Train spotting!

I love train travel! i know it sounds weird for anyone whose traveled in the Mumbai trains,but a train ride never fails to entertain me!Here are some interesting observations on Mumbai local train travel! Njoy!!!
Train surfing
The act of hanging precariously onto any surface of a train that allows for grip while the train is in motion.Window grills,doors,on top of compartments and last but not the least onto other people!

Butt seat barging The desperate attempt of squishing an over endowed butt into the fourth seater in a train.

Train peeking
When the restless tip toe to the edge of the platform in the hope of wooing the train to speed up its arrival.

That unceremonious clanging
The incessant chanting accompanied by the clanging of bells usually seen in the early morning trains.The more crowed the train the feverish the chanting and clanging!

Face tickle therapy
The strands of deviant hair from the person in front of you that make it their mandate to tickle your face as you hang out of the train.

Deep tissue revitalizing treatment
That unwanted,all intrusive full body massage as a result of a number of sweaty bodies in a little to close of comfort proximity.

Armpi spacemaker The act of creating enough of space to breathe by making sure those around you cant.Letting your stinky armpits do the talking!

Head Shouldering
People using your shoulders as their head rests

Jhatka Alarm
People who've nodded off to sleep suddenly losing their balance and waking up with a start.

Chindi Page 3's
People borrowing your Bombay Times, while you read the main newspaper.

Advertiser & consumer

For all of us in advertising who think we know exactly what were doing!
Check out this video

http://www.dailymotion.com/geertdesager/video/x1zv6w_the-break-up

Smirting away to glory...

Those coy exchanges through a cloud of smoke that could translate into a date or even better a soul mate,
As the ban on smoking in public and the workplace takes on new fervor and the nuber of female smokers is on a rise, the lone smoker has started exploring the opportunity to flirt with the like minded on smoke breaks. Smirking- smoking + flirting which is catching especially in countries that have strict smoking laws like Ireland, Britain…The Irish were the first ones to discover the magic of smoking and flirting when their cigarette ban started in 2004.
Smirkers mingle on footpaths, doorways, and closeted smoking rooms or on balcony landings.

TRUMPETING ABOUT THE SOB STORIES…

It’s the final drum roll; the curtains have closed on the last smile.
Happy endings are a passé, at least definitely not on the first pages of any leading daily in this country.

When did good news become bad enough not be splashed about on the front page? And when did we become OK with it? Skim through any newspaper today and the eye is met with a violent killing, bomb blasts, screeching MLAs hurling chairs at one another, people getting run over…Ghastly, gruesome, gory tales…

Are we as a people becoming more responsive to news that shocks, scandalizes and more often than not spells blood and gore? Or are media conglomerates dictating the way we perceive our world, our city, our lives… When did the happy stories we have to tell get hidden somewhere in the bowels of a paper?

The Hindustan Times Mumbai edition carried a heart-whelming story of a seven-year-old prodigy child[ Sushma Vema of Lucknow] who cracked the matriculation exam to become the world’s youngest matriculate. Her tiny shoulders carry this honor despite situations that don’t run in favor, an illiterate mother a semi-literate daily wage father and a household with not a lot of money to spare. Sushma’s elder brother Shailandra has a success story of his own to tell, with having tried his shot at becoming the worlds youngest matriculate [only to be faced with the never ending bureaucratic red tape] he carries on just as determined, if not more, to becoming the youngest computer graduate in the world!.
These are stories painted in the true colors of success. Where hardships have been surpassed and boundaries broken!! And yet we choose to let them wilt away in dark corners devoid of the fanfare they deserve!

Wired!!

You can’t bat an eyelid or turn a muscle without seeing it...
Its a world full of the wired...connections, varied wavelengths, bonds being strengthens and bonds being broken...

Bubbles of babble, disconnected from reality, distracted yet focused on a wired voice...
Cyborgs with jazzy gizmos, walking the streets, sitting at cafe parlors, eating at roadside chaatwallahs...making connections far and wide...

We have closed our eyes and ears to the sounds of the external world as we walk the talk...the wired talk...from connecting with the people around us we've become one on one conversationalists...

