Advertisements for gold and jewellery assault you on all television channels. Invariably, the setting is the fat Indian wedding. Even the glamorous female actors from Bollywood make an appearance in these ubiquitous commercials. The level of competition and the soaring profits, no doubt, foster this trend.
Most of these ads are pretty much a khichidi. You have seen one and you have seen them all. Recently, in an ad, a beaming bride was seen getting decked up for the occasion. A renowned Bollywood female actor appears and the bride is positively elated. Only then, you are shown that the bride is confined to a wheel chair. Never mind all that. She gushes that she has watched all films of the glamorous diva. Especially Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and the last wedding scene at least 50 times, and how it moved her to tears every single time! The Bollywood icon presents her with a diamond necklace. The girl gets all she wants on the same day. The story line beats all others, hands down.
Often, though, the desire need not be so extravagant. In mid-eighties when we were postgraduate students, TV sets were a rarity and so were swanky resorts. We were once watching the biggies of the business world having a bash in one of those resorts on an exotic island. A picture of bliss? My colleague wryly remarked that the main concern of those eminent elders would be whether they had a proper peristaltic movement in the morning. I suspect that he had something there.
Do you remember that in the 70s, you needed all the luck and goodwill of those in the telephone exchanges to get through to a distant city? Cartoonist Abu Abraham remarked that he started his day invoking the deity to grant him a ringtone on his landline.
Even in fairy tales, long before Mrs G made them paupers by abolishing the privy purses, there were poor kings, or so we are told. Remember, there are no questions to be asked when fairy tales are recounted; you gulped them down willy-nilly, very much like those rulers were made to do, except for the Air India Maharajah who survived the tsunami. There was this genie who appeared to one such impoverished monarch and granted him one wish. The Rajah pleaded with the genie to advance his pay day by a week. Imagine!
Now what would be topping my bucket list?
At 20, I might have wished to ride a premium two-wheeler, but since the companies those days wanted the payments in hard currency, and I was not blessed with an uncle working in the US or the UK, I shelved the idea. I always dreamt of a trip to the Arctic Circle and a ride on a sledge, just like they show on the nature channels. And what about having a husky as a pet? Then I realised that these aspirations are not for the also-rans. By the way, last year I turned 60, and the preoccupation of those distinguished senior citizens, seems to be creeping up on me, too. It just goes to show that your desires and wish list vary so much from person to person. Besides, it is so much dependent on your station in life.
Likewise, will there be a tectonic shift in the craze for the yellow metal in the Indian psyche? If you have a cursory glance at the globe, you see that this fatal attraction is more in the subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula. The European races have eschewed this as they advanced in technology and became more rational in their thinking. Perhaps this day is not too far in time when our countrymen emulate the people of the West. Just perhaps.
(Dr Kuruvilla P.K. is a psychiatrist working at Parumala in Pathanmthitta district of Kerala. Views are personal.)
