Memory of the memories

Long time..been almost a year since I wrote on this one.

In the interim..id migrated to anythinkgoes.wordpress.com, along with a friend, who had become 2 friends, and will continue on that but I was thinking maybe I write much faster and think much faster on a blogspot.com rather than a wordpress.com

So but blogs are also just like long-distance telephone call with a long-distance friend. The lesser you talk, the lesser you have, to talk and vice-versa.

Anyhow, i wouldn't even attempt reviewing this whole year. I might attempt to review what I have missed writing however. Missed writing about a hell lot, the shift from Mumbai to Delhi, the laptop to the netbook, from the first year to the 2nd year at work, from Zoo to Minkie and then without both, from the struggling, teetering new kid on the block, to a slightly seasoned one.

But while I'm here at this moment of time with ticking seconds and not years galloping ahead, I will take a moment to breathe in, breath out and lurch hesitatingly ahead in this blog.

There have been a zillion times that I've wished to write. I've stopped short at making a few keyword notes of them on my phone or sponging them into my memory and then done nothing about them. The truth is that memories become stronger only if you replay them, in head or on paper lest they become mere specks of somethings that were, or could've been.

I might as well blame it on my reading more, consuming more, leeching more. I may as well blame it on 140 characters, beyond which my brain resists a little, on Twitter and a whole world that it has opened, on longer work hours and shorter sleep hours leading to a more wasted and indolent body. I put this casualty of no-blogging on all of these and more.

anyhow, now that I've begun this, i wish to talk about much more. social media, digital media, Twitter, ads, marketing, Delhi, Indore, SEO/SEM (#hehe), movies, how businesses are run and how they almost run over employees like us and about much more angst and turbulence.

let's see of the fresh lease of life and the second coming. Never mind it'll be coming from an overworked pair of typing hands and an even more worn out pair of butts planted on a sagging brown bean bag.

Later

A roiling new day at the IT agency :D

This is absolutely unbelievable. I'm writing this post out of no idea of what else to do with my time. So no one obviously expects much. Can't say I'm brimming with creative juices. If anything, they would be crushed by the consciousness of an empty hour with a crore new faces in Gurgaon, few new faces that seem interested, an empty canvass as this and a sleep-deprived me.

So, for a quick update, I'm in Gurgaon now, in a company called Sapient Nitro. Just got here yesterday, underwent a chaotic induction (mostly boring) session, an arbid fire alarm drill, a quick introduction to the team, a hap-hazard running to the cab, etc.

For starters, I didn't think I'd be in for a task as this one and a company this large. I was looking at a creative agency and not an IT behemoth. But this agency happens to be a division of this IT place. Yes conflicting places. Try to use your hands while you imagine this. IT on the one hand and an agency on the other. Suited-up coding, consulting people and the jeaned-up, m***** *******-touting, the cooler (for the lack of a more suitable and a less judgemental descriptor) agency ideators. So I'll tell you what that would amount to PRACTICALLY. Because Im' still entry-level something, get ready by 7.30 in the groggy morning to catch one of the crore cab services, rush like a berserk horse, getting nervous for ablutions, ofcourse eventually getting to the office way and I mean way before my team members who put on their thinking caps only sometime later, probably staying back till late (because thinking caps are most effective then), First In Last Out (FILO in stock management), etc. Hmmph...and sigh already. God Bless me.

So like everything so radical (Radically different I mean), it needs some getting used to. Getting used to waiting it out for people in the cab, shutting between the many floors of the big, glassy, corporate building in the big, glassy, corporate and may I add linear Gurgaon (Except a few interesting places to eat). Getting used to the consequences of missing office facilities, less prompt-emails, paying for the parking facilities, similar-looking men and women (Can understand men, but women?? I expect them to all look different, they have the world to choose from) who have the same leashes in their necks that they use to yes, swipe, the hundred coffee-vending machines, jams at the foyer, near the lifts, crowded cafeterias that already boast good business early mornings, etc.

So I'm looking forward to all this getting used to, to some of this hard-core IT routine and even more major creative ideation at the agency.

If they asked you to assess the prose in some MBA exam, I know one would call it a 'slightly apprehensive tone' and would also be correct perhaps but I'll tell you what, I'm already getting a handle at this and promsise to make it an enjoyable experience.

