Pleading Sanity...

To his utter horror, an otherwise handsome chap finds himself being cold shouldered by the fairer sex in his college. The distressed "student" turns to a trusted friend for advice. The advice? Simple: Vicco Turmeric. On constant application of the said product our protagonist lands up with that chick he had always been eyeing... and then they lived happily ever after – ‘they’ who? The chap, the chick and Vicco Turmeric… and oh I almost forgot, the jingle! "Vicco Turmeric, It’s not a cosmetic!" … just in case of the viewer being in the habit of mistaking aphrodisiacs for cosmetics.

If you’ve got pimples – girls won’t fuck you. Manson says that it is through creation of fear that commercials like these work. Oh no, not the fear of sprouting a pimple. No sir, it is the fear of peer rejection, the fear of losing ones identity in the multitudes of humanity, fear of not having a chick to flaunt, fear of not getting laid. Commercials like these, that exploit your fears do not try to make you ‘want’ the product. They instead make you ‘need’ it. Wants are those things you can live without. But needs… you can’t live without them. You just have to have Vicco Turmeric, you just can’t live with pimples.

"The seven deadly sins" are some of the advertisers most reliable tools: Pride, Envy (Neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride; uski sari meri sari se saphed kaise?) Wrath (Mehmaan lagti hain meri! … lolz), Lust (The Axe Effect), Gluttony (No one can eat just one), Avarice (All those "Special offer!"s) , and Sloth ( Sit back, put up feet, pour glass, survey kingdom… Chivas Regal). Sins or not, those seven things form an inalienable part of human psyche and they are exploited indiscriminately in commercials. They’ll use every god damned trick in the book to send you scuttling to the nearest store – patriotism, philanthropy, aims, aspirations, health and well being… I mean the list is endless they will strike a knife through every hole in your armour. So, whats the big fucking deal about it? The fact that an advertisement more often than not exploits human weaknesses rather than highlighting the virtues of the product they intend to sell. That’s the big fucking deal about it. To me it sounds like manipulation bordering on charlatanism if not deceit, and I hate being manipulated more than being out right deceit. Btw is hutch selling dogs these days?

And yes, one more thing, if you think you are a customer to television channels and newspapers you are wrong. You are the product. The businessmen pushing forward their commercials are the customers. Media houses don’t make money from the measly amounts you pay to the cable guy and the newspaper guy. They make money by selling your time and money to their advertisers.

At the time of independence the Indian newspaper business was boasting of many reputable names, names which have now become synonymous with sex and sleaze. When profits started to matter more than empowering people with information, they crossed that fringing football field that separates news from entertainment. Today their primary asset is not their credibility, but their circulation, the former sought by the reader; the latter sought by the advertiser. A naïve observer would have presumed that credibility and circulation are concurrent goals. But it was not to be so. Somewhere down the line Indians decided they wanted entertainment not news and the newspapers decided that they wanted circulation not credibility. So, began The Great Indian Media Metamorphosis, scantily clad women and men battled for space with those in kurtas – no angels themselves, but people with power to make a change, if change is what is demanded of them at gun point or at the ballot. Lifestyle pages have pushed out farmer’s news (yes, long ago, a page or two used to be devoted to the farmer, you can still catch it in The Hindu if you are interested. But its a wasted enterprise, really, you see farmers are illiterate, farmers don’t buy fancy dresses or dine at fancy restaurants, they just indulge in frivolous exercises like committing suicides and starving to death, really no point to advertising on that page). The changes are many. The question is why did they have to be this way? If circulation numbers were all that mattered there were other ways to pump them up. Why this way? Why are we reading about how much fun the filthy rich are having? Why are we reading about American football and European League soccer? Why is the Prime Minister called MMS and not by the name that his parents lovingly bestowed upon him? Why was the Finance Minister’s picture morphed to show him holding up a beer mug when he announced the budget? Why is Lalu Prasad Yadav a comedian and not a serious threat to our democratic institutions? Why is serious news trivialized?

