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 :D

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 :D

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 :D that's really weird. God forbid Dominos Delivery guys start that too!

all smiles

I started my day very early, traveled a great distance to deliver a talk on advertising and PR in the Digital Age. The talk was for distance learning students affiliated with MICA.
I think it went off well. Especially since I had the initial jitters of having to stare into a camera for 2 hours.

Just got a mail from a someone who attended the talk. So all's well I think.

And I just heard that an article I co-wrote with my boss got published in USP AGE. It's about our 72 hours in second life experiment. Do check it out if you can.
A low res wonky copy is available here.


So smiles all around. Plus it's friday. So there.

the sky is falling

Doomsayers are plenty and very few bother to dispel myths and fears.

With all the major news channel and newspapers crying about the end of the earth because of the latest news on experiments with the LHC, people online are really trying hard to find out the truth.

Most, of course are googling out of curiosity, but considering the noise the media is making, I'm sure plenty turn to the Google Gods to provide them with some peace of mind.

Here are the top trends on google (last evening's) for people searching for the 'end of the earth' type scenarios. Quite amusing :)

Interestingly the US and UK searches don't reflect any such noticeable trends.

Of course it is possible that the US govt is keeping the doomsayers quiet since they don't want panic. And we in India cannot keep a secret and are yelling it off any mic we can get our hands on :D

So before the world ends and all that jazz, I thank you for reading.

Now go on. Add yourselves to the list of people googling for the end of the earth. These two links might help :)
1. survive 2012
2. LHC machine

You know you’re in the corporate world when…

1. You start to look forward to the weekend from Monday itself

2. Repeating someone else’s idea louder than them, makes it your own

3. Saying polite hellos in the washroom is actually required

4. You’re giving ‘downloads’ at meetings instead of just ‘talking’

5. You smile and say your hellos to everyone and it’s called ‘networking’

6. You have to book a room 2 days in advance if a few of you just want to meet up and chat

7. The louder you talk, the more confident you seem and nobody tells you to keep it down

8. If you are upset you’re actually ‘stressed out’

9. Nobody bothers you if you have a scary looking excel sheet on your computer

10. You look happy and people wonder if you’re in denial