Blending, Branding & Bollywood!

We come across branded celebrity nuptials more often these days. The branding starts with a hashtaged  name blending of the couple. The first time I came across this trend was when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided to live happily ever after and the world called them Brangelina!!! Though now the brand is hyphenated. Then came our Bollywood friends aping their Hollywood cousins and the first on the list was Virushka which was an amalgamation of the names of celebrities from two religions in India Bollywood and Cricket!

Initially I was impressed at their creativity only to realise later that there were online tools like couple name generator like an anagram generator that could churn out combined names of couples in various permutations and combinations.

Later on I learnt from my daughter that there was a term for this in the millennial lingo and was called ‘shipping’ or ‘ship’.  You could ship two romantically linked couple by co-joining their first or last names and flaunt it as brand. The convenience of publicizing their union was also simple. All they needed to do was to prefix a hashtag to their ‘shipped’ names to set sail on the sea of eternal bliss. Some though turned a Titanic half way through.  I’m sure the Sailing fraternity, which is an otherwise boring male dominated profession were more than happy to be romantically linked to the union of celebrity souls in love. The ‘shipped’ hashtags started trending on the social media sites and the numbers that followed them eclipsed the numbers that attended their wedding.

That is when the Malayalee in me woke up? This was an art we conceptualized generations back, We were the pioneers at combining names and our ancestors were the ones who started this trend of naming not themselves as a couple, but their offsprings with some lovely combination of their own names. Once they took this a tad seriously we had some interesting names doing the rounds, the best of which was Shitty, named after Shoshama & Ittycheria. Had the tools like the name generator been available then, we would have had an entire generation of Malayalees with esoteric names. Baby naming was so easy back then, a child born to an Aleyama and Varghese could be named Arghese…Close to Nargis!. Being born to Thomas and Gracy, had they followed the trend I could have been named Thoracy which sounded more like an acute throat infection.

Today almost every other Bollywood celebrity couple release their hashtaged ‘shipped’ names months before their big fat Indian weddings, that does not happen in India any longer. But picking the right one can be tricky, Virushka had Virat taking on a partial Anushka as the second half of the name and sent a message to the sorority that the husbands can take their wife’s names as surnames, then came Deepveer, now we can also argue that Ranveer let Deepika take the lead…the latest couple on the block is Nickiyanka which was a Transcontinental shipping liner altogether. The American with a small name managed to fit in his entire name into the equation though it sounds like the name of a Russian Gymnast.

Soon to be released is Hashtag AliaRan! Could well be the ‘shipped’ term for Aliya & Ranbir. Not sure if it sounds right though!

Wishing all the ‘ships’ and those ‘shipped’ a wonderful voyage irrespective of the tides and the icebergs they may encounter and make sure the hyphen does not split their brand.

#metoo Vs #humbhi

#metoo vs #humbhi

This is definitely not going to be one of my more popular blogs. I am going to be accused of being judgmental, chauvinistic, an alpha male etc. In fact the very mention that such a blog was a work in progress drew the ire of the ladies at home.

Well, irrespective of all the brickbats I’m bound to receive, I intend expressing my perspective.  My apologies if I directly or indirectly hurt any sentiments in the following paragraphs. You may choose to leave the blog right away.

#metoo movement is opening up many a Pandora’s Box recently in elitist India namely in all the woods prefixed with Bolly, Kolly, Tolly and the likes in India, though it started off with Holly ironically one ‘l’ short of holy. This awakening in India is almost a year after it happened in the US. The time lag between a developed country and a developing one is understandable; since a social issue is no Apple IPhone to be launched simultaneously. There is a lot of difference between ROI (return of investment) of an American product and an ROI (return on interest by public around on a topic of social cause).

While I’m respectful to all the allegations brought forward in the #metoo movement in India, I need to warn future generations of aspiring celebrities to be wary of the world around you. Being a celebrity is much more difficult than climbing the corporate ladder from the lower rungs unless you have big family name towing you. Please do not be as naïve as the scion of one of the first families of Bollywood who claimed after years she was subjected to difficult situations in a place as public as an airport when all she needed to do, was to scream, since her father at that point of time would have used all influence possible to bring the perpetrators of the crime to book and ensure they are wiped of the face of the entertainment world. Now why she didn’t do that is not left to anybody’s imagination but hers?