The answer can be found in the post ’91 reforms and globalisation. When India joined the WTO we promised to make our economy "investor friendly", "foreign investor friendly" actually. But there were problems. How can you expect a people surviving on roti and chawal (rice) to embrace Mc. Donald’s and Pizza hut. How can you expect Indian women, who for generations had clad themselves in traditional dresses to suddenly jump in to a pair of jeans and pull down a T-shirt {for the feminist: I am not against alternative dressing styles. My emphasis is on how those styles come about. I would not give a shit if all the chicks in Delhi dress like Britney Spears…. Come to think of it, they are dressing like Britney.) So how are foreign products to sell in India? It has a billion people alright, but it doesn’t make a difference to Mc, D’s or Pepe if they are not civilized enough to appreciate their products. What was to be done? Consumers had to be turned into potential customers. Indian consumer’s wants and needs had to converge with those of the consumers these businesses were serving in the west. Indian way of life had to be overhauled. The media promptly got on to the job, its new customers had much more cash to spare and a lot of advertising to do… and so it began – The Great Indain Media Metamorphosis.

It was not just about readership numbers now, but also about the receptivity (to commercials) and buying power of the readership. It was about building an impressionable, consumption crazy readership, it was about creating that ‘itch to shop’ in the readers it was all about ‘civilising’ us Indians. And for this the media had to sell us western lifestyle and culture before selling us their products. Some thing else was sold in the process – the integrity of media houses. The trivialization of serious news is not accidental, nor is the spice added to it. Newspapers after all are newspapers, they have to publish news, or at least something that can be dressed up as news. But then publishing serious news has a lot of drawbacks. Who’d have the appetite for a burger if they have just read of starving kids labouring in Sivakasi? Who’d have the wish to dress up like movie stars when millions in India are doing with a single piece of garment? Social concern and consumerism are mutually exclusive and often conflicting behavioural paradigms. A single newspaper cannot foster both in its readers. So we have trivia and entertainment dished out early in the morning in the name of news. The likes of Lalu Prasad Yadav are nothing to worry about, they are just clowns in Indian politics, so you just go ahead and turn to page3 and drool over those great bods and while you are at it check out the ads as well. Now, that’s like a good boy.

I have talked about us being westernized and there is something I have to clarify about it. There is nothing wrong with accepting another culture or even imbibing it into one’s own, on the contrary I think it is a good thing. Acceptance of a culture is a conscious and vibrant process. What’s happening in Indian metros is not. It’s more like dressing up a carcass in colourful apparel. Our youngsters are brought up on a diet of cartoons and MTV. They are not imbibing western cultures, they are just imitating it. Culture is a product of history and geography of the region concerned, not of television channels and commercials. It would be dishonest to say that I am any different from the ‘youngsters’ I have just talked about except – except that I am now conscious of what is happening, of what I am a part of. Should I ever choose to wear my jeans in a way so as to expose my underwear I’ll do so with the knowledge that I’ve been manipulated into it by some very powerful, purely profit motivated economic forces and with the knowledge that I also have the choice of resisting these forces by saving the rest of humanity from an unpleasant experience – a peek at my underwear. You see, I am not superman and I just hate being manipulated.

Tail Piece: I must mention that there are a few honourable exceptions that have fought the malaise that is engulfing Indian newspapers.

We should have been tired. We should have been sleeping like logs. We were not. The six of us had traveled 300kms – by road, walked a longer distance than we would normally cover in a month, we had pedaled those tourist boats for what seemed like eternity. We should have been tired, but we were not. We were in Lansdowne: a sleepy retreat set in the Himalayan foothills. Whether it was the fresh mountain air that energized us, or our excitement over escaping from our mundane lives for a couple of days; we did not know. That evening as we sat down by the fire, under the starry night sky we did know this – it was going to be a long night.

And a long night it was. We were joined by our driver, Ajeet and the driver of another party, Ashish. As the whiskey and cigarettes did the rounds the conversation ran berserk, jumping from stock markets to politics, pausing now and then to acknowledge the tranquil beauty of the mountains until we learnt that Ashish was brought up in Garhwal. We started enquiring about places to visit… the usual tourist queries. I do not know how it happened but almost suddenly I found myself listening to the legends of Garhwal.

