I have been a smoker for longer than I care to remember, and of late, different parts of my body have started sending me Facebook messages, BBMs and tweets hinting that it’s time for me to quit.

I have finally decided to listen to them. But before I switch my loyalties altogether and move on to the ‘am sorry, I don’t smoke’ (spoken with the same disdain as when one would say ‘I am sorry, I do not share your juvenile fixation on Justin Bieber’) camp, I would like to get some things straight.

Being a smoker in today’s day and age is a taxing pursuit in more ways than one. It is as if society met up clandestinely some time back and unanimously voted in favor of making all smokers feel like ‘cute-cuddly-baby-killers’. Since then, the world has been divided into normal citizens with intrinsic rights, and then, smokers. All the ‘anti smoking’ propaganda in movies, magazines and TV is, by itself, enough to make anyone feel persecuted. The government too sees smokers as nothing more than a captive source of revenue. And add to that, the free license all non-smokers seem to think they have to pull up smokers at random and give them lectures on life, health and such like, and you have a fair idea of what Manmohan Singh feels in his cabinet meetings. 

Imagine this: One fine morning, you walk into the air-conditioned paradise that is your favourite burger joint, order a double-meat, double-cheese burger with French fries and a cola, take a table with a nice view, and just as you are about to sink your teeth into the juicy goodness, you hear:

‘Excuse me, sir. You’ll have to take this outside.’

‘Huh?’

‘Yes, am afraid, we have a strict no burger policy. Consumption of such unhealthy food disgusts our more discerning patrons (pointing toward a salad-munching bloke on the next table who is trying to shield his kid from the monstrous sight that is your meal, while shaking his head in equal measures of disbelief and disapproval). We do have a special burger zone though. If you would just walk out of the back-door, take a right, and then a left, walk across the parking lot and keep walking for another kilometer, you’ll see a tiny little board saying ‘Burger Zone’ in the corner where the sunlight is at its fiercest. You can’t miss it – it’s just beside garbage dumpster. In fact, what would probably be simpler is if you just follow the stink…’

You get the idea.

But as a smoker, what is more painful than being threatened with fines and treated like a different species at most public places, is the unending supply of good Samaritans that one have to deal with all the time, who’ve taken it upon themselves to eradicate smoking from the face of the planet, one smoker at a time. These crusaders come in all sizes, gender and varying degrees of ‘ability to take a hint.’ But they do follow somewhat similar intervention methods. I’ve never really learnt how to deal with this barrage of unsolicited advice, but every time I’ve pursed my lips and nodded my head, thoughts such as those below have been running through my mind:

Private Space

You see, smoking is not a mental pursuit; it’s a physical activity that requires physical space. I respect your choice not to smoke, and don’t want you to get unwell. Every time I felt like smoking, I would willingly step into some parallel universe, have my cigarette, and pop right back. But I can’t do that, which is why I am standing beside the main road, at noon, in the sweltering sun. So, you following me out here uninvited, standing right next to me and disapprovingly fanning the smoke off your face isn’t going to make me stop smoking. If at all, it will probably just give me a nice target to aim the smoke at.

You think you look cool smoking, don’t you?

No. This is the same as me asking you if you are annoying just to feel human. You have to understand that I am an addict, and I have as much choice about smoking as you do about being a jerk. I don’t smoke to look cool. Perhaps, as a kid, the first time one lights up a cigarette, images of John Travolta in Broken Arrow are swimming around somewhere in the deep sub-conscious recesses of the mind. But after that, every time I’ve smoked, I have done so to draw smoke, take in nicotine, and satisfy a craving. Nothing more, nothing less. There’s no Freudian psychology at play here. Besides, I have better pursuits than to try and look cool for the sweaty, pot-bellied, half-naked pan-wallah standing beside me.

These things will kill you!

Just because I tolerate your presence, and pretend to listen to your predictions about who’s going to win Masterchef Australia doesn’t give you the right to flick off my cigarette just as I’m about to light up because you do not approve of it. You have to be either family or friend to take such liberties. Your being a non-smoker doesn’t give you any special moral right to dictate terms. How would you like it if I slapped you on your wrists every day at lunch and said, ‘those dosas will kill you!’?

You stink!

Yes, I did notice you exaggeratedly sniffing and coughing when we were in the elevator together. I just pretended not to. I know you were just trying to point out that you could still smell the cigarette I had just had, and that it made you feel uncomfortable. But,

1. I don’t really give a damn. I’m not your guardian angel and it is not my job to make your life comfortable.

2. I don’t go all ‘ooh, ahh,’ every time you open your mouth near me and give me an olfactory tour of what you had for breakfast, do I? So, live with it. Or take the next elevator. And get some mint.

You know what I think?

I don’t want to. I don’t live under a rock; so, I know that cigarettes are harmful. But I don’t remember anyone designating you as my life coach; however, if you still feel compelled to, I have a deal for you: for every day that you give me unsolicited advice, I get to come over to your home in the evening and advise you and your spouse on ideal sexual positions. How about that? Erectile dysfunction? Let me help.

It’s an addiction. You should stop. NOW!

Dear idiot, what part of ADDICTION don’t you understand?

