How an ad changed my life
[Applause]
namaste
i am people today’s uh
theme of the event is asthatva and
i think for as long as i remember i have
been identified or as tithified
as a curly haired girl but while i was
growing up
the idea of curly hair being beautiful
was so alien to the people
i was growing up with that it was almost
considered as a disability
definitely it was very difficult to
manage i was growing up with
very dry dull almost damaged hair
and it was nearly impossible for anyone
to manage it
i remember my relatives meeting me and
saying oh to maribya
still the same they would give advice to
my
mom like you know you should comb her
hair a certain way so they will
straighten up
i just felt that there is something
certainly wrong about the type of hair i
had
and that’s how the the idea that curly
is not beautiful
was instilled in my head but i was fine
with it as long as
i was in school but then i turned 17
and the days of tying a ponytail or
having oily hair all day were gone
and now i was in college and college was
the time when i was supposed to be
a diva but unfortunately what bollywood
had taught me all my life
was that only girls who had straight
long black beautiful hair were the divas
everyone else who had short hair who had
curly hair
who had anything other than this normal
diva
stereotypical diva were not considered
too good these were girls who would be
unhappy
or wouldn’t wouldn’t be the protagonist
or would be considered a very negative
character or would be friend zone
and i didn’t want to be friendzoned not
so soon at least
and that’s when someone introduced me to
this magical
magical thing in my hands it was
a straightening iron and what it did was
it could straighten up my hair and
immediately
like in a blink of an eye i would look
so different
i would i started looking beautiful all
of
all of a sudden it was completely
magic to me i was so happy to receive it
i wouldn’t i
i couldn’t thank more to god and to the
people
who invented this i was so happy that
all
it took me was just pulling my hair on a
burning hot plate
and that’s it there i was it felt like i
was the cinderella who just found a
ferry
all of a sudden i felt like i was the
most beautiful
chick on this planet conditions applied
i
i was aware of the conditions that i am
beautiful only with this hair
straightener
not without it when life happened
i grew up to enter advertising
and what are the odds i was managing
uh beauty brands i was selling cold
creams and
face lotions and beauty creams and hair
products
hair conditioners etc and i was enjoying
it
this was also when i was going on a lot
of dates and meeting guys
and i met someone who was a really
really charming guy
and eventually fell in love with him
he was the guy any girl
would feel so proud of he was good
looking
he was smart he was attractive he was
from a good family
he was well educated he was well behaved
occasionally but he was everything
i could i have ever dreamt of like he
was more than that
and that’s when i felt that if i could
have this guy
that would be like an ultimate
validation of
me being beautiful
that’s it there it was i just need to
have the sky
but there’s this thing uh there’s a
complex that a lot of
people who have newly acquired wealth
often go through uh they feel
often obsessed with this wealth that
they have suddenly acquired
so much so that they get insecure about
losing it
it’s called sudden wealth syndrome it’s
a real thing you can
google it and i felt that sudden wealth
syndrome hit me at that point
and well my fears came true
when this guy started behaving he
started acting weird and eventually
dumped me
but that’s not the bad part i mean i’m
happy
that he did the worst part was that he
dumped me on a whatsapp message
like that’s what he chose to
to break up with me
and that just left me wondering that
what is it exactly
that happened that make made him hate me
so much
he did not give me a specific reason for
this breakup
so i started digging in and i started
blaming myself that there must be
something wrong that i did
there is something wrong probably in me
probably i don’t look
good enough probably i am not good
enough
and suddenly all the things that i had
heard
as a as a child and everything that was
said to me as a kid by my aunts about my
hair
about my body about my face everything
came back to me
and i started believing that i am not
beautiful i am not even closer
close to it i am ugly
i feel so ugly that i stopped looking at
myself in the mirror
in fact i stopped clicking pictures or
even facing the camera directly
while taking pictures there is a
specific timeline
on my instagram where i’m not facing the
camera directly
it was the period when i was shying away
from facing myself because i hated it so
much
i mean isn’t it funny that a person who
is the brand custodian of so many beauty
brands
actually couldn’t relate to the beauty
category itself
i felt distant from the category of
beauty
from my own beauty and this went on
for a few months when i was also taken
on board with
another brand which was a hair product
brand
this brand wanted to do a campaign for
their shampoo
and this was under the campaign thought
of true beauty
it’s not the actual name but sort of
similar
and so i went through everything that
they have done i was trying to study the
brand whatever they have done in the
past i was trying to read their history
all the ads that they have done in the
past and what i learned was that true
beauty was trying to feature
women of different types they were
trying to break the idol standards of
duty that are usually portrayed
in media or in in films
and they were trying to feature women
with different hair types
the one like me also with different skin
type
with different body types with different
skin colors
and i don’t know what happened to me
that time
but i just after doing this activity for
the entire day
at the end of the day i went in front of
the mirror and took a good look at
myself
i just opened my hair i untied them and
i went for a wash and when i came back
i left my hair for the entire week just
the way they were
i did not comb them i did not
try to arrange them they were frizzy
they were curly they were puffy they
were just the way they were
and after many many years for the first
time
i felt truly beautiful with no
conditions applied
and that day i understood the power of
an
idea the idea