There is another celebrity who often offers incentives to bare herself in skin and thoughts with the sole objective of encouraging the sports teams in India to perform better ends up accusing a co-star with dubious records in such matters. Well, I acknowledge that every profession new, old, or the oldest has its own dignity of labor. The fact is that, that dignity should never be exploited.

The question and the definition of consent needs to be discussed and understood by all and a teacher in California recently tried to decode the same trying to educate third graders all about consent so that they don’t end up suing people decades later.  This is certainly a step in the right direction, however what was taboo in in one generation is no longer in another.

 

That’s a quick guide to help our children learn about consent. Unfortunately this chart is being taught to third graders now. Today giving a hug is a form of greeting that is just as acceptable as a handshake was two decades back. I’m sure none of the kids these days ask for consent before they hug their friend irrespective of the gender. So apart from the third graders who are taught these consent rules everyone who has hugged without consent can technically sue the other for inappropriate behavior in the years to come, more so if he or she goes on to become a celebrity.

It’s time we turn our attention to the sizeable population of women who are going through hell every day in rural India and other parts of the world where internet and English are yet to penetrate. These women are oblivious to the #metoo campaign and the attention it is mustering miles away from them. They go through this at the hands of family members, friends and elders irrespective of their age every single day. They are always not fortunate to live to narrate a once in a lifetime incident decades later. The reason they hide this from the society is more a matter of survival than it is for the celebrities who are subjected to this. The ‘revenue’ model is different in both; the decision is between the ROI of just trying to live / survive while the ROI in the case of celebrities is to live better and longer. We need a campaign to bring these rural women out of their misery. #Humbhi / #Wetoo instead of #Metoo would be more appropriate.  Since metoo would be translated in Hindi as mehtho… which roughly means I am the way I am? That shouldn’t be the case!

Let’s pledge to bring up our sons to be respectful and daughters even braver!

The Death of Memory!

Two years to the dawn of a new century that witnessed the anxiety of being able to boot up your home PC at the turn of the century, also saw among other things the extinction of the wisdom of many a grandmas across households, the extinction of the reference sections in libraries, the extinction of Mr. / Ms. Know it all’s in the class rooms, in short the extinction of the beautiful world of memory.

It also marked the birth of the high bandwidth know it all’s, the virtual gurus, the tell- me-all friend,and the dump-your-memory friend.

Overnight one was enlightened about the what’s, why’s, when’s, which’s, how’s of the happenings around us. We were the so called empowered society when a toddler all of 2 hand held us to the world of information overload at the turn of the century and at a click.

A generation that grew up being told that Knowledge was Power was elbowed out by a generation that claimed Information is Power as long as the electrical power and connectivity existed. There is a world of difference between knowledge and information.  Sadly the speed at which information was disseminated was more important than the quality of the information that was being spread. The advancements in hardware kept pace and ensured they facilitated uninterrupted dissemination of ‘uncontrolled’ information.

All this happened because one Sergey a Russian and Larry an American decided that they would bid adieu to the cold war, their countries were at and give democracy a new twist and empower mankind with information.  Democracy sadly gave freedom to everything except the right to uncontrolled information.  Uncontrolled information sounded nice but when the source of uncontrolled information passed its early life entered adolescence and crossed over to the teens, now out of the teens realized uncontrolled information was irresponsible information too.

As we suffer from various health hazards associated with poor lifestyle and eating habits as a result of our consumption patterns we also suffer from an acute information obesity / disorder due to the consumption of junk, so called intellect influencing steroids like misinformation, disinformation and mal-information that are so beautifully camouflaged under empowerment or right to information.

The facilitator of all this, turns twenty today, and hope they leave the teeny tantrums behind and focus on a more responsible dissemination of information. The brand became a verb before they reached the responsible 20’s and hope they remain a responsible mental verb.

