The money pot's awaiting you! Here comes the rainbow.

Money…money… money! That’s what makes the world go around. For a few months now I have been reading these ads in the newspapers how one can earn thousands sitting at home… part time/full time etc. Without fail there would be these small classifieds. I was intrigued. Oh well I thought with glee… may be I could get a nice income sitting at home. So today (since I was feeling especially lucky…. My feeling lucky and being lucky has abs no connection) I called this girl up. She told me how LUCKY (see even she thought it was my lucky day) I was, that they had an orientation programme just this afternoon and I should attend it. She just wouldn’t divulge any details about the product etc. She told me that the entrance fee was just Rs.30. As that was very reasonable I decided to attend the programme. One should note how carefully they guard the identity of their product till they have herded the unsuspecting people inside the conference room. So I paid the enrolment fee and got myself enrolled. Then went in to attend the programme. I never thought I would see live what I normally get to see on the telebrands shopping channels… where they speak about how extremely good a product it is and that there has never been and will never be another.
So this speaker comes up and tells us how he made it big. He came from a lower income group and used to live in a “chawl” and never thought he would buy an apartment of his own and then this company happened and today he had an apartment of his own, has traveled to foreign shores..etc..etc and etc.
Then there was a huge line of people who had used the products and how it had helped them lead a healthy life…. Then again the same people telling us how after a healthy life the same company has made them wealthy…. (don’t know about the wise as yet ).
As an outsider what I found most interesting were the speakers. Talk about marketing. It was a lesson. Bring on the middle class… people who don’t speak English well… they speak to you in hindi and this gets the lower/middle class/housewives. Throw in a CA so that the educated ones are hooked. When the middle class people hear about an all expenses paid trip to say Goa, it will definitely excite them . For some it’s a dream to even get away from Mumbai. Away from their humdrum lives…. Away from the crush of bodies that try to fit into a 10x10…. Just to be away from people.
It’s quite remarkable that these companies use just one basic of psychology to grab people. That’s body language. They point to the fact that the people who are sitting in that room with their arms crossed are close minded people and they will remain where they are because they will not open their minds to new avenues of making money and getting ahead. Suddenly you find people sitting up cos no one wants to be “narrow minded”. There you are…. Half battle won! Then the guest speaker came on. He was a great orator. He could have sold ice to an Eskimo and I am not even exaggerating. Now our minds were opened…. And we were told how abs lucky we were that there was a success training programme coming up the very next day. I mean when I felt lucky I never thought I would be THAT LUCKY!!! Once you enrolled with their company after paying about 4000 bucks you get to go to the programme in a 4 star hotel abs free (Read the last line in an excited kind of orgasmic voice… the way they say in the TV show)
The speaker said that we earn what we dream of. Our value remains at that level. So if we dream of living a clerks life we will remain that. To get out of that thought process we had to start dreaming big. This line I considered to be worth the Rs.30 I paid as the entrance. Yes what he said was abs right. You have to define your own value and work towards reaching that goal.
No I didn’t enroll for the seminar. Maybe for them I am a close minded person…. But I don’t believe in selling herbal/medicated products to anybody. I don’t have faith in miracle products which helps you reduce/gain weight within a few days when you don’t know about the long term effects. All the agents from the company were seen sipping these products ( makes one wonder if you can get addicted).
Untangling myself from dreams of mansions and dream cars, I got away from there…. My “narrow mind” and middle class values intact. Figured that I am not an adventurous person at all nor “open minded”. Guess entrepreneurs are made of diff stuff!

And the winner is....

