Branding the Movies!

Here’s the trouble with life – shit happens. And when it doesn’t, there’s constipation, which is probably worse! Ok, now that line has absolutely nothing at all to do with this article – this is neither a philosophical ramble about life, nor does it have anything to do with the fag end of the digestive process. But I just wanted to fit it in somehow – just as the creators of Confident Casanova would’ve reacted when the Confident Group agreed to pump in some money for their new film.

Now, for those of you not aware – well, pretty much most of you, actually, Confident Casanova is the name of a new Mallu film, one that also happens to be the most expensive Mallu film EVER made. It’s the sort of name that stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder “WTF???!!!” Sure, it’s quite likely that the Casanova in question would embody confidence as one of his foremost attributes; but it still seems a little superfluous to say so upfront. It’s a bit like if Rambo was titled as “Strong Rambo”, or if the Godfather were to be named “Powerful Godfather”. After getting over the ridiculousness of the name, it turned out that the word Confident in the movie title was inserted into the name because the movie’s main sponsor was the Confident Group (a Bangalore-based real estate company).

I suppose that this sort of information can set alarm bells ringing for a lot of people and trigger off a chain of apocalyptic thoughts like “Is this what the world is really coming to? Are brands now going to take over our movies? What next – will our textbooks in schools be named after brands as well? Will brands start sponsoring religion as well? Will Leonardo di Caprio plant a brand name in my brain using the technique of inception? Is there any way we can blame this on the BCCI? Can someone please explain to me what on earth the difference between a Llama and an Alpaca is?”

Valid as such apprehensions may be, there is also the prospect of movies with bizarre plot twists that could come about as a result of the marketing chaps climbing into bed and getting cozy with the movie fellows. Rather than risking consumers’ ire by forcing their name onto a movie title, brands could use this as the latest ploy to sully their competitors’ reputations. Here are a couple of twists on some popular movies that I could think of – I’m sure many, far more interesting ideas could come about as a result of further brainstorming and introspection.

The Kingfisher Terminal

The Kingfisher Terminal features Tom Hanks essaying the role of a Bangalore IT professional. Through a strange quirk of circumstances, Hanks is stuck at the Bangalore International Airport for nearly six months, due to the fact that his flight is delayed every single day. Sometimes, just to break the monotony, his flight is overbooked. But the next available flight is never more than 10 hours later. As a result of this, it does not make sense for Tom to venture back home due to the inconvenient fact that he has taken up residence at Electronic City, which is a good 3-hour drive from the airport, and he has to report ridiculously early for an international flight.

The film casts light on the apathy of modern-day airlines towards an ordinary passenger, and how the cut-throat competition in the aviation industry has meant that customer welfare generally ranks somewhere between ‘ethical business practices’ and ‘should we allow polar bears on international flights if they’re willing to travel first-class?’ on their list of priorities.

Despite the hardships faced by Tom, though, the film isn’t one of the all-consuming, depressing sorts that might possibly drive one to the brink of inflicting grave harm upon one’s self or one’s surroundings. Rather, the film poignantly highlights the ability of the human spirit to rise above all adversities as Tom, instead of moping about or going on an abusive rampage against the customer service staff, takes it all in his stride and makes the airport a second home. While at the airport, Tom manages to make friends with the airport staff, learn the entire domestic flight schedule for no apparent reason and even have a fleeting affair with a frequent flyer! Don’t miss out on this heartwarming tale slated for release this coming Friday.

The Airtel Negotiator

A group of crazed terrorists has just taken hostage nearly 200 people in a shopping complex in Mumbai. The whole country has come to a standstill as people watch this saga unfolding live on their TV screens. The city police, the army and the NSG have all been called in as the complex is surrounded on all sides and a strategy to rescue the hostages is being plotted. The Prime Minister himself is monitoring the situation on a lot of fancy TV screens that bring him real-time updates at 7, Race Course Road, a sort of Indian equivalent to all those American disaster movies where Mr. President sits in the Oval Office solemnly surrounded by his generals and advisers and tries to save the world from the impending aliens/mutants/meteorite/nuclear war/etc.

Specially flown in all the way from the US is Samuel L Jackson, who has forged his reputation over the last couple of decades as the toughest negotiator around. BUT…BUT…as soon as Samuel L makes the call to start the negotiations, he runs out of talk time! Despite repeated pleas to his network operator that a crisis situation such as this is worthy of additional talk-time, and that he would happily settle any outstanding amount as soon as he’s done, Samuel L is informed that his request would take 48 hours to be processed. Samuel then puts his negotiating skills, along with his patience, to the ultimate test as he embarks upon a series of calls (interrupted by long spells of instrumental music) with customer service personnel while he tries to figure out a way to convince the network operator to be willing to entertain his plea at such short notice. The swagger with which Samuel had first arrived to begin the negotiations slowly starts receding and Samuel’s confidence visibly drains as the negotiations drag on for hours. Will Samuel finally be able to rescue the hostages? And more importantly, will Samuel be able to negotiate the requisite talk time from his network operator to enable him to get a shot at rescuing the hostages? To find out, catch The Airtel Negotiator, coming soon to a theater near you.

Su(r)e We Do!

There are many quick ways to make big money – but most of these usually involve high levels of chance (gambling, lottery), great risk to life and limb (adventure sports, crime), or being subject to intense humiliation and ridicule accompanied with an acceptance to be the laughing stock of the country (reality TV, politics). There is, however, a fourth and easier way to make big money that doesn’t involve any of the above – although it’s probably applicable only if you’re in the US. Every now and again, you read these amazing stories about customers suing corporations in America, winning the subsequent lawsuit and ensuring their financial security for the next seven generations or so. You know what I’m talking about, the ones that typically sound like this:

“Woman wins $3 million from McDonalds”

McDonalds was ordered by a federal court to pay $3 million in damages to Wilma Flintstone, a 35 year old native of Lincoln, Nebraska. Mrs. Flintstone sued McDonalds after getting burn marks on her forearms after spilling a McCoffee. Seeking compensation for the consequent series of cosmetic surgeries and considerable mental anguish, Mrs. Flintstone alleged that the steam emerging from the cup was insufficient evidence that the cup of McCoffee was hot, and insisted that McDonalds had not warned her that the cup of McCoffee could possibly have a high temperature and was unsuitable for application on her forearms.

In an unusual move, the judge announced his verdict by starting with the classic joke about a horse walking into a bar and being asked by the bartender “Why the long face?” The judge then proceeded with the verdict, explaining that he narrated the joke so that the courtroom could distinguish between the joke and the judgment.

“Man gets $5 million compensation for eating cardboard box”

A man who ate the cardboard box containing some pesticides he’d purchased sued the manufacturer Dow Chemicals Ltd for not having given sufficient warning as to the inedibility of the box. While the pesticide packet had a sufficient number of “Poison - Do not consume internally” warnings; the man claimed that there was no instruction whatsoever to stop him from eating the carton. Dow Chemicals, already feeling guilty about a number of past misdeeds, decided that it was best to settle out of court rather than face the potential negative publicity of a lawsuit, and agreed upon a settlement of $5 million in small, unmarked bills.

