Aiswarya Rai and the wolf whistle: Published articles/DNA 1

Article in DNA, June1, 06

Aiswarya and the wolf whistle:
The fall of the last male bastion!


Aiswarya “giving it back” to the guys, and in fact, whistling better than them, is surely the last straw, for men watching advertising.

Just see what these guys are being subjected to.

Chased out of a girls’ hostel for wanting to be Fair and Handsome.

In the college classroom, we have Adam teasing. Girls go “yes, yes, yes” when his Fastrack-wearing hand goes up to answer the attendance roll call. All in good humour, collectively, in front of everyone… even the other guys enjoy it.

If you are in the marriage market – watch out. There are girls out there, who treat a man like a dog on a leash… you’ll have to sit when they say sit, and talk when they say talk, thought they may not actually let you talk. So don’t let it happen to you, do register at jeevan saathi dot com.

If you are in the army too, watch out. The lady may be in disguise and may not belong to your side at all… and she may try to distract and seduce you by undressing in public in her reversible Levi’s jeans.

If you are a young husband working in a BPO, don’t for a minute imagine that your wife will be waiting for you with a cup of coffee, crooning, “it’s been a hard night’s morning”. On the other hand, you’ll have to wake her up with tea and breakfast. And while you are at it, do try not to be so sloppy. And if you are Abhishek Bachchan, you’ll have to keep everything green for her with an LG refrigerator.

But if you had a night off, and if you’ve given her a good time, she may just tell the world about it as she clings behind you on your bike… it all depends on her Moods.

If she wins an innocent bet, she may go to the extent of getting you to roll out endless papads, so be careful before shooting your mouth off on some inconsequential detail about any bank, most of all SBI.

If you don’t pick up the chance to rub some suntan on their back, they’ll call you dumb, dumb, dumb… though you may get to buy an Indica Xeta. But if you don’t drive carefully, she may just say Bye Bye to you with her lovely new VIP suitcase.

There was a time when women complained that women in advertising are being shown as props and objects. I mean, we asked, why should you always show a woman slaving over her husbands shirt, or cooking delicious food, or soothing her child’s forehead? Aren’t we women in our own right, we demanded. Don’t we have a soul, we shrieked. Should we only be portrayed in the roles we play, we argued. Do we always have to be so good? And so BORING?

The Ariel husband obliged us by washing the sheets - oh my god, a man washing clothes, this is a paradigm shift in Indian advertising, we thought! But even then, wasn’t he sweet, flirting with his wife like that? And wasn’t she sweet too? And weren’t they both so sweet together?

Well, the pendulum has swung. Now, we are being assertive and bitchy and arrogant. We are taking revenge, giving men a hard time and generally having great fun at their expense.

And mind you, “age does not wither nor custom stale her infinite variety”. Those little old ladies, who missed the Great Indian Feminist Movement, are catching up, and how.

If you give her a chatar patar candy, she’ll blow the whistle on the boss when he visits you. She won’t think twice about getting her gang together and take a train ride all the way, just to surprise her brother with laddus. She doesn’t mind receiving a diamond, because a diamond does not know the age of the wearer. And, if her husband hadn’t taken SBI life insurance, she may consider remarriage if you give her a Titan. That is, if the Femina daughter didn’t get to her earlier.

So the moral of the story is, the dal in the pressure cooker is the last thing you should be worrying about. Leave it to the guys with the weak whistles. For, as the bike ad says, “Why should boys have all the fun?”