Where have all the poster boys gone?

I was coming back from a friend of a friend's place yesterday night. It was almost midnight and while my friend was almost alseep, I had been ogling out of the window to get a peek of what Delhi looks like so late at night. There were of course the usual brightly lit skycrapers and even more brightly lit hoardings and banners from within which smiling girls informed that Delhi has been dressing up for me. You see it was quite late and I am offering you a fairly literal translation. But frankly, it did make me squirm a bit for a momemt or two. I had no idea whether Delhi had been naked all this while or whether it was my gaze that exposed its nakedness. Lest I run riot with more such literal translations, let me just conclude that Delhi's nightscape defies easy, literal translations. But what about the poster boys? I saw a few of them yesterday night passing by in a three wheeler carrying a whole bunch of large hoardings. They'll have them erected at various strategic corners of the city before you and I wake up in the morning. Which means I saw some invisible men!

Those of you who know your english know your poster boys too. They remain forever young and never cease to smile at you from the morning newspapers or from your bedroom walls. Or from the roadside banners and hoardings. Ever gave a thought who ercets those gigantic banners and hoardings, leave alone the innumerable posters pasted on the walls around you? I am not talking about ad hoc posters or banners like those before or during an election, which some of your or my politically-charged friends might be designing or even pasting. I am talking mostly about those large hoardings or insertions in a busstop, the ones from which you have a smiling Amir Khan selling Titan watches or those reality show contestants begging for your votes.

Have you ever noticed that you have not seen too many of those being erected during the day? Do you know any one yourself who does that sort of work? You may be familiar with many professions which poor men and women take to for a living but how many professions do you know of which are so invisible? There is a reason of course. Putting up such huge hoardings requires workmen climbing up impossible heights. Given that the frames of such hoardings are almost always dangerously close to the side of the road, it is seriously risky to have men climbing up so high during peak traffic hours. But tell me just how safe is it to have men climbing up so high in the first place, whether during peak hours or lean hours? Night in and night out? Unless, of course, they are lifted by escalators. Now, if you go by the number of large banners and hoardings in the city, you'd clearly see it is not possible to lift each and every hoarding-fixer and still meet the deadlines set by your clients. Better still, go ask any advertising agency executive whether s/he even knows the guys who actually put up these hoardings. I remember this little controversy last month over destitute children peddling magazines at traffic junctions. An executive of one of the publication houses actually admitted that they had no control over who actually sells the magazines to the retail customer and that it is entirely decided by contractors hired by the sales and distribution department. I suspect the story would be no different with the advertising agencies and their banners.

I also suspect this invisibility of ceratin professions--occupations really--is an integral aspect of growing urbanization. These are the occupations that are populated by poor and entirely dispensible men, women and children, the ones who fall through the cracks of our projects of modernity. These occupations involve too high risks and too little returns for us to understake. Your or my children frankly would have no need to stand at traffic junctions in the sweltering heat and humidity of july and try to push sale a copy of a Marie Claire to indignant car-travellers. Just as you or I are unlikely--in my case as of now--to venture out in the middle of the night and climb up those rickety, rusty 19th century iron frames and then hang those sleek 21st century hoardings over them. I cannot resist the temptation to use this incongruity as a metaphor for our modernity and urbane poise. I have a feeling we too are resorting to wearing very expensive and spectacular clothes to hide our sketetal inners as far as possible. Unless those wiry poster boys (and girls) too are included within our vision (pun intended) of 'development' and 'progress', the body of our modernity will continue to lack in flesh.