BRAND MANIA

A pair of Nikes and Lees, Gap tee, iPod Nano, CK eternity, LV handbag, Fossil and oh yeah I forgot the Oakleys – well I am sure you all know what products I have mentioned here. We can guess the product by the mere mention of its brand name or slogan – products have become synonymous with brands (e.g. for a layman iPod is a product and not a brand, most of the people don’t know that iPod is the brand name for a portable media player by Apple). Even if we are going down the lane to do the groceries, we want to be in our new Lees teamed with the new Gap t-shirt. Brands have become status symbols and prestige issues in our society. It is the brand revolution – we are living in the material world of labels – Chevy, Tag Heuer, MNG, The Body Shop, Esprit, KFC, Starbucks et al.
Cut to 5 years back and we were totally clueless what CK stands for or whether Cappuccino is a coffee or an Italian actor or even how to pronounce ‘Louis Vuitton’. We have become so brand conscious in the recent past that we are virtually covered with brands from head to toe - today our coffee is branded (we have masala chai at Starbucks and not at the roadside tea-stall anymore); kids want a Mcdonald happy meal on birthdays, Pepsi and Coke serve as the ultimate thirst quenchers – we have now even started to eat and drink brands, all our clothes have labels - be it national or international; the brands have conquered not only the apparel and shoe business but also the food and beverage industry. We want to be recognized, so we need to be branded and the more the better! Even kids have become brand conscious and are quite picky and choosy when it comes to shopping for clothes, toys or shoes - they know all about it. Brands have changed the socio-economic scenario in our country. Well, nothing is bad about brands but nobody has a plausible, convincing answer for what is so great about them!
What is a brand? An encyclopedia explicates a brand as a name, logo, slogan, and/or design scheme associated with a product or a service. Forget the technical description; a brand has now become an essential element of the culture, of one’s persona and obviously of our financial system. It is like a feel good factor and a necessity for most people. Let us accept the fact that we are slaves to brands .Consumerism and brands are not just restricted to western world but are now also associated with the developing third world countries, thanks to the emergent higher income groups or the upper middle class and the improved standard of living. The incessant hammering of commercials and glamorized endorsements of products and services are exerting a pull on the young and the old alike and we are all surrendering ourselves to the brands, in order to belong to the clique (our reputation is at stake, and we want to be like everybody else yet maintain our individual identity, right? ) So if you have the money, spend it – if you have more, spend more because yeh dil maange more!

BEING SOMEBODY

There are times when you wish you could rewind the cassette named “life” and alter a few events in the past – convert some frowns to smiles, some wrongs to rights, some delays to some timely actions, some hatred to love, some gibberish to something significant and something incomplete to something complete. In such a case, these “somes” and “somethings” and “undos” and “redos” will be never ending! Why isn’t our life as uncomplicated as computers? Why don’t we have certain keys like Ctrl+Alt+Del or backspace or Esc? If you take a wrong step simply erase or delete it, if you have had enough of something/someone dump it into the recycle bin and if you suddenly realize you need that particular thing (person!) again, just restore it/him/her. Oh how we would all love to have a recycle bin around! Why can’t you just save something that you are just half way through and open it later and continue with it! And make different files and folders for everything and classify everyone and everything accordingly. (Well, do you really want to be that organized, are people that easy to understand so as to pigeonhole them in specific groups - naaah!)

This feeling is utterly momentary – if our life were as banal and trouble-free it would be mechanical and monotonous. Emotions will lose their importance because we would want everything to be just perfect and pleasurable. Expressions will be restricted to laughter and smiles; there would hardly be any exhilaration, surprises, anger, fear, suspicion, sorrow, jealousy et al. Utopia will just be a nine days wonder and it will start bothering us real soon. We have to spice up our routine and make the most of every single moment. For us, things happen only once, life happens just once and nothing recurs (cliched but the truth); and it is often the case that we don’t know what we have got it till it’s gone. Utopia is surreal and we tend to long for something that we don’t have so trust me when everything is so idyllic we would yearn for imperfection and chaos.

Come on, we are human beings we cant live without arguments, challenges, envy, hardships – we undoubtedly want to live without all these but practically we need them as a source of motivation to lead our lives. They say nobody is perfect and we don’t want to be a nobody! We are somebody. I am somebody.