All this made me wonder – how come we don’t have any of this in India? If you look at most news channels or online forums, you’ll realize that Indians do get outraged – very easily and very frequently. In fact, if you look at someone like Arnab Goswami, he’d get outraged even if you told him that he’d just won a lottery, a genie would fulfill his top three wishes AND God had reserved a place for him in heaven. (“Mr. Finance Minister, the nation demands an answer. What sort of a country do we live in where one man can get everything he’d ever hoped for, yet more than half the country is living in abject poverty? Is this what we’ve been reduced to? If this is not a black spot on the nation’s credibility, I don’t know what is!”) So how come we don’t sue, the way the Americans do?

As someone who’s not an expert in law, psychology, anthropology, socio cultural phenomena or consumer affairs, I have no clue as to what the answer is. One possible explanation could be that Indians do sue, but we do it more out of a sense of community duty or for the ‘greater good’ as opposed to a profit motive. This would explain the large number of PILs. As a matter of fact I personally knew a guy who’d filed a PIL against Fashion TV complaining that their late-night content was inappropriate for family audiences. What on earth made him choose Fashion TV over a hundred other possible channels while watching TV with his family at midnight, one can only guess!

This is why the corresponding headlines that you’d come across on court cases in Indian newspapers would sound like these:

“Man files PIL against RCB Cheerleaders”

Activist BN Krishna has filed a PIL against the cheerleading squad of the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, alleging that the use of skimpy clothes and provocative gyrations was against Indian culture and tradition and would have a negative influence on millions of viewers across India, especially men.

“Man files PIL against Pune Warriors Cheerleaders”

Advocate PS Kirpal has filed a PIL against the Pune Warriors cheerleading squad, saying that dressing up and dancing traditionally for a Western activity like cheerleading was demeaning to Indian culture and portrayed it in negative light. He also added that Bharatnatyam, the dance used by the cheerleaders, was actually a Tamil dance form and not a Marathi one; and this was insulting to either the Tamilians or the Marathis, or maybe even both.

Basically, if an American didn’t like something, he’d sue, citing ‘mental trauma and duress’ and demand an insanely high level of compensation; whereas an Indian would file a PIL saying that it was against culture/religion/society and demand that it be discontinued.

Maybe advertising has something to do with this – the ‘Jaago Graahak Jaago’ ads do little to inspire confidence in the consumers. While the ads make it look like you, the consumer, has a lot of power, it feels like some fake sort of power. The sort of power where if the company does not mention the correct quantity present in the pack, you, as an empowered consumer, can go to the consumer court and fight a lengthy court case at the end of which the company would have to tell you that they were sorry. At the most, they would replace that pack for you, or if you’re really lucky, they’d give you an extra pack for your trouble. Now if the ads were changed to show some down-on-his-luck sort of fellow who happens to buy a product one fine day, sues the company and in the next scene is shown with a bevy of women by his side, wearing the finest designer suit and hopping into a stretch limo – that’s the sort of thing that would really awaken the consumer!

Beware the Meme

The fundamental difference between economics and marketing is that while economics assumes that all individuals are rational, marketing assumes that all individuals are stupid. This explains 90% of the advertising that you see today. This is quite acceptable, given that 90% of movies, TV shows, music and most other forms of popular entertainment today are not much better. But what’s more dangerous is the sort of thing that Coca-Cola has been trying to achieve with its new “Brrrrr” ad campaign. As an ordinary lay person, you might wonder how an ad campaign that makes no sense and sounds like an overworked electric motor could possibly be dangerous for you. After all, as an ordinary lay person, I would’ve wondered the same.

However, as a person with some level of exposure to how advertising agencies work, I can guess, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, what the jhola-clad ad agency fellows had in mind when pitching this whole idea of “Brrrrr” to the business suit-clad marketing fellows at Coca Cola. “Brrrr” was not just another nonsensical ad campaign that would take the cola wars to a new level of inanity. “Brrrr” would’ve been pitched as a “meme”. According to the official definition, a meme is a unit of social information for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. In English, this means that a meme is a fad.

In advertising, this means a lot of money. I can imagine how the ad agency chaps would’ve gone on for two hours, explaining over a dozen slides the phenomena of ‘memes’. They would’ve quoted Richard Dawkins (the British biologist who coined the term) to sound intelligent and highbrow, and quoted their five-year old offspring’s latest school fad to sound “street” and “with it”. They would’ve droned about phenomena like the rituals accompanying tequila shots and the latest email forward to emphasize the power of memes. And then they would’ve landed the killer blow about how the emergence of social networks and new media has meant that memes, when exploited well, can just take off on their own and all the company would need to do would be to sit back, laugh maniacally and watch as the world went mad and purchased Coca Cola everywhere.

“Brrrr” would, therefore, not be another in a series of forgotten ad campaigns. Instead, “Brrrr” would take the shape of a social movement, a fad that is picked up by ‘new media’ and regurgitated endlessly until everyone from upscale Manhattan bars to roadside Dar es Salaam stalls are shaking their bodies in odd ways for no apparent reason. “Brrrr” would be tweeted and re-tweeted countless times on twitter; “Brrrr” would be the new Facebook phenomena that would cause uproar in the social networking world; “Brrrr” would be played by DJs at nightclubs to get the crowd at its feet; “Brrrr” would receive 200,000 hits a day on YouTube and you would be praying for the day when space travel is economical enough to help you get the hell away from all this.

Now, a lot of you might think that I’m making this sound far more sinister than it actually is; that I’ve painted a greatly exaggerated picture; that ad agency mandarins cannot possibly be THAT diabolical and that the crisis would never take on such drastic proportions. Well, I have one word for you - Macarena! I still shudder/wake up in a cold sweat/feel a shiver down my spine/pray for economical space travel when I think of the days when you couldn’t switch on the TV or the radio without listening to the Macarena, when you couldn’t go to a party without being subjected to those ludicrous dance steps that looked like everyone was touching various body parts to check if anything was missing. And this was before the era of social networking and new media, so you can imagine how apocalyptic things can get now.

The good news though is that Coca Cola seems to have wholeheartedly bought the idea and decided to sink millions into ensuring its success. This usually means that it will not succeed. While fads may be stupid, annoying and give you genocidal thoughts, the one good thing about them is that they cannot be controlled. Despite a lot of people spending years researching the phenomena of fads and countless books being written about fads and how you can cash in on them, the truth is that you cannot. Fads are still gloriously unpredictable and the harder you try to control them, the less likely you are to succeed.

