Ads, weight-loss and RIPe bananas

Primarily, there are two kinds of boards on our city roads
i) advertisement boards
ii) sign boards

Loosely speaking, ad-boards are evil.. they distract u.. and put u off ur guard.. the big ones especially.. the ones perched atop the tall buildings...
but the trouble is, u feel the ads look awesome and gaze and gaze at them.. eyes transfixed... until somebody comes along with a bucket of cold water, splashes it on ur open-mouthed face... and shouts-
'hey, do u know that u r in the middle of the road?? huh?? now get outta my way.. before i slap that face of yours.. with a robotic arm !!'

The sign boards, on the other hand, are meant to bring u back to the real world (.. in case that somebody didn't get his hands on that bucket he ordered!!).. they kinda give u these last-minute warnings of whats coming ahead.. and do quite a smart job of it actually.. and what do u know? they can be very very informative too!!

for instance, once i'd been to kanyakumari.. there was this signboard that read -
Trivandrum- 89 km
Nagercoil- 13 km
Varanasi- 2460 km!!!!
.. now thats what i call information!! signboards are smart.. yet they keep their feet on the ground.. but soon, the big green eyed monster of jealousy would hunt them down.. wonder why?? bcos generally, people don't give a damn to signboards, however smart they are... they just don’t…

on one of those rare, lucky days, my dad had asked me to take the car to the petrol bunk all by myself.. so, having the car all to myself, i felt like a king.. i even felt proud, like a haughty advertisement board...

then i saw a lady on her scooter, a few metres ahead of me... she was moving pretty slow.. in fact, she was snailing her way on the road...inch by inch.. i've even seen tortoises move faster (on animal planet's Tryst with Turtles..)... anyway, the road is not the place to imitate a tortoise.. the tortoises certainly wouldn't agree to it... i only hope they don't take it personally!!

So it turned out that the lady was actually staring at one of the ad-boards.. one of those jewellery ads.. or was it abt designer sarees??.. don't remember.. all i know is that the model who featured in it was kinda okay-looking... but the itchy fingers of impatience started tickling me... and i blared the horn of my car a couple of times... the woman got a rather nasty shock, fell sideways and turned turtle!!... man, that was one hell of a sight... when i started honking, she jolted back to reality and started behaving with her scooter as if it was an infuriated spanish bull out of control!!!.. oh man, that was amazing-videos material!!...and before the locals could start crowding around the scene of accident, i made a deft exit...whew!! close shave..

Nasty, them ad-boards!!

I regret to say that once even i became a victim of their crime.. ok look ..i agree that ad-boards need to be eye-catching... but they go too far to prove that point... what they really do is eye-catching-capturing-imprisoning-bonding to steel chains!!.. there was this one ad that had my jaw drop... It read something like this..
"VLCC-
Pay for a weight loss of 10 kgs.
Lose upto an extra 5 kgs...Absolutely free!!!"
My jaw dropped and hit the ground... (well, almost...) fortunately, i was not driving at the moment i was confronted with that ad... well, what the heck was happening to…er.. orthodox weight-loss??

(Of course...the pic on the right side has 4 different women... and the ad makers think they're very clever!!)

Speaking of weight loss, there r a couple of things to be added here.. First of all, the kind of ppl who come to health clubs to "lose" the extra-5 are 'FAT men in branded bermudas'... they come there to pump out their calories by punishing themselves... they lift loads.. they pull heavy strings...whining and wincing, puffing and panting… and when the instructors r not watching, they snooze off on the benches... sigh!! heavy work does that to u sometimes!!

Worse, they are put on diets.. everytime the dietician says, "No X..No Y..No Z.." ( where X= rich sweets; Y= fried snacks; Z= chocolates...etc etc), they writhe with pain... they get choked…and tears fill their ever-hungry eyes… on their diet list, comes bananas, oats & cereal, low-starch rice, triple skimmed milk, plain bread...( and other small stuff which only skinny fashion models would dare to eat...with a guilty heart)

But bananas... ah! always fleshy and juicy... (unless they're more than 3 days old)…
I rushed thru half my breakfast before college one day..and stuffed the other half - a big, healthy banana - into my college bag ... but alas! little did i know that mom had packed my freshly prepared lunch in that very pocket of the bag… right next to the banana... later at college, i put my bag away in one of the seats... this was when karthik pottered his way into the class, searching for a seat.. and sat on my bag!! ouch!!..anyway... that was one R.I.P.e banana for u, steamed and sat on!!!

I leave u with these interesting/ disturbing images...