Want that laptop??

Nice promotion campaign....perhaps it might be useful for certain giants ;P.

And they teach you english....

Watch this picture, I came across this hoarding for a "Spoken English Class" in Bangalore....interesting fact is "Hurry avail discount" has been misspelt!!

Whatte Fun

Radio City has come up with this idea of having fun while listen to music. Silly jokes like the one above, does make one smile...the TVC is also good and memorable.

Running out of steam....

Our politicians these days have started living in a world of disconnect. Sample the latest two issues which are grabbing headlines while one very important one is being sidelined.

• Who will be our next president
• USS Nimitz docks in Chennai

A lot of hue and cry about both the issues, I am a fan of current incumbent president and so are most people in the country due to the image he has created - "People's President", reminds me of Princess Diana who wanted to be "People's Princess" anyways getting to the point, one politician said that SMS campaigns cannot decide who can be the next president, here Mr. Kalam had an overwhelming support base compared to Ms.Patil. Alas, we are voting on SMS for the Taj as a world historical monument....why not the president. But then, surely detractors will say that is not how a democracy is supposed to work. Today it is working at the wimps and fancies of our netas and babus.

As for the Nimitz, well its docking at Chennai am sure will not leak any nuclear wastage, as much as our babus turning a blind eye to factories pumping toxic waste into the Bay of Bengal.

I hope our politicians do work better on what they are saying cause the people are today no longer the ignorant masses. They are aware, and if they miss something, they might catch up on the 10s of news channels present.

Franchise Season!!

Well the drunken swagger is back and so is the lovable green monster ....well folks Jack Sparrow and Shrek is back with their 3rd installment. Hollywood is raking it big time but problem is not all are that good...I for one sat through Pirates holding my head in pain! Ohh it was sooooo long!!



Somehow franchise of most movies are plain pathetic- Take Basic Instinct for Example. We in India did not have a second coming until recently with Krishh and Lage Rahoo...and Dhoom 2,they have been consistently better!



Well as for me am still going for these movies, perhaps am quite jobless on weekends. Next Up, Ocean's 13 & Die Hard 4.

Rehab Junkies

Noticed a new trend in the west....am really afraid when it would catch on here in India. Yes, it is the Celeb rehab visits. We have the A listers doing the rounds....and surprise surprise it is the girls who lead the pack- Paris Hilton has been there, so has Britney and Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss.

As far as Paris Hilton goes well, she seems to have gone every place her mom should have warned her not to go (jail included). Money and fame has got so much into these coke heads that they can't seem to get enough getting plastered all over the media. Week after week!! But then as an after thought...we do live in a shallow world after all!!

Strategy gone wary??

Some companies in India never seem to learn. ...my focus currently is on two such companies, Fiat and Yamaha. These players

have been in India for dog years, yamaha had its two stroke success with RX100, really nice bike...loved it. Fiat had its sad looking Padmini, circa 2007 these companies are dishing out new models with the same engine? Don't believe me ...take a look at Yamaha Gladiator 125 cc bike...looks decent...but engine? Remember YBX? It had the same 125 cc engine, just retuned and redesigned. Globally the Gladiator(as I read in an auto mag), looks yummy, could make a Bajaj Pulsar turn a shade or two green with envy.

Italians are known for their robust design and amazing engines. Fiat launched its FIRE based Uno in the Indian Market in 1999, and today they have re-introduced the same in Fiat Stile (2007) which is more of an upgrade of the Palio, albeit a smaller engine to meet Govt regulations. I really hope they do well at least with the Punto, otherwise it is wiser to look for an exit option,ditto for Yamaha with their bigger bikes!!

I strongly believe the Indian consumer knows that these companies have better variants to offer, just wish the companies do too. Local players such as Bajaj and Maruti are speeding ahead with greater market share with interesting innovations and amazing models.

Tabloid Celebrities!!

Rakhi Sawant, Shilpa Shetty, AbhiAsh and a few other are today's top news makers....and no we are not even reading Punjab Kesri (whose staple is news on celebrities) we are talking other mainlines too! Time and again we see that the real news nowadays has been pushed to the brink. Editors might say "this is what people want" or "skin and sex is what makes our paper reach out to the youth of India". Right, we are all morons and our next generation will only get Dumb and Dumberer thanks to such useful information such as whose slip showed and who kissed whom. Please do not put these in a GK quiz.

