Daag ache hain!

and no I don't mean "Daag - the fire"!

In a water-starved yet hygiene super-conscious country like ours, one may think that such a strong brand association would be difficult to sell. But therein lies the success of marketing - for it resonates with the "higher sense of aspiring for the greater good"!

Think about it, if getting messy helped someone then yes, Daag ache hain.

This gets even more interesting when one extends it to the metaphysical level - aka our life's canvas. Just for a moment, putting past-life "karma" aside, imagine that a new-born enters the world with a clean, pure white canvas. Over the course of the next few days, his first touch, his first sensation of hunger, the first smiling face he sees, another infant he catches sight of, his own image in the mirror when revealed to him for the first time, all make up his "first memories". To these, he keeps adding to, for the rest of his life - his first exam, first best friend, birthday, stomping of feet, first act of deceit or lies he finds out about, his own first act of rebellion, his first kiss and so become "experiences". His life canvas is by now, a myriad of colours - some pleasing to the eye, some more complex. Its like one of those abstract pieces that seem to have colour randomly splashed about.

On the white canvas that we all start off with, there seem to emerge spots of messiness that seemingly add to us but also take away from us - our innocence, leaving us sometimes scarred, sometimes scared.

You know, in the big picture, time lends to itself the quality of timelessness. While for some lucky ones, the big picture emerges to be actually a nice clean simple easy to understand picture - of the sort that has a house, children, birds chirping in the background that most of us first drew in pre-school, for some though it really does boil down to being a complex patchwork, akin to a work of expressionism. Its there, but somehow, the picture emerges only when you think about it. Daag is case mein bhi ache hain - the memories, experiences and thoughts that sum us up - not all good (like turmeric stains, don't believe me? Ask your mother!), not all pleasant (like grease stains, yuck!), not all wanted (all stains? if one just looks at the washing expense and irritation it presents).

The life canvas is about these being all adding up eventually, with the bad "daags" teaching us something about the journey that is life...or if not, simply, adding to the bigger canvas - even if we don’t like it, eventually, Daag ache hi hain!;D

Notes

'Daag' translates to 'a stain'.

"Daag - the fire" refers to an extremely sloppy, pointless and irritating film released in the late 90s. Never ceases to amaze me the drivel that Bollywood is capable of dishing out and that stupid Bollywood aficionados like me subject ourselves to!