But my goodness, judging from the TV ads, India looks like a fabulously itchy place.
I’m keeping myself company while working late (again) with the second cricket test between Oz and Bangladesh, this one from Chittagong. It seems to be the live Indian feed again, complete with commercials.
It seems like half the ads are for creams and powders to keep your body from spontaneously swelling, turning red, and driving you slowly insane with pain. This must happen a lot, apparently. Not being able to understand Hindi makes the whole thing a notch more delirious. Neat!
Now that I finally have that dang Dermi-Cool jingle out of my head (see earlier post, below, and praise Shiva for the relief), I’m giggling at a competing ad, depicting, in sequence: a fashionable young man in considerable discomfort, a cartoon of a bright red swollen crotch of ambiguous gender, and then the same guy dancing with a cute babe in a disco.
Oddly, a Hindi slogan begins the ad with a little arrow pointing at the guy’s lower torso, but later, the words reappear with the arrow pointing at the cute girl’s lower torso. I’m guessing that a phrase like “hot body” in Hindu is being remapped to refer to both a man’s itchy groin and a woman’s fantastic butt. Thus the humor.
Either that, or it just says “abnormally red and swollen genitals.” Also funny.
(Rainy day? Make up your own!)
And now as I write this, the damn Dermi-Cool ad is back on! Crap! Thande Dermi-Cool ka! It’s back in my head! Aaaaahhhhhrrrgggg!
Itchy itchy itchy, this India. At least judging from the cricket ads, which of course is no way to judge.
I must go there and see someday.