Floating through the physical reality that surrounds us, bubble wrapped to the happenings of the world as energy is focused on connecting with the person on the other end of the line...

Are the ugly ducklings absconding?

There was a time when little feet played undaunted and little hands muddied themselves unabashed…When the size of the scratch on your arm or the gash on your knee were worn like medals of bravery. Trees were climbed on and more often than not fallen off, as little boys and girls imaginations were far from little!
Where have these children gone? One glance around me and I can see mini-mummies and mini-daddies, mini-hoity toity, prettied up kids…Today little girls and guys of five and six years are clad in the most avant garde fashions, tiny pink sequenced summer dress with matching high heel sandals, pink painted nails and matching lipstick, a string of beads to adorn the neck and butterfly clips to curb their tresses! I can’t see a child anymore!! They’ve become living replicas of their parents!

Stepping into any college campus today is like walking into a ramp show. a shimmery pink-star bra makes a guest appearance, with a naught tear-drop navel piercing titillating the innocent and wide eyed…Has the gawky adolescent ugly ducking stage disappeared? Where have they migrated? And when?

Children and young adults today seem to be leap frogging! With the catwalk being brought out to the street walk we have a generation that knows the fashion lingo at the tip of their fingers, this generation is more conscious and aware of their physical appearance. Affluence, the spending power that allows for these indulges and works to fuel these wants and desires. Aping the western lifestyles and the focus on materialism also has its role to play in this shift to a body conscious generation…

With raunch culture on the rise, playboy bunnies budding, bimbo girls becoming the norm…music videos, movies, TV programs all conspiring and working towards a change in focus it is no wonder the youth today have forgotten what its like to be young and free!

Riding the rickshaw high!!

Beads of sweat hit the brow, crystal clear streams with a dash of salt make unceremonious journeys to the unknown. Shrill squeaky sounds emanate from the bowels of a rickshaw, which my unfortunate hand seems to have waved down.

Spruced up in the snazziest of colors, with seat covers far from merciful in this relentless heat, I decide to bode my not so holy medium of salvation from the penetrating harsh rays. Inside things seem to take on a life of their own, as garish trinkets giggle to the musical beats and our Bollywood sirens pout and purr in their newfound heaven(or so it seems).Just as my saner, more no nonsense side calls to me to backtrack onto the blistering heat ,a thirty-two teeth grin flashes itself unabashed and eyes twinkle with anticipation as a paan stained mouth, divulges its crimson secrets, spewing a few in the process.


A young barely legal driver asks me where I’m heading over the music a blaring.As I’m barely done screeching over the eardrum splitting crooning ,a restless foot presses down on the accelerator and in a smooth flamboyant synchronized lunging outward, spitting unruly crimson secrets and flinging back of his head my usually twenty minute journey home begins. At lighting speed his rickshaw and all its dwellers rattle, jiggle and swerve to the blaring of angry horns.

With my ears splitting and my head falling obediently in suit I unwittingly plunge into an experience leaving me dumbstruck and gaping.With almost commando like battle tactic training and agility, only reminiscent of an experienced rickshaw driver, my adept rickshaw ride, far from a non self-effacing experience dashed to its destination and my home in record time. Leaving a frizzy haired, white knuckled, parched throat, wide-eyed passenger, for whom never seemed sweeter!

Flashed & branded!!

The Indian market has evolved, the Indian consumer no longer stops dead in hi/her tracks to a “Breaking News” ticker on the TV news channel, because media has sensationalized itself. Tiny truths flicker in a frenzy of over hype, PR, mellow drama and opinionated reporters.

The layman wants that drama to spruce up his/her life, but seek a sustained source of sensation. Flash brands have in way risen from this need; here is a brand that escalates to great heights purely on the steam of media spinners and exhaustive PR! The brand exposes itself to a 360-degree consumer reach, where television, print, radio, outdoors… weave a web of almost continuous bombardment...

A tapestries of stories are woven into the warp and weft that serve to fuel the brands ascent. These brands are scrutinized, to the extent that everything they do , are made to do or claimed to have one, suddenly become of uttermost importance and the focal point that feeds the ever hungry gluttonous media mouth. Reputations of these brands get torn down, tarnished or they become sanctified, God men and women, the walkers of the right path.

