Somewhere in Space

It is without doubt Telangana’s most famous icon. In one stylish sweep it brushed aside the rather archaic Charminar and by being counted amongst the best in the world it placed Hyderabad on the map better than any other representative figure.

Why it was called Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the first place, only the wily brain of the late Dr. YS Rajasekhar Reddy can explain. In his strategic tribute to Party Chief Sonia Gandhi he wrested from her an independence enjoyed by hardly another Congress Chief Minister in the history of independent India.

But now, there is a sudden move to undo this naming. Almost as if they want to erase any sign of the Congress and its sponsored sycophancy, the pressure is on to rename the airport…and possibly as the weeks go by, other icons and monuments as well.

And that is where I have a problem.

Kennedy has remained Kennedy. De Gaulle has remained De Gaulle. Oh come one, there is a practice in place. Can’t we let it be?

First of all this constant renaming according to the political climate seems to me a rather childish waste of time. I am sure more icons will be built and leaders and politicians who have been ignored earlier will soon have a chance to have a station, a playground, a stadium or a slaughterhouse named after them. Knee Jerk reactions like renaming international airports are sure to make us the laughing stock of the world.

If at all you want to rename the airport, can we, at least now, in the shadow of an ostensibly more mature and rational government examine the qualifications of the person after whom the airport is supposed to be named.

NTR seems to be the current favourite. NTR!!!

While he is perhaps a Chief Minister who revived the twirling moustache concept of Telugu Pride, he had nothing substantial to do with the development of the airport…and really nothing significant to do with the progress/development of the state itself.

If any body can be given that recognition it is only Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the Hi-Tec Chief Minister of Consolidated Andhra Pradesh who spent half his life as a Chief Minister and another half as an Opposition Leader, and now embarks on a new chapter as the Chief Minister of Seemandhra.

The Hyderabad International AIrport is definitely his brain child and if it were to be named after him I would accept it as a fitting tribute. But NTR?

He is the closest thing to a joke book that the history of Andhra Pradesh wrote. The man who singlehandedly destroyed all signs of protocol, eliminated courtesies, introduced macabre schemes and populist systems and did everything possible to drive the state into disaster.

Plus…and this is very relevant in the present scenario. He was an out and out Andhra Man. Now how will it look…the first thing Telangana does after the state is formed…is to rename its brightest icon after an out of state person.

How it will look I say?

Why not name it after a prominent Telangana Agitation Leader. Mallikarjun for instance. Or the loveable poet from Telangana. Gadar. For heaven’s sake why not KCR. He is after all the Telangana equivalent of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

All I am saying is that let there be some logic and dignity in this whole renaming game. Let not names be like footballs…being kicked around by all and sundry. Let there be a protocol.

Otherwise I am afraid a few years from now, if KCR dies, as he is sure to sometime or the other…and his son or daughter or son in law or nephew is in power, the naming issue is sure to crop up again. So why wait till the confusion starts off again? Let’s name the Airport now.

KCR International sounds nice…even if it sounds like a shady bar. But it maybe better than what I am scared we are headed towards…MIM Charminar, Janardhan Reddy Peddamma Gudi, Chenna Reddy Safilguda, Vengal Rao Tank Bund, Geetha Reddy Monda Market…and so on.

Think about it.

 

I guess I can say that I have a symbiotic relationship with mikes. I come face to face with them everyday almost in at least one of my avataars.

I use a mike for my voice-overs. I need them for my lectures and workshops. I am surrounded by them on stage. They are an integral part of my film making process. They are in my phone and in my PC.

So Mike, I would say is a good friend. And like any good friend, he is honest and kind only upto a level that his credibility is not compromised. If I am sounding good, he enhances the qualities of my voice. If I am off colour he tries to cover it up and if that’s not possible tells me very clearly that ‘today’ is not my day.

Now good friend that he is, he drops in often at home to have a chat. And we often land up chatting away late into the night. Two deep voices talking about all and sundry. People. Things. Ideas. Thoughts. Deeds. Misdeeds. There is no limit really and we don’t bother to censor our comments.

The free flow, heart to heart sessions are a huge relief for me. A true  stress reliever for sure. And I guess we both understand each other and draw some unseen lines.

No shouting matches is an unwritten rule. Leave the amplification to the Ahujas, the Philips, the Marantz and so on, Mike always says. We are the Royalty in this business, the Voice and The Mike. The amplifier is the common man and it is his job to carry our tales to all who want to listen.

But last night, I saw a different shade of Mike altogether. He came in shouting. Almost screaming. I was shocked. Was he drunk, I thought. And to make matters worse he was sounding incoherent. Not the usual Mike at all.

I calmed him down. Wrapped him snugly in a windshield. Caressed his face. And then asked him gently what was wrong.

He almost exploded again. Wrong…wrong…he stuttered. I gave him a quick ice feel and brought him down to normal. And then he told me…

I can forgive anybody Vijay, he told me. But I cannot forgive Manthan. Come on man, Manthan is run by Ajay Gandhi, a Chartered Accountant by profession and a man of details by passion.

He is used to checking everything a hundred times before okaying anything. He is used to demanding 100% accuracy.

Yeah, yeah I said…unable to understand what he was getting at.

You know Vijay, he continued…it was alright when the amateur theatre chaps mess up on mike placements, mess up on lapel mikes and so on. It was alright when some of them were lost to the audiences because of ill planned sound systems. But Ajay!!! Manthan!!!

No way. What happened at Sanjaya Baru’s event was unforgivable. Of the three or four mikes that were present not even one was a 100% ok. Sanjaya’s lapel mike was the first to buckle under the strain of the occasion…and Sanjaya hadn’t even started yet. Then he started a merry go around of mikes, trying to find one that could deliver his message without a hiccup.

