Yes, the World.

I found myself a new job

If there’s one thing that really makes my blood boil, it’s people littering city as if the world’s a garbage dump.

On a recent train journey to Pune a lovely young (seemingly educated) couple threw a whole lot of stuff out the window into the ‘universal dustbin’ that is the world around us.

I thought to myself… (even though it was bloody hard to think with my temper rising by the second)

‘Maybe I should just stare at him and he’ll get the hint.’

So I gave him the stare. But he just looked confused

‘Maybe I should wait till he decides to chuck something else out and stop him then.’

So I sat and waited for him to start to chuck something out again. God! Those were the longest minutes of my life as he slowly munched his food on his soon-to-be-out-the-window-paper-plate.

Just as he reached out the window to chuck his plate I screamed

“WAIT-WAIT. DONT-THROW-IT-OUTSIDE!”

and I reached for his plate in an attempt to force it out of his hands and throw it in a dustbin. (totally filmy I tell you!)

So basically he apologized, and took it to the dustbin himself (I think!) and went on to tell another kid in our compartment to do the same and not chuck junk out the window.

He said to me

“Thanks for reminding me”

( which of course caused a big smug grin to surface on my face which I tried my best to hide with a book I was reading)

So I’ve decided that since I’m probably not going to be doing anything great for India, I might as well just take on the job of a cleaner.

Last evening I picked up two ticket stubs that this lady threw on the compartment floor. She noticed my clean-up-act but didn’t say anything. As for me, I was happy that 2 less ticket stubs littered mumbai last night.

Bulldozed!

human bull dozers exist.
it is a fact.

we have seen them.
been bull dozed by them.
and some of us may even be them.

perhaps it is only my experience, but most bull dozers tend to be middle aged aunties, not more than 5 feet in height. elbowing their way through a crowd with their head ducked low so as to enhance the bull dozer effect, I suppose.

They have a very purposeful look on their face. their eyes fixed on one imaginary point ahead, to which they must reach within seconds.

Upon reaching this imaginary point of course, and having elbowed scores of people in the process, they stand nonchalantly, as if they had been there all along. Their ducked head finds a dancer’s height as their noses now reach for the sky in a futile attempt at regaining dignity.

you’d think she’s the sweet next-door aunty who smiles and helps little kids along. But then your crushed toes and bruised ribs tell a different story.

here are a few tips on how to avoid the bulldozer

1. look out for sudden and magical separation in crowds. much like moses and the sea. you’ll know a bulldozer’s heading your way.

2. quickly check the people around you. if there are any middle aged women under 5 feet, try and steer clear of them.

3. look out for anyone with their elbows out. they look a bit like angry chickens out for revenge. also they tend to charge the most when trying to catch a bus or train.

as for me, i’ll just buy a relispray. Does that help with bruised ribs?

the really short story

Khyati showed me a site that runs a contest for the best short story. The only catch is that the story needs to be really short. 140 characters to be precise. A typical SMS limit.

My first thought was that it’s interesting, but I wondered if it would be any good.

So I visited their winners page and am now eating my words

Sample this!

‘The baby’s fine,’ the midwife says, touching her hand. ‘Bit of a scare there, but he’s a little fighter. Have you decided on a name yet, Mrs Hitler?’

‘I love you,’ she says just before he places the pillow over her face and presses down, hard. As her cancer-gaunt body stills, he feels his heart break.

‘Aren’t you the musical one son’ said Dad. ‘Don’t know where you get it from.’ Mum’s blush rose as the postman passed the window, whistling tunefully.

‘I’m home’ I yelled, entering the house. No response. In the kitchen my wife sobbed and hugged our son. ‘Daddy’s dead’ she whispered, looking through me.

Visit the site for more.

I propose a short story contest on my blog. Lemme invite a judge. Who knows, there may be prizes

war of sponsored links

back to basics

In a world of clutter, how does one little shop in Bandra stand out?

