The Hindu Business Line : TV ads that punch life and more…

Two TV ads from Airtel and Havells Cables, on Star Cricket channel offer pleasing viewing like the India-Australia Test series. The Perth Test match brought back the fun in viewing a five-day game and the two ads, sometimes cutting into the Perth game, could win applause.

Beginning 2000, Test matches have seen quite unpredictable finishes like the one-dayers as that format has made the game fast enough for the contestants in a five-day match to arrive at a conclusion. With no office to report to, one has been spending most of the mornings in front of the TV set watching cricket and the Australian Open, with ads for company.

The 10 or so overs by Ishant Sharma to Ponting in the second innings were the best moments at Perth and was on par with that of Javgal Srinath at Johannesburg. Ponting had no clue proving that good cricket is more difficult than sledging and fake appeals. This writer has lost esteem for Gilchrist, Clarke, Symonds and Sreesanth whose noise does not match any talent. And decent Kumble has blossomed to be mentioned with Frank Worrell. One has yet to come across a piece in the marketing pages of business journals outlining the process an ad is made from the first thought to the final flash on the TV screen.

The Airtel ad passes by the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, while Havells Cables is quite close to one of the short stories by Munshi Premchand titled Idgah.

The Airtel ad one is joyous over is that of two young boys crawling out of barbed wire fences running parallel to play a round of football with a voice saying, “There is no wall; no barrier, that can keep us apart if only we talk to each other.” It is a spare, stark message with the two kids reminding one of Darsheel Safary in Tare Zameen Par.

My daughter Vidya picked up John Boyne at a book exhibition and one started on it cautiously as it seemed to be yet another piece based on the killing of Jews by Hitler. Western civilisation will never be able to get over Out-With, the term Boyne mints; yet, it has not kept away the Jews from going after their Arab neighbours; like India and Pakistan can never explain the killings of Partition; that will always set down the contours of our friendship with the exception of Mahatma Gandhi.

Musing over it, if given a chance Gandhiji would have surely advised Lord Rama not to battle with Ravana; rather, he would have preferred a satyagraha by Lord Rama. Nine-year-old Bruno is an innocent kid like all kids. His father takes him out of Berlin to a house somewhere where he misses “most” his grandmother and grandfather.

“That day he sat down with a pen and paper and told her how unhappy he was there and how much he wished he was back home in Berlin. He told her about the house and the garden and the bench with the plaque on it and the tall fence and the wooden telegraph poles and the barbed-wire bales and the hard ground beyond them and the huts and the small buildings and the smoke stacks and the soldiers, but mostly he told her about the people living there and their striped pyjamas and cloth caps, and then he told her how much he missed her and he signed off his letter ‘your loving grandson, Bruno’,” writes Boyne.

Follows the strangely titled chapter activating the book: The Dot That Became a Speck That Became a Blob That Became a Figure That became a Boy. That Boy is Shmuel from Poland.

“Every afternoon that followed, Bruno returned to the place in the fence where they met, but Shumel was never there……He lifted the bottom of the fence up like he did whenever Bruno brought him food, but this time he reached his hand out and held it there, waiting until Bruno did the same, and then the two boys shook hands and smiled at each other. It was the first time they had ever touched.”

This may be the best moment to shift to Havells Cables with a boy making a chimta (tongs) out of the cables to help his mother make rotis without burning her fingers.

“Lo ma,” he says in Hindi, handing over the tongs. The final ad line is a trifle prosaic: “Wires that don’t catch fire.” With an unstated pride in her son, the young mother places a fresh roti and dal in a plate and hands it to her son.

Premchand writes: “Now listen to Hamid’s tale. Ameena (the grandmother) had come running out when she had heard his voice. She pulled him in her lap and began kissing him. Suddenly, she spotted the tong in his hands and stopped. “Could you find nothing else to buy in the entire fair?” Hamid answered guiltily, “Your fingers get burnt when you take the rotis off the fire; that’s why I bought it.”

Gulzar in an introduction to the book A Winter’s Night and other stories by Premchand, says: “At home, we had a tandoor in the courtyard, as was traditional in most households in Punjab. My mother used to bake rotis every evening. She would wet her hand, place the roti on her palm and in seconds would place it inside the burning tandoor to bake it.

“Despite her expertise she often had burn marks on her arms and occasionally bandaged fingers too, for the burns. That used to disturb me, but I never expressed it. A few years later, my textbook at school had another story by Premchand. It was a story called Idgah and uncannily it mirrored what I had observed in my own life.”

John Boyne and Premchand write ordinarily to punch life with a dash of art (or is it ad lines from the creative directors of the agencies?). Their offerings have a tang. Like the TV ads.

P. Devarajan

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TV ads that punch life and more…