And right now Coca Cola, to my great relief, is trying desperately hard to make this whole “Brrrr” thing succeed. Whenever I switch on the TV, every second ad seems to be “Brrrr”. When I browse the net or log on to Facebook, a Coca Cola ad/pop-up asks me to post my “Brrrr” video and share it with the world. While it’s annoying temporarily, I can put up with it safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t really take off beyond the world of advertising; that people wouldn’t forward me links to their “Brrrr” videos, set “Brrrr” as their status update or start dancing to “Brrrr” at parties. In fact, if I were to be all Navjot Singh Sidhu over this whole affair, what I’d say is “My dear friend, you might need a tank of gasoline to set a cottage on fire, but all it takes to start a forest fire is a matchstick! So how could Coca Cola succeed when they’ve used up an entire offshore oil rig?”

Death of a Villain

While this isn’t a very nice thing to say, sad news is something that one comes across daily in the newspapers. Some of it, like the Japan earthquake, you react to and think about – while others, like the release of a new Lady Gaga album, you tend to file away under the ‘indifferent’ section of your mind. So a few days ago when I read that Bollywood actor Bob Christo had passed away, I didn’t cast the headline a second glance and had begun the mental process of filing it away…until my eyes fell upon the accompanying picture:

And immediately, it set off some sort of alarm bell in my head. This was the face of pure Bollywood evil! Granted, we’ve had far greater and more legendary villains like Amrish Puri, Danny and Amjad Khan – but if I were to think of one villain that evoked pure, unadulterated hatred the second you saw him on screen, it was Bob. And I didn’t even know that it was Bob, as the first time I heard his name was when I read about his death!

I speak with very limited experience, of course. Apparently Bob has done over 200 films in Bollywood, of which I would’ve seen less than a dozen. But the point is, he’s always been one of those “as evil as can possibly be” kind of villains, without any shade of grey. Ever! Granted, Bollywood villains were anyway usually pure evil – but once in a while there could be mitigating circumstances as to why the villain was evil – he could be a victim of circumstances. Or the villain would be ‘humanized’ in some way by having a brother or wife or kid. Or he would have a cat that he genuinely felt affection for. Or even the odd movie where the villain would turn nice/see the evil of his ways.

But with Bob Christo, it seemed that he was out and out evil, and his character would never be fleshed out in any way that could possibly evoke sympathy from the viewer. Unlike other villains, Bob was never allowed to portray a character – he was pure evil the second he appeared on screen, and stayed that way until he got brutally killed. He would rape, kill, smuggle, do drugs, loot, plunder, castrate, set on fire, torture – often in the same film. And that was all he did. For example, if Manoj Bajpai was to play an evil, corrupt cop, they’d still show him going back home to his wife and kid; or how he ended up turning evil due to the system being corrupt or a family member dying of an expensive, critical illness. But if Bob Christo was shown as an evil cop, he’d only be shown in scenes where he brutally tortures the hero – they won’t show him going back home to a family or even a pet. Hell, even if they showed him doing something nonchalant like smoking, it would probably be accompanied with evil background music and wicked glint in the eye / with lots of alcohol around to connote decadent lifestyle / mujraa-type dance happening to denote complete lack of morals. The movie would not have a single scene depicting Bob doing something humane – I’m not talking about something saintly like rescuing an injured kitten from the traffic and bandaging its paws, but even something mundane like giving his kid some pocket money.

All this recollection of Bob and the sort of movies he was in (a lot of the smuggling-type ones, I think) did make me realize one thing, though – villains today just don’t inspire that sort of terror anymore. This is not specific to Bob – just think of the villains from the 70s and 80s Bollywood movies. The evil ‘thakur’ who would ruthlessly oppress the simple villagers, the demonic ‘daaku’ that would wantonly terrorize simple villagers just for the fun of it, or the devious smuggler that would ruin countless lives (and the nation’s economy) with his misdeeds. The sort of roles essayed by the likes of Danny, Amrish Puri and Amjad Khan with such conviction that I’ve come across a few people who actually believe they’re evil in real life! Even well into the 90s, Bollywood was churning out movies where Amrish Puri would still be a thakur/zamindar, with his henchmen merrily chopping to pieces any villager that had the temerity to disobey his orders.

Compare this with the villains of today’s Bollywood movies. Half the movies don’t even have a villain, and even if they do, he’d be a watered-down ‘anti-hero’ or a ‘negative role with shades of grey’. He would probably be coordinating a kidnapping or serial blasts over his cell phone while being out shopping with his wife – something that Bob would’ve completely frowned upon. While I do believe that this subtlety has helped improve the overall standard of Bollywood films with lots of experimental films seeing the light of day and the emergence of character actors, I think that as a kid, I would’ve preferred the sort of rubbish movies that Bob was part of. The subtle stuff of today would have seemed slow and boring – and there’d be no fun without characters like Gabbar and Mogambo, who are part of cinematic folklore today.

Bob’s death reminded me of a simpler time when heroes were good, villains were bad and there was nothing in between.

Uzbekistan Calling!

About a week ago, I received an email from a travel company. Ordinarily, an occurrence such as this would elicit little reaction on my part, apart from looking for the delete button. However, this was not your standard-issue “Give up your life savings and shop like mad in Dubai!”; “Sell your first-born and go on a trip to London!!”; “Take off your clothes and go wild in Thailand” kind of mail. This particular travel company wanted to pack me off to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. This obviously made me wonder – why on earth would someone want to do that to me? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for travel destinations that are off the beaten track – but Uzbekistan? That’s a bit like asking someone who’s expressed a fondness for food to eat that nasty chilli that can burn the inside of your stomach.

Maybe there is something to see in Tashkent, but all I could remember about Tashkent was that Lal Bahadur Shastri went there and he died. Tashkent sounded like just the sort of place where you’d go and never be heard from again. It’s the sort of place where one moment you’re walking down the by-lanes of a busy market and the next moment an unmarked car screeches to a halt by your side, the door is flung open and you’re knocked out cold and dragged inside. The next thing you know you’re right in the middle of an international arms-and-drugs smuggling racket run by an ex-Soviet army colonel. It’s the sort of place that would be teeming with shadowy terrorist groups affiliated with big-ticket terrorist groups, smuggling arms into Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and other strife-torn, unstable countries. It’s the sort of place that before you go, you’d be advised to leave behind some nice photographs of yours with your family, so that when news like “Argha went to Uzbekistan and was never heard from again…” appears, the accompanying article would talk about what a regular, happy-go-lucky fellow you were and have a smiling picture of you posing at a party with a drink in hand.

And then it struck me that I’ve never EVER read anything about Uzbekistan, leave alone go there or watch a TV show about the country – yet I had so many pre-conceived notions about the country. What if I was wrong? What if, after the dissolution of the USSR, Uzbekistan actually embarked upon a liberal economic policy that encouraged businesses to flourish, and was today a thriving, bustling economy striding progressively forward in the new millennium? What if Uzbekistan is not run by a despotic, tyrannical, egotistical dictator but instead has a free press and parliamentary democracy? What if Uzbekistan is not the sort of place your car got stolen the second you parked it? In short, what if Uzbekistan is not the sort of rubbish hellhole I imagine it to be? Just to see how right or wrong I was, I decided to list down my pre-conceived notions about Uzbekistan and then do a reality check on the internet to compare the results.

