Gung-ho or gun-ho?

Gung-ho or gun-ho?
Tara Sinha

This year marks a marketing milestone in leveraging the fun and gaiety of Holi -- the festival of colour has gone colour-crazy in a zany way! Days before the great day, the media and the shops and restaurants and, the new kid on the block, the home pages of India-centric websites, all climb aboard the colour-splashed bandwagon. Ad after ad announces special deals of goods and services. Banners and streamers brighten up neighbourhoods. The tempo picks up as the great day arrives.

Not to be left behind, the establishment pitches in by alerting citizens to the dangers of dangerous colours and the risks of spirited overindulgence. An ad issued by the Government of Delhi's Department of Environment advertises the benefits of `natural colours' providing recipes for `cooking' up a rainbow range of colours. The rather charming recipes use haldi powder mixed with flour (atta, besan or maida) to make a yellow. The recipe for magenta intrigues me as it features one of my favourite vegetables: beetroot, soaked in water! Readers are directed to visit www.cleanindia.org to `know more about natural colour preparations'. In all innocence the Govt's Directorate of Prohibition, appeals to us by suggesting that we `Don't Let Alcohol Spoil the Charm of HOLI'. It wisely tells us that `Drinking is bad. Keep away from it. Encourage others as well not to drink'. Life would be so much easier if issuing direct directions changed deeply ingrained habits!

Let me now present a really block buster Holi gizmo. It really is a blast, in every sense of the term! A full spread in a Delhi newspaper, this Holi, featured an imposing full colour range of pichkaries all in the shape of guns and guns and guns. The article emphasised the humongous size of some of the `lethal weapons'. It gave tips on where to find the top end guns from a range ranging from Rs.15 to Rs. 850, at half price rates. Another newspaper draws our awed attention to the mighty Chinese marketers flooding our market with plastic AK-47 pichkaries. This paper labelled the Rs 950 model as being `The most expensive pichkari ever' and were they ever so wrong!

Before we move into the celestial stratospheres created by a whole new genre of pichkaries, let me relate a press report of how one young kid and his friends react to Holi guns: `Me and my friends have decided to fight a (colour) war tomorrow like soldiers. We have two teams and my team will surely win because of this gun.'

On a more kindly note, we learn of KBC Holi hungama pichkaries, in the shape of a tiny AB doll `with his trademark beard, clad in black'. A series of exotic home recipes for `colours' follow. Again a pity all these wonderful tips came at least a day too late.

Now we will move on to a champion that knocks out all others to take the top spot in the top spender category. The Frazer and Hawes Silver Holi Gift Set of five katories, five glasses, one ghungro and one pichkari flamboyantly priced at Rs. 34,275 must be the unassailable winner. In this whirl of guns and roses, is it Holi hai or hai hai?