• I am skipping town yet again. I am growing tired of this routine ok? I mean I put my bags, set my house, buy all the nice things that make me feel at home and then there I go- throwing water on the picture i just neatly painted. The worst part is packing. I think I am getting better at it. I used to worry a lot about organizing stuff. Now I just dump them all and see it makes no difference at all.

• The Marketing Myopia lesson came back to me today when I was dealing with the courier guy who slapped a Rs.2500 bill for transporting a carton the size of a monitor box. He justified the price saying diesel charge, insurance, docket charge and the worst packing charges of Rs.300.  Because he brought me a stupid cardboard box and packaging tape. Obviously I showed him the door. You can’t be grateful about paying for some services like petrol, transport, courier etc. The price will never be right for doing this. Must suck to be them.

• I was shopping for books today and I decided to reread Foundation. I was disappointed to find that they had only fresh unread copies. I somehow prefer used books.  I mean new book is all sharp, crisp and snotty and it is sometimes distracting to read. Whereas old books are like chums who let you get on with your life instead of being poky.  Anyway I still bought the new copy of foundation. I mean by conventional wisdom people perhaps never resell Foundation.

• Ok. I didn’t want to reread Foundation. For one, I think it will never be the same again. I mean you should leave magical moments just magical so that you can preserve the awe.

• Sometimes you think you are being mean for hating a person because they act like jerks and they deserve a second chance to be judged fair. But jerks will be jerks and will never understand that. Jerks are jerks because they choose to be so and any amount of time you give them to see their nicer side is simply self-destructive.

Now beat that, Holden Caufield!

And I have been spending my time
1. Picking fights with water guy, internet guy, print-out guy, driving class guy and all the other people who shouldn’t piss you off enough to deserve a place on your blog.
2. Looking at shaking branches of trees and wondering if they are stationary and I am the one that is swaying.
3. Watching Boston Legal. (I am in love with Alan Shore. He’s cute )

And then it happened. It’s ironic you find the most profound quotes in Hitchhiker’s series: “How can I tell,” said the man (who really ruled the Universe), “that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

And so I have decided that all this inertia of my mouth (and mind) isn’t going to help me figure out about life and I have been having this sudden need to be loquacious and couldn’t think of a better place to start. Though by doing this I will just be refuting all the 5 reasons I shouldn’t be blogging , I guess that’s what makes me me. :-)

I have a dream that one day coffee machines will disappear from all offices;  leaving milky, filter coffee reign forever.

I have a dream that one day people will stop asking “How are you” and “How is life” back to back.

I have a dream that when people play music out loud on their cellphones, they will buy earplugs to everybody in the vicinity.

I have a dream that some day fondness for pink will not be analogous to being empty-headed.

I have a dream that people will develop a wee bit of self-respect and stop breaking down and touching feet to pander to the I-am-way-too-old-to-act-in-movie-plus-I-suck-at-it-anyway judges on “talent” hunt shows.

I have a dream that one day TV show producers will rise from their self-accepted resignation to the dearth of creativity and stop making reality shows.

I dream that people will stop picking up the longest adjectives from the thesaurus to describe themselves on their orkut profiles.

I have a dream that one day same gender friendship will be seen as platonic again.

I have a dream that one day when pricks passes off another person’s original work as their own; the sky will open up and shower rotten eggs on them. (Though I wasn’t around to see,  I hope Rahul Bose mentioned Martin Luther King)

I have a dream that  my blog will receive three digit hits per day without any of my cheap attention-seeking marketing gimmicks.

1. I keep getting lot of accidental blank calls from friends because mine is usually the first name on their phone.
2. I love bows and ribbons. I tend to pick clothes, shoes and bags that have them.
3. I am a morning person.
4. I love bright colours- pink, orange, red, yellow bright shades of  blue, green, purple. I also like  black, purple and brown when not mixed with other colours. I guess I like all colours :P
5. People confuse me for a  North Indian.
6. I hate when people use short forms of words and intentional wrong spellings. (like kul, gud, lukin, havin, mebbe. Congos is a new word I have begun to hate A LOT lately)
7. I hate using “me” as a subject pronoun.