Come Q & A time, and the shit really hit the fan. No mike management crew in place. And when the mike did reach a questioner it refused to work. So the audience did not know what the question was that Sanjaya was responding to. Till he started paraphrasing the questions for the sake of the audience.

This was not a last minute event. This was a well planned one. Like most events are nowadays. Then what happened?

Was the sound check shoddy? Was the equipment at fault? Where were the shortcuts taken? Where did they compromise?

You don’t see such embarrassing mike failures in Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, even Chennai…Imagine Narendra Modi’s  speech facing a mike failure. Someone obviously is doing things better, more carefully. Paying more perhaps, looking at more backups definitely.

Then why is it that in Hyderabad there is a problem almost everytime.

I realised that he had a point…did Mike. There was indeed a problem in Hyderabad. I have so many times landed up at swank studios only to find that there was a loose connection. I have witnessed many plays that managed to amplify only a half of the dialogs and left the rest to our imagination. I have had to, on many an occasion, had to use brute force to make myself be heard.

And yes, I can accept it in a village or a small town. But in Hyderabad…this has to stop. And stop fast.

Because whether Mike is sensitive or not, whether I am patient or not…the rest of the people have reached the end of their tether. Their tolerance has been tried to the extreme. And a definite snap is due. And you don’t want to be a victim of the backlash.

Politics doesn’t turn me on.

No, let me rephrase that. I am indifferent to politics…and politicians.

They have as a breed exhibited so many varieties of cheap, lowdown behaviour that I have preferred to make them my blind spot. Which also means I have stopped having any kind of expectations from any of them. The difference between a good deed and a sin is insignificant in their context. There is nothing they will not stoop to, nothing that gives them troubled nights of conscience and conflicts. So in my books they are as a species, quite a lot lower than the lowest worms.

Between politicians and corruption the nexus is today so overt that even the distaste has stopped having any meaning. And a dirty cop who pockets a few hundred bucks can no longer be faulted in the face of multi-million dollar scams. In fact he can only be pitied.

So in this environment where a good, honest politician is an aberration, why would I want to listen to a friend called Sanjaya telling ‘all’ about a Government that failed in many ways, but most of all, one that has consistently failed in allowing some basic dignity to its leader-members?

Was the ‘Accidental Prime Minister’ an attempt at eulogising an alleged gentleman? Was it a case of setting straight a chapter of history? Was it indeed a post mortem report of a corpse written even before rigor mortis had set in? Was it yet another case of a fan making his hero a God even as the rest of the world was branding him a devil?

None of these questions or even similar ones interested me. They were just examples of the noise that I was hearing and not even bothering to shusssh! So why did I go to the Manthan Evening with Dr. Sanjaya Baru?

And no, it was not because he was an old school friend and a fellow YMCian. Not because he was a journalistic voice that I respected. Not for a variety of reasons.

I did go, simply because I saw somewhere, the beginnings of an ethical battle. And that interested me…nay, fascinated me.

There were these many camps see, who had branded the book a betrayal of sorts. And some who said that the whole publication reeked of opportunism. There were factions that wrote off the book as fiction. But it seems everyone had a position…not just about what was written in the book…but more importantly about the person who wrote the book.

I found that strange. Really…I mean if someone is smart enough to release a book so that it exploits its own topicality, that cannot be cause for complaint.

And if someone who rode shotgun with the driver of this story writes about the journey, how can his authenticity be questioned?

More importantly, what is the point of discussing ‘him’ (Sanjaya) and his motives, his ethics, his action, his wisdom etc., whereas the book was really about someone else…whether it was about the Sardar who couldn’t or about the system that wouldn’t or even about the lady who wasn’t…

So I thought I’d drive across to the Manthan meeting, meet up with old friends Ajaya Jayarao and Sanjaya Baru (and where are you Chaitanya?) and listen to Sanjaya’s point of view or even his defence of several allegations.

The first thing that struck me was that ‘defensive’…he never was. Apologetic he did not try to be. And far from willing to bend over and forget all the bile that was being directed towards him, Sanjaya was taking a stand and hurling it all right back at ‘them’.

Okay!!! This is a fight that I am liking to see.

Pity that it is going to be at best a ferocious round of shadow boxing.

Because Sanjaya’s opponents have no chance of attacking him. They can, as they say, bark…but the biting is a privilege limited to Dr. Baru and he has already bitten off chunks of reality…and the proverbial ‘purdah’…ab to ‘phatee’ hai.

Can Sonia and/or her cohorts authoritatively claim that what Sanjaya said…did not happen…or happened in a dramatically different fashion?

No they cannot. Simply because their deeds have stripped them of any cloak of dignity and the poll results have washed away the last signs of comfort.

Naked, they stand before all of us and shudder to be among the counted.

Now, do they interest me? Am I keen on giving them a chance to tell their own version of the story? I don’t think so. I do believe that I have a better purpose in life than listening to a bunch of losers trying every which way possible to not blame the ‘hand’ and satisfy themselves by blaming the pointing ‘finger’.

Now…Am I going to read the book?

I guess I am…not today…not tomorrow…not in a hurry. But I will read it. It’s the closest thing to the footnotes of contemporary history that can ever be written.

And history always tells a fascinating tale if only you care to listen.

 

 

From stolen moments of glee when we would look at a friend’s Playboy Collection in the giggly confines of a college hostel to seriously literate sessions of reading ‘meaningful’ articles in Debonair and even to shamelessly lusting at heavily airbrushed images in Hustler, Penthouse and their ilk, I have always been one that responded to a person more than a shape.

I would always look for a spark in the eyes. An attitude. A posture. A language. Possibly this is what defined my interaction with models and actors and extracted from them very often, better expressions than they managed to give out in the normal course of work.

If indeed I put together a portfolio of shots taken over the years, of various young ladies (and men) I can say without hesitation that the collection would be a rather pleasant one. And while most of my models have admitted this in public and in private, I am the type that has never looked for affirmations of any kind.

