61-AN APPEAL TO MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES

This is my personal appeal to multinational companies that post print and TV advertisements which involve young children.  Often the products that are endorsed by very young children, are not appropriate for their age group.  Five to fifteen year olds, are used to promote cars, hair dyes, fabric soap and sugar supplements.

School students are portrayed in a very 'smart alecky' type of attitude.  Students, donning school uniforms, that too in a school environment, are shown insulting teachers.  The  'Colgate zig zag brush'  advertisement that shows a student admonishing his teacher during a parent-teacher meeting, with "teacher, kal raat aapneh palak kee bhaji khayee theeh."  Although the company has been made aware of the insensitivity of this ad, they continue to air it.  This TV ad is in very bad taste, and it makes the younger generation saucy.  What makes me angry, is that,  the 'student' is shown with four to five inch long hair.  Every school that I know of, insists that boys must have a short haircut, yet role models like these encourage long hair for the male students.

Here is a list of multinational companies that feature school going students and show the male students with four to six inches of long hair.  This amounts to surrogate reinforcement that school boys look good or best in longer hair.  Unfortunately, it makes the task of school authorities more difficult to maintain discipline of a neat short haircut for boys.

1)  Pepsodent - toothpaste badal bachoo - 2 boys with 4 inch long hair in school uniform, with two girls.

2) Vanish - Bunty, a school boy with 5 inch long hair, and 'ink kaa daag'.

3) Lifebuoy -  boy with unkempt hair.

4) Aquaguard - 'Rohan, tumhaareh plant meh pharak dikhtaa hai'  and the school boy with the longest hair in the class portrayed, answers, 'maineh healthy paani diyah hai.'

5) Dettol - Dettol kah dulhah. a boy student in school uniform is shown, washing a cycle.

6) Bournvita biscuits - a school boy with 3 inch long hair saying 'healthy tasty'.

7) Hershey's milk - a young school boy with longish hair.

8) Mom's Magic  biscuit

9) Usha air coolers

10)Mahindra SUV

11)Patanjali fresh fruit juice - 8 year old boy with 6 inch long hair, somersaults.

12)Colours channel - A new serial 'mard kah naya roop' a young boy with 6 inch long hair.

13)Nihar hair oil - shows school boys and girls in school uniform, the boys all have long hair.

14)Patanjali rice - patanjali rice, sahseh nice.  This ad shows school boys with 5 inch long hair and Shilpa Shetty.

15)Tide - It show the 'captain' banner on a young male student with a very white uniform and about 4 inch long hair.

16)Suthol talcum powder - a school boy with 6 inch long hair is shown.


Of course, the lengths of hair that I have mentioned are just approximations that I have visually measured.  But students with this length of hair would be sent back home from school, unless special permission has been taken for being part of ads.  So it is a very unfair tactic that multinationals use, by endorsing long hair for male school students.  Not only students but even parents get influenced by these ads and want to see their own sons look 'good', and so are very reluctant to maintain their school going boys' hair at a short length.  It is also natural that balding fathers too dote on their progeny's lush hair growth.

It is very contradictory that even the school that I work for, which strictly enforces the 'short haircut' policy for all male students, felicitated a young boy, with quite long hair, as a chief guest, at a recent interschool programme.  It may be that that boy is home schooled and can maintain his hair length without rebuke from 'school authorities',  but what sort of role model did this portray?  I recall how my son had taken great care to lengthen his locks during college days.  Shampoos, conditioners, straighteners, hair gels, filled up the bathroom shelf.  And then, he had to get a very very short haircut, as a hotel management student, which continues, now that he is a chef,

So, schools should counter the surrogate reinforcement of ads, that endorse longish hair for school boys, by spreading awareness of the 'why not' in this matter.  If anything, it would save a lot of  daily heartache for teachers, who end up being the 'devils' in the bargain.

62 - INTEGRITY???

