To say I am deeply disturbed by the Sony BBC Earth ad featuring Kareena Kapoor is an understatement.
It makes a recent “soda” ad – in which two nitwits make a reluctant friend jump off a cliff into a stream below, to finally cut to the reason for his reluctance (an artificial limb) – look like it was made by Terrence Malick. (If their soda makes you this stupid, what can their hooch do, you wonder.)
Coming back to BBC and poor Earth, this new, big-budget, CGI-heavy ad features, for starters (drum roll), a giant Kareena Kapoor.
I have to tell you at this point that my nerves, with years of medication, have learnt to just about take the normal-sized version.
Because Ms Kapoor belongs to that school of acting, which a school friend of mine so aptly described with reference to a Tamil character actor from the ’80s, where she feels she has fully discharged her thespian duties only when she gives you histrionics worth ₹263.25 for every ₹100 she is being paid.
Anyway, let’s say you got past the idea of a Brobdingnagian Bebo like I did because you are secretly masochistic, this is what she proceeds to do next. She opens her account by sitting atop a hill, grinning beatifically, and washing her gargantuan feet in an unfortunate river, giving the fish pedicure a King Kongian twist. Next, she terrorises an unsuspecting polar bear by literally going in-your-face with the bewildered beast, and giving it her best selfie pout as the thing begs for mercy in bear language. This is followed by a moment of tender self-reflection as she sits all by herself on a pristine beach with not a care in the world about the marine life that is being crushed to death under her. Then, in quick succession, she is seen harassing a flock of penguins skittering away in vain, stalking a sleigh being pulled by huskies, terrorising Masai tribesmen going about their business, and looking at a charging herd of springbok like they would do perfectly as hors d’oeuvres at the next daawat at Chateau de Pataudi or wherever she lives.
But the most disturbing shot by far, in an ad filled with landmines, is the one of her in the midst of a bunch of windmills, much like a certain Señor Quixote of yore, bending gracefully and giving us what appears to be eco-friendly power from places I dare not mention in a family-friendly newspaper.
See, I’m all for non-fossil fuels, reducing the carbon footprint, saving the planet, etc, but I totally draw the line at Kareena Kapoor powering us thus.
My simple point is this. If BBC Earth’s brief to their agency was, “Sport, give us something ace, where Bebo comprehensively destroys the Earth, would you?” — which it had to be if you see the ad — they could have done it in a 10-seconder. Where Begum- ji holds a cantaloupe-sized earth in her hand, looks at the wick that’s positioned roughly at the north pole, gives her best head shake and pout, and lights the wick.
Fadeout.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist and humour writer. His latest novel is called The Sentimental Spy .
