Random

Sitting in office. It's 9.30 in the night. I haven't phoned home to tell my roommates whether I'll be having dinner with them or not.

I'm longing to be home. Not here in Pune. Home in Calcutta.

I know this will pass. :)

Blah blah?

You've seen the Headlines Today 'blah' ad, right? The one where they imitate other news channel shows with the people saying "blah blah..." ad inifinitum, implying that other 'typical' news channels of the day are doing nothing but blabbering on about nothing in particular, and then that Headlines Today is the refreshing channel which does not give you blah but substance?

Now can you tell me the number one blah news item of the season? Ofcourse it's the mighty WWE warrior Khali! World's envy India's pride, if I may borrow the line from Onida.

So what was the self-proclaimed blah channel doing, showing us a story about how Khali gave some Indian gifts to his opponent The Big Show, had dancers doing Bhangra in the ring and all that jazz to become friends with his opponent, and then how The Big Show hit him instead of being friendly, and then how Khali fell down senseless after just one blow?

Now what was the poor white man supposed to do in a wrestling ring? Hug his opponent and call off the fight, because they have become best buddies?

But I'm digressing. The real question is, if you want your target audience to believe your claim that you are a non-blah channel, then why is a blah item featuring on your waves?

Feeling Blue?

Those of you who were in or around Bombay yesterday and were channel surfing on the radio must have noticed something strange. Red FM 93.5 was calling itself Blue FM 93.5 yesterday, and even their jingle was customized for Mumbai Indians, the IPL team representing Bombay.

Interesting. How many times has a media property changed their name to match their sponsors' message in the past? It was a buzz-generating tactic for only a day it seems. They don't seem to be planning to repeat this stunt during the future matches when the team would play.

But what is more interesting is that through the time that I was hearing that channel, there wasn't one commercial played between the songs or jingles. Apparently, Reliance had sponsored them enough for them to be able to just play songs, do the channel branding and the occasional soundbites about the game.

Like the possible options with the controversial London 2012 Olympics logo, Red used their own identity to carry a sponsor's message, and wove it into their programming as well. Smart move, not considering the probable damage to the channel's brand equity.

Sounds like a media planner's and programme manager's delight!

Job Reservations for Locals? WTF?

Ok, so I am irreligious and apolitical. Which means that I have strong opinions against religions and their infights, and political ideologies and their mutual discrepancies. And though I am fairly vocal about the former online, I seldom write about the latter. Today I shall. This post is about political events, but please remember that my stand is not political at all.

While talking to friends during tea today, I heard about this news item (forgive me for not being a newspaper or news-in-general addict). Have you read what it says? Okay then.

When these leaders were saying that immigrants to Mumbai should not be allowed in any more because the infrastructure cannot bear the load of any more people, it was still making a little bit of sense. But reservations for localites? Are we really going back to Nazi ideals, the democratic-loophole way?

I remember a few weeks back Mr. Raj Thackeray had issued a statement that the other political leaders were not concerned with Biharis being killed in the North-East, because they are only concerned about money-pur (Mumbai) - the city of riches. The whole thing is wrong on so many levels - one is that just because people of a certain ethnicity are being harassed in some other part of the world gives anyone NO RIGHT to do the same to people of that ethnicity here. And then point to that other area and say "if you guys aren't bothered with what's happening there, why bother with what we're doing to you?". In what way are the MNS people better off than the terrorists of the North-East then?

The leaders of this ideology want to pressurize companies in to placing region-based reservation on jobs. Are you out of your mind sir? You're asking private companies to place reservations based on region, when they have not agreed to reservation based on caste & religion?

The funny thing I noticed is that the Thackerays have issues only with the working class and some celebrities. They do not seem to have trouble with the Ambanis, who are not Marathis. They do not have trouble with the Mumbai offices of the MNCs, whose executives are not even Indians, let alone Marathis. Are they against IAS, IPS and IFS posted in Maharashtra belonging to Bihar & UP as well? They do not have problems with Infosys offices (the Bangalore giant; is Mr. Narayan Murthy a Marathi maanus?) and Tata's multiple offices (the Tata conglomerate has roots in Jharkhand FYI). Are they not selectively targetting the money-less populace? The powerless junta? And in case of the celebrities, the people whose fame is not directly giving riches or employment to the localites?

