Conflict Of Interest?

This post is about two of my favourite books launched this year, May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss by Arnab Ray (Greatbong) & Dork by Sidin Vadukut. Before I start, if you haven't read either of these, I would highly recommend you quickly make amends by ordering them now.

Both of these are the debut novels of their authors. Both of them are two of India's most well known and widely read bloggers. Personally I am an avid reader of both. As a wannabe blogger I am very proud of these two books produced by the best we have in the Indian blogosphere.

Disclaimer: I may potentially have a conflict of interest myself while writing this post because I am a friend of Arnab and have known him personally for sometime now. I follow Sidin's blog & tweets (and love both), though we haven't had any personal interactions yet.

What sparked off this post was this review of MIHYAP (May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss) by Livemint, a newspaper/news portal owned by Hindustan Times, one of India's leading media houses. The review seems a bit too personal and in parts of very bad taste.

Example:

"Unless you are leading a secret life as a prostitute, you have no business turning your blog into a book"

Now coming to the conflict of interest part of the post. So far it just seemed like a reviewer trashing a book, almost at a personal level. But that's okay. You can't please all the people all the time, and the reviewer is well within her rights to share her thoughts about the book.

There is a twist in the tale here because, interestingly, the Managing Editor of the publication (Livemint) which carried the review is none other than Sidin Vadukut. 

So here we have two well known Indian bloggers, who have both just launched their first books (Dork was launched in January 2010, MIHYAP in March 2010). One of them is the Managing Editor of a publication brought out by a leading media house. And that publication runs a stinker of a review of the other's book.

Seems a bit off.

Again, having been a reader of Sidin's blog & tweets for long I am not questioning his integrity. Or accusing him of using his professional powers for some personal reasons. Sidin is way too popular a blogger and the author of a best selling novel who will require to do such stuff. The question I have in my mind is - isn't there a situation of conflict of interest here due to the circumstances?

Also, another question regarding the conflict of interest issue is the glowing review of Dork brought out by Livemint. Here again the reviewer is well within his rights to say whatever he feels about a book, in this case he felt highly positive about it, and that's okay. But given that this review is being written by an employee of a publication about the book written by the Managing Editor of the same publication, isn't there a case of conflict of interest?

Sidin by the way has put a disclaimer stating this conflict of interest in the reviews section of his blog.

Some food for thought.

Pictures courtesy: greatbong.net & flipkart.com

CAT De India

They say every day is not a Sunday, definitely not the third Sunday of November. This day decides India's fate every year. The great Indian middle class dream is up for grabs for two to three hours on this day.

Whether you become a part of the all conquering India Inc. or spend another year trying to multiply two numbers with three digits following the decimal point in less than two point four seven seconds is decided on this day. Your entry into the steel and glass world of Euros, Yens and laptops is decided by your ability to understand the pathos of a character from an excerpt from a management story and relate it to the feelings of an eskimo after he has bought his latest refrigerator. Is he happy that he has a new item to flaunt? Or is he flaunting his happiness at the new acquisition? Or is it a blend of both emotions? Did you say (a)? Or was it (b)? You better be sure because in the difference lies your anonymous existence and the key to the brave new India.

How do you expect someone to handle the declining sales of a company in times of recession such as this, unless she could blurt out the volume of a pyrimad on a spherical object in less time than a computer, ten years back? You thought the last sentence was convoluted with an intention of propelling you into the orbit of uncertainty and gloom? Ha! Your comprehension abilities are many notches below what is required to add up cells in Excel with the help of your Executive Assistant. You are not welcome to the 'club'.

Frankly, you tell me, which sane person will employ you in an organisation if you don't know the differences between chutzpah and chiroprocter? Or is it chiropractor? Well, there goes my chance!

If MBA is religion CAT is baptism. Baptism by fire as many would say. As a friend's dad recently mentioned about the i-banking crash, "It was but natural for the crash to shake up the world. After all these years all these super brain MBAs finally did something for the world as a whole to take notice."

For all of my friends and others trying to 'bell the CAT' (the winner of the most cliched Indian expression, 7 years running), I wish you all the best. May the MBA Gods smile approvingly upon your DI, PS and VA questions on the third Sunday of November.



P.S: been there, haven't done that it. Took the test a few years back and couldn't divide numbers fast enough. So feel free to call it sour grapes or half baked wisdom:)
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Shameful

I found this picture in a Facebook album of some contact of mine, and it has been disturbing me since then.

