LET'S BEGIN BY CALLING THEM STREET DOGS
November 11 2005 (09:42:00)
(Published in Hindustan Times Mumbai on November 17, 2005)
..And not stray dogs. Most of the dogs that live on the streets of Mumbai are not completely ownerless. Many of them belong to slum dwellers, construction workers, and pavement shopkeepers. They share in their meager meals by day, and guard them and their babies by night. Their owners do not read English newspapers, or any newspaper for that matter, and by and large have no say in this ‘stray dog issue’ that is taking up far too much space in these pages these days.
Then let’s begin to get our numbers right. Five lakh dogs is the figure being bandied about. One begs to know, who has bothered to do an actual census, where has this gross exaggeration come from? If there were truly five lakh dogs in this city, that would mean one for every 26 people, or one for every six families. Look around you. Even in the slums and the suburbs, where the sterilization program has not yet got off the ground fully, there couldn’t be more than one dog for every 100 people. Including the hopefully sterilized housing society dogs.
Many of the readers of this paper have written to say, that besides the compassionate viewpoint, this issue itself is not anywhere as big as other problems facing our city. Problems which, if properly attended to by our Corporation, would make this one go away too. The danger of making a mountain out of a molehill is something not many lay people realize.
A number is not just a number. Not when it’s a life. Placing a demand to increase the number of canine sterilizations per year from 8000 to 20000, without adequate infrastructure backing can itself lead to far more cruelty than extermination. There are NGO’s with heart, and there are NGO’s with figures. I have seen many animal welfare organizations that follow all the guidelines laid down by the Central Government, drawn up by Maneka Gandhi herself, which stipulate the kind of catching methods, the surgical routines, and the feeding and release practices to be followed. May their tribe multiply. And I have also seen NGO’s who chase a ‘target’ much like one would an annual sales target. They operate on the dog the day it is caught (the catching itself a highly traumatic and exhausting experience and no fasting rules are adhered to), get in contract vets who will operate like an assembly line, forty or fifty a day, obviously without sterilizing any of the equipment properly between operations, and leave them practically unattended to post operatively. Leave them to literally die on the streets when released later. Do we want to encourage this kind?
Let’s not forget that a dog feels even more pain when she has her insides chopped at than you or I do, because at least we know what’s going on and why we need to be opened up – she hasn’t a clue, and in addition to the physical pain, the mental anguish of being taken off the streets for while, is something that many of us humans choose to turn a mean blind eye to. This therefore is a call to all citizens and journalists – stop exaggerating the situation. It won’t help us and it certainly won’t help the poor dogs.
Runaway Dogs
November 07 2005 (08:29:00)
Bobby was my first dog – a gift from my family for my ninth birthday. She was a four year old brown and white Corgi whose owners didn’t want her anymore because a human child had come into their family and Bobby would try to eat from his plate. Her first night gave me a childhood introduction to separation pangs. She sat at the door and whimpered pitifully, not understanding why she had been left behind by her owners in this strange house. My brother (then fourteen and familiar with dogs having grown up with Tinker the bull terrier) sat by her side all night. When he took her out for her morning walk she made her first unsuccessful attempt to run away.
Since then, we have kept several dogs, some from puppyhood, some as grown ups who were lost on the street, or given away by owners who had tired of keeping them, or from an animal shelter. We made a rule in our home. Once a dog comes in, he or she stays for life. Whatever the price – missed holidays, holidays only in places where dogs are allowed, too many days of casual leave when sickness or old age steps in, investing in homes in four parts of the country and dog friendly cars. When you have heard a dog wail when he misses his family, skips his meals, gazes wistfully out of the window, runs to the door every time a familiar sounding car honks, and is still willing to put his trust in you even though he does not know whether you will abandon him too, you learn that no price is too high to pay.
Bobby never stopped running away. Nearly a year after she came home, she ran half way across the city of Ahmedabad, in search of her old home. My father and I went looking for her in his car, while my brother rode off on his cycle. He eventually found her running in front of cars in high traffic on the middle of Gandhi bridge. When we moved to Pune, she ran away there too, in attempt to follow me to my grandmother’s house. This time my aunt and brother cycled around the area making enquiries till someone reported having found her and taken her in to offer her some water. After that we got used to shutting the door carefully, and keeping her on a leash every time we were out of a house, a practice we followed thereafter for all our pets.
Tinker the bull terrier ran all the way from Kolhapur half way to Pune. My family were taking their annual holiday and had left him behind with the cook. He escaped from his kennel, caught the scent of my father’s car, and made his way down the highway, till a family friend chanced to spot him. When he arrived at my grandfather’s house, I am told there was as much surprise as admiration for the tenacious little fellow, who I have met only in photographs.
Chimpu was a Tibetan spaniel my brother brought home because his colleague’s wife from Madras didn’t want to keep a non vegetarian dog inside a Mumbai flat and so kept her tied up all day and night in the balcony. Though mild tempered (our family vet delivered a breeched pup by sliding his hand inside her without even tying her mouth) she dominated all our other dogs. Within two months of settling in, she came on heat, ran off down the streets in search of satisfaction, and was unceremoniously chased after, picked up and scolded by me. She responded by seducing Candy, our alpha dog with an unlikely name, had three pups, one Caesarean, was sterilized and lived with us till she was fourteen. Unlike Bobby, she never attempted another runaway after the sterilization.
Chimney, a black Cocker spaniel was one of my favourite adoptees. His owner was a batchmate who had given him as a gift to his girlfriend. Once they got married, she no longer wanted him, and pleaded with me to take him away. Why is it that time after time, the man of the house will bring in a family pet, only to succumb to the insistent demands of his wife to give the poor creature away – because at the end of the day, she is the one left having to do all the work? Thank God my mother was the exact opposite. Over the years, my brother and I brought home no less than seventeen dogs, all of whom were accepted and loved as little brothers and sisters. When my brother got married, he took home three mini poms and two dobermanns. Not surprising, his wife gave the dobs away to her brother, one of the mini poms to us, and the rest to her sister. Thankfully, none of these appeared to show any separation pangs, neither did Chimney.
My most poignant runaway dog story however is of my current girl, Gemma, an Afghan hound. She was stolen from her owners in an autorickshaw by some slum dwellers, who kept her chained in a filthy little hut. Though extremely mild in appearance with hardly any vocalization, this breed can be willful and cunning, having been trained for thousands of years to catch and kill leopards. Her several attempts to escape were accompanied by severe beatings. When she was ultimately rescued by a gentleman from National Geographic Channel and taken to the SPCA Parel Hospital, her body was covered with maggot wounds, her long silky coat matted, and her right elbow battered. She also had a deep anal wound, which one can only imagine what could have caused it – I think I know, and my mind refuses to accept the possibility.
After four months of treatment, the SPCA asked me to take her to my own shelter in Goa, since an Afghan needs a lot of care. When I first met her, there was no sign of her silky coat which had been shaven off to treat all her wounds, and she weighed only 18 kilos. Though I visited her with treats every day, she refused to acknowledge my presence in her kennel for at least a month, then surprised me one day by yelping in delight when she saw me. Another month of wooing, then I took her home to Goa, where lazing on my verandah under the trees became her favourite pastime. I brought her back with me to Mumbai, since I don’t think she and I can bear to live without each other – the separation pangs would be on both sides for sure.
After three years, she is a beautiful dog with grateful eyes, but still suffers the aftermath of her trauma both mentally and physically. Sometimes, when she is lying down at my feet in deep sleep, her own feet twitching as she chases the neighbourhood cats in her dreams, my mind conjures up visions of her on the roads, running, running, her grand coat flying in the breeze (an Afghan in full speed is a sight to behold) dodging in and out of the traffic, trying to flee from her captors, her mind as tortured as her body is beautiful, and I reach down and hold her close to me and kiss her lovely long nose and think, Gemma you are home, you never have to run away again. And then she nudges her nose against my hand in a curiously horse like gesture, and looks at me with her seven thousand year old eyes, and I can surely hear her whisper, “Lady, you are home too”.
Comments
Hi, Ran a google search on 'seperation pangs' on a bleak winter morning and came on your page...and as I prepare to navigate away, there is an unsuccessful attempt to hide the tears..One simply does not cry in office, you know.. :) Never owned a dog..urban lifestyle with everybody out of home until 7 PM made it impossible..but had several at my maternal grandma's home and their horizon of trust is so wide...that I feel so demeaned and small to be human. Thanks for making my morning..thanks for taking my mind off my selfish musings and fuse it with the liquid eyes of Gemma..wish could stroke her lovely fur this second.. Thanks again...:) Friend!
Posted by Kite on 01/11/2007 05:08:27 AM
Just noticed the date..this is way too old post..:) Is she still with you? Gemma i mean..
Posted by Kite on 01/11/2007 05:09:24 AM
CARVING OUT A NICHE
November 02 2005 (08:14:00)
(Published as my colum in Business World on November 28, 2005)
There are over three hundred television channels circling the skies nowadays. Of these, between 60 to 90 descend on to our television sets. Some of them deliver fare for undifferentiated target groups – usually referred to as ‘mass channels’ like Doordarshan 1, Star Plus, Zee and SET in Hindi, Sun and ETV among the regional languages. These few channels pick up the giant share of viewing – close to 70%. The rest is split across a myriad of diverse special interest offerings ranging from music and movies to adventure, sport, fashion, news, children’s, spiritual and education. News and movies enjoy more viewing than the others but here too, there are differences in appeal across socio economic groups.
A few years ago, the mass channels garnered more than 95% share of audiences. As Indian viewers mature, the sky boutiques have carved out attractive niches for themselves. Advertisers looking for superior targeting and minimum waste are drawn to these channels. Justifying their inclusion in a media plan remains a qualitative hunch, since the ratings that we presently use cannot pull up enough of them in a sample for any meaningful analysis.
Developing a suitable model to assess the effectiveness of niche channels is a crying need of the marketing community. They cannot continue to be measured by the same yardstick as mass TV channels, and indeed need to be looked at as differently as magazines are from newspapers. Many niche channels still use TAM data to estimate their reach or to profile their audiences. They are doing themselves a huge injustice.
Take a look at some analysis that Intellect, Lintas Media’s research and technologies unit, drew out of the September TAM data. Would you believe that 50% of all ads telecast drew zero ratings? This thankfully was a little lower on the weekends at 43%. But still, nearly half of all the spots telecast were watched by nobody, at least according to the TAM sample. These do not include the channels’ own promotions, just advertiser booked spots. At TAM estimates of cost, this added up to 13% of all the money spent – but could well be much more since advertisers buy packages of airtime, where costs are averaged across various kinds of spots.
Even for the mass channels, as much as 20 to 30% of spots have no viewership during weekdays. While that could be a matter of concern for advertisers and agencies and indicates that better scheduling negotiations ought to be done with the channels, that is not the point of this article. What is of tremendous concern is that according to TAM, 79% of all the spots aired on the English entertainment channels are watched by nobody, and account for 67% of the money spent on these channels. Does this mean that only desperate advertisers advertise with Desperate Housewives?
What about the news channels that are much in the news today? 58% of spots aired on these channels have no viewers, and account for 27% of the money unwisely spent on them …..or so the current ratings would have you believe. Calling for an investigative story of its own, wouldn’t you say?
What I would say is that TAM cannot and must not be used by the niche channels to sell themselves, price themselves or compare themselves with each other and against other genres. At weekly reach levels of less than 1%, the number of targeted individuals being touched in the TAM sample by these channels would be in the region of 50 or less – too little to make too much sense with. Yet viewer identification and involvement levels with these channels are much higher, as conclusively proved by individual studies done by many of them. Making them attractive choices with no numerical backing….yet.
As an industry we need to collectively put our heads together and come up with a fairer measure of how these special interest channels are performing, and what makes them tick with their audiences. They already command 30% share of all viewing, and this figure is rapidly on the rise. Time is of the essence, unless of course no one feels guilty about spending hundreds of crores of rupees on spots that ‘nobody’ watches.
THE TELEVISION RATINGS TRAP
October 28 2005 (06:37:00)
(Published as my column in Business World in May 2005)
Consider these figures.
1. According to various reliable industry estimates, the television industry is worth Rs 12000 crores. Of this, the television networks themselves earn Rs 4500 crores by way of advertising revenue and another Rs 3000 odd crores from the subscription fees that they are able to draw out of the cable operator system.
2. The media planning and buying agencies who recommend and place advertising time on these networks earn an average of 3% of advertising costs for their efforts – so that’s Rs 135 croresor less.
3. The television viewership ratings, or TVR’s, measured in 5000 peoplemetered homes 24 by 7 cost about Rs 21 crores to deliver annually.
Who pays for this rating service? Is it the advertiser community who uses the service to ensure that the Rs 4500 crores they put up is ‘well spent’? Is it the television community who make a sweet packet from the advertising revenue they earn by using the ratings to sell their channels, time slots and programs? Or is it the impoverished media agency go betweens – who help the clients buy and the networks sell all those thousands of crores?
Internationally, the seller funds the system. Over 80% of all television rating services worldwide are funded by the networks. By comparison, the readership surveys too in most parts of the world are almost entirely funded by publishers. In India however, 60% of the TAM (television audience measurement) service is paid for by agencies, and only 40% by the networks. This means that here we have a Rs 130 crore industry putting up 10% of its revenue because a Rs 12000 crore industry cannot collectively rummage up even Rs 10 crores for an efficient, credible ratings service.
TAM justifies this anomaly with the argument that reducing dependency on the broadcasters is better for the system so that no undue pressures are placed on the research. With more than 150 channels operating in a free market, are we stupid to assume that competition will not even out these ‘undue pressures’? Do we not have a twenty year old successful precedent in print?
No one is happy with the coverage of the existing TAM product. 5000 sampled homes to represent 45 million TV homes is a bit of a stretch. The ratings are usually believable, but that could be because we have got used to what to expect. The old adage – you believe what you have been programmed to believe. But even the sharpest media planner and the most astute brand manager, not to mention the savviest time salesman, has got to be asking himself – do 450 peoplemeter homes in Mumbai really and truly capture the television viewing kaleidoscope of 13 million Mumbaikars?
Lintas Media did an analysis of the breadth of television viewing that TAM, in its current form, cannot even take a sniff at. Limited to 75 towns, the TAM sample can at best be projected to 33% of all Indian TV homes. The sad truth is that these 64% of homes not captured account for 74% of all the time spent nationally watching TV. TAM currently does not even measure a quarter of all the television that is viewed in the country.
Not that TAM cannot. As always, the road block is cold hard cash. Give them another Rs 20 crores and they claim they can cover another 5000 homes more representative of mera Bharat mahan. But who is going to put up this additional money? My vote goes wholeheartedly to the television networks – it’s high time they took up their fair share of the burden.
A few weeks ago, the most read newspaper in the country (Dainik Jagran with a readership of 16 million) launched a TV news channel. The might of their legacy in the Hindi heartland, coupled with their grassroots contacts, is unmatchable. I told them – you will get viewership, plenty of viewership – it’s a great pity though, you won’t get the ratings. Why? Because TAM is simply not geared to measure viewing in the place where you will get viewed.
Sadly, India is still a country where tv ratings are not equal to tv viewership. And only the networks can do something to change this. But will they?
(This article appeared in Business World, May 2005, and the world has subsequently changed for TAM. I did not expect the fallout to take the shape it has. .oh my God, the power of the pen is frightening).
THE HUMAN MEDIUM
October 28 2005 (06:30:00)
(Published as my column in Business World in February, 2005)
On August 12, 2004, a thirteen by four column story in the Times of India went by without much fanfare. The headline read, “Lever’s Lakme loses urban sheen….according to AC Nielsen, Modi Revlon is leader with 28.6% share”. Within a short span of a year, and an ad spend of well under Rs 2 crores, Revlon had succeeded in knocking the number one lipstick seller in the country, Lakme, off its top place. Notwithstanding the fact that Lakme spent more than twice that much in media on lipsticks, besides enjoying the rub off from their spend on other colour cosmetcis, skin creams and so on.
A remarkable achievement, by any standards, made even more laudable by the complete lack of publicity and media hype around this – no fashion shows, no awards, no interviews, no public posturing. Revlon lipsticks continue to sell very well, despite the stiff premium they command. The company still resolutely stays away from television, that darling of the cosmetics industry. We show them competitive spends information every month, and encourage them to stay firmly on the path they have chosen. I have taken their permission to share with you their special beauty secret – the art of making a lasting impression with your customer, without spending unnecessarily.
Revlon have discovered what many other advertisers have – that, used well, the human medium can be more powerful than any box of electronics.
In 2003, Revlon decided to take the store-in-store strategy adopted by most international cosmetic firms forward by training and employing beauty advisors even in smaller markets and for stores much smaller than the department store. They increased the number of such beauty advisors by nearly ten times in less than a year, from a base that was reasonably big to begin with. This was at a time when its key competitors were reducing the numbers on their own beauty advisors. Believing that this strategy has worked for them, Revlon have now embarked on a program which will train and empower even more women in even smaller markets.
Not surprisingly, market share has now touched an even higher 31%. As for share of ad spend, it’s still at a nice low of 15%.
Initiative investigated this interesting phenomenon further. In exit interviews last month, we met women who bought lipsticks at the Revlon store-in-sore, and those that had bought any brand elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the former group rated their brand significantly higher on important image parameters like classiness, trust, look and feel on lips, safety and so on. The revelation was that these women were also great word-of-mouth media themselves.