Maybe I'll write again as I reach the plush (the consultancy type) guest-house with on the house wi-fi, which is again thanks to the moneyed IT business :).

Till then

Later

Cheers to the good time I've had and going to have!

It's been an insane amount of time that I've written; Can't say nothing has happened in the meantime; Infact some significant progress has been made in life and profession (Claimer: Don't mean any significant change in roles; but progress nevertheless).

I've had a lot of decisions to make in the last. It's like a snarl-up of wires that you're trying very hard to undo. But it's a matter of just stretching it to its full length and there you are- the tangle is resolved. The questions just get puzzled out themselves sometimes, without having to take much action.

Briefly, I've put in my papers at work for a whole bunch of reasons; Decided to relocate to Indore (hometown) and give a crack at working with Dad in a highly B2B exercise. So for now, maybe no looking out for other branding/market research opportunities;

Agree more than ever that people don't leave jobs, they leave their bosses. It's so important to not let your self-worth get affected by whimsical people around you. It's so important to keep the bigger picture in mind while working in the microcosm of the corporate life. At all times, zoom out and take a macro view. It's so important to know that you have to enjoy doing what you're being made to do because yes, life is passing afterall! Anyhow think that was all the pontification, i could dish up.

Meanwhile, I've got mixed responses from working with folks in the modest town of Indore. I will take it though like this- a golden opportunity to help my folks, make them happier (fyi- our very presence lightens my parents up :)), try and lend my dad a hand at work so he can take Saturdays off; Play tennis and tone up; basically an overhaul.

On the flipside it's babye to Mumbai for now. Truth be told, don't think I have given the city enough opportunity to indulge me. Maybe I can come back sometime in the future and agree to be pleased; I will, though take some professionalism, timeliness, unrelenting attitude, etc, with me, everywhere.

If one has to tap foot in cadence with the city, we've got to first feel the beat and then start to tango. For new comers, don’t just crash into the new rhythm, without knowing that a fair amount of work would be required to settle it in, with the city and its people. Didn't know any metropolis could make such a difference and teach you some. The amount I've discovered, imagined and reimagined about myself in this one year has been brilliant.

Cheers to a Mumbai I haven't gotten to know and the one I've begrudged of some of my other battles. Cheers also to its mild monsoon, when the passage down to the road from my place has looked stunning, under the canopy of trees.

Meanwhile, there's much joy in stumbling upon the radio in the telephone and the several stations they play here in Mumbai, after purchasing the phone some 8 months back.

Also, I was struggling with a few names and words in the start of the day. But both words and thoughts have a talent of finding their way to you, when you are struggling to find them. They may not come to you at the exact time when you might need them, but they do much to alleviate that unsettling feeling that keeps you from moving on or concentrating on things, next.

Looking forward to a fun-filled and enriching home life (some would call it a country-side existence), to the slough-movement, to living with family and other learnings. Looking forward to really sound sleeps after terribly worked-up and tired days. That I know is one sure-shot way of drifting off the minute you lay yourself horizontal.

I've realized that sometimes we might not have enough to write and thinking that may not want to sit down, open the window and start writing. But an open canvas is so inviting and almost prods one to think and then write. It's awesome.

Don't want to commit myself to it but hopefully I'll write next about a different kind of experiences and life that I've only lived and celebrated vicariously or sometime back, in the past.

Later

and this is how it works!

Just a word (will take more liberty than that) about some of my key natures, that I've only just understood. I start to cry every now and then. And just for a quick background, I'm not one to cry easily. I cry when I'm stuck for subsequent traffic signal cycles (On the same bally signal). I cry when my auto-rickshaw takes me on the wrong lane, and we get marginalized by both scales of vehicles- Trucks and cycles alike. I cry when the rickshaw breaks down without preamble. Sometimes when the fast train has just gone past me, despite my desperate running for it. When the nearby BEST bus issues black smoke and mounds of cough collect in my pharynx. Very few times when we take a route, get stuck in a jam, take a longer detour, backwards where we came from, and get stuck yet again. And face exactly what we'd attempted so hard to avoid, etc. Imagine I'd be sobbing when 2 or more of these happen one after the other.