Pre-conceived notions about Uzbekistan (or any other Central Asian country with name that ends with -stan):

1. It is ruled by a tyrannical, ruthless dictator. Although he’s not THAT evil or ruthless or crazed that he’s made it to the news like Kim-Jong-Il of North Korea, but a relatively brutal dictator nonetheless, who’s been around since the Soviet dissolution.

2. It’s grey. I mean, like most Soviet/ex-Soviet countries I can think of, Uzbekistan seems very grey to me – grey skies, grey buildings, people dressed in grey or black, etc.

3. It has mountains. Not the pretty, alpine, tourist-y ones that people visit, but grim, ominous-looking mountains where only wolves go.

4. It’s lawless. It’s probably part of some nefarious network of international arms and drugs smugglers that start from Pakistan/Afghanistan, go across Central Asia, Middle East and then on to Eastern Europe; involving a rag-tag group of junkies, jihadis, ex-Soviet army men, al-Qaeda operatives and ex-ISI agents.

5. It’s barren. The geographical landscape of the country would be pretty barren – not much is grown there and there isn’t much of greenery.

6. Any important building/tourist attraction would be made of domes and minarets.

7. The economy survives on oil or natural gas – the sort of country India would try to hammer out a gas pipeline deal with that would subsequently be nixed by Pakistan.

Facts about Uzbekistan (as against pre-conceived notions, after some very basic Google work):

1. According to Wikipedia, Uzbekistan is ostensibly a democracy. In simple words, this means that Uzbekistan is not a democracy. Since its creation, Uzbekistan has been particularly clever about trying to appear like a democracy. Apparently there is a parliament but NO opposition. This is because political parties are allowed to be formed as long as they DON’T take part in the elections (go figure!). And a guy called Islam Karimov has been its first president since 1995 with his five-year term being extended each time it’s approaching the end of its tenure. So I was partially right about the first point.

2. From the images I came across, it isn’t particularly grey as a Romania or a Bulgaria might be, so I was wrong on that.

3. It has mountains – some ugly, desert-type mountains, others that look picturesque yet forbidding. So again, I’d say I’m partially right on this one!

4. Law & Order: Most countries have issued travel warnings to their citizens traveling to Uzbekistan, although lawless would be too extreme a word. But yes, terrorist presence is very much there and on the rise, and there’s a huge black market as well. Partially right again, I would think.

5. It’s barren – ABSOLUTELY so. The whole country is just mountains or desert, or both!

6. Spot on – any building of consequence in Uzbekistan follows the domes-and-minarets style of architecture (although I’m sure there’s a better, more official-sounding, architectural term for that).

7. While the biggest and most strategic resource for Uzbekistan is gold, energy comes second. This is because Uzbekistan is amongst the world’s largest producers of natural gas. However, agriculture, particularly cotton, also has a big role to play in the economy, so it would be wrong to say that it depends on oil and natural gas.

So there it is – out of seven pre-conceived notions, two are correct, three are partially correct, and two are wrong – that’s not too shabby now, is it? Perhaps pre-conceived notions are not such a bad thing after all, and I could pass off as an authority on Uzbekistan without having read much about the country, sort of like an MBA might do. However, all this relatively-extensive reading on Uzbekistan only deepens the original mystery – why on earth did that travel company want to send me there?

The National Board For Blog Control Would Sue This!

A few days back, I stumbled upon this interesting headline in the papers “SC: Scrabble is a game, not a puzzle”. Baffled and bemused in equal parts, I went on to read further and discovered that the Supreme Court judges had spent a good deal of time studying the history and development of Scrabble (and presumably also played a good deal of games) before concluding that Scrabble could not be classified as a puzzle and instead was a game. They went on to list differences between Scrabble and Crossword puzzles to prove beyond doubt that Scrabble was indeed a game. Now you might wonder “It’s been 25 years since the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and the perpetrators have still not been brought to justice, so what on Earth is the Supreme Court doing wasting precious time on the taxonomy of Scrabble?” But there you have it – being a Supreme Court judge does not simply involve wearing a funny wig and presiding over judgments that change the course of a nation – you also get to play a lot of Scrabble.

And then it dawned on me – there are a lot of people with important-sounding titles all over the place, who really don’t do anything much. Take, for example, the National Egg Coordination Committee. Now, I’m not saying they don’t do anything at all, and they must be quite busy putting out all those “Roz Khao Ande” ads; but I’m pretty sure the NECC employees don’t come home dead tired at 10 in the night saying “Honey, don’t disturb me today – I’ve been working really hard coordinating eggs all day.”

And I bet you didn’t know that the Indian Government has a Ministry for Non-Resident Indians as well as a Ministry for Overseas Indians! I suppose both the ministries are perpetually at loggerheads over what falls under their purview, which is probably the only way to keep them occupied. The second of these ministries was probably created just to stop some politician from defecting to a rival party, is what I would guess. Here are some of the more obscure government departments that you probably didn’t know your tax-money was supporting:

• National Centre for Jute Diversification
• Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan
• National Balbhavan
• National Centre for Promotion of Urdu Language
• National Remote Sensing Agency
• National Mission for Manuscripts
• National Frequency Allocation Planning Board

And this is not just limited to the government. Take scientific research, for example – sounds like a perfectly serious and responsible profession, doesn’t it? Yet every second day, solemn scientists with top degrees and impeccable credentials make the news for research that would not exactly make you go “Oh my god! Is that really so?” If you ever turn to that section of the newspapers that talk about the latest developments/findings on the health/lifestyle front, these are the kind of reports you’re likely to see:

Men Likely to Stare at Women in Skimpy Clothes

Researchers at the Department of Anthropology, University of Bath, England, have concluded that there is a 94.6% higher chance that men would stare at a woman dressed in skimpy attire as opposed to a woman wearing a brown paper bag over her head. This was the result of a research conducted across 12000 men all over the world over a five-year period. According to eminent anthropologist Dr Ludwig Van Ecclestone, who headed the research, “Men tend to suffer from what we in the research circles refer to as the ambulatory optic syndrome, something that lay men would call a roving eye. The minute a scantily-clad woman walks in to a room, most men’s eyes would immediately dart in her direction to catch a quick glimpse. This explains a lot and we hope this study contributes to a greater understanding of the cross-gender interaction in a socio-environmental context.”

