Funnycontrol | Of Liril ads, electricity bills, and the business of summer

Mumbai adman Alyque Padamsee's Liril girl ad, the perfect ad for Indian summers, was a huge hit.

I read an article about how Starbucks India is struggling to figure if it should boost its cold or hot beverages due to the wild climate fluctuations.  This is a different struggle from remembering the names of their customers especially if they have to now remember their preferred pronouns as well. But the article made me realise how much summer is a business as much as it is a season. I mean somewhere there is a giddy air-conditioner sales executive salivating at the prospect of you drowning in your sweat. Luckily this is a hazard only in Mumbai. In Delhi, there is no humidity because the moisture in the air gets ionized by spontaneous combustion. But the blazing heat is why advertisers have used water motifs in their ads for years. I think the late Mumbai adman Alyque Padamsee mis-understood why his Liril girl ad was a hit. Mumbaikars were not salivating at the Liril girl. They were salivating at the prospect of being drenched in the waterfall for a change.

Summer is generally a bad time to sell things to people because they are barely restraining the urge to kill each other especially when squashed together in the Mumbai local train second-class compartment. But, on the other hand, they will be desperate to lap up any solution that promises relief even if it’s a false one like that song “pal bhar ke liye koi humein pyaar kar le, jhoota hi sahi”.  I almost plonked down a ridiculous sum for a newly launched fan that apparently leaves water particles suspended mid-air for an air-conditioner-like experience. Actual reviews say the fan costs three times the price of an air-cooler while being one-third as effective. The only thing you need to suspend in mid-air is your disbelief if you want to buy this.

I did, however, buy a cooler which has an outlet to fill water at the back while the indicator showing the water level is obviously at the front to avoid accidental convenience for the customer. And obviously the cooler exactly fills up the bathroom doorway, so you have to leap backward and forward across the cooler each time to check for overflowing and hope you don’t trip on the spilt water. The outlet, of course, is tinier than advertised in the photos so you must now aim a hundred mugs of water with the precision of a laser only to realise you are now sweating even more from this exercise. I make my peace with it by calling it “cooler cardio”.

Luckily, this article is being written in the bedroom where my AC is freezing cold at 28 degrees Celsius and barely gasping for breath when the setting is on 21 degrees. When they told me it has “Fuzzy Logic” I suppose they were being literal. So, I spend the whole night trying to catch the cold wave before it becomes a hot wave a lot like Jerome Powell trying to get ahead of inflation.

But I am willing to suspend disbelief for even momentary relief. So, I am in the market to buy the “cool re-hydrating 100 percent energy drink” made from 1 percent energy and 99 percent sugar. As my energy bills skyrocket this summer, the only climate change is in my finances. So, please like, share and comment to support my sustainable development.

As I write this Funnycontrol article, I am trying to decide if I should finish writing it in front of my cooler in the hall to avoid using the AC in the bedroom because I am worried about the changing climate of my electricity bills. I don’t wish to add a knee into the fight on who sends you inflated electricity bills.