Is not the MNS and Thackeray crusade against non-Marathis also biased, coloured and influenced by matters of money?

If Mumbai is being overburdened by the people moving in, why single out the people from Bihar & UP alone? Why not also ask the Tamilians, the Kannadigas, the Bengalis, the Punjabis, the Gujaratis, the Marwaris to stay out as well? More importantly, why not ask the Maharashtrians whose village is not in Mumbai itself stay out and stay in their own villages? If Bihar should develop a city like Mumbai, then shouldn't east Maharashtra develop another city like Mumbai also so that the natives of that area do not have to emigrate westward and burden the city? Is Mumbai being burdened selectively only because of people of a certain ethnicity, and not by the thousands of non-Mumbaikar Maharashtrians moving in every day? Oh, they 'own' the city, is it? Since when has a state's borders become more important than our country's? Does the Constitution not give every citizen the right to move, stay, work in any part of the country as he or she deems fit, and that no one has the right to prevent him or her from doing so?

And if you agree with me that in case of Mumbai being overburdened, even Maharashtrians from outside Mumbai should be prevented from coming in and those not belonging to Mumbai should be asked to leave, can anyone tell me which is the native village of the Thackerays? Is it Mumbai? :) After all, if it's ethnic cleansing you're after, why demarcate at state-level? Why not take it to district or village level? :)

Whew! With that off my chest, I can go back to my non-politics related blogs. Thank you for reading. Would love to see your opinions.

Oh and in case you are curious. I am a born Calcuttan (yes, I love the names Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Poona, Bangalore, and am of the firm opinion that the name of a place carries history, and its dwellers' memories along with it and should not be tampered for whims of politicians and regional fundamentalism, no matter what our politicians think), with family roots in Bihar. I do not go to my native place in Bihar anymore, because I do not find any reason to go there - almost all my family is in Calcutta & Bombay, and I do not find any reason to feel ashamed of either my connection with Bihar or the fact that the connection isn't strong enough anymore. I love Calcutta.I love Bombay. I have loved Delhi :) and I'm loving Poona. I am loving my experience of learning the local language and the funny situations that I get into when trying to speak Marathi with the locals. And I find that the people of Bombay and Poona are lovely and quite welcoming towards us "non-Marathis", just like the Bengalis are friendly and warm towards us "non-Bengalis". I don't see any reason the politicians should be allowed to take us, the people of India for a ride over such downright petty issues and cause turmoil amongst us.

I don't say this blog is best...

There was a time when promoting your business meant saying out loud “We make the best stuff”. But who would trust you when your competitor also said the same thing?

Then there was “We are the best makers of stuff”. But who would trust you when your competitor also said the same thing? And isn’t vanity a sin?

Then you hired someone famous to say “These blokes make the best stuff”. But then people figured out that these famous chaps were paid to say this, and were lying.

Then you hired someone not so famous to say “These blokes make the best stuff”, so that they do not look like highly paid famous people, but genuine users of stuff. But then people figured out that no matter who is saying this, they are paid. And were lying.

Now you say “We don’t say we are the best makers of stuff. You (or ‘Our Users’) say.” Aaah the smugness! The subdued, almost veiled, confidence! The assumption that the receiver of the message is such an ass that he would not get that the message is just twisted around - and the money that would have been spent on getting someone to say it is also saved. And I see it everywhere... not the big makers of stuff, just the small shops who sell stuff.

How long do you think it will last?

fire

fire
Originally uploaded by recaptured

My most popular photograph on flickr till date. I posted it in the afternoon, and it has surpassed both "keys" and "sun god" in "interestingness".

Questions - Got Any Answers?

