It pays to be hot!

When hot girls eat free pizza, the boys will follow. Clever marketing

Iwas amused to read about a Sydney pub getting slammed for launching a “hot girls eat free” policy. The sign outside the pub features a woman seductively eating a slice of pizza. Amusingly, the advertising has sparked an outrage, with some calling it sexist and misogynistic. Suddenly, I felt good that such over-reactions from the pseudo-moral brigade weren’t confined to India. A commercial organisation engaging in a bit of fun publicity to woo customers is nobody else’s business. When hot girls eat free pizza, the boys will follow. Smart ruse. But how do you police who is hot? What happens to a woman who isn’t considered hot enough to eat free? And do hot girls even eat pizza? 

What’s in a name?

Call it an obsession or disease — Indian politicians thrive in changing the names of states and cities, as if such pointless rechristening will magically rid the place of its ills and evils. Clearly, there is no plausible answer to such lunacy. It would seem that the country has no real issues to tackle as our leaders appear to have abundant time for lame agendas of the ilk.

Recently, the name of our beloved “Millennium City” Gurgaon was changed to Gurugram, never mind the gaping potholes, roads under water, endless traffic jams, and hugely inconvenienced travellers, after a spell of heavy rain hit the city last week. Now, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to change the name of her state to Banga, Bangla, Bongo or some such inane thing. Some say she wants her state to feature higher on the list of alphabets. Or maybe she’s still been unable to fathom why the state is called West Bengal when it is situated in East India.

Not so long ago, Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Cochin became Kochi, Pondicherry became Puducherry, Gauhati became Guwahati, Calcutta became Kolkata and Bangalore became Bengaluru. These changes were carried out presumably because the leaders wanted to remove all traces of British rule from India and make the cities sound more localised than English. On several occasions, the name change is for political reasons, for vote bank politics, than for reasons originating from any noble rationale or sensible logic. But this incessant renaming of places has gone way too far, creating unnecessary nuisance and confusion, and costing the national exchequer a bomb. Pakistan is lucky that its government hasn’t yet been inspired by its neighbour’s idle ideas. Hard to imagine what Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad would sound like in their renamed avatars! 

Tailpieces

1) Pakistani TV journalist, Amin Hafeez, did a special report on Lahori buffaloes using a foot over-bridge more than humans. He trails the fat, slobby creatures ascending and descending the steps, while they seem visibly irritated with his puerile shenanigans. Following the tenets of ethical journalism, he even seeks their version of the situation but all he hears are angry moos, which he goes a step further and interprets. For once, Hafeez might have left the equally numbing Hindi news channel reporters feeling crestfallen about getting pipped in the idiocy department.

2) At the recently-held Lux Style Awards in Karachi, a dwarf couple was invited on stage and ridiculed — in the name of humour. I’m sorry but insensitive jokes about physical defects, securing laughs from the audience is antithetical of ‘style’.

3) In his speech about Hillary at DNC, Bill Clinton got coy: “After the class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I saw her several more times the next few days but still didn’t speak to her.” He had obviously developed more robust tactics by the time he met Monica Lewinsky.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2016.

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