lost and found

Spring cleaning day today. I start the operation by plunging into a dusty tangle of junk jewellery that had moved cities and apartments without once being taken out of a giant wooden chest. The plan is to give away at least half of it, to make space for more important things.

The first to come out of the tangle is not junk jewellery. It’s a pair of gold hoops my mother believes she has lost. I think of old photographs of my mum, wrapped in silk saris that her parents had bought for her as appropriate post-marriage wear. She smiles into camera, presumably at my father, who she had met thrice before her wedding. She fits her form demurely against backgrounds she had only seen previously in Hindi films and on wallpapers in photo studios. She could have been a stereotype of an Indian wife or mother of the 60s, if it hadn’t been for the rings. They wink in spite of the British gloom around her, wild, gypsy-like, a tiny spark of individuality rebelling against a life vowed to conformity.

I rediscover a silver pair my friends had given me as a farewell gift when I had left Mumbai. They were loopy, large and flamboyant and l had loved them instantly in the poor light of the restaurant. I remember wearing them for months afterwards, loving the way they swung against my neck when I shook my head. Come to think of it, I shook my head a lot those days. I hold them now against my ears and feel overpowered. When did my clothes fade so much I wonder. And when did I fade?

Buried under the tangle is a pair that I’ve always disliked. My sister had given it to me when she had started working, and they’re well… hideous. Of course I hadn’t told her so, or anyone else. On the contrary, when a friend had remarked tactfully that the earrings weren’t my type, I had lied shamelessly about how beautiful they were, and defended my sister’s gawky demonstration of affection.

I find a pair I had once hurriedly bought to wear at a traditional wedding. I hadn’t had the time to get the 22 carat stuff out of the locker, so I had paraded all evening in a pair of burnished brass imposters. I had beamed all evening at compliments without a twinge of conscience.

There’s a set of earrings given to me by someone who I had loved once. And another given by someone who had loved me. The earrings are the only symbols left of both relationships. For the first time since I got them, I look at both pairs objectively, unclouded by feelings of hope, mush or guilt.

The tangle reveals dozens more and before I know it the morning is gone. So is the afternoon.
I put aside the gold hoops to return to my mother. They are hers, even if she doesn’t need them anymore to express her individuality.

The rest are mine, even though they may stand for things and values I've lost. I want to believe they're still there, hidden deep in me, waiting to be untangled and dusted. I make a start by putting all the earrings back into the box, promising them and myself, that one day I will be worthy again of each pair.

Bangalored Times

Everyone thinks the term bangalored refers to Americans losing jobs to India.
All I can say is hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Get real, jobs are just a front to conceal the real assault. Slowly but surely, we’re taking over every language of the world. We’ve already made serious inroads into English, and French and Chinese are also on their way to getting Bangalored!

Here are some of the words that the rest of the world has lost already to our city.

Jolly
Pronounced jarley, it is a compliment maids pay you when you give them a bonus. I thought my maid was accusing me of giving her counterfeit notes, till I realised she was speaking in English.
Systematic
This is not an adjective or adverb when used in the service stations of Bangalore, but an independent noun. Small objects have systems, large mechanisms have systematics. For example, car ka systematic kharaab ho gaya. Here's an acknowledgement from a male dominated industry that size does matter.
Meals
If you use the term to mean the plural of meal, you're sooo 90s. You go to thali restaurants and order one meals.
Manchuri
China has lost a part of their culture to Andhra restaurants in Bangalore. Akin to a collection of unmentionable parts of dogs, a plate gobi manchuri is a perfect accompaniment to Andhra meals.
Déjà vu
Rechristened Deja View in concrete and steel! A residential complex off Old Madras road now wears the term in shining letters. I guess it must mean that residents look out of their balconies at the end of a long day and enjoy a refreshing view of Deja.
Rights
Not what the oppressed fight for, it’s what parking attendants chant to you with the accompaniment of whistles when you’re backing into a parking spot. Rights, rights, pheee, rights. And when they do that, don’t, whatever else you do, wrestle with your steering wheel to turn. Rights means straight in Bangalore.

pleeeease, make the journey more rewarding

‘On my way’ has to be the most commonly used text message ever, remarked a colleague a couple of weeks ago, as he checked his mobile for news of a tardy team member.

We smirked and settled down for a long wait.

‘On my way’ should constitute a punishable offence, not for the sender’s lack of punctuality, but for his or her lack of imagination. Come on, if you’re going to be late, the least you can do is to be entertaining. Not only will you keep our blood pressure in control (laughter being the best medicine as Reader’s Digest told us even before the dot com revolution was a dot on the horizon), it will actually help you become more truthful as well. All of us in Bangalore know that nothing is as entertaining as the truth.

