Phobo-philia

I envy children; as much as I hate them. Those bratty little hooligans can take a toll on your peace and sanity but that’s the very thing I envy the most. Do what you think is right and no one is going to blame you for it. Kick people where you feel they deserve it and the smile back, pull your cheeks and say, “naughty boy” and wink at your mom. Spit all over the place, pee at will, cry, make noise, run around the house with no conscience nagging you… I was not like that. Now I feel I missed doing what I was licensed to do.

But there is something I can never get over; the sense of fear that they have and the fear we live in (at our age) is poles apart. What do children fear? Nothing! There are a lot of children who fear the darkness or the monster in the closet, they fear their own shadow but for how long? Till the night passes? Or lesser still, till they fall asleep? I sometimes fear sleep itself. Dreadful dreams; work pressure speaking to you in the middle of the night, sometimes gnawing at you even during the day; Bosses, their temper and ego, parents, their temper and ego… even your own temper and ego cross your life and jolt you now and then. I fear silence, I fear loneliness, I fear my future and there is nothing that comes without fear as side dish. I thought growing up was all about learning how to get rid of fear but no one told me there was fine print that read, “get rid of one fear and the other comes free after the first.”

Few find sense in their fear(s); fewer find their answers lying hidden within their fear(s). “Fear does pose questions and finding answers to them is the way to get rid of fear”, is what some philosophers say. Others opine, “When you look through fear, it will vanish by its own virtue. For fear is nothing but a figment of your own imagination.” I feel fear appears like God when its time for you to introspect or set things right for yourself. We keep looking for signs from god when we are dreading something and the solution is lurking within that darkness.

I stand by it: when fear strikes, be prepared to know what’s beyond it. All you need is one bold step towards the battle against your own dark side.

Natures Rave

I went for a little party the other weekend.

This lovely person called Monsoon invited me. It was very nice of him to send me a shower that said, “It is time you took some time out, friend. Here is a lovely opportunity for you. There is little get together and you should come along to let your feet dangle and head swing to some fab music by DJ River Featuring Waterfalls and the Sparkling streams. Not to mention the Trees are going to be performing a little jig for you. Venue: Close to Pune, time… whenever the hell you like”

So, I took up the offer and organized a trip to Pune with a friend of mine, who has two friends staying there and they know the city well. Little did I know, what was in store for us.

The morning after we reached Pune, we hired a car and decided to let the host (Monsoon) take over from there on. 40 Km south of Pune, waited our first welcome committee. A small stream that trickled out of the big fat wall of Munshi Damn came out to greet us at the bridge. The carpets laid out, were all green and a mix of different shades of it, too. The sky pulled a perfect roof of clouds over us, which made it difficult for us to know what time of the day it was. Not to mention, it struck a perfect contrast to the lovely greens. We then moved on. A serpentine, gray road kept taking us higher and higher like an elevator. The greens grew darker and lighter at each turn and the small droplets of rain kept attacking us like a naughty child’s idea of bothering the guests. A boisterous gust was playing a lovely tune while the trees, the tall grass, fat bushes, all danced to the music. We would stall the car every five minutes and take a walk on the wet gray road. Mist rolled down from nowhere and waterfalls found their way from dizzying heights to the one rock where they would gush and gurgle to add another instrument to the orchestra of Nature.

Overwhelming sights were presented to us as we ordered for chai and biscuits. Sitting right in the center of a meadow we watched a boar grunt, buffalo herds being driven out and in the distance there lay a vast expanse of a lake with jetties hanging menacingly, over the clear yet gray waters. A dark cloud would fill the horizon, as we would watch for a great black Viking ship to break the mist and roll over to our side. Of course, that was not going to happen but darkness was having its effects. The party continued but the guests were all starting to get tired, a little edgy and the rains almost threw a tantrum. So we all decided to let them clear up behind us and we would relish the drive back to civilization.

At that point in time, I had no inclination towards returning. All of this was a scene straight out of the Shire and the images still play in my mind. We made a small attempt to capture beauty in our little cameras and what you see here is only a fraction of a fraction, of what we witnessed and more importantly, what we experienced.

Writing Blues

Why have I lost my taste in writing? Why have I become passive to the one medium that allows me to be free with my thought? What has gone wrong?

I always wondered if it was a good idea to make your hobby, your profession and the answer is, “I don’t know”. I have tried thinking of it as a positive phenomenon but it just doesn’t come to a point, where I am completely convinced about it. Sometimes your profession makes you sick to the bone and you try taking solace in the fact that it is your “hobby”, thus, it must be fun. Conclusion? I must be tired.

So what have I done about it?

Nothing out of the box, really. A few days off because I suffered from Positional Vertigo… (I’m in no mood to explain what it is… look it up!), some movies… Lost season 2 is done with… some books (trust me, I was reading two books simultaneously) and driving around with friends. It did not help much but it did refresh my thought process. The funny part is, I got back to work and within a week, fatigue set in again. Now, what must one do? One has concluded that one must get out of the city. So, I have plans to go to Pune shortly and take three days off. I know this post has almost made you loose interest now and that is my point exactly; I don’t know what to write. I have lost the touch because now I only write 30 second commercials. This post seems menacingly long and it is beginning to annoy me because I still don’t see the point in typing all this out. I guess I will drop it here for now. Hopefully I will come back with something more interesting. So, all my loyal readers, (if I have any) please don’t hold this post against me. I’m just not in the “zone” yet.

