As a bona fide Indian uncle, I am thrilled. FMCG giant Cadbury has recognised my power. Their new Destroy Valentine’s Day ad is all about the Indian uncle.
To destroy the pernicious Valentine’s Day once and for all, they are calling on all uncles to step up to the plate. This does not involve heckling young couples trying to go on a date at a pub. Nor does it require thrashing an interfaith couple trying to get married in a court.
Instead, the ad for 5 Star chocolate bar requires uncles to embrace Valentine’s Day whole-heartedly. If they fill the cafes with teddy bears and balloons, wear shirts with heart prints, it will be the end of Valentine’s Day. As the ad tells us, “When uncles join a trend, the youth instantly lose interest in it. It happened to social media platforms, skinny jeans, YOLO and many others.” Now uncles can kill Valentine’s Day. With love.
Uncle knows it all
All cultures have the uncle problem. But the Indian uncle is a breed apart. No uncle knows as much as this uncle. He knows the “real” motives of both Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. He could fix the Indian economy in a jiffy. He can hold forth on whisky, women, mutual funds, diabetes and the GDP. In the school-friends’ WhatsApp group, he is still Romeo No. 1 and his friends remember the penalty kick he made 37 years ago. Intermittent fasting is an acceptable topic for discussion, enlarged prostrates not so much.
Denial is the first commandment of uncle-dom. The other day I met a friend’s father. He scolded me for letting my hair go grey. “If you all let your hair go grey, how will we look?” he said disapprovingly, his own slicked-back hair a shiny jet black. I am hardly immune either. The first time someone in the market called me “kaku” (uncle), I bristled. I still wanted to be “dada” (brother).
When a teenaged Aparna Sen was cast in Satyajit Ray’s Samapti (1961), the third part of his Teen Kanya triptych, she was delighted to hear her co-star would be the dashing Soumitra Chatterjee. Chatterjee was already the heartthrob of young Bengal after playing Apu in Ray’s Apur Sansar (1959). He immediately dashed her hopes by introducing himself to her as “Soumitra kaku.” He was too young to be a kaku then, but Chatterjee, unlike most film stars, accepted his uncle-ness with relative equanimity. Ray turned him into Bengal’s most famous dada by casting him as the charming, cerebral detective Felu-da. When Ray’s son embarked on his own Felu-da movies years later, he hesitantly told Chatterjee he was planning to cast a new actor. Chatterjee agreed wholeheartedly saying at that point he was no longer Felu-da but had become Felu-uncle.
Toxic uncle-hood in new India
At one time, uncle-hood was more about the waistline and the hairline. At worst, this was mutton trying to pass as lamb. Uncle-hood in the new India has become more toxic. In the open economy, the bar for success is higher. Where age and membership to the right club had been enough at one time, now they are not sufficient. Performance anxiety is higher even for the Indian uncle and that has translated into a small-heartedness that resents the progress of others, especially non-uncles.
In an essay, economist and writer Shrayana Bhattacharya writes “we live under the tyranny of the Indian Uncle” — from corporations (where they want everyone to work Sundays) to the RWAs (where they object to everything), they live to dominate, and insist on imposing their bad jokes on everyone. But while it’s easy to pile on the patriarchal tyrannical conservative uncle who fumes about feminists, Bhattacharya writes that “self-professed liberal uncles” are even more problematic. They are the “unhelpful uncles”, the gatekeepers and mansplainers, the ones who are “stylish in the sexism”, smilingly ignoring the input of female colleagues while they suck up the oxygen in the room as they deliver non-stop gyan.
But what strikes me from my unscientific survey of WhatsApp groups is that Indian uncles are not just killjoys, they are singularly joyless. They like to shoot down new ideas and are ever ready to tell you why something will not work. And I worry that, surrounded by a cohort like that, I will easily become like that as well, sitting in the club, nursing dyspepsia on the rocks.
That’s why the 5 Star uncles give me some hope. For once, the uncles are having fun without tired sexist jokes. They are wearing brightly coloured outfits, they are whooping it up in cafes, and holding onto teddy bears. Of course, the WhatsApp uncle will sourly point out this is all to sell a diabetogenic candy bar.
But at least for once, some uncles just wanna have fun.
The writer is the author of ‘Don’t Let Him Know’, and likes to let everyone know about his opinions, whether asked or not.
Published - February 10, 2025 05:01 pm IST