It is  such a contradiction when the 'great' Salman Khan, the 'king maker' of actor's careers, tweets :     

""How these kids grow up so soon... ALWAYS keep giving your best #ZAHERO no matter what. Stand tall and always bend backwards for those u love and those who love u, Yeh yaad rakhna that the most important thing in life is Respect and Loyalty. @iamzahero""


In the same breath as the person who launched Katrina, Sonakshi Sinha and Sooraj Pancholi??

Mr Salman Khan,  How can you support a rascal like Sooraj, who showed no respect, and no loyalty to the girl who has given him all her love, Jiah Khan.

Wake up Sir, be fair in all your dealings, and then we shall believe what you tweet.

60-PM MR.MODI'S SWATCHCHTAA ABHIYAAN......BLEH.......MY EXPERIENCES

Posting advertisement videos and print media sloganeering is not enough to motivate people to keep their surroundings clean.  The rich people are not bothered and will discard bottles and used tissue and food containers and cans, from their car windows.   The poor are not bothered either.  They will urinate at any 'secluded' spot or any corner of the road or between parked cars, and they will spit any where and from any place.  Shopkeepers throw rubbish just outside their shop and no one can do anything about it.

Often there is no choice, but to throw wrappers and containers onto the space away from your own.  Especially train and bus travellars, prefer to discard rubbish through the window of their vehicle, rather than into the vehicle.  No one is bothered to put rubbish into their bags.  Travelling by train, all passengers throw used paper teacups, vadapau paper trays,  soiled newspaper of samosas or vadas, empty pet water bottles, bhel wrappers, biscuit and chocolate wrappers, etc.  The rubbish crescendoes just after Dadar, Karjat, Lonavla. How else should the travellers discard their rubbish?  When you travel in the Japanese bullet train or on the train up the Swiss alps, each bogie has a garbage bin, but then there are limited passengers, only as many as can be seated.  No standees are allowed.  On Indian trains, if one is lucky enough to get into the train and stand, sit or squeeze between co-travellers, then you are lucky.

So, the message given by the governing bodies that plastic needs to be banned,  but all the garbage is not  plastic.  Even paper rubbish is an eyesore and an environmental hazard.

If one travels by any local train or outstation train from Mumbai,  it is a horrible sight to look out of the window.  The worst is Ulhasnagar, because it is extremely full of garbage and even the stench is unbearable.  How do the people there survive and remain healthy, is beyond belief.

The defecating and urinating on the train tracks has not diminished.   When the slum dwellers have to sleep on footpaths or roads, where are they expected to defecate?  Urban beggars and slum dwellers, defecate on plastic bags and then push it into any drain, the cover of which they manage to pry open.

I am not a homeless person, but even I have a problem of not getting to use a public facility when needed urgently.  Some of the bad spots are CST terminus, Churchgate station, Crawford Market, Gateway, Byculla, Fountain, Mumbai university, and of course any local railway station.  Even if the loos are available, for pay and use, the doors are broken, or they are soiled, or unclean, too crowded, not safe as the doors of the loos are broken, or the ladies loos are locked, etc.   The Zoo has been renovated with an ugly facade, sporting snakes, but the toilets are only accessible to the security guards, public has to use the badly maintained prehistoric loos inside the zoo, horrible!  Shop till you drop at Colaba Causeway and then control your urge to urinate, unless you want to stand in an endless line at the public loo near the Gateway, or use the one at the Macdonalds outlet or Westside.

MLAs and MPs should visit the public loos and check out the sorrowful state that most of them are in.  Maybe Salman Khan should visit the CST loo and improve it, like he did to the prison loos that he had experienced.  Please sir, the governing bodies, especially the Shiv Sena, is indifferent to the problems of the public,  you could do yeoman service instead.  Of course, the Big B only wants to be featured in expensive ads about public defecation etc,  only if were to walk on the road and visit a loo at any station, or travel in a local train,  then I would believe all that he advertises, otherwise your swatchch Bharat ad campaign  is just Modi-worship-Modi-appeasement.  No one would urinate on the road, if the alternative was feasible, available and reachable.

I wonder if the high and mighty, the government 'lal batti' politicians, rich and very rich actors, directors, business persons, who have drivers, every worry about them when they wait in the parked cars, about facilities available for their use.

