Since I was a child, I always had a sweet tooth and of all the means, I always preferred the good old Dairy Milk, endearingly known to us as ‘Cadbury’. Isn’t it the same chocolate that our parents and probably their parents had as children ( a vintage pack gifted to me once suggested that). A chocolate bar that along with 5-star (now relegated to obscurity) has become a synonym for the whole lot of chocolates available in market, just like Xerox for photocopies.
Yet with changing times, our dear ‘Cadbury’ has also changed. As long as I can recall, formerly it use to have a paper packing which after much wormy controversies was changed to the present plastic packing which also gives it a more ‘take me seriously’ look. But the other day, when I decided to relish the calorific sin, a look at the new version of the standard Rs. 5/- dairy milk and my heart sank- it had been trimmed to half its former size. To be fair to the brand’s policy makers, let’s say that it has been ‘slimmed’ and why not?!! Aren’t everyone infatuated with slimness. Whether it is the dear uncle and aunties next door for whom the whole world should be slim except their own children or the TV channels that promote slimness through the soap operas where even the 60 year olds are unbelievably and enviably slim and of course young looking too to add to the injury of the viewer’s already battered ego.
So if we want everyone to be slim, we will have to accept everything as slim…..slim TVs, slim mobile phones, slim cameras, slim models and slim chances so why not a slim ‘Cadbury’??!! May be very soon, the ad campaign which says ‘kuch meetha ho jaye’ (let’s have some sweet) would be changed to ‘kuch kam meetha ho jaye ’(let’s have a little lesser sweet) where our Big B will reason with the world that his age calls for such desperate measures.
So the die has been cast rather the slimmer chocolate has been cast for us to suffer the agony of relishing a slim ‘Cadbury’……the only time I despised the generalization of slimness..
