Marketing?? Well…

Well… enough of these marketing jargons… am fed up with this .. this.. crap.. all this 4Ps, STP, 5 C’s, porter(that %#*#%^& has made up so much jargon in his life tat I wonder what he would hv said to propose to his wife, maybe – “impressed by the product offering, I would like to capitalize on the potential offered soon, seeing the threat of new entrants!”)

” I will not be manipulated by the sweet talk of a well dressed bloke who knows my entire family history, to purchase something I clearly don’t and never will need“, my grandpa would say…. I can’t say how much more I can agree with him… marketing always seems like telling someone they are a lost cause and that they need to do tat ‘something’ to have a hope! Even dilbert agrees with me –

And to make matters more clear….

I guess as I am writing this, 135427 people in the world are hating marketing at the moment… but then, many of the profiles offered in summers are marketing, and seniors say marketing is the ‘in’ thing… why the hell many ask…

my aunt working in the marketing industry would say – “marketing is like changing diapers, no one would jump at an opportunity to do it, but know they have to do it for a healthy baby”… alas, we have to make consumers buy things which they can do without, making them feel bad about something they dun have but dun need, keep disturbing them in the name of ‘marketing research’…

but don’t you think all of us in a creepy kind of way are marketers since we are born? We are not marketing anything but ‘ourselves’… when a kid feels lonely and unpopular, it starts crying or throws up tantrums to get noticed… the companies do the same… when, ppl get bored with a product, they ‘reinvent’ the product with a new tagline, new ads, and splash it all over the papers and TV to regain the attention…

when you win something or achieve something, u make sure the whole world knows about it.. even if it is as harmless as winning an ”eatomania’ competition, we make sure it is put across in different ways to different audiences… to the ‘fairer sex’ we portray it as sumthin which no one was able to do, and how the girls conducting the competition asked u for dates, and then to guys as sumthin u can win any day… well this is segmentation and targeting at work…

the senior tasks that we PGP14ers’ did was nothing but ‘market research’ and gauging the ‘market potential’… and some tasks which involved conveying of ‘certain’ information abt sumone to ‘that one’ was surrogate marketing…. Well u can go on and on…

fine all said, wat point am I trying to make in all this??

Nothing I am just trying to market myself so that I can again kick start the interest in my blog!!!

The year 1984…..

Timeline:

5 March – Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi orders Operation Blue Star, a massacre and attack on Sikh separatists in Harimandir Sahib, the most sacred shrine of Sikhism. – 575 dead officially….

13 April – India launches Operation Meghdoot, for the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir . Deaths unknown….

31 October – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her two Sikh security guards. Government-sponsored riots soon break out in New Delhi. – 3,000 Sikhs are killed..

3 December – Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. – Over 15000 dead…

Well.. guess I don’t have to enumerate further on 1984… the dreaded year for India….

There is an interesting point to note here… none of these deaths were due to natural disasters… Nature was a silent spectator…

The first one is Operation Blue Star… the attack on Golden Temple in Amritsar was one Sikhs would never forget for generations to come.. just to put it in perspective, it is equivalent to an attack on the Tirupati main deity for the Hindus or the Vatican Peter’s shrine for the Christians… yes, militants were holed up in the temple and posed a grave danger to the pride of the country.. and yes, it was in certain ways a right decision by Indira Gandhi to storm the temple.. but the manner in which it was done, with the temple being almost razed to the ground and innocent civilians murdered by their own army was just not tolerable…there were charges of rape, and molestation also, which of course were never proved…

Then came Operation Meghdoot, where the Indian army secured the Siachen Glacier from the militants, making it the highest battlefield in the world… more deaths have been caused due to the inhumane conditions out there rather than the war.. but then again, this is something which cannot be compromised…

The next one was something Indira Gandhi herself expected… in a rally before her assassination, she said that she knew her life would end in a few months and that it would be one of the last rallies she would be attending.. she declared that she would be unfazed by all this and would not buckle down.. brave words… she ignored the plea from the intelligence bureau to remove sikh guards from her security… well, some people say she walked into her own assassination… no one will ever know… but then as history says, she was assassinated by two of her sikh body guards…