I can help you quit

Before you drown me with the epic tale of your cousin who stopped smoking by biting his toe-nails every time he felt a craving, please stop a consider: what if I don’t want to? Am sure you do a lot of things every day that you know are harmful. Speeding, eating junk food, holding back flatulence, drunken driving, thinking…?

But passive smoking is bad for me!

The thought of passive smoking harming my family and friends hasn’t deterred me from smoking. But now that you point out that I might be harming you, I will quit at this instant. And punch you in the face instead.

So there you have it – a typical day in the life of a smoker. Not a cake-walk, right? Don’t get me wrong. I do understand how bad smoking is, which is why I have taken the decision to quit. But do spare a thought for the smoker. If you are his best friend/ spouse/ sibling/ parent/ child, do your best to get him to quit. Else, stop being a self-absorbed, self-important jerk.

Note: I’d written this a while back. Thought I’d hold back till I’d decided to quit smoking. For good.

Photograph Courtesy: © Alex Eylar

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Exposing people to an extremely hostile, competitive environment for a prolonged period of time has its toll on the superficial layers of decency and accommodating spirit that we’re otherwise taught to adhere to.

Cracks begin to appear in the fabric of camaraderie and gamesmanship that normally drapes our social interactions, nudging us to say things like ‘sure, I’m game for a cup of coffee. After all, it’s just a stupid test,’ or ‘Okay, I think you should read Chapter 5 for tomorrow’s test. I’ve a feeling we’re going to be quizzed on that.’ What’s left behind is a more in-your-face, hunter-gatherer mentality that refuses to make excuses for being cut-throat, or leave any room for formalities.

When the course was in its initial stages, everyone was acutely conscious of the fact that the entire batch was made up of extremely talented and high achieving individuals. Hence, since it was unlikely that there would be too much differentiation in terms of output, it was necessary to set oneself apart by managing how much effort one ‘appeared’ to be putting in. One is not a genius if one appears to be trying harder than everyone else. The worst thing that could happen to a genius was to appear desperate for something as petty as grades. Where was the charm in being an Einstein if everyone knew that you stayed awake till 2 AM, got up at 4 AM, spent 8 hours in the library and spent most of the time in class either taking notes or with your right arm sticking up, ready to impress the professor again.

But with time, as the pressure builds, and every test, presentation and grade nibbles away the myth of equality, the pretences start peeling off. All those half-answered questions, average presentations, so-so grades and Bs in group projects start piling up and the luxury of ‘I’ll take care of it before 4th term’ starts disappearing. Until one day you come to the firm conclusion that being popular and considered a nice person are perhaps over-rated concepts. So, I’ll be damned if I care that I have to step on a couple of toes to succeed; in fact, if it comes down to it, I’ll even chop off a couple.

This inevitable transformation seemed to build up to a crescendo towards the end of the third term. Once the exams were over, and everyone had a fair idea of how one did, the pressure was at its maximum. For despite MBA being a six term course at IIMB, everyone knew that the first four terms were all that mattered. Since placements were held immediately after or during the 6^th term, prospective employees were only forwarded the performance records up to the 4th term. This left the last two terms for students to take up papers like ‘Meditation’ and ‘Appreciation of Indian Society’ to get back part of their humanity that the first part of their course would have no doubt stripped from them.

Amidst all this, it obviously became even more important for us to appear as if we didn’t give a damn. We were like the silent, macho protagonist in action movies, who was content with chewing on tooth-picks, while the rest of the world was being ripped apart by a giant, reptilian monster. This inertia suggested a reservoir of as yet unexplored potential. The inaction hinted at a possibility that there will come a moment in the near future when the heroes will finally get up, brush off the bits of samosas and cream-rolls from their trousers, and get down to showing their true mettle. At a superficial level, while everyone laughed us off, we knew that deep down they also suspected that we had some trump card up our sleeves, and we were just waiting for the right round to play it.

We didn’t, of course, but just the thought was worth it.

(To be continued)

Read Chapter 8.1: It Was the (t)est of Times… (Previous)

Photograph Courtesy: © Kevin Zollman

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

I sat staring at the question paper hoping against hope that the words will magically rearrange themselves and start making sense. Each question teased me with words that I vaguely remembered having heard over the last two terms, but couldn’t quite place now.

I felt cheated. When did the last 9 months whiz past? It seemed like just yesterday that I’d come to the institute. Then, two years had seemed like a lifetime – I had 4 full terms to get my act together. But all of a sudden, here I was sitting in the exam hall, writing my third term paper. Why didn’t some alarm bells go off? Why didn’t anyone point out that I was running out of time?

‘What is ambush marketing?’ the first question read. Right, this is simple enough. Two English words I was very familiar with, but juxtaposed with each other made very little sense. Relax, relax, it will come to you. Marketing is all about common-sense. Use your imagination, and you can’t possibly go wrong. Visions of detergent packs dressed in ninja costumes pouncing on unsuspecting housewives from ceiling fans came to mind. I decided to move on to the next question.

‘Explain a recent example of guerrilla marketing in the Indian context.’

I closed my eyes and sighed.

