That was early 90s. My two nieces, Aruna and Shubha who had completed their intermediate exam visited us at Hyderabad. Their purpose was to appear for EAMCET exam to seek admission into Engineering Colleges in the then Andhra Pradesh. They are daughters of two of my elder brothers, Seshagiri Rao and Vasant Rao. Their declared purpose of seeking engineering college admission in AP was only to play it safe since both of them were certain of their admission into colleges in Karnataka. Infact they had completed their intermediate course in Bangalore. So, their visit to Hyderabad was primarily to holiday with us for a few days and the EAMCET was only a pretext. We had a gala time. Once the exam was over, I wanted to take them to my eldest brother who was living in Mahendra Hills area of Secunderabad, about 10 kilometres from my home in Ameerpet.
My two nieces, my wife and I got into the car to go to Mahendra Hills. We were on Sardar Patel road and at the junction with Rastrapati Road, we saw a man with a well receded hairline and less dense hair looking at a roadside hoarding with an advertisement for the new pack of Clinic Plus shampoo. The ad was about an addition of 50% quantity in the sachet at the same old price of Re.1 per sachet so that even the lengthy, thick braid (జడ, pigtail or plait) of a traditional south indian girl could be washed with a single sachet of shampoo. The theme was "with one sachet, more hair could be washed." The ad wasn't looking attractive to the man with sparse hair and receded hairline standing across the road. The thought running through his mind on seeing the hoarding was as if to say why the company is only thinking of people with larger tuft of hair and their needs by giving added quantity of shampoo in the sachet. Running his fingers through the less dense and sparse hair on his head, he thought that even half of the quantity would suffice his need. The company wasn't being sensitive to the needs of people like him.
As if to summarise the disappointment of the baldy and the thoughts running in his mind and giving expression to all that she saw in that man's eyes, my wife shouted "why should I?"
Startled by hearing my wife's shout, I stopped the car immediately and asked my wife "what happened?" She drew our attention to the baldy and the hoarding on the other side of the road. She pointed to the anguish appearing on the face of the baldy on noticing the hoarding of a new Clinic Plus sachet with 50% extra quantity. His anguished look spoke a thousand silent words. He looked as if he was shouting hoarse "why should I" He was wondering why he should buy more quantity while he requires only just half of it and pay just 0.50 paise? "why should I, why should I" he seemed to be saying.
We three in the car couldn't stop laughing out at my wife's analysis of the baldy. We all agreed and said in unison "yes, why should he?"
That was a sparse haired man lamenting about the ad. Looking for 0.50ps sachet even with half quantity.
😀😂
ReplyDelete