Creativity on the move !

One phenomenon any resident of Delhi can ill-afford to miss are cars- not the normal ones busily plying on the roads..but the swerving ones with dark rolled-up windows, roaring music sans lyrics (pure dhol + desi metallica) and driver with only one hand on the steering.A sight that is deeply ingrained in every dilliwalla's mind (read 'especially the ones who walk on the pavement deeply fearful of this category')..These are the 'mundas' every mother warns her daughter to guard herself against in her growing up years but come marriageable age, the same 'munda' somehow seemingly transforms himself to the most suitable 'Raj' or 'Rahul' ! Woww..

But this post is not intended to furnish a character assassination..oops character description of such variety, but to exaggerate their acts when they take to the roads on their 'machine'... However tiny or big their 'machines' are, these are forbidden to cross a speed limit of 25 km/hr..so the cars are tuned to devotedly abide to this dictum and travel slowly with loud music reverberating inside it; the loud music remotely resembling 'underground' music so popular in the US of A; except that it contains some chaste punjabi and fluent English rap camouflaged together.Even an ardent music aficionado is bound to fail in separating the two bipolar music streams; such is the remix..ostensibly to cater to fans of both genres ! The remix and some possible action inside vibrates the entire car..what with woofers, sub woofers and sub-sub woofers augmenting the effect..a worthy parallel to contractors, sub-contractors in the Outsourcing business..
One thing I have always noted in such cars are the supra funny messages on their back window shield..Being a student of Economics and a zealous fan of Stephen Lewitt, I have tried to delineate a 'social manifestation of a profound attitudinal change' sort of trend in instances of such name depiction. During the 90's, these read something as pedestrian as- 'Dad's gift'; 'My dad's an ATM'; but most commonly the names of children of the couple owning the vehicle. Given most families had 2 children, their names would ensconce themselves on the two extremes of the window, the stickers sometimes dangling wildly..Come 2000's, the dual named(names of the children) back window shields gave way to a single heavier surname..A possible reason is the emphasis on family planning and hence the possibility that the name of a single child may not look so great all alone..This was thus replaced by either 'Raghuvanshi' ; a 'Singhania'; & similar heavy sounding surnames..Not sure if you noticed, but the above gem on obscure correlation (b/w family planning & outward behavioral depiction of such attitude) was my tribute to 'Freakonomics' and to other freaks who loved the book. I would want to reserve the barrage of criticism that I would like to shower on the book by just saying that making intelligent sounding correlations from disparate/disconnected events (read 'Butterfly effect') can fool only a few.
Now moving back to the business of shoo-shaa cars, the back window naming adopted by these have taken a different route altogether. Thanks to emergence of Facebook, lack of internet enabled handsets & slow 3G data speed; the window shields have slowly come to become a surrogate for FB status updates or cooler versions of 'Thought for the day' listened to by bored to death students every morning. Some gems : 'Mast chora'; 'Shera di kaum punjabi'(last heard it was transformed into a hit Bollywood song); 'Pachche hatle' & 'Ziddi buoy' !! So much for creativity. Pardon if you do not get the meanings of these-any attempt at translating these will only spoil the intended effect.
I am not sure if the guys behind the wheels of such cars have any connection to advertising; but the above taglines can be easily replicated to a slew of macho desi products, the sound of which is bound to resonate with the heartland.

Once a Dilliwala, always one !!

Since I am back in Delhi and armed with a richer understanding of other cultures and places now more than ever before, I stand in a decent position to offer insightful comments on our very own Dilli da Banda. Born a South Indian and raised in the capital, my control group is the unenviable 'Madrasi by birth & Punjabi by nature'(MBPN) category and being in such a non-elitist group renders me the by now much practiced ability to glean non-MBPN segment from the MBPN one.( Btw people from states Tamil nadu, Kerala, AP, Karnataka and probably southern parts of Maharashtra are all clubbed into the humble noun/adjective- 'Madrasi'; as the age old, unrevised definition of it goes)

The comparison however necessitates a strong and supporting context to make us understand the propensity of the Avg Dilliwala to showcase his much maligned exhibitionist behaviour to the amused audience he is serenading.Take my last travel in the Delhi metro as a case. Traveling along with so many of us that day and without the slightest hint of things to follow, I was busy devouring the ET. The train already had had 4 halts save the designated stoppage points.Cut to the next pause and one of the passengers took out his Nokia 3315 with a BSNL sim( I intend to define the consumer segment that he belongs to, should it help the loss making operators target him profitably via better positioning- as we will know later..)and called up somebody, yelling and shrieking at him.

