Dhona; Sukhana; Bahana… gaya woh Zamaana!!!

Eid holiday’s combined with National Day and weekends resulted in… “13 days of fultu chutti” I spent most of the time on bed watching movies and surfing internet. I never even bothered to go out to enjoy the nice weather and the rare rain. I didn’t even take the pain to get out into my balcony to see the lightening and thunder storms. I preferred rather to be inside my comforter; busy watching movies.

I was alone at night and outside it was raining heavily. I switched of my AC as it’s fairly cold. I wrapped myself with my comforter and switched on the TV… I browsed thru a few channels and ended up watching a firangi-horror-movie where the hero is pretty much in the same state as I am. He too is lonely… It’s a night sequence… The hero too is browsing thru the TV channels. Suddenly the power goes off in his house… It’s fully dark… All he can hear is the sound of that heavy down pour… The hero slowly gets out of his bed to reach out for his torch. He gets it. The loneliness combined with the darkness and a heavy downpour and the mid-night factor made me a bit alert. I am slowly getting scared. Suddenly he hears foot steps upstairs. There is somebody in the house… Carefully he takes his stride up the staircase. I’m getting nervous. He slowly opens the door and enters into the dark room. I held the pillow tighter and much closer to me. Yaaaaaaaaahhhh… He sees the ghost. He screams out loud… The background music reaches its peak. The screen blacks out. The Next frame is bright… It shows a test tube filled with a blue color solution. A white linen nearby. I thought… a new twist in the movie. Immediately a husky female voice says from the background… “Now introducing to you the new Whisper Wings; it has the new S-T-R-E-T-C-H-A-B-L-E wings that keeps it buckled and hence protects your clothes from staining. It has double absorption power too.” She pours the blue colored test tube solution onto the napkin piece… then smiles.

I am a big time ch***ya… A nice way of watching a horror movie… Right? With all these ads in between the movie continued and again after ten full minutes I reached a fearful moment. Someone attacks our hero from his back. He is shocked and terrified… He flees towards the door. I keep my fingers crossed. He opens the door and enters a bright room with some furniture. The next frame shows a lady sitting on a sofa. I thought it was his girlfriend or wife. That lady starts saying… “Horse Riding; Stunt and Dance Sequences in Jaipur… All this on the second day of my periods… Outdoor location; not even a bathroom!!! So now presenting to you the Kotex sanitary napkin – Never hold your dreams to yourself… Achieve them.”

Maakda… I am fooled... AGAIN!!! With this; I started thinking more analytically… The evolution of sanitary napkins in India… It all started with “Dhona; Sukhana; Bahana… gaya woh Zamaana” and the young girl shouts… “Deedeee” It was quite famous ad at that time… An ad which definitely did influenced a lot of middle class girls and women in term of personal hygiene. It appealed to several youngsters like me too… I remember how curiously I watched that ad… more curiously than I ever did in my classroom. I remember having spent time with my friends discussing… “What was this Carefree and Stayfree?” We knew that it was something “not-very-straight”… so we friends kept speculating. Some friends said it was a medicine; then some said it was for grown up people who have the habit of wetting the bed. Anyway; those days were fun days where everything was viewed with a skeptical eye.

It seemed to me like a fight between the sanitary napkin manufacturers… Carefree offered 5 napkins in a pack while Stayfree offered “Buy 5 and get 1 free”. Stayfree shows pouring a test tube full of blue solution while Carefree pours two test tubes plus a double protection pack. Carefree showed a girl becoming basket ball team captain with confidence. Stayfree showed a girl jumping across the seat rows in a cinema hall.

Jokes apart; it is a fact that these ads… Stayfree, Carefree and Whisper have introduced a new phase of personal hygiene in Indian middle class women. The napkin manufacturers thru their continuous efforts have induced the mothers; girls and women to open up instead of keeping things to themselves and suffering. Ads can influence people for sure; but on the flip side… Although their target segment was women; but some lads like me too caught their unsolicited attention.

Thinking on the future of sanitary napkins… I can come up with few ideas… maybe reusable sanitary napkins or something similar to tampons or something like the ones with “stretchable wings”

CHEERS!!!