The sound of vigorous scribbling throughout the exam hall seemed to get louder with every passing second. My ‘still’ capped fountain pen, gifted to me by Ma before I’d left for the institute, starred back at me disapprovingly.

‘Of all the people that could have had me, it had to be you, eh?’ it seemed to say. ‘Surely, you must have something to say, you dim-wit! If you don’t intend to use me, at least have the decency of putting me back somewhere I can’t be seen. Unlike you, being totally and utterly useless embarrasses me.’

I left my opinionated pen on top of the blank answer sheet to writhe in embarrassment, while I looked around the class for someone with more empathy. I spotted K2 at the corner of the class, to my left. The sight of him starring out of the window, while probing his mouth with his pen calmed me to an extent. Usha was a couple of rows behind him, squinting at his paper intently, like an Egyptologist struggling to decipher a new hieroglyphic tablet. Karthik, sitting 3 rows behind me, was just making angry faces at his neighbor, trying his best to make him feel guilty for seemingly knowing all the answers.

One hour into the exam, I convinced myself that I’d tried my best, and another pen-sketch of Homer Simpson on the answer paper wasn’t going to add more value. I stood up, submitted the paper and looked back at my friends. I slit my throat with an imaginary knife to summarize my performance, and walked out.

Within five minutes, all four of us were lying on the lawn in front of the computer centre.

‘It’s just the third term,’ said K2, in much the same tone he’d said ‘It’s just the first term’ and ‘it’s just the second term’ some months back.

We were finally realizing that the thing about ‘marketing being all about common sense’ was actually an elaborate lie constructed by people more determined than us to keep us from doing better than them. There was nothing common about the talent to remember verbatim lines spoken by the professor one month ago. There was no sense in expecting us to remember a thousand two letter phrases suffixed with ‘marketing’. Of course it didn’t help that we seemed determined to preserve all our books in mint condition, neatly tucked into some corner of our rooms. Neither did we think, unlike the rest of the class, that a transcript of the professor’s every cough and sneeze would some day help us get grades. What led to the demise of Vespa in Italy, and why Metro failed to gain a foothold in China was not something you picked up over casual coffee-break conversations.

Compared to marketing, our experiences in other exam papers was much more tolerable. For unlike in marketing, we would be completely prepared not to understand much of the question paper itself, let alone answer any of the questions correctly. Certain-death takes away one’s fears; it’s the possibility of being saved that gets one all worked up. Corporate finance exam was the time you set aside for filing your nails, catching up on your doodling, and cleaning your wallet off unwanted bills and receipts. Corporate strategy was akin to hand-writing practice. As long as you were out of ink by the time you’d finished the paper, you could be reasonably sure that the professor would see some unintentional merit in your point of view, and give you the benefit of the doubt. But when one had to resort to comic illustrations to answer a paper in one’s chosen subject of specialization, it was generally an indication of something being terribly wrong.

‘Oh come on, am sure all of us answered some of them right!’ said Usha. ‘What about you, Rishi? I saw you scribbling for quite a while…’

‘Sure,’ I replied, and secretly recalled my elaborate answer to ‘How will India’s differences with the West with regard to conspicuous consumption impact the success and failure of Starbucks in India?’- Homer Simpson eating a donut on top of a pogo-stick. I wondered if the Professor would see the link.

‘But I think the questions themselves were a little vague. Didn’t you guys find them a little subjective? I mean, I couldn’t even recall most of the stuff that was asked. Do you remember discussing Ambush Marketing in class, for example?’

‘Er…the second chapter of the text book is called Ambush Marketing…’ spoke a voice from behind me. Vibhor, another marketing aspirant, had just finished his paper, and had come over for a cup of tea. Unlike us, he was one of the focused, driven type of individuals who really ought to be studying finance.

‘Guerrilla Marketing?’

‘Well, we didn’t so much discuss that as listen to a guest speaker talk about it for 2 hours just a week back?’

I ran through the other 10-15 questions that I could recall from the question paper, and Vibhor went on to cite a class, a guest lecture, a chapter or a presentation for each one of them. I couldn’t help feel cheated that so much of it had been sneaked past us while we were busy putting on hats, admiring our own jokes, or recovering from a hangover somewhere else.

‘So you remembered all this stuff? As in, would you consider the exam an easy one?’ K2 asked.

‘Well, not really. All that stupid jargon can be a little too much to remember,’ replied Vibhor to our relief. ‘But considering it was an open book test, I suppose it was manageable.’

‘Yes, yes of course,’ noted K2, vigorously nodding his head in agreement, even as he quickly latched on to a nearby hand rail for support. He waited for Vibhor to finish his coffee and leave before speaking.

‘An open what?’

‘Open book. As in, you can take your books and notes in for reference,’ explained Usha nonchalantly.

‘You mean, you knew this?’ I asked.

‘Er…yeah,’ replied Usha, instinctively hiding his textbooks behind him. ‘Didn’t you?’

The three of us kept starring back at him in silence.

‘But…I thought you guys knew! Tsk. Besides, uff, er…I didn’t do very well, anyway. I mean, I even came out early like the rest of you…’

‘You back-stabbing piece of shit,’ said Karthik, before we left Usha alone and started walking towards the hostel. Throughout the terms, Usha had somehow managed to maintain his grades a shade better than ours. We had noticed that well-timed allusions to this was enough to make him feel like he’d just blown up a bus full of school children or was siphoning money out of an orphanage. It was strangely comforting.

