I first wanted to title this post in a more straight-forward manner and just call it: Surf Excel and a dirt blob. But I held myself back from it because wherever I look I find only subterfuge, facades, and truth hidden somewhere in riddles. The mesh of obscurity is as dense as a dirt spot on a clean shirt and, therefore, there is more than mere straightforwardness that will solve… well, dissolve it into oblivion! Just as ‘pulsation’ is quite different from ‘quivering’, truth is also quite different from perceptions. Perspectives need to get written in a way that helps a reader conclude and reach the truth without being pushed into it.

What is important, therefore, is that perspectives must lay down a general direction where readers walk and create their own path towards what is true and real. So it is time to STOP soaking anyone in falsehood in the belief that it will cleanse the system… my wife smiled as I tried to explain to her the logic behind my post.

‘You always end up making your posts so complex,’ she said, ‘they start sounding like a social studies lecture.’ To say I was not taken aback would be wrong. I just looked at her and thought, ‘Here is a teacher saying this. Teachers are so well known for moralising and lecturing.’

She probably heard my thought – happens when you’re married for more than twenty-five years – and said, ‘My post on this topic is already written and submitted.’ So here I am, challenged… and the post needs to move ahead fast and sound less like a lecture. So be it.

The cartoonist and a line drawn on paper

Look at a cartoonist. What does he do?

‘He draws cartoons,’ you’d answer and add, ‘cartoons that may have a social relevance or may act like barbs for someone doing something wrong.’

‘Right,’ I’d answer, ‘but what I am trying to decipher is the link of a cartoonist and the cartoon with the word SOAK.’

The way I look at things is that there will be people who will constantly chant, ‘Soak some more! Soak some more!’ And go on to suck the nourishment out of a project, assignment, state, country, idea, concept… and it is the job of the cartoonist to remind himself: ‘Soak no more of this corrupt state of affairs. Think and draw them out in simple lines so that the common man understands the truth fast.’

This is how that magical line or a set of lines come to be on paper… lines that are powerful enough to help clean up the system! It happens because there is a cartoonist hidden somewhere in every social fabric who is not willing to soak anymore in the quagmire and decides to draw lines that may create a flutter, a tremor, a quiver amongst the people and help us all get a cleaner future. This is how a cartoonist understands ‘soak no more’ and I think this is exactly what Surf Excel tells clothes that are dirty.

The blogger and the profit graph

There is surely a link between the blogger and the business houses of today. Even as business houses are busy soaking in all the profits in every possible way, the blogger looks, thinks, analyses, and mutters: Soak no more! He then gets down to writing an objective post that has all the possibility of getting picked up by the national media… and this is how the profit graph of the nation goes up!

It is expensive marketing gimmicks that have begun to soak up budgets fast and it comes as no surprise that business houses too are turning to bloggers.

‘So businesses tell the marketing leeches to suck no more,’ I said, seeing that my wife was reading my thoughts intently.

‘But businesses need to promote as the competition is stiff,’ asked my wife.

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘they are slowly realising that bloggers are like surf excel. Marketing plans are the ones that are heavily smeared with the dirt of unrealistically high budgets with long actualisation periods. Now can you conclude what I’m getting at?’

My wife cocked her head to one side, thought for a while and slowly said, ‘So bloggers, without actually saying it, clean and shine the marketing targets of businesses with letting them soak anymore. This just means that bloggers do their jobs fast and businesses end up with a clean profit graph!’

She thought a bit more and then asked, ‘What do bloggers get out of this relationship?’

‘Commitment,’ I answered, ‘just as you buy Surf every time because you know it does the job fast, bloggers are also getting to be an important part of the fighting force for a business. They are like the social media commandos who get in and come out fast with the mission accomplished!’ They do all this by emitting the right form of tremors and shocks that help dislodge all the scum and dirt from undesirable elements that are simply slowing the pace of reforms!

The reader and a novel

‘This one seems strange,’ said my wife when she saw the sub-heading, ‘why would any novel ask a reader to soak no more?’

‘Well, why can’t it?’ I countered, ‘It is good novels that tell readers to soak no more of the nonsense that the television gushes out to them and instead get the best perspectives and thought-provoking ideas from their pages.’

‘Ah! Hmmm…’ was all I got from her this time. This is exactly what she does when she watches our maid wash clothes with Surf Excel in record time! A good novel has the power to shake the couch potato out of his stationary position and makes him jump energetically at having discovered a newly found joy! Just as the social fabric thrives better with more readers than soap watchers, even clothes do better with detergents that ask them to ‘soak no more’.

Surf Excel and a dirt blob 

Hey, come on, I have already given you all the perspectives that could be linked to the concept of ‘soak no more’… and it is obvious that this section needs to soak no more in words!

My mind is now clean – as clean as my clothes that were washed without being soaked unnecessarily!

 

This post is a part of the ‘Surf Excel Soak No More’ contest on Indiblogger.

Perspectives on 'Soak-No-More'

Perspectives on ‘Soak-No-More’

 

Arvind Passey
18 September 2012