Copyright@shravancharitymission

Not very long ago I was on the lookout for a suitable birthday gift for my wife. As we have come of age I mentally rejected those silly romantic and valentinesque gifts. There was plenty of time. I could select at leisure, not knowing there is never time enough. In such situations it flies on the wings of a dove, and lo and behold the birthday was well nigh-It was the birth day eve and I hadn’t made a choice. I decided to take the bull by the horns and walked into a shopping mall. I tried this and that but right choice eluded me. I wanted to be sure it would not turn out to be something on the lines of ‘the gift of the Magi’. The brilliantly lit cut glass bottles caught my eyes. The perfumes-yes of course-that was what I was looking for. It was difficult to select from a variety of foreign brands because all were Greek to me. I delved into the recesses of my mind and came up with BVLGARI. The quaint, almost unpronounceable name had remained stuck in my memory after watching a foreign serial where a girl goes shopping and among many things she pauses before a glittering array of perfume bottles. The name stood out like a sore thumb. BVLGARI- must be good. That’s how I purchased the gift. Obviously, the serial had robbed me off some hard earned wampum but I was happy. The triumph of advertisement or casual memory-retention had done the trick. Reminds me of something I read somewhere:  “Advertising is the art of arresting human intelligence just long enough to get money from it.”

A.K.Tripathi,                                                                                                                                                                                       Guwahati-Assam-march -2015