Every year, Initiative and BBC World join hands to study advertising avoidance behaviour in our country. The most recent one, done in the last quarter of 2004, painted a fairly dismal picture. We know that the advertising and media industry enjoyed a prosperous year with 18% growth, but that means that clutter levels also grew – by 70.4%! The average Indian views more than 450 TV spots a week, and that excludes all the channel and program promotions. This places us among the top ten ‘cluttered’ countries in the world.
The Initiative BBC World Adwatch found that only 31% of people don’t attempt to avoid ads. That implies an overall waste of 69%. It gets worse. Ad avoidance is highest on the media we use the most – as much as 78% on television – and among people we usually want to target the most – young people, upmarket upwardly mobile people, people with overall high levels of exposure to media. And yet, we keep pouring crores and crores of rupees into the mass media and they guzzle it all up like a bottomless pit.
But wait a minute. The point here is not to flog the media – after all they are doing well to deliver more and more of better and better audiences each year. Rather, it is to question the role of blindly scheduling truckloads of inventory (ie, ad spots) into channels, to futilely measure GRP’s that a peoplemeter captured but the eyeballs did not.
A very senior gentleman, head of one of the largest advertisers in the country commented last month, when we shared this concern with him – “Ah maybe we should be making ads that don’t look like ads!”
But of course, how many informercials and vignettes and in program promotions should one negotiate for, before the viewer gets tuned off these too? Instead, move on to the Revlon Beauty Advisor …and there she is. She doesn’t look like an ad, and yet she does. She is well turned out, she is a right-where-you-are spokesperson for the company and the brand, she tells you what’s good for you, you can go back to her if you’re not satisfied, you can interact with her, get your friends to meet her. And then you become the ultimate spokesperson for the brand yourself – a loyal, satisfied customer. You become a walking talking ad. Marshal Macluhan comes full circle – the medium is the message.
AUDITING THE IMPOSSIBLE
October 28 2005 (06:28:00)
(published in Economic Times on September 22, 2005)
The Audit Bureau of Circulations is a respectable not-for-profit organization that represents advertisers, advertising agencies, and publishers. Its goal is to audit the net paid circulation of member publishers – through a rigorous process of rules, procedures, mandatories, documents, reports, checks and surprise checks – with a view to delivering every six months an authentic certificate of paid up circulation.
Several years ago, when print was the dominant medium, the weighty ABC tome was the Bible of the media operations department in an ad agency. Its yellow and white pages spoke with authority, and its users took pride in memorizing their contents well enough to be able to rattle them off before the account executives who would later use them before their clients to justify a publication’s inclusion or exclusion from a media plan.
Much has changed since then. Print is no longer the dominant medium. Indeed in order to survive and grow, savvier publishers have successfully moved the distance between price and value perceptions – creating packages and offers for their consumers (both readers and advertisers) that go well beyond the traditional rupee cover price or advertising rate card.
Circulation has ceased to mean much to the advertiser or media planner, whether total, paid, net paid, or net net paid. In the past ten years, readership data has grown in availability, frequency and richness, and media planners have come to rely upon them more and more. In today’s media exploded world, even readership is looked upon with greater scrutiny, and is sought to be qualified with better indices of loyalty, involvement, interactivity, affinity with special interest groups and so on.
Research is now done to estimate readership for specific pages and sections in newspapers and magazines, not just the entire paper. Going beyond readership, research now even tries to predict a reader’s likely response to the placement of an ad – by page, day of week, size, shape, content, context, and so on. All of which leaves the earlier dependence on a simplistic overall circulation figure far behind.
So where does this leave the ABC? From a once hallowed body, has it ceased to be relevant? Or worse, has it ceased to even command the respect it once did?
Marketing strategies to woo readers in the face of stiff competition, not just from other publications but other media too, have left the ABC and its stringent audit rules far behind. The ABC in its purest form recognizes only those copies which have been fully paid for by the purchaser or subscriber, at predetermined trade terms. Anything beyond this done to ‘induce’ purchase, by giving huge discounts, attractive promotional offers, or straight gifts along with the publication, are frowned upon, and given what I like to call a ‘below the belt’ status. The ABC certificate declares an average net paid circulation in bold at the top of the certificate. Below the weekly or monthly details, which are blocked off in a ‘belt’, are given details of copies sold at less than permissible trade terms. The copies that diehards in the ABC sneer at.
Most media planners and advertisers, however, do not how scoff at these below the belt numbers. I receive a copy of the Economist every week courtesy Sri Lankan Airlines. I don’t value it any less because I don’t pay for it. On the contrary, it increases my good will towards both the airline and the magazine. Our initial dipsticks in Mumbai show that while the introduction of Mumbai Mirror into a Times of India home may be free, it has helped to draw in the younger readers in the household, who earlier couldn’t be bothered to read a newspaper. Shouldn’t advertisers be interested in these new readers, even if the ABC doesn’t think they warrant being counted into their certificate?
On the other hand, there are also instances where several homes in some states have subscribed to newspapers only for the daily coupon offers on regular household products – the monthly value of which far exceeds the cost of the newspaper itself which is sold off unread, but well cut out, at the end of the month as raddi.
It’s high time that this august body peopled by highly seasoned and senior members of the publishing community woke up and smelt the coffee. Large publishers have withdrawn their membership, and refused to be audited by a set of rules the market can no longer live by. Smaller local and regional publishers who would benefit from the sanctity of an ABC certificate now fight shy of being audited because the entire audit process is too unwieldy for their systems to accept.
Of late the ABC has been trying to rejuvenate itself and adapt itself to market realities. For one, training programs for media planners have been held in Mumbai and Delhi to reacquaint them with the value of knowing circulation data. But much more needs to be done about the audit rules and processes themselves. Internationally, the ABC is as respected as ever. All forms of marketing strategies are recognized, measured and audited – even electronic editions. Memberships of the ABC run into thousands. Here in our country, where the print medium still commands the maximum share of the advertising pie, and more than 2000 publications are advertiser supported, it is sad to see the ABC down to less than 400 audited publications, with some of the highest read publications in the country not even bothering to get audited. Losing relevance is one thing – and can be corrected. Losing respect is quite another – and that’s what we have to work at to arrest.
ANIMALS IN ADVERTISING
October 28 2005 (05:25:00)
(Published in DNA Adzip on October 21, 2005)
Aamir Khan looks striking in the new Toyota Innova ads. Unkempt and unshaven, a far cry from the stylishly haired Titan watches man. But so much more winsome and appealing. Then he goes and puts his arm around a wide eyed, slobbering black Labrador sitting in the boot of the car…and poof, he is completely overshadowed.
That’s what happens….add any animal, especially a dog, into the picture, and magic walks in. This is probably why the men who make the Raymonds ads decided that a hunky Great Dane was needed to convey the thought of presence being felt not announced. Or that soft white puppies personify the warm personality of the Raymonds man better than the cloth itself.
In pet food ads of course, dogs are natural heroes. But my favourites in this category are the ads for Pedigree, in which its the little girl who steals the show, especially when she tries to teach her puppy to read.
Chico, the pug in the Hutch ads, has made advertising history of sorts. When he was on air in his first appearance, the ad was the most liked and recalled one in several polls. The podgy little mutt had unseated the likes of Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar.
These days, an organization called PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has attempted to turn public attention towards an altogether different aspect of animals used in advertising. Creative directors have rapidly latched on to the draw that celebrities and pets add to an advertisement. So now you see them all over the place. Sadly though, while celebrities and models are pampered, the same cannot be said for the animals in the shoot.
I was horrified to learn that the rooster who sits atop a man’s head in the Pepsodent toothbrush commercial actually had its legs tied together for the length of the shoot. While most of the dog food people claim to follow the humane rules that their parent companies internationally adhere to, the same cannot be said of other companies and ad agencies using animals in their commercials.
Indian law requires that any advertisement intending to use an animal needs to be registered with the Animal Welfare Board of India prior to the actual filming, and a representative of this Board or any of the SPCA’s (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) or of PETA must be present at the shoot to see that the animal is properly fed and watered, rested between takes, not tied up for long periods, and allowed to relieve himself occasionally. This is really not too much to ask for especially since the poor creature cannot ask for it himself.
Agencies do look at this as an unnecessary irritant. But until we can all be sure that Chico did get attended to after he took that little fall in the Hutch commercial, it would better for these rules to be followed, so that we can all feel happier knowing that the animal, who makes us smile when we see him in an ad, was smiling too when he posed for us.
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WOMEN ON TOP [ edit ]
January 20 2006 (04:17:00) ( 3 views )
(Published in man's World, April, 2004)
Women in charge make good fodder for many kinds of mills, not just the rumour kind. Fodder for soap opera, news channels, business journals, history books, pulp fiction. Every year I receive at least two requests from journalists to answer questions about the glass ceiling, the kitchen-cabin balance, the advantages of being a woman in a man’s world (is there such a thing then?), the softer side of management that I supposedly embody, emotional intelligence, the list goes on.
Give me a break. Most of these calls are from women writing for men. Seventy percent of the readership of the enlightened publications they represent is male. On and off, some saucy male journalist will throw in a piece about what it’s like having a female boss. I ask you…don’t you guys want to know what it’s like having male subordinates?
Let me break a few of your fondly heald beliefs
"Boys don't cry"
Don’t they just? For every male manager who has told you that he does not know how to handle a weeping female colleague, (which is rubbish because men have been putting up with weepy women since the Ice Ages), let me tell you that handling a sobbing male is a whole lot worse. Guilt, grief, compassion, confusion, anger, angst, disbelief, disgust, all fighting to be suppressed and exploded at the same time within the space of twenty odd seconds. So far, the best response I can muster is to place a box of tissues before the bereft gentleman and make a diplomatic exit from my own room. Usually, they are gone, the men not the tissues, before I make a hesitant return.
Lesson No 1. Both boys and men cry.
Lesson No 2. The effect of a weeping man on a woman in charge is exactly the opposite of that of a weeping woman on a man in charge. Figure that one out yourself.
Lesson No 3. Men still carry handkerchieves in their trouser pockets.
“Men don’t gossip”
In fifteen years of being boss to some four hundred men and women, divided equally (advertising is thankfully gender insensitive), I have got at least 500% more juicy bits of malicious gossip from the guys than from the gals. Plus the embellishments are meaner, funnier, more imaginative, and far more destructive, both in motive and in practice. I have found my women subordinates sometimes cattish, but mostly silly and ineffective in the stories they choose to spread, while the men select their target and the tales with a great deal of care. Garnished with just the right amount of mystery and wit to take the guilt out of listening.
A woman’s favourite topic of pointless conversation will usually have something to do with another woman, especially if they are competing for the attention of a common person (read friend, foe or boss). A man’s favourite topic of pointless conversation is seldom pointless, and never restricted by mundane demographic discriminators like gender, hierarchy, age, model of car driven, number of spouses, length of expense account, and so on. A management trainee can be the focus of as much as locker room ribaldry, I have been told, as the Chairman. I recall with remorse the number of car rides and inflight conversations that have been peppered with useless information about marital escapades, voucher fudging, foreign trips, and exchange of favours. All of which mysteriously turn out to be very useful only a few weeks later!
Oh no, sentences beginning with “have you heard about…..” are not just the prerogative of Ray Romano’s mom. These days, many of my office mornings start with a timid knock on my door, followed by a mile-wide grin, and the inevitable, “Guess what!” Sometimes he is kind enough to stub out his cigarette.
“Girls just wanna have fun”
This you can expect to hear from a woman manager – that second for second, heartbeat for heartbeat, action for action, thought for thought, a woman worker is at least six times more hardworking than her male counterpart. And by the law of averages, she is also more efficient. If I have to get a rushed job out, I prefer to entrust it to a woman colleague given a choice.
Call it the overcompensation factor if you will, I like to call it genetics. There is plenty of biological evidence to support the fact that women think and process information faster than men, and are in fact quicker ‘on the draw’ even physically. Alas, they also crack more easily under pressure, so while the work does get done, the actual presentation of it just might get jacked. Thus, seizing the opportunity, the stoic waiting-in-the wings male colleague usually lunges to the rescue. By the law of averages, he is therefore more effective.
“More than a woman”
Going by a sample of eight woman friends who are bosses, two of them in HR, let me now make an uncharacteristically sexist comment, and may I never be condemned for this. We all find it easier to get along with our male subordinates. This could have something to do with an “opposites attract” hypothesis, or perhaps a statistical argument that on any given day there are more male than female colleagues to rub shoulders with, or that quite simply, men bring less personal baggage and more official camaraderie to the table. Men are much more ready to make compromises, sadly sometimes with their ethics too – this has no personal bias, check all the legal and official statistics on this one to bear me out.
Having said all this, mostly in jest, and just a little in judgement, every one is fun to work with, warts and all, irrespective of the God given appendages they come with. It would however be a waste of these precious pages if I did not use them to send out a heartfelt message on behalf of all my fellow women bosses to all the men who have worked with us, still do, or someday might. If we ever say something you don’t particularly want to hear, please please don’t cry.
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Taking help [ edit ]
January 09 2006 (07:52:00) ( 2 views )
Nothing my own words can say this week, so I will let the lyrics of Billy Joel's Stranger say it for me.
"Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on
Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?
Don't be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south
Every now and then
You've done it, why can't
Someone else?
You should know by now
You've been there yourself
Once I used to believe
I was such a great romancer
Then I came home to a woman
That I could not recognize
When I pressed her for a reason
She refused to even answer
It was then I felt the stranger
Kick me right between the eyes
Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?
Don't be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south
Every now and then
You've done it why can't
Someone else?
You should know by now
You've been there yourself
You may never understand
How the stranger is inspired
But he isn't always evil
And he is not always wrong
Though you drown in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You'll give in to your desire
When the stranger comes along."
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TRANSFORMING TAM IN THE YEAR OF THE DOG [ edit ]
January 04 2006 (08:17:00) ( 2 views )
(published as a year ender special for a week on Indiantelevision.com from January 3, 2006 onwards)
There can be no two ways about it. Our current television audience measurement system must transform itself radically, or go. In 2006, the Chinese year of the dog, I predict that the definition of television audiences itself will change – its measurement therefore must change too.
The term ‘audience’ is a passive one way thing. It conjures up images of ‘lying back and thinking of England’, while the man in the box dishes it out. ‘Viewership’ is no different. It implies that the only sense one uses while interacting with one’s television set is that of eyesight.
Digital TV and DTH will add sound and light and interactivity to the idiot box, making it as intelligent as our laptops and PDA’s. Viewers have already piled on to the SMS response bandwagon in billions. Actively engaging oneself with the medium, finding the channels and programs that one identifies with – these are not just confined to the urban top end. Just as cellular technology gave us the ability to deliver reach in surprising quantities at one end, coupled with unforeseen quality in value added services at the other end, simply by enabling different types of receivers depending on what you can afford, so too will DTH do the same to television.
When audiences lie passive, one needs to use an active system to measure them. The peoplemeter we have been using till now does just that. A sample respondent has to punch a button before his viewership starts getting recorded and punch himself off when he stops viewing. When audiences turn active, the measurement system has to become passive – it has to have the ability to measure without interference. That’s the first and important change. Canada has already moved into the portable peoplemeter system, and the successful Houston experiment will soon see the whole of the US questioning the longevity of the sweeps-cum-Nielsen meter approach.
The line between consumers as audiences and consumers as consumers will also blur, as television networks find themselves partnering advertisers more and more closely to deliver both content and consumers to each other. The Media Research User’s Council has set up a special committee to look at measurement. This committee calls itself the Television Consumer Assessment Committee, recognizing that there will be no such thing as an audience in the near future. There will be only people who consume goods and services including television programming and interactive content.
This will lead to a third and very important change. Till now, India is one of the few countries where the measurement currency is advertising agency supported. Undoubtedly, this has had its roots in the historical support given to the TAM service by lead advertisers and agencies. The service has therefore built its strengths, skills and expertise in areas that would appeal to this community, developing and investing in tools and training systems largely geared to making better media planning decisions.
This unfortunately is a business model without a future. With the revenue models of media agencies already under threat, how can one expect this group of users to continue to fund and invest in this service and its growth? The megabucks have got to come from the networks – the creators and distributors of television signals. The megabucks will only come from this latter group if the service provides them answers to far more difficult marketing and consumer behaviour questions than a simple currency can provide. A currency based on a sample that does not even adequately cover India by a long shot.
The networks will not want fancy media planning software. They will want to know that even as the Indian sky gets clogged with more and more channels each getting less and less share, the system and the sample are robust enough to capture it all, in all its intricacies, with reliability and stability. They will want to know what makes television consumers come to a place and stay there. They will want expressions, not impressions.
And guess what? So will the advertiser and his media agency.
Happy New Year, TAM! It’s high time you got yourself a new collar.
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THE YEAR OF THE DOG [ edit ]
January 02 2006 (06:06:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in Impact dated February 3, 2006,and in DNA Adzip on February 22, 2006)
There’s a pug living in the building next door. I see him occasionally when I take Gemma for her walk. He is usually flopped down on his belly at the edge of the road, panting heavily, while a Maharashtrian maid stands indifferently by his side. Another victim of the pug craze that has caught our city by storm, and perhaps several others too.
A muscular brachycephalic dog prone to fungal infections that develop quickly in the extra folds of skin on his face especially in this humid Mumbai climate, coupled with respiratory disorders, this breed sold for Rs 5000 a pup two years before Chico Hutch made his debut. Now they go for ten times that amount. Within a few years, there will be several faddy homes in Mumbai who will not know what to do with their pooches who will no longer be fashionable but will most certainly be ill and uncared for, left to the whims of maids and drivers.
