Who Removed My "Cheese" (Billboard)?
By Deepak M. Rao

There are a set of "purists" for whom billboard advertisements on the main roads are a blot on the landscape. For yours truly though, they are an integral part of the city's skyline. But this morning, on the way to my office, I felt something amiss. My roving eye suddenly noticed the gaping hole in the familiar sky: The Krishnaiah Chetty and Sons' giant sized billboard - you know the model with an angelic face draped in a mélange of red cloth and a gold thread string over her shoulders - was gone! What a pity.

Frankly, I used to take the longer route to work whenever the price of petrol dropped below the Rs 51 level just to stare at the billboard. And worst of all, it was replaced by a 'Customer - Our God' ad by one of the fancy banks with a fancy name.

Recovering from the shock, I thought about all the customer-centric ads that adorned the city with merciless apathy. While I have nothing against private banks making money for themselves, I am dead against false ads. By false ads I mean, ads whose truth ends where the billboard does.

Nattily clad doormen opening the door of your car while Ms. High Net Worth Individual lazily looks around for her purse is not how things really work. All right, advertisements have the licence to purr, to exaggerate, mix metaphors, and play with the truth. But whatever happened to simple, unfussy and quick service without being accompanied by some colourful language from the bankmen.

Or take the ad where a call center employee puts you out of a 'technical snag.' Whenever I encountered a TS, all I ever got was to hear a full fifteen minutes of canned music. The same mindless, irritating drone over and over again. This and a million such ads have built up a bias in me against Nirma removing stains and nymphs flaunting the shine and spark of jewellery. 

Anyway, as I got to work, and switched on my PC, I received a flurry of mails. A few from my senior at work (the ones I looked at the last), an Estee Lauder mail displaying gifts for World Happy day, two from Times Jobs and such other junk mails. And then there was this mail from one Mr. P.K. Gupta. Intrigued by the name, since it sort of rang a bell, I read the mail, once, twice and many more times. I somehow could not believe my eyes.