Monday, December 05, 2005

Painting the town red!

But first, the papers reliably inform me that Amitabh Bachchan recently consulted a numerologist which was the reason he changed his monkey cap from red to blue. I frankly thought the red one did a good job of hiding his baldness. Of course, one has to comment on the sneaky, shady underhanded tactics employed by Aaj Tak to get into the Big B's room. Not a bad job, but the man is ill for gods sake, and honestly it shouldn't be done. I believe the reporter involved has been seriously reprimanded and if PC had to go apologise to the Big B, then it shows that the man didn't take to this invasion of his privacy too well. However, India Today, at the other end of the spectrum of the same group goes and fires a fusilade at the Congress, which I'm glad at least one mainstream publication is. God knows what made Aniel Mehtrani talk (fear of being made a scapegoat perhaps - which has a strange tendency to open people's mouths) but talk he did and Natwar Singh, despite using every crutch available - including the fact that he is a Jat - to survive finds it seemingly impossible to do so. Now, we just have to get rid of that clown Abhimani Ramdoss from the Health Ministry before India ends up dealing with a gigantic AIDS crisis (no pre-marital sex please we're Tamil????)
Anyway, the point of this post is wondering why Indians chew pans and then spit out the supari along with the colouring agent to festoon pavements, roads, buildings, trains, and god knows what else. Some buildings have even resorted to using images of gods on the corners to prevent people from spitting. Throughout the Bombay suburban rail system, the tracks facing the platforms seem to have been painted by a million mouths. Its rather disgusting! But then again, I'm a smoker and I believe a nonsensical (Union Health Ministry style) crackdown won't help - but maybe the installation of some spittoons will. Whenever I ask someone why he spat onto a wall, he'll retort, where else? And I will have admit that the person is right. I assume an investment of a few thousands on some spittoons might have a few lakhs in painting costs.
Either that, or we should go ahead and decide to paint India in an universal shade of Paan-Red.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, a pretty high-ranked IAS guy once told me, ``People behave in accordance with the environment you put them in.''

He was sorta right... which is why you'll never see anyone spitting in the Delhi metro. If someone chucks a wrapper onto the tracks, he gets frowned at by a million folks.

But then again, the CRPF guys don't let you onto the platform if you have pan in your mouth.

Just imagine, if you had giant hoardings all over bombay, of a super-erect penis, with a condom on it. We'd come close to eliminating aids :)

can't ever happen. But if it does, it'll be cool for kids to talk about it over dinner with their moms :) yay. i'm an ad guru.

Anonymous said...

the aaj tak caper, reminded me of one did u know that one of particular incident ... one of my colleagues walked straight into the hospital room where Ashok Jain (father of Sameer and Vineet) was battling for his life. He even shook hands with the Sr Jain and said I am so-and-so from XY newspaper, and I came here to enquire about your health.
The poor man almost had a heart attack. One of the brothers then called up my Big Boss to complain.
The Big Boss in return sent a congratulatory mail to the reporter :)

K said...

That reporter never worked with with the Jain's I assume.

Anonymous said...

absolutely :)