Ok, I'm sorry to have to do this to you. Having been asked to write two essays on furnished topics, I came up with the following. And since this blog acts as a repository for most of my writings, here goes:
Live life for today
The theists may have a lot to say against this notion. After all, living life for some obscure promise in the afterlife, is what they claim we were born to do. Well, while they continue to live in the hope of someday reaching Paradise, I advocate living for the here and the now. What do you have to lose, except yourself?
While you’re young, there’s plenty of amusement to be derived from the world. Having been influenced by random rock stars who had also taken to following this style of thinking, several of the youth of today like to live ‘like there’s no tomorrow’. I suppose this is the most comfortable way to think because it keeps all sorts of worries, that you might otherwise have, at bay. If you live life only for the present, you don’t have to worry about how you’re going to ever pay off that car loan, you don’t have to think about who’s going to look after you when you’re old and dying and you most certainly don’t have to worry about whether all those cigarettes you’re smoking are going to give you lung cancer or not. No, living for today is so much easier.
What I just said may have sounded very pessimistic, albeit realistic. It’s just that I like to live for the present, as well, perhaps because of the way I’ve seen my father lead his life. Although he’d wanted to buy a Suzuki Grand Vitara all his life, he never did so because he was too busy saving money for the future. Now, while he has several savings at various locations and banks, he has aged – gone are the joys and passions of youth. At this point of time, there aren’t even any ‘chicks’ he could impress even if he went ahead a bought the jeep. None that my mother would approve of, anyway.
Sometimes it’s important to just let go, or there’s so much of good honest fun you could miss out on. I suppose that’s why it’s better to let tomorrow take care of itself. There’s a lot of life in the day that is; stop worrying about tomorrow, and just let go.
Influence of advertising on our lives
Six months ago I was quite satisfied with picking up a pack of Lays or Kurkure when the odd craving for unhealthy snacks arose. Now, thanks to ITC’s latest onslaught on modern India, we have Bingo as an alternative.
Now, I do not watch a lot of TV, mainly because of the lack of a television set at where I currently reside. The Bingo chips ads were, however, so widespread and popular that I had friends coming up to me describing these ‘amusing’ commercials that even had me going ‘what’s Bingo then?’ And that’s exactly how advertising through mass media works – it makes a product so familiar or tantalising to you, that soon you end up wanting some of it for yourself.
Until a year ago in Chennai, several residents had no idea what Barclays was. While you can blame that on the general ignorance of Chennai dwellers, the fact remains. A year ago, blue billboards starting popping up all over the place with a single word on it: “Barclays”. Six months later, a short line would appear below the word, describing things like how old the bank was, or how it was the first to revolutinise banking and other such statements. Ask anyone in Chennai today about Barclays and they’d give it to you like a walking encyclopaedia.
While I don’t object to advertising as such – after all, some ads are so creative that all you want to do is focus on them rather than the mind-numbing serials shown in-between them – what I do object to is the alarming impact it has on us. For instance, I have a friend who chimes in an ad jingle any time some word associated with it is spoken. While she may think it is ‘cute’, I find it just plain scary. It brings to mind George Orwell’s 1984. After all, mass media is a most effective way to brainwash the public into believing what you want them to believe.
It’s tough to ignore the words and images that are thrust out at you along the roads, at shopping malls, as you move through the city you live in. That’s probably the most frightening part about the advertising industry. It can plant a seed of thought in your mind that you may never have wanted there in the first place...