You Give Me Fever

It feels strange when your odyssey ends. Although you have gone through a hell-like experience for most part of your stormy journey, the rewards seem sweet. Sometimes there are no rewards yet a sense of the slightest achievement is ecstatic. The long and the short of it: I feel like Simbad when he returned with his princess. Sometimes I wonder if he was a Mallu from Kunnur but that’s another story.

BIG FM is history, for all practical purposes. But I miss the place. Come to think of it, that’s the catch. I miss my friends, colleagues, associates, the assholes at the top but heck, I am so glad to be out of the organization. All said and done, I received a warm welcome from vultures when I had joined the place and I got the sweetest farewell from them, as a fellow vulture, leaving the pack to invade browner deserts. (I would have said greener pastures if vultures ate grass, but they don’t call me a creative guy for nothing).

So, this vulture has arrived in a blood-red organization called Fever 104 FM. The newest kid on the block, is the result of Hindustan Times copulating Virgin Radio (now that’s the strangest thing I have said) and this place kicks some serious butt when it comes to knowing Radio. But the curse of the 82 never left my side even for the slightest moment. I enter a team of hungry wolves from the early days of middle earth. In the tongue of the commoners, they are better ill famed as “Sales Executives” and man, they can suck your brains out through your skull. Of course, I had to be a part of a team that does nothing to understand the medium they are dealing with. In the words of Meja, “Its all about the money, its all about the dum dum du-du-du-dum” and who gives a flying fuck about creativity, knowledge, feasibility… and such like terms. Having said that, I must admit, I am liking it, much more than BIG. I get to go home at 7:30 p.m. I see people when I go home and not half-dead sleeping dogs. For the unaware reader, I used to work till 1:00 a.m. every day, sometimes later.

Thus the proud sailor embarks upon a new journey of magical adventures and ugly clients with an attitude. Bon Voyage is what I told myself this morning before leaving home.

Murder that ad and i shall pay you for it

He sat there with a frown and eyes squinting as he stared at nothing in particular and sharp was his nose as it twitched while he thought. His aggression, manifesting itself in the vibrations of his throat, as he prepares to speak. His left hand palmed his right fist, tightly clenched as if to protect a very important something from being stolen out of his hands. And he spoke with the authority of a U.S. General declaring war on Iraq. His forehead glistened with a bead of sweat as he opened his mouth and he uttered five words, in a low voice that was hard and cold like stalagmites in an arctic cave.

“IT HAS TO BE CLUTTER-BREAKING”

These rogues come in varied shape and form and they are better known as ‘clients’, dreaded by the agency, by every agency. It’s ironic that the reason for the existence of an agency is one and is also called, “the client”. The hand that feeds the mouth also pokes the tummy (and how?) My banter actually lies not in the inequities of the monster mentioned but in the five words he uttered. The old joke, if I may quote, is “you are unique, just like everyone else” and now this needs a change. The new version should be, “I want an ad that’s clutter breaking” Period. If every goddam client wants to break the clutter, allow us to make some first. The agency then brainstorms to come up with a “unique” idea that “breaks the clutter” and the client sits scratching his little chin. He then paces the room staring at the screen displaying slides of the presentation. A sip of water, an occasional grunt, a throat clearing ritual and lo, you have a client stripped of all that aggression he had displayed in the previous meeting. His face tightens and he looks at you with the concern of a mother and says, “well, nice idea but is this not too early to experiment such a drastic shift in conventional advertising?” You pathetic bastard… what else do you call “clutter-breaking”? A female selling shaving cream for men is clutter; would a man selling shaving cream thus become, clutter-breaking?

That’s not where the buck stops. You give him an ad he would like and he will kill it for you. Changes, as they are known, are his right to cruelty for he pays you to be victims of it. After a thousand such changes, you look at your own creation and wonder if it was your idea in the first place. You started off with an image and a headline and a body copy that flowed evenly, ample white space, lovely font and strategically placed logo. What you end up looking at, is a notice from the court. The image is gone, the white space is a waste of his money, the logo has to be larger than the goddam print area itself and the copy has to have the eighty-five-year-old history of the company and the future it promises in the next eighty years. Not finished yet, it should also tell you who the CEO is and how did he become the CEO and who wiped his poop when he couldn’t do it himself in sixth grade. Everything.

I don’t even know why am I writing all this in the first place… I belong to the radio industry… but they are no different there, either. In my case, my bosses are my clients… go figure my sadness out.

Condition Zero - the mind game

The times when you want to return to that one state of mind that is ‘state of zero’ for all good reasons, are simply those times when you never want to turn around and ask yourself how you got to it in the first place.

Allow me to explain… Once in a way (invariably when you are alone and never want to be otherwise) your mind finds this one niche that is so peaceful, that you don’t want to move away. Maybe you might even feel a smile but that is the beauty of it… you never want to see it; just feel it.

For the irony, we have a simple sound of the earth calling you back; maybe just that message on your cell phone from a bank offering you credit cards at no additional cost; it brings you back, never-the-less. So here you are trying to run from everything that was ever taught to you and it’s the same ‘enemy’ that can pull you right back into itself, with the slightest whisper.

I guess I found one song that came close to that feeling. In terms of music, it is the only song that can take me there and then I discovered the lyrics… a little difficult to understand at first but the absolute pleasure lies in relating to it.

For your reading pleasure:

Angel (Sarah McLaughlin)

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
There’s always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it’s hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I’ll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here.

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There’s vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It don’t make no difference
Escaping one last time
It’s easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here