The need of the hour is a mature and responsible GOOGLE. We need exponential efforts in 100’s as the name suggests, to help foster a responsible society.

 

Many Happy returns of the day Google… thank you for returning all our queries till date.

India Running!

The legend of Philippedes has it that he ran from Marathon to Athens to declare the victory over the Persians. This happened in 490 BC.  Last week a population of 1 plus billion people from an even older civilization produced a gold medal winner at the 400 M world junior athletic event for the first time and the whole country went into frenzy.

However the followers of Philippedes are a plenty in India and it has become more of a fad than a sport. As one might be aware, barring one sport nothing else is revered as a sport in India. Almost every city in India has more than a couple of branded Marathon events all the year around. I happened to ‘witness’ (A recent survey says we are the largest sporting event ‘viewers’ in the world) one this week which started and finished close to my house in Chennai.

Went there to check on a friend who claimed to be a marathoner and me being the doubting Thomas wanted to go by the seeing is believing principle and I had my reasons for that, knowing him for long now, his closest association with the word RUN during college days was with a Hotel by the name RUNS in Adyar. Was amazed at the size and splendor of the event. Close to 5000 odd people sweating it out, some sprinting, some gracefully cantering and some even ‘selfieing’ their way in, while a few others limped to the finish to be greeted to the sounds of ‘chenda melam’ and egged on by a handful of lazy onlookers like yours truly and proud family members of the descendants of Philippedes armed with the latest Phone cameras and DSLR’s to capture their moment of glory. What further amazed me was the accessories that the runners where adorned with apart from good running shoes some were strapped with the latest fitbit and the likes monitoring their vitals as they made through this gruesome endurance challenge. Some ran barefoot too. Some hydrated themselves with water from PET bottles while some sipped from long pipes hanging over their shoulders. I was later informed by a well-informed runner friend that particular gadget was called a camelback. A water pouch that one can carry on his or her back with a sipper to keep hydrated.

Mercedes Benz as one of the lead sponsors had displayed large Digital Timers on the roof of their cars at the finish lines so that the runners could see their timing and also kindle that urge in you to own the coveted brand, for which, you need to run a different race though.

Marathon for sure is not for the weak hearted and calls for skills that revolve around endurance, focus and monk like concentration; this has now opened up an entire tribe of life coaches / Management gurus drawing parallels with marathons and emphasizing that these very skills will take you to the top at your workplaces. Sadly none of these Management gurus give you gyan on how to make it big, taking up running itself as a profession.

It’s an irony that in India many take to Marathons once they are secure and successful in life unlike the Ethiopians or the Kenyans or the Mo Farahs who went on to make it big for themselves and their country running for a livelihood.

Marathons are run every second day across the country for various causes which is certainly good, however wish one could be run to promote the spirit of sport as a profession and not only as a fitness fad and thereby help in producing at least one marathoner or an athlete from India who could make it big on the world stage.

Horses for courses!

A state that is home to the so called Silicon Valley of India has been witness to the dance of democracy the last 48 hours. The dance has been all but graceful, plunging the constitutional pundits into a huddle.  Though this is something we Indians have got used to irrespective of who is in power, sadly highlights the grey areas of democracy in a diverse and populous country like India.

We thump our chests with pride when we are referred to as the largest working democracy, largest yes, but working I am unsure. We sure are diverse and thanks to our colonial teachings on leveraging the multiple  cast / tribe / regional and religious divides, it makes the working of democracy all the more difficult. That is why a fragmented mandate turns the dance of democracy into a bacchanalia.

As a citizen of the largest democracy I have heard this term Horse Trading from the time I was old enough to read a Newspaper and follow politics. The origin of the word goes thus - courtesy the wiki.

Horse trading, in its literal sense, refers to the buying and selling of horses, also called "horse dealing.” Due to the difficulties in evaluating the merits of a horse offered for sale, the sale of horses offered great opportunities for dishonesty, leading to use of the term horse trading (or horse-trading) to refer to complex bargaining or other transactions, such as political vote trading.