So why am I concerned today with the public’s inexplicable fascination with Aishwarya Rai Bachan?

Well, let me admit that this lady first came to my attention when my friend the late Dr. Hari Pai talked to me about a community called the Bunts. She had already won a crown or two and was fairly prominent in the media. And I had already decided that I did not like her.

Nothing personal mind you. And not that it made a difference to her or to me. I did not like her. Period.

It had nothing to do with stories about her, her love affairs…her modelling assignments for Philips, Coke (or was it Pepsi) and so on. It had nothing to do with her disastrous performance in a movie called The Mistress of Spice, where, to put things into perspective, I must admit that her lovemaking scene in this film actually put me off sex for a while…she was so bad.

But again, that is my opinion.

Now I am not the type that questions the wisdom of another gentleman when he decides to court someone I do not personally like. I am sure there are things that he sees in them something that I don’t and vice versa. But to say I was disappointed with Abhishek when he decided to marry this girl, would be a definite case of mild understatement. If he was looking for a trophy wife, I was sure there were better trophies around. But hey, this was perhaps at a time when he hadn’t yet matured enough to recognise a good “idea” when he saw one.

My bias possibly was also because of another iconic lady who shared the spotlight with Aishwarya around the same time. The inimitable Sushmita Sen.

Now here was a woman who deserved a second glance. She was tall. Statuesque. Graceful. She was well read, intelligent. And she had a spark in her eyes that lit up the world. She had long hair. Was a Bengali. And had a Hyderabad connection (okay, okay I know that’s really tenuous).

But seriously, she was all about personality. She could laugh. She was obviously sensitive. And she made better use of her titles than most.

And I think that she had what is called Spunk!

So I like Sushmita and am not particularly enamoured with Aishwarya. So what. As I love quoting to myself “Kee fark penda” or “what difference it makes”.

Okay it is an insight into my world view of women. Not in any objectification kind of context. But in a unabashedly opinionated kind of angle.

So I know I get along with women/girls who react, who emote, who participate in life. People who have the same expectations from living that I have. The same “Devil may care” attitude that has defined my life.

But does that mean anything to you? Should it?

I think not. My likes and dislikes are my likes and dislikes. Just as yours are yours. If we are friends you already know this about me, just as I know this about you. We’ve never made a big thing about this. Never read more than necessary into this insight. Never misused the knowledge.

But why am I still asking you to get over Aishwarya? This is not part of any campaign I am mounting for Sushmita. It’s just one of those things.

Now don’t tell me you never have had those moments when you felt that the world deserved to be educated about something that you personally liked or didn’t. Hey, the last few months we have been discussing Modi and Rahul in such detail as if all of us knew the two personally.

Now if you can dissect two gentlemen who you don’t personally know from Adam, and yet delegate the responsibility of running your country, I think you can allow me the freedom of having contradictory opinions about two women who have no role in our nation building or our future. What say you?

 

 

It was supposed to be a short evening of theatre. The usual telling of tales heard and unheard of. A laugh here, a thought there, a poignant moment perhaps and if lucky a message to take home and digest.

It was supposed to be a short evening of theatre. The usual past tense narrative. Do you know what happened one day, and then...a few competent actors, some well delivered lines, some flashes of brilliance and if lucky, a performance that cut through the sweat and cooled our skin like a breath of fresh air under the hot and humid Lamakaan sky.

It was supposed to be...well it was supposed to be a lot of things...but a realtime performance it was definitely not supposed to be.  Something changed the format however, someone pulled the right switch and suddenly it was not a series of tales being recounted, but a series of incidences unfolding.

And I, the audience was not a sit down guest but Superman.

I was flying around town, looking down into homes, apartments, streets and at random scenes. In Realtime. As it happened. And what I saw was an amazing smörgåsbord of emotions and situations.

The first glimpse I had was of a black & white mermaid trying to see if she could fly. I thought this anxious young man wanted to save her, but he was more comfortable with his own agenda. And used his anxiety to steal a kiss, and his sad story to look at life anew.

Almost straight underneath, at the street corner was this poor lady trying to sell some lemonade. Dennis the Menace walked in and tried to buy off her last glass when he was rudely informed that the glass would cost him 33 lakhs of rupees.

Before you could understand that the lady was indeed serious about HER lemonade, HER last glass and HER price and empathise with Dennis’ confusion…damn he sold them lemonades only for 50 Cents in the comic books…

I peeked into one flat by mistake. Two women were sitting there, two best buddies and one woman was trying to convince her friend that a job that earned her double her salary just for fucking her husband three times a week was far better than working with Deloitte or whatever. Though the ladies were having what could possibly be, in other circumstances, an interesting conversation and confrontation, I felt that I had a responsibility to be a prude and quickly flew away for a refuelling of samosas and egg bondas. 

And then I saw Yamraj. He had this mere mortal next to him, and boy, was he stringing him around? By the end of their encounter he had hung the English Language and allowed it to stew in its own lexicon.

No, it was meant to be an evening of theatre but I think it ended up becoming a montage of sorts, a kind of slice of life imagery that took death (and dying) by surprise.

The Dramanon team was in its element. The set changes were near seamless. In fact the ‘partition on wheels’ set looked tailor made for Lamakaan. The actors were more than proficient.

Harika Vedula however was outstanding. She seems to be maturing day by day and was a delight to watch. Another actor worth praising is RK Shenoy who is consciously shedding his earlier frivolousness and delivering dialogs without too many laughter punctuations. Some amount of English language intervention in terms of pronunciations however may be called for, but I am nit picking really.

Ganesh Nallari’s intensity is his hallmark and he used that to good advantage and peppered his performance with a few comical and slapstick deviations.

Overall, I liked the deliberate ‘stayaway’ from the sheer morbidity of grey. The sadness and the pathos was served in small measures. And the end result was a pleasant walkaway. Well done Dramanon…you well deserve the sweaty hugs of appreciation. 

