Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN revealed a great idea today.
What do you do when you are in the middle of an interesting program on TV when
a mindless advertisement comes on! Dr Gupta was talking about something very
interesting, when his own program came to a commercial break. So, he told the
person he was interviewing that he was going to do a few push ups by himself
when the channel had the commercial break. In fact, he started off with his
exercises a few seconds before the channel switched to the advt!
I took a pledge there and then! I will follow Sanjay,
with a modification. Any time a commercial comes on, I will get up and do a few
walks around the apartment, and add a few sit ups if the advts last longer. I
figure that this will help not only me lose some weight, but help my friends in
the advertising industry as well!
While I am on this topic, I have some advice for Mr
Chidambaram, our beloved finance minister! Sir, please consider a cess on all
income derived from television advertisement! The cess can be used to set up a
string of cardiac clinics around the country, to cure a problem TV watching contributes to! I know the budget has been
typeset already and has to be presented in a few days. Don’t worry. Your chaps
can do a bit more of word processing and insert another cess! Imagine Rs 5,000
Crores more, all to be spent on gaining weighty votes!
Srinivasan Ramani
