BRAND CONSCIOUSNESS –
BANE OR A BOON
Gone are the days when
people were judged on the basis of who they are or what they do, now the only
criteria to judge one’s “respect” is whether the person is wearing an “Armani”
suit along with a “Movado” watch or just a plain “zainab market ki t.shirt”
along with “bata ki chapalain”.
This statement of mine
would make me appear like someone who is all traditionalist and someone who
despises all the brands and is always in his kurta pyjama, sorry to disappoint
you because that’s anything but true. I love to use all the brands out there,
all that are affordable for me and which do not create a hole in my pocket and
I love the unaffordable ones even more mainly thanks to the brothers who are
frequent on foreign soil [if you know what I mean;)]
What made me realize
that all is not hunky dory was the conversation that I had with my young cousin
who is a 5th grader in one of the best(read burger on the scale of
burger or peela:p) schools in town. I was actually shocked when he told me
about the hummers and what not that his classmates conveniently flaunts and the
sad part my cousin’s description of all those assets was filled with so many
sighs and all those gestures that made this so very obvious that how he wish to
get his hands on all those cool gadgetry, although mind you my uncle (cousin’s
dad) is no ordinary gentleman and he himself holds a profile that can be a
source of many sighs. Yet my cousin’s reaction made me wonder how even such
innocent minds nowadays are filled with all these brand wars that are going on
in our society, at a age when for me the ultimate asset was my Rs.350 casio and
I wasn’t really concerned whether my school mate is coming to school in his
papa’s honda civic, a school van or even a public bus.
My only concern with
the ever increasing brand consciousness is; that no one has the right to be
judgmental just on the basis of some one’s material belongings as this will
create, infact has already successfully created a section in our society that is
suffering from different levels of inferiority complex which results in either;
A) Accept the illusion
that you are inferior to Mr.X or Y as you do not own a merck and let the world
molest you like anything.
B) Try to achieve all
that Mr.X & Y has through quicker/shorter routes (snatching, bribing, ransom
kidnappings are common examples)
In either of the cases
the person suffering from such conditions is the one who is always at a great
loss, be that in the form of lack of self confidence, absence of peace of mind
or even actual physical punishments. Who is responsible for all this?? In my
opinion there are several sources including ever increasing consumerism, the
wide class divide or even our very own (mazloom) media. Media, especially media
as immature as that of our country is of course one of the major sources in
promoting this psyche as they will easily make you believe that your life is
all but wasted if you don’t own the latest smart phone with 50 mega pixel
camera (even if the only use of your cell phone camera is taking a picture of
your friend’s bulging tummy or different poses of your own nostrils), and to
think of this that all this is being done in a country where per capita income
is not more than couple of hundreds of dollars, its gross to say the least.
Nevertheless this gives
birth to the question can we stop all this?? Or is it just one of those evil
blessings that have been gifted to us by the modern times and there is
absolutely nothing that we can do about it except accepting it.
Well as far as I see the
whole situation the ultimate responsibility of trying to avoid the aforementioned
situation lies that with the parents, Yes the Parents! As they are the ones who
can inculcate the core values in their offspring so that when they go out in
the world they have enough sense of differentiating between right and wrong and
what is actually good and should be respected and what is a mere sham…How that
can be done is obviously anything but easy as the poor parents of today have
far more adversaries then what were there for the parents of yore. Yet this is
not the only thing that can be done to stop the constant decline of the moral values
in our society and to stop our society from becoming a material jungle or perhaps
not even a jungle, as Zohra Nigah beautifully puts it “Suna Hai Janglon Ka Bhi
Koi Dastoor Hota Hai !!