Humans Need Privacy

In a groundbreaking research that was conducted across 25 different species that included humans, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and Paris Hilton, it was discovered that humans needed privacy more than all other species, except bears during hibernation. “The human need for privacy is indeed a very strong one, which is why there are so many houses that have been built all over the world. Not just houses, our research has helped explain other phenomena of human civilization such as curtains, doors, and why Russell Crowe is regularly in the news for beating up a pesky paparazzi photographer”, says Dr Ricard Ecschnede, Director, Psychiatry Studies Wing, University of San Diego.

Three Bottles of Beer a Day is Good for Health

Well, its official – beer is good for your health. At least until the next such study is conducted. Researchers at the Oktoberfest University of Health Studies in Munich have concluded that having three bottles of beer after work every day generally keeps your bodily functions as well as mental faculties going and can lead to a longer life expectancy. This contradicts the earlier study that stated that consumption of beer was injurious to health, which itself was a direct contradiction of the previous study that said that beer had a lot of beneficial effects on the human health.

And I’m not kidding about any of all this – you might think that I made up all the stuff mentioned above, which may be partly true when it comes to the finer details, but the essence of it is pretty much the same. If you don’t believe me, I quote below the headlines from yesterday’s newspaper on the kind of research that’s been happening:

“US docs relocate fat to create bigger breasts”

“Tomato and potato plants are carnivores”

“All men watch harmless porn”

So remember – the next time you meet some official-looking person who hands you his business card and it says “Vice President, Documentation”, he could very well turn out to be the office photocopying boy! (as one of my professors at GIM had put it)

To Do or Not To Do?

After the spectacular failure of condoms as contraceptives, the government has decided to opt for more drastic measures to confront one of the biggest challenges facing our country - overpopulation. Recently, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad announced something along the lines of “The best way to control the population is by having a TV set in every house in every village. Witty and engaging late-night television programming is the only way to ensure that people do not spend all their free-time having sexual intercourse and procreating.”

Now, a lot of you might be wondering why condoms have ended up being such a spectacular failure, what with the government doing its utmost to promote their use – they created embarrassing ad campaigns and condom ringtones to generate awareness, they distributed condoms across the country, they enabled easy access to information about condoms, they installed vending machines at public places, they spread awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, they created catchy slogans for family planning, etc.

The problem is that people will not listen to anything that the government tells them to do. Most people will go to great lengths to do something that is dangerous and frowned upon by the authorities, but might not care much about it the minute it is approved and/or encouraged by the authorities. Take pornography and drugs, for example. Condoms probably had a perfectly decent shot at being a successful contraceptive until the government decided to step in and promote its use. Perhaps the best way to encourage people to use condoms would be to ban them.

This would result in a huge underground market for condoms, and people would go to great lengths to get hold of condoms. Youths across the country would be planning their Saturday-night escapades, “Let’s get really wild today – we’ll get pissed drunk, smoke up and then use condoms while having sex!” Condom dealers would replace drug dealers as the coolest people around town; although the downside would be that the condom mafia might pose all sorts or strange law and order problems – “Four Killed in Gang Warfare between Ribbed and Extra-Lubricated Condom Gangs” or “Textured Condoms Kingpin Arrested in Raid – Six Cartons of Dotted and Flavoured Condoms Seized”

But I guess the government had had enough of condoms, and decided that “If condoms have not succeeded as contraceptives, then by God we’ll find something that will!” As is usually the case with the government when choosing something, tenders were invited from various different pastimes/activities to pitch for the position of “Official Contraceptive of India”.

Predictably, the government was swamped with responses from all sorts of entities pitching themselves as the ideal fit for India’s next contraceptive - whether it was sports, television, movies, surgical procedures or Paris Hilton. Below is a sample of the responses that have been obtained from the inbox of the Ministry of Health:

From: Chocolate [mailto:chocolate@aphrodisiacs.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:21 AM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Since time immemorial, chocolate has been effectively utilized to enhance one’s appetite for sexual activities. Whether it was the Egyptian Civilization, the Indus Valley Civilization or the Flintstones, there is enough evidence to suggest that Chocolates have played a major role in boosting the sex-drives of humans throughout history. Even today, most cultures accept chocolate as one of the foremost aphrodisiacs...WAIT A SECOND!!! OH, SORRY...YOU’RE LOOKING FOR CONTRACEPTIVES! UMM...JUST IGNORE THIS MAIL. DELETE IT FROM YOUR INBOX. Sorry for the confusion, this is so embarrassing.

Warm Regards

Chocolate

From: Religion [mailto:religion@rubbishconcepts.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:35 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

While it makes absolutely no sense for people to stop having sex, history has revealed that there is only one way to get people to do something that makes absolutely no sense – Religion.

Therefore, we believe that the answer to India’s new contraceptive can only be religion – we’ll tell people that it’s against their religion to have sex.

Thanks and regards

Religion

From: BCCI [mailto:BCCI@humoungousprofits.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:15 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Over the years, Cricket has emerged as India’s favourite pastime. The entire nation is hooked to cricket when the Indian team is playing – therefore we sincerely believe that the best way to stop people from having sex is to get the Indian team to play cricket every night.

Truly,

Board of Control for Cricket in India

PS – This has nothing to do with us wanting to make more money – do NOT listen to our detractors who’ll tell you that the BCCI is nothing but a greedy, money-spinning organization.

From: Work [mailto:work@takethefunoutoflife.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 2:08 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

dear govt

spectacularly successful in a lot of countries across the world (refer attachment), longer and more stressful working hours have resulted in people having sex less frequently with their partners. plus it has the added advantage of raising the country’s national output – hence we believe that work is the most effective and safe form of contraception now that condoms have failed.

rgds

wrk

From: Banking Industry [mailto:banks@thedoldrums.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 4:45 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

We don’t know how or what we’d do as contraceptives, BUT WE REALLY COULD USE THE BUSINESS, what with the recession and all.

From: Chocolate [mailto:chocolate@betterthansex.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 5:15 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Proposal – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

Statistics reveal that sex is one of the most primal and pleasurable activities known to man. Now, a lot of people might suggest different ways to get people to stop having sex - sports, household chores, long hours in the office, joining the army, looking at nude pictures of Paris Hilton, etc. But I ask you this – are any of these MORE enjoyable than sex? The answer, dear government, is that they’re not.

So how do you get people to stop having sex then? Innumerable surveys have revealed that there is only one thing women enjoy more than sex – CHOCOLATES!

This is why you need look no further than Chocolates when looking for a new contraceptive.

Sincerely,

Chocolate

Just as the government was finalizing on Chocolates, along came the winning pitch, the one that instantly convinced the government on whom to go with for the “Official Contraceptive of India”:

From: Television [mailto:tv@thenextcondom.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 6:12 PM
To: Ministry of Health [mailto:healthmin@indiangov.in]
Cc: Department of Population Control [mailto:contraceptives4u@indiangov.healthmin.in]
Subject: Pitch – Official Contraceptive for India

Dear Government

“I suppose all my competitors would be saying a lot of things and giving a lot of reasons as to why they should be made the next contraceptive. I just have this to say:

According to research conducted in Italy, people with TV in their homes had 40% lesser sex than those without TV in their homes. And this is ITALIAN WOMEN we’re talking about!!!”