(To be continued)

Read Chapter 7.2: Losing the Plot (Previous)

Photograph Courtesy: © Alberto G.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

‘Excused! You are excused from my class for today. Please catch up with your world news outside,’ said Rambo, and gently twisted his upper body a couple of degrees in the general direction of the door. He was very economical with his physical gestures, but that only amplified their impact.

Like spectators in a tennis match, the 60 heads that had been momentarily looking at Rambo, instantly turned towards Karthik again, who had on his face what he meant to look like a startled expression – arched eyebrows, and a jaw that was dangerously close to impact with the desk. What it did unfortunately look like was as if he’d just snatched away a kid’s toy and was now making faces at him to irritate him further; suffice to say it didn’t purchase him much sympathy from the audience.

Through some intense twitching of my eyebrows and frowns, I thought it best not to be seen chatting with him under the present circumstances, but I did my best to convey to him that his face was incapable of looking like Bambi, and his histrionics were making the situation worse.

K2, however, was less discrete with his support.

‘Don’t you think we’re over-reacting here a bit? I mean this is the first class – cut us some slack, will you?’ he said, with the convincing tone of a defiant teenager explaining to his dad as to why he should be allowed his daily quota of cocaine and meth.

Usha probably didn’t notice that Rambo’s clenched fists were gently shaking by now. He must have interpreted the Professor’s silence as some sign of his capitulation; else, he would have not spoken at all.

‘Please let it go this time….it will not be repeated. I guarantee you, yaar…err…Rambo…o faak!’

Having made his case, he proceeded to try and burrow his way out of the classroom from under the desk.

Then, something strange happened. Both K2 and Karthik immediately turned to me, as if it was my turn to be suicidal. I carefully weighed the options in my head. No matter how much I had tried to convince myself over the years that I was some sort of an iconoclast, I knew that I was more of a chicken. My rebellious streak was restricted to standing by the sidelines and applauding as others did all the mischief. And almost involuntarily, whenever the teacher used to ask, ‘who did this?’ I was like the cock on the weather vane that always pointed in the right direction. Being the teacher’s pet felt very fulfilling momentarily, but the sense of achievement tended to fade off when everyone started calling you names, and pushing you around during leisure breaks. In this new place, I’d had an opportunity to correct all that and carve out a new persona for myself. But still, I wasn’t going to commit hara-kiri.

‘Yes, let it go, sir. It’s just the first day,’ I suddenly heard myself say.

‘Mr. Che Guevara, why don’t you take yourself and your merry comrades outside? Use the free time to plot your liberation of another South American country.’ said Rambo, the quiver now taking over his entire body. ‘GET OUT, AND DON’T BOTHER TO COME FOR THE NEXT 2 DAYS!’

‘But…’

‘3 days.’

‘Faak!’

‘A week.’

Thus regaining total control over the situation and having ensured that things did not spin out of hand, we filed silently out of our first MBA class.

Once out of the classroom, we left Usha alone to rationalize how all of it was somehow his fault, while the rest of us headed towards the hostel. There was something inexplicably boastful in being anti-establishment. We could almost visualize the numerous times we’d relate the ‘story of how we were thrown out of class’ our first class in B-school. Yet, we knew that we could perhaps have been better off in the long run with one anecdote less to boast of. Karthik tried his best not to betray any remorse, but he had on an expression of a magician making a mental note that the ‘swallowing swords’ act was probably best left out from his next performance.

‘Coffee, anyone?’ said Karthik, pointing to Prabhakar’s stall, as if the last half hour hadn’t even happened.

‘You know, what bothers me more is that it happened in Marketing class’, noted K2, as we settled down with our cups of coffee.

He was right. If there was any subject that we needed to be serious about, it was marketing. There are 3 kinds of MBA students. The first are the Finance types that you are guaranteed to spot in their hostel rooms, whenever there was something interesting like a party or a game of cricket happening elsewhere. Life for them is a series of academic achievement awards, strung together with hours and hours of nothingness. Their over-developed numerical abilities are at the expense of their right brain, making it difficult for them to carry on the simplest of conversations without trying to reduce them to more manageable forms like binomial theorems. Their idea of porn is the Economic Times or the Economist, from which they liberally quote things like ‘the urgent need for decoupling of the Indian economy’, and when in the mood for a party, they like getting together and adding up the Fibonacci series to never-before seen lengths. In short, these are the types you expect to find, ten years from now, on the covers of magazines, either posing in front of their villas in Ireland, or being escorted out of their Wall-street offices by the police for crimes like ‘insider trading’ and ‘Ponzi schemes’ that you don’t even understand the meaning of.

