An 'Ode' to Commercialism

Even words cannot define how business affects our lives today. No, I'm not actually going to write an ode to commercialism but I sure am intrigued at how we are all caught up in a whole load of rubbish and how easily we fall prey to business ventures.

Business is defined as an activity performed to make profits. Profits are all that businesses strive for. Making profit out of selling mobile phones - acceptable, making surplus from selling merchandise of a football team - also acceptable. Making profits from selling cards and flowers and so on....... for a very conspicuous celebration every year - February the 14th is genius! How people get trapped into buying things for people they 'love' today and fight with tomorrow is hilarious to see.

Here's an interesting stat - today people in India spend a whopping 12 billion rupees, yes that's right RS. 12 BILLION on February 14th. While I support the spirit of making profit - trying to influence youngsters by making them buy gifts for people who they might like or love might be a marketing wonder, but is a disaster on the ethical side of things. The reason being that the people who they like or love most probably might not even feel the same way about them. So, then these businesses try to make people buy love... make it an activity of materialism.

I was really outraged when a guy from Hutch, soon to be Vodafone came up to my door and said there’s some special Valentine’s Day offer and that he had a special scheme which was only available today. Why? What on earth is so special today that people end up getting new mobile phone connections today? What does that have to do with Valentine’s Day?

My belief is that marriage is the ultimate symbol of love. Whether it actually is or not is a completely different matter altogether. When you commit to another person for the rest of your life (or at least at the time of marriage), it is impossible to match that feeling with a gift, a card or a bunch of roses - they might supplement that feeling, that's it! Here we are though, in a world where we simply don't know what will happen tomorrow - trying to make people buy a whole bunch of gifts for their boy/girl friends at that time is just another indication of what a materialistic world we live in.

Valentine's Day, by the way is a day where people express their love for each other WHILE exchanging flowers or a symbol of their love, not gift hampers! The problem today is a rush of feelings is considered strong enough to buy those hampers and while I have no problem with Valentine's Day per se, how people get impinged by the commercial side of it baffles me... and so I have to pay my respects to those people who have masterminded such a phenomenal rise to the National Income for a so called developing country! You deserve your profits, because people are foolish enough to believe in the rubbish you sell! I just hope such sort of money gets pumped back for the welfare of our country rather than producing more teddy bears and candy.

Happy Valentine's Day!