Winds of change

The winds of change carry with them a burden so lofty,us plebeians of the world cant shoulder.A torrent of possibilities seems to be lost in an ocean of confusion.Thoughts are fuzzy,images blur,the mind is intoxicated with points of views, opinions, biases...The mind and heart beat to a restless drum,an unsure drum, a broken drum...

A live and kicking child is being laid to rest, as arms reach out for no one to hold.The stench of death rises high,its putrid odor fills the nostrils,it creeps into the deepest corners of our soul eating us from within.

As the heart seeks anyone to shoulder its loss and the mind wanders, resorts to any means possible to come to terms with the loss.The flood gates are open as emotions are unleashed,they play havoc with the workings of the mind,making us more weary by the day...
A peaceful head we seek to lay down to sleep...

A hopeful thought[s]

Trenches dug deep, remnants of an unfinished task, unkept promises and long lost whispers fall with a thud, raising a fine layer of dust, as hairs on the back of ones neck rise in anticipation. Wiping the slate clean, redrawing the boundaries, re-chalking the parts to tread on, only till where the eye can see. The chance to plough the field and sow new seeds into the earth as the ensuing hard work and sweat beats the brow, a plentiful harvest the hopeful dream to reap.

I stand here, a hopeful, expressing my hopes…
I hope I continue believing in David
I hope David doesn’t continue to be the training camp for freshers to learn the tricks of the trade and run their own shows elsewhere
I hope we feel more like the family we claim to be.
I hope justice prevails.
I hope as a Client servicing person my job profile doesn’t spell, collecting prints, haggling for monies, chasing layouts and artworks.
I hope the great wall of David, which to me is not the wall on which we share our thoughts and ideas, but the very real wall between servicing and creative crumbles.
I hope clients are not our masters and we their underpaid genies.
I hope the more ‘systems in place’ that we always talk about find their place in David.
I hope we collectively pool our innate talents and energies to make David a little part of everyone.
I hope I am not hoping in vain.

All this said there is the side to David that I hope we don’t lose out on!

I hope we look past marketing jargon and see organizations as individuals, rather than revenue figures
I hope we don’t cut the umbilical chord that has nourished us and help us grow for so long.
I hope we don’t decide to give David a premature death, when David has still a lot of spunk left.
I hope we realize sometimes good things do come in small packages and I hope we don’t rubbish them in the hope of the bigger package.
I hope David stays alive, stays strong, and stays young and sure-footed.
I hope we don’t just land up playing the game…especially the game we don’t want to play.
I hope we learn to enjoy the intimacy David has to offer and I hope we can see the good tighter bonds brings.
Again I hope I am not hoping in vain

Pin prick!!!!

Its the pin pricking into a Valentine heart!Call me a sadist if you must but the sight of red and pink hearts makes me nauseous!!!

Media conglomerates,ad agencies and multi billion dollar companies feed on the hullabaloo they create themselves on this day of so called expression of love.They sow the seeds of a million expressions, a thousand desires and a hundred wishes...They are the new planters of insecurities, uncalled for lows and false highs.Why?to make that many an extra buck.Creating an environment where the masses are forced to see the world through pink tainted spectacles.Rosy red or baby pink these are not the colors of love...

War strategy"Bombard the target with as many sights and sounds of mushy.gooey images of 'love'.Break all forms of resistance through unmasked,unabashed hard hitting messages,quotes,anecdotes,fall back on eternal love stories if need be!The battle cry the resounding sound of the word Valentine,till it resounds in their head.The war leader 'Cupid',become cupid!Think,feel,believe you are the new Cupid!,interpolate
the necessary skill set to sell the same to the non-believer.

