Publicity

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During my High School Years in our seaside Village Muthukur (1951-57), there was a plethora of Elections (or so it seems now).

The First General Elections in 1952 were followed by the carving out of Andhra State from the Madras Presidency in 1953, followed by the unification (unwilling it now seems) of Telengana with Andhra to make up Andhra Pradesh (AP) in 1956 which called for more and more elections and by-elections every once in a while.

My abiding picture of the pre-election scene is the lone tractor of the Village adorned by yards of Congress Tricolor, cardboard cutout of Nehru, and the election symbol of Congress:

"Two bullocks and a plow".

And the only Opposition Party then was CPI (undivided) which didn't have a tractor but lots of pushbikes going round, with blood-red banners and its election symbol:

"Sickle and sheaf of corn".

See, both the Parties then had agriculture as their common heart, one plows and the other reaps (contrast this with the hand, elephant, lotus, cycle, time piece and so on, which have nothing in common).

Anyway, the belching tractor was a great attraction to us urchins. The driver would halt near our school and most of us would be given a leg-up, and once we are in we would be handed cheap Congress flags and asked to shout lustily: "Two bullocks and a plow!" and we would be hauled around the two major streets to and fro and dumped back to upload the next batch. And those who don't get the flags would be given a sheaf of cheap pamphlets to be scattered on the roadside to be picked up by one and all running for them. The pamphlets had again the picture of "Two bullocks and a plow".

We all got hoarse in the throat but anything for a tractor ride!

The CPI didn't have that much money to fritter away ( Russia was kanjoos) but the cycle processions were a treat to watch and we were asked to tail them shouting: "Corn and Sickle!" for a fistful each of "balli gudlu" (red and green colored tiny candy balls that resembled "lizard eggs" and melted in the mouth).

That was all the Publicity we knew...

Apart from the Touring Talkies that graced our Village once or twice a year for two months, during which a cycle-borne youth would fly by our streets throwing leaflets as he went. And all of us would run and fight for as many as we could garner as a valued treasure, for they had what we thought were lovely pictures of heroes and heroines who were heartthrobs for the women folk: Nageswara Rao and Savitri all the time; like Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen.

One overarching bridge between Andhra and Bengal which otherwise were poles apart was the Communist Movement: we had legendary figures like Chandra Rajeswara Rao, Pucchalapalli Sundaraiah, Basavapunnaiah who were friends of Jyoti-da. All these were revered figures and idealists and were much admired and respected. Then of course, Srikakulam took up the Naxal Movement along with Kanu-da and Charu-da.

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How different Publicity is now!!!

For the past 2 months everyday, all newspapers in Hyderabad are jacketed by front and back full page advertisements for condominiums begging you to buy dream apartments in gated communities which have everything you can wish within their four walls like a Fortress.

Imagination boggles at the moolah that goes into those serial ads.

And these things have exotic names: Space Station, Nile Valley, and such.

Nile Valley in the rocky and hilly and thirsty Hyderabad!!!

And as soon as you pick up your newspaper hoping to turn to the first page to read the day's headlines, half a a dozen glossy pamphlets would spill all over the floor and frustrate you...anyway there was nothing much to read till our Rambo did it!!!

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I was made to read Feynman's "Surely You are Joking!" by Amitabh Chatterjee (the one who also made me read Sakurai's MQM)... He brought an early US paperback a quarter century ago.

The only other full sentence I remember now is:

"Publicity is a whore!"

And that also was not spoken by Feynman!

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