don’t play tennis, it doesn’t matter how varicolored my body is, I am not sure that I can carry it off. So, I have to smear body lotions all over now and, let me tell you, if someone has found a way to conveniently reach the middle of the back – other than using a husband or boyfriend – she deserves the next Nobel Prize for whatever! 

I know that I have no intentions of picking up a couple of pompoms and flinging up my hands. So, what do I need with fairer armpits? Maybe this is one thing that I can dispense with. I, however, don’t dare do that unless I intend keeping my hands firmly stuck to my body whenever I wear a sleeveless dress. Just cannot stand the idea of my friends murmuring, “Did you see that? Her armpits are darker than the rest of her body!” and sniggering at me. (Boy-friends? No way! A man has difficulty enough in seeing that his girl has her head completely shaved. Pester him about it and “You look somehow different”, is the most he can come out with. When he has difficulty in even seeing that what you are wearing is a sleeveless dress, do you really expect him to notice subtle variations in skin color? Nonsense! It is the friends of my sex that I am apprehensive about)

Am I done with the bathroom and can I proceed to my dressing table where there is another pharmacy set up to design my face and body? Till about a week back I thought so. Not now! Apparently even my vagina has got to be the same color as the rest of my body. Now that, at least, is safe from the eyes of my friends and I can rely upon men to not be very perceptive, can’t I? One doubt bothers me, however! About the only two things men seem to take interest in are a plunging neckline and the vagina. To be sure, their interest in the latter has not, hitherto, been in looking at it but dare I take a chance? I may be willing to trade in my current boyfriend for a better model but I cannot stand for being the one who is dumped and with cause!

You do not really want to know about the saga of the dressing table or the dress decisions that come thereafter or of shopping for all these. After all this, do you really think that I even have the time to worry about balancing work and home, leave alone actually balancing them? What am I - a juggler?

I envy the previous generation. A bit of shikakai, some turmeric and soap and they were done! They never knew how easy they had it. I can, however, thank Heaven for small mercies. By the time my daughter grows up, they would have found a way to get rid of the unseemly red that mars the lips and the mouth and that disgusting pupil which is of a different color from the lovely white of the rest of the eye! It will probably take a woman two days to get ready for an outing but, then, any sacrifice is worth it to make a proper appearance in society, isn’t it? Thank God, I won’t have to make all those sacrifices! Yet!

Ad Agonies, Again

I seem to be developing a lot of irrational fears thanks to ads. For example, when I am out on the streets, I am always looking warily around for people who would waylay me with scalp cameras and dental cameras. What can be more irrational than my wearing a hunted look on my face being afraid of people trying to sell me shampoos? Given the super-abundance of hair on my head, the last thing anyone would want to sell to me is an anti-dandruff shampoo. Something to help grow hair would be more like it.

Another of these irrational fears keeps me from buying the Cadbury Bournville chocolates. Every time I go to my local mall and try to pick it, I am frightened by the possibility that the counter clerk would put me to work packing goods for the other customers. After all, you don’t just buy a Bournville, you have to earn it!

Ads not only create irrational fears they seem to create irrational hopes as well. Take the Airtel Money ad about the chap in Goa, who is robbed of all his belongings by a woman, calling up his friend for help. I cannot understand this woman. She steals his wallet, his baggage and even the clothes off his back but leaves behind his mobile so that he can call for help!

All I can say is that if you are in the mood for dangerous liaisons in Goa, please do not think that a mobile and a convenient friend will do the trick for you. A real life woman may have less use for your soiled clothes and more for your mobile!

Ads - The best of programs on TV?

Ads are a never-ending source of entertainment. Even when I cannot make any sense of a few of them, they do engage my mind like a crossword puzzle that I never do manage to solve.

Ads for beauty aids for women are endlessly fascinating. If a woman is prone to irresistible impulses to pull trucks out of mud-holes with the help of her hair, there is a product to enable her to do so. If, however, a woman eschews beauty aids out of a deep sense of worthlessness, there is a company that encourages her to do so by telling her that she is worth it!