Next are the Consultants. If you’ve ever wondered what kinds of weirdoes have stuff like oatmeal and baked beans for breakfast, here’s your answer. Being from an IIT IIM lineage, they have very little wrongs in their lives, and hence go around trying to solve other people’s problems. Apart from having IQs in excess of 145, they are also generally very knowledgeable about almost everything, which makes them very annoying company. For them, with a little bit of effort, every problem in life can be broken down to colorful graphs and boxes, which in turn lead to solutions that are in the form of even more colorful graphs and boxes. Being the most likely to do well in life, these are the guys you’d want your kid sister to get married to, but avoid being with them at the same dinner table for the rest of your life.

The third type are those that would have received their call letters from IIM, and would have gone, ‘What the fuck?!’ Having no discernible talent or focus, they generally misinterpret their short attention spans and love for television commercials as some kind of affinity to consumers and brands. Their ineptitude with numbers gives them a born aversion for finance, and their inability to grasp a line of thought that doesn’t fit into 15, 30 or 45 second segments make them very bad consultants. Thus, they default to marketing which only demands that they read books with a lot of pictures in them, and try to retro-fit everything in the past into a limited number of models to sustain the illusion that stuff like brands and consumer behavior can be predicted and is in fact a science. The simplicity of the subject and the absence of any scientific basis are more than compensated by the compulsory use of an elaborate set of jargon that cloaks their world in a shroud of faux complexity, to the exclusion of the other two types. Since there is no imaginable metric to measure results, the third type generally flourish in this arena.

The only other option is HR, which is of course a bit like openly admitting you are a fan of Guddu Dhanoa’s work. Hence, getting thrown out of your first Marketing class had implications beyond the immediate dilemma of ‘what are we going to do for the rest of the class?’

‘What are we supposed to do now for the rest of the class?’ I wondered out aloud.

‘Let’s go and watch Seinfeld on your PC,’ suggested K2.

As the three of us strolled to the hostel, unbeknownst to us, merely 200 feet away, an event was afoot, that would have an impact on each of our lives.

(To be continued)

Read Chapter 6.2: Guerrilla Marketing (Previous)

Photograph Courtesy: © Jasohill

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

The classroom was a big hall, with the seats arranged in a semi-circle, facing three white boards, placed adjacent to each other.

The room was eerily silent, with all the students seated in their designated places, arranged alphabetically and marked out with printed name tags. Since the floor was at an incline, although my seat was on the second last bench, I noted I was fairly visible from the centre of the arc, where I figured the professor would stand.

Every place has its share of folk stories that get handed down from generation to generation, mutating themselves to unimaginable and implausible forms with every retelling. In IIMB, the legend of Rambo merited a compendium of its own. Whenever anyone from IIMB meets an alumnus, it is customary to ask, ‘So, did you attend his class?’ Thereafter, a couple of minutes are spend in uncontrollable laughter, nodding heads and slapping thighs, while both exchange versions of their ‘screwed by Rambo’ stories. Reputation could be built merely by stating ‘I was there when Rambo slayed the Lochness monster’ or ‘I was sitting right next to the guy when Rambo chopped off his balls and proved that they were in fact cuboids.’ Events could be accurately dated with ‘around the time Rambo had started chewing steel for breakfast’ or ‘the week when Rambo survived on nothing but anti-matter’. Rambo-Maps could precisely identify places with references like ‘200 meters from where Rambo first crossed the sound barrier on foot while reading Schiffman & Kanuk’. Even before one set foot on campus, these stories have a way of travelling across the length and breadth of the country and downloading themselves to the new batch of students automatically. So, when we were told that our first class would be with Rambo, the images that came to mind were that of the masculine, gun-totting, ruthless vigilante that we’d all been exposed to throughout the last 20 years. Unsettling thoughts, irreparably adulterated by the many horror stories we’d been so kindly told by our seniors, began floating around in our minds.

‘’You!’ the bare-chested professor, hands akimbo would ask me in a thick Italian accent, his right arm threateningly hovering over his stiletto holster. ‘WOT R DA 4 PISS of MARKTNG? I REPEAT. WOT R DA 4 PISS of MARKTNG?

Silence.

‘Pilferage, Protection, Pillaging, Impaling,’ he would finally clarify, before sending his stiletto flying across the room to pin me to the wall.

With this as the reference, I found it difficult to convince myself that the person standing in front of us, at 8 AM sharp, was in fact the legendary Rambo. Dressed in a plain off-white shirt, gray trousers, and spectacles that seemed as thick as they were wide, Rambo seemed surprisingly non-Italian and over-dressed. Even his bullet belt, his grenades and his stilettos were missing. His weapons of choice were a much less threatening old file cover, a bunch of papers, and a set of transparencies tucked under his right arm. He was a man in his late 40s, with short, curly hair and a generous paunch that gently bulged out and hung over his waist belt. A thick moustache, shaped deceptively into a U-curve over his lips created the illusion of a smile, but took on a menacing incline towards the edges where they ended rather abruptly in two tiny bulbs.

Rambo had walked into the classroom in a ‘one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-eventually-you’ll be-there’ kind of unsure gait, smiling at the floor throughout. As we would come to know later, making eye-contact was tantamount to stripping in public for Rambo; he carefully guarded his modesty by always looking at the floor for most of his waking hours. In fact, rumor had it that Rambo could recognize people better from their shoes. His family album apparently looked like a shoe-catalogue, complete with close-ups of all his family members’ foot-wear.

