Today morning, as I stepped out of my room, I saw a guy walking upside down, hanging from the ceiling. Rubbing my eyes in disbelief I was unsure if it’s a dream or for real. I turned back and picked up the newspaper lying on the floor. There was a similar picture of people walking upside down along with an article titled ‘Gravity loses ground’. I quickly ran through it to find that some German scientists have proved earth’s gravity to be a farce. They proclaim that every object has a tendency to rest on a surface, and for most part it just chooses a surface below it rather than above it. The scientist said, “It comes as a-matter-of-fact if you look closely without preconceived theories. Why do the branches of a tree grow upward rather than bending down? Why do lizards choose to hang upside down from our ceilings while birds perch up-straight on trees? That’s because plants and animals haven’t heard about earth’s gravity while we unfortunate humans have, thanks to Galileo and Newton. Humans believe in it so superstitiously that even if we tried to walk on the ceiling, we have to fall down to confirm to this blindly held farce.” The article further talked about a debate over global acceptance of this new theory and its effect on habitats of birds, monkeys and lizards.
Before testing it myself, I decided to move around just to make sure. In the washroom, a guy was using the wash basin with the tap turned up and water reaching up to his face two feet above. I was not sure that if I pissed, will it go into the sink or the sink will throw it back on me; so I simply avoided the morning chores for the time being. My neighbor had already shifted his bed to the ceiling and was hanging with his hands resting from the ceiling. I couldn’t say if he was standing downside up or was practicing Yoga upside down. Whatever it was, it all seemed so creepy.
Without crinkling my brain further, I went to attend classes as scheduled. But the scene inside the classroom was too much alleviating. Till yesterday, students had the choice of sitting in the front or the back. But now they had four options, front or back on floor or ceiling. To avoid challenging my already constipated bowels, I chose to sit upright as usual. And I also decided to put my chair on side wall from tomorrow onwards just to be unconventional while have fun with this new opportunity.
During the lecture, the marketing professor drifted away from the topic and talked about the possible implications of this new anti-gravitational theory on marketing. According to him, it will be a boom for retail industry since they will now have both floor and ceiling area to doubles their shelf space. But it will be a bane for realty and construction since people will opt for smaller houses with adaptation of natural bunker beds facing each other. However, all this will be short lived since land and property prices will also double in due time.
Other than these, I saw one clear and immediate advantage for us. Now we can put tables on the ceiling in our mess to avoid overcrowding. Also, the future generations will be rescued from studying Newton’s laws of gravitation. It also removed one of the greatest fears of humans – “Will the lizard on the ceiling fall on my head due to gravity?” – now we know it won’t unless it specifically chooses to. Hitting a six in cricket will be a lot easier while hitting down the ball will be difficult in volleyball. Also, gymnastics will not be so awe-inspiring any more. Spiderman will no longer be a hero and terrorists will threaten to destroy the moon with a hijacked plane.
As a student of marketing, I thought of making the best of this opportunity and come up with an innovative product to cater to the anti-gravitational aspirations of hitherto grounded humans. But marketing is not about creating new stuffs, which must be left to scientists and researchers. We marketers only create the perception of a great desire, for an absolutely crap and useless product, in the minds of the consumers. So I pondered upon ideas to resell an existing product with a new name. “How about a Wall-resting TV to replace a Wall-mounted TV?” I asked myself. “Sounds great. But why is my alarm clock ringing on the middle of the day. Darn, it must be morning and I must be dreaming all along.”
