Tasveer Ghar: A Digital Archive of South Asian Popular Visual Culture
Good Morning – Welcome – Svagatam
But back to 'Good morning'. Besides its manifest cultural hybridity, 'Good morning' carries several other messages, often conjoined in the repertoire of calendar art. The first is of the child anticipating the roles of adulthood. At first glance, 'Good morning' would not seem to present much evidence for this. But the presentation of the little girl as 'cute' – 'cutification', as a well-known Indian educationist has called it – provides an insight into things to come: femininity constructed as frivolity. This, as feminists have stressed, is one of the insistent messages of contemporary product advertising -- universally, 
not just in India. And indeed it is not hard to imagine the original of 'Good morning' as an advertisement for Scottish shortcake biscuits!
Obviously, there is an intimate connection between calendar art and contemporary product advertising. The deeply bowing 'maharajah' of the 'welcome' calendar is, as everyone recognises, the mascot of Air India, and his invention by a prominent advertising agency is regarded as a textbook case of successful product promotion (leading also to the agency's commission by the political leadership for election campaigns). The connection with consumer product promotion and class aspirations is no doubt muted in 
the androgynous child's 'You are welcome', or in SMS style, ‘UR Welcome’. But when prominently linked with a female gender identity, it serves as a reminder of the fact that women are an important conduit for the transfer of property in consumer goods from one family to another. The cute girl of 'Namaste-ji' (Salutations) from a slightly earlier era anticipates her role as wife (the mangalsutra style of gold chain) and mother (the doll), while the T.V. set prominently in the background represents the acme of lower middle-class aspirations in consumer goods and dowry at that time. This is the rather sinister side to the 'welcome' of the bride as the ‘Lakshmi' of the home -- the bringer of new prosperity.