Just thought I should put this thought down before I forgot about it in the rush. Heard that Shilpa Shetty won the Big brother! Oh well.... with the whole of Britain of Asian origin wishing her well this was a given anyway. This is what one means when it is said that "Your luck will turn". Otherwise can you imagine an actor whose acting career or rather the hits that she's given is shorter than the minis that she sports goes to foreign shores in search of fame (or rather money.... I mean why beat about the bush.... better to call a spade a spade) and creates such a storm that the British couldn't wait to pack her up with the programme as well. Though I haven't watched the actual programme I did follow the news about the racial slur and when I saw her competiton so to say... well they looked pretty "DUH". Unfortunately quite a few people from the First world don't know much about the Indian sub continent at all and as a friend rightly told me they still ask questions like "Are there any snakes/ elephants?" " Do you ride elephants?" One smart alec answered "Yes we do share the elephant taxi (like share-a-cab)"... I abs loved this one.... so thought it deserved a mention.
Coming back to our Shilpa... tell me dear do they teach you how to react.... like the exact degree the jaw should drop to show the surprise/excitement/disbelief and happiness, and the exact number of tears one sheds along with the jaw drop. Since 1994 I have seen the exact reaction from all our winning beauty queens and thought I should also learn how to get the degree right, only I could use it on the traffic police when he pulls me over for speeding:) to show utter disbelief and the hurt feelings. Do send me the contact details... be a darling. Shilpa has now become an international star if the breaking news feeds are to be believed. Suddenly they have realised that she was a STAR here as well. Amazing! So I guess now Shilps armed with 100,000GBP prize money will land up in Hollywood. Hope baby your career takes an upward swing rather than the hemline taking it. All the very best.... do take hollywood by storm the way you conquered Britain.
BTW Rahul Roy won the big boss..... I can't say whether his career will take an upward swing.... and with the 50lacs he got, it would be rather difficult landing in Hollywood as well. Rahul you should try Big Bro if they are still up to going into another season. A real gambler would throw in the whole lot..... so go for it what do you have to lose anyway!

Rules to be broken.

Over the years whenever any of my friends from foreign shores have visited me, they cannot get over the mind boggling mire that is Mumbai traffic. First thing that hits them is the blaring of horns. Then the blinkered way the rickshaw/taxi drivers drive totally ignoring the other drivers and getting their way... literally. The size of the other vehicles don't bother them at all. The bigger the other vehicle .... more thrill cutting through his path!
The RTO rules are always meant to be broken. Partly I feel that the authorities are also responsible. Just to show people that "we" have given you a four lane high way, if you draw lanes, which are tailored for minis then obviously the heavy vehicles are already in your path.
Talking about the rules. It is mandatory to wear a helmet while riding a two wheeler. Other day I saw the pillion rider holding the helmet in his hand. I couldn't help laughing as a thought struck me. He must be holding it so that when they did sight a traffic police officer he would dump the helmet on the driver's head so that they wouldn't have to pay the fine. 80% of the riders don't wear the helmet, which incidently is for their own safety. Unless each and every offender is fined this rule will be taken as just an irritation to be swatted away.
Similar is the case of seat belts. Some drivers just take it over the shoulders. It's not even taken across the body. Some smart alec came up with the idea of wearing T-shirts which had a black stripe going across which looked like a seat belt...... so that the police wouldn't know the difference. How would it be possible to make people understand the importance of these rules? Some years back a lady went to the RTO to give her driving exam. When the police officer asked her what a particular sign meant. She told him she couldn't remember. I guess the officer had a great sense of humour. He told the lady..... madam you are right..... these days no one takes this sign into consideration. By the way for your information this is the STOP sign. :)
He was so right. Stopping at the red signal is an ego prob with many a rickshaw-wallahs.
Only a person who drives in Mumbai knows the kind of reflexes one requires. It is like playing chess. You have to be at least 10 moves ahead of the driver in front of you. You have to be a mind reader, chess player and a Houdini to get through the traffic and still get to the destination on time and in one piece.
Even then I guess being a pucca Mumbaikar.... I will say theres no place like Mumbai.

Motherhood

Recently a friend of mine adopted a girl child. I was really proud and happy about it. Proud because she’s a single woman and still had the guts to adopt a child. Her parents too gained my respect for supporting her decision. She’s taken the right decision at the right time. She’s adopted a child when she is still able to enjoy one. That’s the important thing.
Then I got thinking about the woman who gave up her child for adoption. Look at the irony….. one lady shunned by society for giving birth to a child out of wed lock so to say and another lady, also single adopts the child. One lady is ashamed of her motherhood or totally hapless about it and gives up her child while the other exalts in it.
I just felt very sad for the lady who had to give up a child. For no fault of hers, just because her man was a coward, who couldn’t stand by her, she has to spend the rest of her life in disgrace (living away from her family in an ashram) and with an empty space in her heart for the child she gave up.
I have no doubts this child will really do well in life because my friend is an exceptional human being. She will bring her up well, and the child will never want for anything and will be able to spread her wings. I hope the birth mother would see her dreams fulfilled about the future of this child through my friend.