In the Chinese year of the dog, perhaps the pug story will help remind all of us in advertising and communication about the power we wield, sometimes innocently and ignorantly.
We have the power to launch the face that will launch a thousand chips. We have the power to differentiate the essentially undifferentiated. We have the power to make the ordinary seem extra-ordinary and the impossible seem possible. We have the power to make the devil look clean and the angel look dirty. To make consumers believe that dirt is good, and fair is better.
Few professions can command this exceptional ability to add immeasurable value strictly on the basis of the intangible. We work on human frailties and longings and glorify them. We legitimize greed in KBC, prying in Sansani, belittling in Idol. Our sting can be more poisonous than the viper’s and, by a strange logic all our own, arguably more likely to bring about social change than straight journalism.
If only we used more of this power in the upliftment of the underdog. Public service communication was once something the agencies did out of genuine caring, today they are done in a haste to win awards. It was ‘Mile sur mera tumhara’ that put Piyush Pandey on the fast track to creative superstardom – the first tentative step that stirred a billion souls. There hasn’t been anything as innovative and far reaching as that since, not from him, nor from our industry.
Frankly, there is no real need to even use social communication, we can begin with the work we do for our bread and butter - the brands that we work on. Aamir Khan depicted the essential Indian in several ethnic forms for the Coca Cola campaign. Somewhere in them lay an opportunity to promote something far more than some villagers drinking Coke. If ‘sar utha ke piyo’ is now the theme, then why get back to a normal Aamir Khan to do that?
So coming back to the point of this article, may I use the pages of this prestigious magazine to put a thought into the astute minds of all our creative directors? Maybe especially Piyush?
Why a pug? Why not our friendly neighbourhood Indian pie dog? He has become the butt of so much malice in the past year – demands to kill him and wipe him out pepper the newspapers, cases have been filed, heard and discharged. Few realize that he is a true symbol of the underdog. Look past his form – and see in him all that he stands for. Undesirable (like slum dwellers), voiceless (like battered wives), spreads disease (like commercial sex workers), abused and misused (like poor children).
And then look again. Strong and handsome, when clean. Loyal to a fault. Fiercely protective of those he loves. Playful and fun to hang around with, a born comedian. Not fussy about his food habits. Intelligent enough to outwit some really smart humans. Resilient and doesn’t get sick easily, heals quickly when he does.
If you want to say ‘daag achha hai’, he can say it for you – gladly! If you want to say ‘express yourself’, oh you bet he can. ‘Be my lover, bubbly!’? Piece of cake. ‘Feel like God’? – he already does.
Use the pie and ditch the pug, Piyush. He needs you. And you know what? You need him too.
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Sasha [ edit ]
December 28 2005 (07:54:00) ( 2 views )
Sasha was adopted as a baby by a childless well-to-do couple. They regarded her as a gift from God. By her third birthday, it became clear that she was a special child. Her mental age would never go beyond eight or nine, though physically she was normal and healthy. Before her sixth birthday, her adoptive mother went into severe depresssion and took her own life.
Sasha's father coped with the tragic loss of his wife, and the burden of bringing up a special girl on his own, with the help of his mother, for several years. Gradually a friendship with a former colleague, who was going through a divorce she didn't want, grew into a romance. He proposed marriage. Both Sasha and he could do with the stability of a woman in the home. His former colleague had her resevations. Coping with a personal loss of her own, she loved him but wasn't sure if she had it in her either emotionally or physically to take on the responsibility of a special child that wasn't even her own.
Four years later she made up her mind and said yes. They were married two years ago. Sasha is now thirteen and has had her first period. She calls her new mother Mama, and Mama is teaching her all about the birds and the bees. Mama's initiation into motherhood skipped all the stages from sonographies to nappies to playschool. Hell, she doesn't even know what a normal PTA meeting is like. She interacts with counsellors and pediatricians instead.
Last night Sasha and her parents came to dinner along with other friends of mine and their kids. The house was like a playground with seniors, adults and children cracking jokes, singing songs, throwing soft toys about, teasing the dogs, eating and drinking heartily. Age, specie or sex no bar, intellect absolutely no bar. Mama was the happiest and most relaxed that I have seen her in a long long time. She has been my best friend for over twenty years, a former colleague too, who has seen me through all my ups and downs, major successes and glaring failures, standing beside me like a rock. I too have tried to be there for her, all through the stormy years, and now it looks like her ship has finally found anchor. Her former husband had gone off to America to chase a dream, one that he never found or shared with her. Who would have thought that her own rainbow was right there all the while in the form of a once-colleague's special little girl?
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Of packing and unpacking books [ edit ]
December 16 2005 (07:53:00) ( 2 views )
A couple of months ago, my family happened upon the uneasy task of moving home after thirty years. Some things can be left to the packers - crockery, furniture, electronic equipment. Some things you just need to have a go at yourself. Somehow, wading through old clothes, throwing away the ones that have no prospect of a future, putting aside those that will go to the dry cleaners and then to charity, and rediscovering that t-shirt you loved and lost (Amadeus and crow) leaves you with an overall-tired-but-clean-and-happy feeling.
The books ofcourse are another thing altogether. They suffer from all the qualities that spell 'tough work' from the word go. Too many in number (our collection definitely runs into thousands and thousands), too weighty by far, too dusty and too smelly. And yet....
....I loved it. Or what I was allowed to enjoy of it. It's one of those family sayings, "Keep her away from the books". I spring clean my book shelves every six months, squatting on the floor among a heap of them, sorting out the ones that will go to Goa, those that will go into storage, or into my great great grandfather's revolving book case, and so on. What would take a normal average adult an hour takes me about five. I simply cannot dust and put aside a book without scanning through it, it is just not an option.
So, many of my books were hurriedly thrown into cartons by my parents and the packers while I was away at work. But.... they left the ones in my great great grandfather's rosewood writing desk cabinets to me.
Aha! What a heavenly experience. First of all the smells. A heady mixture of the sour scent of old paper, mothballs, pungent antique wood, insect leftovers, ink and glue. Then the textures. Old books and newspapers have a certain soft roughness to them that our grandchildren, weaned on a diet of keyboards and styluses (styli?), will never know. And finally the words and pictures. A 200 year old book of quotations, my dad's collection of the Stars of the Silver screen cigarette cards, my great aunt's anthologies of travels around the world, ancient encylcopedias, my grandfather's stamp collection, my mother's 'my first baby book', cuttings of all my brother's writings in newspapers from the age of seven onwards, and my tennis exploits, an old family Bible, cookery books, books I had seen before, books I look at each time with new eyes.
All the cartons were shipped off to Goa, where people presume I have the space to keep them. I have very few books now left with me in Mumbai, but it's only a matter of time when my monthly additions with change that situation. The revolving book case has also kindly been sent to Goa, while the cabinets of the writing desk are now used to stash away Dad's Scotch... and all the wine made by my mother in the 70's and 80's that we discovered in the clean up. Since this desk lives with me in my Mumbai bedroom, it's a bit of a waste for a teetotaller book lover - having the wine and the whisky, but not the books.
Unpacking the cartons in Goa is ofcourse an experience that's all mine. It's a tough job indeed, one that leaves me exhausted after each sitting. Lugging a fully filled carton of books, slicing and scissoring through the packing, lifting out the books and dusting each one - all this I hate. Sifting and sorting and scanning I love. Sometimes I find myself sitting among them, leaning back against a tallish pile that is capable of taking my weight, and actually reading a full book start to finish. Torda is quiet in the evenings, after the hustle of the hospital is over, and all the animals have turned in for the night. With only the kitten sisters for company past sundown, it's easy to lose track of time.
So far I have unpacked only four cartons, and slid many of the books into their appointed places in the revolving bookcase. There are at least fourteen more to go. The kitten sisters will be fully grown by the time I'm done.
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Noel [ edit ]
December 06 2005 (10:00:00) ( 2 views )
I spotted Noel on a sapling cart this Sunday morning. Among coxcombs and roses, he was the only Christmas tree teetering close to the edge at one corner of the cart. I liked him instantly because he is well shaped, with six good rows of symmetrical branches, none damaged. Noella was wider and taller when I bought her but had only four rows. The cart seller wanted Rs 300, I negotiated him down to Rs 150, not really wanting to buy the plant even though I liked it. I continued on my way, and when I returned an hour later, he was still there, waiting. So I got him for 'boni'- first sale of the day price.
My mother is already feeling Christmasy - trees do that. She decided that this one was a boy since my tree in Goa is a girl,and gave him the unimaginative title of Noel. He has already been washed down and placed in his 'spot', and after a few weeks, we will put an acorn crib beneath him, and decorate some of his branches, but not too much. I don't much go for the overdone tinsel effect.
And after epiphany I will take him to Goa and settle him down next to Noella. Where they will live happily ever after.
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Thank you, Russel [ edit ]
December 02 2005 (06:49:00) ( 2 views )
The weekend was more interesting than usual. It began with a call to help an injured cow that had been hit by a car on the NH 17 at the top of the hill. Deby and Dinella trudged up with all their equipment but couldn't even manage to restrain her. She had a three month old calf by her side, a broken forelimb, and a prominent swelling on the side of her stomach. So Dr Rathod was summoned as well, and as expected, he expertly put together a splint, and washed her down with a bucket of water. By the next morning, she and her calf had moved on.
The veterinary parade returned to the hospital by noon to discover that Mr Russel Viper was curled up nonchalantly outside the surgery door, in the nook between the bottom step and the large laterite rock. He has been visiting my aunt's plot next door every night for the past few nights, hissing his loud and ominous russell viper hiss. Such a beautiful creature with large black diamonds set against a bright yellow body, and as deadly dangerous as he is beautiful.
Tony and the gang went to work sending all the dogs and cats up the hill into the shelters. When we were visited last year by a cobra and her mate, Candy attacked the female and was rewarded with a bite on the mouth. A long night of antivenom drip did save her life but she was never the same and passed away suddenly ten months later. We didn't want the same thing to happen with a viper, since death is much more quick. Besides, cobras are gentle creatures who will not attacked unprovoked, but a viper is a callous as a wild boar.
Dr Rathod sent for the Green Cross. Fortunately, Arnold was in the vicinity. It took him exactly five seconds to bag the snake, and put it aside, for release later into some other forest. Deby ofcourse rebuked him - are you the guys releasing all your rescued snakes into our forest??
On his way out, Arnold met Lucky at her usual sitting spot. The emaciated abandoned Great Dane has now put on some weight and can stand on all fours for a short while. Arnold immediately contacted a friend who offered to adopt her and give her all the special care she will need to recover fully. Lucky found a good home by that evening.
So all's well that ends well. We don't want any more vipers visiting us, but if they bring along some good samaritans in their wake, then it's not so bad.
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Of letters of resignation [ edit ]
November 24 2005 (09:26:00) ( 3 views )
My artist friend broke the mould. Instead of the standard A4 letter paper with four paragraphs of hypocritical thank-you’s, miss-you’s, it’s-been- great-but-the-future-beckons, and will-always-remember-you’s, he sent in a gold leafed leather bound monogrammed book, with a single entry on the first page,
“The End of a Chapter”.
Then he packed up his bags and left.
If I must receive a resignation letter, I wish the writer would at least make it interesting for me. Something to remember the bloke by, since everything else one would rather forget. Whatever the stated reasons for leaving, and whatever else is said and done as is expected to be said and done, in the final analysis, there is really only one fact. He, or she, left.
June and November are the months. Promotions and increments are given out in April. The disappointed scour the market in May, and the resignations follow in June. It’s so easy to predict who will stay and who will go, and to engineer the whole process. The November post Diwali bonus goodbyes, however, are different – these have the ability to make you sad and reflective. You learn who your fair weather friends were. The ones who hung around just till the money hit the savings bank account.
It’s been more than ten years since I penned a resignation letter of my own, replete with all the expected banalities that, as always, didn’t mean a thing. So unlike me. I may walk out of here someday, just like I walked in. With nothing in writing. I must be the only employee of this great agency who has never signed the compulsory employment agreement.
As I explained to my boss, the Chairman, if it’s written in my heart, that should be good enough for you. And the day it’s erased from my heart, you will know without me having to tell you.
But perhaps I will leave behind a nice symbol, just like Neville did. Or die in this job, whichever comes first. But no resignation letter. Never.
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144/9, Torda [ edit ]
November 15 2005 (08:22:00) ( 2 views )
Ultimately, it’s all about witchcraft and wizadry. Hogwarts cannot have a monopoly on magic. I won’t allow it.
It starts with a nondescript, non-used but fully functioning brass bell, set inside a 4 by 4 hollow square in the front of the left compound wall that was meant to house the giant red dolphin.
(The dolphin being the then mascot of the Goa SPCA, much maligned by all our trustees.
- Benny – “of all the creatures you could have shown as a symbol, why on earth a dolphin, why not dogs and cats and horses and the common cow?”
- Lt Col Nageshkar –“ people think we are fish mongers – when our three wheeler animal carrier passes by with the red dolphin painted on it, they think we are transporting fish” (this one must make my priestly ancestors roll in their polished marble graves – having looked down for centuries at the ‘fisherfolk’ – if you’ve encountered the cacophonous quarrelsome locals of Calangute and Baga, you will sympathise)
- Bharat –“are you sure red is a good colour for a) a hospital, b) a dolphin?”
- Ashley – “it makes us look like a tourist hotel”)
The dolphin that was delivered hours before the inauguration was a flat uninspiring piece of badly cut and poorly painted red steel, so I sent Clem off to buy a bell – “We have to put something in that square – can’t leave it empty, might as well be a bell – it can stand for anything you like, I don’t care, just fill up the square.”
People sometimes clang on the bell for fun. Sometimes to call the vets down the hill. The bell is where the magic begins.
It moves on to Leopoldina. A badam tree sapling we planted on Foundation day, October 4, 2000. Named after a local twenty something senorita who looked longingly at Clem, the Man from the Big City – during the mass. Everyone says hello to everyone in a village that houses 900 people, if that. “Hello, I’m Lynn, this is Clem, what’s your name?” “Leopoldina”. Clem does a double take. Turns out that was Annabelle’s code name when she lived in America while they were dating. Our baby tree is officially named Leopoldina. A clutch of elves live inside her.
(When the construction papers finally got approved we realized that we had miscalculated the whole project by three metres, since that’s how much forward it would have to move up, to make way for potential ‘road widening’. No way I would let Leopoldina and the corner stone be moved, even though they were technically quite out of place. So everything had to make its way around her, the pathway, the vehicles going up and down, the cashew tree above her that now looks down at her with angry frowns since she has grown right up to his lower branches. We celebrate her temerity every year on her birthday, she continues to cast her cheeky spell.)
It moves further up to the office block, that houses the administration, the OPD, and the angels dressed up as vets, nurses and general dogsbodies. Everything is spic and span, including Tixi and Toxi, the two teak trees who rise up from the Torda earth, right through the administration rooms, into the front verandah of my own home above. From time to time, the insects dance around them, and the toadstools pop out at night. In autumn, I turn into a sweeper of falling blossoms and leaves as they shed their clothes faster than an American stripper.
The front wall of the administration building that faces the road was painted over in aquatic blue by two young Warli tribals shipped in by Clem on a bus the night before the inauguration. Animal rescue and treatment scenes depicted by them show a nurse chasing after a bird with a needle and syringe that’s taller than her, among other such expressions of their typical triangular art.
(The addition of over two hundred plants of varying lineage, taken from Mumbai in the Grand Rescue of all Things Living at Gym View for over Twenty Years, (the said Gym View now having been razed to the ground to make way for a dazzling display of diamond gotten wealth) have somewhat hidden the Warli contribution and added a semblance of civilization to the place’s jungle appeal. Palms, ferns and cordelias rub shoulders with jackfruit, cashew and goti, and all blend together beautifully. The only rule being that there are no rules – grow where you grow best and feel happy, darling, ain’t no posh garden manicurists here.)
Up a long laterite flight of steps hugging the right compound wall, past my impossibly sloping backyard, back of my house but front of the shelter. We are now at the fourth floor by city standards, but at the ground floor of my house. At Torda, logic has a magic of its own.
Here lives Noella, nestling among jackfruit, mango, papaya and lemon, all waiting to grow up and bear fruit – hopefully, not long now. I carried her from Mumbai to Goa on my lap in a plane, her graceful young branches tied closely together to keep her trademark spiky Christmas tree leaves from getting hurt. Every year, she sprouts a new row of hexagonally symmetrical branches. This Christmas, her third new row has just starting reaching out to the other trees around her, and the fairies will skip past each row as always when the clock strikes twelve on December 25th, so that a magical star can come down to settle on her forehead.
By now, you are breathless. When you look up, you think, “Oh my God, how much further?” If you have a scruffy little pup by your side, he’s having a party. Hop, skip and jump, here I come. Hey cat, wait till I get you. That’s right. You have just reached the gates to the shelter, where Gingy awaits you with a haughty little meow. Her sisters are sunning themselves on the surgery roof, flat on their backs, paws kneading the air dreamily – you can see them as you go past the roof. Yes you do go past the roof, this is 144/9, Torda, remember?
Before you turn left at the little nookish entrance to the kitchen block, you are greeted by pups of assorted weight and colour, and if she’s not feeling too sleepy, Shalu will step up to say a polite hello too, while Philu will shake her bum ecstatically.
