Misplaced dissent

“You see me standing in an old man’s shoes
No sense of style, a limp in my walk
Repeated jokes, forgetful talk —
And yet it’s the young who are singing the blues…”
From The Ballad of Bachchoo

Driving through Dhaka last year, the traffic was held up by a vociferous street demonstration. My Bangladeshi companion explained that the protest was against the US’ use of drones to bomb tribal areas in Waziristan. “Ah, so we are outside the American embassy?”
“No, no, it’s outside McDonalds,” he said.

He assumed that I would accept that the fast food outlet was a natural target of a protest against the US administration’s policies. Ronald McDonald may not be Barack Obama, but my companion and the demonstrators seemed to equate them. McDonalds was a symbol of America. I can’t think of another country in which a restaurant selling national cuisine would symbolise an arm of the state or its embassy. I can’t see people opposed to Indian foreign policy picketing a curry house or even demonstrating outside a Taj group hotel.

But yes, America stands in the popular imagination as the icon of retail and the fast-food outlet seems, to very many people in the world, a natural target for protest. That being said, I don’t know if the Bangladeshi protesters would have chosen a Kentucky Fried Chicken branch or a Starbucks as a stand-in for the Pentagon or the White House.

Though human beings have since time immemorial bought and sold things, material and abstract, it was probably American commerce and consumerism that introduced the concept of “branding”. Brands that were aggressively peddled on the global market emphasised their uniqueness and that distinction became inextricably tied to the desirability of anything “Made in USA”. One of the (possibly untrue) canards of my youth was, that some consumer products branded “Made in USA” and passed off as American, were actually made in the Ullhasnagar Sindhi Association.

Some brands didn’t need this verbal appendage. The Model T Ford, for instance, was in the early 20th century the shape of motoring. In time to come it may puzzle historians that a fizzy drink, aggressively marketed all over the world, became not only the most recognised brand of its times and perhaps all time, but began to somehow stand for the culture of the New World. This year is the 100th anniversary of the designed Coca-Cola bottle.

The drink was invented a few decades before by a charlatan called John Stith Pemberton who concocted “remedies” for common ailments. In 1886, he hit upon the idea of making a drink that he called a “brain tonic” using the leaf of the Coca plant from which cocaine is derived, alcohol, caffeine and the extract of the Kola-nut which Africans said had a powerful aphrodisiac effect. To make this concoction of stimulants palatable he added sugar.

The drink became immediately popular as it seemed vast numbers of Americans needed a brain tonic. It was branded, through a deliberate misspelling, as Coca-Cola, with the running handwriting of Pemberton’s bookkeeper as its typeface. It was, at first, sold in bulk by Pemberton’s company and bottled by retailers in various shaped glass. It was only in 1915 that a Swedish glassmaker called Alex Samuelson, inspired by the curvaceous contours of the Kola nut, designed the Coca-Cola bottle as we know it — though the drink is now sold in cans and plastic bottles of various shapes and sizes.

The word “Cola” has become a general suffix for various purple fizzy drinks and has lost its intrinsic connection with the reputedly aphrodisiac Kola-nut. The Coca-Cola brand has, through these last 100 years, acquired connotations far beyond its vaunted brain-stimulating qualities. In the 1960s, the protest movements against the Vietnam War began to refer to American aggression and expansionism, as “Coca-Colonisation”. In India, in 1977, George Fernandes became the Union industries minister in the Janata government and expelled Coco-Cola from the country, purportedly for trade violations. There may have been a case against Coke, but the expulsion was seen as symbolic and a declaration by George against global capitalism.

When later Coca-Cola was readmitted to India, it marked the new era, of the country being ready and willing to participate in globalisation, albeit with safeguards, regulations and specified Indian partnerships in place. In my college days in Pune, as a protest (the ultimate in feeble gestures) against the Vietnam War, several friends and I stopped drinking “Coke”, even though it was seen as the  cool thing to do then —  and yes the word “cool” had been formulated by the 1950s’ Beat generation to mean fashionable, stylish and turned-on.

Rejecting Coke represented anti-Americanism but was an empty, possibly hypocritical, gesture as we were addicted to American films and didn’t stop to think that they were linked to the American myth in stronger ways than an aerated drink which began as a fraudulent cure for dyspepsia and melancholia. I suppose the characters that emerged as mythical constructs from Hollywood and the US pop-industry were as persuasive and pervasive as American icons and representatives, as was the sexy Coke bottle. Still, there seemed no point in boycotting Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or Eartha Kitt.

The same circle of Coca-Cola rejectors would avidly read the Time magazine, which my uncle subscribed to and posted from Bombay each week. Again, though it was often a mouthpiece for the American administration, it struck us as less pernicious than Coca-Cola. That changed when a group of students came visiting Pune from the University of California, Los Angeles and some of us were deputed for the week to show them around the town. We made friends. One of them, a black guy, saw me carrying the Time magazine and reacted as though I had the mark of Cain on my forehead. Why was I reading this racist, imperialist, Republican rag? I said I didn’t realise that I was, but that for a time was the end of Time.

And I do occasionally drink Coca-Cola.