I’ve had a strange relationship with Bombay. It has always been the city that I refused to fall in love with. It’s also the city that I fought with at almost every stage and refused to become a victim of its unique circumstances.

While the first couple of trips to this amazing city were by train (unreserved third class) I decided very soon that I would only fly into that city or if there was no choice, I’d drive into it, but never would I take a train or a bus into it.

I set a rule for myself that I would never be part of the mad suburban rush on the insane electric trains that give the city its buzz in more ways than one. And except for a few  trips while I was a regular weekend hiker I managed to live most of my life in Bombay as a Taxi-ist.

One of the maddest, loveliest decisions I took when I decided to take up a job in Bombay was to take with me from Hyderabad, a motor cycle. The Bullet I laid my hands on thanks to a dear friend who was at that time migrating to the US was cabin baggage in what has proved to be my last entry into Bombay in a train.

Due to a safety rule in the Indian Railways, my bike accompanied me on the train, but had to have its tank emptied of all fuel. So the moment I landed in Dadar I took a cab, all my luggage, and went off to Juhu where I was going to live for the first few weeks. Having dumped my luggage at the flat, I came back to the station, collected my bike, unpacked it from the jute covering, then walked it a kilometre or two to the petrol pump (I wasn’t savvy enough then to bribe someone to allow me fuel in the bike, or smart enough to send someone from the station to get me a litre or two). The damn walk in the middle of the afternoon made me look at Bombay with a strange defiance. “Going to make it hard for me, are you”, I asked the city with the fresh, naive and almost confrontational attitude that I guess we all have at that age.

The first few weeks in Bombay were crazy. It took me very little time to figure out that I had to leave Juhu by 8.15 if I planned to reach my Marine Lines office by 9.30, and that it would be better to stay back a couple of hours at work in the evening so that I could avoid the 530-730 going home rush. While the mornings were a straight run, my evenings were exploratory and I managed to see a lot of Bombay in those first few weeks. I would ask around and work out alternative routes back to Juhu, ask for different eating joints, find them and get back home late at night, thrilled and enlivened by the sheer pace and energy of the city.

My Hyderabadi ‘laziness’ soon demanded that I look for more convenient living alternatives and I soon found myself (again thanks to a dear friend) moving into a single bedroom flat in Colaba.

And that changed my life and brought me back into my normal cycle. I have always been an early morning riser and the pleasure of taking the Bullet out on a spin on Marine Drive in the wee hours, looking condescendingly at the poor walkers and the joggers, discovering vada pav breakfasts or walking into office at 7 am and convincing the in-house canteenman to make me authentic Bhaiyya breakfast was all part of a delightful routine. Also it allowed me to finish my work in the morning before any of my colleagues came to work and I still remember with amusement my boss’s irritation to see me playing around through the day but almost never being in a position of being pulled up for late deliveries.

The first few months in Bombay also proved to be my loneliest. Come evening and my colleagues would all be planning to catch the 6.23 or whatever so they could go back to their homes and families. Even the bachelor friends I had were mostly suburban PGs. So the evenings, once we packed up from work would be lonely forays into dinner destinations.

Being a Colaba boy my evening map was predominantly shaped by Sundance Cafe, Paradise, Kailash Parbat, Woodside Inn and so on…and the Status, Samrat, Balwas options.

But once in a while I began to venture out in a different direction. Marine Drive became a regular option and I used to call it my Cream Triangle. Cream Centre, Chowpatty. Rajasthan Dairy behind Wilson College where I used to gorge on fresh strawberries and cream. New York, Thakker’s, Sukh Sagar and on my carnivorous days Kobe Sizzlers, these were the places that attracted me to that pocket.

It took me only a couple of rides to realise that if I planned my dinner runs late I’d have the pleasure of ripping my Bullet down Marine Drive and flirting with the night air.

That it was an early morning ride after working for 72 hours non-stop that I fell asleep on my bike while cruising on Marine Drive. That it was then that a taxi slammed into me while I took a turn in my sleep. That it was then that I shattered my ankle and had to be rushed to Hyderabad for a nut and bold operation. That it was then that I decided that biking was obviously not designed to extend my lifeline. That is a different story.

Just as the case of why I could not attend the Cream Centre Meet of the Desi Foodies is a whole new story.

I don’t know about you. But I am convinced that the Congress wipe out was due to a clear direction given by Rahul. “Listen guys…ever since Daddy was killed, my mom and I have been trying to tell you that we are not interested in politics, power or prime ministership. Even Priyanka Didi tried to tell you the same, except that Jijaji wanted to enjoy some perks for a while”.

“But did you listen? Did you allow us to go our own separate ways? No. The Congress Party needs you, you said. Without you we will be orphans, you said”.

“So what could we do? What could I do?

Manmohan Uncle and I planned the whole thing out. We decided that the poll strategy that we would together adopt was based on “Don’t say anything & Say anything dumb”.

“So the PM kept quiet and I put my foot into my mouth. It wasn’t easy I assure you. I mean try writing a line like…One morning, I woke up at night…and you’ll know what I mean. And my masterpiece to the milkmaids of Gujarat? That was sheer brilliance. Tell me which speech writer can come up with these kind of gems. I had to work hard for them”.

“Anyway now the elections are over. And our party has been decimated. It will take a long time and a lot of hard work to recover. I neither have the time, nor am I interested in rebuilding the party. Let the next generation do that. My mother and I have done enough. All we want to do now is to go home. Mom’s Olive Gardens in Sicily have always been her passion. And me and my Colombian girlfriend feel at home among the poppy seeds of Tuscany”.

“So please guys…can you just let us go? We don’t even want air fare. A boat is all that we need. Money, we have enough. And security, you’ll provide in any case. And just imagine, every year I can send you some nice olives for you to chomp on or float in your martinis. What say?”