Friday word: Gold

Read in Sai's blog that friday word was Gold and thought I should try my hand at writing a blog about gold too. In India especially Gold is an extremely important commodity. From ancient times Gold has always been a favourite with women and they were supposed to enhance the beauty of the wearer. Artists let their ideas take wings when they carved and made intricately designed ornaments in Gold which is an extremely malleable metal. One always read in Indian mythology that the king would award Gold coins for a job well done.
Gold meant security. Thats the reason why the gold jewellery given to the bride is called stree-dhan. During hard times this same Gold can be sold to get cash.... it never devaluates.
Gold denotes all that is important in your life. You think of the colour gold when you hear someone saying "rays of hope"..... the light at the end of the tunnel is also golden. The good old days when life was good are referred to as the golden era. Theres a brightness attached to those days which you can never forget.
The most important gold in our life is the golden Sun which gives us and the whole earth and it's nature LIFE.

Fashion tales: In quest of a seamstress.

During my teenage years fashion meant buying clothes at Fashion street cos that was what I could afford within my pocket money. Or otherwise it meant trying to make the local darzi (tailor) understand the intricacies of western clothes from the Japanese fashion magazines that he would have. Finally I would land up with an iffy fusion of the western and the occidental.
Let me go back a bit….. as a kid my mom would take me to a Parsi lady who would make my dresses. Her patterns were so good and the clothes would be so comfy that I would hate to discard them. She’s the only seamstress I have seen to date who would be proud of her pattern inside and out. The inside of the dress would be as neatly done as the outside. Having done a bit of textiles and sewing during college years I am in a position to say that it’s not always that one finds such a seamstress. Many a times the dresses look gorgeous from the out but turn them inside out and the inside seams are a mess. That’s the reason why I always admired Hilla ben.
The 80’s and the 90’s were more the prêt-a-porter years for me. I wasn’t too happy with the ready-mades but I had still not found the ultimate seamstress. During those days there would be a variety of ready-made dresses but not much of a variety in the fabrics. So one didn’t really have a choice. Also fashion designers had not mushroomed at every “nukkad” (corner). My tailor at the time was someone who did tailoring as part time business and thought that drinking was his full time one. So not only did I have to go to his shop when he wasn’t really too high, then get him to understand the pattern and then pray for the best. If he kept himself sober during the time that my dress was being cut, it would come out well otherwise…. I have found that the embroidered parrots on my dress that I thought I would see on the front hem were viewing the world from behind me. After this I seriously started to look out for another tailor. The next one had triangles on his brain. You give him any material. The final kameez would have a triangular tent look to it. In the suburbs we really didn’t have much choice where tailors were concerned. Also I kept thinking that I was too hard to please. Having learnt sewing I was very particular and finicky.
Finally I thought I should up the stakes and look out for a designer. Even if I did pay through my nose I would be able to enjoy my clothes. I found this girl. She charged more than double the going rate. I was new to this fashion thing and thought she was a bit OTT. So I would tell her to tone down a bit when she would pattern my dress. She would take it as a personal affront that I was clipping her designer ideas. Once we got used to each other, I could comfortably let her design for me. Now that we have come to an agreement about what I feel suits me I let her have a free hand.
I realized the difference that clothes make when a friend of mine asked me “hey what diet do you follow… you have started looking trim?” (remember the triangle tailor) I said no diet…. Changed my designer. She thought I was being funny and said hey whatever it takes to keep us looking young huh! It was only then that I actually thought about the phrase : “clothes maketh the man” and the difference they make to a person’s personality and feel good factor.

Auto-rickshaws of Mumbai.

