A Time To Reflect

charukesi April 15th, 2008

Blogger appreciation day…. came and went. And I had no clue. That may have been because I have not been blogging or reading blogs with any regularity (does speed-reading through google reader once every few days count?) Anyway, as it happened, I missed blogger appreciation day, which was April 14th - and came across the idea just now, today being that day of the week when the google reader gets a clean-up. Thanks, Sailu at Indian Food for pointing this out to me. This whole appreciation idea 9informal, he stresses) comes from Darren Rowse (whose latest video post is on - How to Come Up with Topics to Write About On Your Blog - and if anyone needs tips on that right now, it’s me)

Says Rowse on his blog -

I’ve been chatting with a few bloggers of late who’ve been feeling a little down in the dumps about their blogging - so perhaps everyone could do with a little lift.

We’re in it together, blogging is about collaboration and together going further than we can by ourselves - so why not help another blogger today by shooting them a word of encouragement, a pep talk, a congratulations, an idea to help them improve or some other positive constructive message. Better still, do it publicly on your blog and tell the world about another blogger who you appreciate.

What a good idea! I know I have been feeling down in the dumps about my blogging - or lack of it. And just this morning was talking to my husband about getting on top of things and discipline and other key words that he normally associates with my resolution to diet and therefore ignored promptly.

Anyway. Here goes. My appreciation for bloggers, blogger friends, blog readers - people who have made my life so much more fun in the last four years. A big thank you. Especially those of you who write in to me after stumbling upon my blog. And those who write or call to ask when I have not been blogging for a while.

Here comes a longish list then, of blogs I love - the usual suspects - Newsmericks, Harini, Shoefi, Nano. Jalsa and Indiequill who were THE discoveries of 2007. And Arun, who writes down his travel experiences with the kind of discipline and passion I can only admire and envy from a distance. And Dina, whose blog who I used to be, and still am, in awe of.

And then those I wish blog more often. Or just get back to more regular, more frequent blogging - Uma, Dilip, Annie, Reshma, Smugbug, Blogpourri, entelechy, Sunil (why this sudden slack in blogging, people?)

A special nod to the most prolific of them all - Patrix (also because the two of us love to get together and talk about the “good old days” of blogging - when we used rediff and blogger respectively!)

And a huge thank you to Madhu Menon who keeps this site up and running. I only reach out to him when something has gone wrong here. Thanks, Madhu!

And a few not-so-usual people too I must mention here - photobloggers - Phil Douglis, friend and mentor at pbase - Phil has been teaching photography for some decades now. He travels with his wife for a few weeks (months?) every year - when he was in Bombay last week, I could not meet up with him as I was away in Thailand. It’s our anniversary, Phil, I wrote to him, Seven years. Phil wrote back congratulating us on the anniversary. And he added that his wife and he would be celebrating forty seven years together in July. Forty seven years! A special toast to you, Phil. And thanks for a wonderful year at pbase.

Julie too - I had written about Julie three years go when I had first discovered her photo stream at flickr. Julie was seventy when she discovered photography. I recently exchanged emails with Julie and she points me to her new English blog (she used to write in French), dedicated to her recent move to London. And she ends saying, I feel younger now that I did three years ago. Cheers, Julie!

So to end, discipline. Yes, that is what is going to drive this blog from now. Regular posting, if it means only links to interesting or just plain funny things. Go see then - The Hidden Half: A Photo Essay on Women in Afghanistan - click on the photographs, read the accompanying text and feel stunned. Just as I did.

Happy blogging! And do pay it forward.

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charukesi April 10th, 2008

…neither of them mine. hah! gotcha.

If you have heard great things about those Thai massages and are dreaming of pretty young things softly caressing your skin with fragrant oils, here is something to make you pause and reflect. Sure you can choose to walk into a dimly lit massage parlour and live out that fantasy but chances are you will end up with some such rough-kick-boxing-meets-sadistic-massage routine and then where are you?

I tried a “relaxing” shoulder and neck massage (right, that is how optimistic I was, given the sorry state that my neck and upper back have been for years now) - I sat for maybe one and a half minutes before the ouch! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! finally got through to the masseuse (I think I had fainted in pain by then) and she stopped, giving me just enough time to make a run for it. And this was after several minutes of detailed instructions and requests for a “soft massage” - absolutely no pressure please, see the surgery scar here? and so on.

