Enjoyment - deferred!!

I have been wondering you know, about how the erstwhile 'normal' has become 'diabolical exceptions'.  Let me elaborate a bit here.

Enjoying a good meal was the norm once upon a time. I remember the pleasure on the faces of aunts and sisters when their culinary skills were appreciated by guests and dishes were polished off with relish. Cut to the present and a meal is all about calories, oats, protein shakes, keto and GM diets, and the need to "burn off" the guilty pounds supposedly gained after a decent meal. A day when one can eat to the heart's (and the tummy's content) is termed a 'cheat day! So one is basically being 'dishonest' with oneself when she/he eats well! There is no joy anymore in eating upto the heart's content. Food is more of a vile than a pleasure. The line between an optimum meal and  a strict diet even in conditions without any medical or health-related indication has become concretized and infallible.

Remember the afternoons when kids of the neighborhood  gathered after school to play? Actually play? No, there were no play stations or mobiles. There were no transformers or Barbie dolls. Yes, a few precious Hotwheels sporadically popped-up , courtesy either as  freebies with Maggie packets or as a generous gifts from benevolent relatives. Cricket, football, gharial-paani, chor-police, hide and seek, kabaddi - these were real entities, not just visuals on the idiot box or  phrases in nostalgic blogs. 

We now kvetch about being bored and stuck to the mundane. Everything seems to repeat itself without any adventure or surprise. So what we end up doing? Yes, you are right! We seek distractions in social media and by eating junk food ordered online. More fulfilling activities like reading a book, cooking for friends and family,  sewing,  gardening, painting, etc have all become unachievable fantasies for us - we are robbed of time and interest. 

There is no longer the urge in us to savour the finer nuances of life. In pursuing goals,  our personal needs and happiness have taken a beating. We can no longer even dream of dropping over at relatives' place without prior intimation. There is no joy left in watching the television; the exposure to thousands of channels has been so much that the pleasure of watching a television programme is long gone. Choices were handful earlier. Bharat ek khoj , Chitrahaar, Vikram-Betaal, He-man, Stoneboy,  Night-rider - we could count the programmes that we were allowed to watch in our fingertips. These days kids are encouraged  to stay glued to the mobile or the television so that the adults can continue chats with virtual friends or can  upload narcissistic selfies in various social platforms. 

Yes, things like smelling the first rain of the monsoons ( we stay cocooned inside our air-conditioned offices), bargaining over the price of a garment (since we order online now), cooking up a meal ( why bother when boxes of our favourite dishes are delivered at the doorstep) , etc are fast becoming mere childhood memories. 

I wonder about the fast disappearing cobblers ( who mend their shoes these days? A new pair is just a click away!). Like fossilized specimen (like me), the cobblers also now make rare appearances. No, I do not mean to say that I have remained unaffected and special. Rather, I feel that I over-react at times. Or is it that real time is indeed fast getting metamorphosed into virtual time???

Storm in the toast ….

These days we all tend to create enormous noise to get ourselves heard. There is so much of eagerness to push forward only our own viewpoints that most of the times we end up hearing only our own voices. The cacophony produced by city traffic at the peak hours sound milder than voices which are thrown like directionless meteors falling all over the earth.  

But there has been one lone voice which has made its presence felt for over five decades now. While it may be biased to talk about it in this space, I cannot rein in my urge to think of the issue. I am talking about the cute, ‘utterly butterly delicious’ Amul Girl (there seems to be no other appellation for her) who has spoken up at times when we, the people, have chosen to kept mum. Created in the year 1966 by art director Eustace Fernandes, our little nose-less moppet with her trademark polka-dotted frock (‘dress’, if we use the lingo of these days) has become an inseparable part of our lives. Her ungrammatical ‘butterly’ notwithstanding, our girl has survived and spoken her heart out over the decades on issues ranging from celebrity weddings to surgical strikes, from corporate scandals to rising fuel prices..

As I butter up my kids’ crunchy toasts with Amul butter, I wonder what makes our little wonder survive the blitzkrieg of celebrity endorsements and expensive ad campaigns. An eager search in the net tells me that all her ads are hand painted by referring to scrapbooks compiled by previous teams who were in charge of making those blue hair, round eyes, long lashes and the naughty smile come alive. In addition to the remarkable teamwork and apt marketing, I feel it is the timing of our Amul Girl’s punch lines which adds to her mass appeal. She embodies the simplicity which we associate with our childhoods and also the maturity which we have imbibed with age.

In her most recent avatar, our girl is seen in two illustrations donning Deepika Padukone's bright green vintage style and Aishwarya Rai Bachchhan's golden look in the Cannes, with each of them holding a slice of bread - "Gori tera gown badda nyaara” goes the tagline, a picture so cute that I cannot help smiling as I type. But our darling has had her share of legal repercussions too. With one-liners like ‘Satyam, Sharam, Scandalam’, ‘Dalmiyan mein kuch kala hain’, ‘Indian Airlines serves Amul butter – when it flies’ etc, she invited the ire and wrath of the respective stakeholders. But kudos to her creators who always stood by their ads, never buckling under the pressure.

Once a while, whenever situations have demanded, our girl has given up her trade-mark polka-dotted garment to wear situation-appropriate attires. Saluting in army fatigues, she knocked at every Indian’s heart after the Pathankot incident. Two blue-braids tamed by red-ribbons and looking extremely smart in a polka-dotted saree, our little lady embodied women empowerment. She has raised the toast (that too ‘buttered’!) to Malala Yousafzai, Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni to name a few. She has paid teary eyed tributes to Dr. Verghese Kurien, the man she owes her birth to (it is said that it was the only time the little one actually cried down from the billboards), APJ Abdul Kalam, Neerja Bhanot and many other eminent personalities. With expressions like ‘We’ve always practiced compulsory sterilization’, ‘Wayanad have it with butter?’, ‘Baaho se belly tak’, ‘Sharampal baba’, etc, our wonder girl has touched almost every aspect of India’s socio-political scenario. 

India has got a lot more than the White Revolution to thank Dr Verghese Kurien for. He, along with Sylvester DaCunha (the founder-chairman of DaCunha Communications that initiated the Amul ads) and Eustace Fernandes, gave us the fearless pint-sized symbol of wit, courage and truth. At a time when loud journalists and shrill politicians threaten to perforate our eardrums, we find a witty solace in that mischievous smile, doling out wisdom one after another with a clock-like precision.

Here is an ‘utterly butterly delicious’ unapologetic toast to our very own Amul Girl -  to a long life spanning many more decades filled with humour, adventure and lots of wonderful memories.