“Mom…are you ready…”

June 2nd is not far off. Telangana will be a reality soon. And a new History Book is taking shape.

The book will have many chapters. Who will be the state’s first Chief Minister? Who will it be it’s first Governor? And so on…even chapters for the scammers, the cheats, the frauds will be written afresh. But if you are in marketing or trading, involved with communication of any sort, here is an opportunity you should exploit. And write your way into the History Books of Telangana.

Will yours be the first Corporate Film produced in Telangana? Will yours be the first ad film? Will yours be the first book published? Will yours be the first anthalogy of poems? Will yours be the first song? Will yours be the first Radio Spot or Jingle?

Opportunities galore. Don’t miss them.

Most of the time we get opportunities to witness History. Now here is a chance to create it!!!

Is there someone called an ideal advertising client? I think I am blessed because I have had the good fortune to have worked with quite a few who qualify for that distinction. But I know a lot of clients who are truly bad apples and I also know a lot of advertising professionals and film makers who have been doomed to work with the worst of the lot.

I keep getting questions from friends and colleagues about who I think is/was my ideal client and I am mostly disappointed when they expect my answer to be coloured by the profit I made from my respective clients.

I must clarify at this stage that unlike quite a few of my peers and fellow professionals, my benchmarks for “ideal client’ are way beyond any money the assignments represent.

I look at how much I was allowed to contribute to the assignment. In terms of creatives, in terms of strategy, in terms of deployment. I look at how much fun I had, how much I learnt. Of course I also look at the money I made, but that is almost tertiary. Most importantly, I look at how much my work benefitted the client and how much he acknowledges it.

Naturally, when I go about voicing such utopian standards I am bound to be asked the question…how do you find a client like that?

Honestly I have no answer, or rather, I did not till today.

It was this morning when I was working on a project for a client and reading up some material connected with his project, that an idea struck me…and I am writing out my thought process without any kind of editing…let me know if you agree.

Now, I am sure you know a womaniser or two. Maybe you are one yourself. Who knows…and that’s not the point anyway. It’s important that you recognise some traits in a womaniser.

1. A Womaniser is one who understands the importance of a first impression. As a result of this he is open to quite a few innovations that he may use to enhance that first impression.

2. A Womaniser knows that he has to follow through the impact of the first impression with some serious content.

3. A Womaniser knows that the window of opportunity is often very small, and that he has to act fast.

4. A Womaniser knows that whatever he invests is worth it, and believes in ROI.

5. A Womaniser does not encourage mediocrity. He intrinsically, always aims for the best.

Now take the above five observations and replace the word “Womaniser” with the phrase “Ideal Client”. You will be amazed at how much sense the observations continue to make.

What say you?

She was in a hurry. She said she’d make me a fried egg. I said fine. Then she screamed her disappointment from the kitchen. What happened, I asked. The yellow is running, she wailed. No problem, I said reassuringly. Just make it a double fry. An indulgent smile, a grateful hug and she was gone.

But the gooey crispy taste of the double fried egg made me nostalgic. And I slipped back a few years and began to trace the culinary journey that school and college had taken me through.

The first time I was pampered with school lunch was at the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. HPS had legendary lunches and those of us who put on weight during school were often teased about ‘School Food’.

Lunch at school was a kind of formal affair. With teachers at the head of the table and the ritual of grace. Everything went by the bell. When to start. When to finish. And the kids, almost all of us wanted to rush out of the dining room to go spend the rest of lunch hour doing things that we enjoyed.

In my case it was running to the Library so I could lay my hands on a favourite author. And it was this rush perhaps that triggered off the invention of the HPS Mash.

There was bread, there was rice. There was dal, a curry or two. Even a fruit or a dessert. To go through all this, course by course was too time consuming. So we used to mash a couple of dishes together and speed up the eating process. Dal, Curry and Curds mashed up into a messy gravy worked perfectly with the two slices of bread that we wanted to eat. And it is a combination that I find I still use when I am in a hurry, or on a diet.

Being day scholars we were exposed only to the lunch menu and therefore did not have any great stories to tell, but when I went on to Loyola College, Madras the scene changed drastically.

The College had four different Mess Options. NV1 and 2, V and 2. The difference being the quantity of food served…limited vs. unlimited and the varieties provided. Needless to say I opted for the higher end unlimited option.

That was convenient for many reasons. But the most important reasons had to do with the informal competitions that were regularly sparked off…the chapathi eating competition, the idli eating one, the dosa championship and so on. I remember my father came to visit me one day and was surprised not to find me in my room. A neighbour told him that he would find me in the mess. A Chapathi eating competition was underway…and I so loved the Madrasi Chapathi Kurma dish. Preferring them hugely over their Borotta. I was on my 30th chapathi or so when he walked into the mess and dragged me out of there admonishing me soundly for indulging in such orgies.

My friend, and now brother in law, used to study at AC Tech in Guindy. And their hostel used to serve amazing dosas, so I used to go there at the drop of a hat and gorge on the delicacy.

My short stint at the IIM Bangalore Hostel however was unfortunately not so inspiring. In all fairness, we were the early batches of that institute and the hostels were nothing but large houses taken up in different areas of Bangalore (ours was in Banashankari) and the ground floor hall was everything from Community Hall to Dining room and the fare was very average and eminently forgetful. Perhaps our batch remembers more of Jayanagar 4th Block restaurants than anything else.

The only thing I remember from the hostel was how I used to ‘borrow’ the Kitchen Tri-Cycle that was meant to bring in the stores and take my room mate Rajnikanth for a drive around the colony in what can be compared to later day ‘Cruizin’. I am amazed that I had the strength in my legs those days to power this front ended rickshaw of sorts.