We the people are the protagonist in the theatre called democracy and it is we the people who should choreograph the dance of democracy, but sadly with our numerous differences we are unable to evaluate the merits and elect our representative who later turns a horse to be traded. They end up being traded at exorbitant sum which is always proportional to the complexity of the fragmented mandate. The masters who trade them are extolled for their political acumen and compared to Chanakya sadly this comparison maligns Chanakya’s famed political dexterity.  

Democracy is all about people and not about horses. Thorough bred horses fetch a fortune and let’s not compare the illiterate opportunistic elected representatives to those lovely creatures of pedigree.  Let’s ensure when we exercise our franchise next, to house the political stables with horses for courses and not horses to be traded.

It’s all about the jeans!

Air travel in the past was a mode of travel confined to the rich and famous, and if at all one managed to afford it, they would make sure that they were donned in their Sunday best as they walked into an airport or boarded a flight.  Though the world has come a long way since, the skies are now as crowded as the gullies of an Indian metropolis, the old school patrons like yours truly still take travelling by air a little seriously when it comes to looking your best. So, during a recent trip to Europe I slipped into my relatively new & favorite pair of jeans.

Walking through the plane’s aisle I ended up tearing my jean at the thigh. As soon as I realized it, I was absolutely horrified at the possibility of having to walk through two international airports wearing a pair of torn jeans. There were days one used to rush back home from school or office when a part of your attire had given up at the seams.

As I got off the plane I walked coquettishly trying to hide the damaged portion of the jean. A quick glance around the airport made me realize that almost every second person passing through the airport had encountered an even worse mishap with their jeans. The denims were all ripped in different shapes and forms, and the so called rich and famous were flaunting their ripped jeans with pride. I developed a complex again when I realized mine was an accident and was confined to only one thigh; the others sported a more symmetric damage which actually made them look good.

Growing up in the 80’s I have worn different kinds of denims, stone wash, acid wash and even one with the complete lyrics of a Deep Purple song hand written on it, and yes some were torn at the knees but that was caused by natural wear & tear. We never bought a branded torn jean then, so when my daughter wanted one I was aghast at the possibility of having to actually pay for a torn jean. Its then I was given a crash course on the denim jargons I am supposed to use.

I was told it’s not torn… It was called ripped and the more expensive and the more torn it was it had to be addressed as distressed. In fact I have a better name for a recent distressed version that is doing the rounds on social media valued at 168$. It could be called STRANDS…there are a couple of strands left of what, was once a denim.

The irony is that the celebrities today who wear a distressed pair of jeans paying a fortune for it are all depressed while we were quiet happy growing up wearing hand-me-down jeans that were torn at the knees not as a fashion statement but as a result of over wearing.

The evolution of Gyration

Circa 1988, all of 16, I ended up in a theater watching a Hindi movie with a few friends; probably the first time I watched a Hindi movie on the silver screen. Sholay might have been up there but for someone who was baptized in the Kollywood land it was sacrilege to watch a Hindi movie.  

The Heroine was a fresh face who  had a very not-so – filmi-name, 80’s was decade when close to 13 ladies made their debut into Bollywood breaking the hegemony of Rekha, Hemamalini, Zeenat, Shabana, Smita Patil and the likes. This movie was the break this actress was looking for and her dancing skills catapulted her to fame and stayed queen of the industry for close to a decade.

Having been so conditioned to the Sri series (Sreedevi, Sripriya, Srividya, Srilatha et al) of actresses in Kollywood it was a welcome break for me to see a dance performance by this relatively unknown actress who would go on to be part of the history of Indian cinema.

Life and the world moved on since that day in 1988, we went our separate ways; the actress went on to make a name for her while I went on to try and make a living for myself.  That performance stayed however in memory for the gyrations and the graceful moves and above all the music associated with the song. It was the so called catchy performance which in today’s cinematic jargon gets referred to rather crudely as an item number.

The song and the dance unfortunately was replicated by an expat actress recently 30 years down the line in a movie officially as an Item number, watching it made me realize the transformation  the art of music and dance had undergone in the last 3 decades.