The mayhem that followed this was something which is unexplainable… there was no leader in the country after her assassination, and delhi was hell…. Random Sikhs were brought out of their houses, molested, women raped, houses burnt and finally killed… it was a Government sponsored mayhem.. there is a story where some Sikhs approached the police who immediately called up the miscreants to send the Sikhs to the grave… they were under ‘orders’ to not do anything. It was evident from a statement from Rajiv Gandhi, the next Prime Minister who said, “When a banyan tree falls, the ground below shakes” virtually giving a clean chit to the rioters… it is even more humiliating to see some of these rioters later becoming MPs and ministers… even the famed writer Khushwant singh was not spared… he had to be escorted out of his house by the Swedish Ambassador to India who took him to his house for safety.. wat more do we need.. a Swedish ambassador to india giving safety to an Indian in India….

Just one month after this, came the mother of all government blunders… the Bhopal Gas Tragedy… the factory in Bhopal was established in 1969… there was a similar plant which was already present in the US.. and the Bhopal plant was a carbon copy of the US plant… it was to manufacture a pesticide called Sevin… the isocynate part which was the cause of the tragedy was added later in 1979.. it is interesting to note here that, the industrial license for the isocynate plant was not granted by the GOI due to safety concerns.. but during the emergency in 1975, this was hurriedly granted… no comments on what transpired…

Even worser, an industrial safety audit done in 1982 identified 30 major hazards and safety deficiencies in the plant… these were corrected in the US plant, but, u guessed it right not in INDIA… and Anderson was aware of this… and one of the deficiencies mentioned in this audit caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.. where water mixed with the isocynate gas causing a violent mixture and subsequently the leak…

Even more blunders to follow…. Anderson arrived in India wanting to “see” the site where it happened and he was promptly arrested by the MP police… he was put in a guest house, which ‘coincidentally’ had a phone… he called up ppl.. and immediately orders were given to safely escort him to delhi and then to the US never to be seen again… and adding salt to the wounds.. a total compensation of 470 million dollars was ‘granted’ by the Indian court, under pressure from the US…. Which worked out to less than 500 USD as compensation for a person.. tat was the value of an Indian Life.. 500 USD…

Then as everybody knows now… the 8 convicts were given 2 yrs jail and 2000 USD fine… the order stood for ten minutes and after that 7 were out on bail, one had died in the 25 years that it took for ‘justice’ to be delivered… the charges were criminal negligence, watered down from culpable homicide by the Special Court of India…

Well.. this was 1984… a year that was and will continue to haunt India for generations to come…

When people die due to a natural disaster, people take heart from the fact that, no one can fight against the fury of nature… when people die in a terrorist attack they relate it to war against the nation…. But when people are killed by their own government, only to be followed by further humiliations from the same government, every bit of anger is justified… if you don’t believe me, ask the naxals…

The day I got slapped………. That too from a girl……….

Yeah…. I got slapped by a girl….. it was that hard that people could hear it from a long distance……..

let me tell you how it happened…..

there was a girl in my college…. Well, she was my senior and I was behind her. I was so much after her, that when she slapped me and rejected my love I went mad and started dancing like an idiot in front of everyone and even tore a guy’s t shirt!!!!!

I had been lookin at her for a long time and it was only in april one day when I was in my second year that I got the guts to propose to her. She was one year elder to me. I spent the previous night writing a love letter. As, you can see from my earlier blogs, my English is not tat gr8 and I took sum help to frame a poetic love letter, but it turned out to be a waste….

There is a park in my college which was specially set up. But this park was always crowded.. but I managed to call her to the park at evening 6.

I got into the finest of my dresses and even put on some makeup!!!  then I went to the park a bit late deliberately to keep her waitin. I saw her waitin for me next to a tree…

I plucked out a rose flower from the nearest plant and armed with the rose and the letter and I went near her. She looked peculiarly at me, as I was usually the very casual type who has never come out dressed properly and never in makeup!!!!

