“On the film sets we make movies,’’ a movie director of great repute once said. ‘‘But in the cinema halls we sell hopes.’’The whole world is peddling hope. Everywhere you go people are buying happiness, or the hope of it. In the USA, the pursuit of happiness is considered an inalienable right in its Declaration of Independence. There people want to perpetually smile and they do not mind paying handsomely for it. Therefore it is hardly surprising that with the advent of globalisation, the American way of life and the American way of thinking have spread all over the world like a killer virus. People will do anything to feel good.They go for exotic holidays, join health clubs, indulge in adventure sports and just about do anything in the hope of getting happy. And no matter who you are and what business you do, you are in some way directly or indirectly contributing to keep the wheels of this feel-good industry chugging.The other day one of my friends recommended a typically sad art house film to a co-worker. His co-worker said: ‘‘Why? If I want to be miserable and unhappy, I can just open my passbook and see how much money is left in my bank account!’’This explains why Hollywood and Bollywood have never dared move away from the happy ending. ‘‘Cinema should not be just a replay of life, it should be an improvement of life.,’’ said the great French director Francois Truffaut. A bookshop owner tells me that the books which become bestsellers are almost always happier and more hopeful.What happened after the recent tsunami catastrophe perfectly illustrates the need that people have to hope. The media first bombarded us with heartbreaking tales of families and villages being swept away. But very soon we began to be flooded by tales of human resilience. Day after day we sat before our television sets listening to tales of little children and old people who had survived on their own for days without food and water.A journalist friend of mine says: ‘‘For me the tsunami tragedy is not about death but about life. When the body count was finished, what people did in these regions was to sit together and listen to brave accounts of all those people who had survived the wrath of nature.’’Said a star anchor from a leading television network: ‘‘You must understand it was the need of the hour. Man needs to hope. That is why our survivor stories sold like hot cakes and shot our TRP ratings to an all-time high.’’Unlike a product which is tangible, which the buyer can see and touch, we sell products of the mind; ideas that are invisible. The world of entertainment is actually a part of the service industry which sells a promise. In fact when you go to a salon you cannot see, touch, or try out a haircut before you buy it. You first order it, then you get it. The world over, people working in the service industry sell the promise that somebody will do something first, for which they will be paid a fee. Nike, presumably a running shoe manufacturer, does not make shoes. It only designs, distributes and markets them. In the USA people in the fast-food business used to think they were selling food. Then McDonald’s figured out that people were not buying hamburgers—people were buying an experience. The phenomenal success of Barista Coffee shops is not because of the coffee they sell but because of the lifestyle they provide. ‘‘I go to the coffee shop hoping that I will find someone who will not mind having coffee with me,’’ said a lonely young man who works in a call-centre all through the night. So there you are. Even coffee shops sell hope and not caffeine.My friend U G Krishnamurthy once said: ‘‘You give people hope and they will give you money.’’ Religion has done this for centuries. Osho Rajneesh owned more than 300 Rolls Royce cars. Try buying one Rolls Royce car with a 9 to 6 job. The spiritual supermarket, which is infested with these hope sellers, has done roaring business in every age in almost every country in the world. But unlike we ordinary mortals these holy men do not have to deliver the goods in this lifetime. All they have to do is make empty promises, which may or not come true in the life hereafter!
