men who wore fine shirts stitched with perfect collars and drank cappuccinos with whipped cream. They needed to know which street had the shops that sold what they need and billboards exist to tell them. As technology advanced, so did these billboards evolve into entertaining television commercials, glossy magazine advertisements, digital billboards, which are again billboards that can change contents like a magical shape-shifter, unlike it’s painted counterpart, and a cigarette commercial can, in no time, be transformed into a ‘say-no-to-tobacco’ campaign. Informing consumers about addresses that had their needs could no longer suffice. They demanded your attention, and, to a certain extent, deserved it. And they ensured that they got it.

And that’s where the race began. With advertising campaigns as massive and phenomenal as to smear every existent space on the globe capable of coming into the vision of a homosapien, with attention seeking lures for men to buy what existed, sufficing needs can no longer be enough, If firms that funded those advertisements want to sustain, they have to create needs - needs that did not exist before. And that’s when you, who would have been happy with his Disc player that churned out your favourite numbers, suddenly realize that music is no longer as good without the latest device that fits in your palm, can store 6,000 songs, lets you play games when you get bored and allows you to take pictures as well. Home cooked food doesn’t suit your palate anymore. Overpriced colas and burgers which cost as much as a meal for a family of three comprise your meal while you are on the ‘go’. You need leather upholstered seats fitted to petrol guzzling vehicles, that keep the vehicle’s interior at a comfortable temperature, oblivious to the sweltering heat or biting cold outside. And all of these are no longer luxuries of the rich and famous, they are bare minimums of all of the jetsetting hard workers in today’s world.

But all this jazz comes with a price tag, right? A big one, indeed. Well, there isn’t much to worry about. There are the banks which care for you as much as your spouse does. So, before you can decide that you need one, you have the friendly customer care agents from your bank calling you and informing you about the seemingly endless benefits that a credit card from their bank can provide you with. What else can be better that being able to spend the money you don’t have? So, you decide to grab one and instead of waiting for another six months, order that smartphone from your favourite online shopping portal. Well, you can always pay ‘later’. The ‘later’ which eventually arrives.

You are not satisfied until you have the ‘best’, and to grab the best always, you take the other route. Overwork to the pinnacle of exhaustion, deception at the workplace so that you stay at the top, ensuring that you make no new friends and turn old ones into enemies; so that you can wear that exorbitantly priced French perfume and flash your obnoxious cellphone at your friends and colleagues. And it’s all a little too late when you realize that the ordeal of pulling it through the hardships has taken a serious toll on your actual well - being. The stress has added wrinkles to your face and grey hair to your scalp. You are no longer as energetic as you used to be, not to mention the pot - belly that you have put on and the few diseases with fancy names that you have picked up. Nevertheless, it doesn’t bother you much. You can always have face-lift creams and Botox injections to keep you young forever, health insurance packages that see to your well - being at expensive hospitals and sessions with fancy yoga gurus who, at a rather high price teach you postures to keep all ailments at bay. And even after that, if you still feel demoralised, well, worry not, here come the Godmen to your rescue who assure you that the material world is but an illusion and it’s futile to run after worldly possessions. Hence, you should surrender yourself at the feet of the ‘Divine’ and pay their ‘donations’ in equal monthly installments. Amen.

In his latest book titled “Buyology: how everything we believe about why we buy is wrong,” branding expert Martin Lindstrom explains the complex and rather shrewd nexus on which modern economy thrives. Satisfying the demand and supply equation is not a prerogative of modern businesses, not anymore. To survive in the world of open economies and fluctuating, ever-changing consumer behavioural pattern, demands need to be created. Demands that are conceptualized in corporate boardrooms by highly paid and overtly intelligent market analysts, product designers and business experts, and later on, impregnated covertly and casually in the psyche of consumers; through cleverly placed advertisement campaigns, brand endorsements by revered figures and not to mention, reviews and suggestions of a certain product by connoisseurs and field experts. So, even before you can zero in on an economical eau de toilette, your favourite sports star comes up endorsing one with an obnoxious price. You think of buying a simple phone when you read in your techno-magazine about the trendiest communication gadget equipped with a touch screen, superb camera that also plays crisp music and can help you navigate your car, reviewed by a top-notch tech guru. Your best friend flashes his new tablet computer, something which is not in your arsenal and you end up desperately desiring one. You feel like chomping on hot mom-made paranthas, but your kids nag you to the neighbourhood’s hip burger joint.

The saga of endless needs, synthetically manufactured in business analysis labs continues to inconspicuously penetrate our daily lives. And courtesy the hysterical social networking epidemic, it is always easier to flaunt what we have and provide nutrition to this demand disease (how many times have you felt jealous after reading someone’s “updated his status via iPhone” in Facebook?). The vortex swirl of bizarre desires and whirlpool of urban requirements drag us deep into the sea of credit crunches, recessions, catastrophic competition in claustrophobic cubicles, until we give up and give ourselves to numerous charlatans. Unless we realize that it has been indeed our soul that has been put up… For Sale!

By Saptadip Saha