I got this email today about the gen-next auto-rickshaws which will ply in India. These auto-rickshaws or autos are a menace and a necessity all the same time. In Mumbai , they are like mosquitoes swarming in the burbs… still I guess I could say there is a method to the madness (lets leave Pune autos out of this …. It’s complete madness). Let me give an example of method….. if you see an auto signaling to go right…. Do not ever overtake from the left cos he can at the very last min. change his mind and take a left turn. The method is for the people following behind the auto. The autos are gravity defying bodies being driven as if they are being tested for speed and requires the passenger to be of an adventurous spirit.
I dread traveling in an auto after meeting with a couple of accidents while being inside. The people who really enjoy auto rides are tourists. Mumbaiites have a very bored expression and a long suffering one while inside an auto. I once had a French friend of mine visiting and she was very excited about the auto ride (she would call an auto a “pousse pousse” motor… I think the Thai autos are called “Pousse pousse”.) due which the auto driver got excited and wanted to show off his driving prowess. We were taken from point A to point B at a break neck speed. It was like being in an obstacle race the only difference being that this man was hell bent on making our posteriors aware of all pot holes (obstacles) existing on that stretch. Not only did he take care to jostle and make us feel each and every bone in our body but also since the horn was like an extension of his thumb our ears were ringing at the end of the ride. The French girl had a glazed expression when we got down. She had probably experienced something far more adrenalin generating than the most dangerous rides in the amusement parks. She had probably communed with God during the ride!
If you look at the gennext auto pic closely you would find that it has been fitted with a bar to “restrain” the passengers just like in the roller coasters. Is it I wonder a license to the driver that now it would be legal to drive autos like roller coasters.
From all the autos that ply one can make out if they are self owned or rented out. The self owned one are nicely done up from the inside. You might find stickers of Hindu Gods stuck all over (well you need them to get you through the ride)…..there might even be a small statuette of a particular God which is garlanded. While a rented auto is in tatters. The seats are torn. The auto has a rusted look, paint has peeled off and the driver drives as a bat out of hell scarcely caring for the safety of the auto.
To top everything the autos are now fitted with music systems. From outside you can only hear a loud sound that sounds like “dhin-chak, dhin-chak”….. it can be any song playing the words are not important the dhinchak is (which I came to know much later is called jhankar beat). If you are looking out to flag down an auto, can’t see any and hear a loud dhinchak, be assured that an auto is at hand and you would see it soon enough.
The auto’s fortunes are on an upward swing. Earlier on only the middle class would use them now Mr.Bharat Dabholkar ( a theatre personality) has made a customized one for himself. It seems Salman Khan and Govinda (Bollywood personalities) get a yearning to take auto rides and do so in the dark hours. So suddenly the autos find themselves in the limelight. I read somewhere that the autos will be exported to the UK where they would be used as beach buggies.... an added attraction for the tourists.
Inspite of the menace the auto has become a symbol of Mumbai. Whenever I visit friends from foreign shores I always take with me a model of the auto and these are always welcomed and given pride of place on the mantle or in the show cases. The only lament being that they have not experienced the autorickshaw ride!!!

Going the cartoon way.

Since the Asian games way back in the 80's and the colour TV revolution in India, TV has progressed by leaps and bounds(?). Suddenly you have more than a 100 channels at your finger tips and one normally sees a child glued to the TV switching between the Cartoon network, Disney channel, Jetix, Pogo etc. Earlier on the serials and programmes would be in English but then the companies must have thought that they would reach more impressionable audience if they were to dub their programmes in Hindi.... that being the national language. Well a very good marketing idea I say.... but what i can't understand is why are the characters made to speak Hindi like caricatures.... as a foreigner would speak Hindi. I have heard many kids speaking in that sing-song manner..... like Tom Alter playing a britisher from the Raj and talking to Mr Bharat (Manoj Kumar). Even the hindi programmes which are made in India also have the comperes speaking in a sing-song manner instead of educating the audience in chaste hindi.
TV has always been a very strong medium and it could have definitely been used to improve the Hindi of it's young audience. For the foreign programmes they could use sub titles instead of accented Hindi. Every language in the world has it's own distinctive body language. And accented hindi and OTT body language don't gel.
It becomes very difficult to correct a wrong pronounciation. Once it's set in your brain to wipe it out is an abs uphill task.
It saddens me when I see the kids speaking in this manner. Cos I do believe that the "maryada" of Hindi (or any other Indian language) is totally different from the "maryada" of any other foreign language. All languages have their own distinct flavours which should never be compromised upon.

Of Aromas and ambience

Actually I had decided to blog about another topic altogether….. But then just a whiff of my toothpaste reminded me of my visit to my friend’s place in the US. Isn’t that absolutely hilarious? It’s true though that many a times when the aroma of coffee wafts to me I am transported to the trattoirs of Paris and the many petits bistros that line them. I would love to go there again and sit at a bistro, with une petite tasse du café (a cup of coffee) or with a glass of wine and watch the world go by.
The complete stillness of an evening reminds me of Switzerland… where you can hear the silence. It’s amazing that till you actually get to the Rhine falls you don’t even realize that they exist… such is the silence there. Even nature behaves :)
The brain is tuned to such nuances of smells and aromas. The heavier attars (fragrances/perfumes) brings a picture of the desert while the cooler perfumes brings to mind the snowy landscapes.
For me even the crayons have a distinctive smell….. and in my mind’s eye I can see my aju (my grandpa) drawing. My childhood memories are associated with him drawing either my portrait or drawing figures from the stories that he would tell. While the sandalwood reminds me of my grandma….. as her saris would be scented with sandalwood that she kept in her almirah.
All through life your brain keeps soaking in these trivial (?) things and whose importance you only get to know when memories get jogged by only a whiff of that long forgotten fragrance/aroma.