Saturday, June 1, 2019

A Dark Kind of Art

"Luna mein hain no tension -trumpety music-
Chalane mein hain no tension -trumpety music-
Maintenance mein no more tension"
[Luna gives you no tension, in riding and in maintenance]

That's the one. Or something like it.

This was the first advertising jingle to find permanency in my head. A very humble two-wheeler, the 50 cc moped that was the Luna even gave its rider an option of pedalling to the next petrol station with its radical in-built cycle option. Back in its day, it wasn't without its quota of cool and the fact that my older brother, 11 years my senior, commanded one was no small matter of pride. This, I need not remind you, was in pre-liberalisation, single TV channel India.

To date, I am yet to ride the Luna except as a passenger (it was sold long before I reached riding age). I have had the unhappy and possibly unique experience of being dragged by one, knees scraping along the road, for a good 10-15 metres as a bump on the road dislodged me from the pillion seat and unlike Jack of Titanic fame, I refused to let go. I have also been sent flying by one, on a routine road crossing to catch the school bus, at a tender age (early primary school) when it was still physically feasible for a Luna to send me flying as it ran into me. The central message being that there is absolutely no reason for me to look upon it fondly but even then, that jingle... it never quite left me in the three decades since.

Advertising, at its dark core, is mass mind manipulation. It is designed to stamp an impression on impressionable minds and at its most nefarious, force us to buy things that we don't need at all. Want is created where there was none, greed where there was peace.

Be that as it may, advertising is also an outlet for storytelling which tries to tap into the moods of the time. The underlying wish to push their product notwithstanding, it is difficult not to appreciate the genuine effort put into channeling the right notes. 

The fruit drink company, Paper Boat, for example, seems to have mined that rich vein of nostalgia for those of us who remember a time when long railway journeys were a family institution, and a pocket-friendly adventure rolled into one (Read aforementioned 'Luna Days'). I wouldn't waste words on why these images work. They just do, and for that generation at which these ads are targeted, any explanation is superfluous.











I, for one, am yet to buy a Paper Boat product but I think the universe is a happier place if, after all the dust from the board-room meetings, sales targets and distribution networks has settled down, a creative managed to sneak out a story and a smile for someone who isn't even a customer.

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