by A. J. PHILIP
A few years ago, my son and his family were traveling from Mangalore in Karnataka to Aluva in Kerala. In the train, they met a popular television actress, who became very friendly with my grandson. She had absolutely no airs about her and when they alighted at Aluva, she even helped them in taking out their heavy luggage. She was a beautiful, friendly, down-to-earth person, who practiced the catechism she learnt as a child.
Given this description, I was surprised to find the actress promoting a lucky locket in an advertisement on a Malayalam television channel. The advertisement claimed that anyone wearing the locket would become rich and prosperous. It also showed someone winning a lottery prize, getting a good job and finding a good partner soon after buying the locket. The locket, worth thousands of rupees, need not even be worn. It could even be kept in an almirah and it would, still, work.
I wondered how the channel thought it fit to telecast this advertisement, particularly as it belonged to a Leftist party. Soon, another advertisement shocked me. It promoted the virtues of Kubera, depicted as a fat man, adorned with jewels and carrying a money pot and a club. The surest way to become rich was to buy and keep an idol of Kubera anywhere in the house like the showcase in the drawing room from where it would perpetually emit prosperity.
Kubera did not come cheap. The idol had a high price tag. But, then, the price was nothing compared to the bounties that awaited the purchaser. In Hindu mythology, Kubera was the King of Lanka, until he was toppled by his ‘demon’ stepbrother Ravana. Much of the riches of Lanka that dazzled Hanuman, who was on a visit to the famed city to find the whereabouts of Sita, were attributed to the deposed Kubera.
I wondered whether any Malayali from the most-literate state would ever fall for the misleading advertisements. The very fact that the advertisements were repeatedly telecast suggested otherwise. Since the production cost of the merchandise was paltry and the profit margin large, even a thousand orders would make the advertiser fabulously rich.
It was only much later that I realized that Kerala was, indeed, a fertile land for fraudsters as young as Sabarinath, whose fraudulent company was known as “Total 4 U”. Also, how easy it was for a fair-skinned woman and her live-in partner to bluff people in high places and make money worth at least Rs 5 crore!
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