But that's not key. What is key is that one of the important ways of remedying that is by cutting vegetables and cooking something great sounding. (Of course, notwithstanding how it turns out).

I believe that what is even more key is that I hardly do anything concrete to permanently REMOVE this traffic in my life. I think the way this crying business works is that it rinses and purges you in ways that makes you more content and procrastinating, till I'm in for the torment again. Of course my ability to keep taking it and going on doesn't help or helps. Wonder when things actually do come to the end of a tether? Or is it fictional? Or I lack the faculty to feel it? Or is it that things will never really become as bad as to not be able to become worse. Or is it just a bad day?

Later (On a better one)

Ya, Go on prattle

You write and write and don't publish it. Mostly because you know it makes sense only to you. But no matter how much you try, building context would be both difficult and dangerous, which make me feel lazy, both. Hence.

From one became 2 and now it seems like such a long time.
Hopefully just like your old hills, it should last indefinitely.
Well if it does, then I'll continue to ramble every day about mundane and serious stuff alike, and calling names in loud interjections and then getting into that rut, hard to escape and then calling everyone by the same name as you.

Meanwhile you stay at charming. And since it's been a couple now, you should definitely slow down. And yet, slowing down would make things worse. It would make the distance and the philia almost painful. And pacing up wouldn't help either. It would rob off the relish from it.

Going back to that time in the trudging bus, sultry capital, the crowded streets of Mumbai, followed by solitary, the smashed nights, the fighting and depressing days, the few north-bound visits, the many south-bound visits and a couple to my sweet little village, I just cannot tell the difference between then and now. As I look back at those times, they just come alive, so visual and graphic but I cannot tell whether it was then or now? Except, experientially, I'm more seasoned. Maybe, I can predict better. Maybe I can be pre-empted better. May be not. But the hope is- it would continue. If it does, I'll be obliged.

But you always play down important landmarks and play up not so important ones. No harm in the latter but I propose to do great things with the former as well. I propose to plan better and have more fun, so that there's no boredom in my company ;) And stop throwing your moody fits, they're endearing but taxing. Or go on doing what you're best at, for more such time.

Anyhow, good to know you. In fact great to know you. You've made some waits, less boring. In fact, you may have been responsible for the former. Don't quite know. You have inspired but what's the point, you were the competition. I'd like to offer my fidelity but don't know if there's a need. But it's been more or less unresolved. When you paced the time around me, I'd just stare and when I was moving, time would start crawling. So it all finally amounts to...let' say a hill of beans :D

Later

Backing Out; Sizing Up

More to less. Too much to too little.
Deluge to famine~

This is because it's been more than a month since I've written.
And have wanted to write every now and then. When I came back from a brilliant vacation to Pondicherry with wonderful people. When I went home for the Christmas break and loved it. When I returned, into the New Year, to a pretty sweltry Mumbai. When we got serenaded by some pretty fine music on the Durshet picnic. And when this and that. But now I just forget.

As I try to stir my mind up for some dope, general ponderings on a choice gone-just-a-little-amiss.

1. Small fish in a big pond is not that bad after all. The ocean supports the whales as much as the shrimps. The small fry find their troupe and you get a well-functioning, enthusiastic and fun team.

2. What good are systems that enslave and not facilitate. A certain amount of chaos might help organizations tide through. A little bit of improvization is always a good idea.

The problem with the market research industry is that sticking to set processes (that haven't been changed or infact been stifled to evolve) has become the end. This is typically how the tail wags the dog. So they're trying to frantically follow your method of recording data, transcription, content analysis, in the same rut, whereas the situation is desperate for something more. For better note-taking, presentation, etc. Let innovation be rewarded!

3. Imagine how nice it would be in some circles to see what flavours of chocolates do children like best, if there is a ready market for black-heads remover market, if a certain bank's portfolio management is on track or if the vodka in some other format is taken to by the brand loyalists. It is indeed fantastic to look at so many product categories, consumer segments and need states. But getting flustered under the weight of paper-work and insane amount of content analysis is not what I ask.

