- By abhishek Iyengar
“First we need to get a new cover.. it will get spoiled.. “, shouts the uncle in the neighborhood! raising his BP levels, “tomorrow I am going to the market to get it and there are no second thoughts on that” he exclaims, “I thought he will give us free” justifies the lady of the house! huh! the suspense was in-tolerable as i peeked into their house to check on what’s happening!
‘Crap!”, ‘holy shit’, I dismayed! Yes! the inevitable had happened, I couldn’t believe my own eyes, They had bought a new TV and the TV remote was not covered!! can any one believe that? ‘A brand new Television’s remote completely lying their bare with absolutely no cover on it, what’s more the TV either did not have a cover and the salesperson had duped them of a remote cover! as they tried to calm down and I walked down the steps of their house to only add to my appall! I had never seen a Bare body TV remote in my life! leave alone TV remote, I have never seen any appliance bare body! we are typically ‘covered’ people here in sub-continent, Yes we like to cover every possible thing available to us in this world! Long before telephones were just discovered into Indian houses, where having a land line was all the ‘Status Que’ one had to show it off! we covered those telephones with ‘Turkey towels’, ‘handmade woolen cloths’, ‘cut Saree pieces’ what not? Creativity was at its high and ‘Telephone covers’ were sold like ‘hot dogs!
The old VIP suitcase and its ‘Military cover’, the eternal ‘Bajaj’s Scooter spare wheel’s cover’ and the oldest of all, ‘Spectacles cover’ which was an ounce heavier than the spectacle has brought in us a whole new tradition of covering things, We do hate to see things bare, we only enjoy when they are covered, believe me! when they are covered hard.
With the advent of ‘television in our homes, our ‘Covering’ creativity just got bigger! dark,bright television covers ruled our houses, the covers were actually more priced than the ‘Television’ itself. When ‘Charles Babbage’ invented ‘computers’ least he knew that We would invent ‘covers for computers’ from big brands such as ‘Zenith’ to local market side shops, computer cover business made ‘hay’ while the rest of the world saw us astonishingly! “Computer cover free” became the most powerful ‘Marketing strategy’, As Indian opened their ‘Economic gates’ to the outside world! we were exposed to a whole new ‘Economical revolution’, ‘The cover revolution’. Things got smaller and faster and so our ‘covers’.
The automobile industry revolutionized the whole world and so did our ‘COVERS!” those plastic covers were on our cars and scooters for decades to come, the chance of an engine wearing out was high, but the covers on our bikes and cars did not loose their charisma! they glittered and glittered to glory. ‘Reselling’ rates were decided upon the amount of ‘covering the automobile had’, the car accessories had created a record with their plastic covers, 4 generations made sure that the covers were intact. We loved those covers hard! our passion for covering did in fact affect the whole world
Little did steve jobs knew that his revolutionary ‘I-pod’ would even find a cover to fit in, The mobile and laptop world did not stop us from ‘covering’ either. Leather pouches, handmade cloth covers, those plastic covers et.al it only got bigger! higher the appliance, costlier the cover, smaller the appliance, bigger the cover. “Cover that”, “Cover this” we covered every little thing in our life, indeed it was our treasure and we had to make sure it had to be covered!
We covered every little thing with plastic! or did we really cover? huh! if only we had covered ‘Everything ‘with plastic’, ‘Our population would have not crossed a billion mark’ or ‘We had to counter HIV and AIDS’
Cover it! cover it intelligently! fight against HIV