The only other time I had a chance to sample college food was when a few years later, as part of one of my first jobs, I had to visit the Gachibowli Campus of the University of Hyderabad. It was still being set up but they had a canteen that served subsidised meals at Re. 1. UoH became as a result of this perk, one of the most over serviced clients I have ever handled.

I have had chats on different occasions with my friends who went to schools like Mayo College, St. Lawrence, Doon School, Rishi Valley or to colleges like IIT and so on. Almost everyone had a tale to share. About how one dish was legendary, about how one was lethal. About one they often tried to replicate at home…and so on.

Sometimes I think food stories may be healthier to talk about than the drunken soirees that we have all had or the wild trips that many of us have come back from… unharmed.

An incumbent party who should have been riding the crest of success if only they had managed to convince the people that they had actually done some good in the last five years of their rule. A serious challenger who had more baggage than most can carry but also a responsibility to shake the corrupt lethargy that the Congress seemed to represent and reflect. A host of regional parties with independent opinions and agendas. This was the battle ground sketched into the annals of advertising history in the year 2014.

Everyone needed to be heard. Everyone needed to be understood. And everyone had a time limit. It was money however that changed the very shape and methodology of communication for these parties. And that is where I feel normal clients can benefit from the lessons learnt.

Another one for the SOB Story Chronicles then…my random ramblings for Service Oriented Businesses.

Frankly, it was such a familiar scenario. The market leader who thought he was undisputed King. The challenger who had latched onto a relevant USP almost by chance. And the insignificant small brands that were pocket size by definition.

The Congress I must admit looked like it had lost the battle even before the first skirmish. The BJP seems to have seen this as a ‘now or never’ opportunity. And the small fries tried to take shelter in a common man appeal that cried about no money in the pockets but only ideology in the heart.

Reports say that the BJP alone had a 5000+ Crore Advertising and Promotion Budget. And they were visible on almost all conventional media as well as new age alternatives including social media. They were also the forerunners of spectacular media like Holograms which ostensibly allowed them to address more people in real time, but experience shows that they managed to wow more illiterates.

The smaller parties understandably wore more economical garbs and tried to make a non-spend on advertising seem like a virtue.

The Congress in abject surrender mode did not try anything spectacular…nor did it try and present a content strong front. Are they saving up for Rahul Gandhi’s 2024 Blitzkrieg? Or did they decide not to spend precious resources on a no-hope campaign? Or has the money been kept aside to buy results at a later stage?

Answers to these and many other questions will only emerge in the next few months but the lessons to be learnt are already there.

No party can take the electorate for granted. Similarly market leadership is a current state of affairs and is not to be seen as a heritage property.

If you do not have an USP, you have to create one and focus all your energies in promoting that very USP. BJP had nothing but Modi. Even those who objected to Modi realised this and allowed the party single minded focus and projection of uni-leadership.

If your message has to reach multiple audiences, you have to choose your media carefully. The medium you use defines the way you are perceived. BJP’s or should I say Modi’s…thrusts into the Social Media sector got a whole new class of voters into the fray.

However they have yet to learn that Share of Voice in Social Media does not have as much value as Share of Engagement…and their creatives lacked in this department. News of Modi was shareworthy, but the communique itself made no attempts to become more shareable.

Kejriwal’s drama that shows him admitting that the AAM AADMI PARTY does not have the financial muscle to spread his message and indeed wants the citizenry of India to conscientiously contribute in this endeavour…did not work as expected. And possibly backfired after his 49 day debacle.

So Brand Leaders beware. You cannot sit on your laurels. And you are as much of a leader as your last innovation. Frankly, this Gandhi Legacy trash has gone beyond Expiry Date.

Challengers. You have to spend. And spend fast. Impact has a short duration fuse. And your USP can be one only if you hammer it down everyone’s apprehensions.

Small time products and services. Time for you to bring out the Mufflers. Cough discretely. And leave.

Do not take communication for granted. It comes as a package and price is part of it.

Man is a creature of habit. The same place, the same food, the same friends, the same style, the same taste, the same plans…these are the traits that defined man in what we used to call civilisation. Today, man has tweaked the definitions somewhat and added a significant dose of experimentation and adventure.

No longer is it enough for a restaurant, for example, to dish out the same favourites year after year. This may have worked in the past and we still have establishments famous for just the one or two items that they continue to serve and expect their clientele to only come for these dishes. Idlis, Dosas, Paranthas, Puris, Biryanis, Steaks, Desserts…speciality dishes like these have stamped their signature on several iconic and legendary restaurants and eateries.

But the times, they’ve been busy changing. People have had to, because of their increased travel opportunities, confront so many cuisines that they have lost count. And they have become more discerning too.

No longer can Pulao pass off as a Biryani variant. Nor can a Biryani pretend to be a Fried Rice. The client who walks in for a meal knows what he wants and especially in the domain of international cuisine, he has definite and quite authentic benchmarks.

The Pizza Lover is no longer just a Domino’s bred junkie. He is more than likely to have tried out the original stuff in the back streets of Rome or Venice. The Burger Maniac has chomped on the real McCoy off an American Street Corner and the Steak Sizzler has gorged on Texas breakfasts as much as continental meals.

Given this background and many more such interesting insights, my visit to Fusion 9 to chat with owner-chef Shankar Krishnamurthy was something I was really looking forward to. I mean, here was a restaurant that can be truly credited with having changed the very eating habits of most Hyderabadis. The number of times people stepped out for a meal has come up in the last few years predominantly due to this decade plus old establishment. And it is no wonder that more people have maintained that F9 is their favourite restaurant for more years than they have ever said the same about any other multi-cuisine place.

And guess what makes the F9 phenomenon more interesting. The team that cooks up the F9 delicacies has largely remained unchanged ever since their establishment. Their retention rates have been exemplary…both when it comes to their chefs and when it comes to their loyal clients and customers. What could be the reason? Given that other outlets were playing open and shut games with alarming regularity, what really made this place tick with sustenance…and were there any lessons to be learnt.