For example, try ‘On my way to running down miniature acrobat sliding through giant earring’. The city’s best gymnasts aren’t at Beijing, they’re at every traffic signal in the city, gyrating and bobbing to give your text fingers fodder.

Or after a drizzle, you could text – ‘on my way out of Ulsoor lake which has cloned itself at Sadashiv Nagar. Instead of cursing you, those of us cooling our heels would spend the next hour comparing impromptu lakes we have braved in the past.

If you’re new to Bangalore and mms enabled, messaging solutions await you at every road sign. Besides dozens of signs that say ‘Hump ahead’ (it takes a newbie a while to figure out if this is an announcement or a request), road signs will always tell you exactly how far you are from various destinations. Of course you won’t know what those destinations are, as names of places are usually written in Kannada. Try ‘On my way to a series of marathon humps’ or ‘On my way to getting lost in translation’.

If you were about to say that you can’t punch in long messages while driving, save yourself the effort. All of us know sms lingo well enough to decipher that when you say ‘on your way’ you’re probably on your way to the rest room at the office.

public service inventions we could all do with

Today, I stumbled on an amazing fact. A Mercedes (C, E or S-Class) can be fitted with a reverse parking sensor kit that warns you of obstacles behind your car when you back into a tight parking spot. And if you’re really fastidious, you can get the sensors spray painted to match your car perfectly.

If ever I meet the inventors who’ve gone through all this trouble to protect a rear bumper and a no claims bonus, I want to hand them my wish list of inventions.

Mouth sensors for feet: These sensors are embedded at the corners of your mouth and tinted with kiss proof paint to match your lipstick (nude shades would be a hit this season). These set off an extended fit of coughing to expel all thoughts of speech when your foot threatens to get into your mouth. These sensors are programmed to automatically get activated when you’re 3 bloody marys down.

Ex-file: This one forces you to take a u-turn when there’s an ex within a kilometre. This innovation has multi-functional sensors that work on all categories of exes, including ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands and ex-friends (the ones you made before you installed the mouth sensors for feet).

Itchy finger kit: This sophisticated device fits neatly into the magnetic strip of your credit card (the black strip at the back of a credit card – if yours looks balder than your car tyres, you definitely need this gadget). Every time you get close to maxing your card, this sensor sets off a strong optical illusion that makes the card invisible. The kit comes with an instruction booklet that has face saving lines such as: “Oh oh, I think I must have left my card at the Mercedes showroom when I bought my maid a car”.

Bum sensors: This one works on the principle of the sensors that save no claim bonuses. The portable device fits into your back pocket and detects habitual freeloaders who usually leave abruptly between the arrival of last drinks and the bill. It then uses consumed alcohol as fuel to propel you off your seat faster than the moochers and to steer you into the loo. With this one, you have nothing to lose, but your cheapo companions.

selling cars and keeping drivers off roads

For once, let’s assume that selling an expensive sacrifice is not a haloed task, but that it's similar to selling an expensive product.

This may seem to take away the magic of public service advertising, but we have nothing to lose but an award category. The fact is that plasma TVs and expensive cars do sell, while we haven’t really managed to sell safety to the drunk drivers zig zagging across streets.

So the first thing you would do is find an insight that reveals what consumers really want or don’t want.

Why do people drink and drive? Definitely not because they don’t know what could happen if they had an accident. Digging deeper, we might find that:
It’s macho: You think you can hold your alcohol and are totally in control.
Cabs are expensive: It’s much cheaper to drive back than to take a cab, especially if you own a two wheeler.
You don’t know what to do with your car/bike: Parking in a public place overnight is often dangerous. You never know if your car or bike will still be there when you come back the next morning.

Working from these insights, you would then make an offer that makes people get more than they’re giving up.

Here are some, working on the principles of selling expensive things…

Bundled offers: If you’re planning a wild night out, you’re prepared to shell out more than at the neighborhood booze shop. Bars or pubs build in the cost of a driver into the cover charge. Before you stagger towards your parking shpashe, the manager offers you the use of a complimentary driver who gets you home safely.
Another version of this could be shared cabs hired by the bars, which drop people off at closing time. Again, the cost is built into the cover charge.

EMIs: The idea of a designated driver has been executed before, but that doesn’t stop it from being brilliant. You break up the sacrifice into palatable portions, and throw in free snacks for the abstainer.