Ceteris paribus, let’s assume the popularity and hence the exorbitant price of apple as a function of demand. What exactly drives this demand? Let’s leave aside taste as it is a subjective area. Nutrient content also is a debatable parameter. How many people do we see looking up nutrition charts before they buy fruits?

How about the possibility that maybe it is good marketing that is driving demand? Are you saying it’s crazy because no one sees an advertisement or a promotional event for apples? Remember the last time you hung up on the guy who called to sell you credit cards? Smart marketers are not hawkers but fabulists who ensnare people into buying products with compelling stories. Apple owes its success to the anecdotes, fables and adages spun over ages.

Here are citations of the marketing concepts involved:

1. High Brand Recall Rate: The author of this post did a quick brand recall test. Twenty random people were asked to name a fruit. All except two named apple. (One said tomato just to sound geeky and the other said Jackfruit).

One of the reasons for apple’s high recall rate it is the first word we are taught in school/home. Think of the magnitude. Every kid who is taught English becomes aware of apple by the time he/she is 4 years old. That’s close to 80-100 million kids a year. Have you heard of a marketing campaign more effective than this?

The old adage ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’, the idiom ‘apple of one’s eye’ only strengthen the argument.

2. Packaging and Appearance: Apple’s colour and shape are testimony of nature’s partiality at work. Apart from the fact that the color red makes head turn, it is a proven fact that the colour red stimulates hunger and hence works best when used in packaging food items and eateries (Fast Food joints like KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino’s all use the “red” strategy). Also apple’s full and succulent body and shiny texture like a sedan driven out of a showroom contribute more to its attractiveness. (This may also be the reason why green apples are grown and hence sold lesser than red apples)

3. Strategic Product Placement: Apple has been placed in historic moments. Man’s first sin (if you believed in creationism) was to eat an apple. Apple right from the beginning of time itself has been positioned as an object of temptation. It’s like a seductress that one tries to stay away from but still wonders about curiously.

Over the years, apple went through a brand makeover and got repositioned to appeal to one’s geekier side. Newton had to sit under an apple tree to discover gravity. Thus an apple tree became a place that conjured inspiration for path-breaking discoveries.

Centuries later, even today apple’s significance hasn’t reduced by a smidgeon. It has only grown bigger to become the name of the company that makes the world fanciest toys.

There are innumerous references of apple in popular culture. The Trojan War was started by the Apple of Discord. The evil stepmother lures Snow White with an apple. Apple is the last clue that Robert Langdon cracks in one of the contemporary best sellers, Da Vinci code. I will not list down all instances but it must be noted that even in evergreen advertisements such as a Vicco Vajradanti one, we are shown an old man bite into an apple.

So the next time you buy an apple don’t blame inflation for its high price. Blame yourself for falling for the marketing gimmicks that’s been conspired for epochs.

First of all, what is gmail doing to ensure that I am followed by the people who I want to be followed by? The other day, I got a mail from a laptop service center confirming a certain transaction. In all probability, he can follow me on buzz now. There are many such people with whom I would like to use gmail for strictly professional communication. Being on buzz is just going to make things uncomfortable.

Second, isn’t combining buzz and gmail putting too many eggs in the same basket? Gmail is for formal and informal mails, facebook is for keeping in touch with friends, twitter is to publicize my blog and my blog is a place to vent-out. I want to be able to maintain all these at fungible levels. With this new intertwining, I’m not sure that’s going to easy.

Next, buzz is going to be a definite kill on productivity.

Then, I like having separate networks for family and friends. Buzz would now make it impossible. I mean how many of you would appreciate your college friends knowing that you are called “Booboo” at home. Or your family knowing details of your college flings.

