“I waste a lot of deodorant on men everyday. Like, recently, I used a hell lot of a body spray before going to my school’s alumni party. But it turned out to be sort of a bachelor’s party; none of the girls turned up. I had to stay around men for that whole evening, and obviously they were not going to get seduced and dance around me like the girls do in the ads.”

This is the story of a dismayed Romeo, 23, who laments how a huge amount of his modest budget is spent every month on faking his body odour among girls he comes across. But, for some unfortunate reason or the other, the perfumes are destined to be wasted on male companions on many occasions. “It is sick wastage… who cares what odour I am spreading around me when I am with guys, huh?”

If popular brand Axe is to be believed, Romeo will soon have a pocket-friendly solution. “We conducted a survey, and found that an astounding 94% male consumers believe that it is a waste of money to smell good among other guys,” said an Axe spokesperson last week. “We will launch the SexSensor line of deodorant body sprays and perfumes by the end of the year. The SexSensor will look for female presence around the user, and it will deactivate the odour of the spray if there is no girl around.”

Young men who are alive on the hopes of having a sex appeal like the male models in Axe advertisements, have applauded Axe’s announcement. It can help them save hundreds of dollars every year.

The statement said further, “In such cases, the Axe effect will be conserved for later on. This means the spray won’t be wasted on unwanted people, even if the user is stinking like ammonia otherwise. We care for our economically poor customers and we understand their priorities. The product tagline will be: I’m a man and I don’t have to woo MEN!”

The product will use a technology called SexSensor, by which the fragrance will look for female hormones within a radius of 10 metres. If female traits such as gossiping and giggling without reason are caught by the sensor, it will automatically spray the product on the user’s body parts so that he suddenly starts smelling the way he doesn’t normally smell.

Meanwhile, some people are not amused. “This doesn’t ensure that girls will indeed come towards me. What if a girl doesn’t even notice me and moves away? It again is a waste, no?!” complains an Indian engineering student. He says he recently suffered humiliation when a recruiting interviewer turned out to be a gentleman who told him to leave for using too much perfume. “I missed out on a job, and so much of my perfume got wasted… all because I prepared myself for a female interviewer.”

Inside sources suggest that Axe also did the same survey among young women; 99.9% of all women surveyed were as interested in smelling sexy around other women, as around men.