‘Good morning class,’ he said, his feet firmly rooted in one place, while his upper torso kept moving about in a slow, elliptical orbit. ‘Welcome to Introduction to Marketing.’

After this verbose and detailed introduction, he decided to get down to business. He had been in the world of marketing, 2x2s, and presentations for too long, so much so that his speech pattern had also taken on the ‘Heading, Bullet Point, Sub-bullet Point pattern.’

‘Pre-class preparation. I expect you to come to class familiar with the relevant sections of Kotler’s book,’ he spoke to the row of feet jutting out from the bottom of the front desk. ‘Much of the book is outdated, but we’ll bring it up to speed with more relevant examples.’

A fleeting glance at a copy of the book on the front desk betrayed some personal disdain he had for its author.

‘Your contribution. Much of what you’ll learn from this class will depend on your own initiative. Unless you diligently do the pre-class work, there is not much point in coming to class.’

‘Marketing. It is not an exact science,’ he said, as he pulled out a transparency from his envelope and placed it on the projector. ‘Much of it is subjective. There is no right or wrong.’

I stared at the white transparency with the words ‘Marketing’ written in thick blue ink. What he had missed mentioning here, is that the ‘subjectivity’ fell completely under his domain, while we were expected to learn the science part, mugging up nuggets of wisdom like poetry from classical literature – complete with meter, rhyme and alliterations.

‘Time. I respect your time, and I expect you to respect mine and each others. No one comes late to class. No one ever has. You are either on time, or you are not here at all.’

Listening to him was an immensely trying experience. He seemed to be fighting to hold onto an elusive train of thought that had a mind of its own. A small nudge, the tiniest of distraction, and it would derail his entire thought process.

The class door suddenly swung open and hit the side wall with a loud thud. This was the time Karthik had chosen to walk into class. And just in case the fact that he was fifteen minutes late was not enough to prove a point, he’d arrived in his torn jeans, with no books, a newspaper tucked under one arm and a cup of coffee carefully balanced on the other. I suppose these are the kinds of moments when a sane person’s self-preservation instincts kick in, and the brain starts pumping in stimuli to the rest of the body parts, asking them to run for cover.

‘Er…guys, I’ve messed up again. Am afraid you’ll have to do your disappearing act again,’ a normal person’s brain would implore to the rest of the body.

But clearly such conversations were few and far in between within Karthik. Else he wouldn’t have just stood there besides the door and casually glanced at Rambo, shaking his head as if directing him to continue with his lecture, while he scanned the room for familiar faces. I did my best to spontaneously collapse my spinal cord at multiple places and sink into my desk to escape eye-contact. But I shouldn’t have bothered, for K2, sitting right behind me, had decided to play the light-house and guide our friend in with an friendly, excited wave. Being nature’s favorite whipping boy, I should have guessed that it was only to be expected that she would have arranged some 20 so years ago, that all four of us be born with surnames that ensured we get to sit through our MBA course together. In a few seconds Ushasis Saha, who was sitting right beside me, too joined in with a ‘Hai, Karteek.’ Suddenly, it only seemed right that I too showed some signs of life; I smiled back at Karthik Shankaran, and pointed out his seat beside Suketu Talekar with my thumb.

A long period of silence ensued as 60 pairs of eyes escorted Karthik to his seat. While it seemed weird then, I realized later that Karthik probably deliberately landed himself regularly into situations where he had the maximum eye-balls. Like an insecure lead actor, his energy was fuelled by attention from others, and he threw a tantrum every time life’s camera seemed to pan away from him. Presently though, assured that everyone’s attention was firmly fixed on him, he happily approached his seat, sat himself down, and proceeded where he had left off on page 11 about ‘India Wins last ODI, Clinches Series’, while taking occasional sips of his coffee. Almost 30 seconds passed before he realized that the classroom was unnaturally quiet. Looking up from his paper, he noticed that everyone, including Rambo, was still looking at him.

(To be continued)

Read Chapter 6.3: Blending In (Next)

Read Chapter 6.1: Morning Rituals (Previous)

Photograph Courtesy: © Hugo Chinaglia

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

The ‘Union For The People Who Stand Behind News Reporters Trying To Act They Just Happened To Be There’, or the UFTPWSBNRTTATJHTBT for short, called for an indefinite strike today, as talks on performance and revenue sharing broke down for the fifth consecutive week.

On this first day of strike, news reports across channels sported a deserted look, with confused reporters standing alone in front of the camera, with a disturbingly clear view of the subjects being reported. ‘It’s really unnerving,’ said junior reporter Sunanda from India TV, listlessly starring at an open manhole she’d been assigned to do a primetime exposé on. ‘Whipping up a social-crusade with stories like these in the absence of a furious mob or a candle-light vigil is a challenge in itself. Without even a couple of mildly interested onlookers, it’s virtually impossible to create any human interest whatsoever.’