Number one in my question list right now is

Why do rickshaw-wallahs in Pune always not find any customer on the way back from where you want them to take you? Why do they always want a 10rupee or 20rupee or half-return extra on the meter? Why do they always begin with a flat rate instead of turning the meter on? Why don't the authorities increase the meter rate if the current rate is not feasible for the survival of the poor rickshaw-wallahs?

I'm sure the other things happen in almost all cities in India, but do all rickshaw-wallahs in all cities of India ask for a half-return or a markup on the meter on the pretext of "I won't get a passenger on the way back" at 11 in the morning?

MetLotus - are they getting it right?

I came across this Facebook ad today, and clicked on it. It was an Indian site, which is... I don't know what. On reaching the site (www.metlotus.com), I see the following:

What's wrong with this? A good design, nice layout, soothing colours, slick animations. But where is the information about the site or the company that it represents? There are the generic social networking promises flashing in neat animation clips, but apart from that? What is its USP, positioning, the hook that would make me want to click any of the links on this page?

When I clicked on 'Take a Tour' (which I did purely for the reason for writing this blog), I am presented with another slick flash site in a pop-up window, which has description on how to use this site. Apparently it is a social networking venture. But didn't the Facebook ad mention something about widgets? I clicked on that link thinking this might be a site specializing in making widgets that we can use on other social networking sites.

Now if it is trying to be a popular social networking site, why is the interface so unusable (for lack of a better word), and not intuitive? How many of us had to go through a tutorial when we first started using Orkut, Facebook or MySpace? Why does a new site, which no one knows about, insist that users log in on the front page without showing any tangible benefit to signing up?

And because I'm a designer of sorts, I also have a problem with the way the consistency with the sans-serifs in the entire design system is not maintained - they've used Arial in Flash animations, where they don't have to worry about embedding fonts! That's sacrilege in graphic designer-speak :)

Leaving this last bit about font puritanism apart, how many times did my mind go "negative" while going through that site - can you count?

Proof, courtesy Indian television

Read the headline on the next frame. Can you believe it? Yes, India TV has found that the legendary Sudarshan Chakra of Lord Vishnu is not a myth but is a reality.



How does the channel get to this conclusion? By getting a piece of news that paleontologists have found a head of a crocodile which lived around 60 million years ago, and was killed by a sharp object which severed the head from the body. Ofcourse this could not have happened other than the mighty Vishnu killing it himself, according to a fable (The one where the said crocodile catches hold of an elephant, who happens to be Vishnu's devotee. The elephant, seeing inevitable death, cries out his Lord's name, and Vishnu comes running barefoot to save his devotee, and to achieve this end, uses his Sudarshan Chakra to cut off the crocodile's head).

The deeply religious folks at India TV saw this as proof that the fable actually happened.


Even though the head was found in Brazil, while Vishnu is an Indian deity.


Who is the expert they are consulting here? A certain Pandit Ajay Gautam, who is apparently an expert on the Vedas.

No, they don't feel the need to consult, interview or publish words of the team who is supposed to have been involved in this excavation and is responsible for this discovery. Not their opinions, not their clarifications, not what they derive from this, not what impact this discovery could have on their field. And no, they did not flash or tell us the names, identities or even nationalities of the scientists involved in this.

The story carried no identifiers using which we could search for more information on this excavation. Only low quality video footage of some people holding a crocodile head's bone structure. And repeat "flashing news" snippets that the mighty Sudarshan Chakra has been now proven to exist. All with 'expert comments' from Panditji who is an expert on Vedas, not paleontology, carbon dating or archeology.


So dear friends, if you are an atheist, start repenting now, and if you are an agnostic, don't be one - here's proof. Courtesy Indian news television :)

Jigrr

Here's a video of our Jigrr I found on Youtube today.



Jigrr is the mascot of Commonwealth Youth Games Pune 2008. The mascot along with the other identity and overall look & feel of the games is designed by Elephant Strategy+Design, Pune.