Random Thought Luck

Copywriters and Art Directors should also form unions. We also need a one stay strike to protest against higher workloads and lower quality of briefs. I suspect the only good thing that would come out of that would be the Union posters, if we were given a free hand.

Lokmanya BG Tilak had the biggest activation/on-ground idea before marketers racked their brains trying to form communities around brands or Harley came up with Harley Owners Group. Mr. Tilak's idea will be visible on the streets of Maharashtra in a 100 year old festival celebrated by throngs venerating the elephant headed god Ganpati.

Living in Mumbai

In Mumbai, when you buy a house, you buy into the location and not the surroundings.

Fear, Happiness And God

People have often suggested 'amazing', 'this is the baap of movie A or movie X' horror movies to me for a long time. I have politely declined and have tried to explain to them that I can't willingly trouble myself so much. It's a thrill that I haven't quite gotten addicted to. I'd rather stay a creepy arm's length away.

I feel that the fear you experience, stays with you longer than it should. It eventually gets buried deep within only to resurface at an (in)opportune time. Like the times when you are alone at home. Underground car parks after office hours. While working alone at night. I have heard of people packing up and leaving in spite of the advertising deadlines because they couldn't stay back and finish the job alone in office.

Happiness is a great emotion. Altogether fleeting. Unlike fear or sadness, it doesn't stay with you, at least as much as they do. Nothing new to say, but moments of happiness are mere punctuation marks in an otherwise staid, sad, unhappy, fearful existence, depending on the person and the circumstances.

Sadness is an emotion with a longer existence. It takes events, mental effort and circumstances to go away.

So if the fear of the spirits, possession and the occult is a constructed and continuing myth, it is the second most powerful sustained myth other than the concept of a physical manifestation of God.

Herein lies the duality that I live with.

I dislike horror because I feel it is an unnatural, artificial emotion that is propagated and sustained by various people (like shamans) and organizations (like film makers and studios) either for power and/or for profit.

If a human being is isolated and never introduced to the supernatural concepts, I doubt the possibility of such fear ever crossing his or her mind. If we check the isolated communities in Northern Andamans and Nicobar Islands or Polynesia would they have a 'devil' or 'evil' equivalent? I don't know.

When it comes to God and such like, I agree that most religions are, again, a way to control masses through another type of fear. The fear of heavenly wrath. So be good, do good, commit no sin.
So having being born into a religion, I accept it, I celebrate it but there isn't a fervent, 'blind' belief that one might be expected to have. Still, somewhere deep inside is a faith in a force of nature, Gaia like concept of integrated, interconnected creation, which could again have been because of the books that I have read.

It is still another milder, benign fear. Almost like Mother/Father/Androgynous/Big Brother Nature is watching. Which is why we do good. No one wants to be hauled up and dragged over the coals.

Which is also why criminals/mad people are Godless. They don't fear the supreme force because they realise probably that there might be none. Or simply because the Supreme Force or Being(s) are too busy with more important things than worry about a lie, a theft, or something more serious. And if they get caught, it's not like what goes around, comes around. It's more like the law of averages literally catches up with them.

Minority Community

Granted that the Muslims in India are just 13% of the population (160.9 million per 2009 estimate according to two sources: CIA Factbook and India Census 2009). But if you look at the figure, how can anyone (or any longer) call them a minority community? Call them vilified, oppressed, ignored or whatever else. But minority they are not. They are the size of an average country by themselves.
Parsis, Jews, Jains and so on can be the new, true minority communities.

Matryoshka Gets A Makeover

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Vogue Russia, Aliona Doletskaya decided to honor the famous Russian Matryoshka. They took the traditional wooden doll shape and turned it into a carved female body.

Standing 50cm tall, these beauties doesn’t confirm to the perfect 90×60x90 model proportions.

Commissioned to some of the world’s greatest designers to create tailor-made and exclusive outfits, the best Russian craftmen have hand-painted and dressed the dolls according to the designers sketches. Installation, sculpture, object of art, you can call it however you wish.

If you have 5000 Euros…you’ll have the opportunity to buy one of these babies for your living room.

The article and the rest of the 30 are here: http://www.gugazine.com/2009/08/31-stylized-matryoshka-dolls-by-vogue/

TED India

Mysore, India, 4-7 November 2009. Even if they deigned to let me in, unfortunately, all sold out.

23.09.09: Oh well, there are a few places, but where do I get the dough?

Human Resources

When it is called 'Human Resources' why shouldn't I be suspicious? If we call it something else, would it be any different?
It's like Ministry of War called Ministry of Defence after the World War. Same thing, but with less aggressive posturing.
What would be a better name that stands up to the intentions, or is all the posturing that they are actually about caring for the people who work in an organization a front for the obvious?
Is the HR department caught in a bind, since they are employed by the employer to make the organization's resource happy?
So can the HR function be outsourced to make it truly impartial and be a balance between the employer and the employee? Is that a business opportunity?

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

TED Talks rocks. Specially 'Do Schools Kill Creativity'

Bob Geldof

www.viddler.com/explore/petterjensen/videos/1/

Vote For...

Instead of a political party or an ideology, why can't we vote for the person best for the job? Where have I heard it before?

Public Shyness

Why are people shy of publicizing their blogs? Isn't it an oxymoron so to speak? You write in a public space, and then you really don't want to go hammer and tongs after letting all and sundry know that you do.
I confess, I am one of them.

Mirror, mirror...