The current events were set in motion four weeks ago when the News Channels Association of India had announced that they would most likely not renew their annual contract with the UFTPWSBNRTTATJHTBT citing falling performance levels. ‘The initial idea was to elevate each story with a social-reformation angle, but it was clearly not working. Our relentless crusade against wrongly painted zebra crossings has surprisingly received a very lukewarm response,’ said another junior reporter, Mr. Khanna, standing on a deserted ringroad intersection in South Delhi. ‘Besides, twenty excited, grinning men pushing and pulling to get into the frame, while simultaneously calling up their respective spouses to tell them to switch on the telly while you’re reporting how the latest natural calamity has left the country shocked and devastated can confuse some of our sensitive audiences.’

Late evening unconfirmed reports suggest that the news channels may have found a way out of the situation. A man introducing himself as the founder of a certain Fluke Determination Committee claimed that they were on the verge of inking a landmark deal with the news channels. ‘In so far as complete distraction free screen presence is concerned, we believe we have just the right candidates for the job with extensive experience in being virtually untraceable on the screen,’ he said.

Meanwhile, anticipating similar developments, news channels of neighbouring countries have already started preparations for what is being termed as ‘unassisted news reports.’ ‘We are more proactive then them,’ said Indus TV reporter Chand Nawab, featured in the clip below. ‘The first few days have been tough but we are making steady progress.’

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

In a magnanimous gesture, Indian Fast bowler S. Sreesanth today decided to pay Sri Lankan batsmen compensation amounting to 90% of his match fees for unintentionally restricting them to an economy rate of just under eight.

Indian Coach Gary Kirsten declared that he stood by his emotional fast bowler’s performance. ‘It’s just not right to expect him to consistently deliver each and every time,’ he said. ‘Besides, I believed him when he swore on Bhajji today in the dressing room that his performance today was totally unintentional and as much of a surprise for him as for the opposition.’

‘It’s the sporting thing to do,’ said Sreesanth, wiping off his tears. ‘Even I was surprised when they failed to score more than 2-3 boundaries off each of my over. I can only imagine their shock and disappointment. My mojo went for a complete six today.’

The Sri Lankan team chose to downplay the entire incident, terming it as the decent thing to do. ‘Fine, he did partly make up by conceding those two boundaries off his last two balls,’ said a relieved Sri Lankan batsman Mahela Jayawadene. ‘But imagine what would have happened had we lost! How would we’ve justified those three dot balls off him in the first few overs?!’

The cricketing fraternity expressed mixed feelings about the entire incident. The perpetual come-back kid of Indian cricket, Ajit Agarkar, termed the entire episode a cheap publicity trick. ‘What’s the big deal,’ noted Agarkar dismissively. ‘If some day, in like the next decade or so, I fail to give away my usual twelve runs per over, I too will do the same!’

Veteran cricketer Mohinder Amarnath refused to see the novelty in Sreesanth’s actions, terming it a normal practice for inconsistent bowlers. ‘I’m still paying the entire West Indies team in installments for all those unfortunate wickets I took back in 1983.’

And as is the case with everything that involves remuneration, compensation or credit these days, Chetan Bhagat couldn’t resist a comment. ‘Sreesanth has remained true to at least 82.5% of his implicit agreement with the other party,’ he thoughtfully noted in his newly acquired appreciation for legal contracts. ‘By the way, have you seen the similarities between today’s match and my latest bestseller? In fact, I’ve made a list. Firstly, all the characters are humanoids…they all have two eyes, one nose…’

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

In a move that is being universally regarded as a political masterstroke, the Congress today finally packed up Shashi Tharoor in a carton, and left him in front of the BJP office as a Pongal gift.

The BJP office at 11, Ashoka Road was witness to some pensive moments as the party workers tried to make sense of the curious delivery. ‘We thought it was a bomb or something at first…,’ said a dejected party worker. ‘…but alas, it wasn’t.’

Commenting on the issue, party spokesperson Manish Tiwary clarified that all possible alternatives had been explored prior to this extreme step of giving up the controversial Minister of State for External Affairs for adoption. ‘We didn’t understand most of the stuff he said in his weird accent anyway, but we still put up with him for all these months,’ explained Mr. Tiwary. ‘We even tried hiding his handset a few times, but the opposition kept gifting him new ones every week.’

‘Returning festival gifts is not as easy as it sounds; we have to take care of his constituency’s sentiments,’ said a reflective BJP spokesperson, Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad. ‘Besides, he’s been no trouble at all. He’s been glued to his phone ever since we unpacked him.’

Emerging from his makeshift accommodation, a visibly disoriented Mr. Tharoor said ‘I was blissfully imbibing my morning cuppa tea when suddenly, out of nowhere, Tiwary and that Singhvi dude crawled up from behind me, and put a bla…’, but stopped abruptly after 140 characters.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

The Copenhagen Climate talks received a fillip from unexpected quarters today with the announcement of Ashutosh Gowarikar as the first certified fluke of the Indian entertainment industry by the Fluke Determination Committee. The Fluke Determination Committee was constituted earlier this month to identify flukes or ‘one-hit-wonders’ amongst celebrities in an effort to ease them out of public life, thus reducing the entertainment industry’s carbon footprint in the form of saved newsprint, air time and web space.