After all this, I still went ahead and took a foot massage when mall-hopping got too tiring. And I am happy to report total bliss, everything I had hoped for (pretty young things excluded, of course). An hour of feet pampering and I was ready to hit the shopping scene again.

And on the road, this. I have no idea what this means though. And all within twenty minutes!

Match made in the heavens?

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charukesi April 7th, 2008

This blog has been silent for a long time now. For the last week or so, I have an excuse - we took a quick holiday in Cambodia and Thailand for our anniversary. It was an exciting, exhausting trip, given the heat and dust of Siem Reap and then the frenzy of Bangkok. Angkor Wat is every bit as awe-inspiring as one has heard, though I personally preferred the Bayon temple with its human faces carved out of rock on all sides, and the other smaller temples of Ta Phrom and Bantaey Srei.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat - some things in life are worth waking up early for…

The reclining Buddha

At the touristy floating market

The photographs are getting uploaded slowly… And the posts are still drafts in my mind.

Till then, read my piece on Lepakshi that appeared in the April issue of ‘Windows&Aisles’, the inflight magazine of Paramount Airways - the temple that time forgot

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charukesi March 15th, 2008

At a time when the world had long ago discovered the greens and blues of Kerala, the alluring backwaters of Alleppy and the warm beaches of Kovalam (and perhaps getting tired of the same images), director Maniratnam put a small spot in North Kerala on the map. Thanks to his evocative shots of lovers torn apart by a hostile world (in his movie ‘Bombay’), suddenly the rain-drenched ramparts of Bekal became one of the most romantic destinations within Kerala. It seemed the perfect rendezvous, hidden in the heart of Kerala and far from prying eyes. And the canny Kerala government seized this opportunity with both hands and suddenly, God’s own tiny country was officially larger on the tourist circuit.

Published in the March issue of Windows & Aisles, the inflight magazine of Paramount Airways - read the fort of dreams at Itchy Feet…

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charukesi March 4th, 2008

Last year, I watched two different productions of A midsummer night’s dream - the first at the open air amphitheatre of Regent’s Park in London. It was midsummer, the perfect setting for that play and just the perfect play for that setting - the trees rustling above, doves flying, the sun shining on well into the performance (which started at 8 p.m.) as it slowly turned cool and then cold… I sat, shivering in the London night air watching the fairies with their lutes and flutes, their laughter ringing in my ears as they ran in and out of the open stage… listening to the music fill the air… the actors in their suits and gowns and the clipped British accents.

Just as Shakespeare would have had it perhaps?

“It shocks me that there are Londoners who have never been to a Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - this is one of the great and simple rituals of London life” - Alistair McAuley, Financial Times, 2006.

Yes, it shocks me too.

And in January this year, the same play in Mumbai, but different in every way - with a British director and a South Asian crew speaking not just Shakespeare’s English but Tamil, Sinhala, Malayalam and three more languages. Not attired in plaids and pastels but in shiny silks and deep reds of the subcontinent…

If in 2006 Vishal Bharadwaj transported “Othello” into the brown badlands of Uttar Pradesh with his film Omkara, British director Tim Supple’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” could easily have been set in some mythical forest in the Vindhyas. Why, it could even have been an untold canto from the Aranyakanda of Ramayana, with Shakespeare’s fairies as lively vanaras, and Puck a young, playful Hanuman himself. In the true spirit of free creatures of the forest, Supple’s creatures indulge in acrobatic feats, climb up ladders and shimmy down ropes, roll in the mud and jump in the air.

[image courtesy : British Council website]

What contributes a lot in this is the extensive use of color in an otherwise barebones set. Visually arresting single tones have been used to their best effect; a deep red runs through the performance. In the long satiny womb that Titania ensconces herself into as she drifts into sleep, that becomes at once a swing in the middle of the forest and a thooli (makeshift cloth cradle) in the heart of the home.

[image courtesy : British Council website]

Here is my review Southasian Shakespearewallah for Himal.

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charukesi February 29th, 2008

Some odds and ends for the weekend…

A compilation of Indian blogs on marketing, social media and advertising. Good weekend reading. I know / know of many of these people but not their blogs, or even that they had one, so it’s been a nice surprise to discover some of them…

And from The Chasing iamb (who also admits - and why blog names should not be picked in a hurry) - sound advice for the freelancer. Where was the iamb when I needed this advice when I was starting out as a naive, will-cringe-and-die-before-I-discuss-money freelancer? Possibly chasing something else.