I chitchatted with her for a while… then there was a lull in the conversation and I thought it was the right time!!! I stood up… and gave her the letter. She started reading it… then I went to the trademark position of a man proposing to a girl with the rose flower in my hand… then the unthinkable happened…………

She got mad reading the letter, tore it into pieces and threw them at my face…. I was shattered. She started to leave, and when I caught her hand…. She came back.. I thought there was a change of mind…. But suddenly, with all her power she gave me one tight slap on my face……

So hard that it could be heard everywhere in the park and even outside it…. I fell down in disgrace…….. then suddenly sumthin got into me and I went mad… I started dancing like an idiot and started kicking and pushing ppl around… I even tore a guys t shirt….. then I was goin to do my best dance step, when…………..

The guy in control of the lights on the stage switched it off!!!!!! He pressed the off button by mistake instead of the switch to blue colour…. so was done our manoranjan performance for NITTFEST 08. It was supposed to be a super duper performance, having themes like blinded by love(where I was the main character), blinded by anger, blinded by power…. We had practiced so much… but alas, we screwed it up on stage…. The show went on after the lights came back also, but it was not the same it was meant to be……

But the slap by a girl on stage, in front of the whole college, was sumthin which a guy can never forget in his life!!! 😉

P.S: the park was ‘specially’ set up on stage by our art team…. It was real good… 😉

Back after a long hibernation!!!

Well… am back after a looooooooooonggggggggg time!! Dunno why, not feeling the urge to blog!!! guess that’s all got to do with sumthin inherent in me called a “somberi” (lazy for the ‘tamil teriyad’ ones!!). especially after I wasted a solid two and a half months of hols just chillin out at home!!

Lots hv happened since I blogged last time… my last blog was on the maytas scandal and whew, how much has changed on that front! Satyam is no longer only satyam, but Mahindra Satyam and is now on the way to recovery!! And rajus are behind bars!

A lotta things have happened in my life since then, nittfest, cpc’s, pragyan etc…. all different experiences I would never forget in ma life! And now I have pragyan to look frwd to!!!

Well.. that apart it was another thing tat brought me into blogging now…

Saw a prgmme in TV abt how the most famous of the music performers and popular men always die young and spectacularly! Be it jimi Hendrix, elvis, lennon (he had rockstar status), kurt cobain, kennedy, marilyn monroe and now the most famous of all, micheal Jackson..

There was something interestin in all of these… these ppl achieved more popularity in their deaths than all of their lives put together!!! And the manner of their deaths adds to their enigma.. elvis is still believed to be alive and hiding by some crazy fans. Same case with micheal too…

This brings me to an important discussion…so do these ppl who have orchestrated most of their lives for popularity and fame on stage and off it , orchestrate their deaths too? Did elvis presley want to die young? Are people remembered only if their deaths are spectacular?

There is an interesting theory abt how Julius Caesar knew that he was goin to be assassinated but fell into the trap himself because he wanted to die in a spectacular way and be remembered!!! He had got many hints from his intelligence that there was a plan to murder him in the senate and that he get extra security. But on the fateful day he went to the senate even without his bodyguard!!

Would kennedy or Lincoln be remembered as they are now if they were not assassinated? For that matter, would have Indira and rajiv Gandhi be glorified such, but for the manner of their deaths?

There is even an interestin anecdote! “Good ppl die young”. But this can have another meanin also in the present context… “if you die young, you are perceived as good”.  Will anyone talk abt Jackson and his molestation charges now?

Take the case of bhagat singh… there were hundreds of youngsters who fought the war as valiantly as he did… but atlast who is remembered?? Bhagat singh, for he went to the gallows!! Am not sayin that he does not deserve his popularity, but am just pointin out that he was more remembered for his death than his achievements!!! Would he have been remembered such and honoured as the best freedom fighter had he not gone to the gallows?