On the eve of the press conference, Sanjay Kapoor, ex-actor and founding Chairperson of the board, elaborated on the breakthrough work of his committee and global climate change. ‘Every third person is a celebrity today. The committee makes it easier for the general public to identify the real ones from the ones who are still trying to derive mileage out of something they did in the mid 90s,’ said Mr. Kapoor, obliging the photographers by striking a pose in front of a poster of his 1995 hit ‘Raja’. ‘It’s criminal to waste so much of time and money on someone who’s clearly outlived his or her public utility. Just imagine the amount of that ozone thingie, old classics, careers and present-continuous tenses we could have saved if this committee had existed during the early part of RGV’s career!’

Mr. Gowarikar was much more guarded in his reaction to the development. ‘You can’t debate the numbers. But don’t be surprised if some of us make a surprise comeback with another hit in the very near future,’ he said, while fork-lifting his 10-volume, hard-bound script of ‘Jodha Akbar Returns‘ into his Swades-style mobile home.

Seeing the overwhelmingly encouraging response to this novel initiative, the committee is hopeful that has-been celebrities will now voluntarily step forward to be phased out of public life; however, when quizzed about rumours of himself being up for review in the next meeting, Chunky Pandey, the only other committee member, coyly clarified that the current algorithm required one to have at least one hit to be eligible for review.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

There comes a time in every amateur photographer’s learning curve when they come across an image that requires them to pause and ask, ‘am I ever going to be that good?’ All the nice little macro images of blossoming sunflowers and the ever-active cockroaches under the bed that they just uploaded on Flickr somehow seem a little off-target compared to the image in question. As they twiddle their thumbs, alternately glancing at their new 55 – 2000mm AF YU FG KK BC !! lens crafted from ores harvested from Proxima Centauri and the stack of unpaid bills that were themselves beginning to look threateningly like a meteor shower, the sense of urgency seems to heighten. At this juncture, the usually reassuring comments like ‘You’re a Photographic Genius, Comment 5, Post 1′ somehow seem unable to overshadow the burgeoning question, ‘Am I talented?’

Err…no. The plain and simple truth is that everyone cannot be as gifted as I am. But let’s just put that handicap aside for the time-being (since there’s very little you can do about the fact that you’re not me). How can you make progress? How can you get *almost* as good as I am? Huh? Heh? Hmm? Quite frankly, the easy way is to kill yourself instantly and pray that you are reborn with a little more talent (on second thought, you might want to do it the other way round). A roundabout way of achieving the same thing is to use the following resources:

Light, Science and Magic: If Photography were to turn into a religion in the future, there’s a very distinct possibility that this book would go on to become the Bhagavad Gita/ Bible/ Quran/ Zend Avesta/ <fill here>. First published in 1997 (I don’t really know that, and I don’t care – just needed something to start the sentence with…), this book takes you through the basics of lighting in the context of still photography. That, it does through some easily replicable photographic exercises, illustrated through very detailed lighting diagrams. In fact, what you read in my previous post was a rather shameless reconstruction of one of the exercises from this book. The text is lucid, and instead of just ordering you around to ‘place gelled light at 45 degrees to left of camera’, it in fact explains why you should place gelled light at 45 degrees to left of camera’ and how it would impact the final photograph. What this does is give you the necessary dope and the confidence (funny how both of these always seem to come together) to think through your own shots and try variations. And in fact it is these variations that contribute the most to your learning. Get it here! You will not regret it. If you do, I promise to get rid of your copy for free.

Strobist.com: Mercilessly stretching the religious motif further, David Hobby is perhaps the Johannes Gutenberg of Photography. Prior to the craze that is Strobist.com, photography was an elitist pursuit, reserved for a very niche kind of people who were either already well known professionals or were not bogged down by the mundane details of life like responsibility and having to earn a living. Credit goes to David Hobby for peeling off, layer by layer, the mystique that surrounded photography and make it more accessible. Through his blog, he suddenly made people realize that one need not necessarily have lights the size of airplanes and equipment that merited visits from UN inspectors every other week, to take decent photography – just a tiny little strobe is enough. In fact, the Strobist website attacks this idea with a vengeance – an often reinforced theme here is to make-do with whatever is around, rather than investing in expensive equipment and writhing in guilt every time the folks at home made a fuss about the disconnected phone line, the erratic electricity supply or the irregular milk supply.(Alternately, he could also be blamed for the deluge of blogs on photography by talentless idiots, who insist on dishing out crap in the name of photographic knowledge – a specimen here). Through a series of articles imaginatively called Lighting 101 and 102, the Strobist website takes one through the basics of off-camera flash, and how it can be used effectively to create professional looking photographs without having to file for bankruptcy. There is an ‘On Assignment‘ section that’s dedicated to the dissection of photo shoots that helps one recreate the same. Also, there are Boot Camps (currently, Boot Camp 2 is on) that offer assignments that the readers can participate in. (I rocked assignment One of Boot Camp 2 – see here!). And in case one is at a loss as to where to start, there are the Strobist DVDs that pretty much encapsulate everything one needs to know to catch up – find them here. Lastly, there is a very large following of the website present on the dedicated Flickr group – this is a very active and helpful community that one can learn a lot from (barring the occasional Off-topic post on burning issues like ‘A Bride threatened me with a shotgun…‘).

To be continued…

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.