By Deepa Majumdar
Three memories stand out in my mind from those halcyon days of my childhood in the Shillong-of-the-sixties. The first is that of Kanchi’s shop at the street corner behind our home. A small rough shed, decorated colorfully … replete with gaudy streamers, greasy bottles of goodies, bundles of bidis, and matchboxes … Kanchi’s shop was a child’s paradise. One could stand there for hours simply exploring the many exquisite delights to the taste buds and the senses. Kanchi herself was a presence … My favorites were the delicious tamarind sweets that Kanchi sold at 3 paise each. Sharp and tangy, they simply melted in your mouth after setting your taste buds on fire. I mention Kanchi’s shop because it was the clear opposite of what the business model prescribes today. Anything but homogenous or sterile,it was a far cry from the way franchises look today. Every nook and cranny possessed the indelible stamp of Kanchi’s originality, business acumen, and artistic sense. Unlike the Walmart behemoths that look exactly like one another, Kanchi’s shop could never be replicated. The idea of advertising her shop was wholly inimical to the Kanchi-type of entrepreneur. You knew of her store by the whisper of your taste budsrelishing their lingering memories. When you shared your sweets with a friend, the point was not to add to Kanchi’s profits. The point was to share the joy of tangy tamarind. The fact that other kids then flocked to Kanchi’s shop was a side-effect. The ubiquitous profit motive was truly absent in those days. I can remember so called hotels (as all restaurants were called) in Bengal, where they fed you sumptuously … as if you were in your own home … with waiters bending over backwards to show hospitality and love, especially to little children like myself. A glass of water never cost any money.
My second memory is that of travelling down the Shillong-Guwahati road. We the children always sang during these journeys. In those days the forests that flanked this road were pristine, stately, and verdant. If you loved nature like we did, you could feast your eyes on the never-ending luxury ofthe quiet greenof conifers up-in-the-hills, so different from the disquiet of the tropical forests farther down in the valley. Yet every now and then, rising from these thickets of beautiful dark green was this sharp anomaly … really a monstrosity … a manmade intrusion that stands as the epitomeof modernity … an advertisement! Rising above the svelte trees was this huge billboard that screeched one word … only one word in black upon a dull white background … “SELVEL.” In my child’s mind I had no idea what this word meant, nor what this monstrosity was meant to convey.All I knew was that it was the total opposite of a tree … that its essence clashed with that of the tree or the forest. The very notion that something had to be blared aloud … imposed on the senses … not to inform or request … but to merely sell… was wholly inimical to our cultural ethos in those days of innocence. All I felt was this sense of being crashed upon … interrupted … jolted out of the harmony of that sea of stately conifers. Without knowing what it was I decided that I really hated “SELVEL.”
My third memory, which many readers of my generation may recall, was this small Hindu temple that stood at a sharp corner of the road as we almost reached Guwahati from Shillong. Drivers slowed down as they approached the temple and tossed coins, sometimes whispering a prayer. This temple was built in this particular spot, because many road accidents had occurred here, thanks to the sharp bend in the road. The direct purpose was to respect the dead and infuse good vibrations perhaps – not to solve the problem of accidents. But the accidents did cease. As I sit here at my desk in northern Indiana, I cannot help but muse that like the advertisement, which stands as a symbol of modernity, this temple and the reason it was built too are symbols. Theyrepresent the enormous differences that linger between east and west … between the pre-modern and post-modern … between the heart of India and its post-colonial sheen. Imagine if this dangerous bend in the road had existed anywhere in Europe or America … causing many accidents … some of them fatal … What would these western authorities do? They would appoint a commission to investigate the problem, send the road engineers to make recommendations, solicit bids from various companies, offer contracts, and fix the problem by an engineering feat to make the road safer. But India did something far more sophisticated … something innately corruption-free. India too solved the problem … not by means of the restless techno-business spirit … not by directly seeking to stop the accidents … but by building a temple. Drivers naturally slowed down once the temple was built because they wanted to show their homage. As a result, the accidents naturally stopped. This, I realize is the basic difference between east and west … even as I celebrate the basic dictum taught by Swami Vivekananda … that east and west mutually needed one another.
In the context of India’s current socio-economic crises, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is right in placing toilets above temples. But the metaphor of the temple … when it represents genuine piety … cannot be dispensed without dire consequences. Today, the crisis in western civilization is a crisis of the “I.” It is a crisis in self-knowledge … a dire egotism that expresses itself in the retching soul, externalized beyond all measure, searching in vain for itself in daring acts in the external world. Having lost God, it trumps the ego, fortifying the “I” with the fanciest of legal protections. The sum result is a burgeoning therapy industry, to which the withering soul turns in desperate thirst, in search of its highest Self.
It is in the highly titillating sensate world created by this retching soul, a child of mature capitalism that the advertisement fits in. What is an advertisement in essence? Neither a work of art, nor a mere communiqué, both of which merely announce and represent, at best attracting, the advertisement cajoles, wheedles, entices. Traversing the naturally hostile battleground between buyers and sellers, the advertisement tries to mollify through falsetto tones of persuasion. Hardly a voice of friendship, but rather, wholly artificial, the voice of the advertisement is rather that of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In essence, a voice of self-centered persuasion couched in dulcet tones, the advertisement cares nothing about the needs of the individual, whom it degrades to the mere customer. Always a disruption, the advertisement ruptures the mood, by intruding with a product that can clash wholly with the event it sponsors. Thus serious tragic news about a genocide may be interrupted with impunity with an advertisement of Coca-Cola, if the news event is sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company. Inherently an imposition, the advertisement advertises not merely the product it blares aloud, but without meaning to, it expresses in effect, the dearth it stands for … namely loss in faith. The advertisement advertises, because it relies on the human will alone to impose the product it sells on the hapless customer. It does not rely on the divine will, nor on faith. Often students here in the west see advertisement as something indispensable … an artifact we need in order to be informed about the product. But for advertisements, we would not know about products, they argue. They are nonplussed by examples of the great sages of the world about whom, ordinary people know, not through advertisement, but through the collective consciousness. When a poor pious soul hears a divine command in a dream, to sell his meager possessions and visit a place of pilgrimage to pay homage to a holy man or woman, this is the very nemesis and converse of advertisement. This type of subtle communication is natural, where an advertisement is contrived. This is selfless where an advertisement represents at best, rational self-interest. The subtlest and greatest of human thoughts and deeds cannot be advertised. One cannot and should not advertise one’s love for others. For love disappears when it is thus incontinent. Nor should one advertise one’s virtues.
The advertisement is therefore, in essence, not only an incontinent intrusion, but also futile … To think that just because it cajoles and wheedles the customer to buy the product it advertises, that customers will actually flock to purchase this product, is to wholly underestimate the sovereignty and self-possession of the customer. It is a sign of the crisis of the post-modern world that advertisements unsettle the landscape as often as they do … whether the outer landscape or cityscape, or the landscape of our minds. Not only futile, the advertisement is, in essence, futility itself.
Imagine a day when the advertisement is turned on its head to become a venue through which individuals express (not advertise) their needs … not sellers their products. Imagine a mother who needs food for her children “advertising” this need. Imagine the advertisement now serving as a meeting point where need (not demand) solicits supply … not the other way around. Imagine companies fighting one another to serve this customer-mother … not competing to chase profits. All the billions now wasted on advertisement would now be used to serve the genuine needs of people. This is no idle utopia. All it needs is the human will to empathy and unselfishness.