Ad nauseum

It was a lazy day that came my way , on a Sunday- the twitterati, facebookers and whatsappers had shut themselves out after the nocturnal ‘carniball’ over the Rio cup and my word feud friends had also vanished without a trace. Adding insult to injury was the lacklustre lunch , the monotony of the mundane was simply unbearable. And to make matters worse, I hit the button on the remote and the LCD crackled to life. After several inglorious minutes of channel hunting akin to scavengers rummaging the garbage, I settled on the match highlights – after all I had to keep up with the Joneses on the greatest show on the planet , at least to engage myself in conversation with the rest of the football frenzy household.
But the deluge of commercials before the Latin wizardry and tiki taka,  took the wind out of my sails. What perfect timing to air the advertisement on toilet cleaning agents, here I was looking for some masala to pep up the food on the platter, but what I got was the nauseating looming visuals of the lady in white coat bending down to the deplorable level of touching the toilet basin to prove her point and do justice to the crores she was earning for endorsing the product. All I could do was take my eyes away and say “yuck” aloud which was grossly misunderstood for the food , by my loving critics!
I have seen shoes being hurled at prominent politicians, and this celebrated list includes our very own Chiddu saar, by frustrated citizens but it was sickening to see a man throwing his shoe at the hapless yet formidable insect , the cockroach ! The well aimed throw, putting many an Olympian to shame did find the target and creature flipped over. The people for ethical treatment to insects would have gone for the thrower’s throat for this dastardly act but for the humane act of the husband and wife duo who were trying to revive the creature by sprinkling drops of water on it. But the insect activists’ joy was short lived as the voice over in the commercial says “now how can the dead cockroach which had eaten the poison product kill other scores of its friends when they come in contact with it?” Genocide” cried the people , anyway the product is living upto its name ‘hit’!!

I am still trying to figure out the connection between a chewing gum and the sequence of slides showing a ugly man transforming into a toothless blond with a Lasith Malinga hairdo. If only my eyes were “zip locked” instead of the mouth .....to avoid the trauma of watching such a ludicrous ad!

Next in the line of repulsive ones, is the plethora of commercials for  deodorant sprays , well this goes on to prove that the skunks pervading our planet is only directly proportional! Scantily clad models heading towards the water hole to party all night are enticed by the odour and they swarm, slither and self indulge much to the discomfort of the custodians of moral rights who squirm in their couches and are left “axed”!

The obsession with us Indians, on the fair skin will never wane and so will the ads on fair skin creams, each one of them guaranteeing whitest shades of skin colour! The obvious choice of prefix for these bleaching agents is “fair” and only the suffix changes to suit the gender – ‘lovely’ for women and ‘handsome’ for men. These are gentle reminders of the dark ages of apartheid that we still live in!

My grocery purchases have never been influenced by these oft repeated and reinforced repulsive ads but always held a standard – a hurriedly prepared list with half the requirements given a glorious miss, I head towards the supermarket ( oops! it is the hypermarket store , these days)and end up buying the “most wanted” along with the “unwanted”  the latter  far out numbering the former ! The end result would be the bazaar running out on printing stationery due to the ultra long bill and a gaping hole in the wallet!!!

ASIDE.....But all the same I do stand and gape at the huge billboards of amul ads on busy traffic junctions oblivious of honking and polluting vehicles, to admire the creative caricature and the wonderful play of words...then it is “AD”diction and not “AD” nauseum!!!