Whenever I go by SV Road Bandra, I can’t help but notice this little shop that is in the buisiness of healing broken bones.

It’s such a simple, clutter breaking… and err.. pretty straightforward shop sign

1. It visually depicts the services offered
2. Is understandable even if you are illiterate, thereby increasing number of possible customers
3. Shows smiling faces signifying positive results
4. Shows that it’s for both men and women, so women need not shy away

Anything else I missed out?

Next time you go by the road, try ignoring the shop with the weird picture of a man and woman with broken arms. You just cant

PS: I had to juggle with the steering wheel and the camera in a Bandra jam, but thankfully I managed a decent shot.

I <3 Tag Clouds

I must confess I love tag clouds. I think they’re an amazing way to visually compare factors. They show the importance of one factor by making it bigger than the other words and often even changing the colour of less important factors.

Wikipedia says: “ A tag cloud is a visual depiction of the word content of a site. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color.[1] Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.”

Brand Tags

Recently I was introduced to Brand Tags. Yes, I know it’s been around forever and most of you use it already… blah blah
For those who don’t know brandtags read on.
It’s a cool little site (experiment) which asks visitors to type in one word that they associate with a particular brand name. So if Colgate pops up you type in one word that you most relate to the brand (I said white).

You can also go through the brand list and see what people have to say about a brand. And it’s all shown to you in the form of a cool tag cloud like this one for casio ———————————->>>

There is an option for you to add your brand to the list to see what people have to say about it.

Wordle

I found wordle through Gautam and I think it’s very cool.

All you need to do it type out words and the ones that occur most in your write-up will be showcased prominently in your tag cloud. It’s fun and looks very cool.

It’s great for client presentations when you want to show brand perception findings. For example I can put the findings of a recent FGD done for a hospital to showcase what people generally think of hospitals-

PS: this is a wordle of this post

an afternoon with shyam benegal

“tell him I hated Bose, but loved Making of the Mahatma”
“tell him I’m looking for a good role in the movies”
“he might just offer you a film”

Sorry people. I did not tell Shyam benegal any of the stuff you asked me to.
Actually for the most part I kept my mouth shut and my ears open.

He spoke about many things, from the distasteful reality shows on TV today to the reason why ‘ramdev ka sajjanpur’ became ‘welcome to sajjanpur’.

I’ll begin with the latter.

In his own words, people want ‘evening entertainment’ and to them Shyam benegal can probably only provide ‘evening’s gyaan’

To escape the tag of being ’serious’ and heavy, the marketing team at UTV decided to alter the title to the more frivolous and easy going ‘welcome to sajjanpur’.

For those who know Prof Mathew from MICA, would understand when I say that great minds think alike. The disappointment at the new generation’s lack of ‘world view’ is both depressing and very obvious in the sentiments Mr Benegal expressed.

He is so right when he says we have become information gatherers for reasons known best only to us. That we cannot ever be wise with our concept of education which does not push us to read more and understand more perspectives.

I’m not sure if I found the meeting with Shyam Benegal inspiring or depressing, knowing what my life and career is and how it’s heading in a direction as a meaningless as reality tv.
Maybe if my state of mind was more positive I’d be inspired. But right now I can’t be anything but thoroughly depressed.

global perspective comes to the tv

For as long as I can remember people have bemoaned the negative influence of the western world.

From asking the kids to leave the room when ‘the bold and the beautiful’ is on, to giving teenagers the stare when they’re watch Phoebe give birth to the children of her brother

Yes, western culture has influenced us. No, we’re not delivering our brothers’ babies.

Substituting punctuation with ‘like’ or whatever-ing ever unhandled-able situation; we are pretty American in our talk.

But just last night while watching Jimmy Kimmel Live on Star World I saw two videos which were picked right out of India.

Video 1: Dadagiri slap video

This is the one where a rather moronic TV host slaps a contestant, only to be slapped right back.

