Condemning tinda: Advertising at rock bottom

The recent advertisement by Uber Eats condemning tinda forces one to think about the low levels of advertising experienced off late. Just because tinda has been cooked, the actors order burger using Uber Eats mobile app. This advertisement undoubtedly will have a negative impact on young minds, making them think that eating tinda is not cool whereas ordering burgers is trendy.

This is the most shameful and grossly irresponsible conduct by the advertising agency and Uber Eats. For the readers who might not know what tinda is, let us get to know about it in very brief. Tinda, in English, is called Indian squash, round melon, Indian round gourd, apple gourd, or Indian baby pumpkin. In Marathi, it is called dhemase and in Sindhi, it is called meha. All this information is gathered from Wikipedia. Tinda is gentle on the stomach and is full of vitamins and fibre.

In all probability, the persons concerned who made this advertisement and thereafter approved it have never tasted nicely cooked tinda.

My mother used to cook tinda in several ways and the most popular and family's favourite has always been dry tinda cooked with a little bit of moong dal with several spices, particularly moti saunf – fennel seeds of the thicker variety – added generously. The other version is with tinda cut into wedges and cooked with the normally used spices in Indian kitchens but without any onion and garlic.

There is another way of cooking it, which is called the bharwan tinda – the stuffed version. After softly scraping – not peeling – the surface, slice it from the top in four parts without cutting it through and then stuff it with regular spices. The other form of bharwan tinda is prepared by first making the tinda hollow and then stuffing it, which obviously can take in a lot of spices, with or without moong dal, as filling. Another version of tinda is prepared in thick gravy by adding a little bit of dry coconut powder, cashew paste, and milk to give the dish a slightly sweet and rich taste. A slightly different method is of preparing really hot and spicy tinda with thin gravy. Loads of regular spices and freshly coarse ground black pepper are the key ingredients which make this tinda dish comparable with pepper rasam or heavily spiced sambhar. There are many more versions with curd, tamarind, jaggery, etc. These dishes are delicacies.

The influence of advertising and other media is immense, and sociologists have very often advocated positive advertising to inculcate good habits, at least in children, whose minds are impressionable. For instance, the cartoon character Popeye – known for "I yam what I yam", and spinach as his power food – was used to popularise spinach. It helped in making children eat more leafy and green vegetables. There is to the best of my knowledge no "tinda growers/lovers association" which can object to this advertisement, however, when Australia had decided to use the colour greenish brown – the ugliest colour according to research – for the cover of cigarette packets after the plain tobacco packaging law was enforced, and named it "olive green", there was strong opposition by the Australian Olive Association. The government had to change the colour name to "drab green".

Thus, tinda per se should not be belittled. I will prefer a nicely cooked tinda to horribly cooked paneer any day. In the Uber Eats advertisement, tinda is being used to advertise a service which is simply food delivery; nothing more, nothing less. New services and products, with forceful advertising, often leave an indelible impact on consumers' mind and are responsible for changing consumer behaviour. Not very long ago the food delivery service was considered to be a luxury, which slowly became a convenience, and, nowadays it is being marketed as a necessity, however, with this type of advertisements a consumer is forced to think that rather than eating tinda, one should order junk food – whether burgers are in the category of junk food or not is debatable; by the way, Warren Buffett's staple diet is burgers and colas – or, food from outside. This is the creation of "forced necessity" by smart but deceitful advertising.

Such advertisements, not tinda, need to be condemned.

The author is a professor at IIM-A, akagarwal@iima.ac.in