(Philu was named after the girl at the PFA shelter who sentenced her to death. Those were the days when other NGO’s sent us animals to work on since our own vehicle was on down time. Philu, the dog not the girl, had ‘untreatable’ mange. Dr Rathod set to work on his secret potion, made from exotic ingredients available at the local tinto. He calls it the Golden Lotion. Golden Lotion saved Philu from an untimely death, and sowed the seeds of an anti-euthanasia policy that I seft-righteously drew up. Mange is common in salty sandy Goa, and Golden Lotion has now become a household name in Torda – so what if there are only 300 houses?)
If it’s feeding time, they will all ignore you, pointedly. So will the staff. It’s not easy spooning rice and chicken broth into bowls, with cats hovering by the raw fish at your elbow, and pups scraping at your calves. Lucky will not budge however. She can barely stand. An emaciated Great Dane with a genetic hip disorder, she was left here by the Youth Congress General Secretary. Big man, in service of mankind, in abandonment of dogkind. She sits stretched fully across a strategically positioned step. You realise that the winding steps above were made only for the feeble, the rest of us must learn to take the slope of the hill in our stride and our rubber chappals.
The sloping roofed tubular maroon shelters now loom up before us. The inmates are quiet, dry-eyed, in obvious pain – some from the surgery, some from wounds, some from disease. They place their trust and hopes unflinchingly in the hands of the good Dr Rathod. He bows his head, and waves his wand, and they get up and walk.
(For those that don’t, further up the hill is a spot where magic touched my lips six years ago in a kiss that will stay unforgettable. Here lie the remains of Nixon, Jumbo, Bobby, Candy and many others who fought brave battles, played with the gypsies, and are still playing with them somewhere that is not 144/9 Torda, but as close to it as you can get. Ever.)
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WOMEN ON TOP [ edit ]
January 20 2006 (04:17:00) ( 3 views )
(Published in man's World, April, 2004)
Women in charge make good fodder for many kinds of mills, not just the rumour kind. Fodder for soap opera, news channels, business journals, history books, pulp fiction. Every year I receive at least two requests from journalists to answer questions about the glass ceiling, the kitchen-cabin balance, the advantages of being a woman in a man’s world (is there such a thing then?), the softer side of management that I supposedly embody, emotional intelligence, the list goes on.
Give me a break. Most of these calls are from women writing for men. Seventy percent of the readership of the enlightened publications they represent is male. On and off, some saucy male journalist will throw in a piece about what it’s like having a female boss. I ask you…don’t you guys want to know what it’s like having male subordinates?
Let me break a few of your fondly heald beliefs
"Boys don't cry"
Don’t they just? For every male manager who has told you that he does not know how to handle a weeping female colleague, (which is rubbish because men have been putting up with weepy women since the Ice Ages), let me tell you that handling a sobbing male is a whole lot worse. Guilt, grief, compassion, confusion, anger, angst, disbelief, disgust, all fighting to be suppressed and exploded at the same time within the space of twenty odd seconds. So far, the best response I can muster is to place a box of tissues before the bereft gentleman and make a diplomatic exit from my own room. Usually, they are gone, the men not the tissues, before I make a hesitant return.
Lesson No 1. Both boys and men cry.
Lesson No 2. The effect of a weeping man on a woman in charge is exactly the opposite of that of a weeping woman on a man in charge. Figure that one out yourself.
Lesson No 3. Men still carry handkerchieves in their trouser pockets.
“Men don’t gossip”
In fifteen years of being boss to some four hundred men and women, divided equally (advertising is thankfully gender insensitive), I have got at least 500% more juicy bits of malicious gossip from the guys than from the gals. Plus the embellishments are meaner, funnier, more imaginative, and far more destructive, both in motive and in practice. I have found my women subordinates sometimes cattish, but mostly silly and ineffective in the stories they choose to spread, while the men select their target and the tales with a great deal of care. Garnished with just the right amount of mystery and wit to take the guilt out of listening.
A woman’s favourite topic of pointless conversation will usually have something to do with another woman, especially if they are competing for the attention of a common person (read friend, foe or boss). A man’s favourite topic of pointless conversation is seldom pointless, and never restricted by mundane demographic discriminators like gender, hierarchy, age, model of car driven, number of spouses, length of expense account, and so on. A management trainee can be the focus of as much as locker room ribaldry, I have been told, as the Chairman. I recall with remorse the number of car rides and inflight conversations that have been peppered with useless information about marital escapades, voucher fudging, foreign trips, and exchange of favours. All of which mysteriously turn out to be very useful only a few weeks later!
Oh no, sentences beginning with “have you heard about…..” are not just the prerogative of Ray Romano’s mom. These days, many of my office mornings start with a timid knock on my door, followed by a mile-wide grin, and the inevitable, “Guess what!” Sometimes he is kind enough to stub out his cigarette.
“Girls just wanna have fun”
This you can expect to hear from a woman manager – that second for second, heartbeat for heartbeat, action for action, thought for thought, a woman worker is at least six times more hardworking than her male counterpart. And by the law of averages, she is also more efficient. If I have to get a rushed job out, I prefer to entrust it to a woman colleague given a choice.
Call it the overcompensation factor if you will, I like to call it genetics. There is plenty of biological evidence to support the fact that women think and process information faster than men, and are in fact quicker ‘on the draw’ even physically. Alas, they also crack more easily under pressure, so while the work does get done, the actual presentation of it just might get jacked. Thus, seizing the opportunity, the stoic waiting-in-the wings male colleague usually lunges to the rescue. By the law of averages, he is therefore more effective.
“More than a woman”
Going by a sample of eight woman friends who are bosses, two of them in HR, let me now make an uncharacteristically sexist comment, and may I never be condemned for this. We all find it easier to get along with our male subordinates. This could have something to do with an “opposites attract” hypothesis, or perhaps a statistical argument that on any given day there are more male than female colleagues to rub shoulders with, or that quite simply, men bring less personal baggage and more official camaraderie to the table. Men are much more ready to make compromises, sadly sometimes with their ethics too – this has no personal bias, check all the legal and official statistics on this one to bear me out.
Having said all this, mostly in jest, and just a little in judgement, every one is fun to work with, warts and all, irrespective of the God given appendages they come with. It would however be a waste of these precious pages if I did not use them to send out a heartfelt message on behalf of all my fellow women bosses to all the men who have worked with us, still do, or someday might. If we ever say something you don’t particularly want to hear, please please don’t cry.
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Taking help [ edit ]
January 09 2006 (07:52:00) ( 2 views )
Nothing my own words can say this week, so I will let the lyrics of Billy Joel's Stranger say it for me.
"Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on
Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?
Don't be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south
Every now and then
You've done it, why can't
Someone else?
You should know by now
You've been there yourself
Once I used to believe
I was such a great romancer
Then I came home to a woman
That I could not recognize
When I pressed her for a reason
She refused to even answer
It was then I felt the stranger
Kick me right between the eyes
Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?
Don't be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south
Every now and then
You've done it why can't
Someone else?
You should know by now
You've been there yourself
You may never understand
How the stranger is inspired
But he isn't always evil
And he is not always wrong
Though you drown in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You'll give in to your desire
When the stranger comes along."
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TRANSFORMING TAM IN THE YEAR OF THE DOG [ edit ]
January 04 2006 (08:17:00) ( 2 views )
(published as a year ender special for a week on Indiantelevision.com from January 3, 2006 onwards)
There can be no two ways about it. Our current television audience measurement system must transform itself radically, or go. In 2006, the Chinese year of the dog, I predict that the definition of television audiences itself will change – its measurement therefore must change too.
The term ‘audience’ is a passive one way thing. It conjures up images of ‘lying back and thinking of England’, while the man in the box dishes it out. ‘Viewership’ is no different. It implies that the only sense one uses while interacting with one’s television set is that of eyesight.
Digital TV and DTH will add sound and light and interactivity to the idiot box, making it as intelligent as our laptops and PDA’s. Viewers have already piled on to the SMS response bandwagon in billions. Actively engaging oneself with the medium, finding the channels and programs that one identifies with – these are not just confined to the urban top end. Just as cellular technology gave us the ability to deliver reach in surprising quantities at one end, coupled with unforeseen quality in value added services at the other end, simply by enabling different types of receivers depending on what you can afford, so too will DTH do the same to television.
When audiences lie passive, one needs to use an active system to measure them. The peoplemeter we have been using till now does just that. A sample respondent has to punch a button before his viewership starts getting recorded and punch himself off when he stops viewing. When audiences turn active, the measurement system has to become passive – it has to have the ability to measure without interference. That’s the first and important change. Canada has already moved into the portable peoplemeter system, and the successful Houston experiment will soon see the whole of the US questioning the longevity of the sweeps-cum-Nielsen meter approach.
The line between consumers as audiences and consumers as consumers will also blur, as television networks find themselves partnering advertisers more and more closely to deliver both content and consumers to each other. The Media Research User’s Council has set up a special committee to look at measurement. This committee calls itself the Television Consumer Assessment Committee, recognizing that there will be no such thing as an audience in the near future. There will be only people who consume goods and services including television programming and interactive content.
This will lead to a third and very important change. Till now, India is one of the few countries where the measurement currency is advertising agency supported. Undoubtedly, this has had its roots in the historical support given to the TAM service by lead advertisers and agencies. The service has therefore built its strengths, skills and expertise in areas that would appeal to this community, developing and investing in tools and training systems largely geared to making better media planning decisions.
This unfortunately is a business model without a future. With the revenue models of media agencies already under threat, how can one expect this group of users to continue to fund and invest in this service and its growth? The megabucks have got to come from the networks – the creators and distributors of television signals. The megabucks will only come from this latter group if the service provides them answers to far more difficult marketing and consumer behaviour questions than a simple currency can provide. A currency based on a sample that does not even adequately cover India by a long shot.
The networks will not want fancy media planning software. They will want to know that even as the Indian sky gets clogged with more and more channels each getting less and less share, the system and the sample are robust enough to capture it all, in all its intricacies, with reliability and stability. They will want to know what makes television consumers come to a place and stay there. They will want expressions, not impressions.
And guess what? So will the advertiser and his media agency.
Happy New Year, TAM! It’s high time you got yourself a new collar.
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THE YEAR OF THE DOG [ edit ]
January 02 2006 (06:06:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in Impact dated February 3, 2006,and in DNA Adzip on February 22, 2006)
There’s a pug living in the building next door. I see him occasionally when I take Gemma for her walk. He is usually flopped down on his belly at the edge of the road, panting heavily, while a Maharashtrian maid stands indifferently by his side. Another victim of the pug craze that has caught our city by storm, and perhaps several others too.
A muscular brachycephalic dog prone to fungal infections that develop quickly in the extra folds of skin on his face especially in this humid Mumbai climate, coupled with respiratory disorders, this breed sold for Rs 5000 a pup two years before Chico Hutch made his debut. Now they go for ten times that amount. Within a few years, there will be several faddy homes in Mumbai who will not know what to do with their pooches who will no longer be fashionable but will most certainly be ill and uncared for, left to the whims of maids and drivers.
In the Chinese year of the dog, perhaps the pug story will help remind all of us in advertising and communication about the power we wield, sometimes innocently and ignorantly.
We have the power to launch the face that will launch a thousand chips. We have the power to differentiate the essentially undifferentiated. We have the power to make the ordinary seem extra-ordinary and the impossible seem possible. We have the power to make the devil look clean and the angel look dirty. To make consumers believe that dirt is good, and fair is better.
Few professions can command this exceptional ability to add immeasurable value strictly on the basis of the intangible. We work on human frailties and longings and glorify them. We legitimize greed in KBC, prying in Sansani, belittling in Idol. Our sting can be more poisonous than the viper’s and, by a strange logic all our own, arguably more likely to bring about social change than straight journalism.
If only we used more of this power in the upliftment of the underdog. Public service communication was once something the agencies did out of genuine caring, today they are done in a haste to win awards. It was ‘Mile sur mera tumhara’ that put Piyush Pandey on the fast track to creative superstardom – the first tentative step that stirred a billion souls. There hasn’t been anything as innovative and far reaching as that since, not from him, nor from our industry.
Frankly, there is no real need to even use social communication, we can begin with the work we do for our bread and butter - the brands that we work on. Aamir Khan depicted the essential Indian in several ethnic forms for the Coca Cola campaign. Somewhere in them lay an opportunity to promote something far more than some villagers drinking Coke. If ‘sar utha ke piyo’ is now the theme, then why get back to a normal Aamir Khan to do that?
So coming back to the point of this article, may I use the pages of this prestigious magazine to put a thought into the astute minds of all our creative directors? Maybe especially Piyush?
Why a pug? Why not our friendly neighbourhood Indian pie dog? He has become the butt of so much malice in the past year – demands to kill him and wipe him out pepper the newspapers, cases have been filed, heard and discharged. Few realize that he is a true symbol of the underdog. Look past his form – and see in him all that he stands for. Undesirable (like slum dwellers), voiceless (like battered wives), spreads disease (like commercial sex workers), abused and misused (like poor children).
And then look again. Strong and handsome, when clean. Loyal to a fault. Fiercely protective of those he loves. Playful and fun to hang around with, a born comedian. Not fussy about his food habits. Intelligent enough to outwit some really smart humans. Resilient and doesn’t get sick easily, heals quickly when he does.
If you want to say ‘daag achha hai’, he can say it for you – gladly! If you want to say ‘express yourself’, oh you bet he can. ‘Be my lover, bubbly!’? Piece of cake. ‘Feel like God’? – he already does.
Use the pie and ditch the pug, Piyush. He needs you. And you know what? You need him too.
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Sasha [ edit ]
December 28 2005 (07:54:00) ( 2 views )
Sasha was adopted as a baby by a childless well-to-do couple. They regarded her as a gift from God. By her third birthday, it became clear that she was a special child. Her mental age would never go beyond eight or nine, though physically she was normal and healthy. Before her sixth birthday, her adoptive mother went into severe depresssion and took her own life.
Sasha's father coped with the tragic loss of his wife, and the burden of bringing up a special girl on his own, with the help of his mother, for several years. Gradually a friendship with a former colleague, who was going through a divorce she didn't want, grew into a romance. He proposed marriage. Both Sasha and he could do with the stability of a woman in the home. His former colleague had her resevations. Coping with a personal loss of her own, she loved him but wasn't sure if she had it in her either emotionally or physically to take on the responsibility of a special child that wasn't even her own.
Four years later she made up her mind and said yes. They were married two years ago. Sasha is now thirteen and has had her first period. She calls her new mother Mama, and Mama is teaching her all about the birds and the bees. Mama's initiation into motherhood skipped all the stages from sonographies to nappies to playschool. Hell, she doesn't even know what a normal PTA meeting is like. She interacts with counsellors and pediatricians instead.
Last night Sasha and her parents came to dinner along with other friends of mine and their kids. The house was like a playground with seniors, adults and children cracking jokes, singing songs, throwing soft toys about, teasing the dogs, eating and drinking heartily. Age, specie or sex no bar, intellect absolutely no bar. Mama was the happiest and most relaxed that I have seen her in a long long time. She has been my best friend for over twenty years, a former colleague too, who has seen me through all my ups and downs, major successes and glaring failures, standing beside me like a rock. I too have tried to be there for her, all through the stormy years, and now it looks like her ship has finally found anchor. Her former husband had gone off to America to chase a dream, one that he never found or shared with her. Who would have thought that her own rainbow was right there all the while in the form of a once-colleague's special little girl?
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Of packing and unpacking books [ edit ]
December 16 2005 (07:53:00) ( 2 views )
A couple of months ago, my family happened upon the uneasy task of moving home after thirty years. Some things can be left to the packers - crockery, furniture, electronic equipment. Some things you just need to have a go at yourself. Somehow, wading through old clothes, throwing away the ones that have no prospect of a future, putting aside those that will go to the dry cleaners and then to charity, and rediscovering that t-shirt you loved and lost (Amadeus and crow) leaves you with an overall-tired-but-clean-and-happy feeling.
The books ofcourse are another thing altogether. They suffer from all the qualities that spell 'tough work' from the word go. Too many in number (our collection definitely runs into thousands and thousands), too weighty by far, too dusty and too smelly. And yet....
....I loved it. Or what I was allowed to enjoy of it. It's one of those family sayings, "Keep her away from the books". I spring clean my book shelves every six months, squatting on the floor among a heap of them, sorting out the ones that will go to Goa, those that will go into storage, or into my great great grandfather's revolving book case, and so on. What would take a normal average adult an hour takes me about five. I simply cannot dust and put aside a book without scanning through it, it is just not an option.
So, many of my books were hurriedly thrown into cartons by my parents and the packers while I was away at work. But.... they left the ones in my great great grandfather's rosewood writing desk cabinets to me.
Aha! What a heavenly experience. First of all the smells. A heady mixture of the sour scent of old paper, mothballs, pungent antique wood, insect leftovers, ink and glue. Then the textures. Old books and newspapers have a certain soft roughness to them that our grandchildren, weaned on a diet of keyboards and styluses (styli?), will never know. And finally the words and pictures. A 200 year old book of quotations, my dad's collection of the Stars of the Silver screen cigarette cards, my great aunt's anthologies of travels around the world, ancient encylcopedias, my grandfather's stamp collection, my mother's 'my first baby book', cuttings of all my brother's writings in newspapers from the age of seven onwards, and my tennis exploits, an old family Bible, cookery books, books I had seen before, books I look at each time with new eyes.
