What I've liked
"You can't storyboard a smile," so Bernbach is supposed to have famously said. In other words, even though the idea dictates what the emotion should be, it takes the personal charisma of the actor to make it sizzle.
As in the case of the Rin TV commercial where, very clearly, it is a plaintive little chubby-cheeked boy who carries the show through, despite sharing the screen with a towering (literally) legend.
Admittedly the story revolves around the little boy, but it is his marvellous performance and sheer appeal, which makes the ad play in your head for a long while after. And every time I watch it, there's a sense of dèja vu.
When we were making one of our earlier Rasna TVCs, the one with the baby girl lisping 'I love you Rasna' we had no clue that the ad would go on to become as hugely popular as it did.
All that the sketched out idea revealed was that there would be a child playing pretend games with her dolls. And she would look up and say that she loved Rasna. Sounds like an average story doesn't it? And it would have remained so.
But then little Ankita came on screen and the rest is history. It took the actual charm of an adorable, saucer-eyed tiny tot to make that crucial connection with the millions who eventually went on to not only buy the product but also made sure that their daughters too had a little 'fountain ponytail' bobbing up and down on top of their heads, just like the 'Rasna girl'!
Such is the power of perfect casting. Even though the 'hero' is only a few feet tall, he can make an ad shine brilliantly even though the story may be mediocre.
What I've learned
Your mind is your feel-good maker. I've had encounters with two phenomenal individuals in the recent past, both of whom have jolted me out of my comfortable state of mind and set me thinking.
One is a good friend who, despite having a life-threatening illness is one of the busiest men I know. He works ten-hour days and travels incessantly as he has always done over the past three or four decades. He hasn't slowed down a bit. No one would believe that any one in his physical condition could be so full of life.
My second encounter was even more of an eye-opener. An old acquaintance dropped by at home the other night but to my dismay, he was on a wheelchair with both his legs amputated at the knee. He is the other busy man I know. He is an avid online stockmarket player, making a pot of money wheeling and dealing day and night long!
Happy and content he almost made me envious of his feel-good state. There he was cracking jokes, discussing company futures with the zest of a man who had everything he could possibly want!
I also know quite a number of young and middle-aged achievers with stereotypical perfect lives. Good health, a well-paying job, good-looking wife, bright children the whole package deal, but yet, spend five minutes with them and you come away feeling unsettled about the depths of their unhappiness. Nothing seems to be going well for them.
So what does it take to be happy? After all happiness is the ultimate goal that we all work hard to achieve. And my two friends have found it. The secret of feeling good. They don't need physical or material well-being for this state of 'nirvana'.
Clearly, their minds enjoy enviably robust health. And if your mind decides that an illness or a handicap is just one of those little inconveniences that you have to put up with, well then that is exactly how insignificant and irrelevant the problem becomes.
If, on the other hand, like the other guys, your mind decides to magnify every little thing then you can let tiny little problems rain on your parade. And a perfect life magically turns into a miserable one.
Happiness is a state of mind. Literally.
