Ageing and Advertisements

I have always loved advertisements. They are so full of colors and peppy music and jingles that refuse to leave your brain for long. I can still recollect the famous jingle of Britannia biscuits that I watched during my school days. ‘ting-ting-ting-ting’. Many a times I have caught myself humming the tune of an ad that I happened to see just before leaving for office. Advertisements connect you to the happening world outside, show you warm exotic places and educate you about the stuff in-vogue. Yes, they can be weird and full of innuendoes too. What has a pretty woman’s painted, caressing fingers got to do with a men’s perfume? In real life, nothing. But in an ad, with the suggestive tunes and background, that opens a plethora of possibilities.

I think children have a knack to understand advertisements better than adults. They catch the phrases and the innuendoes better than the oldies. Have you noticed how easily children by heart and role play ads? My young cousins are experts in advertisements. Talk about a new product in the market, and they can immediately recount its advertisement!

Advertisements can ignite nostalgia too. One of my best friends used to sing ‘washing powder Nirma, detergent powder Nirma’ at the top of her voice to annoy her hostel mates. Recently at a reunion gathering, the hostel mates forced her to sing it again!

There was a time when people were forced to watch the ads, when you had only DD National and was left optionless! Later, when cable network sunk its roots, you could always flick the channels, rather than watch the ads. Siblings would adjust timings of the shows like this; “Haan, so when the advertisements begin, I’ll watch WWF and when that channel has advertisements, you can watch your stupid movie.” Soon, with the advent of advertising agencies, that field has witnessed a massive change and became a huge space of creativity and turnovers in millions

As a child I was an expert at deciphering advertisements. My grandparents would miss half the things in the ads, thanks to the speedy delivery, the loud music and the short dialogues, and I would gladly explain the ad to them. Maybe, as kids, you knew the trends and the common verbiage and that made the task easier. As you grow up, you lose touch and slowly you start failing at understanding ads. You begin by missing a few terms. Then you realize that you can’t make sense out of a few dialogues. Further, an ad begins and ends and you feel blank! You just haven’t understood what just happened on screen! That’s when you should seek help of your younger siblings or cousins! They would look at you incredulously ‘Cant you understand such simple things in life???’

Well, hence proved that ageing is inversely proportional to your advertisement grasping abilities.

 

An 'Approved' Life

“Jumi! How could you do that? What would others think of you?” During my childhood I was often reprimanded like this. “What would others think?” “What would others say?” Most of my childhood and teenage pranks and errors were caught and curbed so. In a traditional and conservative village in Kerala, it was most important for a girl to ensure a good ‘image’ in the society. I was taught to fear public opinion. By fearing public opinion, it was mandated that I earned their approval too. And thus, I ended up going to church every day, and entered the good books of old aunties and grannies. “See, such a pious girl”. I fasted and followed all Lents mandated in the Catholic calendar and made my grandmother proud amongst her friends. “Oh! Such a devout young girl. Even my daughter in law doesn’t observe Lent.” I studied well enough and was usually amongst the top ten students in the class. “See, Jumi always scores above eighty.” Worse, I was reasonably good at extra-curricular activities and that made another entry in the good books!

By being in the good books of the elders, I also ensured that I was disliked, if not hated, by my peers. For them, my existence was a torture. They were constantly compared and contrasted against me and that irked them. I fairly doubt that my cousins too dreaded me.

But, the person behind all this was my Chechy, my mom’s youngest sister, who brought me up. She made sure that I topped each exam, bagged most prices, and was brought up as an ardent Christian. She would spend her study holidays to drill Mathematics into my dull head. She got me lots of books from her college library and made sure I was well-read. She wouldn’t mind staying up all night to stitch something for me for a competition or a dance performance. And, the night before an exam, she would even ask questions in my sleep to check if I have by-hearted everything. That was Chechy, my love. Always worried and concerned about me!

So, it was she who nurtured this idea of being approved by everyone. I had to be miss righteous and miss perfect. My uncle was well-connected and though I studied at a far-away school, each actions of mine were reported at home by his most diligent informers. I was encouraged to maintain a daily journal and my uncle and aunt used to go through the entries and it made the task of ‘bringing up Jumi’ easier. I never realized that they read my entries; instead I wondered how they came to know about my schemes to ‘stray’. I was caned, advised and sometimes blackmailed that I toed the line. Public opinion mattered so much to our family.

A terrible sense of guilt grew along with me and by the time I was a teenager, I was always worried about others’ opinion about me. I acted nice with people even while I hoped I could scream at them. I learned to tolerate people though all I wanted was to run away from them. I could fake laughs, smiles and worse, happiness. Slowly that became my habit. I am eternally worried about my actions and keep hoping to make the right remarks and perfect conversations so that I please others and not hurt anybody. I lost touch with the real me and these days, I truly wonder what my real self would be like. And when I think of myself, the image that comes to my mind is that of a caged pathetic bird with two stubby tufts of feathers in place of wings.

On Anonymous Profiles

Two years ago, I wrote a post in Facebook on the burden of being a newly married girl. It was not based on my experiences alone; I had adapted the tales shared by a few of my friends and what I saw in the lives of my aunts. However, for a reader, it looked like I was rambling and complaining about my new ‘status’.

My husband did not bother much. In fact, he did not care. (Maybe he just ignored the subtle signs or simply believed what I said “No, this is not about us, love”). The post got a good number of likes, and a reasonable number of comments, ranging from ‘well, said’ to ‘are you okay?’. My husband got phone calls from a few of his friends who felt his life was in shambles. My married friends probably rejoiced, (‘haha…welcome to the club), a few unmarried ones texted (“really, Jumi? Is this what marriage is about?”) 

I got a phone call from my mother in law, who tried to educate me about the different phases in life and the adjustments every human being has to go through. She did make sense. But I had too much of unhappiness nestled in my chest. I had hoped them, my new family and new set of friends, to acknowledge my wish to write and publish.

Slowly, I learned to confine my thoughts to my diary. I religiously penned down my feelings, opinions on movies and political incidents, things I longed to do, my frustrations and unforgettable moments. It gave me a sense of accomplishment. I went for morning walks and came back to the silence of my kitchen, my mind full of fresh air, lot of ideas and good lexes that I longed to write down and show to the world. But I had earned too many constraints. I would hurt many people and their sentiments.

 I was learning why women were forced to opt for fake names or profiles when they write.