A DAY IN MY LIFE BEFORE VALENTINES DAY

• Get up switch on the radio to pep myself up for the tasks ahead and what do i get! Valentines days is round the corner win passes to blah blah blah...now take part in the Valentines day contest blah blah blah...followed by a whole bunch of mushy songs that make me want to clobber my radio set and the RJ if he/she were in it!
• Get into the bus,there's giddy headed girls giggling away at what they should buy for the guys they hope to kick it off with[why does it always have to boil down to what you buy & how much you spend?!?]Interspersed with this 'giddyheadedness' is a lonely heart that dreads the thought of another Valentines day alone[For Christ sake woman!!give me a break!]
• On my way to work all i see is a sea of red & pink..headlines and corny images screaming at me, all laced with hidden agendas, that unveil themselves in the barely readable fine print.
• I get to work, start my computer and check my mail,there a dozen freaky hearts popping around my screen,picture perfect smiles and babies in diapers shooting arrows dangerously all over my screen!
• Disgusted i pick up the newspaper in the hope of taking my mind away from this hearty affair, but to my dismay it seems like media's lost its soul to love too[or maybe the moolah that rides with love]Gifts,parties,that tiny dress that will make him drop dead,red nail paint and pink lipstick, a bouquet of red and pink roses...
• I get through the day with alot more bombardment from every conceivable angle!

Love has to go beyond those few seconds of joy when someone exchanges gifts on Valentines day,it has to go beyond that one day and what is now being stretched easily into a week and a month even!Why cant we go back to when love was pure,true to all its shades and not just hues of pink and red!Where have all the colors gone?!?!?

Don't worry bout the bill!

Endorphins deceptive, nasty endorphins,rush to the brain,sending out impulses, carriers of a ripple effect of happy feelings,good feelings,warm feelings,feelings of joy!!

Every time i get what i want and i get it now,I've fallen prey to this addictive sense for elation .I belong to generation that lives for the moment with an eyesight weakened to the extent that one can see beyond the satisfaction of the most recent craving.

Worldwide we are witness to a movement,a movement that endorses the Id in us,it brings to the surface our inner most instincts to satisfy our selfish needs.Credit cards being the very blatant reiteration of this belief to the not so overt,subtly woven instruments that work to create a sense of pseudo power-the focus on the consumer.Today the consumer is so the focal point of any product or service unlike ever before.As a consumer I have the power to create new product designs,[Apple I phone],new categories or products[P&G has a consumer inputs link where consumer can contribute in the suggestion and creation of new products],create media waves and decide the faith of others[Big Boss,Indian idol,Channel [V] VJ hunt etc]I can demand customization to suit my needs...

I can control every aspect of my life,well almost.It is the sense of God like power bestowed onto the common man that subtly fuels the latent need to gain more,it pushes us to want now!Materialism,consumerism is at the peaking point, we are at the brink of a revolution that might change us forever.This generation lives by the philosophy' Live for today, who knows you may be dead tomorrow'

Impulses put up on a podium and given a standing ovation,rash decisions and behaviour float by me everyday.Do i care?Not really!Don't worry bout the bill is all i have as an answer!

Slanging it!!!

Scrambling skills are the pre-requisite to ‘belong’…With a neo lingo that’s certainly catching on like that leechy blob of gum on the sole of your shoe, the youth is unleashing a torrent of incoherent words…letters gone haywire, rearranging themselves, pairing up with new found partners to create a new world of ‘slanging.’

Its far from a play on words, it’s the actual playing with words, to give birth to an almost avant garde sounding language. It’s the re-chalking of boundaries of ‘being in’. Maybe its social ostracism taking on a new garb or maybe it’s the prising open still further of the generation gap. Leap frogging in slanging by culling out new words symbolic of behavior patterns that were non-existent earlier or the christening of behavior that have gone unnamed for time in memorial, is the only sure set way to run the rest to the dust.

Light bulb moment!!!.. I’ll start my own agency

Read an article in the TOI that dealt with Ex-BPO employees foraying into business ventures that work as support structures to the outsourcing industry. After having first hand faced the pros and cons of the ‘Call center industry’ these young turks have ventured into businesses like stress management, voice training workshops, recruitment for BPO…

A parallel can be drawn to the advertising and media industry where now, we have an array of service providers who act as support systems. A model coordinator turned event management firm cum celebrity management agency. Two young guys fresh out of college decided that the advertising and media world already had enough of third party bodies to contend, so what better way to smoothen the ripples than to provide a consolidated array of services with a one point contact.