What do you do when the baggage handlers decide to slack off? We were stuck at International arrivals for 2 and a half hours hoping to see a glimpse of the people we were waiting for.
A steady trickle of people only makes you observe them closely, there is nothing else to do. Losing the match was bad enough, so was the sweaty, muggy weather.
Indians of all shapes and sizes are coming out pushing heavy carts with extra large suitcases. The accents were foreign, the body types still very much Indian and the fashion obsessively and compulsively, the latest.
Clingy tops paired with reed thin jeans, no care whatsoever about big bums and now-revealed bow legs. Striped collared T-shirts hiding rotund paunches with medium-long shorts showing off skinny legs. Why? Aren't there mirrors around when they shop?

Spammmmm

If I had a split personality, this would be perfect!
Got spam from 'me' inviting me to dinner.

Time Sheets

Can anyone publish the CM's weekly timesheets?
I want them in my Monday morning newspaper.

Bitings Anyone?

Drove up to Daman last weekend. It seems that the snakes jokes have had an effect on the Gujarati populace. At all the restaurants, the hotel that we were staying in and even a beer bar that we stopped at for a break, no not for beer, thank you, were all asking us one thing - bitings sir? French fries, Peanuts masala, Cheese-pineapple, Boiled Chana and so on, now all qualify as Bitings.
Bram Stoker's creation must be out of a job by now.

This One Takes The Cake

When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

More iWoes

Just gave the iPhone for a look-over. Vodafone tells me there is no one in Mumbai to do that. It will have to be sent to Bengaluru. 15 days.
- Well, the screen goes blank (imagine that on a full touch screen!).
- It hangs randomly.
- The battery of course is not happening. To change the battery you change the phone. The Happy to Help guys had no clue that there is an additional battery pack available on the Apple Store
Wondering what to do - use it, sell it or crack it and use it.

11.02.2009
Got the iPhone back. Replaced and shiny and brand new!
The sarson ka saga continues...

03.08.2009
Called up Vodafone helpline.
I say, 'I pay Rs.35,500 for a 16Gb handset ($699 +). Plus I commit a minimum of Rs.9,600 a year for the iData Plan. How come I get the Edge/GPRS service for just half the time? Do I get money back for the deficient service?'
Sir, we are happy to help, but last week there was an outage, so now it is working fine.
I say, 'I am not talking about last week, but since August 2008.'
Sir, thanks for the patience for keeping you on hold for a long time, but my service engineer says just reset Network Settings on your phone an it will work fine.
I say, 'Thanks.'

Karachi to Jai Shri Krishna

This was in the news. All signs were being made to change to reflect 'Indianness'. So poor Karachi Sweets was threatened and the owner decided to call it Jai Shri Krishna Sweets. By that logic, you can't have any Sindhi friends. And while you are at it, never ever eat again at the various Taj Group, ITC hotel restaurants called Peshawari, Baluchi or the Bukhara. Change New Delhi's Lahori Gate to Laxman Gate or something. Of course, no Multani mitti for the Shive Sainik's wife. No Peshawari or Afghani Kebabs. Sikandari Raan. Qandahari whatever. Utter nonsense.

Mumbai Manoos

I have always suspected that Mumbai is nothing but a glorified transit-camp-casino in the minds of its dwellers. People dream, land up here and at the back of their minds, home is somewhere far away. The migrants have land to till and to go back to. The middle class yearn for their ‘native’. And the rich, well they will always have multiple homes of convenience. Till of course, the city makes you an addict. To the opportunities. To the pace of life. To the comfort and the freedom of not being judged constantly.

The indiscriminate firing in Mumbai on 26.11.08 undid the work of all the political parties trying to divide vote banks on caste and regional lines. It brought Mumbai residents (or as I would like to call them, the Mumbai Manoos) together like never before. The attack wasn’t localized to trains or the buses. Random people – CEOs and the 5 Star rich, Omelet Pav sellers, train travelers and western tourists were among the people caught unawares.

The Mumbai Manoos - all the people who work, live and dare to call this city their home - are out on the streets and demanding some concrete action, demanding security and a better life in their ‘working home’. Well the city is (inefficiently) built for work not for a comfortable life.

The middle and upper middle class of these Mumbai Manoos, generally immune to most things, have been galvanized into action, as the huge gathering on 03.12.08 at the Gateway of India proves. More rallies have been planned. Voices are being raised. The hawks are out, demanding an attack as an answer to this seemingly proxy war emanating from Pakistani soil. The live telecasts and a bit of prodding by the newscasters has done its bit no doubt. Asking questions, as someone rightly said, that should have been asked by our politicians to the Pakistanis.

The people in power treat the city like the natives of the Amazon rainforests do. Slash and burn, extract their pound of flesh, make the most out of their years in power before getting booted out.

One can only hope that the sense of outrage and the ownership of the Mumbai Manoos lingers on and reaches the thick-skinned, Gordon Gecko-esque politicians. Like Prannoy Roy put it, enough is enough.

The True 'I' Phone

Every phone that I look at, has some disappointment in store. Doesn't have GPS. Or doesn't have WiFi, or doesn't have a good enough camera, or doesn't have a good battery life, etc.
How about Nokia (could be anyone actually, including Google and Apple) introducing a micro-site that lets registered users drag and drop the style, shape and features that they want, which then gets shipped in say 30 days. If Dell can do it, if car companies can do it, so can mobile manufacturers.