INDIA’S WICKET-keeper batsman and captain of ODI and Twenty20 team, Mahinder Singh Dhoni is presently being dangerously showcased on some television channels, uprooting and taking away a letterbox after consuming a particular biscuit that supposedly boosts his energy to do this ‘unlawful’ act.

Definitely unlawful if one goes by Indian Telegraph Act. Damaging any means/part or agency of communication, including a letterbox, is a crime and punishable under various sections of this Act. But Dhoni with some children around him, who also consume the ‘miraculous’ diet, does it. He does it publicly and has no remorse while dismantling the red letterbox in this vague and ill-conceived advertisement.

It is a different question that in an era of e-mails and SMSs, even if letter writing is not common among the elite, it doesn’t mean that letterboxes have no place and public figures like Dhoni can be shown damaging the public property with impunity? Indulging in such an irresponsible act with a false sense of bravado creates an unwanted stereotype.

Such misleading advertisements have a negative impact, especially in the rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir, where children have reportedly started attacking the letterboxes in Dhoni style, only to damage their own legs and hands. Situation elsewhere in the country may not be different.

Was there nobody to whet the script when Dhoni acted in this advertisement? Why has the protagonist in the advertisement shown to be bestowed with a license to eliminate this enduring symbol in ‘terminator’ series style?

Isn’t there any monitoring body in India to point out flaws in such advertisements or has the national conscience accepted this? It may be glamorous on the surface but it is creating havoc with the public property and the psyche of children who find their power inadequate to perform the feats a la Dhoni, their hero.

Now let us take another advertisement, though popular, but full of implications.

Two children are standing on the two sides of a border. One child invites the other for a game of soccer by pushing the football into other side. The child is lured, crosses the border, but is caught up by the pincer of the barbered wire. The child on the other side of the border rescues the one caught by the hook and speaks in some language, alien to this writer and possibly to others in this part of the world. The ambience is striking, that is, somewhere in Kashmir or possibly somewhere in the northern sector. A very touching advertisement indeed, poignantly portraying the human condition, especially in third-world countries (read India and Pakistan) but fraught with dangers for India.

The child cries something like this: "VALE YOURKUN… VALE YOURKUN…"(Meaning come here, come here, in Kashmiri). The message is conveyed that boundaries are irrelevant when people speak through a particular network. So far so good! But since India cannot expect reciprocity, doesn’t the advertisement involve breach of national security by inviting unsuspecting children to fall into booby-traps and land mines?

Isn’t this advertisement too misleading and needlessly adventurous, when teenagers are shown on the border and one even crossing it, while risking his life?

In a border state like Jammu and Kashmir, such advertisements will definitely have a negative impact. If one goes by the instances in the past, it gets revealed that when children, particularly teenagers inadvertently crossed borders, they had to undergo the trauma of having been caught and tortured by the security agencies in both countries.

Such advertisements will encourage those who love adventure and at the same time want to talk to their relatives on the other side of the border. Do they just need to kick a football, as is shown in the high-profile advertisement?

But will such kicks on the border help the individuals in linking the hearts through this network? The fact being that there is no provision for cellphone service in border areas. Those who claim to have such facility on the borders are then definitely inviting trouble… Nothing misleading about it!

Public memory may be short but the fact that SHAKTIMAAN was instrumental in eliminating precious lives of scores of children who, in a bid to copy him, jumped over rooftops, allowing the electric current to pass through them and indulged in other impractical acts. The present advertisements as discussed here, it is hoped, may not be the basis for such idiosyncrasies.