Brands I Grew Up With

Dalda- There was a shortage of this cooking oil most of the time.

Binny- Many clothes were made from this cloth brand.
Bata- Shoes invariably had to be Bata. Learnt much later that this was a company started by a Czech immigrant into the West.
Cadbury- the end of desire.
Chiclets- the first chewing gum that we had.

Tata- The trucks and buses we saw were either Tata or Ashok Leyland.
Godrej- They made locks and cupboards. Life's valuable possessions (few then) used to be under their lock and key.
Camlin- Oh, the excitement of a new compass box in school!

Taj Mahal- This was a Udipi restaurant in Hyderabad.
Kamat- and this too.
Modern- Mummy, mummy Modern Bread-an iconic ad.

Philips- Listened to marvelous songs on the Philips radio through the ages..Binaca Geet Mala, Bhoole bisre geet, Aap hi ke geet, Jaymala, Chhayageet, S. Kumar's ka Filmi Muqaddama, and many sponsored programs. Murphy with the iconic Baby ad was another big radio brand.
EC TV/Uptron TV- at home and at IIMB respectively. On the latter, watched in 1983 as India lifted the Prudential World Cup from the West Indies' hands.

Abids- High Street in Hyderabad for shoppers.
Chowpatty- The only one, in Mumbai. Bhel was made famous by it.

Ambassador- Travelling in it was rare, and we felt like royalty when we did travel in it.
Air India- The Maharaja was only aspirational. No air travel for the middle class, was the norm.
Jeans-any brand- The ultimate in cool.

2 comments:

Diamond Head said...

PS: Good read. Here are some useless trivia to add to the Dalda story -

Had England's Lever Brothers not insisted on inserting the letter 'L' in the name, then perhaps, India's most loved vanaspati ghee would have been called Dada.

Vanaspati is the Sanskrit word that now refers to the entire plant kingdom, a good marketing gimmick back when - pre Lululemon Yoga pants and Kombucha.

Dada was actually the name of the Dutch company that imported vanaspati ghee into India in the 1930s as a cheap substitute for desi ghee or clarified butter, prepared from cow's milk.

Oils (such as vegetable, olive, sunflower) are liquids at room temperature. In the food industry, hydrogen is added to oils (in a process called hydrogenation) to make them more solid, or 'spreadable'.

Vanaspati ghee, on the other hand, was a type of vegetable shortening made up of hydrogenated or highly saturated vegetable oil and made to mimic desi ghee.

Finally Ghee is not an Indian exclamation for Gee - rather Clarified Butter!

Rajendra said...

hmm..

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