A more recent example is that of che Guevara and fidel castro…. Che Guevara died young and mysteriously… while the fight was taken forward and successfully won by castro. But who do you think will be remembered more for generations to come? Castro, who has won the battle and is living upto late eighties or che who died young? The answer is obvious…….

satyam-maytas

well…. this was a recent development which interested me a lot!!

here is a gist of it:
satyam headed by ramalinga raju, a golti, announced an acquisition of maytas infra and maytas properties for a whopping $1.6 billion or Rs.6240 crores!!!!
apparently, satyam had an abundant cash reserve of some 8000 crores or so and ramalinga raju wanted to put that to ‘good’ use!!! and how he does that??

by investing in a real estate company which has a huge amount of debts, when satyam is an IT company!!!!! (other IT companies have piled up reserves to tide over the present economic crisis) that too the deal was grossly overvalued!!!! and why did he choose this company?? becoz it was a company whose majority shares were owned by his family!!! just put SATYAM in reverse, you get MAYTAS!!!!!!!! well, to simply put it, he was using his shareholders money to bailout his family company!!

the more shocking part of this deal was how the management gave the green signal to it. Ramalinga raju owns only around 7% stake in satyam and he alone could not have made this decision!!! the majority stakeholders in satyam were franklin templeton and other FIIs. franklin templeton had even issued a statement saying that they would not allow this deal no matter what happens.

the reaction in the stock market was instant!!!
satyam whose ADR is listed in the US saw a fall of nearly 50%!!!!

the tale doesnt end here…

ramalinga raju, seeing the reaction of the market, now calls off the deal!!!

now this further eroded the faith the people had on satyam!!! the sensex stock of satyam next morning saw a hit of nearly 40%!!! from around 220 to Rs.160!!! maytas fell by 50 %!

there were calls for an enquiry into this gross misgovernance and all the investors were shocked!! the stock market fell that day on fears of an erosion in faith of foreign investors on indian corporate companies. the IT sector stocks fell, on fears of a slow down in IT. (raju had said that he wanted to diversify as IT was slowing down).

then came the last nail in the coffin..
world bank bars satyam for 8 years from doin business with it on charges of espionage!!!
that was it!
the satyam stock had a free fall and touched lows of even Rs.118!!! (from Rs.220 days earlier).
but now it has started recovering on news of a top level management reshuffle in satyam.

meanwhile, maytas continues to go downhill, due to fears of the sustainability of the company and the stock price was around Rs.200(from Rs.498).

well, this clearly shows that the indian corporate industry has still to come off age to be able to not only compete globally but also to sustain investor confidence!!

and one more lesson: the stock market is ruthless and hits very hard at any wrong decision made by the management!!! i repeat “ruthless”!! satyam’s market cap has eroded by about 55%
in a week and all the goodwill earned has vanished!!! all analysts have put a sell rating on satyam for the short and the medium term!!!

Chennai to Mumbai train journey

 

Well… this is my first trip to Mumbai via train.. and I must say it was adventurous….

I was supposed to go for a project to Mumbai on 27 -11-2008. And as luck would have it few boys played with their guns and grenades in Mumbai and this managed to brainwash my parents, against sending me to Mumbai!! Well.. after a lot of deliberations, it was decided that I leave on Monday that is on the first of December.

Well there I was at six in the morning at the egmore station. My bags were thoroughly checked at the entrance and there was a visible gloom throughout the platform where the train to Mumbai would arrive. There was rumours about massive cancellations and I presume them to be true as I had booked this ticket only on 27 th of November and it had got confirmed by 1^st!!!(normally in the winter holiday season, Bombay trains are booked fully two months in advance!!!))

Then there were the usual goodbyes and I had gotten into the train…. Things were smooth for about an hour, but after that the adventure started.

This was due to an unclaimed baggage which was present in my coach. In normal times, this would have just been left lying there for eternity, but now you could clearly see the tension on the passenger’s faces. There was some commotion, and calls to the railway police (rumours had started flying that the lock to the bag had the code of 786, which is the holy number of muslims). I really feel for the Indian muslims for, they are being stereotyped as ‘dangerous’ due to these terrorist bastards.

Then there was the railway police who came in to the compartment in the next stop , with a bomb detector, and the baggage was opened……..

It happened to be a bag full of air pillows… which an innocent hawker had left in my compartment and had gone for sellin in the other compartments…. The hawker was promptly reprimanded and the train was into its journey.

The whole of my compartment then went into deep discussions about the happenings at CST(which was incidentally the station we were supposed to get down), the taj etc…. and this went on till about lunch at about 2. Well after lunch it was supposedly golti (andhrapradesh) territory and we could make this out by the numerous arrival of eunuchs!!!(ombodhus in tamil)….