The radius of gyration had increased exponentially while the bending angle had moved from acute to obtuse, the epidermal exposure was directly proportional to the elapsed time period and above all the first part of the song was missing…3 decades back.. It began with a conversation that went thus…

Dancer: Namaskar…kahiye kya sunengey aap!!! (good day! What would you like to hear)

Audience: Arrey!!! Pehley yeh kaheye kahaan thi aap? (Oh tell us where you were all these days)

Dancer: Mein…Mein karr rahithi kissi ka intezaar… (Me? I was waiting for someone!)

Audience: Khon hai wo? (Who is that?)

Dancer: Wo jissey mey karthi hun pyaar!!!  (The one that I am in love)

Dancer: Aur jissey karthi hun minnethe baar baar! (And to the one whom I keep requesting)

Audience: Kaisey? (How is that?)

Dancer: Aisey ( Like this!!! Ding…Dong Ding…Ek Do teen…)

Well, the song and dance had a dialogue like prelude that gave the audience an interactive experience that made them remember this number for years to come.  Unfortunately 3 decades down the line the cultural landscape does not allow people the time to enjoy a work of art at length and hence the fast paced version did not resonate with me.

I might sound old school and so not in sync with choice of the Gen Z when it comes to music and dance. But it’s left to each one of you to watch both the version below and take a call.

PS : The direct links are posted below. Its possible you might have to log on to YouTube to watch the Gen Z version.

Checked out of privacy!

Alas! The world has woken up to the importance of privacy and suddenly it is the most sanctified. Last year we celebrated the 13^th birthday of the social media platform facebook and there was so much zeal over the network turning a teen. With the teen years, come the tantrums and that’s exactly what we are seeing today.

They are suddenly finding themselves out of favor with the majority and public in general are accusing it of sharing their data. Sadly the root cause does not lie with Facebook alone; we the people too have a certain share in the mess we find ourselves in.

Facebook opened up a culture that replaced the conservative closeted diary entry habits with the writings on the wall. The everyday life happenings were graffiti. Our neighbors who had never rung our door bell in ages were suddenly poking us to take a look at their holiday pictures from their La La land. We were in turn poked by our wives to take out a loan to counter the neighbor’s poke! The parallel rapid developments in data speed infrastructure & the exponential advancement of smart phones features further fueled man’s voyeuristic pursuits.

Then came about the check in culture, even if one waits at the car park of a 5 Star Hotel  to pick up a rich cousin one could ‘check-in’ to the 5 Star hotel much to the envy of friends far away. Every third person became a food photographer and some dabbled in writing and published it to the world like yours truly. 50 year olds behaved like adolescents who had a new toy in their hands. The world went berserk stoked by the human greed for attention. It was a mass hysteria of Mirror! Mirror! On the wall, who is the most famous of them all? Mark just facilitated a platform, we the eco-system created a behemoth out of it and now we cry foul.  

We kept shouting out to the world our joys, sorrows, emotions in our pursuit of virtual ‘likes’ sympathies and shoulders. We did this by writing on our walls and on the walls of others little did we realize the literal meaning of the ‘writing on the wall’ which simply meant a premonition, portent, or clear indication, especially of failure or disaster:

Unfortunately like all vices adopted by humanity we went overboard with this one too and sadly social media had words like addiction and rehab soon associated with it. The days are not far when we could see statutory warning on the ill effects of Social Media and asking us to use them more responsibly.

PS: Most of you might read this blog via my Facebook page and the writer is not responsible for the profiling you may be subjected to, as a result of reading this.

Head spinning, Stomach churning headlines!

Waking up to the headlines in newspapers these days is a rather challenging experience. Apart from the unpleasant news from around the world we are confronted with futuristic stories that sounds more like the science fiction novels we read growing up.

This week’s reading has been all about Brain Hacking, Reverse Thinking, A car orbiting the outer space, a social media message asking me to walk bare foot and a BOT checking on my emotional well-being at frequent intervals.

