Petronas's Deepavalli festive season advertisement this year on two competing Indian businessmen who operate restaurants using almost similar names is tasteless. Why do they have to impose caricatured images of Indians that they culled from third-rate Tamil films from South India?

I daresay the storyboard was inspired by a real event that took place in Petaling Jaya where two Indian restaurants had similar names. But eventually both were targeted by the local authorities because they had constructed shades in front of their premises and laid out chairs and tables on the road.

I suspect the producers of the Petronas ad had wanted to show a vignette of Indian Malaysian life using the style found in interesting Lat cartoons. But what they have failed to also notice is that Lat doesn't make fun of the different races in such a fashion. He knows how to capture the essence of their colourful lives without passing judgement on them.

This is what the Petronas Deepavalli ad tried dismally to do.