Mammals are known to extremely good parents, they take care of their young ones to ensure that they genes they transmitted in them are passed on successfully their offsprings and so on. Thus they say that our bodies perish but our genes live on in our children and their children. Immortality, or at least the concept, is thus accomplished in some way.
Humans take it to quite another level and chase their genes with zealot fervor. Such fanaticism about the genes that they’d disown their own offsprings and at times even exterminate them if the latter were to dare transmit the genes to an individual other than their own type or a type they consider inferior to them and thus they accrue discrimination in yet another form. This is seen around the world to some degree but none to an extent as in our motherland. How wrong it is to do so might be debatable but let us see how someone, once more, used it as a business strategy.
The advertisement starts with an old couple spotting a young girl exiting a building with a big guy with long curly hair. The two seem to be happily conversing and sit on a bike and move out from the scene. The old man watched in disbelief and inquires from his wife if the girl he just saw was someone by the name Nisha; he asks "is that our Nisha?". The old woman, alarmed as well, breaks out into flurry of sentences. Meantime there’s a decently dressed young man right behind them eavesdropping into the conversation. The old woman tells her partner that they should have consulted the “community” temple, “community” astrologer and the “community” elders. The young man behind them suggests that they should check up “community” matrimony dot com (communitymatrimony.com) as well. The old woman snubs him by saying that it would be another “dot com” but the ad goes on, in some vague way, to quickly say how useful this website would be to find partners in your community. The ad ends in the old woman resting peacefully on a chair, a big smile embellishing her face, while she looks with the contentment at the happy picture of the aforementioned “Nisha” with a decent looking guy, I can’t say if it was the same guy who suggested the website to them, in which case it made him a nifty man.
There you go, communitymatrimony.com, if you have some girl in your family who’s seeing a guy outside the “community”, you should definitely refer to this website. I do not how it would be different from shaadi.com or bharatmatrimony.com but sure there has to be some USP there.
Let us see what the ad, subliminally, enforce in one’s brain. Firstly the girl appears decently dressed and therefore, maybe even well educated. What’s wrong with the guy? He’s dressed in western outfit, has a western hairstyle (unless maybe you wanna call those hair a la aghori baba style). From his attire and appearance, he could pass for a student. That he owns a bike, also strengthens the presumption. What can possibly be presumed is that the two are seeing each other. Now according to the societal norms, a nubile-girl, again a debatable term, shouldn’t be allowed to exercise her free will to choose her partner. There are “values” that are very skillfully imbued into a girl’s psyche from a very early age. The ad underscores the fact that in our society it is not decent to have a boyfriend and be seen in public; someone’s gonna see you and you’ll bring a bad name to the family and therefore the “community”. Also that it is totally unacceptable to have a boyfriend from another “community”. Girls, when seen indulging in acts like roaming around freely with a boy, worst case scenario a boy from another community, must be married-off in earnerst. There are innumerable examples all around us of well-educated middle class, even high class families doing this. Married-off is more like disposed-off; off you go, keep our genes in our community.
The old couple shown in the ad is well dressed and conversing in English. Very smartly the ad doesn’t represent any one community as the decent well-educated old couple could belong to any “community” or religion. They’re definitely neither the filthy rich nor smelly poor, they are people who want to live in the society according to the rules laid down by the community, they’re people who educate their daughters, daughter who’ve studied with people like us, daughter who’ve been “arranged” to be married within the “community”, sometimes with, and at others without their consent. These are people who have access to the internet; these are the modern Indians.
The ad also plays to the fact that people from one community look down upon people from another community. As is shown by the fact that the “community” boy is shown to be more decently dressed, more appealing and appears to be the more acceptable of the two. They’ll sell what you want. If this is what you want, they’ll make it and make money from it.
A well-meaning ad for a society with good intentions but then did someone not say “the road to hell is paved with good intention”.
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