Bewildered, we all were curious for what had befallen the once-sane guy.( Precisely the reason why shows like Big Boss do so well--any human is basically voyeuristic by nature; not sure where exactly does this trait stand on Maslow's hierarchy though). Looking at the clutch of stations yet to arrive on the metro route map,he shouted at the person on the other line deploring him and the Central government for the state of the Metro and requisitioning him to fix the problem NOW.By these 1.5 mins, people were in awe of the man who had at least the valour to call up somebody important in the Metro scheme of things and vent out the mass displeasure. Silent appreciation for the pluck just displayed filled up the box we were in.

Alas !! In the next nano second, while he was still busy yelling in assorted intonations, his phone rang to the tune of "Radhey radhey...". You are right..The man had fooled us !!

I truly believe this ingenious behaviour has its roots in dilli !!

As if this mooring ranked tops among the many that have involved one homosapien fooling the other, this person was beginning to experience a whiff of cold- shouldering plus the Gaali effect by the duped travelers en masse.One began to sense the air inside wafting with expletives directed at X for having fooled the mass- with fellas opinionating on how they knew always that he had been fooling us all along and that how one of their highly placed relatives could have directed the officials to build a metro right near his car parking -but in national interest and on account of propriety stopped just short. The Metro it seems is just 20 metres further from the tall-on-the influential-scale's house.

The plot for this blog had already been set in those 20 mins of action and never did I alight at my designated station with more glee !!

The Bang !!

Saw the much hyped 'Dabangg' which opened to full houses with a ‘D bang”. While walking through the movie, I had a justified grouse that the movie was not as good as the trailors had promised it to be-with its 'Kollywood styled stunts' and deadly dialogues.



The fact that the movie has raked in good returns in its first three days proves the importance and impact of good marketing and promotions. Buoyed by foot tapping numbers, the trailers for example promised more and much more wrt to the song picturization in the movie. One would have imagined the songs to contain more hilarity in actions and context and the new found quirkiness of Salman. As is the wont with Hindi movie promos, I expected the trailers to showcase some 2-3 of the numerous pithy yet laudable monologues from the actor. However, the movie contained the same 2-3 dialogues that one appreciated in the promos. Alas ! I was duped. To someone initiated to the works ahemm antics of Tamil superstar Rajnikant, the stunts showcased in Dabangg pales in significance. Rajnikant uses the entire Indian artillery to light up, kicks one guy whose reverberations lead to multiple deaths, finishes off villains at the same time as we homosapiens intake one molecule of oxygen. However, having watched Dabangg movie along with a true blue fan of the actor, I was forced to jump and shriek at every line mouthed by him.

The movie, however is a big hit -which makes me wonder whether my cinematic sensibilities are way different and vague from the usual cinema going fellas. This is probably the first time I ve thought about it-for I can be accused of liking the familial appeal of K3G, the now gone & then returned love story in KKHH, to mention two of the many.

It is another matter altogether that I visit theatres every Sundays. Armed with cheese popcorn and coke, it is not too difficult to breeze though a Hindi movie-for there would be numerous others who would be laughing and loathing at the movie along with yours truly.

This piece by no means is meant to be a critic of the movie. I happen to be too swayed by the public opinion to offer any!!

The Offline world !!

An uncanny interest towards human behavior and its idiosyncrasies’ compels me to write this piece. Frequently chided by my pals for not being a big enough fan of The Facebook or the Orkut, I have come to being a muted participant in the otherwise no holds barred facebook comment zone. During my 10 minute daily participation at the social networking site, I read people philosophizing about their forlorn love, irreparable motorbike, indulgent lifestyle , intruding parents ordaily career progression. “Raining outside”, “Boss is bad”, “My mom supermom”, ”Cooked Maggi today”, “life goes on” are some of the enlightening status messages that one finds. Displaying monotonous happenings about obvious climactic variations to not so strange facts about work life on a public forum is courageous indeed. Due to my inability to boast of matters as private and mundane as these, I am forced to settle for the unenviable status of a silent spectator.

Hand held mobile phones have only made this ritual easier for the people. These have become affordable, stylish and enabled with faster browsing speed. The sites have also been a boon for marketers who feign inability to find their target audience anywhere else but on the site. Thanks to the penetration of Facebook, the world is divided into 2 zones now-Offline (read real world) and online.

