IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 144 — COLGATE, XEROX... AND SOLDIER Brig PS Gothra (Retd.)

"Saab, Paytm kar ke WhatsApp kar dena," my car cleaner said about renumeration after cleaning my car.

I smiled. In one sentence he had unknowingly narrated the history of modern branding. He neither expected me to use Paytm nor insisted that I send him a WhatsApp message. The money could go through PhonePe, Google Pay or BHIM. The message could be an SMS.

It didn't matter. The brands had quietly swallowed the products.

Growing up in Punjab, I suffered from the same confusion. I genuinely believed The Tribune was another word for an English newspaper.

Likewise, every photocopy was a Xerox. Every digging machine was a JCB. Every instant noodle was Maggi. Every rugged four-wheel drive was a Jeep.

Then came Close-Up. One of the cleverest advertising campaigns of my youth asked,

"Kya aap Close-Up karte hain?"

Notice the brilliance. The advertisement wasn't asking, "Do you use Close-Up?" It was trying to make Close-Up replace Colgate in everyday language.

It won market share. But it lost the dictionary. Even today, after brushing with Sensodyne, Dabur Red or Pepsodent, mothers still ask, "Colgate kiya?"

That is branding at its finest. Or perhaps...at its most dangerous. Because sometimes branding does something it should never do.

The company spends decades building a brand, only to discover that the brand has become so popular that it loses its own legal identity.

Few people know that Escalator, Thermos, Cellophane and, in several countries, even Aspirin were once protected brand names. Their success became their undoing. People began using them for every moving staircase, every vacuum flask, every transparent wrapping sheet and every painkiller. The trademarks became common nouns. Ironically, the companies that created them gradually lost the exclusive right to those names.

Success had become a legal liability. It erases identities. Recently, I heard a gentleman point towards a camouflage-clad man and proudly tell his son, "Beta, soldier ko salute karo."

The gentleman meant well. But the man wasn't a soldier. He belonged to another uniformed service. An honourable profession. A demanding profession. But not soldiering.

That made me wonder. Have we become so fond of borrowing prestige that we now borrow identities as well? Camouflage uniforms. Military-style rank badges. Combat terminology.

The word soldier generously distributed to almost anyone wearing disruptive-pattern clothing. If branding succeeds by replacing one word with another, are we now trying to replace professions as well?

A surgeon would not like to be called a physician. A judge would not like to be introduced as a lawyer. A pilot would object if someone called him a driver. Because every profession has its own qualifications, responsibilities and traditions.

Then why should soldiering be any different? A soldier is not defined merely by camouflage. Nor by boots. Nor by medals. Nor by rank.

He is defined by something far less visible. Unlimited liability.

When a young man joins the Army, he signs a covenant unlike almost any other profession. The nation may one day order him towards danger rather than away from it.

He cannot negotiate. He cannot resign on the battlefield. He may be required to lay down his life to complete the mission. That willingness is not stitched onto the uniform. It is stitched into the oath.

Perhaps that is why soldiering has always occupied a unique place in every civilisation. Not because soldiers wear camouflage. But because they accept consequences that most professions never will.

As I entered my house, another thought crossed my mind. Colgate became a generic word because it was too successful.

I only hope soldier never becomes one. Some names are brands. Some names are professions.

And a few...must remain sacred.

Jai Hind.