Regards

TV

This Blog Can Change Your Life!

There are two kinds of books in this world (and I’m not talking about textbooks here): books that are interesting to read and don’t teach you anything, and books that try to try to teach you something and ought to be burnt. Business/management books happen to fall squarely in the second category, along with self-help books, motivational books and anything ever written by Deepak Chopra.

Business books first started when people (probably MBAs) with a lot of time on their hands decided that MBAs should not have so much free time on their hands. The truth is that MBAs hardly learn anything during their two-year course. If you don’t believe me, ask any MBA what they learnt in B-School, and they would look lost for a good few minutes before sheepishly telling you something vague about how being in a B-School changed their mindset and made them more confident even when they have no clue what they’re talking about. But no one would ever be able to tell you something specific that they learnt, like the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To plug this gap, B-School students were forced to read business books with the false claim that they contain learnings essential for any aspiring manager.

After having read precisely two business books, I am thoroughly convinced that the entire business book industry is a big hoax. The biggest problem with Business books is that...well, they don’t really deserve to be books. Most of these are books that can be summarised in ONE SENTENCE!

For instance, I happened to read one such business book, called “Who Moved My Cheese?” While the title may hint at a boring in-depth analysis of the dairy-farming industry, the book is actually an infinitely more boring allegorical tale about people needing to adapt to changing circumstances instead of moping about and clinging to the past. The author goes on and on rambling about how this one mouse went into a heightened state of depression when the cheese in his regular place went mysteriously missing and refused to go looking about for more cheese. The other mouse, on the other hand, goes looking for new cheese, all the while scribbling profound quotes on the wall on what he’s learnt for the day (don’t ask me why!):

“The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Find New Cheese”, “Old Beliefs Do Not Lead You To New Cheese” and “Movement in a New Direction Helps You Find New Cheese”.

For a mouse hung up on change, it’s ironic that he doesn’t realize he's writing the exact same message over and over again in a slightly different way. Predictably, this mouse finally manages to get a new mountain of cheese after going through the usual series of struggles and hardships where he feels down and out and as if it’s a hopeless cause. The first mouse, equally predictably, finally dies of hunger, or realises the error of his ways...I cannot exactly remember. But the underlying point of the book is that if you don’t adapt to change, you starve.

Now, I’m not suggesting that no-one ever learnt anything from the book. I’m sure there are a large number of people whose lives changed dramatically after reading this book and who went on to have super-successful careers attending meetings and pocketing bonuses. All I’m saying is that, like cigarette packs, there should at least be some sort of a warning or disclaimer to alert one that this book could be a monumental waste of time for anyone whose intellectual depth exceeds that of an earthworm. The publishers and the author should come right out and state that:

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU’RE THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO FEELS THAT READING ABOUT THE SAME IDEA FOR ABOUT A HUNDRED-ODD PAGES NARRATED TO YOU IN A VERY CHILDLIKE AND SIMPLE MANNER WOULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE DRAMATICALLY THEN GO AHEAD AND READ THIS BOOK. ELSE THE MESSAGE BELOW WILL SUFFICE.

“Dear Reader

When stuff around you changes, you need to adapt to succeed; otherwise you’ll be left behind while others rake in the dough.

Come to think of it, Darwin had said something along these lines when he talked about Survival of the Fittest, so this isn’t even anything new. I don’t even know why I’m writing a whole book on this. Forget I ever brought it up.

Regards

Dr. Spencer Johnson, MD”

Or take the other business book that I’d been forced to read, Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done. Written by a big-time former-CEO chap called Larry Bossidy, he painstakingly rambles on for three-hundred odd pages about the same idea, filling the book up with examples of his visits to various offices and plants and using top-management-y sounding words like paradigm, adaptability, actionable, incentivize, leverage, etc.

It would’ve saved everyone so much time and effort if the publishers had just stated upfront:

DISCLAIMER: THIS BOOK CONTAINS AN ENDLESS REPETITION OF ONE CENTRAL IDEA SIMPLY BECAUSE BIG-TIME CEO LARRY BOSSIDY HAS NOW RETIRED AND IS NO LONGER DRAWING THAT SIX-FIGURE SALARY SO HE THOUGHT WRITING THIS BOOK WOULD HELP GET HIM ONE LAST BIG PAYCHECK. IF YOU’RE THE TYPE TO LAP UP ANYTHING EVER TOLD BY A BIG-TIME CEO AND BE INSPIRED BY IT THEN BY ALL MEANS PURCHASE THIS BOOK. ELSE THE MESSAGE BELOW SHOULD SUFFICE.

“Dear Reader

Even though I’m a big-time business leader who spends all his time jet-setting to far-flung plants and attending strategic meetings, all that amounts to nothing unless you see to it that the plans you make are implemented.

Many of you might think that’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but I’m a big-time CEO and have a lot of real-life examples to prove my point, so I thought I’d write an entire book on this.

Sincerely,

Larry Bossidy”

For some of these books, the title itself gives away the fact that it does not deserve to be a book. Take “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” – you would think it should’ve just been one paragraph with seven bullet points; yet the author manages to stretch it to an entire book! As if that wasn’t enough, the sequel to that book (The Eighth Habit of Highly Successful People) talks about only ONE habit! Although I haven’t read the book, I’m willing to bet that the eighth habit would be something that Stephen Covey learnt after his previous book:

Habit # 8 – “Write a self-help book with a simple yet purposeful/life-changing-sounding title such as ‘Seven Habits...’, ‘You Can Win’, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’, etc”!

Doesn't Quite Ad Up, Does it?

It’s a strange sort of effect that advertisements can have on you: you either feel that you don’t belong to this planet, or that the people who create the ads are from another planet. Take, for example, the latest ad campaign from Idea Cellular, “Walk and Talk”. A lot of people walk while they’re talking on their phones, but I think just about everyone would agree that they don’t see this as the route to a healthy lifestyle. I mean, you’d definitely never come across a conversation such as this on planet earth:

You: Good Lord, look at you! I would never have recognized you! You looked like a blue whale the last time we met; your physique stretched across time-zones! And now you’re thinner than graph paper! Wow – whatever happened? Did you stop eating altogether? Underwent a gruelling weight-loss regime? Were you run over by a road-roller?

Ex Blue-Whale Lookalike: Nonsense, nothing of that sort. I just spoke a lot on my cell phone – it’s the Idea network, you see!

Or if you take a look at any of the hair gel ads, you might wonder why anyone really needs an ad agency – all you need to do is just get hold of a hot girl and a guy who applies so much gel that it looks like he has a wet porcupine on his head. Well, to be honest, this is exactly what an ad agency does, but only in case the ad budget is really low. If the ad budget is higher, then the ad agency is automatically expected to do something extra. So the ad agency scouts around all over the world, finds a suitably exotic foreign location, and then gets hold of a hot girl and a guy who applies so much gel that it looks like he has a wet porcupine on his head.