I have also closely noticed online behaviors of various kinds of people who thrive on the site-one of my friend who seems to be perennially depressed logs onto it every 2 hours to check the status updates of some of his friends. This exercise gives him that much more of a reason to whine and add up his accumulated depression. Another one is a very active member of the site and frequently uploads videos from the Youtube for all to relish. He refrains from commenting at all uses (misuses rather !!) the site as a vehicle for online video dissipation.

Revelations about a deceased celebrity hitherto kept secret get revealed and beamed by the news channels for the voyeuristic consumption of all, thanks to one of his/her seemingly trivial comments on one of these platforms. Lately, the attention of the media seems to have got diverted to the Twitter though, which gives a real time opportunity to celebs to vent their ire on one another or exhibit their humorous side or more importantly promote their upcoming releases to their zillions of hypnotized followers.

Sometimes I feel grateful to the rate of technological evolution over time. It is good that a platform like Twitter did not exist during the time of the famed fan rivalry between Kamal Hasan and Rajnikant and between Mohan lal and Mamooty. My addiction to movies limits me to offer a comparison of only these kinds. However, one must add that those fights between followers were real world ones that frequently involved tearing down the theatre for reasons that ranged from a not so appeasing ending of the movie to the cinematic demise of the star.

Talking about social media platforms, one can ill-afford to detest them because they are not only about Facebook and Twitter , which in themselves are great vehicles for mass consumption, but also about blogging and other web 2.0 features.. And I am a compulsive blogger myself. Not to mention a hypocrite and an armchair critic !!!

Selling mobile phones !!

Its been exactly 336 days since i last blogged( 2010 is not a leap year)..time not permitting n even when it did, paucity of creative ideas . Even today i ve nothing tangible to write about but the fascinating experience i ve amassed in the last one year.

Basically, I took up my first job in a company that was in a sector which in turn happens to be the fastest growing one in the economy( that's hw folks at business news channels describe it).
Insurance and telecom are two educated guesses..but i was/am in the business of selling mobile phones.

Being introvert by nature but never when there s a bragging contest goin on, I was thrown into the open world to face retailers and distributors who had established businesses running for years that sometimes surpassed my humble age. So one really had to develop the smarts to negotiate and deal with them on a daily basis. Since the channel partner and the company representative have to build a good working relation, there are occasional conversations over tea-not about the economy or the industry or political thoughts but about the weather,the sucrose/lack of it in the tea,about how one employee from X company became his friend or about how good his political links are in his state. Sounds interesting na.

We in our economics class had learned about how one looks at an 'opportunity cost' for every penny one spends. Some of these guys ve formulated 3-4 more mathematically proven ways to assess where every rupee of their capital should be devoted to. So, any B-school gyan should not be rigidly adhered to and so should be left open to be contested was one of the first lessons that I learnt.

During this period, I ve met various kinds of people- sophisticated to downright down market to inspid ones to non-chalant braggadocios. One year well spent in the 'market' makes you much more worldy wise , smart and develops in you a divine ability to save your ass evrytime its on fire. Sales as is thought, in the junior management level is much more tactical and is more about fire fighting day to day issues. But if one has a larger perspective of where the industry is heading to vis-a-vis where your prdct stands and then chalk out ways to expand its presence and thereby ' ve the enviable feeling of viewing your product being held in most hands that you happen to see on road, you feel a tad bit nice.

This happened to me when I was in the city of Kota- which boasts of a student population of around 2-3 lacs, which usually lives in a separate part of the city called New kota. Since my brand always has had a good imagery amongst the youth and coupled with decent distribution reach, one used to feel nice , seeing younsters hold one or two very high selling model of ours. Dont know how the Nokia sales managers would feel for it holds almost 55 percent of the mkt.But mine was a start up while the latter is an established behemoth.

The journey for me has only started and I hope to assimilate every such experience and savour them for the time to come.

Chao.

Seven minutes of fame!!

The word-digit combo 'CDC H1N1' sounds like a near chemical formulae of a sexy hydrocarbon.However,far from being a part of elementary chemistry , it has managed to evoke emotions mimicking fear,anxiety and to people like me- a generous dose of hypchondriac-ism.









Swine is one animal that will be extremely proud of the way it has managed to create havoc among us homosapiens. The pioneering breed of pigs that showed signs of it initially are ones belonging to the North America. Not that it puts shame acrss the faces of our ubiquitous desi ones.They seem to be way too happy as well- a momentary freedom from slaughtering and thus ramifications on businesses in fine dining that use them as inputs like TGIF n Ruby tuesday .