If you haven't figured out already the picture shows my contact, a little girl then, getting ready to go to school and another little child, looks like a domestic help is tying the shoelaces of the contact's elderly male relative.

It's just revolting. And the point is not how she could put up this picture, but how could this take place? Okay, I know it happens all the time and the previous question may seem naive, but if we for a moment manage to get out of the conditioned state we are in, and ask ourselves the question once again, how could this take place?

Has left me really disturbed.


P.S: No questions about the contact will be answered for obvious reasons.

Net Practice

I feel like that little kid, woken up at 5 in the morning and sent packing to the cricket coaching centres which have mushroomed all over the cities, big and small. Carrying the dreams of their parents, of becoming the next Dhoni, they practice. They run, they stretch, they dive, they bowl, they bat. They do anything that can take them to the doorsteps of the national team, and then wait for the little push from behind.

This is a country of a billion plus population and two passions, cinema and cricket. There is engineering and MBA too, but that is for the less adventurous. And these little kids hit the balls day in, day out with Arjuna like focus to make the cut. Their mothers model themselves upon Sehwag and Yuvraj's moms and start practicing their lines for milk drink ads once their precocious child makes his mark. His first fifty against New Zealand in a 20-20 match at the age of fifteen, and the media is all over him. He is the next Sachin, the next Sir Don. Everyone develops a keen interest in his choice of music and women. The former he didn't have the time to listen to during all the practice, the latter he is too young and busy to give a thought to. He is a machine, a run scoring, wicket taking, money making machine. Cricket is not his favourite sport, it's his profession. Getting through the Ranji team is like the board exams, the national A team like higher secondary and finally cracking the national team is akin to cracking the IIT-JEE test.

He has to do something, anything. He has given up his education, mostly. His parents have cancelled all the vacations during the childhood years because that's when all the tournaments are held, his school teachers have given him secondary treatment and asked the other boys to concentrate on studies and not be distracted by his strange ways. After all this how can he just be content with the state under 19 side? What happen's to all the sacrifice? What happens to him? Who cares if he got up at 5 all his life to smack leather with wood?

I don't the answers to any of this, but I don't feel like that kid anymore. I started this piece as a practice session for my big blog dreams, but am ending it relieved and satisfied. I may practice or may not, but I don't have to make something I love take over my life and take the fun away from it.

Maybe you found this writing most pedestrian, but that's perfectly fine! I wrote because I wanted to, not because my parents or anyone wanted or forced me too. Maybe I will not write again for days, maybe I will. Maybe I will read this after a few weeks and find it so bad that I will delete it. But the fact is I like to write, so I wrote. And I also realised I don't want to take up writing as a profession. I don't want to mix my love with deadline and numbers, because then it will not be too different from writing codes or selling soap.

Practice over, time to go selling.
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A Stereotype

If you believe in birth and rebirth, and the theory of your next life being decided on the acts committed in the present one, then you have to agree with me on the following point: murderers, rapists, hijackers who crash airplanes into high-rises and other similarly sinful people are reborn as stereotypes in their next lives. Being a stereotype is like reliving a life already led by countless others before you, and neither will you be the last one to do so, well at least in most fields of life. We first have a prototype, and then based on its success or failure the process is automated and assembly line production of the same begins. That’s as true for products as human beings.

A long, long time ago there must have been a Marwari kid, who after dropping out of middle school opened a shop, and in spite of failing his math lessons time and again, somehow managed to make more profits than he could calculate. Or let’s talk about that Bengali youth in the ‘70s who, sitting in his comfortable old Kolkata verandah, read Marx, Gorky and others and made his contribution by voting the communists to power. He was extremely active during strikes and book launches, and hibernated just during his working hours sitting in that den of inefficiency, which also goes by the name of government offices at times. The Parsi grandfather, Pestonji, who was the first one to drive his old jalopy well past its best before date, also initiated another series of stereotypes. In the present age you ask any kid between the age of seven and fourteen what does he/she want to become after growing up and pat comes the answer, computer engineer and an MBA, and they immediately re-immerse themselves in their quest of understanding Einstein’s laws .

