I’m sure you’ve seen the new Coca Cola TVC…the one featuring Warli art. This one…
I couldn’t get the Tamil version of this TVC online, but there are two things that seem MASSIVELY discordant in the transliteration.
1. The original TVC has the guy asking for ‘Dilli ki bus’ in a place that is either North East or Leh types. Why would the advertising agency change that dialog to merely ‘Chennai’ without changing the backdrop? Why can’t it be, for argument’s sake, a Tamilian asking for a bus to Delhi, in broken Hindi (to add nativity)? Are people in Tamil Nadu so stupid that they need to be shown a guy asking for a bus to Chennai – all across the damn country – from Leh? Is there even a bus like that? I’m sure the Telugu version has Hyderabad in it.
2. The jingle. The Hindi version has a funky reworking of O P Nayyar’s C.I.D classic, ‘Jaata kahaan hai deewane’. It sounds really good (wonder who sang it in the new form!), but in Tamil, it is mind numbingly transliterated. ‘Jaata kahaan hai deewane’ means, in coarse terms, ‘Where are you off to, O lover, you’ (!!). The Tamil jingle goes, ‘Enge nee pogindraai rasiga’, which is elementary school transliteration of the same words! Why can’t the agency use a Tamil film song that has a similar mood? They don’t have people with such skills? Ask online, for heaven’s sake – make a social media contest out of it…I’m sure they’d get tons of suggestions!
Oh wait…I understand. Budget constraints, to get the composer to do yet-another remix (and more, if you consider other languages this TVC is in)? If so, why not just leave it in Hindi? It’s after all a cult song and it’s not as if Tamilians have never ever heard Hindi songs – they’ve O P Nayyar fan clubs in Chennai too! And no, DMK’s first family will not send paid goons after the agency and Coca Cola for having a ‘Hindi’ song in an otherwise-Tamil TVC. If you want to add nativity, go the whole hog…if you can’t, just leave it at the rashtra basha level…we vernacs can understand and will still buy the drink.
Bheja…adequately mauled.