58 - WALKING IN MUMBAI AND PUNE . . .

In Mumbai, the footpaths are dirty, or in bad shape, with the paverblocks tipping over when stepped on, and splashing dirty water onto the pedestrian, or two wheelers riding across them.  In Pune, footpaths have been taken over by hawkers, with large cardboard boxes, in which they display their ware, blouses, shoes, scarves, purses, belts, stuffed toys, etc.

I  compare these two cities, because I travel to and fro, often.  The footpaths in the suburbs of Mumbai are often unusable because of large garbage piles, or beggars, who have made it their home.  In south Mumbai, the richie rich crowd use the public footpaths as a parking space for their mercedeses,  audis, chevrolets, audis, toyotas  and other super expensive SUVs.  The school where I work has a broad footpath, about ten feet across, all along the road, but it is futile to try to use to walk safely on.  Two wheelers, motorbikers and scooter riders use the footpath as a freeway, riding in either direction, and parking their bikes whenever they wish, blocking the walking space.  The entrance to buildings often has a break in the footpaths and cars and vans are parked in this space, without fear of any type of repercussions. If at all one ventures to use the available space between the parked vehicles, to walk, then the AC drips from overhead, all along the path, puts one off. Any petrol pump along the footpaths, block the entire space with parked cars, and proclaim that it is their 'right' to do so.

In Pune, shopkeepers put a metal platform, made of metal strips, as a way to block the space from vehicles parking along the footpaths.  So the public can access the footpath from the road by climbing onto the platform and entering the path.   In spite of this, some fools park their bike across the platform's outer side and block the entry.

The roads of Pune are overcrowded with 2 wheelers and rickshaws.  In the camp area, M. G. road has been declared a one way zone, but many 2 wheelers break the rules and  no one cares to stop them.There is a desperate need for a skywalk or foot overbridge, for pedestrians to walk  and cross safely.  One evening I visited the famous Empress Botanical Garden, after thirty years and what a shock awaited me.  There is an entry fee of rupees fifteen,  to enter and see a gutter flowing on one side of the garden.  Another area was an enclosed nursery.  There is an open space as one enters, which has a  fair with paid rides and a plastic enclosed mini pool for kids.  The only other lane along the few trees that tower around has been marked as a 'no entry' zone.  The other end of the same path had lovers snuggling on benches along it.  Then there is toilet.  So I can declare that I saw 'kissers' and 'pissers'.  As I continued walking along this path, the vast area of the Empress Gardens that I knew as a child was visible,  but it was covered with rubble, cement and stones, piles and piles of it, almost an area of a hundred metres.  The gutter was again visible, along with 50 to 60 slums, and lots of stray black pigs.  Most of the enclosed area has been fenced off to house the Poonawala horse stables and what seemed to be an air conditioned green house that was out of bounds for the general public.  While leaving the garden, I decided that it would be a good idea to at least walk home and make up for the sad visit.  The tarred road leaves no space for pedestrians, and one has to walk in the stony muddy space along it.  Walking against the traffic is quite a feat.  No one else seemed to be walking, all use two wheelers or a rickshaw, or their car of course.  As I walked along on the uneven rocky muddy side path, a two wheeler raced from behind me, almost brushing against my body.  That was the last straw and I hit out at the rash rider.  That led to loud abuses from them, which was very very depressing.

Mr. Adar Poonawala has won accolades for his effort to clean up Pune, with his mini army of hifi suction garbage vans, but it is a sad state of affairs that the citizens have no proper garbage outlet and so just throw garbage onto the road or footpath.  The most vulnerable areas are where there are roadside food stalls, which resemble a garbage dump when it is closing hours, after ten p.m.  Foolishly, I woke up at 6 in the morning, to go for a walk to work up my health regime,  and the streets filled with garbage were very demotivating.