Now a lot of ad agency professionals might object to the previous paragraph as demeaning to their profession, and I have to agree that they’re absolutely correct. Not all ad agencies blindly get hold of a hot girl and a guy who applies so much gel that it looks like he has a wet porcupine on his head. Many of them undertake a thorough branding exercise where they study the market and the consumers, define the target audience, create a differentiated brand proposition for the product, test these propositions with the consumers, and THEN get hold of a hot girl and a guy who applies so much gel that it looks like he has a wet porcupine on his head. In addition, many of them get hold of a hot girl and a guy who applies deodorant, and create a deo ad out of it. Or they get hold of a hot girl and a guy who rides a bike and create a bike ad out of it. The point I’m trying to make is that a lot of thought has clearly gone into it, and we should not be dismissive of such advertisements.

What would be interesting, though, is if there were ads for concepts or ideas instead of products and companies. This is what some of them could be like:

So what is the toughest thing to do on Earth? Understand women? Achieve world peace? Score lower than Paris Hilton on an IQ test? Resolve the Kashmir dispute? Sure, all of these are incredibly tough things to do...but for the man who wants a real challenge, for the man who wishes to push himself beyond all limits of human endurance, there is only one answer – Differential Calculus! Created by the all-time great, legendary mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, Differential Calculus is a technique using which you can solve complex mathematical equations by making it even more complex and incomprehensible! Some of you might think that Differential Calculus is not exactly your cup of tea, but as any marketing guru will tell you these days: Differentiate or die! DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS: DIFFERENTIATE OR DIE!

Which particle do you think plays the most important role in nuclear reactions? Which particle do you think generates radioactive isotopes useful for a variety of purposes? Yes, we’re sure you would’ve guessed protons or electrons. After all, they’re the ones with all the charge; they’re the ones who get all the attention. But you’re wrong!!! The answer, dear reader, is NEUTRONS! So we’re not positively charged! Neither are we negatively charged! Big Deal! Goddamnit, there’s nothing wrong in being neutral. Neutrons today are being used in a wide variety of applications and research on neutrons is throwing up new uses every single day. Neutrons are the only particle to have a star named after them. So they next time you disparagingly dismiss neutrons as being fence-sitters, think again! NEUTRONS: PROUD TO BE NEUTRAL

Jargon™ Inc Blue-sky thinking, touch base, going forward, take this discussion offline, EOD, FYI, PFA, synergy, alignment, paradigm shift, etc. How many times have you heard management-types use these words? Indeed, Jargon has successfully established itself as the preferred language of the corporate world. The greater your command over this language, the higher you’re bound to climb up the corporate ladder! Jargon™ Inc presents to you its new Crash Courses in Jargon™. In two weeks time, we’ll teach you to talk the corporate talk. Accidents shall turn into unintentional vehicular impacts, problems shall turn into challenging assignments, car owners shall turn into vehicularly empowered people and plain old you shall turn into corporate-ready you! Join now, and avail of our special introductory offer of a free Jargon™ Handbook!

PUBLIC NOTICE ISSUED IN PUBLIC INTEREST BY THE GOVT OF INDIA Dear Citizens This is your government speaking. Since independence, we have consistently been against alcohol and have insisted that it is bad for you. However, recent surveys indicate that alcohol, when consumed in moderation, actually reduces the risk of heart failure and prolongs your life span. Apparently, wine also contains antioxidants, which is one of the things that are damn good for your health these days. To be very honest, we are very confused now and do not really know what stand to take regarding alcohol. In the meantime, we guess it’s perfectly fine if you’re drinking. Apologies for the last 60-odd years. Sincerely, Government

The last ad is one that I’d really love to see some day, but I guess the chances of that happening are about as high as Paris Hilton’s IQ. Finally, I’d like to propose a tagline for religion, which would ensure that, like movies and video games, religion is also among the list of activities considered harmful for impressionable young minds (although it's probably far more harmful, in my opinion):

Religion: Full of sects and violence!

The Art of Self-Defence

When we’re children, adults often fool us into doing things that are allegedly good for us and therefore we ought to do, like studying Geography. However, even as a child, I was not foolish enough to believe that karate was helpful for self-defence purposes. For some reason, though, most of the others seemed to believe this. One moment, karate was just this fighting style that you saw in obscure Chinese movies, the next moment every school and neighbourhood seemed to have karate classes for kids. One minute the neighbourhood parks were filled with kids playing cricket, the next minute the parks were filled with the same kids attending karate classes. Even in schools, instead of spending valuable time playing football or doing nothing, kids were forced into white gowns and colourful belts, made to squat in absurd positions and move their hands and feet while yelling all the time.

As a kid, it all just looked like too much effort for too little reward, but now that I think about it, the whole karate craze seems all the more ridiculous. I mean, think about it – have you EVER seen ANYBODY using karate for self-defence? The truth is that nobody uses karate, unless you’re in a Chinese movie. The way everybody seemed to be taking up karate at that stage, it seemed like there would be a new karate generation in the country. One would’ve thought that by the time we all grew up, people on the road would be engaging in karate fights whenever there was a scuffle due to a road accident.

Yet, as kids, karate was extolled to us as an excellent method for self-defence. The final outcome of a karate training course, however, was not kids who could defend themselves; rather they were kids who could put up an incredibly boring show to an equally disinterested audience consisting mostly of parents. The highlight of the show would be kids breaking wooden boards with their hands, or if they were really good, breaking bricks with their heads.

Think about it. As someone who’s pondering the merits of taking up karate, how would this sound for a conversation you have with a martial arts instructor:

You: So how exactly would this training help me?

Instructor: Well, you’d be able to break wooden boards or tiles with your own hands. Or if you’re really good, you could break bricks with your hands or even your head.

You: And that would help me because...?

Instructor: Ahhh...ummm...well, we’d also give you a succession of coloured belts to keep you motivated.

You: Really? Why didn’t you just say so earlier? Sign me up, I’m in!

