The Complete Man...

I am always fascinated by the Raymonds advertisement, not because of the fabric or their designs but by the content and the way they capture the emotions of characters and various beautiful moments in life. This made me to think on what makes “The Complete Man” to exist or is this term just a hypothetical one. 

The Raymonds advertisement, pictures various stages of a Man’s life, a doting father, spontaneous and surprising boyfriend, loving husband, caring son, affectionate student. Yes Raymonds protagonist is the quintessential person whom everyone would love to have on their side. 

In one of the Raymond advertisement which is also my favourite, we have a hubby who reaches home to find a note from his wife saying, 

“Working Late…. Enjoy your office party.. PS: Can’t dance anyway” 

He looks at it, smiles and then reaches her office with a red rose in his hand, gives her the rose and they dance together. Though the entire picturisation has been taken from “Shall We Dance” movie, it definitively passes on the message that nothing is more important than the family. How many of us have understood this in our lives. How many times we had postponed our vacations which were planned month ahead due to immediate office matters. How many times have we foregone our movie tickets for our boss had wanted some urgent report for a meeting? But here we have an understanding husband who forgoes an office party and instead has a romantic evening with his wife.  

In the other ad we have a couple getting into a hotel with the boyfriend nodding and gesturing to his friends. As the reach the center of the hall, his friends start to play the piano of a famous old song. Everyone around joins them in singing and dancing and the girl is taken by surprise and overwhelmed with joy by this act of her boyfriend. At the end she meets his parents and at the end of the ad, she just rests her head on his chest and nourishes this pleasant moment. This is what pleasant surprises can do to people who get one. Haven’t we experienced such moments in our lives when our friends / family members wakes us up at midnight to celebrate our birthday with cake, when our loved ones comes behind and closes our eyes with their hands and asking us to guess who it was or everyone in your class room / office stands up and starts to clap their hands as your enter office / class room just to appreciate your achievement. All such occasions bring on a momentous joy which last forever in our memories.

The other one shows a son handing over his appointment order to his mother. His mother delighted on this gets sad on seeing that his son posting is in Singapore. Though unable to show her sadness, she wishes all the best to her son. He at that moment produces two tickets for Singapore which includes one for his mother. On seeing this, his mother’s eyes are overwhelmed with joyful tears. At that moment, he bends down and touches his feet for her blessings. The ad ends with the complete man tag. Yes this is what our parents expect from our grownups. The caring that we need to shower on them. The assurance that we are there for them and care for them at all times. 

Other Raymond ads such as remembering old teacher for the wedding, outperforming Dad’s expectations and daughter’s wedding. Each ad lays emphasis on a particular aspect of life. After watching all the ads, a Complete man is one who has all the above characteristics. 

 

IMHO, we all have a part of the characteristics depicted in the ads but lack each all of it. It may be our impatience or our inability to inculcate all these values in our daily lives. However I still long to have all these and be a Complete man as the Raymond tag says…

Smile..

Smile..

One of the characteristics that makes a difference between humans and other living beings. A facial expression which make things better in this world. I had experienced the change it could make to one's day to day life few months back.

It was late winter and I was to travel to Mumbai that day. I had to catch an early morning flight from Nagpur. Getting up in the morning during winter is difficult and that too, getting up early in the morning to catch a flight with airport that requires you to be present atleast one hour before the departure is such a pain..

I woke up that morning thanking God for giving me an another day and also cursing my schedule of traveling so early in the morning. It usually pisses me off to get up early in the morning, as it had never been my habit till now. Though if I had been given an option to change one thing about me, getting up early would top the list. With great effort and difficulty, I got ready and reached airport. I was till in a drowsy mood. All  Indian airports requires you to go through the following checks. As soon as you get down at airport, you need to show your ticket and ID card to the security who is positioned at the entrance. I seldom find justification for having these people stationed there. His role is to go through your ticket, find the name mentioned there and that mentioned in the ID and see whether the photo present in the ID matched to the person. This simple task often takes a lot of time resulting in long queues at the entrance.

The same task is repeated again once you reach 20Mtrs past the entrance. Think we people take a lot of pride in doing the same thing twice. The guard positioned here though does the verification work very fast. He doesn't even go through the details. All you need to do is hand over the ticket and ID to him, he will take it from you and hand it back to you within a second and will allow you to pass through the gate as if he is Chitti the Robot - Speed 1 Terabyte and Memory 1 Zetabyte.

The next stage is baggage screening which is often done by the airlines people in which you are traveling. Once all this is done, you stand in the counter to get your boarding pass. With numerous travels that I had made during the past few years, I had noticed few things that are common like all Air hostess have short and sweet names. Are these really their names are pseudo names assigned to them at work, like Sendhil becoming Stephen and Janardhan becoming Jonathan. Haven't got an answer for it till now. May be next time I will ask the air-hostess itself.

Having got my boarding pass, I had to wait until boarding announcement is made so that you are allowed through the gate to board a bus which takes you to the aircraft and after which you board the flight. I was eagerly waiting for the boarding call as it enables me to lodge my luggage and go back to sleep for the next one and half hours. Finally the boarding announcement was made and I was again standing in queue to board the aircraft. This time your boarding pass will be checked by an air-hostess who does it with the help of a bar code reader and then by a guard to ensure whether your hand baggage had gone through security check. 

I handed my boarding pass to her, she took it, called my name, scanned my boarding pass, looked up at me and with a sunflower smile said, have a nice journey Sir. That smile which lasted for a fraction of second, illuminated my mood. The smile was as if thousand sunflowers were smiling at you. I received my boarding pass and boarded the flight. After keeping my luggage in the overhead bin, I took my seat and closed my eyes, the smile flashed over again and made me think. This Smile had changed my mood and the way I was looking at things from the morning. It doesn't take much to lighten up One's mood, a Smile will do. May be that's the reason why God has bestowed upon us this simple but highly effective characteristics of Smile. That day, the first time in my life I understood the importance of Smile in my life and the change that it would make if we could sport one on our face through out the day. I did get few chances to see her during many of my travels, the smile remained and this time I had smiled back. It would have been like a Monster smiling back at her :D. Anyways..

So all you people there, just keep smiling and make other people lives better with your Smile...

Ilakshi it is...