Well… they demanded money, (I stress upon the word again… “demanded” and not begged…) and any amount of pity you had on them would vanish, when you refuse them. What happens when you refuse them….. is that they ma@$%!&d y#%r ba@&*s. (oops censored…….:-)) . I had been forewarned and had enough five rupee notes at my disposal to quickly ward them off….

Well…..after this adult adventure I was back to reading “the alchemist”(which I had reserved for a long train journey)…. When suddenly there were a large number of policemen in our compartment..

It was supposedly a naxalite area and the policemen had come to warn us and told us to close all the windows and the doors. The tension was again up among the people!!!

But then as this subsided, it was dinner time and I continued with Coelho.

Well..the lights were switched off at around 12 in the night and everyone were in the bed…..

Then at 3:30 the train came to an unscheduled halt!!! Someone had pulled the chain to release the emergency brakes.

Well the action scene was again in my compartment. The passenger next to my seat in the lower berth had lost his bag. This bag supposedly contained all his documents and money and his ids. He had slept with the bag as his pillow and it had been stolen from there!!!!!!! This was near a place known as Karjat.

There was a search in the nearby compartments, which was of no avail and subsequently the train started and stopped at kalian junction, where an official police complaint was registered, the police had a look into the compartment and as usual promised action…

Then from kalyan it went to dadar and then to the destination CST, the site where 57 had been killed just 4 days back…there was a predictable gloom in the station, but I was surprised to see people get back into their normal work gear in such quick time…..

Well… some journalists prefer to hype it up as “Spirit of Mumbai”, but I prefer to say that, the people had no other choice!!!!! They had to go to work to earn their next meal!!!!!!!

To start or not to start?

Well, I had been pondering about starting a serious blog of my own for a ‘long’ time (well, here the long time frame is in years J), but the major impediment was, “what to write in it once I have started?”. I had a conversation with one of my blogger friends and here is how it went:

Me: machi!!!(well, ‘machi’, is tamil for ‘dude'(though the actual meaning is brother – in – law))

Friend: hi dude!!! Wassup?(was one of the ‘peter’ types u see….)(well… ‘peter’ is wat a guy is called in tamilnadu, when he speaks English full time in an American accent, although he is a local tamilian!!)

Me: machi! How can I start a blog???

Friend: hey!! Why are ‘you’ are asking about blogs??!!(very nonplussed…) (well, my reputation as writer was not that commendable!! 🙂 )

Me: illa machi!!! Blog seems to be the fad now, so just thought would start one!!!

Friend: see dude!! Blogs are something which has to be maintained with frequent posts!!! Dunno wat ‘u’ r goin to do!!!…

Then he gave me the instructions and my first successful blog was up in blogspot. I had my initial post with my intro and stuff………

2 months later………..

Me: machi!!!

Same Friend: yea!!

Me: wat to write in a blog????

Friend: Write whatever you like.

Me: whatever in the sense??

Friend: whatever you feel like. I told you that blogs are not for your types….blah….blah….blah….. (he went about raving and ranting about how I was not the blogger type and that I should do only things I am good at!!!)

Me: F%@! U and the ‘blog’!!!

 

Well… there ended my first blog!!!! I think my blog is still there sumwer in google’s servers!!!(did not bother to even delete it.. J)…… and so went my plans to start a serious blog……. Till…….in my winter vacation of third year…

 

Me: amma!!!!

Mom: wat??

Me: I am bored.

Mom: so am I with you.

Me: wat should I do?

Mom: write a mail to your uncle in US. Its been a long time…….

And as usual I was again sittin in front of my comp, on the net, closing the door, in total privacy, seeing ‘interesting’ things (open to imagination!! J )…….and my uncle forgotten, where i accidentally fell upon a blog “Crystal Blur”(http://aashraya.blogspot.com/), (well… meant to search for a different kind of blur…J) where the writer had written a perfect spoof of Mahabharata!!! I enjoyed every part of it and it somehow triggered in me an interest to start a blog… and the result is this one…

 

 

Well I hope this one does not go the same way as my first ……. J