that straight hair is beautiful was
instilled in me as a kid
the thing is that human beings love
symmetry
we find symmetrical things beautiful
very easily
because symmetry is easy to adapt it’s
easy to register
and that’s why we love it but anything
which is remotely asymmetrical
we find it different we find it
difficult to understand
and when we define it difficult to
understand we call it weird
it instills doubts in us and human
beings don’t like to be
in doubts that’s why every weird thing
or every different thing becomes
not so beautiful and that day
this template of beauty in my mind was
broken
and i’m grateful to this brand for doing
this
but that is not the only template i was
carrying
our mind is set to create templates for
everything because it makes our job
easier just like how we do it in
advertising because it makes our job
easier once again
and just like beauty i had a template
for success also in my mind
i always wanted to become an author
and i wrote my first book with a lot of
interest it’s called live life stop
analyzing it
i wouldn’t recommend you all to go and
read it it’s a pathetically written book
i wrote it when i was in 12th standard
and i was i would
i remember i would take all the time i
would get from my studies and
try to write this book uh in that time
my second book is something that i love
i i it’s my favorite one
it’s called dope kebab and that one was
written with a lot of love
my third book however is the one i would
recommend
to you i would highly recommend to you
to go and read that book
this one was called two day down and
this was written out of
sheer greed of becoming a best-selling
author
and that was the template i was living
with
the thing is that as i grew up being a
writer in the publishing and
book industry i understood that it is
very important for me to become a
bestseller
a best-selling author because that is
what will get me
bigger publishers publishers who will
actually give me contracts which means
hashtag fame hashtag name hashtag
richness hashtag money hashtag
everything we all want
so i i started working towards that that
became my dream that became my template
to success
and i did everything possible whatsoever
whatsoever possible to get there
and i got there i did instagram reviews
i did
a post to follow i did a lot of
campaigning i went on to the
to to most noted platforms just to speak
about my books
i gave people my book to read and then
review about it
i did of click baits i did free copy
contest
i did meet the author contest i did free
workshops i did blah blah blah hundreds
of things
and here i was i derived i became the
best seller
i became the best-selling author
but i as much as i want the story to end
here
it unfortunately doesn’t
because in real life stories don’t end
after you become something
becoming beautiful best seller
successful they are just adjectives to
feel
and in order to feel them you need to
consistently be them
there’s nothing like becoming one of
them
unfortunately it took me a while to
understand that
because when i became a bestseller i was
clueless of what to do to
do with this tag i i did not turn the
rich
overnight i did not become famous
the way i imagined i would become
i nothing changed nothing much changed
around me or in my life i was the same
person working in advertising
living off my salary i was doing the
same things
nothing nothing changed
and it only made me disappointed i felt
cheated i felt like
someone told me that if you will become
a bestseller
then something good will happen to you
you will become rich you will become
famous
everything that you ever want would come
to you
i felt so cheated that
there came a point that i felt like i
should i should call it quits it’s high
time
because i didn’t know what to do from
here
what to what to what should be my next
goal what to dream next
and while i was it again it felt like
a breakup because i was i was with this
i was in the relationship with books and
with
writing for over a decade and i loved it
but today i was so heartbroken that i
felt that i need to walk off i need to
walk out of this relationship
i felt so heartbroken that once again it
felt like it reminded me of the
breakup that i just went through
and then i said to myself that wait a
minute
maybe this is not the love for writing
that is making you feel this way but the
love for
the best selling tag that is making you
feel this way
because this best seller tag was once
again
a validation for me to be worthy of a
writer
having a best-selling tag meant i was a
great writer
and when i was not able to make that
make that happen
or may give get a proof of that it
disturbed me
once again i was struck by the sudden
wealth syndrome
so i thought that okay let me put aside
all the tags
and look beyond them and see what
happens
that’s when i started focusing on the
art form
and i started enjoying it for what it
was i
started enjoying writing for what it was
and that is when i realized that you
know probably i don’t need
a publisher to treat my ideas and rebond
them
as per commercial viability maybe i
don’t need the mamas and cha-chas of the
world to validate
my style of writing or review it
maybe i don’t need a charming contract
to validate my worthiness of being
an author or a writer as long as
my idea is worth spreading
today i write and i share my ideas
as a copywriter through acts as a
screenwriter to my short stories
and short films and as a speaker
through platforms like tedx
i intend to add perspective
to someone’s life through my writing
i truly believe that perspective
is a really strong power that you can
share
a perspective has the ability to bring
about a change
its perspective that makes one design
different
from the other and make one type of
beauty look different from the other
type of beauty
it’s perspective that helps you break
one template
step out of it and create another
a lot of times we blame media for not
representing
beauty the way it should be or for
showing negative
uh standards of beauty but in my case
i believe i’m thankful for the same
media
for changing my perspective on beauty
and they did it by
simply reshaping the template they used
to sell a beauty product
and i couldn’t be more grateful for them
doing this
so as an advertising professional i
would highly recommend you all to use a
template in all your social media posts
but keep away from them when it comes to
life
thank you
you