Today if you do not adhere to the rules that have already been laid out, you are different, eccentric, odd-ball etc. If you don’t do much in life, here much is the stereotype much, that is making money kinds, then you die an odd-ball who was talked more than talked to. If by some queer stroke of fate you happen to make it big, again big being the conventional big, you will just succeed in starting a new breed of stereotypes. Your grandson will be forced to eat his dessert before the main course, because you did so and became big. A whole new stereotype story will start all over again.

Violence In Movies

Gone are they days of the hero very theatrically punching the villain three inches below the chin and the extras making unconvincing sounds of ‘dhishum dhishum’. In today’s movie world violence is so real that after some of the more convincing scenes there is a greater no. of people making a beeline for the theatre washrooms. This a trend that has been observed across cultures. Among other things technology and the real life happenings are responsible for these reels of gore and blood.

They say movies are a reflection of society, to a certain extent at least. That given, when you have planes crashing into tall buildings, pictures of soldiers being stripped naked and tortured doing the rounds, video clips of beheading of journalists circulated through the internet, can you really blame the movie mongers to be showing those blood curdling scenes? Every alternate day in the newspaper you hear stories about how a 16 year old boy was killed by his 17 year old friend because they both happened to love the same 14 year old girl. Isn’t that very similar to a stammering Shah Rukh Khan doing every negative thing possible to get his Juhi Chawla, including killing her screen husband Sunny Deol?

Is it a chicken and egg story? Which is replicating what? There is no clear answer, but one thing is for sure, if the world actually buys the concept of peace unconditionally then these movies will have to do away with the violence. If for nothing else at least for commercial reasons because then violence won’t sell. Ask Neha Dhupia what sells most after sex and Shah Rukh Khan and she will agree with me.

A Successful Person

[NOTE: I have just assumed the gender of the imaginary successful person as male to do away with he/she, his/her, him/her problems. Any form of mental stress caused by this to anybody is purely unintentional and you are more than welcome to edit the document by changing the gender. The ‘replace all’ option in MS Word will come in very helpful in this pursuit]

A successful person starts life as a precocious child. In most cases he is born to a well-to-do family, in few others his legend becomes even bigger. He starts off a dozen paces ahead of his peers and he knows his nursery rhymes while the others are still fumbling with their ‘maa s’ and ‘papa s’. He is a teachers pet and knows more at the age of three than the teacher knew in her third standard. He comes first in class, and his parents mourn every report card day when this other guy pips him to the post by a mark or two. He puts in those three extra hours per day for that one mark, and the parents take a more than eager in interest in comparing the mark sheet with that other boy, who just manages to barely get ninety percent marks.

He does equally well at all subjects, but his favorite subject changes from history to math and science subjects as soon as his parents tell him that those are the ones which will make him the only thing worth being, an engineer. In today’s world his parents can’t let him remain just a mug pot, so he takes classes galore. After those eight periods in school, he scoots to his teacher’s place for extra private lessons. No sooner than that is over that he will be dutifully drawing the village scene at the neighborhood drawing class. He will be reading the newspaper, of course as a chore. Then he will answer the question about the highest temperature recorded in the Atacama desert in the year in which the fortieth president of the United States visited Pyong Yong, in the inter school quiz contest. As his board exams appear he will get into a shell, add more weight in kilograms than the no. of movies he would have seen in his entire life. He will look down at other kids who go out to play during evenings and lose precious study hours. He will make himself, his teachers and the housemaid proud by getting the highest marks in the exams in the thirty year history of his school. By the way, he will have girls swooning over him, but he will continue with his vocation, which will put even the sages in the Hindu epics to shame.

He will shine brighter than ever in the higher secondary years and will be reprimanded for sleeping one minute after four in the morning. He will join all forms of coaching available in his city and any other in a radius of hundred kilometers which will guarantee him a place in the best engineering college in the country. He will obviously get through the entrance exams and will breathe easy.

Having finished a majority of the hard work, he will out perform all his friends at all extra curricular activities in college and still maintain astronomical figures in his marksheet. He will break more relationships then he will enter. He will have the best years of his life. Just before leaving college, he will realize that the past twenty some years were spent with only purpose in mind, to become an engineer. Then being in that rebellious stage he will question himself why. He will realize it’s the money, honey. And that would be the end of all engineering dreams and getting admission into the countries premier management school will become the new target. He will complete this one with equal ease. After a couple of years he will come out of the hallowed portals with eight figure salaries in US dollars. He will start his life, in cooler climes of the western world as an consultant, using his slave, the personal computer to help him decide the best investment options for his clients. Then he will realize its high time he married. Girls and their parents will lay themselves prostrate before him and his parents and like Draupadi our hero will make his choice. Amid pomp and show and joy unbridled his marriage will be solemnized and thus the fairy tale will begin. Junior genius will come in three years time and the story will repeat itself.