All the cartons were shipped off to Goa, where people presume I have the space to keep them. I have very few books now left with me in Mumbai, but it's only a matter of time when my monthly additions with change that situation. The revolving book case has also kindly been sent to Goa, while the cabinets of the writing desk are now used to stash away Dad's Scotch... and all the wine made by my mother in the 70's and 80's that we discovered in the clean up. Since this desk lives with me in my Mumbai bedroom, it's a bit of a waste for a teetotaller book lover - having the wine and the whisky, but not the books.
Unpacking the cartons in Goa is ofcourse an experience that's all mine. It's a tough job indeed, one that leaves me exhausted after each sitting. Lugging a fully filled carton of books, slicing and scissoring through the packing, lifting out the books and dusting each one - all this I hate. Sifting and sorting and scanning I love. Sometimes I find myself sitting among them, leaning back against a tallish pile that is capable of taking my weight, and actually reading a full book start to finish. Torda is quiet in the evenings, after the hustle of the hospital is over, and all the animals have turned in for the night. With only the kitten sisters for company past sundown, it's easy to lose track of time.
So far I have unpacked only four cartons, and slid many of the books into their appointed places in the revolving bookcase. There are at least fourteen more to go. The kitten sisters will be fully grown by the time I'm done.
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Noel [ edit ]
December 06 2005 (10:00:00) ( 2 views )
I spotted Noel on a sapling cart this Sunday morning. Among coxcombs and roses, he was the only Christmas tree teetering close to the edge at one corner of the cart. I liked him instantly because he is well shaped, with six good rows of symmetrical branches, none damaged. Noella was wider and taller when I bought her but had only four rows. The cart seller wanted Rs 300, I negotiated him down to Rs 150, not really wanting to buy the plant even though I liked it. I continued on my way, and when I returned an hour later, he was still there, waiting. So I got him for 'boni'- first sale of the day price.
My mother is already feeling Christmasy - trees do that. She decided that this one was a boy since my tree in Goa is a girl,and gave him the unimaginative title of Noel. He has already been washed down and placed in his 'spot', and after a few weeks, we will put an acorn crib beneath him, and decorate some of his branches, but not too much. I don't much go for the overdone tinsel effect.
And after epiphany I will take him to Goa and settle him down next to Noella. Where they will live happily ever after.
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Thank you, Russel [ edit ]
December 02 2005 (06:49:00) ( 2 views )
The weekend was more interesting than usual. It began with a call to help an injured cow that had been hit by a car on the NH 17 at the top of the hill. Deby and Dinella trudged up with all their equipment but couldn't even manage to restrain her. She had a three month old calf by her side, a broken forelimb, and a prominent swelling on the side of her stomach. So Dr Rathod was summoned as well, and as expected, he expertly put together a splint, and washed her down with a bucket of water. By the next morning, she and her calf had moved on.
The veterinary parade returned to the hospital by noon to discover that Mr Russel Viper was curled up nonchalantly outside the surgery door, in the nook between the bottom step and the large laterite rock. He has been visiting my aunt's plot next door every night for the past few nights, hissing his loud and ominous russell viper hiss. Such a beautiful creature with large black diamonds set against a bright yellow body, and as deadly dangerous as he is beautiful.
Tony and the gang went to work sending all the dogs and cats up the hill into the shelters. When we were visited last year by a cobra and her mate, Candy attacked the female and was rewarded with a bite on the mouth. A long night of antivenom drip did save her life but she was never the same and passed away suddenly ten months later. We didn't want the same thing to happen with a viper, since death is much more quick. Besides, cobras are gentle creatures who will not attacked unprovoked, but a viper is a callous as a wild boar.
Dr Rathod sent for the Green Cross. Fortunately, Arnold was in the vicinity. It took him exactly five seconds to bag the snake, and put it aside, for release later into some other forest. Deby ofcourse rebuked him - are you the guys releasing all your rescued snakes into our forest??
On his way out, Arnold met Lucky at her usual sitting spot. The emaciated abandoned Great Dane has now put on some weight and can stand on all fours for a short while. Arnold immediately contacted a friend who offered to adopt her and give her all the special care she will need to recover fully. Lucky found a good home by that evening.
So all's well that ends well. We don't want any more vipers visiting us, but if they bring along some good samaritans in their wake, then it's not so bad.
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Of letters of resignation [ edit ]
November 24 2005 (09:26:00) ( 3 views )
My artist friend broke the mould. Instead of the standard A4 letter paper with four paragraphs of hypocritical thank-you’s, miss-you’s, it’s-been- great-but-the-future-beckons, and will-always-remember-you’s, he sent in a gold leafed leather bound monogrammed book, with a single entry on the first page,
“The End of a Chapter”.
Then he packed up his bags and left.
If I must receive a resignation letter, I wish the writer would at least make it interesting for me. Something to remember the bloke by, since everything else one would rather forget. Whatever the stated reasons for leaving, and whatever else is said and done as is expected to be said and done, in the final analysis, there is really only one fact. He, or she, left.
June and November are the months. Promotions and increments are given out in April. The disappointed scour the market in May, and the resignations follow in June. It’s so easy to predict who will stay and who will go, and to engineer the whole process. The November post Diwali bonus goodbyes, however, are different – these have the ability to make you sad and reflective. You learn who your fair weather friends were. The ones who hung around just till the money hit the savings bank account.
It’s been more than ten years since I penned a resignation letter of my own, replete with all the expected banalities that, as always, didn’t mean a thing. So unlike me. I may walk out of here someday, just like I walked in. With nothing in writing. I must be the only employee of this great agency who has never signed the compulsory employment agreement.
As I explained to my boss, the Chairman, if it’s written in my heart, that should be good enough for you. And the day it’s erased from my heart, you will know without me having to tell you.
But perhaps I will leave behind a nice symbol, just like Neville did. Or die in this job, whichever comes first. But no resignation letter. Never.
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144/9, Torda [ edit ]
November 15 2005 (08:22:00) ( 2 views )
Ultimately, it’s all about witchcraft and wizadry. Hogwarts cannot have a monopoly on magic. I won’t allow it.
It starts with a nondescript, non-used but fully functioning brass bell, set inside a 4 by 4 hollow square in the front of the left compound wall that was meant to house the giant red dolphin.
(The dolphin being the then mascot of the Goa SPCA, much maligned by all our trustees.
- Benny – “of all the creatures you could have shown as a symbol, why on earth a dolphin, why not dogs and cats and horses and the common cow?”
- Lt Col Nageshkar –“ people think we are fish mongers – when our three wheeler animal carrier passes by with the red dolphin painted on it, they think we are transporting fish” (this one must make my priestly ancestors roll in their polished marble graves – having looked down for centuries at the ‘fisherfolk’ – if you’ve encountered the cacophonous quarrelsome locals of Calangute and Baga, you will sympathise)
- Bharat –“are you sure red is a good colour for a) a hospital, b) a dolphin?”
- Ashley – “it makes us look like a tourist hotel”)
The dolphin that was delivered hours before the inauguration was a flat uninspiring piece of badly cut and poorly painted red steel, so I sent Clem off to buy a bell – “We have to put something in that square – can’t leave it empty, might as well be a bell – it can stand for anything you like, I don’t care, just fill up the square.”
People sometimes clang on the bell for fun. Sometimes to call the vets down the hill. The bell is where the magic begins.
It moves on to Leopoldina. A badam tree sapling we planted on Foundation day, October 4, 2000. Named after a local twenty something senorita who looked longingly at Clem, the Man from the Big City – during the mass. Everyone says hello to everyone in a village that houses 900 people, if that. “Hello, I’m Lynn, this is Clem, what’s your name?” “Leopoldina”. Clem does a double take. Turns out that was Annabelle’s code name when she lived in America while they were dating. Our baby tree is officially named Leopoldina. A clutch of elves live inside her.
(When the construction papers finally got approved we realized that we had miscalculated the whole project by three metres, since that’s how much forward it would have to move up, to make way for potential ‘road widening’. No way I would let Leopoldina and the corner stone be moved, even though they were technically quite out of place. So everything had to make its way around her, the pathway, the vehicles going up and down, the cashew tree above her that now looks down at her with angry frowns since she has grown right up to his lower branches. We celebrate her temerity every year on her birthday, she continues to cast her cheeky spell.)
It moves further up to the office block, that houses the administration, the OPD, and the angels dressed up as vets, nurses and general dogsbodies. Everything is spic and span, including Tixi and Toxi, the two teak trees who rise up from the Torda earth, right through the administration rooms, into the front verandah of my own home above. From time to time, the insects dance around them, and the toadstools pop out at night. In autumn, I turn into a sweeper of falling blossoms and leaves as they shed their clothes faster than an American stripper.
The front wall of the administration building that faces the road was painted over in aquatic blue by two young Warli tribals shipped in by Clem on a bus the night before the inauguration. Animal rescue and treatment scenes depicted by them show a nurse chasing after a bird with a needle and syringe that’s taller than her, among other such expressions of their typical triangular art.
(The addition of over two hundred plants of varying lineage, taken from Mumbai in the Grand Rescue of all Things Living at Gym View for over Twenty Years, (the said Gym View now having been razed to the ground to make way for a dazzling display of diamond gotten wealth) have somewhat hidden the Warli contribution and added a semblance of civilization to the place’s jungle appeal. Palms, ferns and cordelias rub shoulders with jackfruit, cashew and goti, and all blend together beautifully. The only rule being that there are no rules – grow where you grow best and feel happy, darling, ain’t no posh garden manicurists here.)
Up a long laterite flight of steps hugging the right compound wall, past my impossibly sloping backyard, back of my house but front of the shelter. We are now at the fourth floor by city standards, but at the ground floor of my house. At Torda, logic has a magic of its own.
Here lives Noella, nestling among jackfruit, mango, papaya and lemon, all waiting to grow up and bear fruit – hopefully, not long now. I carried her from Mumbai to Goa on my lap in a plane, her graceful young branches tied closely together to keep her trademark spiky Christmas tree leaves from getting hurt. Every year, she sprouts a new row of hexagonally symmetrical branches. This Christmas, her third new row has just starting reaching out to the other trees around her, and the fairies will skip past each row as always when the clock strikes twelve on December 25th, so that a magical star can come down to settle on her forehead.
By now, you are breathless. When you look up, you think, “Oh my God, how much further?” If you have a scruffy little pup by your side, he’s having a party. Hop, skip and jump, here I come. Hey cat, wait till I get you. That’s right. You have just reached the gates to the shelter, where Gingy awaits you with a haughty little meow. Her sisters are sunning themselves on the surgery roof, flat on their backs, paws kneading the air dreamily – you can see them as you go past the roof. Yes you do go past the roof, this is 144/9, Torda, remember?
Before you turn left at the little nookish entrance to the kitchen block, you are greeted by pups of assorted weight and colour, and if she’s not feeling too sleepy, Shalu will step up to say a polite hello too, while Philu will shake her bum ecstatically.
(Philu was named after the girl at the PFA shelter who sentenced her to death. Those were the days when other NGO’s sent us animals to work on since our own vehicle was on down time. Philu, the dog not the girl, had ‘untreatable’ mange. Dr Rathod set to work on his secret potion, made from exotic ingredients available at the local tinto. He calls it the Golden Lotion. Golden Lotion saved Philu from an untimely death, and sowed the seeds of an anti-euthanasia policy that I seft-righteously drew up. Mange is common in salty sandy Goa, and Golden Lotion has now become a household name in Torda – so what if there are only 300 houses?)
If it’s feeding time, they will all ignore you, pointedly. So will the staff. It’s not easy spooning rice and chicken broth into bowls, with cats hovering by the raw fish at your elbow, and pups scraping at your calves. Lucky will not budge however. She can barely stand. An emaciated Great Dane with a genetic hip disorder, she was left here by the Youth Congress General Secretary. Big man, in service of mankind, in abandonment of dogkind. She sits stretched fully across a strategically positioned step. You realise that the winding steps above were made only for the feeble, the rest of us must learn to take the slope of the hill in our stride and our rubber chappals.
The sloping roofed tubular maroon shelters now loom up before us. The inmates are quiet, dry-eyed, in obvious pain – some from the surgery, some from wounds, some from disease. They place their trust and hopes unflinchingly in the hands of the good Dr Rathod. He bows his head, and waves his wand, and they get up and walk.
(For those that don’t, further up the hill is a spot where magic touched my lips six years ago in a kiss that will stay unforgettable. Here lie the remains of Nixon, Jumbo, Bobby, Candy and many others who fought brave battles, played with the gypsies, and are still playing with them somewhere that is not 144/9 Torda, but as close to it as you can get. Ever.)
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Showing 91 to 100 of 107
SmilingDolphin
Posts 81 to 90 of 107
Lynnisms
stray thoughts about stray subjects
Silence speaks.... [ edit ]
May 09 2006 (05:56:00) ( 0 views )
....from many different places.
Fear.
Ignorance.
Confusion.
Contempt.
Arrogance.
Knowledge.
Understanding.
Acceptance.
Sympathy.
Love.
Yes, silence does speak louder than words.
Comments
hi lynn i realllly luv this new layout and the colours are so alive. Very very rocking
Posted by svety on 05/09/2006 02:20:26 PM
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The difference between.... [ edit ]
May 08 2006 (07:56:00) ( 0 views )
....tolerance and acceptance is worth looking into.
Tolerance is a skin deep patronising emotion
that has characterised our civilisation for centuries.
Acceptance begins and ends in a much deeper place.
Comments
absolutely.and the beauty of it is if u truly accept u will never ask "how much".You just accept.Without conditions.Without assumptions & Without regrets. When u tolerate, the first interrogation u have with urself throws up the most limiting question - How much more??
Posted by svety on 05/09/2006 02:28:07 PM
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Birds on the fifth floor [ edit ]
May 01 2006 (08:26:00) ( 2 views )
There are two pine trees at the front of our building who have now grown right up to the topmost seventh floor. We can reach out and play with the branches from the balconies of our fifth floor flat. On the right of our building is a very large cottage with tall trees all around. Nearest my mother's bedroom window is a neem tree. And a little away, a mango tree and the row of ashokas. Nearer my room are a clutch of palms that talk to the the coconut palms of our own building.
Being so close to the higher branches of trees gives one a chance to get acquainted with tree living birds, even in the city. While our pigeons continue to nest in the eaves and the special pots laid out for them in the balconies at the back, the trees have helped us make friends with parrots, bulbuls, wagtails, woodpeckers, and a very special pair of crows, and cuckoos.
There are two pairs of crows that live in the pine trees. One of them built their nest in the branches on the second floor, and from our level, the four blue spotted eggs could be seen clearly. I don't know whether they were all laid by Mrs Crow, or whether Mrs Cuckoo has also done her bit - I think it's the latter because the male koel is always nearby, usually in a branch on the neem tree, from where he sings his coo-cooeee-ooo relentlessly all day long. We saw his wife only a couple of times, a beautiful speckled brown bird in contrast to her mate's glossy black plumage - perhaps that was when she laid her eggs in the crow's nest while her mate distracted them away.
One of the eggs fell off the nest, last week. This morning, I spotted the open red beaks of three nestlings, as their parents fed them breakfast. They appear grey and cute from above - no names yet, just Baby one, Baby two, and Baby three. More on them later in the blog, I suppose. It will be nice to watch them grow, and learn to fly, like we do for our pigeons. Except, in the case of crows, we know we can never reach out and touch them, or help them if they fall out of the nest.
The other pair of crows are almost our pets. Specky is an oldish female who had a large white patch above her left eye. We fed her on banana for a week, and the patch has disappeared. She has now become very friendly, and chats with me every evening, and brazenly asks my mother for her bread and banana breakfast every morning. Her mate is a much younger bird we call Fluffy, because of his funny head - I think he has mites, he always holds it down for her to scratch at with her beak. They make an odd couple, having tried unsuccessfully for the past month to make a nest. They have tied some of the branches near our floor together but just don't seem to realise that the branches higher up are too thin and far apart to make for a stable home. Ah well, they still make a sweet stupid couple, and it's wonderful to watch them kiss and caress each other all day, even if they never get to make any babies.
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What ails the advertising industry? [ edit ]
April 27 2006 (09:34:00) ( 2 views )
Is the industry really ailing? Is it sick, lacking in product and service quality, not making enough money to invest in the future, losing customers, losing talent, degrowing?
Yes and no.
The value of advertising placed in the mass media is growing at 15% plus. This is a healthy growth rate by any standards, and even though some media are moving to revenue models that are more consumer or subscription based, there is no drop in the value perceived by them from advertising revenue, or revenue earned by partnering advertisers in some form or other.
However, when compared with ad spend growth of 15%, the value of income earned by the ad agencies is growing at only 8% or less.Which can only mean that our industry has been slow to develop and transform itself into meeting the needs of our own changing customers.
For an industry that has the capability of leading and mirroring social change in its creative expression, we have been remarkably slow in changing ourselves. On the creative side of the business at least, we seem to have become reactive rather than proactive. Leading to a host of other competing industries who are perfectly capable, if not more so, of doing what we do. Our media partners (in the media houses, tv channls, radio stations etc) for one are arguably much more talented and creative than we are. Ask a media agency today if they prefer to work on innovations with a creative agency or a channel, and more often than not, they will prefer the latter.
Then on the strategy side, more and more advertisers ae turning to their media agencies for strategic recommendations on how to take their communication needs forward, believing that more knowledge about consumers and their interactions and changing relationships with the media reside with these agencies.