Video 2: Indian dance video

I’m sure plenty of American shows have picked up stuff that’s Indian and this isn’t the first time, but I still thought it was cool.

While I may not care for that awesome soap produced out of Taiwan, I am still open to watching something interesting on youtube irrespective of where it comes from.

Youtube’s influence on TV programming

So in a way, the internet is opening up a lot of cultures to the world and thereby perhaps influencing even TV programming and making it more open. (by ‘culture’ of course I don’t mean values and snake charmers, but simply a way of living)

So while a Texan farmer may not surf youtube; through his TV he might just get to watch programming inspired by the world. He might just gain a perspective that goes beyond ‘y’all’ and double negatives.

Everyone talks about a global culture, but what’s interesting is that it really does have a ripple effect that lasts beyond just the web. Making it a true ‘culture’ and not just a passing fad.

PS: i get that the dadagiri video is too silly to help me prove my point. Hoping you will overlook that

what’s that smell?

Recently I saw this Martin Lindstrom video about Crayola’s odourless marketing mistake.

For those of you who did not use Crayola while growing up, here’s a quick refresher course.

Crayola is the coolestest brand of crayons in the world. They’re fun and they’re the bestest

And yea, they have a distinct smell that’s waxy and quite pleasant.

Crayola’s smell brings back memories of rainy afternoons spent colouring Cinderella books. Which is why Lindstrom’s video is of great importance. He tells us that Crayola no longer smells that way and neither do their stores.

A brand isn’t just the logo or the colour right? Smell is an important part, especially when it’s as distinct and happy like the crayola one.

I can only think of Lifestyle when I think of a brand with a distinct smell in India. Maybe Parachute would qualify too.

Anything else that comes to mind?

and the horror that is BigFlix: begins

Okay so I know that I shouldn’t have tried out BigFlix anyway. For the simple reason that Reliance cannot run a basic online business because their customer care is really the worst in the whole wide world. But anyway, I thought I’d give it a shot. You know, try the one month rental and take it from there.

Day 1

I decide that I want to register for BigFlix. I go online, choose the appropriate plan. Register. I choose the pay-by-cash option in which a BigFlix associate visits you to collect the money within 24 hrs of registration. You’re given an Order number.

What happens

Nobody comes to collect the money for 2 days. No phone call nothing.

A call to their customer care leaves me shocked because apparently they can’t do anything till the time become a member. But I can’t become a member till the man comes to pick up the money.

Day 3-4 (don’t know which anymore)

I almost think of chucking BigFlix, but something makes me give them a second chance.

I decide to go to a reliance webworld and pay the money there so that they can activate my membership. It was obvious that nobody would come and collect it.

What happens

I walk around, find the damned store but they tell me they have some network issues and I’ll have to come back tomorrow.

Thankfully, quite unlike a typical Reliance response, an employee agrees to help me out if I pay in cash and fill out a second form for membership so that they can do it all offline. I agree.

I’m asked to wait till afternoon the next day to receive my login ID and password to be able to order movies online.

God bless that man’s soul.

Day 4-5

its afternoon and I haven’t yet received the loginID.

I decide to call customer care and after explaining my problem thrice I give up and just ask for the reliance webworld’s number so that I can deal with this myself.

guess what? They don’t have the telephone numbers of their stores.

And like always, the customer care cannot help till I become a member.

Which I will become once reliance webworld inputs my request.

Which reliance webworld will do once I remind and threaten them.

Which I will do when I find their number!

*tearing my hair out*

PS: the nice guy at reliance webworld offered his personal number to me when I went there but I refused thinking I can always customer care. Naive!

Faith restored

Okay so I knew they’d come around! so my faith in bigflix was justified… to some extent.

they delivered my movies to me today.

but i still maintain that their customer service sucks.

I received no mail or call about my account activation and the call centre was hopeless.

Update: A bigflix delivery guy asked my friend for Dussehra bakshish that’s really weird. God forbid Dominos Delivery guys start that too!