Special offers with expiry dates: Parking in a public place overnight is often dangerous, because you don’t know if your car or bike will still be there when you return the next morning. So, like the festival offers that clear stocks, a drinking establishment offers to guard your vehicle till 8 am the next morning. The cost to the bar? That of a couple of guards in a designated space.

Cross promos: Bars tie up with malls in this scenario. For an extra charge, you can leave your vehicle overnight in the otherwise empty mall parking space.

Not only will these ideas keep some tipsy drivers off the roads, a lot of people actually would have a lot to gain. Bars would get more customers more often, since even conscientious drivers wouldn’t mind dropping in unplanned. Cab companies would gain business from people who would otherwise have driven back on their own. Malls could generate money out of hibernating parking lots.

The only people who wouldn’t gain directly would be those pitching for the public service category of awards. But look at the brighter side, the services category is much bigger than social service ...

looking for treasure in the wrong places?

Everyone I know loves public service ads. They win awards, make great forwards and spark off interesting conversations.

But that’s not all that public service ads are meant to achieve, at least ostensibly. What they are really supposed to get from you is a sacrifice. A public service campaign almost always wants you to give up money, a habit, a vice, a convenience, a comfort or an element of your social status.

To complicate things, there are different levels of sacrifice. Here are a few, based on what you have to give up.

Clearance sale sacrifice: These are campaigns that ask you to donate to a cause or to report a problem. Great bargain! For the price of a telephone call, a few drinks or clothes you wouldn’t be caught dead in anyway, you get to become the fairy godmother of the underprivileged. The fact that so many ngos are flourishing is proof of the fact that this category of public service ads work.

Fair price sacrifice: This is where you’re asked to stop using something, say a brand of lippie or t-shirt, to discourage the abuse of children, animals or the environment. While your ego might twitch a bit at being deprived of the coolest logo on your chest, there’s a built-in escape clause in the form of options. There are other brands on the shelf, and another ice age will have to dawn before you have to expose the world to your parched lips. The result? Several companies have backed off from these evils and are even advertising the face.

Daylight robbery sacrifice: Give up something you love, need or want or suffer, demands the campaign. Hey did you see that great anti-smoking/drinking/drunken driving ad, you ask your friends as you light up, order another round of drinks and look for your car keys.

It’s funny, that when it comes to public service advertising of the third kind, creative people get it sooo wrong. In spite of all the hard hitting campaigns featuring orphaned children, dead horses and scary messages, India still has 120 million smokers http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/97238.php. And 40% of India’s road accidents are still caused by drunk driving http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2008/jun/16msg.htm.

Is it because the otherwise successful people who work on these campaigns see public service as a totally different ball game from selling products? Or because the objective is more often the means (to be different/hard hitting/creative, etc.) than the end? Is it because there are no clients with an eye on targets and results?

What if public service campaigns that demand an expensive sacrifice used the principles of selling expensive products?

Hmmmmm....

a glue called helplessness

I’ve spent most of the last two weeks cooped up with a group of strangers in a strange city. Looking back, I realise that I was strange too. I didn’t hit ctrl alt del once to lock up my documents when I stepped out for lunch or coffee. I uninhibitedly spoke about fears that I wouldn’t dare breathe to my mother or sisters (all of who I am quite close to).When I had to go out to take a call or to meet someone, I had no qualms about leaving my purse behind with these strangers. Night after night, all of us, male and female, slipped into our bunks in a common room.

This could have happened at an intensive spiritual workshop or a hippy commune, but didn’t in my case. I was outside the intensive care unit of a hospital in Mumbai.

There is something to be said about offline social networks.

We were offline in every possible way. The people we were there for (my father in my case) were separated from us by a heavily guarded door. Even when we got a peek in, we were up against barriers of tubes, needles and sedatives. Grim looking doctors who emerged once a day spoke to us in an alien language, using scary terms like lumbar puncture and mobilization. Those of us who had data cards were baffled by the number of ominous explanations that google threw up. What threw us furthest into offline territory was the fact that we couldn’t do anything for our ailing ones except wait.

So we waited, with our shared helplessness. And that turned us into a group, connected through our lack of power.

We participated in chats about doctors, treatments and incomprehensible news. We aired witticisms and mpgs from our cell phones. We could have been using super wall on facebook, only, we had no common friends. We trusted one another with our valuables and our thoughts, even though we hadn’t checked out a single profile.

But this was a social network with an expiry date. The day I left for home, I automatically signed out of the network. There’s no chance of reconnecting, because back in Bangalore, I realise that I don’t even know the names of the people I was so close to for eleven days.

I also know in hindsight that we weren’t held together by a cause, but a lack of one.