Unilever Stinks! Now, Get Out Of Asia

Unilever needs to make money, but that doesn't mean it can get away with doing anything for that. A senior executive at the company has alluded - in fact stated it unequivocally - in an interview that Asians stink. It is easy dismiss this as just politically incorrect talk with the aim of creating a market for the company's deo products. However, beneath this inocuous characterisation lies the fact that the statement is more about the arrogance of a white colonialist (or in this case a developed-world imperialist) about all things and people he deems as lesser mortals, who are only good and useful for the money they have to buy his cheap deodarants.
How shameful that such a statement has escaped the attention of most poeple in this continent. Asia is once place where a lot of religions and empires were born, the cultural and spiritual cradle of the world. And here is this imperious white-skinned business executive who thinks the people of this continent is no good without his cheap mix of ethanol and some smelly chemicals.
It wold do well for Russel Taylor, Unilever’s global V-P for Axe deodorants, to remember that Asians were the most advanced people in the world, and the best in personal hygiene, when his ancestors did not even care to wash, let alone brush their teeth.
There should be a mass boycott of all Unilever products by Asians till this haughty neo-imperialist is forced to apologise for his intemperity.

How We Measure Ourselves

For the last few days I have refrained from commenting upon Shilpa Shetty on the Big Brother Show in the UK. After all, I thought, it is a Bollywood actress doing it for money, and the racism is part of the occupational hazard.
But seems like the media thinks I was wrong. They have been falling over each other trying to get mileage from the event.
But let us stand back for a moment and think: is the greatness of this nation to be measured by how Shilpa Shetty or any other actress behaves or is behaved to? I firmly think 'No.'
That would be like measuring America's greatness with the number of pubic hairs you can count on Britney's love cheeks, which she exposes very happily to eager paparazzi.
But we measure America by its economic and miliatary power, the prowess of its statemen, scienteists, and workers, the culture of its people, and a host of other factors.
In the hype over Shilpa Shetty we seem to have forgotten that is how India's greatness should be measured too. When Shilpa Shetty shouts Chicken Curry, that is in no way going to increase India's image before the world. For that we need to show we can do a lot of things that our license-permit Raj governments prevented us from doing for five decades.
Let us not get our priorities wrong, or we risk being pushed to the fringes of a world community which is racing to create a new world order.