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Monday, January 7

Mera PIA ghar aaya

This Pakistan International Airlines ad is most unfortunate in retrospect. But in ‘79, in a French publication, how were they to know? It evokes the silly, retroactive digital excision of the towers from movies after 9/11.

I say put them back in. It’s scar concealer for a killer blemish. (via Reddit)

manish vij on Monday, January 7th, 2008, 4:07 pm in Pakistan, Photographs › Email this Email this › Facebook this › Reddit this › Link › Reader links


13 comments

  1. 1SP on January 7th, 2008, 10:43 am › Link

    Un-fucking-believable! I wonder who dug this up

  2. 2ashvin on January 7th, 2008, 5:25 pm › Link

    Manish you are the king of the multi-lingual pun. [Was the blowback reference intentional ?]

    Personally, I’d say about 39% of the fun of reading UB comes from the titles.

  3. 3Dari on January 7th, 2008, 5:30 pm › Link

    “Manish you are the king of the multi-lingual pun.”
    Ditto that!

  4. 4manish on January 7th, 2008, 5:31 pm › Link

    Yup, dark humor — coming home to roost. (The reference, for non-Bollyeaters.)

    Thanks! But only 39%? It takes a certain sophomoric, mentally-stunted language geek to come up with these puerile titles. But I assure you reading them makes you not just genius, but indigenous. (To borrow a phrase from Anupam Kher :) )

  5. 5Jabberwock on January 7th, 2008, 10:51 pm › Link

    *Dissolves into silly giggles, both at the ad and the post title*

  6. 6prakruti on January 8th, 2008, 6:04 pm › Link

    cute title manish..
    actually there is another cute madhuri dixit song “mera piya ghar aya oh ramji”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU2LfyRaKDE

  7. 7musical on January 8th, 2008, 11:16 pm › Link

    Prakruti, the Madhuri song was “adapted” from the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwali :)

  8. 8Filmiholic on January 9th, 2008, 7:45 am › Link

    …then of course there was the Aerolineas Argentinas’ near miss of the Towers upon approach to JFK years ago, leading the (Brazilian) Dad of my then beau to refer to the airline as “Jesus Te Esta Chamando” in portuñol…

  9. 9zaz on January 10th, 2008, 12:52 am › Link

    so i always called PIA PEE EYE AYY

    is the ad meant to be read VIA PEEYA? Would seem so… i always thought the company pronounced it P I A, hmmmm

    ad is fucked up

  10. 10Sharanya on January 10th, 2008, 2:04 am › Link

    What a premonition! Wonder what the copywriter/designer who came up with that thinks, now.

  11. 11SP on January 10th, 2008, 9:49 am › Link

    The ad is in French, and perhaps the copywriter was playing on ‘via’ and “PIA.”

    Anyone else remember the old joke about PIA standing for “Please Inform Allah” (that a plane-crash-load was arriving) and AI standing for ‘Allah Informed” (because Air India would have crashed first)?

  12. 12brown on January 14th, 2008, 2:58 am › Link

    http://www.historyofpia.com/

  13. 13sundu on February 1st, 2008, 11:50 pm › Link

    Some one has taken all for a Ride or flight I suppose
    I dont see the French publication and so I dont believe this

    A Doubt fire


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