Brain hacking is one that got me befuddled, never knew such possibilities existed when I was young. Securing an education was the foremost thing on my mind, unlike the possibilities today where one can augment / facilitate / stimulate or even simply dope ones way to a higher intellectual plane…no…’ high’ sounds better.

The Kotas of India would soon be equipped with hyperbaric oxygen chambers where your kids could stay for 30 Minutes and end up solving calculus better. The now redundant ISD / STD booths could be re-utilized for this.  You can administer your kids with smart drugs and indulge in brain doping for them to succeed or even have a 2mA current pass through their grey matter to stimulate it to the MENSA cracking levels.  Soon you will hear of an organization called WIERDO (World Intellect Enhancing & Restoring Doping Organization) like the WADA that checks on doping in sports.

Armed with a higher intellect after all the efforts (including some described above) you enter the corporate world and you are advised by Ivy League management gurus to do reverse thinking and ask you to think of the worst possible solutions. They claim that we need to look the wrong way for the right solution or analyze the worst case scenario first.  During a late night banter with like-minded friends, one explained it by drawing an analogy of a simple swelling of the leg and the worst expectations / assumptions that go through an Asian / Indian way of thinking. We would first start with a malignant tumor, a failing kidney or even an advanced stage of diabetes only to realize it was a result of muscle spasm. Did you sit in a hyperbaric chamber for 30 Minutes to come up with this?

Then comes along a story of someone sending his Roadster to outer space with the Starman at the wheels.  The Martians would soon spot an alien in a non-polluting car and still cry foul over it. While the earthlings would celebrate the David Bowie song dedicated to the star man.

As I continue to read, I learn that walking barefoot will keep me away from a possible Electron Deficiency syndrome. From driving a car in space to grounding ones feet for a healthy life. Those are the life lessons I had this week from my newspaper and social media messages that greeted me.

After all this, If we are still depressed and we need an Artificial Intelligence aided app to enquire on our well-being. It pops up on your smart phones and asks how your day was and even advises you to breathe slowly and deep. How can I?  I am what I am because I have spent more time in a hyperbaric chamber than with my parents to reach where I am.

I brain doped my way to reach a high and then indulged in some reverse thinking that I could send a car to MARS and be told that I need to be grounded to stay healthy. If I am unhappy with all this I have an assistant endowed with artificial intelligence to console me and get me out of my depression which my natural intelligence naturally couldn’t.

Guess I should stop reading these kinds of stomach churning articles in the morning newspaper. But on the flip side I carry my newspaper to the chamber every morning and a little bit of stomach churning only facilitates a peaceful day ahead!!!

A requiem to a Hermit!

Back after a period of writer’s block to write a tribute to someone who has been instrumental in introducing something way back in 1954 that has been my trusted companion during most of my youthful years and blogging sessions.

Little did Edward Abraham Dyer know in 1855 that he would leave a more positive legacy in India 162 years down the line than his notorious offspring Col Reginald Edward Harry Dyer who would go on to feature in history books across India as a person who was more cursed than forgiven for his acts every time one read his role in history.

Ghaziabad shot to the limelight or rather (Orange light) in the recent past for all the wrong reasons. But Ghaziabad has a history of spiritual association with the youth of the country since 1960.

When Jamaica took the lead, we in India created a cult.

The above clues were not from a connect-them-all trivia quiz round but facts about something that would go on to calm the nerves of the first youth of an independent India, something that the senior Dyer in a distant way helped us forget his descendant’s wrong doings and also helped us to curse the English better in better English!

The hermit in each one of us was kindled by this concoction. Some would introspect, some would turn a socialist and some would simply laugh out loud much before the expensive laughing club memberships came into being.  Easy on the pocket, light on the mind might sound oxymoronical to a few.  

Solitude was the virtue of a hermit. But the product that was named after the hermit always brought people together…

Happy that a monk is now the guardian of the region that THE MONK that united people irrespective of caste, creed, or religion was born!

The Monk never dies!!! However Old he is!

RIP Brig Kapil Mohan!