A few days back I saw "We the People" which was discussing how media is nowadays becoming the paparazzi and hounding and probing people's lives a bit too much....the final analysis showed that we still do have sane people in the world who would like to read,hear and see news that really matters! Amen to that, hope the media itself also does realise it too!

When Winning becomes everything!!

Well mates ...it ain't a surprise that Australia has won the Cricket World Cup ...third time in a row!! They proved that domination does not work on chances....you just don't give the opposition any!!

Reminds me of another great player who dominated the game.....until it became boring as we all knew the result....Michael Schumacher!! Yup these are the people who make

the opposition sweat and leave a mark in history....and yes repeating it relentlessly. As Ricky Ponting arrogantly put it , they did not feel there was a team that could make them work harder. Lessons to be learnt I guess....for all of us!! Perhaps passion and aggression are a potent mix....

India Inc. ....looking for heroes

So much talk on cricket, endorsements and contracts....it's tough watching TV or reading the papers these days. Yes we are a nation that is obsessed beyond compare with the game, but aren't we all taking things a bit too far?? Here's how I see it, we most certainly lack heroes and am not talking the filmy folks too, but the real flesh and blood ones...!

This is also relevant in advertising, cricketers are having a fair share of the advertising pie and with BCCI cracking the whip, not everyone is happy. I really hope we find back the Lalithaji's to sell washing powder and other locally more relevant people....circa 2007, the Nike ad where the boys are the heroes in galli cricket, and the cricketers are thankfully just watching.

These are interesting times, let's look for our heroes in the gallis of India.

Google Does it again...April fool's Day

I have heard and read about it...google launches things on 1st of April, in India maybe this is a first. When I say maybe, because am tuned to think like a skeptic...what I am talking about is available as soon as one opens gmail. This is about Gmail offering Free Print Service of e-mails.....and a very well established newspaper carried it in its News in Brief section. Now let's see if there is any truth in it...but this joke is all but out there. Nice, elaborately set, it might turn out to be true, cause gmail was born in the same fashion...gawd these people are really good, perhaps even at cracking nerdy jokes!! Reminds me of my college days. :)

The Namesake..painfully so

I got to watch this movie as part of a special screening yesterday! Yes am a fan of Jhumpa L's writing too....but feel screen adaptation of novels in Indian Cinema seem yet to get the right mix. I felt the movie needed some sizable editing. All lead characters did their jobs well....but then I really felt the movie was highly arty, not that am against art movies .

Yes there is an audience for the movie, NRIs and all Bengali's....they can relate to it instantly and the rest of us, it is a bit of a disconnect.

It is worth if you are also looking for a movie which makes more sense other than the usual masala stuff! For all other urban yuppi stuff perhaps delhi heights is a better bet.

Blue Billion get crushed

Was never a Cricket fan, and if I were I would never have been for Team India, reason being, we are all hype no output!! Not only that I find the game a complete waste of time, considering you waste 8 hours on watching people play...and yes the team play..hahaha!!

Most papers and magazines were filled with so much hype about the team before the start of the game....I hated the fact that I had to just look for some newsworthy stuff...especially in sports!! So a Christino Ronaldo steering Man United was far more exiting than say an India winning over Bermuda(can anyone tell me on the map where that country is?) Winning perhaps is what Australia did against arch nemesis South Africa. 163 Crore down the drain in pitting for Team India, we might have had our first F1 Racing Track, or perhaps a class a training school for niche sports such as swimming/chess or tennis.

The cricketers are not to blame, surely they were pathetic earlier, the world cup just nailed it for them!! Perhaps they concentrated on their game rather than grooming products and pushing FMCG products. As for the viewer, he should start watching some other game, at least there won't be a lot of sulking at the end of the game. I so wish our team was more like the French Football team lead by Zidane, he took them to the final before he headbutted the winning the game away!! Killer Instinct that is what team India lacked!! What a waste!!

Jump...creatives run out of ideas

While watching a music channel recently, I came across 2 advertisements that were amazingly similar.....so much so that they looked exact replicas of the Madonna Video-JUMP. One was the new Thumps up Ad featuring Akshay Kumar and an oddball advertisement for parachute oil...dunno what this brand is trying to do perhaps be ubercool. Fact is both are pathetic creative ideas which have been made without any creative juices flowing . Originality seems to have packed the bags and left the building!

Add to my misery the ads ran next to each other...if there were no cans in between...hardly would we have managed to see the marked difference....cutting cost seems to be the mantra these days...even in the ideas department!!