Another facet to the well-entrenched youth magazine is the new quite hush hush role this magazine plays of an event management company. Having a strong hold in college campuses and easy access to the youth this magazine has leveraged this position and now act a mini event organizers for MNC and corporates that wish to participate as sponsors for college festivals.

Talk about leveraging contacts and making your biz work for u!!!

Swinging 180 degrees??

As cleavage comes out of the closet, skirts make an upward run, clothes go on a diet and shrink and shrivel up, while make up makes merry in its abundance!! Raunchiness amongst the youth today has taken on a completely new face. Here is an attempt to delve deeper into the subject to better understand the reasons, expressions and possible repercussions. When sexual repression reaches breaking point, the pendulum swings 180 degrees.

Sex sells!!It sells because there is a need in the market, this need may stem out of frustration, a sense of modernity or more aptly put aping the west, a feeling of liberation, where there is no bar on expression of feeling. Another reason for the upsurge of the raunch culture could be the attempt at changing the power play equation. Women have always been the subservient, repressed sex. With this magical word ‘raunch’, the tables has turned over night, women now have the upper hand and can make men gravel on their knees!

From PDA galloping leaps and bounds from the innocent entwining of hands or the shy peck on the cheek to the now very sexually explicit display of affection. The rising belief that small is better at least in attire and the polar opposite belief when it comes to ‘bodily assets’, has lead to t eh jubilant clicking of champagne glasses of plastic surgeons. Focus on appearance has moved miles, away from ‘my body my temple’ to the domain of contorting, starving, even punishing the boy for its compliance to these preset norms of the perfect body.

A sense of superficiality and shallowness is setting into the youth today; this changing concept raises its ugly head in the form of decreasing commitments levels in relationships, increase in promiscuity, teenage pregnancies and sexual crime. More young unwed mothers, abortion…have found their place in the lives of the youth today The act of making love ahs shed its garb of sanctity in the minds of the youth today and moved out of the confines of the bedroom, smack dab in the glare of the public eye.

Is raunchiness here to stay or will the pendulum swing 180 degrees again??

Gibberish!!!

Today I was witness to a mesh mash, a jumble mumble of far too many things put into one. I went for a play directed by a well know face in the ad circuit as well as the theatre circuit. I was sold on his name and went head long and bought the tickets to the play without doing the usual WOM round up review...

I can very safely say without exaggeration that i have never felt like crying with self pity or hurling a shoe at the performers more in any shoddy play or movie I’ve be subjected to!!! In the grueling two and a half hours of torture. I was subject to a hundred different messages trying to be sent, characters who seemed to have violent personality shifts, almost as if they were suffering from Multiple Personality disorder culminating in an absolute disarray!

Many a time we commit these very same blunders in advertising [though it was terribly ironical that this play was directed by an ad guru!!].In our endeavor to create resonating ads, we land up saying ten different things all at once. We give birth to brands, instill in them values and a personality, but cease to let it transcend in the following communication. Maybe at times we land up listening to everyone but the consumer, or maybe we don’t listen hard enough!!

Stepping out!!

Its always nice to step out of your comfort zone and try something new!!
We tend to get stuck in the rut, going about our day like creatures of habit, even at times getting irritated at the thought of a disruption of daily routione!!

I stepped out!! I did some interesting stuff this week and am proud to share it:-

Mahayana Buddhhist session

I attended my very first Mahayana Buddhist session on Sunday. It was truly an eye opener of many sorts. I went for this meeting with no expectations or beliefs .I am an Atheist, but don’t feel averse to trying out something new. Don’t get me wrong I mean no disrespect to any religion. I see no wrong in attending any religious meet and seeing if there is a practice or faith that I can connect with. Every religion has its own core philosophy and if I can connect to any religion it can only serve to make me a better human being.

Alarmel Valli
I have yet to see a more stunning Bharatnatyam performer than Smt. Alarmel Valli.I have seen her perform on numerous occasions and she never fails to hold an audience spell bound throughout the duration of the show. What was interesting about the performance I went for last week was, the show started of with a violinist performance followed by an Odyssey and Bharatnatyam performance. Valli and an equally renouned Odysee dancer Smt .Madhvi Mudgal took creative expression of the two dance form to the next level. A creative leap indeed, they performed a duet as well as solo performances. In the duet performance what was a visual delight was how right before ones eyes the similarities and differences in the two art forms became evident .Both International artists took their respective dance style to a whole new level through this performance!!