Every evening, the area where four roads meet, known as Aurora Towers Chowk, is crowded with public eating and drinking from the roadside stalls, juices, milkshakes, pav bhaji, pizza, kulfi, falooda, dosa, sandwich, cholle, pani puri, and so on.  The hotels and restaurants have very few customers.  Same goes for the large shops selling branded clothes, shoes and watches.  The public are buying their wares from the cardboard box, footpath sales persons.  The only shop that is crowded besides, is Dorabjees.  Customers flock into this store, with its two storeys of goods and a very large variety of everything besides clothes and shoes. They stock cakes and chicken preparations, at the entrance, with all brands of drinks, packet foods, veggies, fruits, icecreams, magazines, chocolates, on the ground floor, the next floor has crockery, house hold cleaning items, and the top floor has make up, shampoos, toothpastes. toys etc.Across the road is a mall, with Westside and Macdonalds etc .

Typical to Pune are the 'gadiwallas' or vendors selling the seasonal fruit on their handcarts.  Guavas, strawberries, jamuns, figs, star fruit, litchi, cucumber, jackfruit, taadgolas, a real treat to even watch their decorated mobile shops.  They also maintain stalls along the roadside of busy Lullanagar, Kothrud and Kondwa.  Admiring their goods is free, but buying is another task, as their prices are quite high.

So, I have labelled Pune as the city of knights and drawbridges, although these knights ride two wheelers and the draw bridges are stationary, and only help access to the footpaths.

   

57 - BABA RAM RAHEEM AND HONEYPREET

The latest scandal to be revealed is that of the 'godman' Ram-raheem,  from Sirsa, in north India.  According to the revelations, he has studied only upto the ninth standard and was an 'ordinary' citizen until he got married.  Through a span of thirty years approximately, this man has made an 'empire' for himself with an entire 'dera' or city of his own.  In this dera, he is the king, and the rulemaker, the most powerful person, with his own plastic currency, his numerous bungalows, with themes, an extravagant life style, with a pretty partner, Honey-preet.

Such innovation!  But alas!  Only for his own selfish comfort.  But then, we all want comfort and luxuries for ourselves, and that is what we work towards.  The only difficulty is that we cannot manage to earn too much. Ram-raheem earned so much wealth, by whatever means,  he managed to become a film hero too.  And among his friend's circle are the likes of the chief minister of Haryana and Shilpa Shetty and Mr. Kundra,  as disclosed on the news channels.

I envy this man's innovation and enterprise, but if only he would have been 'human' and not murdered others, and raped women, as is being disclosed.  Each one of us has skeletons in the closet, but this man has skeletons in his backyard, buried by his orders, of innocent detractors.  If only he would have used his energies to be genuinely good, as he wanted to be portrayed, and not behaved fiendishly to achieve wealth and fame and power.

Fairy tales about 'rags to riches' abound.  A Tale of Two Cities, the Prince and the Pauper,  Macbeth, Hansel and Gretel, and the real life examples of The Ambanis and The Bachchans.  But Baba Ram-raheem has outdone all of them to have achieved so much extravagance and luxury and opulence.
The investigation has revealed that all his fifteen bungalows, built around 'the wonders of the world' and underwater theme titled, the Amoeba, built around the planets and space, titled the Sun, the Eiffel Tower palace,  the Taj Mahal palace,  Disneyland themed bungalow, etc., all these have seven star luxuries.  Wow!

Whichever way this baba has erred,  it cannot be denied that he has genius, evil genius,  but genuine genius nevertheless.  And there are so many others who would cash in on their 'evil' genius, if they could, without being caught.  And then some of them are 'caught'.

Everyone wants luxuries and for that, everyone wants cash,  whether it is a Shahrukh Khan or a Rabdi Devi.  I can give you one recent example of avarice,  wherein the very 'famous' Mr. Arjun Rampal was contacted to grace a certain school level function,  and promote his movie Daddy too.  His PR team conveyed to us that for 45 minutes of his precious time,  we would have to shell out a whopping eight lakhs.  So then, when we judge Ram-raheem, it should be noted that he too used his initiative to earn a luxurious lifestyle by managing to dupe the vulnerables.  And all of them went into his 'dera' of their own free will.