Heck, I may as well admit, I am still that way. Earlier as a researcher, now also as a travel writer. So this stays bookmarked and becomes daily reading. Repeat after me, you are a freelancer for the freedom and choice it affords you. Not so you get desperate and panicky if no work comes your way for a whole week, month, year. Okay, maybe not year. Go read now. There is a reason I have linked to it twice.

And while on this (rambling without purpose - and is there any other way?), today’s Mumbai Mirror, reporting on the Deshmukh son’s wedding (notice the url ends with english-skin-custom. So nothing. Just thought I’d point it out. I told you I was rambling) in Mumbai says among other things - The state Cabinet was represented by Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil and his colleagues. Marketing Minister Harshwardhan Patil was playing host for the Deshmukhs.

Marketing Minister? What does a marketing minister do? Does he have weekly / monthly / quarterly targets? And sales support? What about business development? And most importantly, what does he market?

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charukesi February 28th, 2008

The Tibetan book of living - in Mint Lounge last weekend…

Available online here. Or head to my travel blog - Itchy Feet…

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charukesi February 27th, 2008

Time was when, finding myself otherwise jobless (which is all the time) I used to head to rediff.com for my daily dose of entertainment. Insipid stories, terribly written out - but the comments following the articles making every moment spent on the site worth it.

It just seems to be getting worse… The problem is when good writers sneak in their pieces when no one (viz. me) is looking - and the same kind of comments show up.

In February, Sidin’s hilarious How to score a Valentine’s date in 10 days! attracted 86 comments, ranging from the mildly abusive…

v-date,bulshit
by Supriya mehta on Feb 09, 2008 12:31 PM | Hide replies

Hi,Ithink your analysis about girl is totally incorrect,& u has enough time to spend , making showoffs, did you personally ever tried the same,kindly lets us know the result,it’s a totally rottan idea.

…to the sincerely woeful…

Valentine’s Date
by cute plumcake on Feb 09, 2008 10:52 AM | Hide replies

Sidin these are cheap tricks yaar… to find a soul mate you need to be truthful to yourself and lovable..

I mean, how can one not feel all warm and fuzzy about ‘cute plumcake’?

Immediately after that, Anita’s travel piece on Top romantic spots for a perfect Valentine’s Day. The comments which are as always irrelevant or rude, suddenly take a turn towards ‘down with western culture’ - India survived for corers of years without vanentines day. Only two hundred year old country like USA is teaching us the way of expressing such love. New generation is falling for it.

Corers of years. Indeed.

This commenter Jayant Tilak goes on and on, to end with - Only those can respond, who can give their very considered opinion. No foolish comments expected please.

And poor Palani was disappointed, he expected to find out about erogenous spots and found himself reading about cool getaways instead - and suggests rediff has manipulated the title to attract readers like him - why not call it places instead of spots, he asks.

I mean, what? When is rediff going to get a comments filter or any kind of policy at all? On writing, reading, commenting…

So, here is what I have been wondering - why would good writers want to write for rediff?

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charukesi February 26th, 2008

I came across this piece on how advertising agencies position themselves - most of it seemed rather obvious or desperate to me (but that is the cynical advertising-industry-watcher in me speaking) - for instance a brand’s best friend? hey, isn’t that supposed to be the customer? And hey, that is anyway why you are the chosen agency for that brand…

I was trying to find positioning statements of Indian ad agencies and haven’t made much progress so far. But driving back to Bombay from Pune, I spotted this on the expressway.

A bold, provocative statement. Written by someone with great confidence and plans for the SMG brand. And as risky as the proposed business decision…

Personally, I found it the kind of attention-seeking statement that immediately raises my heckles - for I was reminded of this signboard on a shop window - Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come to us. What do you think of such a statement?

More : As Apu points out in her comment, none of these is really a ‘positioning’ statement - at best, they are tag lines, much the way keeps my skin smooth is for a soap brand - that is the very least I expect from a soap. And going by the tag lines, there is little to differentiate one agency from the other.

Given that, I think the Starcom statement is atleast, well, different. Provocative, as I said, cheeky and makes you want to stop and think about it. So what makes them so brashly confident? What is it that they can offer that makes the risk worthwhile… I wonder if an additional line about the risk-benefit pay-off would make this whole ad more balanced, acceptable…?

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charukesi February 21st, 2008

The lesser known Dubai, in today’s HT Cafe… (as always, link valid only for a week, so read now, else see photo and sigh deeply in regret for having missed the article)

More photographs from the colors and chaos of Dubai here…

You can read the article here…

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