We crib that we are not earning enough, that we cannot command the kind of prices we used to for our services, therefore we don’t have enough to invest in our future etc etc, the old chicken and egg. Why should we when we don’t set the gold standard either on quality or business or ethical practice? We are seen as an industry of egos rather than pride in our work. Clients in other fast growing highly profitable industries with rose-coloured futures tell me this all the time – ‘Why don’t you guys compete more professionally like we do? For such a small industry, you seem to have so many industry bodies. Do these facilitate or hinder your growth?’
How can we blame our customers for seeking alternatives? For lowering the value they place on our product?
How much have we really been doing together to build the foundations for a better future versus frittering away our energies on taking business away from each other – business not income? How much do we encourage fresh courageous bold thinking – for ourselves, and for the industry - that will result in a better model for the future even if it temporarily disrupts existing paradigms and income sources? Why do we keep defending the status quo?
The Goafest seems like a good beginning. It seems like a real attempt to bring young people together to re-appreciate the tenets of good advertising. Perhpas it suffers however from still being limited largely to the traditional and to the so-called ‘creative’. And is still reeling from the pressure of egos and counter egos.
If we really want to stem the decay, it will only happen with a sincere change of attitude among the leaders of our industry. Instilling real and honest pride in our work and our profession and doing everything we can to make that happen at every level juniormost to seniormost, that and not pitch fees, is the deeper solution we are all seeking.
(Text of speech made at the IBF sponsored Advertising Business Conclave in Goa on 28th April)
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WHY I LIKE TO READ THE HINDUSTAN TIMES [ edit ]
April 20 2006 (07:21:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in DNA Brand Finale on April 27, 2005)
We subscribe to two morning newspapers at home, the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. The Times of course comes with the tabloid, Mirror. For about a month, a few months ago, we also used to receive the DNA, now that there is a Rs 199 a year offer, I will start subscribing to this paper too.
So like many upmarket homes in Mumbai, the newspaper boy has quite a heavy load to lug around. Every morning, I pick up the pile at my front door, while on my way out to walk Gemma, and almost collapse under its weight. After breakfast, I dip into the pile and reach for the Hindustan Times.
Why?
Because my newspaper boy places it on the outside and wraps all the other papers inside. So I see the headlines and the masthead of the Hindustan Times first. And they are always boldly, simply, and clearly laid out, with just the right amount of visual, and the right amount of colour, and nothing flashy or ‘clever’ to take away from the focus of the key message. It’s also easier for me to extract this paper from the rest since it’s on the outside. A simple ploy – I wonder if it’s been planned.
Because the paper looks a lot a whiter than the others. I am told they use better newsprint. Somehow I feel that the ink won’t come off onto my hands and it’s hard to explain – this is consumer speak – but it just feels so ….clean…and white. That, in an odd way, has an effect on the contents – it makes me feel that the news I read will also be clean and truthful and wholesome and won’t insult my intelligence.
Why I like to read the Hindustan Times therefore has little to do with ‘positioning’ and ‘appeal’ and ‘coverage’ – consumers often have inexplicable reasons for doing what they do that we marketers tend to ignore. I read HT because it’s on top and it’s white. In a strange and real way, that means a lot. Go figure.
(submitted to DNA today for my column in Brand Finale, but I am not sure if they will accept it)
April 27th update : it has appeared today - in colour, on the pink pages! Wonders never cease, they had told me they weren't carrying it, so I was going to lose a Rs1000 bet with Premjeet. Well, my admiration for them has certainly gone up, plus it's nice to be 1000 bucks richer.
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Health is wealth [ edit ]
April 04 2006 (12:55:00) ( 2 views )
Last week was full of lessons. The increment, performance awards, and spot bonus letters were issued with a calm and quiet efficiency that disguised the contents of most of the letters, which had people exploding with joy all over India. Beer and biryani parties, trainees throwing treats, the mood has been rather good.
Recognition of hard work, and team over individual contributions, gave rise to a spirit of bonhomie that made my heart swell with joy and pride and the satisfaction of knowing that human nature is always happier sharing, however competitive the times may be. There are some who believe that performance awards must be given only to 'stars' - however I am blessed with a team that is humble enough to understand that the only real stars are those who can see the light in every single member of the team and help him or her bring out the best that he or she can be. So everyone shared in the spoils, Asterix style, including Cacophonix.
For myself, I would trade in my bonus for a return to perfect health, any day. They say you value something only after you lose it. Once I was lean, fit, muscular, with the strength and stamina of men twice my size. I could outplay them and outsmart them, and with my soft voice I made presentations and speeches that were remembered for years after. Then one day the surgeons sliced off a major portion of an important gland in order to save the rest of me. Now I cannot speak in public, and struggle to get past each day after sundown. Last week's continuous bouts of shivers in the evenings, coupled with unstoppable diarrhoea, drained my spirit more than my body. Thank God for the letters, seeing everyone so happy made it better. Who knows, maybe all the cells and organs in our bodies know that they must work as a team too - that's what keeps us alive and productive, no matter what.
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AN ARMY OF ANTS [ edit ]
March 14 2006 (13:04:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in Campaign UK in March 2006)
There is an optimistic buoyancy in the air. It weaves through the endless traffic jams, dug up roads, and construction chaos in our cities like an army of ants, moving relentlessly and tirelessly forward. Nothing can hold it back. Bomb blasts, earthquakes, tidal waves and thunderstorms are but minor blips to be endured and brushed aside. A bright future beckons, calling Indians all over the world, in her cities, her villages and her diaspora, to come and contribute in its making and participate in the takings.
The media and entertainment industry has already transformed itself in the past ten years. And will do so again twice over in the next ten months. Already the value of advertising and promotional inventory used by this industry exceeds that of all the FMCG players put together, making it the top most advertised category in the country. The best minds and talent from marketing, communication and advertising companies are being drawn to this sector, fascinated by its growth prospects, its high energy and creativity levels, the challenges of building the new while competing effectively against the old, and of course the attractive pay packets made possible by bullish foreign and Indian investors in this sector.
A sprinkling of private FM radio in nine cities gave a big boost to this ailing medium six years ago, doubling the reach of the medium within a couple of years. Imagine what the recently awarded 330 new FM radio licenses spread all over the country, bagged by 29 large players, some with internationally proven capabilities, will do to its popularity.
India has gone cellular faster than the West. 70 million users of mobile phones, scattered across the length and breadth of our country, living in remote villages and metropolitan multistoreyed towers, present a mindboggling marketing and communication opportunity.
The USD 4300 million television industry is set to touch a high of USD 9500 million by 2010, making it the largest medium by then, overtaking even print. Direct –to-home television is already here, but the big stakes are around the corner in mid 2006, when the Tata-Sky bouquet is launched. The world’s largest ‘reality show’, test and one-day International cricket, has recently made the Indian Cricket Board (the BCCI) the richest sports board in the world. With over 300 cable and satellite channels beaming overhead, competition is stiff, and new special interest genres in news, kidstuff, infotainment and so on are launched every quarter, driving the viewership share of general interest channel down from 98% to 68% in the past three years.
The regional local language print players have arguably been the most successful in recent years. Rapid increases in the number of editions, grassroot marketing, highly localized appeal coupled with statewide macro cost efficiencies have enabled India to produce the newspaper with the highest daily readership in the world – the 150 year old Dainik Jagran, published from over 30 centres in the Hindi belt now has an NRS readership of over 20 million per day. Success stories like these can be found in almost every state and regional language.
A youthful India, still grounded in traditional family values, has never had it so good. While the materialism of the West has enabled us to look ahead and aspire for a better life, centuries of ingrained tolerance have taught us to keep our feet on the ground. Even as George Bush promises to increase the number of H1B visas to the US, a reverse brain drain has been set in motion with Indian BPO’s outsourcing services as widely diversified as medical transcriptions to data analytics to advertising copy to the world.
The army of ants marches on. Maybe it will swallow up the elephant sooner than we think.
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501, Valentine [ edit ]
February 12 2006 (13:46:00) ( 2 views )
When we moved into 501, Valentine, there was something beyond welcoming in the place. Besides being roomy and airy with a good view all around, there was an air of peace and tranquillity within the house that appeared to have its roots in more than just being five floors above the noises of the traffic downstairs, the traffic itself being very little in this one-way sleepy little lane. The plants we brought with us also began to thrive early despite the transfer of homes.
We discovered what it was when the Society Chairman visited us on Christmas day. For two years, he told us, a Hindu Sant by the name of Sudarshan Maharaj, stayed in the apartment and held darshans every day. More than 100 people came daily to listen to his discourses in our large sitting room, and the entire building used to be decorated 'like a bride' while people streamed past the lane into its lobby. His pujas were conducted in the niche where we have kept an antique cabinet, and coincidentally placed a copper Ganeshji on the wall next to it.
Sudarshan Maharaj still appears on Aastha TV, every morning. Besides being a guru with thousands of devotees from all over the world, he also happens to be an environmentalist, who supports the works of the Animal Welfare Board of India, and tree conservation. Talk about coincidences.
The parish priest who came to bless the apartment soon after we moved in, on my father's birthday, also remarked that there was a special feeling about the place, like the presence of God was more evident than usual. Considering that none of us, or our dogs, are particularly devout people, though we are god-fearing christians, it felt nice to be told so!
Obviously, all the prayers that were said in these rooms, have left their mark on the place. And the nature worshipper in the Sant called out to the nature worshippers in ourselves, since we came upon the place quite unexpectedly, and moved in the very next day.
We will not be at Valentine though, on Valentine's Day this year. It's a little sad that the apartment will be closed, and perhaps it will miss us a little. We will miss it too. Next Sunday is not too far off, when we will be driving back to Mumbai. Ah well, but my own valentine is still in Torda, and always will be.
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Dixie.... [ edit ]
January 30 2006 (12:03:00) ( 2 views )
....lives. Her outrageously swollen face and neck have shrunk back to normal, and her breathing, noisy and laboured from the inflammation exerting pressure on her windpipes, is also nicely hummy and regular. She is eating and running about with her sons, and other than an internal mouth bleed which will take a few more days to cease, it's hard to say that this seven year old dog bravely fought against a deadly Russel's viper just eight nights ago so that it wouldn't attack her family. Mothers everywhere have one thing in common, don't they?
We first met her in an almost comatose state when her owner and his sons came pounding at our gates at 1 am last Friday night, crying out for help. His dogs had been attacked by a viper at 11.30 pm at the top on the NH17 outside his house near Damien da Goa. Their search for a vet had yielded no results for over an hour, till they were directed to our hospital. I phoned Dr Rathod and Rajaram, who lives with him, and we spent the next one hour injecting anti histamines, saline and the anit-venom. An hour later, one of the owner's sons came back with another dog, one of Dixie's sons who had also been bitten by the viper, though the punishment was not as severe as Dixie's, but an eyelid was painfully red and swollen. Then another hour went by and the third dog, Dixie's other son, was also lying on the table. By 5 am we had treated three dogs for viper bite, usually 100% fatal. By 9 am the next morning, the boys were ready to go home. Dixie was still not out of danger. By 6 pm, she was walking around and sent home with her presciption.
The next night at 9.30 pm, she was back again, her head as swollen as a large pumpkin, unable to walk or breathe. The owners had not given her the medicines as directed. After another series of injections and drips, we showed them how to syringe feed the medicines and sent her home with a chuckle and a prayer. After the treatment, she had jumped down from the table, wagged her tail cheerfully and trotted down the steps. Her courageous spirit was written all over her ridiculous looking face, her eyes peeping out from behind swollen cheeks and forehead. What a spunky little girl - not afraid of vipers, she was hardly likely to let its bite and deadly poison get her down.
She hasn't been back since, but her owners phoned to say that they have their old Dixie back again. The old man had tears of gratitude in his eyes when he left with her, I am sure his love for her has grown even more now that he has seen what a tremendously brave soul she is.
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Lost and found [ edit ]
January 20 2006 (05:30:00) ( 2 views )
Here in Torda, with a week behind me and four weeks ahead, it's easy to hear one's innermost thoughts. The clarity of the forest air penetrates deep into one's being, and answers to questions that don't even rise to the surface in the city come to one effortlessly and naturally. Acceptance of the inevitable is as normal as breathing. Fighting, resisting, arguing, the futility of all these becomes more obvious. I want less and need less. It's just enough to be among the plants, the animals and the birds in this peaceful little haven of mine, and it's nicer now that my family is with me. Being connected to life in the city through the television and the internet is a good thing because perspective is always important, and I cannot forget that that too is a part of me - a big part of me. My two lives are so different, but without this diversity I would not find the harmony. My only regret is that I cannot share either of these with the only person in the world I know who would understand and enjoy them completely, but that too adds to the naturalness of things - nature gives you what you deserve, anything more would amount to exploitation.
The words of a poem that I have loved for a long time are even more appropriate to me today - to anyone reading this blog, I hope they bring meaning and comfort to you too.
Lost.
David Wagoner, 1934
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen, it answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or branch does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Comments
Hi Lynn, I came across your interview at http://www.indiantelevision.com/y2k6/eflyer/itv_yrend_flyer6.htm and wondered if you had a Goan link! Then, Google took me to Torda, SPCA, etc. I've often passed by your place, during my cycle rides, etc, and wondered who had set it up! By the way, I'm a journo based in Goa itself. We have a network called Goanet (www.goanet.org) which is a mailing list, now 11 years old, and subscribed to be some 8000 people. Wholly not-for-profit. Do check it out. We would like to support your animal-rights cause, as we believe in building social capital. Could you please look at http://fngoa.blogspot.com/ and http://indiadocu.blogspot.com/ Frederick "FN" Noronha.
Posted by Frederick "FN" Noronha on 01/22/2006 04:40:21 PM
Dear Frederick, I have visited your blogs. Thank you for the interest in our work, please do visit our shelter at any time, we are open from 8 am to 8 pm, call Dr Rathod at 2416180. Regards, Lynn
Posted by lynnisms on 01/27/2006 05:39:07 AM
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Showing 81 to 90 of 107
stray thoughts about stray subjects
Silence speaks.... [ edit ]
May 09 2006 (05:56:00) ( 0 views )
....from many different places.
Fear.
Ignorance.
Confusion.
Contempt.
Arrogance.
Knowledge.
Understanding.
Acceptance.
Sympathy.
Love.
Yes, silence does speak louder than words.
Comments
hi lynn i realllly luv this new layout and the colours are so alive. Very very rocking
Posted by svety on 05/09/2006 02:20:26 PM
(0) Comments | Post Comment
The difference between.... [ edit ]
May 08 2006 (07:56:00) ( 0 views )
....tolerance and acceptance is worth looking into.
Tolerance is a skin deep patronising emotion
that has characterised our civilisation for centuries.
Acceptance begins and ends in a much deeper place.
Comments
absolutely.and the beauty of it is if u truly accept u will never ask "how much".You just accept.Without conditions.Without assumptions & Without regrets. When u tolerate, the first interrogation u have with urself throws up the most limiting question - How much more??
Posted by svety on 05/09/2006 02:28:07 PM
(0) Comments | Post Comment
Birds on the fifth floor [ edit ]
May 01 2006 (08:26:00) ( 2 views )
There are two pine trees at the front of our building who have now grown right up to the topmost seventh floor. We can reach out and play with the branches from the balconies of our fifth floor flat. On the right of our building is a very large cottage with tall trees all around. Nearest my mother's bedroom window is a neem tree. And a little away, a mango tree and the row of ashokas. Nearer my room are a clutch of palms that talk to the the coconut palms of our own building.
Being so close to the higher branches of trees gives one a chance to get acquainted with tree living birds, even in the city. While our pigeons continue to nest in the eaves and the special pots laid out for them in the balconies at the back, the trees have helped us make friends with parrots, bulbuls, wagtails, woodpeckers, and a very special pair of crows, and cuckoos.
There are two pairs of crows that live in the pine trees. One of them built their nest in the branches on the second floor, and from our level, the four blue spotted eggs could be seen clearly. I don't know whether they were all laid by Mrs Crow, or whether Mrs Cuckoo has also done her bit - I think it's the latter because the male koel is always nearby, usually in a branch on the neem tree, from where he sings his coo-cooeee-ooo relentlessly all day long. We saw his wife only a couple of times, a beautiful speckled brown bird in contrast to her mate's glossy black plumage - perhaps that was when she laid her eggs in the crow's nest while her mate distracted them away.
One of the eggs fell off the nest, last week. This morning, I spotted the open red beaks of three nestlings, as their parents fed them breakfast. They appear grey and cute from above - no names yet, just Baby one, Baby two, and Baby three. More on them later in the blog, I suppose. It will be nice to watch them grow, and learn to fly, like we do for our pigeons. Except, in the case of crows, we know we can never reach out and touch them, or help them if they fall out of the nest.
The other pair of crows are almost our pets. Specky is an oldish female who had a large white patch above her left eye. We fed her on banana for a week, and the patch has disappeared. She has now become very friendly, and chats with me every evening, and brazenly asks my mother for her bread and banana breakfast every morning. Her mate is a much younger bird we call Fluffy, because of his funny head - I think he has mites, he always holds it down for her to scratch at with her beak. They make an odd couple, having tried unsuccessfully for the past month to make a nest. They have tied some of the branches near our floor together but just don't seem to realise that the branches higher up are too thin and far apart to make for a stable home. Ah well, they still make a sweet stupid couple, and it's wonderful to watch them kiss and caress each other all day, even if they never get to make any babies.