Products for men cannot be far behind, can they? What I will never understand is that, when a chap tells his cohorts that a shaving gel is actually cheap on a per shave basis, it only encourages them to queue up in front of his room to borrow a drop rather than queuing up at the mall for buying it. Only best when free, is that the message?

The same product goes one better with the mom worrying about whether her son is carrying enough shaving gel to get him through his days at college. Besides throwing an interesting sidelight on modern mothering (Mine used to worry about whether I was carrying enough home-made food supplements!), it makes you wonder what sort of god-forsaken place the son is studying in that he has to stock up on shaving gel! Or is the message about how difficult it is to get the product?

I have, also, never understood the view of India of ad-makers. In the past, there was this ad for a mobile service provider that had the punch line 'Keep it Simple, Silly' in the Hindi version. In Tamil that was translated to 'Idhu simpledaane'! Either the ad-makers thought that 'Keep it Simple, Silly' was Hindi and, so, had to be translated to Tamil or, perhaps, it was assumed that the Hindi audience was better versed in English than the Tamil audience. Only they can enlighten us about what went on in their 'creative' minds!

Whatever! Ads are fun! More fun than most programs on the idiot box!

Beauty and Success

I have lived all my life with a misconception! I had always thought that women of my generation had not made the sort of mark they could have made because Society was not supportive. How wrong I was!

How could the Air hostesses of my time have had their careers zooming up without the help of ‘Ariel Oxy-Blue’? How could they succeed in the corporate world without the priceless help of ‘Fair and Lovely’? How could a career woman balance Work and Parenting without Clinic Shampoos? What a deprived lot women of my generation were, being denied these invaluable aids to a successful career!

The language of beauty aids has changed from being a necessary adjunct for women to captivate men to being necessary for their corporate success. Men, however, have now become the target for beautifying to attract women. A stupendous turning of the tables indeed!

This quest for linking successful women to beauty aids can be carried too far, however. Santoor may keep the pretty choreographer mother looking young but for Madhavan to be so ignorant of his own field that he does not even recognize an award-winning choreographer seems to be carrying things a bit too far. The hairstylist, worthy of being a cover page story, who is so ignorant of other fashion aids like an Anti-marks cream must have an Arjun-like fixation on hair to the exclusion of everything else! It might have been better to have the success in a different field in order to ensure that these characters do not look like total nerds, but who knows what compels the ad-makers to stick to this sort of formula.

Be that as it may, for ads to be selling to successful women or selling success to women is a welcome change. Because they are worth it!

Requiem for some cinematic formulae

Passing time watching old movies is great fun especially considering that quite a few of the cinematic ideas of the past are irrevocably dead and gone. Before getting down to list a few of them one must make mention of those ideas which ought to find mention but do not simply because they have a disconcerting habit of coming back from the dead.

One idea that appears immortal is that of brothers/sisters (twins or otherwise) separated in the childhood as immortalized in ‘Yaadon ki baraat’. Just as one thinks that this is as dead as the dodo, it springs back to life like a phoenix ! The other one – the love triangle - partakes of more immortal blood and lives on in one avatar or the other. I make no mention of the hunt for revenge as a theme since without it Bollywood et al would go into an irreversible tail-spin!

One hesitates to mention the cancerous hero trying to make the loving heroine hate him as a dead idea but it does seem as though it is currently out of favor. Whether it is because the times do not favor such lachrymose themes or because macho heroes prefer not to moon around draped in shawls, one does not know. Let us put it to the fact that being a widow in today’s times is not the sort of living hell that it used to be and, thus, the hero does not think that the heroine should be saved from this fate worse than death.

The other thing that one does not see is the patriarch/matriarch counting his/her last breaths but using it all up in extracting promises from the hero/heroine which makes him/her wish that they had died instead! This promise is extracted with the preface of “I will not survive..” and it is not normally a bullet in the body that causes them to say so. Having never died before I don’t know whether one does realize the imminence of death on one’s death-bed but I am sure that someone who has had a chest pain may well feel close to death and find it was a mere gastric attack! Much of my time in the past used to be spent in thinking of such a ‘dying’ declaration succeeded by a red-faced survival of a gastric attack. One wonders whether, under these circumstances, the promise would still be held valid!

