Boman Irani & Meghna Gulzar have a freewheeling chat on children

Admission to the Kurkure Family Express, a train specially chartered by PepsiCo, is typically restricted to winners of the summer promotion for the snack brand, ferrying them across the country. But we got on board the Mumbai to Pune leg for an impromptu roundtable with D Shivakumar, CEO, PepsiCo India; filmmaker Meghna Gulzar, actor Boman Irani and ad woman turned author Anuja Chauhan for a freewheeling chat on children: empowerment, attitudes and how they are changing.

Are kids today more empowered than you were at their age?

Meghna Gulzar: Absolutely. My six and a half year old son knows how to work an iPhone. We didn’t have even a TV remote. The film a family sees or the TV show they watch over dinner or where they go for dinner; children influence all these experiences.

Boman Irani: I don’t know if it’s scarier or a good thing when a 12 or 15 year old is influencing you. Sometimes it’s convenient that the information comes from them.

Anuja Chauhan: With us, there was no electricity half the time; there was no power let alone being empowered. (The kids today) are more empowered and have no option but to grow up faster. They are dealing with more than I was dealing with.

Do they make suggestions and more importantly do you listen?

Gulzar: My son makes suggestions on everything. In the industry, the film team is mostly men. When I was making Talvar, he told me “You work only with men. You should not work with men so much; you should work with women.” He was five then.

Chauhan: On technology, their advice is probably better than any other. Like on phones, vehicles and cameras.

Irani: I’ve stopped taking that advice since it changes every three months.

How do you view regulations – either voluntary — or by government bodies against marketing to kids?

Gulzar: It’s very intelligent to target advertising at children because they are persistent. If they want something they make sure they get it and don’t give up. How it influences choices is a matter of tremendous responsibility. That has to be monitored by the agency or brand.

D Shivakumar: We are part of a consortium of eight companies that do not target ads to kids. The basic premise is kids are sensitive and prone to this type of messaging. It’s also because society is now challenging people to change, saying is it fair to target a simple mind?

Chauhan: It’s probably not smart to target kids since I’ve never seen such a bunch of cynical non-believers and sceptical people. Anything you put out there, they say ‘that’s not going to make you fairer’ or ‘that won’t make you taller.’ You’d have a better chance with a middle aged woman like me who says “Ah, seven signs of aging? It will all go!” My 16 year old is not going to buy that.

Irani: Every 30 to 40 years, if you look at advertising from back when, it looks terrible. You think, ‘Are these the ads we were listening to?’ (For instance) Cigarettes — the energy stick. When we see it now, we cringe. I don’t know what we will cringe about 50 years from now, but I’m sure it will include many ads that we thought were pathbreaking. Or will we be targeting infants in the next 30 years? I really don’t know. But the right thing to do over a period of time is to not influence a mind that’s so easily influenced. It’s only fair play. If that can stick around, and the advertising looks embarrassing 30 years hence, I don’t care.

Do you think kids these days are smarter or just better informed?

Irani: (It’s not IQs but) Superficial awareness. Eventually they have to face the big bad world. All the precociousness and information go for a toss. They have to settle for one damn phone and make a career. It boils down to have you prepared your kids to be affable, amenable, honest and to have a certain sense of ethics? That will take them further than shitloads of superficial information.

Shiv: Kids today are in a hurry to become teenagers. They are more articulate and hence have a broader knowledge of things. A couple of areas where there is serious loss is handwriting and spelling due to autocorrect.

Irani: I disagree about them being articulate. They say ‘awsum!’ for every damn thing.


Image: BCCL


Are you friends to your kids? Did you consider your parents friends?

Gulzar: Not my dad but my mother. I mothered her more than she mothered me, growing up. She tells me I am doing now for your son what I couldn’t do for you since she was a working woman, an actress, away for long periods.

Chauhan: Friendship with my dad was a total no-no. My mother is 81 and now I’ve achieved friendship, frankness and equality. I’m friends with my daughters more than my son; the girls are older. But I’ve always made it clear I’m your parent. It’s not my business to be your friend. I will give you mother values, mother compass, earthing and advice. We can talk music, emotions, crushes etc, but I’m your mother and no one else can give you that. Once everyone is a certain age, you can hope for friendship.

Irani: I never met my dad since I was born posthumously, but my mom was a big influence. She realised I probably had learning disabilities: dysgraphia and dyslexia which we came to know more about thanks to Aamir Khan. The technical term in those days was “duffer.” She realised this kid is not a duffer and is balanced with something else. She encouraged me to watch films, sing or do theatre. She was my IMDB and Wikipedia; we’d talk till the wee hours of the morning. But then it was a different generation. I could never speak to her about girls. With my sons, I pull rank except when we are playing the FIFA video game. We are supposed to be friends while playing that

What do your kids expect from you?

Shiv: Kids want their parents to have deep values, be role models for their friends and finally be cool; a very difficult combination.

Gulzar: My kid believes he needs me to look after him, his father to get him toys and we need to listen to him; whether he will listen to us or no is up for debate.

Chauhan: My kids demand consistency. I cannot afford to be caught in contradictions. You can’t say one thing and do the other. Also, they just come down on you: they say you are being racist, ageist, sexist... We used to make these mild jokes at the expense of communities and religions and you can’t do that anymore since they jump down your throat.