Brand it Up

Anirudh Rawat

Everyone was puzzled when Chiathon refused to play football in the lunch break. After some speculation one of my classmates came up with a possible reason. It was probably because Chiathon had brought new Reebok shoes and he didn’t want to spoil them playing football in the dusty field of our school. Our suspicion was confirmed in the next few days as Chiathon stopped kicking other students which used to be his favorite past time. The one student who was most relieved by this unexpected turn of events was Ravi, whose one good ball was now safe. Alas he could harbor hopes of getting married someday which would have been impossible with Chiathon scoring imaginary world cup winning goals; with Ravi’s balls suffering agony instead of the goal keeper of the opposite team. Personally I was puzzled as I couldn’t understand the use of such expensive shoes which couldn’t even be used to kick people around.

As I grew up I became even more puzzled with every ooh and aah that followed when anyone brought branded stuff. It was something like “Ooooooo Gucci”. Like suddenly from being human everyone had turned into a chained dog who wanted to pee. Maybe it was an expression of surprise “He doesn’t even know how to swim”. Maybe it was jealousy “His dad must surely be taking bribes” or maybe it was fascination “Only Gucci knows how to make commendable bags”.

When I went to college then people had grown up and couldn’t just come to you and start shouting “I have got Adidas shoes”. Things are much simpler when you are kids. So the problem is that how do you flaunt your branded stuff. I mean how you make people realize that you are wearing Jockey and not Dora. After all one can’t fly by wearing Adidas shoes nor by wearing one’s Jockey on top of one’s pants. So people try different tricks to get their stuff noticed.

Once I was talking to one of my classmates in college. However after every ten seconds he started looking down. Irritated I followed his eyes and realized that he was wearing Adidas shoes. Only after I had complimented his shoes, we were able to have a proper conversation. Similarly some students forgot their Nike bags in class and others kept looking at their Rolex watches every five minutes. One student even stopped showing his hairy butt line as he had got a Jockey underwear which made me wonder that they should change their tag line to “Better than naked”.

Recently one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend and was contemplating suicide. Every now and then he used to come up with an idea about how he was going to die. I advised him “Why don’t you just choose a bus and get trampled by it.” He shot back “Are you insane! You think I am so cheap? If anything kills me it will be a Ferrari!”