Before and After!

Ever surfed TV channels early in the morning? You’ll find that most channels that play the saas-bahu serials by the night have only three kinds of programs for the start of the day:

1. Discourses by various babas.

2. Astrological predictions, with the astrologers purposefully dressed garishly telling you what color not to wear for the day, and

3. Tele-marketing- my topic for this post.

The telemarketers promote all kinds of goods, most of them of questionable usefulness. From oils and balm claiming to ‘cure’ the worst kinds of arthritis (they show 80 years olds suddenly getting up and playing football), to tonics that help adults increase their height! (Now, that’s a height). Then there are various fitness equipments focusing more on the uselessness on other similar products by showing people injuring themselves on them rather than focusing on the goodness on their own products. They also show morbidly obese men and women morphing into shapely bodied individuals as if by magic, while the anchor blabbers on incessantly and dramatically. ‘Hair-raising’ ads featuring bald men re-growing their hair are preposterously replete with ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs, when in fact they’re vice versa. Another of ‘magical’ products is a sort of compression inner-wear that allegedly turns funnily grotesque shaped women into sexy lasses only by pressing their cellulite-filled bulges at the right places. Considering that most women want to look sexy without actually being so, it is no wonder that such products cost a fortune. Other boring and mundane ads include those for kitchen appliances, but the most hilarious aspect of these ads is their dubbing in the local dialect. You might hear a Japanese speak flawless Telegu, of course with atrocious lip-sync.

But my prize for the most humbug ad goes to the one that sell products to save oneself from ‘buri nazar’ (I tried to find an English expression for this, but there is none, not surprisingly). They usually run a story of how a happy household lands into all sorts of trouble after a jealous colleague/neighbour casts his ‘buri nazar’ on their happiness. The ‘buri nazar’ is duly shown as a red line emanating from this person’s eyes and hitting the target object/person. Then they’ll show how things turn back to ‘normal’ once the victim purchases and starts using their ‘shield’ (Nazar suraksha kavach or something) against the ‘buri nazar’! This time the red line crashes against the shield and gets destroyed, leaving the buri nazarwala perplexed.

Such ads have only increased in number over the years. The anchors sometimes include out-of-work bollywood biggies (I saw Jackie Shroff in one ad this morning selling a magical balm, and Gracy Singh in another). All this goes on to show that such products do sell… and as to the people who buy all these things……no comments!

PS: This is not to say that all the products that are advertised are worth ridiculing. Many of them are genuinely useful.