Three years back, I wrote a post called suffocated when orkut was becoming tiresome with it’s (then) open-to-the-world scarpbook, multicast scarps and its shoddy look. Now along with the smothered feeling, I feel more insecure.

Fear of the dark, I have a constant fear that someone’s always near.

Fear of the dark, I have a phobia that someone’s always there.

This movie is not meant for

1. The weak-hearted (Trust me. It’s pointless being egoistic. Read further for details)
2. A date
3. ABSOLUTELY NOT RECOMMENDED for kids. Not applicable to parents who want to be blamed for giving their children a disturbing childhood. Or parents who are ready to answer uncomfortable questions.

I don’t abhor the film because it reminds me of Tomb Raider, Titanic, 300, Braveheart, Prison Break and a bunch of other movie/sitcoms I may not know. I am not even berating it for it’s crudeness of dialogues or the scenes. The movie was simply one of the most disturbing experiences ever.

Reasons? Three hours of Bloodshed, limbs flying, horrificly intricately ornamented face of cannibals, tribal men chopping off their own heads, slimy snakes, people eating a camel raw, an extremely dark cave-like place filled with thousands of thin, coal-black, savage-looking, raw flesh-eating men, women and children, big fat man hitting prisoners with a big iron ball, horrificly rubbery and wrinkly old man shown in close-up, more bloodshed, more limbs flying…

There were a couple of places the movie did make me LOL:

1. Oh Eesa song’s video (which closely resembled a Marilyn Manson video)I thought was brilliantly pulled off with eerie faces, smudged make-up, suggestive dances and all.  But that was till the part where the actors wear Saffron shirts with Om written all over them (which closely resembles Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) and  start singing Govinda Govinda (at which point it’s hard not recalling the Bhajans played at home)
2. Reema Sen and her uncle (who are apparently heirs of the Pandians) fight a battle against the Cholas. Reema Sen and Uncle are dressed in Pandian clothes: kingly adorns with armour, swords and other archaic war paraphernelia. And Surprise Surprise! They are flanked by task force men dressed in regular army camouflage clothes. (Now we may question why Task Force men are interested in fighting against Cholas who Reema Sen and her uncle have a problem with). The most RIB-TICKLING part is where the Pandian Uncle (remember! He is wearing an ancient warrior costume) shouts to his army, “Take position! Fire!”

I am surprised this movie is getting favourable reviews. But if a majority thinks what I am thinking, I hope the director Selvaraghavan has a back-up plan cos I’m sure the censored version of the movie can’t run even for 45 minutes if any channels decides to screen it as an”Indiya tholaikaatchigalil mudal muraiaaga“(First time on Indian Television) product.

So day in and day out, for the next 96 hours, I kept giving Muthu a combination of pills, testing his blood and ensuring he was stable. In between taking care of Muthu, I spent time with Jyothi. She would take me around the village and show me off to her friends. “This is the doctor saar who is treating Muthu. He is my hero”, she used to tell her friends.

My friends riled me for my sudden change. One of my seniors warned me that I was taking the case too personally. I told him, “Most problems in this world arise when people assume what is good for them is good for everyone”. He told me, “There are two kinds of people in the world- people who learn from their mistakes and people who learn from other’s mistakes. The latter are the smarter.” I told him, “Maybe I am dumb”.

I didn’t understand why people always came in between me and my passion. When I was a kid I was dissuaded from running because that wasn’t a lucrative enough to make a career. That week in Nazipet I didn’t care for my grades. I didn’t care about using this experience to write a paper. All I cared about was making sure that the kid goes home safe to his sister and I had become the butt of everyone’s joke. The truth was after years, there was someone who believed in me. I wanted to make everything alright for Jyothi. I wanted her brother to return back safe to her. I wanted it to be a happy ending.

That night Muthu passed away. I don’t remember anything from that night. Except that I ran.