Long considered the most wretched creatures to set foot on this planet and never having been venerated in any of the religious scriptures unlike other more fortunate ones,it is their sole chance for a well deserved riposte. Let 'em enjoy their seven minutes of fame-they would nt get another shot at this for sure anytime soon!!This is cos scientists have managed to discover the gene that leads to the flu.







Given the seriousness of the flu in India esp with the installation of health personnel in airports to check on foreign nationals n NRI's visiting India either in a bid to make emselves seemingly recession proof or to find a desi bride, one never expects to keep reminding oneself of the prevalence of such a thing wherever your legs lead you. Since my astrologer for a long time has not been in a mood to predict a foreign trip for me , I had to make my way to the tech city -B'lore. As is my customary habit during the flight,I was reading a novel n listening to the ipod intermittently.






Then suddenly, I coughed. Then without missing a breath, i sneezed. Without apologizing for the impoliteness as is usually my wont, I continued devouring my book. As i glanced across the seats,i saw a beefy foreigner( I ve grown slimmer u c-hence the comparison) training his eyes on me suspiciously.I was ready for the embarassment that is reserved for a passenger who 's deemed unhealthy and in fact dangerous for co-passengers. The self respecting guy I am , I was ready for a verbal duel with the beautiful Indian- Nicaraguan accented air hostess, should the person complain.Beware!! I growled in my mind.


Then Alas!! I realized I did nt even suffer from anythng in the first place,leave alone the swine .. Then why the hell should I help accelerate my systolic pressure??.. With my mind entertaining all these apparently virulent though in actuality benign thoughts-more aptly confabulations, i kept seated and wondered about the possible sequence of events of my own crafting. The guy was still inspecting whether my cough and sneezes resembled the pattern that a swine.. ahem swine flu infected person would exhibit. My physiological condition fortunately did not concur.

Looking back, I wonder how a few creatures in North america could cause near mental trauma in a guy who s far far away from the action. Blame programmes like 'Hoshiyaar' and 'Khabardar' aired 5 times a day on some select news channels. A bit pondering reveals Food-chain as the answer . Being a vegetarian, albeit a grudging one helps a bit you see!!!!!

People@mindspace

I have decided to pass up jotting down only the major life events that I usually do in my posts for a weekly random update about activities that you may not find as idiotic as you would have earlier. Here, I list down a random profile of some of the people/organization/events who have impacted me this week in some way or the other.In fact, most of 'em have been a part of my Hippocampus for some while now. However, this list is by no means exhaustive.

Tim Berners Lee-the man who invented the World wide web(www) is someone me and everyone who says 'digital' should revere. Its only because of him that Dell computers is able to transact with its customers and build up its competitive advantage,Amazon.com work the way it does , people like me are able to apply online for a job in this deadly downturn,enable me to take pride in my googlability,peep into others' profiles via Facebook and orkut,put to exercise my eyeballs watching evrything from mimicry to songs to funny animal videos on Youtube among other trivial things .

Sachin Tendulkar & Brian Lara-the first one for combining everything the best batsman in the world should have -technique, consistency and records as a token of symbolism to make the commentators yap endlessly on them rather than on his cricketing prowess. The latter because in the 16-17 years I have spent watching and playing the game , I have nt seen any other guy who has the ingenuity to showcase 3-4 spectacular shots for a particular ball. Like almost evry Indian who views himself as an armchair Indian team member, I have contemplated very seriously about who's better, often ending up with never -to-be repaired fights with my friends. Employing subjective methods like Analytical absolutism,(Characteristics - good player) did not in any way alter the result of the slugfest either!!

Nokia-Even though this is an organizational entity, I admire its ability to reap scale economies (thus lessen the prices we pay for a mobile ) and expand to geographies that has helped change the way we communicate.The mobile phone today is more ubiquitous than a bathing soap!! I found that to my amazement when I visited Indian villages as part of my internship project.They unwittingly( to marketers of soap) had more reasons to offer for using a mobile phone than a soap which according to them did nothing to enhance their business and social productivity. I have always been a person with a very low gratitude quotient; so it becomes rather difficult for me to think of all those who have affected my daily life profoundly.

Indian financial sector liberalization (1991-92): Oxymoronic as it may sound, the economic liberalization has made me a captive of the subject of Economics all through my graduation and a bit into my Post grad.An appreciation for the pathbreaking usage of the grey cells displayed by the then government makes me often wonder about the aptness of Dr. Singh as our PM. Blame the General elections and the vitriolic statements by the Opposition party for such a thought entering my otherwise ignorant mind space.