My pet theme, however, is the one employed in the past to get around the ‘How does boy meet girl and fall in love’ problem. There is a party where some miscreants mix liquor into the unsuspecting girl’s coke which she drinks up fully without ever realizing the adulteration. Fully sozzled she goes on further to get thoroughly drenched in the rain. The hero, then, finds her in this pitiable condition (white saree and all and maybe after bashing up the miscreants!) and takes her home. She wakes up in his bed and, under the covers, finds that she has been undressed and is embarrassed whereupon the hero assures her that he had his eyes closed all the time. This, naturally, not only reassures her about her chastity but also about the hero’s noble nature and love is the natural result!

This theme, I think, is irrevocably dead for the following reasons:

1. If ever there existed a time when a girl could not recognize that her coke was adulterated to the extent that she polished it off this day is certainly not that time. If anything, a girl is likely to be sozzled because she ordered her liquor and not because of any miscreant adulterating her coke.

2. White sarees in this day and age!! And, heroines!! What would they have to do with so much yardage? If titillation was the need of the day, a micro-mini or a bikini can do the job, can’t it?

3. I never have managed to understand this thing of being reassured by the hero closing his eyes while undressing the heroine. If the hero were not noble, his reassurance would be worth nothing. If he were noble, I would be a lot more reassured if he could see what he was doing. This concept of a chastity that is limited to the eyes and not to do with his hands beats me and, I think, beats the film-makers of today as well!

4. I am afraid that if such an incident did happen in this sexually permissive age, the heroine would either question the hero’s virility or her own attractiveness..neither of which is conducive to the blossoming of love!

I am sure one can think of a lot more such cinematic formulae of the past that have ceased to exist. The above is not an exhaustive list and, if I do remember more, I shall put it up later.

Fun with ads

It is not that I don’t like ads. Given that my day passes in front of the TV, when I am not trekking, ads sort of force themselves on me. This, in effect, means that the only fodder for what passes for my brain are ads! For example, whenever I see that dispirin ad which says, “When you don’t have time for a headache, take a dispirin”, I am forced to think about what they do suggest when you actually have time for a headache!

This once I am not singling out ads that, for whatever illogical reason, struck me as not sensible. Sometimes the timing of the ads are more humorous than most stand-up comedians. There was this ad – HDFC insurance, if my memory serves me right – about a kid planning to be a cosmonaut and the dad saying that he would save money to allow her to become one. The ad ends with the kid saying, “Yeh achcha plan hai”. As ever, one had the shortened version (how one wishes that the zoozoo ads were also shortened in their re-runs!) which begins and ends with the kid’s statement. A channel once ran the unwanted 72 ad, which was the pregnancy avoidance pill, followed immediately by the kid saying, ‘Yeh achcha plan hai’!

With cricket stars featuring in ads that are run during matches, one always has a good chance of hilarious timing. Amongst the more hilarious was Dhoni getting out after a scratchy 5 of 21 balls (or so) during the ICC-T20 which was followed by the Aircel ad where he ends up saying, “Main ban gaya man of the match’!

A friend quipped cruelly that Dhoni used to be a cricketer who also models but has now turned a model who also plays cricket, thereby reducing him to the level of those charity matches played by film-stars! That, however, is the way of India with its cricketers. It seems as though we raise them to pinnacles merely to see how high they bounce when we drop them down!

More Ad Agonies

These days the ads are addressed to a clientele with an IQ far in excess of my own. Whether I have an unnaturally low IQ or whether the standards have gone up far beyond the levels achieved by my generation is a moot question.

Take for example the Pepsi ad where the young chap climbs over all sorts of junk including some clad in suits while repeatedly yelling “I can’t hear you’. When he issues his climactic yell of “I can’t hear you” with guitar in hand, I don’t know whether the audience was intended to get the message that the young prefer not to listen to the old. All I could think was that if Pepsi wanted to communicate the message that drinking Pepsi would render you deaf, this ad would do a fine job of it though it beats me as to why Pepsi should want to communicate such a message. There are enough people sending out messages about what they think are the deleterious effects of colas on various parts of the body so why should Pepsi be spending its ad budget on one more such message?

