Suck it and lick it : Raj Kundra chides Shah Rukh Khan for 'disgusting' Frooti ad

New Frooti Life’s new ad seems to assume that Toy Story-like characters prancing around a giant mango will bowl kids over and make them harangue their parents to buy them the mango drink . It has a mango playing Gulliver to tiny GI Joe like humans, one slightly resembling Shah Rukh Khan. The humans try to push the mango, tie it to a car, make an elephant pull it, hit it, but the mango is immovable and unfazed – sort of like Baba Ramdev. This is when GI Joe SRK comes to the rescue and chants the ill-tempered mango world’s version of ‘Khulja Sim Sim’, as in the immortal words: “Aam suck it’a, lick it’a”.

The ‘aam’ in the ad is thrilled to bits, rises into the air, then bursts, and fills up a plastic bottle with Frooti.

Mission accomplished : not only does Frooti have a new ad, it gives its rival Slice stiff competition with this one. So what, if it’s in the stupidity department? I mean Katrina Kaif going all Sharon Stone on a bottle of mango drink is only as attractive as the temperamental mango orgasming to Shah Rukh Khan’s tunes.

Oh wait, did we say orgasming? Assuming that we are past the age when ‘sitting on a tree’ sounded like a perfectly respectable and asexual activity, it doesn’t take much imagination to detect rich sexual innuendos in the commercial.

You can watch the ad here.   (You know you want to now)

And businessman Raj Kundra, also known as Shilpa Shetty’s husband, for one was offended. So he vented on Twitter, scolding Shah Rukh Khan on Twitter.

This Frooti ad is disgusting! Kids copying and singing suck it lick it a. @iamsrk bhai how did u approve this script? Tasteless literally!

— Raj Kundra (@onlyrajkundra) May 3, 2015

He, however, had second thoughts

Ignorance is dangerous, but knowledge without responsibility is more dangerous.

— Raj Kundra (@onlyrajkundra) May 4, 2015

And then a third one.

Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.

— Raj Kundra (@onlyrajkundra) May 5, 2015

Finally came the epiphany.

Stop overreacting I love @iamsrk it's my personal opinion the ad is not made in good taste & bad for kids.Frooti thank media free publicity!

— Raj Kundra (@onlyrajkundra) May 5, 2015

And lo and behold,  he started trending on Facebook, no less. The last time he did, so was when he was accused of betting in the IPL. So this may have come as a welcome surprise.

Now going back to the ad, whatever the dirty picture department of your brain says, sucking and licking are perfectly asexual activities too, right? In fact, we suck on mangoes and lick our ice cream cones all the time. And children, below a certain age, only know that kind. The rest, who are of the age which tells them that verbs have different meanings in different stages of life, won’t sing it aloud and embarrass anyone.

Also, the words are integral to the activity of eating. Like how does a good Bengali describe what do with a mutton bone filled with marrow, simmering in a gravy? There’s no replacement for the words, ‘sucking it’ really!

By Kundra’s logic, the entire first half of the ad which lists the following activities - push it, pull it, hit it, move it, shoot it - could be passed off as the beginner’s guide to BDSM and put Rihanna and 50 Shades of Grey clubbed together to shame. But that’s hardly how children will see it, right?

So let’s all calm down and suck on a Frooti.