Ravving about Rave

Last week around 300 people were caught in Pune city ....all were attending a rave party!! This is not something that raised by eyebrows...these things have been happening for long time. From the time the we have seen "Dum Maro Dum" we know that there exists a secret group that is into drugs/booze/sex ....but what took me aback was a mainline publication had an editorial propagating the fact that perhaps as the world adopts things like Yoga and other things Indian...we should adapt western culture ie Rave.
Am not pretty sure how well known the fact is in west but rave parties are looked down upon even in the US and Europe. Yes, we have our own intoxicating ways to indulge, and he did mention holi ....but dear sir do let me know, yoga is a good thing ...mac is not....and when they came here we did "indinize" them ...it is still a vada pao...by the name of MacVeggie Burger....Rave...we will have fun...there is nothing draconian about it....and accepting raves as part of it ...doesn't it take the air out of the fun??

So much smoke without the fire eh?

When participation age lacks participants

One of my clients strongly believes this is the “participation age”, so do I. Problem is there are not many takers to the same thing. There are a lot of people who work on this and yes communications at the next level must be happening exactly in your hands….or rather handset. But fact remains; there is a lot of polarity in the user groups. Sample this most users are men, be it blackberry or any other interface. It is amazing that innovatios are so uni-polar in this country. Yes, boys need their toys and girls are more utilitarian, but then in this age of materialism, the spent should be more equivalent.

Try this one if you happen to visit a pub/disc, switch on your blue tooth on the handset and seek, am sure the point am trying to make will dawn upon you!! That is in itself a statistic!

Love's up for sale!!

Interesting concept we have in this world and one of them is Valentine's day.....yaa we all know all the mush in the world happens on that day!! But seriously, love never got so hyped or let's just say overpriced....ahh to be a woman on such days!! Gifts, spiffy dinner and all the jazz!

I could not help relating the same to an advert running on TV, where the girl is thinking "what shall i give him for his birthday?" ....sorry boys she ends up giving him nothing. We tried out something in real life, we all went out with the girls of our office, and one of the guys suggested we came up with the idea of treating u girls and selecting the place, why don't you foot the bill!!

Sadly, so much for women empowerment, we did end up splitting the bill (fortunately).....long way to go boys!! lol ;) Aah, to be a woman!

126 planes...lot of drool

I was at the Aero India Show recently, and had a whale of a time there. It is rare to find so much high tech stuff thrown around you. So everyone was talking 16,18,30mki,35....no these are not numbers these are the fighters that are present there...F-16,F-18,Sukhoi 30s and Mig 35! Most of the planes were impressive, and clearly Mig 35 was the crowd favourite.

During the stall visits i happened to chat up with one of the Marketing Executives of Lokheed Martin, just to get a feel of their take....and man was i dissapointed! Their perception of the comman Indian was filled with utmost cockiness about themselves. Yes, you are putting your F-16s on display but then did you not sell the same to Pakistan...who is a rogue state? And why would India want to take a risk of buying from US when if something wrong happens(god forbid) you will not supply it on time....to which he replied the relation is between companies? My friend F-16s were and are stalled to pakistan due to govenment delibrations!!

What I strongly believe that whenever India asks for the big order...we should rely more on the russians who have maintained a stedy relation...come what may...and yes...Gripen from the sweds is also a good option!! That is my take...a lot more happens in India...so let's all see how the biggest order in defence history of India Materialises!!

Shattered Glass

This was an interesting movie on journalists (2003) starring Hayden Christensen. The storyline is In the wake of the scandal at the New York Times, in which journalist Jayson Blair contrived sources and quotes, Shattered Glass offers a potent exploration of another journalist's motivations for doing similar in the magazine world in the 1990s. As the youngest staff member of the political magazine The New Republic, Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is bylined month after month, and his writing has such verve, such power, such wit and humor that he's getting calls to freelance for all the best publications. He's also a really nice guy, complimenting the secretary's lipstick and helping new writers find their footing. Nice as he is, though, Glass is also a little childish: He tends to pout; he's always asking fact checkers and editors to help him out with his stories; and he's going to law school because his parents "made him." Because he's such a nice, sweet, innocent kid, nobody suspects the somewhat outrageous stories he files are anything but true--until two writers at Forbes Digital pull the thread that causes Glass' carefully stitched web of lies to unravel. For more on the movie click or the whole review : http://www.hollywood.com/review/Shattered_Glass/1732752

Now comes the real reason why I thought this movie is relavant. We look at the media stories we find stark reality starring into our faces. Don't we see many of these people around us? On electronic media we see "sensational breaking news" everyday.....the relavance is mostly at the lowest common denominator. Come to think of it, Shilpa Shetty got read and talked more about than say Tata bagging Corus! DUMBING DOWN never got clobbered on to us with such continuity. Or say the perceived conflict between SRK and Amithab Baccachan. Irrelavance is today becoming so relavant today that the truth is seemingly being forgotten or kept under wraps and conviniently forgotten.