I ran because I was scared. I ran because I felt helpless. I ran because I wanted to forget everything. I ran because I needed the high that I know marijuana can’t give me tonight. I ran because I didn’t have the guts to face Jyothi. I got reminded of the days I ran through Doom’s Alley. It’s been 14 years and I still hadn’t learnt to confront my fears.

As I ran, I kept thinking. Funny, life isn’t after all the race that Mr. Saamy, my school principal said it was. Nor is it the marathon as my seniors referred to it was when we worked 3 shifts straight. Life is a relay. We are just lonely runners – running our part of the race and passing the baton to someone. That someone is sometimes a person we know, but more often it is a nameless person or destiny. And then all we can do look is stare at the runner going in front – hoping that he would reach the finish line. When we win, there’s something to rejoice. When we lose, all we can take home is the pain in the knees and a sweaty t-shirt to tell ourselves that we did the best and put ourselves to sleep.

I kept running till I passed out.

The end

So I got into Med-school. Most of my first year went off in remorse and cigarettes. In between that there were classes, labs, vivas and exams. Not that I cared. But they became a part of my life. Running was not a part of that life. But I now knew the names of tendons that used to pain after a good running session.. Ah the past.. one more cigarette.. Days were only as long as a pack of cigarettes.

Second year was a progress. I started experimenting with weed and days were now as long as two packs of cigarettes. That summer, we were taken to an infection-struck village called Nazipet. A big company had polluted the water supplies of the town and over thousand people suffered from various ailments. There were people from several organizations around the country. I hated those social service organizations. On the face, they all tried to look like Mother Teresa’s reincarnation. But deep down I always thought they looked at the victims thinking “Sucks to be you”. Well, I wasn’t one of those hypocrites. I wasn’t there because I pretended to care. I was there as a part of my course. And as always, I had planned to do just as much was required to scrape me through the semester.

That evening, I got bored and I wanted a quick fix. I explored around the village to find a quiet place for just me and my joint. I found a shallow desiccated well. I got into it and ensconced myself against its wall. I was delighted to be away from the squalor and noise.

Lost I was in hallucination, when I heard her speak. She was a little girl, probably 8 or 9 years old. “Doctor, can you help me?” she asked. “My brother has symptoms of the flu but all the other doctors seem busy. I followed you to ask you for your help”. I wanted to say I was also busy. I wanted her to leave me alone. I wanted to tell her I was a phony doctor in a white lab coat. Instead I said, “Let’s go have a look at him”.

We entered her house. Her brother, who looked as old as her, was writhing on the floor in pain. She comforted her brother saying, “Don’t worry Muthu, doctor saar here knows everything to cure you.” I ran some basic tests (Yeah, even for the rookie I was, I knew to how to use a stethoscope and check pupils) and it was an affirmative. In fact, an advanced form of flu. I told the girl that she would now have to take the help of the senior doctors in the medical camp and got up to leave. “Can you please take us there?” she asked. I looked around the house there were no signs of any grownups except a short wiry eighty-ish looking woman.

After we managed to get the young Muthu admitted, the little girl told me, “When I grow up I want to become a brave and smart doctor like you”. I swore not to fall for the adulation I didn’t deserve. She went on, “Honestly doctor saar, I am scared. I wish I could do something. Would Muthu be alright?” I wanted to give her some sort of an assurance but I didn’t know anything about the flu myself. So I opened my laptop and decided to distract her with some medical mumbo-jumbo. I showed her a cross-sectional view of the gland that usually was vulnerable to flu attacks. As I read about it and explained to her, I began to understand more about the flu myself. I began to think Muthu’s case probably wasn’t as bad as it looked. There was scope for treatment after all. I took some of his blood samples and began to study. The little girl whose name by then I had discovered was Jyothi was observing me. After two hours of tests and analysis, I had just understood how to treat Muthu. I told Jyothi, “Muthu is going to be alright”.

to be continued and completed

When I was 6 years old, there was to be this eerie dark street called Doom’s Alley that I had to walk through every day on my way back home from school. I was scared of the dark and I used to run the length of Doom’s Alley with my eyes tightly shut. Running through Doom’s Alley became a habit and one day I remember crossing it in under 60 seconds. A proud I sat on my father’s lap that evening and told him about my feat. But he didn’t share my enthusiasm. He said, “The brave don’t run away from their fears. They confront them.” I didn’t understand what he meant. I ignored it and continued my sprint through the spooky Alley every day.

