Friday, July 29, 2005

My Journey: Trying to Understand the Universe!

My Journey: Trying to Understand the Universe!


Guess why this picture of mine is interesting... this cavalry platoon is lead by a woman! Posted by Picasa

Unfair and Lovely

As a business journalist I go to umpteen number of press meets and product launches and after a while I tend to get into a trance. So and So Pvt. Ltd launches an ultra new product with extra new features and it is so unique that it gives you an out of the world experience!

In one such brand management seminar, various issues like celebrity endorsements, employee referrals, brand dilution, core competency, thinking out of the box, etc, were talked being about. After two drowsy lectures, the third speaker was good enough make me sit up and notice. He was the renowned creative director Mr.Balkrishnan of O&M or 'adman Balky' as he was popularly called. He was talking about how to solve a problem in advertising a product. When he said, "If your client has a problem, rejoice, you have business", everybody straightened their ears.

As a typical example he took out his campaign on 'Fair & Lovely' TV commercial, where a dark girl is crying over her fate and after using the cream, life changes dramatically. He said, his client HLL came over to him and told about their problem of deteriorating sales, despite a great brand recall. He thought about an idea how dark girl is always cursed by her parents about not being good enough to get a guy. How the so called 'Jaathak' of a dark girl never changes.

This concept was very well highlighted and the TV ad was so well received that Fair & Lovely sales zoomed up. But soon all women organisations went up in arms against it and his team had to change the strategy next time. He quoted his 'Fair & Lovely Dark Circles' ad (that cute girl saying "matching not matching!") was brought in to pacify the moralistic hypocrite women's lib brigade.

After the lecture, I posed him a query, "Does the product live up to the awesome claims of your commercial?" He asked me, "Do you use Fair & Lovely?" I said no. He said "Use it and you will know the difference!" The audience had a good laugh at my expense.

I came back wondering why don't all unfair women in this world use this miracle cure and become fair. I thought i should tell my dusky girlfriend who is worried that my mom doesn't like her colour. Later I learnt that she does use it and believes that it has done some good thing. But I told her I loved her since she is dark and I don't want her to be fair. She tells me that my mom will never like her that way. I am still perplexed about who is unfair in this world, my mom, HLL company, or Mr.Balky or the whole society?

Saturday, July 09, 2005


The skyline of changing bangalore seen from my cubicle Posted by Picasa

One intriguing thought

One intriguing thought, "If technology has been making our lives easier, why is life so difficult!" Anyway, philosophy apart, the life of an average service sector professional is miserable. Just imagine, instead of having fun with family and friends we end up working on a Saturday night. What a sad state of affairs... wow! it is about to be Sunday morning!


The other day our beloved Times of India's Bangalore Times had an article on which category of working professionals are happy. Obviously Hairdressers and fashion designers were at the top and our IT/BPO guys were at the bottom. I was wondering how Times got such brains to do a worth while survey (unlike their regular would-you-dump-your-love-if-they-flirt-with-others type of surveys!)


Later it dawned to me that it was a story neatly lifted off from a US publication and all they had done was quote some local celebrities on it. Yet another attempt to show that life is all the same everywhere or trying to sell the career of a hairdresser in turn leading to more sales for MNC cosmetic products. Forgive me, I am surely not one of those conspiracy theorists or a miserable cynic!


Life is surely not miserable; otherwise how I could think of opening a blog page in the middle of the night, while I am stressed out with a pile of work undone… Just because I am confined within the four walls of my office, it doesn’t curb my imagination of the world outside or the eagerness to explore the world. Thanks to technology, desktop exploration takes us beyond our wildest imaginations. Into the bedrooms of unsuspecting beautiful women perhaps!


Forgive me for my voyeuristic tendencies… we journos are made of this stuff. Anyway, Mark Twain said "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."


So today this moment I resolve that I will break the shackles of never ending professional life and will go out into the open blue skies. I will explore the world and meet every person who will smile at me. (even if that is a trap set by a network marketer!) I will make an effort to understand this world not by books, TV or the net, rather by sailing out of my safe harbour into the vast ocean. Before that I need to make some money for atleast the travel cost!

Ah! That’s where the catch is… when would we ever able to make some savings beyond our expenses! And that’s the where the maya of the matrix pulls us into this never ending quest of making a fortune to put an end our miserable existence. The day never comes and by the time we realise we have pack our baggage to the nearby old age homes. Oops! That’s the word limit for today.