Glass story is increasingly relavant to all of us as he doctured up something, made it look like a true story and got rave reviews....what is happening right now in India is similar, frivilous gets all the attention while the true story lies somewhere in between. We Indians pride ourselves for having emotional depth, a transition perhaps to becoming shallow. Talk about, Chalta Hai attitude emerging into a new avtaar!!

Here i am
Lost in the light of the moon
That comes through my window
Bathed in blue
The walls of my memory
Divides the thorns
from the roses
It’s you and the roses
Touch me and i will follow
In your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As i let you go I will find my way
When i see your eyes
Now i’m living In your afterglow
Here i am
Lost in the ashes of time
But who owns tomorrow
In between
The longing to hold you again
I’m caught in your shadow
I’m losing control
My mind drifts away
We only have today
Touch me and i will follow
In your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As i let you go
I will find my way
I will sacrifice
Till that blinding day
When i see your eyes
Now i’m living
In your afterglow
When the veils are gone
As i let you go
As i let you go
Touch me and i will follow
In your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As i let you go
I will find my way
I will sacrifice
Now i’m living
In your afterglow
Bathed in blue
The walls of my memory
Divides the thorns from the roses
It’s you who is closest

-JD Fortune,INXS

A song that reminds me of a relationship that ended, gives me the strength to move forward.

POP goes Patriotism..and Britney

Initiatives are a nice thing! Especially when a major english daily takes it up, even better. When was the last time you or I have said out loudly "Jai Hind" or for the conventional IBCD "I love my India" ....hmmm a lot of cobwebs in the mind. Anyway zooming back, the paper initiated a PDA(Public Display of Affection) of sorts for your country....let's just show the world we too are proud to be Indians. With every morning paper dropped on 26th January, India's Republic Day, we got a tattoo tag pinned, coaxing the reader to apply it on his face/arm or any visible part of the body. It is an admirable effort and hats off to whoever came up with this bright idea. At least for one day we were showing off skin for the right reason ;)!

But before you assume that this is a paid for article, we have an interesting article on a supposed trend "Short term relationships as a fad"and who is leading the pack?? No points for guessing the new bad girl in USA Britney Spears. I mean yeah, she is through with K-Fed and is getting a lot of stirring up, but hey how does it affect us indians? And who said we worship britney? Isn't she old hat? Come on , live it up, we love our bollywood movies and all, and abide by them, if aKareena or say any other bollywood star worth her money goes for such thing then perhaps we could say that is a fad! Right now it is so not happening? Correct me if I am wrong!!

Bangalore Riots? Or was there any?

On Friday, January 19th one of the political parties went ahead to condemn the Saddam Hussain Hanging. There was a rally organised and the peace of the generally calm city got a jolt....the reason being some of the participants (belonging to the muslim community)in the rally pulled down someposters of the rally to be organised on Sunday. Minor skimmerishes happened and the usual toll of a few vehicles and injuries happened.

Speed up to Sunday, the day of the Hindu Rally, more such incidents occoured, and Monday was spent in ire silence.

How does this affect an individual? Does fear strike in the minds of people? OR fear is more in the mind or say highlighted by the Media. We had front page coverage in most papers and I could see TV anchors shouting themselves hoarse. Hello?!! Are you people trying to help the few affected or are you trying to max out your byte.

I for one travel everyday through Bangalore east...one of the most affected places .....no it does sound stupid but then as a person who has seen riots occour in 2002 in Gujarat. All these things are just passe. Only one thought occours in my mind... is there no story out there? Are all media in an effort to sell themselves trying too hard? Or is it that today, the truth is murkier than what it seems.

Here's what a few of us in Bangalore did when "Bangalore was Tensed" ...we went out for a movie and had a blast in a nearby theatre. So shall I call this undying spirit "the undying spirit of bangalore"? Give it a thought