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What ails the advertising industry? [ edit ]
April 27 2006 (09:34:00) ( 2 views )
Is the industry really ailing? Is it sick, lacking in product and service quality, not making enough money to invest in the future, losing customers, losing talent, degrowing?
Yes and no.
The value of advertising placed in the mass media is growing at 15% plus. This is a healthy growth rate by any standards, and even though some media are moving to revenue models that are more consumer or subscription based, there is no drop in the value perceived by them from advertising revenue, or revenue earned by partnering advertisers in some form or other.
However, when compared with ad spend growth of 15%, the value of income earned by the ad agencies is growing at only 8% or less.Which can only mean that our industry has been slow to develop and transform itself into meeting the needs of our own changing customers.
For an industry that has the capability of leading and mirroring social change in its creative expression, we have been remarkably slow in changing ourselves. On the creative side of the business at least, we seem to have become reactive rather than proactive. Leading to a host of other competing industries who are perfectly capable, if not more so, of doing what we do. Our media partners (in the media houses, tv channls, radio stations etc) for one are arguably much more talented and creative than we are. Ask a media agency today if they prefer to work on innovations with a creative agency or a channel, and more often than not, they will prefer the latter.
Then on the strategy side, more and more advertisers ae turning to their media agencies for strategic recommendations on how to take their communication needs forward, believing that more knowledge about consumers and their interactions and changing relationships with the media reside with these agencies.
We crib that we are not earning enough, that we cannot command the kind of prices we used to for our services, therefore we don’t have enough to invest in our future etc etc, the old chicken and egg. Why should we when we don’t set the gold standard either on quality or business or ethical practice? We are seen as an industry of egos rather than pride in our work. Clients in other fast growing highly profitable industries with rose-coloured futures tell me this all the time – ‘Why don’t you guys compete more professionally like we do? For such a small industry, you seem to have so many industry bodies. Do these facilitate or hinder your growth?’
How can we blame our customers for seeking alternatives? For lowering the value they place on our product?
How much have we really been doing together to build the foundations for a better future versus frittering away our energies on taking business away from each other – business not income? How much do we encourage fresh courageous bold thinking – for ourselves, and for the industry - that will result in a better model for the future even if it temporarily disrupts existing paradigms and income sources? Why do we keep defending the status quo?
The Goafest seems like a good beginning. It seems like a real attempt to bring young people together to re-appreciate the tenets of good advertising. Perhpas it suffers however from still being limited largely to the traditional and to the so-called ‘creative’. And is still reeling from the pressure of egos and counter egos.
If we really want to stem the decay, it will only happen with a sincere change of attitude among the leaders of our industry. Instilling real and honest pride in our work and our profession and doing everything we can to make that happen at every level juniormost to seniormost, that and not pitch fees, is the deeper solution we are all seeking.
(Text of speech made at the IBF sponsored Advertising Business Conclave in Goa on 28th April)
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WHY I LIKE TO READ THE HINDUSTAN TIMES [ edit ]
April 20 2006 (07:21:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in DNA Brand Finale on April 27, 2005)
We subscribe to two morning newspapers at home, the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. The Times of course comes with the tabloid, Mirror. For about a month, a few months ago, we also used to receive the DNA, now that there is a Rs 199 a year offer, I will start subscribing to this paper too.
So like many upmarket homes in Mumbai, the newspaper boy has quite a heavy load to lug around. Every morning, I pick up the pile at my front door, while on my way out to walk Gemma, and almost collapse under its weight. After breakfast, I dip into the pile and reach for the Hindustan Times.
Why?
Because my newspaper boy places it on the outside and wraps all the other papers inside. So I see the headlines and the masthead of the Hindustan Times first. And they are always boldly, simply, and clearly laid out, with just the right amount of visual, and the right amount of colour, and nothing flashy or ‘clever’ to take away from the focus of the key message. It’s also easier for me to extract this paper from the rest since it’s on the outside. A simple ploy – I wonder if it’s been planned.
Because the paper looks a lot a whiter than the others. I am told they use better newsprint. Somehow I feel that the ink won’t come off onto my hands and it’s hard to explain – this is consumer speak – but it just feels so ….clean…and white. That, in an odd way, has an effect on the contents – it makes me feel that the news I read will also be clean and truthful and wholesome and won’t insult my intelligence.
Why I like to read the Hindustan Times therefore has little to do with ‘positioning’ and ‘appeal’ and ‘coverage’ – consumers often have inexplicable reasons for doing what they do that we marketers tend to ignore. I read HT because it’s on top and it’s white. In a strange and real way, that means a lot. Go figure.
(submitted to DNA today for my column in Brand Finale, but I am not sure if they will accept it)
April 27th update : it has appeared today - in colour, on the pink pages! Wonders never cease, they had told me they weren't carrying it, so I was going to lose a Rs1000 bet with Premjeet. Well, my admiration for them has certainly gone up, plus it's nice to be 1000 bucks richer.
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Health is wealth [ edit ]
April 04 2006 (12:55:00) ( 2 views )
Last week was full of lessons. The increment, performance awards, and spot bonus letters were issued with a calm and quiet efficiency that disguised the contents of most of the letters, which had people exploding with joy all over India. Beer and biryani parties, trainees throwing treats, the mood has been rather good.
Recognition of hard work, and team over individual contributions, gave rise to a spirit of bonhomie that made my heart swell with joy and pride and the satisfaction of knowing that human nature is always happier sharing, however competitive the times may be. There are some who believe that performance awards must be given only to 'stars' - however I am blessed with a team that is humble enough to understand that the only real stars are those who can see the light in every single member of the team and help him or her bring out the best that he or she can be. So everyone shared in the spoils, Asterix style, including Cacophonix.
For myself, I would trade in my bonus for a return to perfect health, any day. They say you value something only after you lose it. Once I was lean, fit, muscular, with the strength and stamina of men twice my size. I could outplay them and outsmart them, and with my soft voice I made presentations and speeches that were remembered for years after. Then one day the surgeons sliced off a major portion of an important gland in order to save the rest of me. Now I cannot speak in public, and struggle to get past each day after sundown. Last week's continuous bouts of shivers in the evenings, coupled with unstoppable diarrhoea, drained my spirit more than my body. Thank God for the letters, seeing everyone so happy made it better. Who knows, maybe all the cells and organs in our bodies know that they must work as a team too - that's what keeps us alive and productive, no matter what.
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AN ARMY OF ANTS [ edit ]
March 14 2006 (13:04:00) ( 2 views )
(Published in Campaign UK in March 2006)
There is an optimistic buoyancy in the air. It weaves through the endless traffic jams, dug up roads, and construction chaos in our cities like an army of ants, moving relentlessly and tirelessly forward. Nothing can hold it back. Bomb blasts, earthquakes, tidal waves and thunderstorms are but minor blips to be endured and brushed aside. A bright future beckons, calling Indians all over the world, in her cities, her villages and her diaspora, to come and contribute in its making and participate in the takings.
The media and entertainment industry has already transformed itself in the past ten years. And will do so again twice over in the next ten months. Already the value of advertising and promotional inventory used by this industry exceeds that of all the FMCG players put together, making it the top most advertised category in the country. The best minds and talent from marketing, communication and advertising companies are being drawn to this sector, fascinated by its growth prospects, its high energy and creativity levels, the challenges of building the new while competing effectively against the old, and of course the attractive pay packets made possible by bullish foreign and Indian investors in this sector.
A sprinkling of private FM radio in nine cities gave a big boost to this ailing medium six years ago, doubling the reach of the medium within a couple of years. Imagine what the recently awarded 330 new FM radio licenses spread all over the country, bagged by 29 large players, some with internationally proven capabilities, will do to its popularity.
India has gone cellular faster than the West. 70 million users of mobile phones, scattered across the length and breadth of our country, living in remote villages and metropolitan multistoreyed towers, present a mindboggling marketing and communication opportunity.
The USD 4300 million television industry is set to touch a high of USD 9500 million by 2010, making it the largest medium by then, overtaking even print. Direct –to-home television is already here, but the big stakes are around the corner in mid 2006, when the Tata-Sky bouquet is launched. The world’s largest ‘reality show’, test and one-day International cricket, has recently made the Indian Cricket Board (the BCCI) the richest sports board in the world. With over 300 cable and satellite channels beaming overhead, competition is stiff, and new special interest genres in news, kidstuff, infotainment and so on are launched every quarter, driving the viewership share of general interest channel down from 98% to 68% in the past three years.
The regional local language print players have arguably been the most successful in recent years. Rapid increases in the number of editions, grassroot marketing, highly localized appeal coupled with statewide macro cost efficiencies have enabled India to produce the newspaper with the highest daily readership in the world – the 150 year old Dainik Jagran, published from over 30 centres in the Hindi belt now has an NRS readership of over 20 million per day. Success stories like these can be found in almost every state and regional language.
A youthful India, still grounded in traditional family values, has never had it so good. While the materialism of the West has enabled us to look ahead and aspire for a better life, centuries of ingrained tolerance have taught us to keep our feet on the ground. Even as George Bush promises to increase the number of H1B visas to the US, a reverse brain drain has been set in motion with Indian BPO’s outsourcing services as widely diversified as medical transcriptions to data analytics to advertising copy to the world.
The army of ants marches on. Maybe it will swallow up the elephant sooner than we think.
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501, Valentine [ edit ]
February 12 2006 (13:46:00) ( 2 views )
When we moved into 501, Valentine, there was something beyond welcoming in the place. Besides being roomy and airy with a good view all around, there was an air of peace and tranquillity within the house that appeared to have its roots in more than just being five floors above the noises of the traffic downstairs, the traffic itself being very little in this one-way sleepy little lane. The plants we brought with us also began to thrive early despite the transfer of homes.
We discovered what it was when the Society Chairman visited us on Christmas day. For two years, he told us, a Hindu Sant by the name of Sudarshan Maharaj, stayed in the apartment and held darshans every day. More than 100 people came daily to listen to his discourses in our large sitting room, and the entire building used to be decorated 'like a bride' while people streamed past the lane into its lobby. His pujas were conducted in the niche where we have kept an antique cabinet, and coincidentally placed a copper Ganeshji on the wall next to it.
Sudarshan Maharaj still appears on Aastha TV, every morning. Besides being a guru with thousands of devotees from all over the world, he also happens to be an environmentalist, who supports the works of the Animal Welfare Board of India, and tree conservation. Talk about coincidences.
The parish priest who came to bless the apartment soon after we moved in, on my father's birthday, also remarked that there was a special feeling about the place, like the presence of God was more evident than usual. Considering that none of us, or our dogs, are particularly devout people, though we are god-fearing christians, it felt nice to be told so!
Obviously, all the prayers that were said in these rooms, have left their mark on the place. And the nature worshipper in the Sant called out to the nature worshippers in ourselves, since we came upon the place quite unexpectedly, and moved in the very next day.
We will not be at Valentine though, on Valentine's Day this year. It's a little sad that the apartment will be closed, and perhaps it will miss us a little. We will miss it too. Next Sunday is not too far off, when we will be driving back to Mumbai. Ah well, but my own valentine is still in Torda, and always will be.
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Dixie.... [ edit ]
January 30 2006 (12:03:00) ( 2 views )
....lives. Her outrageously swollen face and neck have shrunk back to normal, and her breathing, noisy and laboured from the inflammation exerting pressure on her windpipes, is also nicely hummy and regular. She is eating and running about with her sons, and other than an internal mouth bleed which will take a few more days to cease, it's hard to say that this seven year old dog bravely fought against a deadly Russel's viper just eight nights ago so that it wouldn't attack her family. Mothers everywhere have one thing in common, don't they?
We first met her in an almost comatose state when her owner and his sons came pounding at our gates at 1 am last Friday night, crying out for help. His dogs had been attacked by a viper at 11.30 pm at the top on the NH17 outside his house near Damien da Goa. Their search for a vet had yielded no results for over an hour, till they were directed to our hospital. I phoned Dr Rathod and Rajaram, who lives with him, and we spent the next one hour injecting anti histamines, saline and the anit-venom. An hour later, one of the owner's sons came back with another dog, one of Dixie's sons who had also been bitten by the viper, though the punishment was not as severe as Dixie's, but an eyelid was painfully red and swollen. Then another hour went by and the third dog, Dixie's other son, was also lying on the table. By 5 am we had treated three dogs for viper bite, usually 100% fatal. By 9 am the next morning, the boys were ready to go home. Dixie was still not out of danger. By 6 pm, she was walking around and sent home with her presciption.
The next night at 9.30 pm, she was back again, her head as swollen as a large pumpkin, unable to walk or breathe. The owners had not given her the medicines as directed. After another series of injections and drips, we showed them how to syringe feed the medicines and sent her home with a chuckle and a prayer. After the treatment, she had jumped down from the table, wagged her tail cheerfully and trotted down the steps. Her courageous spirit was written all over her ridiculous looking face, her eyes peeping out from behind swollen cheeks and forehead. What a spunky little girl - not afraid of vipers, she was hardly likely to let its bite and deadly poison get her down.
She hasn't been back since, but her owners phoned to say that they have their old Dixie back again. The old man had tears of gratitude in his eyes when he left with her, I am sure his love for her has grown even more now that he has seen what a tremendously brave soul she is.
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Lost and found [ edit ]
January 20 2006 (05:30:00) ( 2 views )
Here in Torda, with a week behind me and four weeks ahead, it's easy to hear one's innermost thoughts. The clarity of the forest air penetrates deep into one's being, and answers to questions that don't even rise to the surface in the city come to one effortlessly and naturally. Acceptance of the inevitable is as normal as breathing. Fighting, resisting, arguing, the futility of all these becomes more obvious. I want less and need less. It's just enough to be among the plants, the animals and the birds in this peaceful little haven of mine, and it's nicer now that my family is with me. Being connected to life in the city through the television and the internet is a good thing because perspective is always important, and I cannot forget that that too is a part of me - a big part of me. My two lives are so different, but without this diversity I would not find the harmony. My only regret is that I cannot share either of these with the only person in the world I know who would understand and enjoy them completely, but that too adds to the naturalness of things - nature gives you what you deserve, anything more would amount to exploitation.
The words of a poem that I have loved for a long time are even more appropriate to me today - to anyone reading this blog, I hope they bring meaning and comfort to you too.
Lost.
David Wagoner, 1934
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen, it answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or branch does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Comments
Hi Lynn, I came across your interview at http://www.indiantelevision.com/y2k6/eflyer/itv_yrend_flyer6.htm and wondered if you had a Goan link! Then, Google took me to Torda, SPCA, etc. I've often passed by your place, during my cycle rides, etc, and wondered who had set it up! By the way, I'm a journo based in Goa itself. We have a network called Goanet (www.goanet.org) which is a mailing list, now 11 years old, and subscribed to be some 8000 people. Wholly not-for-profit. Do check it out. We would like to support your animal-rights cause, as we believe in building social capital. Could you please look at http://fngoa.blogspot.com/ and http://indiadocu.blogspot.com/ Frederick "FN" Noronha.
Posted by Frederick "FN" Noronha on 01/22/2006 04:40:21 PM
Dear Frederick, I have visited your blogs. Thank you for the interest in our work, please do visit our shelter at any time, we are open from 8 am to 8 pm, call Dr Rathod at 2416180. Regards, Lynn
Posted by lynnisms on 01/27/2006 05:39:07 AM
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Showing 81 to 90 of 107
Posts 71 to 80 of 107
Lynnisms
stray thoughts about stray subjects
An evening to remember [ edit ]
May 31 2006 (05:59:00) ( 2 views )
Four good things happened.
One, I learned that the medicines are working and there is no need for another surgery. Guess I knew that anyway, when I was able to make an intense half hour presentation at a pitch a couple of weeks ago, with no difficulty at all, and that too after just three hours of sleep. Someone somewhere is praying for me, and I think I know who it is - thank you.
Two, I learned that the WSPA membership for the Goa SPCA has been accepted officially, and the papers are in the post. Now I can seriously look forward to attending the WSPA symposium in London next week.
Three, we saw a good film. Fanaa is a simple filmi story of slightly farfetched love. Aamir has always been my favourite Indian actor by far, and not just because we once played tennis together a lot. He is incapable of the hamming that Shahrook often slips into - in this film, his transition from an arrogant womaniser to a self loathing terrorist was effortlessly done, the histrionics restrained and yet so moving. Kajol was good too. Gujarat is being stupid. There was a quality to Aamir's acting in this film, especially in the second half, that could only have come from personal experience - that's life - from everything not so good, some good must come. Delhi also came through very well, much more romantic than Kashmir (Poland?), but then Delhi has always had that quality. The only downside - playing the soundtrack of Lata's Lag Ja Gale at two moments in the film - it brought back sad memories of an sms I received referring to this track six years ago, but then again, from everything not so good, some good will come.
When we stepped out of Globus, it was raining, the season's first downpour - a medium drizzle with thunderclaps and lightening, that intensified as the night went on. It's the most beautiful day of the year today - weatherwise. And in some other ways too. Aamir looked his most beautiful when he emoted the deepest sadness. Yes, yesterday was an evening to remember, and today is very beautiful.
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Brand Equity [ edit ]
May 25 2006 (06:17:00) ( 3 views )
The 'thought for the day' put up outside Mahim Church and Portuguese Church are truly inspirational. I found today's thought at Mahim church particularly apt. It simply said, "We see the world not as it is, but as we are". What a wonderful way to describe the difference between reality and perception.
