The Point Being?

Some of you may have seen the following ad, which featured prominently in the pages of The Daily Times' Sunday magazine and the Express Tribune Magazine today...

It sort of reminded me of this by-now famous photograph that did the rounds a couple of years ago...

In both cases, I have only one comment to make: 'Why?'

Slurring Education or How To Get "Neat" School Supplies

Even though Five Rupees has already blogged this, how could one go without sharing it?

Geo News reports on what notebook covers in Lahore's Urdu Bazaar are being made of. Hil-ar-ious!



Don't miss the repeated naming by Geo anchors of the "Red Label" and "Black Label" brands (Johnny Walker couldn't have got such advertising even if they paid for it!) and Ghareeda Faruqi's forced pun on "what kind of label" this attaches to education. As Ahsan points out in his post, the concern also seems to be especially over the fact that it was advertising for "ghair mulki sharaab" (foreign liquor) . . . as opposed to the local brands? My particular favourite is when anchor Salman Hassan asks the provincial education minister:

"Kya kahein gay aap ke jo maasoom bachay hain unn ko issi umr se pata chal jaye ga ke market mein kaun kaun si sharaabein available hain...?" (What would you say to the fact that innocent children will get to know at this age what brands of liquor are available in the market?)

Indeed. They should wait at least until they are 18.

But I have a few other questions for Geo to find out the answers to:

1) Are Black Label notebooks more expensive than Red Label ones?
2) Is whiskey getting preferential treatment? What about vodka, tequila, rum, wine and beer?
3) Are there any Single Malt notebooks?
4) Which brand did children have a preference for?
5) What does happen to the hundreds of thousands of cartons of foreign liquor discarded in Pakistan?


Post-Script: Would add a whole new meaning to teachers telling students to keep their copies "neat", wouldn't you say?

Don't Peg Me

Only a Sardarji could have come up with this one.

This is an actual whiskey being marketed in the UK. The name is apparently based on a rather (inside) desi joke about what to do when you ask someone what drink they would like and they respond "Kuchh Nai" (Punjabi inflected 'Kuchh Nahin' meaning 'Nothing')... So, of course, out would come this bottle...

You can read more about this enterprising Scotch with a desi name here.