New Khosla Kunj – Gas

This morning was the second time that I watched Khosla ka Ghosla (one of the recent Hindi films). And this time I could not stop myself from writing about all the things that I feel makes that film great and special to me.
The film is full of insights about the contemporary urban middle class of a certain kind. Starting today I would like to dedicate some posts to the great experience that I had while watching the film. This is the first in the series that I am calling ‘Khosla Kunj’.

The film opens with Mr. Khosla (played by Anupam Kher) waking up with some stomach gas caused by eating ‘heavy food’ the night before. This is so typical of an Indian middle class family where every adult member has a concept of stomach gas and has an undocumented list of food articles that cause this ‘gas’. These food articles (it was Rajma in the film) are to be avoided in certain meals to have trouble free digestion.
As far as my knowledge goes ‘Gas’ as a concept has never been endorsed by the western medicine and yet it exists in people’s mind. Almost all the middle class families have one or more of such body/health related concepts. For example naabhi utarna & the stomachache that you get because of that is another of such health related phenomenon that might not find acceptance in the western medicine but it still exists. A lot of gharelu (home) medication is even guided towards fixing some of these problems.
Health marketers and advertisers can only do better if they learn more about these medico-ethnic health concepts that reside in almost all Indian households.