What started off as a way of handling my fears slowly became a hobby and then a passion. By the time I was 12 years old, running became a profound experience. When I ran, the whole world was invisible to me. My friends used to tell me that my legs and arms moved involuntarily in perfect synchronization like I was some kind of a machine.  They used to tell me that the fairest girls in the class cheered for me. They used to tell me how nail-biting an experience it was to see my competitors grunt and cuss to take over me. I never remembered any of that. For me, the only proof of running remained the butterfly-shaped patch of sweat at the back of my t-shirt and the pain in my joints. It was the first time I experienced pleasure in pain – yes, running gave me a high – and nothing else mattered.

Encouraged by my friends and empowered by my confidence, I dreamt of becoming an athlete. I spent most of my school days either running for my school or my district or lost in the reverie of representing my country in the Olympics. Then came class 11 – the threshold of career our principal Mr.Saamy referred to it. The predictable happened. My dad asked me to quit running and concentrate on getting admission into a med-school. I told him about my desire to go to a sports college. He protested. I raised my voice. My dad raised his. My mom shrieked. My sister cried. My dad won. My dreams of going to a sports college and running for the country crumpled. “Trust me, Ajit. I have been a doctor for 20 years and I haven’t it regretted even once.” he said.  Most problems in this world arise when people assume what is good for them is good for everyone.

So I started studying. I used to sit by the window and gaze at other kids running around the playground. But I forced myself to flake the rust off my brain and study. My grades improved. My parents were happy. I was not. I had an urge to run. So one day I took off. I didn’t just run around the school playground. I ran miles and miles, to the next district where they were having a state-level competition. Who wants to be a doctor and look at sick people all day? I am going to win this race, take home a trophy and tell my parents running is where my heart is. If running through Doom’s Alley was because of my inability to confront my fear, this run I thought was the way of showing my dad that I was brave to stand for what I believed in. My limbs worked fine despite all the months of inactivity. I ran the race to my heart’s content and won. I would never forget the look on my parents’ faces that evening when I returned back home with my trophy –morbid faces that did not show a speck of happiness or encouragement.

I looked at my parents today. Their eyes were gleaming. They sat with their heads held high – contented and proud. Mr.Saamy, the showman of the day spoke on the mike, “For years I have trained my students into understanding that life is race. I tell them, ‘If you sleep for an extra hour, the rivals who are awake would have overtaken you by a few hundred ranks.’ Only a few understand it, follow it and get a good admission. Ajit Kumar here is one such obedient student. Let’s applaud for him on his success of getting into the country’s most premier medical college!!”

The tranquillity of the warm Sunday afternoon shook when the crowd applauded.  “The hero of the evening deserves a louder applause!”, yelled Mr. Saamy on the old rusted microphone. The crowd applauded cacophonously at his order.  “Ajit Kumar, please come to the dais.” I stood up to walk to the dais. My legs felt heavy. As I dragged myself I heard people say, “How modest he looks”, “His parents must be so proud”, “Take him as an example and follow his footsteps.” Sadly in the whole crowd, I was the only one who knew I was the unhappiest person there. And worse, it was only I (besides Mr.Saamy and my parents )who knew that it wasn’t hours of cramming biological names, physics laws or chemistry equations that got me into med-school. It was my passion for running, a certificate for winning the state-level race and the country’s damned sports quota.

to be continued and completed

Title Courtesy: Iron Maiden