The Business Bytes
PRIYABRAT BISWAL
BHUBANESWAR, NOV 12, 2023
As the practice goes, this festive season – from Dussehra to Diwali – newspapers were flooded with attractive advertisements of various companies, all trying to allure customers to buy their products. And the gullible customers fall prey to such advertisements and end up buying things that they really don’t need.
Like, jewellery shops – with lucrative offers – tempt customers to buy jewellery on Dhanteras Day, to attract Goddess Lakshmi to their homes. Had this been true, there wouldn’t have been poor people in India by this time!!!
Anyways, let me come to the point. While almost all the advertisements were meant for highlighting the products/services of the advertisers, one advertisement – of power discoms TPCODL, TPNODL, TPSODL and TPWODL – that appeared in a vernacular daily on Diwali was most eye-catching, not because of its attractiveness but because of the thoughtfulness it was created by the advertiser.
I am not quite sure where the creative team of Tata Power tried to show the particular image (which I have marked with black boundary lines) in the advertisement as a ‘diya’ or a ‘boat’. If the image I am talking about has been conceptualised as a ‘boat’, then we the Odias should feel proud and be thankful to the Tata Power advertising team for showing our culture in the most traditional way.
If we go back to the past, for Odia people Diwali means lighting diyas (earthen lamps), offering puja to Goddess Lakshmi and paying tributes and homage to our ancestors through the ritual popularly known as “Badabadua Daka” – holding bunches of burning jute-stems in hand and praying our ancestors and seeking their blessings. The invocation process involves the chanting of a prayer, “Badabadua ho andhaare aasa, aalua re jaa (Oh hon’ble ancestors, come in darkness and go back along the lighted path)”. The oldest member of the family chants these lines and other members of the family with lighted bundles of jute-stems in their hands follow him. It is believed that our ancestors who descend to the Prithvilok during Pitru Paksha return to the Swargaloka on this day of Diwali.
Though I have been a part of this traditional ritual since childhood, I had to perform it all alone for the first time this Diwali after the passing away of my parents. Not knowing the exact way of performing the puja, I called up our family priest to explain it to me in detail. He told me to draw a mandal on the floor in the shape of a ‘boat’ (like the one that appeared on the Tata Power Diwali advertisement) and explained where to place the items and bhog for the ritual. This is the prime reason the Tata discoms’ advertisement attracted me the most.
While for other advertisers it was time to highlight their respective brands and products/services, for Tata Power discoms, it was a genuine Diwali wish and that too through an advertisement that showed the traditional Odia way of celebrating Diwali. It would have been much more appealing, had they added the image of “Badabadua Daka” in their advertisement. Anyways, their initiative is really praiseworthy and deserves a round of applause. And, there is always a ‘tomorrow’. Hopefully, the Tata Power creative team or their advertisement designing agency will keep this in mind and come out with a much more traditional and authentic advertisement for their discoms operating in Odisha during next Diwali.
Thank You once again Team Tata Power.