4. In the rush to examine products and consumers, researchers are drawing extensively on stereotypes. A research which would otherwise be thorough in 5 weeks is commissioned for 2 (ofcourse the client is the king; he says 2, it is 2) and therefore a certain researcher thought that one of the things that chocolates do is to bribe the child for studying, (because she remembers doing that with her own child), even though not a single mention was made by the sample, in that direction.

Ofcourse, the name of the game is to remove biases as much as possible, but in the manic race towards a deadline, biases are all they live by.

5. In Qualitative research, the numbers are so small, the sample so unrepresentative that every comment has to be measured most carefully. (Like everything else, there is little time for that).

3. The market research agency culture is blighted to treat employees a.k.a 'resources' like other non-living resources that probably don't need an open door, continuous feedback and constructive criticism.
The fear to face a senior, who's faced with fear of a client research team who in turn is faced with the fear of reporting to the product team is a vicious circle. Where's the good work in a sadistic world?

4. Our lobby (The resources' lobby) is such a weakling. One doesn't need to feel guilty for wanting a weekend, which I'm afraid has become the norm. Work extremely hard; plug away at work; Toil for reports on fire, but working without a shred of knowledge if the work is any good or not, whether it's going to be used or not; whether it needs refinement or nuancing (feedback in short) is like a car whirring it's engine mad, to thrust out from a mucky cavity for take-off.

The deal is I can work in the corporate world but can't make my world so corporate (read static . Once I'm back from work in the evening sometime, I want to cook my food, walk back to my place listening to some music, Facebook for a while and then sleep a good night's sleep like in a Cittaslow town!

Later

There is a huge mis-match between when you might have the time and when creative juices are surging out of you. But before I begin, this is to warn you, this is when I have the time, and nothing creative to offer.

It's been an era, like a long movie that doesn't end. It's not like my film hasn't experienced good and bad in this period, it just hasn't given me enough time to ponder it 'black and white' down.

Anyhow, sometimes i feel so damn unlucky. Having to stay in a difficult place like Mumbai- in a year when metro is being constructed left, right and centre. Having to pass out in a year when recession hit our personal lives so much that every now and then I end up asking why this year? Having to be the only victims of Vista (The blasted thing from Microsoft) and crawl and keep crawling in it. And then having to get into a year when holidays are on weekends, etc.

But at other times....i just thank i wasn't around on VT station just a year back, trying to head home after a tired day at work.

Anyhow, later, one day, a girl asked me why i was reading in the train, and answered her own question by asknig another one- 'You have exams?'. That's the trouble. People think that you read only for exams and exams necesssarily require reading.

Another day, 2 women fought in the bus and like how? 'Tu har*****, tu har*****', is what the entire debate came to. I think smart things just don't occur to you in trains and buses, while fighting with people. One day a lady curtly- (unperturbed like she was God or something) told me- 'It's not your house' and I asked her- 'Is it yours?'. Such acute shortage of smart answers.

Later, Minkie- the chinkie paid me a visit, which overwhelmed me a lot. Zoo- the goon made me brilliant Apple-cinnamon cake, got me a Corby (yes my new baby and the one I'm married to, ((the incestuous life I lead)), with which I'm in total love.
Hyperlink- review of Corby (In process).

Later, visit to home for 2 big weddings in my small town. In that small town, you know everyone and vice-versa. In that little town, we eat the most sumptuous 'chaat' and 'kachoris'. And in that same town, the blistering and blurring sun turns into a nice-orange hue in the winters and keeps you company on the terrace, with small fairy lights in the distance for christmas and big and vivid crackers' patterns in the sky (with loud weddings). And now even better things happen in that small town. Time stands still, trots, canters and before you know it, starts to gallop you out into this big chaotic world all over again.

Anyhow, I'm known to spread rumours about that place. (To the order of it's fully wi-fied) :D.

Later, I realize, people also, like some songs from Dev D, grow on you. You like them, and then they crack a joke that relegates them to the 2nd grade, but funnily you still like them and more funnily you start liking the joke also. Funny ~

Later, I go to Pondi with my near and dear ones (yes, archaic but true). Awaiting the bike rides, walks on the Tamily-French beaches, interesting food, French curios, etc. and ofcourse, 2010.

Bring it on then!

Later

p.s. pictures in the evening from the new Corby- Dhan-te-nan