Striking Good Health

I recently saw this video ‘Striker Strikes Back by Manu Singh’. Sunfeast is running a “Health is fun with Farmlite” campaign, and this short film is a part of the Farmlite Bytes Film Festival. Sunfeast Farmlite is the new cookie on the block, from ITC foods - a health-packed combo made with oats, wheat, almonds and raisins. Just imagine biting into one on this beautiful wintry morning in Delhi. Yum!

But first, the video … 

Love at first sight it was when I saw good old Carrom making an appearance thus. I played this game donkey's years back, in times which were free from gadgetry and full of at least four free kids from the neighbourhood who wanted to ‘strike’ around and win the pinky Queen. As if that was not enough to jettison me down memory lane, the voice over in the sepia-coloured video reminded me of those conical shaped carts cycling around and announcing anything from the circus in town to the latest Bollywood flick running in the cinema hall. If you watch it you’ll see it’s quite a creatively done video.

What is even more creative is the way our Carrom is used to make a point – about Health, and how fun activities can make us fitter and more efficient at the tasks we have set our hearts to do. It takes the 82 kg striker, who is lovingly called Dubey ji, three attempts to get the Queen, despite the ‘tez shuruwat’. The Queen sits lamenting with an ‘Offo!’ as to when Dubey will get fit enough to deliver her from the black and white coins which surround her. Dubey ji does get fit, for after all he has ‘exercised’ three times over to reach her, in the warm-up process going from 82 to 72 and finally potting her.

What an innovative way to drive home the point that getting healthier can be made fun too. That some activity, any kind, is better than becoming one with the couch and the television remote. 

Take for instance the pot-pourri that my own house is. 

A fussy eater Nursery-goer who only understands taste and not health needs clever clog parents to magic food which looks wow, tastes wow-er but most importantly hides nutrients inside. A husband who for the most part of the day works sitting in one place, but who has married passion and health in the form of cycling. So every morning he paints the foggy streets of New Delhi red, for a score or more in kilometres. And the woman of the house? Well, apart from making circles running around her two boys, she makes sure that she moves her lazy bum enough – whether it is to walk around and read, dance and do her daily chores or to go real dancing with the boys. Oh, and on the consumption of unhealthy foods keeping a strict eye!

In our own ways we find time and resources to keep our bodies well-oiled, which is not to say with dollops of ghee on every chapatti. It’s good to research and know about healthy foods, reject unhealthy habits often passed down as old-age ‘wisdom’, follow a feasible workout regime and not be negligent of developing signs of medical problems. As a parent, it’s heartening to see how parents today are much more conscious of giving their kids the right food. It seems the parenting ideal now includes a holistic idea of good health, and not the deceptive ‘healthy’ by weight. 

Equally good to know is that the food industry is working with similar ideals. For like a wise woman now says – We are all but strikers in a game of carrom. To play our parts, we need to ultimately strike back’.

Right, Dubey ji? 

[This is a sponsored campaign review.]