Ashish told us about the bleeding trees near the Tarakeshwar temple, a few kilometers away. “If you snap a branch of one of these trees, they’ll bleed.” he said with in a tone only genuine awe can fabricate. “Not just some red colored liquid,” he continued “but real blood.” Without waiting for us to enquire in to the causative aspects of the phenomenon he began “Long ago, there was a man who promised to visit a nearby shrine with his bride once he got married. He did not keep his promise. As the bridal party visited Tarakeshwar and began walking back ignoring the smaller shrine, there was a blinding flash of light that turned each member of the group into a tree.” He looked at our faces searching for something. Some of us were skeptical some of us amused. While my usual self was silently laughing in mockery of the ignoramus’ stories, another part of me wanted to be spell bound by the narrative.

Ashish however, did not seem to notice the raised eyebrows or the smirks. He seemed to have found what he was searching for – an interested audience. And so he told us of the river with warm currents during the winters and cold currents during the summers. He told us of the tree near Doggadda where Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Bhagat Singh practiced their shooting – “once you are in its shade you cannot hear a single thing from the outside,” he told us. Finally he told us about Sepoy Jaswant Singh. It was an impressive narration which this author is incapable of reproducing in English. But here is the gist of the sepoy’s story.

One morning when Sepoy Jaswant Singh saw the enemy troops advancing, he decided to do everything he could to stop them. He dug out a long trench and aimed a good number of guns towards the enemy and then proceeded to connect the triggers of all the rifles with a rope. Whenever he tugged the rope all the guns would fire in unison. And so the sepoy fooled the enemy in to believing that it was up against a huge force for one-and-a-half days. He radioed base while he held the line – alone. But his ploy was to be discovered before back up arrived. The sepoy was massacred.

The sepoy’s spirit however, is still alive. It slaps the lazy soldier into wakefulness when he ignores the wake up bugle and chides the soldier wearing a shabby uniform. The sepoy’s room in the Lansdowne cantonment has been left untouched. Every morning his uniform is found washed and pressed and his shoes polished to a glitter. As evening approaches they get worn out only to be restored to a prim condition by the sepoy’s ghost for the next morning’s duty. He even receives promotions from the army. He is now Brigadier Jaswant Singh.

As the narrator's voice enveloped his unsuspecting audience, the shadowy silhouettes of the oaks and blue pines seemed to grow larger. The looming mountains in the distant darkness began to close in towards the fire. Sitting there and this time, trying to break the spell of Ashish’s tales I found it easy and I must admit, comforting to believe in what he said. His simplistic world view with Gods, devils and spirits seemed befitting to the time and place.

We had dinner by the campfire. Ashish and Ajeet retired for the night. They had a job to do next morning. After choosing to deliberate on the supernatural for a while our conversation decided to veer towards things we knew little about – superconductivity, teleportation and taxes. We spotted a few constellations in the night sky, a pastime few city dwellers can afford and we retired as well.

The next morning our snobbish perception of villages as honest places free of malice was rudely shaken. There was a theft. A mobile phone was stolen in the guest house. Urban amenities did not leave their immediate cousins – urban evils on their way to the villages or so we learnt. Fingers were raised towards Ajeet and Ashish, the only outsiders who shared the room with the owner of the phone. They both preferred paying compensation to being taken to the local police. Ashish had a resigned look on his face. He did not protest nor did he show any signs of anger or irritation. He just resigned and paid up. May be he was thinking of the mouths to feed at home. May be all his life’s worries became twice as larger or may be he was regretting driving past one of those road side shrines that dot the Himalayas without paying obeisance to the deity there.

Some of us strongly felt that his punishment was inappropriate, and so Ashish was compensated for the amount he paid – five hundred rupees. There seemed to be no one to compensate him for the infernal burden of blame that he is now ordained to carry forever.