Why should the spider be denied his bait of the fly?

56-THE INDIAN BOVINE.

The female of any species is not the more beautiful gender in nature.  The peacock sports the colourful feathers while the peahen is nondescript.  This holds true for all animals and birds and insects, even the marine life.  Human females resort to make-up and colourful clothes, to attract the male, which is a contradiction in nature.  But now, another female species has won a special status, in spite of being the female counterpart, a luxury reserved for the males.

The Indian cow!  This female has no need for any make up etc.,  as religious Hindus touch it reverently as they pass by, and then they kiss their fingers.  Near Hindu temples, the cow enjoys a special status of reverence.   It is the duty of Hindu worshippers to pay the cow's caretaker and feed a little grass to the cow.  Rich devotees pay more and treat the cow to special 'ladoos' that the care taker prepares, with wheat husk, flour, jaggery, and water.  It is a profitable business for these illiterate women,  because as the care taker of the 'holy' cow,  their status is automatically elevated substantially,  and they to are offered new sarees and cash tributes.  They also profit by collecting the cow's urine, which is bought by the devotees, for its medicinal value.  Quite a few people will vouch for the medicinal qualities of the urine having healed some or the other persistant rash that they though was uncurable.

All Gujarati and Jain shopkeepers have started to display a money box in the shape of a white cow, on their counters.  My sincere advice to all shopkeepers of other faiths is to do the same.  It is an effective ploy to confuse fanatics, who attack randomly, accusing the victims of cow slaughter or beef consumption.

Baba Ramdev has floated a floor cleaner made from cow's urine,  and it is advertised as a natural disinfectant, and bio-friendly too.  The advertisement also counsels the public to buy this product and save the cow from the slaughter house. 

My personal experiences with the cow are both bitter and sweet.  I am very cautious whenever I walk in the vicinity of the temples near my house.  It is not a pleasant experience to have one's sandle right in the middle of fresh cowdung.  If I have to cross the road at an unmanned signal and a cow comes sauntering along,  then it is very safe to cross the road as all traffic comes to a standstill for 'her majesty' the cow to walk on safely.  If ever I desperately jay walk, then angry vehicle drivers honk incessantly and almost run me down.  But the cow can walk along any road with immunity.

In our Zorastrian religion, the cow's consecrated urine is used for religious cleansing of the human before a navjote, a wedding and even at the funeral.  Legend says that our prophet, Zarathustra, was saved from being trampled by a herd of cattle as a new born baby, when evil men had placed him in their path.  So, technically and religiously, Zorastrians too must refrain from eating beef, as a reminder of past favours of the cow.

As a teacher of eight year olds, it is not so easy to let the students realize that the bullock cart is manned by the males and that the 'cow' is not allowed to be made to do 'work'.  That makes it very important to educate the students about the different parts of a cow and bull.  So I  start with the dewlap, the brisket, the nostril and the muzzle, the horns,  the hoof, the rump and the switch.  Then the udder and the teats.  Then we discuss how the cow and bull ruminate and chew cud, and how their stomach has four special compartments.  We discuss the colours of its skin, and tongue.  I also inform them about the cholestrol that people eat as a delicacy and which is sold in handcarts on the road, and is known as 'baall-lee'.  Then the awkward explanation about how a cow produces milk for its new born, but humans steal the milk.

Very often, one sees old and skinny cows, roaming on the road, their rump covered with dried dung, flies hovering all over their body, as they seem too weak to swing their tails and shoo them away.  I have even seen crows pecking away at the exposed wound on a cow, and the public would still touch its 'good' parts reverently and pass on.  I have seen cows sitting in the hot sunlight outside a temple with their mouth lathering with thirst, and the caretaker only keen on asking devotees to pay for some grass and feed it.

Recent news reports have highlighted the fanatic behaviour of certain Hindus who have suddenly earned the post of 'gaurakshaks' or 'cow-protectors'.  They take it into their hands to lynch any person who they suspect is out to slaughter a cow, or anyone who they assume is consuming beef.   I prefer vegetarianism,  but I have numerous friends who enjoy beef.  I prefer acrylic bags, shoes and belts, but I admire the well made leather products that I see in the market.  But then, I am not a Hindu and so I suppose it is easy for me to be passive about the situation.

