knotty numbers

How sober can a bank be??

Am put up in an office the size of a football court, with people walking around as if keeping their mouth pursed the max time possible is their chief KRA. They do open their mouths, and when they do - all that comes out is what was the ENR NUNP NFA NTC blah blah - compare this with my peaceful (!!) existence at an ad agency, where if the client asks me for an 'artwork right now'(their favourite line) I could actually tell him that our building had a massive explosion today and am amidst the ruins, being rescued by the firepolice...I could actually get away with it, thanks to the fact that the Client sat in singapore!!

If at all there were moments where we positively needed to make sense we got away by saying things like 'to acquire a distinctive and cultish brand image in middle class india it is imperative to use the 'XVBHK' model of brand mapping where qualitative studies are done with 4000 customers to arrive at a desired positioning' spruce up the presentation with a Marlboro here and a Harley Davidson there & voila - u r thru! all this without no solid evidence or reality mind you! and ofcourse you can always give outlandish ideas like 'We need to get the car suspended in air for 48 hours for free publicity' - even if it werent executed you could put it in your acheivement column saying Client had 'budget issues' in executing it!

compare this to this place where your boss expects a joblist to be supported by 23 excel sheets and 5 pivot charts...worst yet is when your are given a 50 page list of 'acronyms' and are expected to rattle it off from the back of your tongue - no wonder banks are full of geeks!!

Finished reading 'one hundered years of solitude'for the second time - these so called magical realism books are the ones where you get to understand the full story after 3 full readings....one book I cant go beyond 12 pages is midnights children ----- all crap!!

but 'one hundred...' is not so bad - its a bit like god of small things (or is it the other way around?)swampy, dark, sad, depressing yet funny.. an epic in its own right this one...

another recent read was digital fortress - with this one I think I have cracked the DNA of Dan brown stories, a nerdy but handsome hero, unusually successful in a strange career heroine, & they will have 24 hours to clear through cryptically difficult stuff to save the world or the likes...dont think am interested in picking up any more of such stuff - wanna watch davinci... the movie though - just for Tom :D

have picked up catch 22 to read now ( there is no chrono. order of the books I read, have missed out alltime classics for a long time - this one was much overdue)hope it is good - its a joy to read a great book...and better still to talk about it...

lets see if it inspires me to do that...

Media maketh (wo)men!

Finally got rid of buying The Hindu at home... It took a lot of time to convince my parents to do it - but am sure its a good decision...

Yeah yeah people, go on about how Hindu has the best editorial content in India - I was quite part of the passionate gang, being a media student myself - all it took me to get rid of that misperception were three editorials...

Be it shankaracharya's arrest or jeyalalitha winning the recent by elections - Indias national daily will just say 'ah well - there is sense in what this side says - hold on there is as much sense in the other side too'! What great editorial content, when it gets diminished to the state of let me CMA (related to CYA ofcourse), who cares about enlightening the nations masses? In modern day you either have an opinion or u dont get counted - Same happens in the other side of the vindyas with TOI - what my patti in her days called - vazha vazha kozha kozha - the state of ' My job is to be neutral' (TOI atleast tries to get tongue in cheek with the politicians who dont count and sad actors like shakti kapoor)

It is an irony that these are the same people who are crbbing about lack of intellectualism in India - I also read a theory that intellectuals exist when there is a revolt-revolts exist when there are angry young men - and you definitely dont find angry young men in the age of BPOs and atleast 20K a month jobs!

Compare this with the west, where any daily worth its salt will be anti-Bush or anti-blair or anti-sex or anti-something....! Dont get me wrong here, am not encouraging media to be biased, but just to be honest enough to write what they think instead of pretty neatly worded 'umm ahh err..' - which my maid with no knowledge of politics can come up with...

Talking about US, am one of those people who have been completely disgusted with the way saddam has been treated - yup those pictures with news that 'he washes his undies himself' - god knows what ego kick US gets out of crushing someone who is depleted enough already...

For all the threats and worries that people raised when the world was bipolar, I think the uni power centred world is more of a threat to world safety, as Mr. Bush is proving time and again. As long as there was an USSR, there was some amount of accountability that US owed - it was a game of who will blink first, where both of them waited for the other person to blink. Now US, obsessed with its game of looking out for an armageddon to happen anytime, has only gotten paranoid and self obsessed enough to scapegoat anyone in its own power trip.

Again, am not trying to say that USSR should have existed, considering I am a firm believer of how utopian communism is (read 'animal farm; & u will know what I mean!). But am just a normal global citizen who is left wondering where would Uncle Sam stop - am sincerely praying that there better be some superpower emerging soon - and being patriotic - I wish it was India !!

Its really cool to imagine - phirangs coming and seeking for jobs here...!!

guess this is the only serious issue I have written on my blog - well ...some place to shout what I think!!

back to square 1..!

Ah well from advertisng to banking (god save banking!)

from mumbai to chennai (thats eeks to myself!!)

from independence to lurve zone ( ah well - havent found anyone yet (whats new!) - just staying with parents!!)

from late nights at work to back home 6 in the evening

Ohmigawd that just gotta give me something to do - back to blogging folks!!

U know the next greatest woman blogger (god knows who was the first - I have never been first at anything so dont wanna claim that!) restarted here!!!

the episode for the day is my hunt for the right tam bram boy - which has suddenly been snatched and metamorphised into my parents hunt for a right tam-bram-iyer-vadama-god knows what else horoscope shortlisting a.k.a superhunting.

in all the resultant high humour cum drama i am just relegated being a hapless audience - trifle better than a helpless victim!!

it has got all elements of the great witch hunt - considering the fate of the groom to be - it also has the super sophistication of modern day swayamwar...

But the amount of learnings (management jargon - cant be helped) I have picked up in this long and seemingly endless pursuit is amazing!

for one - dont ever be sleepy when ur parents start discussing the groom - before you can blink you would find urself visited by some unknown aunty , uncle & a parade, wanting to know whether you can sing (yeah - I can sing lets make a night - will that do?!) the visit will be followed by my dad saying 'remember the other day I told you about them" - when appa? "oh when you were brushing your teeth and complaining that the water tap is flowing so fast..!"

look out no:2 - Beware of descriptions - the same guy who was described as extremely sophisticated cool guy by your wellwishing(?!) family will be seen in a photograph with proper vibhoothi in forehead & dhoti with a garden in the studio background...("ah who said vibhoothi is not cool? thats the latest in thing in US u know" - my dad)

Be very careful of sentimental attacks - that boy looks exactly like the cousin of my friend neeraj's brother's brother in law's third son who used to carry potful of water everyday for your old grand mother - how can u refuse him? - "huh"!

Be very careful about candid references to your age - "When I was like you I used to be sending your brother to school and managing you at home"...Ammaaaa - I am not THAT old!! "oh big deal you are only 5 years younger to how old I was then.."

Be quite updated on TV soaps and old movies that ur parents are getting exposed to - I was very impressed by a groom who was described as ' he looks exactly like khan the actor '- Only to realise when the photograph came that they meant khazan khan a TV villain!

Enquire clearly about his educational qualifications - I was impressed by a guy who was described as a topper in his MCA - only to know later that he is an MCA from alankapuram aandal college of engineering ($#$^!)

I can just go on - but then my mom has started talking about some other nice boy - need to keep my ears open u c!!

So in spite of all the glitches and my dream that I will find the right man myself - the comedy show continues....!