With this in mind I descended onto the effusive Shankar and tried to probe into his take on what was happening, and what we could look forward to.

The fact that he is a friend made it awkward at first, but as he warmed to the topic, the business side of the legendary chef began to rear its impressive head. One of the very few Chef Owned restaurants in the country that were of this scale and enjoyed this level of success, F9 he said owes its success to a simple belief. Any outlet has to satisfy two urges of the customer. The urge to eat his comfort food in a warm, friendly and familiar environment. And the urge to try out something new knowing full well that the experiment would be supported by authenticity. From the style of cooking to the use of most appropriate ingredients, no shortcuts were taken. Today I know quite a few restaurants that have wood fired ovens to pizza their bases, but F9 is, if I remember right, the forerunner of this small innovation. Not for F9 the convenience of Microwave Cooking.

Even today their Goan Crab Curries at group restaurant Coastal Spice, are made from regularly imported Goan Crabs that reach the kitchen live.

The other side that amazed me was this whole family approach to innovation. It is almost as if there is an unofficial competition of sorts going on, trying to figure out who among the wonderful team can come up with the most viable innovation. And the quest for new dishes and new ways of ensuring customer satisfaction drives them to regularly import Chefs from other parts of the world and also visit Food Expos in foreign lands. So the team stays in tune with what is happening in the rest of the world and keeps a close watch on what is trending.

Becoming synonymous with good food in a food loving society like Hyderabad is difficult and at the end of it all, a constant struggle to retain the honour and also a huge responsibility. F9 has managed this for over a decade and that is truly awe inspiring.

But what got me thinking was that in their own simple and often humble way, the F9 team seems to have stumbled onto a formula that is sure to work in other environments too.

Is yours a Sob Story? Relax, I mean a Service Oriented Business? Is yours a business where customer expectations are being more and more  driven by international expectations? If so, do look at the F9 model. Of how they keep pace…of how they ensure manpower retention and loyalty…of how they’ve mastered the art of representing the calm of comfort food while at the same time flying the flag of discovery and exploration.

Instead of basking in the glory of knowing that you can expect good food in a comfortable, non intrusive ambience when you come to F9, the team has managed a small but critical inquisitiveness that ensures that customers always ask “how else will F9 mesmerise me today?”

More importantly they have managed to reassure patrons that they are constantly working up new and more satisfying answers to their questions.

One old favourite and one new dish every time I visit F9 from now on…that’s the idea. Do you think I’ll be able to complete the journey in a year…before their menu is re-invented, again. I don’t know…but I hope I do. Hell, I hope that many of us do. Cheers.

I must admit that I was sufficiently warned. Good friends asked me not to waste my time. One in fact decided that I had obviously lost my mental balance and any semblance of intelligence when I saw the movie. But I had an old hero called George Bernard Shaw in mind.

He (or was it Einstein) was the one I remembered for exploring a theory of “beauty marrying brains” and begetting perfection. Now I always found Sarika to be plasticy and incapable of displaying any emotion…just as I found Kamal Hassan to be a brilliant actor even if he was a tad extreme. And I was curious to see what their progeny would be like.

I had seen Shruti Hasan in a couple of earlier movies, but thought it was too soon to judge. In this movie I thought I’d get to see a side of her never seen before.

And I did.

You see, the Director seems to have decided to make the best of a non-actress…and so created a character who doesn’t emote. She doesn’t react, she doesn’t provoke…she just floats through life with a Buddha like calm that has been enforced by a very experimental Prakash Raj.

Most of her dialog is delivered by a very seductive mid riff. Her reactions to music for instance consist mainly of thrusting her pelvis into a 360 degree gyration and shaking her ‘pumped up with tassels’ bust into a very distracting jiggle.

In all fairness (again) I must admit that the Director was very even handed in distribution of commands. He seems to have told Allu Arjun also not to act, and especially not indulge in his usual demonstration of aerobics and gymnastics  that he mistakenly calls dancing.

Now imagine the uninspiring songs and ridiculously erotic dances that make up most of the story. And the horse analogy is so thin and so insignificant that even the most avid punter would commit suicide at the way the title has been misused. And you’ll get an idea of the torture that this movie involves.

The goody two shoes older brother and the younger, good for nothing brat idea is so clichéd that even Tanikella Bharani could not give it any new twist. But the cake was surely reserved for Siva Reddy, the villain. For once the villain was not a physical deformity but a fairly presentable fellow with ridiculously childish traits and desires. Seriously, when Telugu film makers copy concepts and steal ideas, they should learn to keep away from psychotic stereotypes. The classic, western, hopped up on weed or something more lethal act is alien to our audiences and the actors manage to caricaturise themselves into idiocy.

So what was nice about the movie? Well I did like the way everyone tried to do something different. I even liked the way the bearded MLA becomes beholden to Allu Arjun and is finally responsible for making him an ACP for a day by virtue of being the Home Minister.

I liked the way Alluboy did not mind that Shrutibaby was beating him at his own game and matching him step for step…and grabbing more eyeballs than he could imagine.

I liked the way I could not get Royal Tickets so landed up spending a hundred bucks less.

I liked the way that films were trying to be different. And oh yes, I loved my salted fries

 

As more and more people are discovering that Education is a lucrative business, the number of colleges offering professional courses has burgeoned in the last ten odd years. And just as Engineering discovered a world beyond the IIT, Medicine ventured into the districts and Law looked at alternatives to NALSAR. Even the IIMs were not spared and every college and its cousin began to offer MBA or PGDBM courses with gay abandon.

With the options available and the similarity of price tags one would have expected a certain ease to influence the selection process. Merit became a wayside formality in many of these institutions and only the fat fees and donations that they could pay, allowed them to take up prestigious courses in colleges with false promises and huge pretensions.