The most recent change that I have observed is that if a temple cow and its caretaker are approaching me from the opposite direction, on the footpath,  I am the one who has to cower into a safe distance, because the cow care taker now walks with her head held high and an almost defiant demeanour, as opposed to the previous diffidence that she used to sport.  I suppose that in Uttar Pradesh, the cows now enjoy a very secure life, almost like the z-security given to important government officials.  Oh! What luxury it must be for Nandini, the most favoured among the five hundred cows in Yogi Adityanath's Gaushala.  It was breaking news, when the general public was informed how the newly appointed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, wakes up at 3a.m. and feeds his cows, before eating his own breakfast. Residing in a small flat, in a multistorey building, even owning a pet dog is not easy.    Hmmmm,  wow, so good to be a cow, now.

 

55 - A MESSAGE TO THE MODI

It would be a grass roots eye opener for the 'great' Modi to please visit CST, disguised as a woman.  And then he must visit the ladies' toilet.  For Rs.5/ I think that the caretaker there earns more than even the platform ticket sales.

Women of all classes and creeds and ages,  are desperately crowding into the dirty and derelict toilets at the CST.  The narrow entrance is blocked by the woman in charge, who demands her money before you can enter furthur.  The stench drowns your senses and the flooded and cracked floor tiles are a danger that one has to overcome and walk inwards.  Three doors, so soiled that I flinched to even touch one when I managed to wait until it was my 'turn' to use the toilet.

The pushing and squeezing between the sweaty female bodies is not a pleasant experience at all.  The toilet doors are cracked and two have no inner latches.  One toilet was flooded.  The one I entered, was in such a sorry state of disrepair and uncleanness, that if my need was not so urgent, then I would never have entered such a disgustingly unhygienic 'toilet'.

That is one of the reasons that I enjoy visiting any mall.  At least the toilet facilities are decent and clean.  There is an attendant and there are washbasins and toilet paper and  clean clean toilets.

Recently I had to go to Dadar to travel by the Shivneri, and the ladies' toilet at the bus stand is usable for rupees five.  It is a very narrow squeeze and the window slats are in disrepair, but the steel toilet was clean.  And then I visited the toilet at the Pune depot of the same bus service, and that was so so unusable.  Charges were rupees five, but the entire inner area was flooded in 2 inches of unclean water .......and only one of the three enclosures was usable.  There was no door latch and it was dirty and smelly. Yuck, yuck and yuck.

If you are shopping at Crawford Market, after walking through the numerous crowded lanes, you feel thirsty, and visit any restaurant to quench your thirst, but you will not be able to use a toilet, because they say that they have none.  Only one restaurant has  a loo for customers but access is restricted for one, only after you have placed your order, because people tend to enter, use the loo and leave.  The  main door of the hotel has the message,  washroom is only for authentic customers.

So many shops all over Mumbai, with men and women working there, so many traffic constables working on the roads, so many taxi drivers all over the place,  where do they manage to relieve themselves?

There is a very posh restaurant near my house, where rich people arrive in expensive cars to eat there.  The drivers wait in the car and very often relieve themselves behind the parked car.  It is so embarrassing to be walking along the narrow road and then realize that some fellow is urinating close to the path that I am using.

Mr. Modi,  your endeavour to encourage the Indian public to use toilets and not defecate and urinate in open spaces is very correct but there need to be more free public toilets all over India.  There are whole families living on footpaths and on the beach in Mumbai and they defecate on plastic bags and on paper and put it into the drains near their haunts, by lifting the cover.  So if anyone is walking along a footpath where the draincover has a rope tied around the handle lid, then that is the easy access lid for the toilet outlet, for the footpath dwellers.

I would like to take the prime minister for a walk along the road in 'posh' south Mumbai, even along the route to the chief minister's bungalow,  because travelling in an air conditioned car does not let you see the ground reality.