The Vodafone zoozoos absolutely beat me. I know I am in the minority here and it is quite likely because of my bias against those squeaky cartoon voices but these zoozoos really got on my nerves. Oh! The messages were simple enough but having seen them once, it seemed to be a real test of patience to wait through three cartoon characters troop in one after the other into a room and come out yelling in order for you to be told that beauty tips are available for a monthly price. Of course, with any ad, once the denouement is known the element of surprise is lost but you find it possible to sit through them simply because the faces and figures are beautiful enough to hold your attention. Whatever else one may claim for the zoozoos, beauty, I am sure, cannot be one of the claims – unless the eye of that beholder is seriously skewed! (Serious flak here, I suppose, since cute is next door to beauty and an amazing number of people found them cute!)

The ad for Maruti Estilo(?) was truly wonderful. If only my father had known that the reason why my school friends did not find me attractive was because he did not own a Maruti car! Where he would have gone for a Maruti car in an era of Ambassadors and Premier Padminis is not the point – it is merely the principle of the thing! The idea of solving childhood angst by throwing big cars at them can only strike a stupendously creative and socially aware mind! I have no doubt that all the people concerned with the ad went home and duly complained about the ‘pester power’ of their children!!

Having groused against one ad for being too complicated and another for having been too simple, you would hardly be surprised if a complaint against spreading social extravagance is followed by one against frugality! There is this Hamam ad where the mom sends her daughter out to buy soap. Since she didn’t tell her what soap to buy she gets anxious about her daughter’s entire future being spoilt because of her purchasing and using the wrong soap! I am a votary of frugality, all right, but this mom’s reluctance to throw the soap away - even though using it would, in her opinion, spoil her daughter’s entire personality and future – seemed like carrying frugality a bit too far.

From what I see from ads, I live in a world of women busily working at becoming fair by way of using ‘Fair and Lovely’ in order to attract men, who are on the hunt for ‘Fair and Handsome’ so that they can attract women! Deodorants, which are supposed to de-odor you i.e. rid your body of smell, are advertised for their fragrance which will – surprise, surprise – attract women to you. The entire fashion industry is in imminent danger of being run out of business. When you can attract women merely by brushing your teeth, why do you need all those fancy and expensive expedients? I have to log out now since I have to log in to ICICI Direct to short the entire gamut of fashion houses.

Ad Agonies

At the end of all the hectic action of ‘Speed’, I walked out of the theatre feeling that destroying a bus, a commercial airliner and a subway train in order to save a measly one million dollars in ransom does not qualify the hero for approbation. It would have been more sensible to pay up and hunt the criminal later. Probably my finance qualifications at work.

Talking of finance qualifications reminds me of how stereotypic the view of accountants has been. In that ad for a mobile, which appears to be targeted at the phone sex business, the nerd is Mahalingam, an accountant, which simultaneously reinforces two stereotypes – that of a Tamilian and of an accountant. How does one create and/or approve ads with such tasteless stereotypes? (Of course, the word ‘nerd’ has ceased to be pejorative after Bill Gates had his way with it!).

Expecting good sense and logic in all ads is probably too optimistic. Remember the ad where the model is rejected because of her complexion and comes over to wipe clean the glass? I have always been astonished by her confidence about the glass being dirty only on her side. If she had had to come over to the other side to wipe the glass clean there as well, she would have appeared as though she was auditioning for the part of a window cleaner. (Anyone can get carried away. If she came over to the other side she wouldn’t need to clean the glass, would she?).

My mind boggles at the thought of my bald, pot-bellied self being chased down the roads of Bangalore by beauteous damsels – who scornfully reject handsome youths – merely because I use the right deodorant. Nor, indeed, am I confident of competing successfully with sculpted bodies on the strength of wearing the right undergarments.

What with my manhood challenged because I don’t own the right car and my existence laid waste because I am bereft of the hair that is the subject matter of shampoos and styling gels, life in this advertising age is hardly worth living for me!