But as the marketplace got overcrowded, advertising dynamics came into play. And the game rules changed.

Colleges had to invest in branding themselves. From the established giants like St. Stephen’s and Loyola, from Xavier’s to Presidency…to unknown fledglings like Amity, Symbiosis, IIPM, Aurora and several others, branding became key to survival.

Some brands were built around heritage…so many years in the education sector. Some were built around their facilities…latest equipment, real life simulation, air conditioned hostels and so on. Some were slowly built on a yardstick called placement. Some called upon foreign collaborations and tie-ups, accreditations etc. to do the trick.

And then some colleges and institutions cashed in on the image of their founders or founding families. But strangely they kept away from their core strengths…the faculty.

The reason, as I found out in my years of dealing with educational institutions, stemmed mainly from the fact that loyalty was an iffy issue in most of these cases. Would the Professor who was claimed to be an asset still be there for the next few days or was he ready to jump ship at the slightest hint of a better offer?

This insecurity on the part of most colleges meant that the professors and lecturers who by themselves could have added huge value to the brand, were systematically side-lined. And due recognition and publicity, promotion etc. was denied to them.

So unlike the West, where I hear of students who want to go to a certain college just because a particular legend is attached to that college…the situation here is that most colleges don’t know who is going to be on board even on the first day of college. Student. And teacher.

That is indeed a pity. But that is reality. So I must admit that in the last few instances where I have been asked to work with a few institutions I have categorically suggested that they do not use faculty as a prime motivator in the case of admissions. Some people have agreed. Some have vehemently disagreed.

Institutions like IIPM for instance have decided to lay their bets on one single face. Some of the industrial houses that are getting into education are betting on in-house employment opportunities or even foreign collaborations.

But the problem that they all face is a severe faculty crunch. There is hardly a discipline where there are true heroes easily available for hire. As a result, most establishments land up compromising with one star and a hundred mediocre light weights.

There was a time when departments were sought after simply because they were headed by individuals who walked tall. Today the legend is more the exception than the rule. So expecting students to look up to their teachers with awe is unreal. And the teachers themselves, well most of them anyway, fail to stand up to scrutiny by their students.

When are things going to change? When are people going to look for the translatable benefits of a college and not just the tangential ones?

Why? Oh why? Why did he eat that salad?

Here he was, a typical Telugu boy. Used to eating mountains of rice with oodles of spice and ghee. Pickles, curries, powders they all had to be nice and hot. That was his constitutional requirement.

Not for him the rotis and dal and chicken tandoori. Nor could he manage with Chinese or Continental. The American stuff he hated and thought eating burgers was a wimpy thing to do. And steaks…food stuff of the barbarians.

So how did he land up trying a salad?

I guess it all began when all of them realized that they had become vegetables. Their minds had stopped working and their bodies had stored too much fat to move beyond. In a stage of vegetative coma, their entire focus was only on making the next illegal buck. And the counting was in millions.

Then one day, almost in quick succession they all realised that the day of the single curry was over. Single cuisine was a thing of the past. The need of the hour was a multi-cuisine hotch-potch. And they served it in a hurry. And in style.

Suddenly the membership of exclusive clubs began to mysteriously open up. Handshakes between brinjals and tadpoles became a common sight. Chickens sat down for community dinners with dragonflies.

But a pretence of independent thought and direction was maintained. Parties regularly fought and berated each other to keep the illusion going. And they called it a phase of constructive and co-operative politics. Agenda based or Issue based support from outside to the ruling party which was no longer a majority, but was not yet a minority either.

Then the ranks began to grumble. Friends in one dish and foes in another as an idea, didn’t seem to go down well with the masses, classes or anyone in between.

The question then was, what to do next?

The people had gotten used to choosing their vegetables independently, irrespective of the dish that was on the menu. And the hard etched battle lines had been blurred into conflict areas of dotted indecision.

It took a massacre and a monk to come up with, or rather force a solution. The massacre was conducted diligently by a man masquerading as an organic option. And the monk, who changed his style from loud Punjabi to quiet Buddhist before the country could say ‘Turban’ just nodded sagely at everything that was happening and everything that wasn’t.

Into the equation came a new concoction called the Dumb Aloo. It was rooted in the famous Banana Hai family and was strongly influenced by Italian wine and Columbian weed.

Now the people, both the electoral masses and the party peers, were thoroughly confused. Since the package of this OR that OR even that was not viable, the only option left was to try an AND.

It is rumoured that the man who eventually proposed the solution that is in vogue now was called the Big B. And it was made clear right from the start that the B neither stood for Bastard nor Bitch. Anyway, this gentleman had some culinary, even if only cinematic, experience and he put it to good use.

What happens when you chop all the vegetables, leaves, meats and even eggs into small pieces and throw them together in a large bowl. he asked himself. Add some cheese if you feel like it and call upon some cash reserves from Switzerland to serve as the ultimate dressing?

What happens is that you get a delicious salad. And depending on which party is in the ascendant position the salad gets an appropriate name. Gujju Salad, Kashmiri Salad, Andhra Salad, Amma Salad and so on.

The salad is a meal by itself and actually tastes quite good. Especially with Cayman Island Dressing or a Swiss Cheese topping. Having struck gold with this magic formula the Big B served it at all occasions around the country.

And the reaction was one of relief. Now everyone could have his cake and eat it too. Individual identities could be claimed even if collective decisions were to be the norm.

A popular chief minister who at one time had Prime Ministerial ambitions chose to bite into the salad instead of eating humble pie. And new partnerships were forged.

Territories were marked out. Shares were worked out. And the Indian public mutely went along to the farce of an election and got ready to console themselves for the next five years with the thought that they had indeed voted in the parties to power.

Why? Oh why? Why did the salad have to look like a solution? We all know what happened to Caesar…one of the few kings after whom a salad is named.