We work almost entirely in the perception business. We spend a great deal of time trying to make reality more palatable, often even manipulating it around so that the resultant perception is sometimes far removed from reality, and yet more easily believed.
The Brand Equity Agency Rankings were out yesterday. It’s an annual exercise that places the masters of make-believe at the receiving end for a change. It’s an eagerly awaited perception study conducted among those who interact with us – our clients, our competitors, potential employees and, this year, media owners too.
It’s always full of surprises – this year was no exception. I know that we did well, and I did well. However, so many people on the 'influential' list were much higher than I would place them, and then again, so many much lower. Some agencies seemed to be too high up, some too low down. Maybe the inclusion of media owners in the sample respondents, and the upweighting in Delhi had something to do with it. Who can say? After all, we see the world not as it is, but as we are.
At the end of the day, there is really only one measure, isn't there? And that's your own. If my world is what I am and not what it really is, then why bother with what others think of me? Extend that thought to the company, the community and the country. It's a good thought. We should believe in ourselves, our intentions and our work, and not care what any one else thinks, unless they are people very close to us. The Brand Equity rankings may be a good yardstick, but not one that any agency or individual should measure itself or himself or herself by. For that, the mirror in the morning is a little bit better. (0) Comments | Post Comment
Marriage [ edit ]
May 24 2006 (09:56:00) ( 2 views )
Dr Rathod got married at 12.20 pm today in his native village of Akalkot, 8 hours from Mumbai and 12 hours from Goa. His bride is a college going girl called Sudha whom he met a few weeks ago for the first time, and had a few short meetings with. He left the decision about who he would spend the rest of his life with entirely to his parents.
In this day and age, the fact that a mature post graduate veterinarian who has lived away from his family for several years could base the most important decision of his life on tradition, was something I really wondered about. But then I look at so many other marriages I know of, where love came in a rush and flew out with a whimper, where people who knew each other for decades suddenly discovered they didn't know each other at all, where families that couldn't get along later worked it out, that all one can really say is - who can say what life holds out for you?
Dr Rathod is a kind and compassionate man - he may not possess much by way of wealth and style, but he is a man of substance and perhaps his is the kind of marriage that will truly stand the test of time, and not just for showing to the outside world. The important thing is to know and be who you are and not to pretend to be something you're not - in any relationship, at any point in one's life.
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Of poetry, personality tests and unlikely pets [ edit ]
May 23 2006 (05:02:00) ( 2 views )
Svety has clarified that the poem she posted on my blog wasn't her own, but something she read somewhere and liked a lot - anyway, it was a great gift since I liked the words too. If you want to read some of her own poetry, visit her blog - svety.blogspot.com.
Meanwhile, when blog jumping on the weekend, I came across a reference to a great personality testing site called personaldna.com. Definitely the best I've attempted so far - with three and four dimensional aspects to the testing, using simple graphics that can easily be applied to survey questionnaires in other areas too. Crisply worded results, some simple good advice at the end, and a creatively expressed summary in the form of a DNA strip.
In this company, we use the MBTI profiles to recruit employees and students for the postgraduate programs. INFP for creative, ESTJ for servicing and media. Which is bit off since the media boss herself (me!) is INFJ. We should definitely look at this alternative, which is easier to administer, easier to fill up, and probably easier to fix if a job is on the line - but that last bit can be managed I guess.
For what it's worth, here are the results of my test, which should guide you to taking your own on the site (and yes, they do ask you to recommend it thereafter on riff.com).
On the subject of unlikely pets, Specky and Fluffy have started strolling into our house in their quest for food and water, since the eggs came along. Today they were presented with a small share of Pixie's boiled egg. Usually, Specky stays put in the nest, while Fluffy fills up his crop then goes over to feed her - what a caring husband indeed! We don't mind the visits as long as Gemma doesn't.
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Svety's Poem [ edit ]
May 22 2006 (05:00:00) ( 2 views )
Svetleena Choudhary works in our Delhi office. A media planner by profession, a closet poet by persuasion. Yesterday, she left this amazing little poem as a comment on one of my posts which I have since deleted. The poem deserves to be on a main post, not a closet comment, so here it is:
"Why,
when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world;
when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more;
and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course."
Thanks, Svety.
Comments
hi lynn just saw ur comment. thank u but i haven't written this.... just something I felt was apt.. its beautiful. i wish i could write like that....
Posted by svety on 05/22/2006 12:12:16 PM
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Of crow's eggs and the Code [ edit ]
May 19 2006 (08:00:00) ( 2 views )
Specky's eggs are a warm aquamarine blue, slightly larger than a pigeon's egg and more elongated.
Three weeks from now, the rains are likely to set in as per the latest weather reports - a week early. I fear for the hatchlings. She should have had them sooner.
Meanwhile the Da Vinci Code movie, sponsored by ABN Amro, will be released next week after the distributors put in a disclaimer required by the government, a week later than the worldwide release today. The movie and its detractors and supporters have made headlines for the past week, with the majority view being that if the movie was such a problem, why did people keep quiet about the book?
It's finally all about reach and impact and the times we live in, isn't it? According to TGI, movies in theaters reach 18% of people over 12 years in ABC homes in the towns, books are read by a close 16%. But the larger than life seat-of-the-pants impact of a movie simply drowns out the quieter, deeper, long term change that a good book can bring about. By critics' accounts, the movie is terrible - from Tom Hank's horrendous hair style to an anticlimactic ending. Movie makers always find the original book a hard act to follow. However, the movie will always generate much more controversy and publicity than the book, c'est la vie. Charles Dickens should have lived today.
As for me, I am not interested in Da Vinci Code the movie. The book was racy and fun to read, like a friend once described it - it's like junk food, you know it's bad for you but can't stop reading. The movie won't be able to top the book - in my best judgement.
I'd much rather wait for Shantaram.....and Johnny Depp. They will both be terrific, I am sure. Like Specky's eggs, worth waiting for, and hope the rains and the Bombay underworld and the cops don't play spoilsport with its release.
On another note, this blog has just crossed the 1000 visitor mark (1060), with 1238 page views, that's not bad for a non-IT, non-journalist type 7 month old blog, I guess.
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Space problem [ edit ]
May 18 2006 (07:22:00) ( 2 views )
Is my love too big to fit inside your tiny heart
Or is your heart too big to be filled up with my tiny love?
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Crow's Nest [ edit ]
May 15 2006 (07:57:00) ( 2 views )
What a wonderful surprise awaited me last Friday when I got home. Right there among the branches of the pine tree closest to my mother's balcony was a perfect little crow's nest. Just four feet away. Specky and Fluffy are not so stupid after all. What they were doing all this while was interesting. I thought they were simply gathering random twigs and tieing them up here and there, but actually they were harvesting. Then one morning, they brought all the twigs together in one place, weaved them around, and shaped out the nest by sitting inside one at a time, pressing down, then pruning and placing the sticking-out twigs properly. This is an absolutely new experience for me - I have never seen a crow's nest so up close, let alone seeing one made. The inside has been lined during the weekend with softer material. I hope to find the brand new eggs in the nest today evening! But Mrs Koel is already hovering about, so let's see what transpires. Gemma couldn't stop staring at the nest this morning when I was grooming her, she usually doesn't like crows but has also made friends by now with Specky and Fluffy. Meanwhile, the pair below have taken to stealing the food I keep out for S and F, to feed their own babies with. From above, their babies now look dull grey and are rather big.
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Books [ edit ]
May 12 2006 (07:50:00) ( 2 views )
Have you ever noticed
how a good book can suddenly leap out of your hands
and pace up and down the room,
talking forcefully and gesturing animatedly,
and, in general, have quite an interesting conversation with you?
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Connections... [ edit ]
May 10 2006 (09:25:00) ( 2 views )
...that seem to happen in an instant
are actually the ones that have been here since creation,
and will be here till doomsday.
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Showing 71 to 80 of 107
stray thoughts about stray subjects
An evening to remember [ edit ]
May 31 2006 (05:59:00) ( 2 views )
Four good things happened.
One, I learned that the medicines are working and there is no need for another surgery. Guess I knew that anyway, when I was able to make an intense half hour presentation at a pitch a couple of weeks ago, with no difficulty at all, and that too after just three hours of sleep. Someone somewhere is praying for me, and I think I know who it is - thank you.
Two, I learned that the WSPA membership for the Goa SPCA has been accepted officially, and the papers are in the post. Now I can seriously look forward to attending the WSPA symposium in London next week.
Three, we saw a good film. Fanaa is a simple filmi story of slightly farfetched love. Aamir has always been my favourite Indian actor by far, and not just because we once played tennis together a lot. He is incapable of the hamming that Shahrook often slips into - in this film, his transition from an arrogant womaniser to a self loathing terrorist was effortlessly done, the histrionics restrained and yet so moving. Kajol was good too. Gujarat is being stupid. There was a quality to Aamir's acting in this film, especially in the second half, that could only have come from personal experience - that's life - from everything not so good, some good must come. Delhi also came through very well, much more romantic than Kashmir (Poland?), but then Delhi has always had that quality. The only downside - playing the soundtrack of Lata's Lag Ja Gale at two moments in the film - it brought back sad memories of an sms I received referring to this track six years ago, but then again, from everything not so good, some good will come.
When we stepped out of Globus, it was raining, the season's first downpour - a medium drizzle with thunderclaps and lightening, that intensified as the night went on. It's the most beautiful day of the year today - weatherwise. And in some other ways too. Aamir looked his most beautiful when he emoted the deepest sadness. Yes, yesterday was an evening to remember, and today is very beautiful.
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Brand Equity [ edit ]
May 25 2006 (06:17:00) ( 3 views )
The 'thought for the day' put up outside Mahim Church and Portuguese Church are truly inspirational. I found today's thought at Mahim church particularly apt. It simply said, "We see the world not as it is, but as we are". What a wonderful way to describe the difference between reality and perception.
We work almost entirely in the perception business. We spend a great deal of time trying to make reality more palatable, often even manipulating it around so that the resultant perception is sometimes far removed from reality, and yet more easily believed.
The Brand Equity Agency Rankings were out yesterday. It’s an annual exercise that places the masters of make-believe at the receiving end for a change. It’s an eagerly awaited perception study conducted among those who interact with us – our clients, our competitors, potential employees and, this year, media owners too.
It’s always full of surprises – this year was no exception. I know that we did well, and I did well. However, so many people on the 'influential' list were much higher than I would place them, and then again, so many much lower. Some agencies seemed to be too high up, some too low down. Maybe the inclusion of media owners in the sample respondents, and the upweighting in Delhi had something to do with it. Who can say? After all, we see the world not as it is, but as we are.
At the end of the day, there is really only one measure, isn't there? And that's your own. If my world is what I am and not what it really is, then why bother with what others think of me? Extend that thought to the company, the community and the country. It's a good thought. We should believe in ourselves, our intentions and our work, and not care what any one else thinks, unless they are people very close to us. The Brand Equity rankings may be a good yardstick, but not one that any agency or individual should measure itself or himself or herself by. For that, the mirror in the morning is a little bit better. (0) Comments | Post Comment
Marriage [ edit ]
May 24 2006 (09:56:00) ( 2 views )
Dr Rathod got married at 12.20 pm today in his native village of Akalkot, 8 hours from Mumbai and 12 hours from Goa. His bride is a college going girl called Sudha whom he met a few weeks ago for the first time, and had a few short meetings with. He left the decision about who he would spend the rest of his life with entirely to his parents.
In this day and age, the fact that a mature post graduate veterinarian who has lived away from his family for several years could base the most important decision of his life on tradition, was something I really wondered about. But then I look at so many other marriages I know of, where love came in a rush and flew out with a whimper, where people who knew each other for decades suddenly discovered they didn't know each other at all, where families that couldn't get along later worked it out, that all one can really say is - who can say what life holds out for you?
Dr Rathod is a kind and compassionate man - he may not possess much by way of wealth and style, but he is a man of substance and perhaps his is the kind of marriage that will truly stand the test of time, and not just for showing to the outside world. The important thing is to know and be who you are and not to pretend to be something you're not - in any relationship, at any point in one's life.
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Of poetry, personality tests and unlikely pets [ edit ]
May 23 2006 (05:02:00) ( 2 views )
Svety has clarified that the poem she posted on my blog wasn't her own, but something she read somewhere and liked a lot - anyway, it was a great gift since I liked the words too. If you want to read some of her own poetry, visit her blog - svety.blogspot.com.
Meanwhile, when blog jumping on the weekend, I came across a reference to a great personality testing site called personaldna.com. Definitely the best I've attempted so far - with three and four dimensional aspects to the testing, using simple graphics that can easily be applied to survey questionnaires in other areas too. Crisply worded results, some simple good advice at the end, and a creatively expressed summary in the form of a DNA strip.
In this company, we use the MBTI profiles to recruit employees and students for the postgraduate programs. INFP for creative, ESTJ for servicing and media. Which is bit off since the media boss herself (me!) is INFJ. We should definitely look at this alternative, which is easier to administer, easier to fill up, and probably easier to fix if a job is on the line - but that last bit can be managed I guess.
For what it's worth, here are the results of my test, which should guide you to taking your own on the site (and yes, they do ask you to recommend it thereafter on riff.com).
On the subject of unlikely pets, Specky and Fluffy have started strolling into our house in their quest for food and water, since the eggs came along. Today they were presented with a small share of Pixie's boiled egg. Usually, Specky stays put in the nest, while Fluffy fills up his crop then goes over to feed her - what a caring husband indeed! We don't mind the visits as long as Gemma doesn't.
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Svety's Poem [ edit ]
May 22 2006 (05:00:00) ( 2 views )
Svetleena Choudhary works in our Delhi office. A media planner by profession, a closet poet by persuasion. Yesterday, she left this amazing little poem as a comment on one of my posts which I have since deleted. The poem deserves to be on a main post, not a closet comment, so here it is:
"Why,
when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world;
when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more;
and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course."
Thanks, Svety.
Comments
hi lynn just saw ur comment. thank u but i haven't written this.... just something I felt was apt.. its beautiful. i wish i could write like that....
Posted by svety on 05/22/2006 12:12:16 PM
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Of crow's eggs and the Code [ edit ]
May 19 2006 (08:00:00) ( 2 views )
Specky's eggs are a warm aquamarine blue, slightly larger than a pigeon's egg and more elongated.
Three weeks from now, the rains are likely to set in as per the latest weather reports - a week early. I fear for the hatchlings. She should have had them sooner.
Meanwhile the Da Vinci Code movie, sponsored by ABN Amro, will be released next week after the distributors put in a disclaimer required by the government, a week later than the worldwide release today. The movie and its detractors and supporters have made headlines for the past week, with the majority view being that if the movie was such a problem, why did people keep quiet about the book?
It's finally all about reach and impact and the times we live in, isn't it? According to TGI, movies in theaters reach 18% of people over 12 years in ABC homes in the towns, books are read by a close 16%. But the larger than life seat-of-the-pants impact of a movie simply drowns out the quieter, deeper, long term change that a good book can bring about. By critics' accounts, the movie is terrible - from Tom Hank's horrendous hair style to an anticlimactic ending. Movie makers always find the original book a hard act to follow. However, the movie will always generate much more controversy and publicity than the book, c'est la vie. Charles Dickens should have lived today.
As for me, I am not interested in Da Vinci Code the movie. The book was racy and fun to read, like a friend once described it - it's like junk food, you know it's bad for you but can't stop reading. The movie won't be able to top the book - in my best judgement.
I'd much rather wait for Shantaram.....and Johnny Depp. They will both be terrific, I am sure. Like Specky's eggs, worth waiting for, and hope the rains and the Bombay underworld and the cops don't play spoilsport with its release.
On another note, this blog has just crossed the 1000 visitor mark (1060), with 1238 page views, that's not bad for a non-IT, non-journalist type 7 month old blog, I guess.
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Space problem [ edit ]
May 18 2006 (07:22:00) ( 2 views )
Is my love too big to fit inside your tiny heart
Or is your heart too big to be filled up with my tiny love?
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Crow's Nest [ edit ]
May 15 2006 (07:57:00) ( 2 views )
What a wonderful surprise awaited me last Friday when I got home. Right there among the branches of the pine tree closest to my mother's balcony was a perfect little crow's nest. Just four feet away. Specky and Fluffy are not so stupid after all. What they were doing all this while was interesting. I thought they were simply gathering random twigs and tieing them up here and there, but actually they were harvesting. Then one morning, they brought all the twigs together in one place, weaved them around, and shaped out the nest by sitting inside one at a time, pressing down, then pruning and placing the sticking-out twigs properly. This is an absolutely new experience for me - I have never seen a crow's nest so up close, let alone seeing one made. The inside has been lined during the weekend with softer material. I hope to find the brand new eggs in the nest today evening! But Mrs Koel is already hovering about, so let's see what transpires. Gemma couldn't stop staring at the nest this morning when I was grooming her, she usually doesn't like crows but has also made friends by now with Specky and Fluffy. Meanwhile, the pair below have taken to stealing the food I keep out for S and F, to feed their own babies with. From above, their babies now look dull grey and are rather big.
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Books [ edit ]
May 12 2006 (07:50:00) ( 2 views )
Have you ever noticed
how a good book can suddenly leap out of your hands
and pace up and down the room,
talking forcefully and gesturing animatedly,
and, in general, have quite an interesting conversation with you?
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Connections... [ edit ]
May 10 2006 (09:25:00) ( 2 views )
...that seem to happen in an instant
are actually the ones that have been here since creation,
and will be here till doomsday.
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