Retail Endeavour
I cant delve too deep into this, but today after a long time I decided to get out and try something new, a new venture, a new passion , maybe even a new career...who knows ...

My learning from this week-"life’s to short...its time to live life!!
Resolution:-Try and break out of my comfort zone at least once a week if not more!!

The Female Chauvinist Pig...

Air heads soaring high in a land of their own, perceptions of flying high above the rest, floating on the surface, superficial, pseudo...

The Female Chauvinist Pig [FCP] as it turns out is the latest raging personality prototype that is sweeping over the youth like a fire gone wild with great fervor. FCP is the polar opposite of feminist ideology. Girls today are finding solace in and in a way identifying with ‘dumbing’ themselves down to fit in. School and colleges cliques today are being defined holding this parameter as of utmost importance, the latest shade of pink nail polish, or lipstick seems to have made its way up the ladder to top priority topic of discussion for months on ends. Giddy headed laughter, an image of fluffy brainless chickens its what these girls crave. Being a bimbo today is cool!! Its en vogue!!

This is a case of identifying with the oppressor; here it is women who are now oppressing women, culling out these personas of acceptability. The foundation stones have been laid, the smart, the opinionated, the informed, the intellectual, etc are to be ostracized.

Videos featuring women bearing much much more than their souls, increasing focus on physical appearance, the defamation of women, the disrespecting women reducing them to objects of lust work in tandem at influencing many a mind creating and reiterating a belief system where what’s on the outside out weighs what’s on the inside

WHEN GODS WALKED THE EARTH

Advertising has an aura of surrealism that envelopes it like a garb it flaunts unabashed .It churns out vivid expressions of creativity, ever expanding; it conceives the unconceivable…images, words carrying with them a potent power to move billions. Advertising has this innate sense of being and not being all at once, even when you’ve toiled in the industry, rolled up your sleeves and done the dirty work.

It manages with a blink of an eye to create brands from the products it gives life to, right from its christening to etching a personality, beliefs and at times gently putting it to the grave when time takes its toll on the brand. Advertising extrapolates these almost ‘Bhramanical’ virtues to the gurus of advertising, from giving birth to the unique, the quirky, the flamboyant, the weird… all brands with distinct personalities. Names, images, symbols, we tend to view with tainted glasses, they seem mythical, unreal as we plebeians gawk in awe staring up at the podium upon which we thrust them.

Once in a blue moon when the stars are aligned and cosmic forces work feverishly to create this one moment in time. They bleed, they bare their all “Adversity introduces man to himself…”It is only in these rare moments that lie suspended in a twilight zone, do we see raw emotion from the splinters pain, the gnawing nibbling of anxiety, the volcanic spurts of ecstasy…Its only then that Gods walk the Earth!

Honey did I really take that long???

Wide hips, thunder thighs, thin lips, dark circles, flat hair…try and conjure up any unflattering physical attributes and chances are you’ll find at least one in ten women [if not more] who believe they are victim to it!!.

Maybe its Sigmund Freud’s Id in everyone speaking” we want what we cant get!!’. Women have however mastered the art of disguise in every day life, they strut around each day with self imposed restrictions on the colour of clothes, type of clothes worn, the choice of make up applied.

What’s amazing is women do it almost naturally all those tit bits of information that float around aimlessly [black colour thins, flared pant accentuate thighs, low waist pants elongate the torso, short hair take away at least 5 years] These bits of information at some point in time get absorbed into the female psyche and unveil themselves in the spontaneous repulsion and obsession with different styles, colors…

What Emile Durkheim terms as the ‘collective consciousness’ is what woman all over the world share and guard with their lives, this collective consciousness, about appearance altering facts has its International brand evangelists in the form of an Oprah Winfrey to name but one of many, who take it upon themselves to reiterate these pillars of womanhood and spread these secrets world wide.Maybe, just maybe it is this need or urge to comply with these ‘sacred truths to a better looking you’ that show themselves in the ridiculously long hours women spend shopping!!!