Perhaps the only thing that karate is really useful for is the movies. If you ask the Chinese about kung-fu or karate, they would tell you that these are ancient Chinese martial arts techniques that require years of rigorous practice after which you can make terrible movies using only your hands and feet along with a lot of wooden furniture. For some reason most of these movies tend to have the word ‘Dragon’ as part of the name - such as Enter the Dragon, Curse of the Dragon, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc. This is how these movies are generally made:

• The hero goes to some martial arts training school that is located on top of a forbidden-looking mountain, far far away from civilization. The school can only be reached by foot and even reaching there generally requires a level of effort comparable to Magellan circumnavigating the Earth.
• On the first day, the hero, who is no slouch when it comes to martial arts and is pretty much the best exponent of it in his part of town, is utterly humiliated by the old master in a one-sided fight scene. The old master has a very long moustache and at some point in the past was the greatest warrior to have lived and had a ridiculous title such as The Grand Master Golden Samurai Ninja Turtle Warrior of the Great Empire. The hero realises that he has a lot to learn.
• For 5-odd years, the hero undergoes a gruelling training where he is made to eat terrible food, sleep on cold stone floors and wear terrible clothes, mostly just a plain gown.
• Then one fine day the hero is suddenly attacked by 4-5 excellent fighters. A long martial-art fight sequence ensues, filled with gravity-defying stunts and a lot of wooden furniture being broken. A bit like the Matrix, the assailants keep getting knocked down and you’d think they were dead, but they bounce back and keep the fight going on for long. However, the hero has now honed his fighting skills and finally is able to vanquish his assailants.
• At this point The Grand Master Golden Samurai Ninja Turtle Warrior of the Great Empire appears out of the shadows and solemnly proclaims. “You have learnt well, Master X. After years and years of training, you are now ready to go out into the world and make some of the most terrible movies in the world using only your hands, feet and immense powers of concentration.”

(Note: This is a far cheaper approach than Hollywood, where they use a lot of expensive cars, explosives and Arnold Schwarzenegger to make some of the most terrible movies in the world).

I think most kids realised what a monumental waste of time karate had been by the time they grew into their teens. Which is when they decided to spend their valuable time playing pool instead; another craze that totally bypassed me for some reason – but I shall leave that topic for another day...

The Truth About Greek Gods

For all those girls who feel that comparing a guy to a Greek god is the best way of complimenting him, the truth is that it’s only a compliment in the way that calling Paris Hilton a good actress would be – it doesn’t mean anything. It so happens that I was doing some research on Greek gods (one of those oddball things that my work requires me to do sometimes) and a lot of myths I had about Greek gods have now been well and truly shattered (although to be honest it was always called Greek Mythology).

Myth # 1

Greek gods are powerful and majestic: Throughout childhood, one is exposed to majestic, beautiful Greek gods such as Apollo, Zeus, Venus and Aphrodite. This is not true – for every majestic, all-powerful Greek god such as Zeus (god of sky and thunder) and Apollo (god of music, archery, light and truth), there are dozens of mundane, everyday gods such as Hermes (god of thieves, commerce and travellers) and Alastor (god of family feuds).

Myth #2

Greek Gods have cool names: This is also not true. The sad truth is that there are hundreds of Greek gods with appalling names that you wouldn’t even try to pronounce such as Haphaestus and Eileithyia. We only end up knowing about the cool ones because their names have been usurped by all the brands; which is why we think that Greek gods have cool names when we are informed that Nike was the Greek goddess for sportswear.

Myth #3

Not everyone can just raise their hands one fine day and declare themselves a Greek god: This is the one aspect about Greek gods that came about as the biggest surprise to me. I always thought it was a big deal to be a Greek god; that the Greek gods comprised a bunch of exceptional, all-powerful beings that were truly worth worshipping. However, a quick look at some examples of Greek gods below will show you that it really doesn’t take much to be a Greek god:

Adephagia: Goddess of gluttony

Agdistis: Hermaphroditic demon

Alastor: God/demon of family feuds

Alectrona: Goddess of the morning or waking up

Ate: Goddess of foolish acts

Momus: God of satire and criticism

Notus: God of the south wind

Hygieia: Goddess of cleanliness

Eurus: God of the east wind

Ceto: Goddess of the dangers of the ocean and of sea monsters

Zephyrus: God of the west wind

Am I the only one who finds it a little odd that there is a goddess of foolish acts and a god of satire and criticism, or that separate gods are required for the directions in which the wind blows, or that one absolutely cannot manage without a deity as specific as the goddess of the dangers of the ocean and sea monsters? I’m pretty sure the first atheist was created due to this very reason. Imagine how tough it would have been for people in the navy, pirates or general explorers and seafarers in those days, when they decided to pray, “Bless me, O Poseidon, god of the sea; Amphitrite, goddess of the sea; Doris - goddess of the sea’s bounty; Ceto, goddess of the dangers of the ocean and of sea monsters; Brizo, goddess of sailors; Aeolus, god of the winds; Boreas, god of the north wind; Eurus, god of the east wind, Glaucus, minor sea god; Proteus, another minor sea god; Zephyrus, god of the west wind, and...ummm...you know what??? Screw you guys, I’m turning atheist!!!”

It’s a bit like the way ministries are formed in India, with every politician wrangling for a ministerial berth “Oh, you want a ministerial berth too, do you? Alright then, let’s see what we can come up with...aha! How about this one? Minister for Sociocultural Upkeep of Suburban India? Or this one – Minister for Closing Down Pubs & Discos, or better still, the Minister for Paleontological Studies of Hominids?”

And these names are just the tip of the iceberg – there are other, even more unspectacular gods such as Aristaeus (a good hunter and inventor), Charon (Hades’ ferryman), Enyalius (minor god of war) and Glaucus (minor sea god). I’m sure I could just walk in to the Greek gods’ annual conference, and if any of them notices an additional person and questions me, I could just cook up something like, “Oh, me! I’m the God of ummm...curtains and upholstery fabric! You know, fourth son of Minerva from her affair with Poseidon when he washed ashore the island of Crete. Nice to meet you.” Unless I said something especially daft like “I’m the god of human resources management”, I’m pretty certain of not getting thrown out of that conference.

And how about this one, Haphaestus – this is what his description has to say: God of fire and smiths with very weak legs. He makes armours for the gods and other heroes like Achilles. Son of Hera and Zeus is his father in some accounts. Married to Aphrodite, but she does not love him because of his weak legs and, as a result, is cheating on him with Ares. He had a daughter named Pandora. In a contemporary setting, this would translate as: “Bastard chap who is a poor athlete and manufactures defence equipment for a living. Is having marital issues; speculation is rife that this is due to non-performance in the sack because his legs cannot take it. Daughter responsible for bringing a lot of evil into this world.” The last statement might make you wonder if it’s Nehru they’re talking about, but would you read this profile and say “Hey, this sounds like a really swell guy! Let’s make him a God!”?

In fact, you could even try making up your own Greek god. I’d done this once, when I was asked to submit some names of Greek gods for a certain product, and slipped in Apropos among the usual list of Apollo, Eros, Adonis and the lot. Funnily enough the name Apropos was even short listed until someone higher up decided to be doubly sure and replied to me saying, “Check authenticity of Apropos as a Greek god. If yes, what is he the god of?”

So there you have it – Greek gods really aren’t all that they’re made out to be, they can have incredibly-tough-to-pronounce names, terribly redundant job descriptions (sounds a bit like a South Indian HR professional at this point, doesn’t it?) and you can even make one up without anyone noticing. Not quite the best compliment you’d want to give someone, is it?