The After effects

I am a morning person, and before you take this to mean anything else; it just means I have oodles of energy and I love my routine. You know, the morning walk, just soak in nature and marvel and then the famous calming chai, prepared the right way and strangely enough after I’ve checked what’s been happening in the virtual world. It always seems that something must have happened, earth shattering while I was sleeping but nothing ever does. I zone into the morning kirtan that is like a balm and then as the internal clock tunes in I put on the national news.

It’s as simple as breathing and I have it down to a clockwise. You know the first cup goes down quietly with the kirtan and then the second one starts of after giving instructions to the ever- faithful Nikki and then news starts. Imagine, my surprise, I am watching news and it breaks for the advertisement. Trust me, I never pay attention but today I did.

And, it disturbed me. A man is presumably getting ready for a party later in the evening whilst his date and he are chatting on the speaker phone. A bell rings while he has primed himself and she walks in. Before this, he had sprayed himself with some deodorant. The minute the door opens, we see the lady dressed up with her hair up, conservative and she smells the air and him and opens her hair and tells him, shall we go to the party a bit later? The door opens.

Call me old fashioned, traditionalistic, stuck in the 1900’s, it made me laugh and wonder what is the world coming to. A multi- national is seducing its customers to use its product while promoting and promising sexual favors.

I wish it were so easy to fool us women! And, then the next clip went to the devastation in Kashmir floods.

I feel as if society has changed its standards to such an extent that we are insensitive to what happens around us till it happens to us.

The extent of commercialization of the needs and the wanton display on media has made us prey to the needs of these so called beauty products with which we would feel confident , desirable and more attractive. It’s just not limited to deodorants, it starts with the hair on our delectable heads to the creams to look fair and lovely and to the clothes we wear. Use a particular shampoo and sweep the love of your life banishing away the dandruff, use a particular cream, and become fairer and sickly white to win beauty contests, get a groom to marry you (who had earlier rejected you ). Imagine not being fair makes you not get a job, not win admiration, makes you the subject of every joke in town. And, then if you don’t wear the trendy clothes how many of you are called bhenji or bhaiya .

Increasingly, the society is defining what ‘we ‘ should look like ! Be it the hawai chappal that has changed its image with Hrithik wearing it, using John’s face wash to become fair and to carry a smart phone to impress and win the girl in the club. And, to top it, wear the particular deodorant , you can land her straight to bed.

I think, I’m parenting my boys wrong, what use is an education or values or striving to be a free -thinking balanced individual where the value of a human being is based on the color of his looks, the fair-o- meter and the car he drives.

The after affects of this scent are multiple and when I quizzed my kids who belong to the under- privileged section they all said they use the 2re sachets and five rs cream to look white. The glistening faces, powdered and primped all reflect a color conscious complexed tomorrow. Till, we change, the afternoon news still carried a fluttering sari clad woman humming a tune and being led like the mice in Pied Piper to her lover.