Is it really that "Big"?

That's the ad line of Rediff, advertising its unlimited email storage. This ad is pretty popular on TV networks these days and double entendre ad's are the one's that have lasting brand recall. I remember Fitness one gyms in Chennai launched their gyms, with similar double entendre, bordering on looking like they are talking on sex. Rediff's advertisement was also bordering on a similar line. Rediff approached SUN TV for advertising slots, to air their ad, as the SUN Network is a huge vehicle to showcase a brand down south. SUN TV rejected the advertising bid, supposedly due to so-called-cultural-mandarins(a.k.a protectors of culture) attitude that they display. Tamil Nadu, thanks to these sidey politicians has become a state where politicians use the conservative nature of people to condemn any act which has a male female interaction/any sex related joke/bold statement.

Khushboo's rather true statement a year back, was misconstrued by the politician's who utilized it as an election gimmick to win the masses sentiments. The fact remains that if so much of moral policing is done, and every thing on sex is hush-hush, then all it does in the long run, is to make children unnecessarily curious about sex, and they end up screwing their lives. Chennai, is also blatantly a city where most parents, are driven by this herd mentality, to police their children into studying, and encouraged not to build relationships with the opposite sex.


Most decent schools in the city don’t advocate such measures, but a majority of schools in Chennai focus too much attention on studies/tuition and discourage an interaction with the opposite sex, saying that the time could have rather been used to study. Any average school or college goer(Sathyabama,RMK and the other engineering college students would have a lot to say) would know that, but would prefer to remain tightlipped about the whole thing.

Its a huge problem to comprehend as the rowdy politicians (any political party) who run the state, make all these mass practices to woo the average voter and in the process only instigate their rather conservative nature to such boorish bohemian laws.

Did You Know

My engineering college suspended a guy who happened to sit in a seat with a girl in the bus. The guy just came out of an accident and could not stand, so he sat in the seat, leaving 2 spaces between the girl.

In other engineering colleges, Male and female interaction is monitored very closely by "dada’s" of politicians, who run the colleges and severely reprimand/punish/suspend students.

Colleges have bars in buses that prevent interaction between students of the opposite sexes.

Boys and Girls have seperate stairs for walking.

In Technical symposiums Men and Women are not supposed to participate togther..... and so much of other crazy rules.

Chennai as a city is a great place to live in, and their conservatism is actually pretty mild, but the way the government uses them as pawns spreading this moral policing, is when things start to look ugly. The way the politicians and TV channels reacted to the Khushboo incident was crazy, where each channel behaved as though they were concerned about the Chennai culture and "were upholders of moral traditions". SUN TV is just making things worse by refusing the ad of Rediff. There may have been a different reason, but I frankly don’t see any other reason than the moral policing angle, which made SUN TV reject the ad. The AD is no where near a Rakhi Sawant or Shakila Video that needs to be thought through so hard, but still SUN TV has its way. Rejecting such an ad, and if it makes news that publicity is good enough for building a brand impression than the money they were to make, if they aired the ads.

God Save Sun TV

Related Links
Rediff Unlimited storage News Article
The Rediff Advertisement Video-


Earlier Article on the Khushboo incident written by me