We hereby come to then end of yet another story of the stereotypical successful Indian. He succeeded in maintaining the standards of the society. He did not go astray in search of hypothetical objects like his personal goals, desires, wishes etc. He did not become a traveler that he guiltily once dreamt about becoming one winter night in his tenth year. He did not marry his first love, the dark daughter of the grocery store keeper, who belonged to the other community. Every time he heard the national anthem in the latest Karan Johar blockbuster in his plush US home, he dutifully stood up and remained so for the whole fifty two seconds of the anthem.

He became the symbol of success in his small hometown and every kid was put to sleep by her mother with the success story of this Kumaraswami, Ganguly, Patel or Verma uncle. They too had to be like him, a successful man.

Smells Like Love, Or Something Like That

Somehow Valentine's Day never fails in rekindling my first love. Taken for granted, forgotten, abused, false-promises made, V-Day is a time for old flames and as I write I am getting those same old feelings. It has happened since I was in the 9th standard, and now I'm happy to see that 14th Feb has the same effect on this working professional. No matter how hard I try forgetting, this time of the year I can't help but WRITE. And St. Valentine's Day has served two purposes for years now. First bring us, me and writing, back together, no matter how far we might have moved and how estranged the relationship has become. Secondly I call it the maturity-meter, comparing the previous years or the one's before with the latest ones always throw up the changes in the way of thinking that crop up from one V-Day to another.

Sad part is that every year, including this one, I want to start the article with a major change, by believing in the efficacy of the day, but it seems I haven't succeeded in convincing myself one bit about it one bit. Anyway 07,08 and years after that will also have middle of February and maybe one day I will be enlightened about the importance of the day.

Valentine's Day means one thing for a majority of the people and hundreds of other things for the remaining minority. For me its a celebration of commercialism, branding and marketing. Feb 14 was no different for the average Indian from Feb 13 or Feb 15 (unless it happens it be his/her b'day) till the merchant of love, Yash Chopra used his favourite salesman, Shahrukh Khan in a movie called Dil To Pagal Hai in late 1997. Watching the movie in a gangtok theatre, the 14 year-old me was clueless about this 'heart balloon day'. In fact in those boring 'days' Independence Day and Republic Day were the only notable one's besides one's birthday. So now the nation of close to a billion came to know that there is this one day when you are supposed to love and express your love. Hadn't one 'semi-naked fakir' (Ref: Winston Churchill) taught us the same thing about a century ago? Ofcourse not, he wanted too much. He wanted all year long, no balloons, no cards and no one-upmanship in love either. Besides he went way over the top by asking for peace. Please bapuji, give us a break.

Compare an over-demanding, cranky, fashion 'un'conscious old man with the perfectly suited top-level executives of Multi-Nationals and even better looking actors and actresses. Whom would you believe? Ofocurse the latter. They are the one's who will lead you on in every aspect of life, including love.

And all along you thought that missing someone, holding hands, a kiss, a hug was love? How simplistic you tend to make love. Don't you see that these are things we all can do and do everyday. Love is no easy game, said the executives. We pricked up our ears. And they said

"So listen, you can love as much as you want all year, but the amount of love you show on the fourteenth day of February is what is the real thing. Do you really think that any self-respecting lover can let someone else go away with all the glory? Love is eternal, love is divine, love is about giving selflessly......"

Someone nervously said, "but sir, do I need to show my love on this particular day and is buying gifts necessary?"

The corporate head honchos glared at him. "So you are getting mercenary thoughts even when we are discussing an issue like Love??"

He meekly surrendered.

So since then it has been decided that on the 14th day of February, every year we shall celebrate our love for all things commercial and this day also marks the beginning of the emotion of love entering the market and working according to the laws of demand and supply and demonstration effect and other irrefutable laws of economics.

Thanks to all of you who helped in giving us this free commodity in a brand new product form, repackaged and redesigned, Come lets celebrate the commercialisation of Love.