ISB MMX Mumbai Meet-up 1.0 (The M Files)

Mumbai guys/gals met last Sunday and had a rocking time with some unbelivable moments in it for everyone of us.

We had a huge turnout of very diverse Junta which was young at heart out of which some of where restless :-) The restaurant was so overwhelmed by our presence that they arranged for a live performance of Saif for us free of charge. The turnout was so huge that intros itself took about 4 hours. 

In between we had some lunatics at the restaurant who were very loud and eating like hogs and spilling quite a signifacnt amount of drinks and food near us. One of us who was a expert on healthy living sms'd using Webaroo (SMS Gupshup) and asked them to eat in a more dignified manner. But the lunatics started to get abusive - vebally and physically. We had Karate champ cum lawyer in our midst who with one chop flattened them out like dosa and threatened to sue them. The lunatics were huge in numbers but we had a consultant in our midst who suggested a few ideas after which the copywriter duo came to the rescue. They immediately copied the Karate guy left and right and we won. 

We celebrated the victory with our national bird "The tandoori chicken" and the national drink "The Patiala peg". In fact time flew so fast and it was so much fun that we ended up having Dinner too at the same place. 

By the time the bill came we found that none of us had enough cash. But fortunately we had a 5 star hotel manager in our midst who helped us settle the bill in a much amicable manner without having to do the dishes. Next day our meet was all over news channels since we had a TV Producer in our midst. We also got extensive coverage by the print media since one of our junta was a journo there.

It was a time that could easily not have been forgotten :-)

TV Soaps

Never has anything had the same effect on Indian TV audience as much as TV Soaps have. Over the years they have degenerated from being a healthy dose of masala to an overdose of rat poison. Blame it all on Ekta Kapoor for her masterful contribution to the retardation of Indian TV programming.

For me the memory of daily soaps started with the twin epic saga called "Swabhimaan" and "Shanti" which were entertaining in the initial days but saw massive decomposition in their story once they ran out of genuineness. From there on it was just dragging for the sake of dragging it on. And once Ekta Kapoor started with her K-serials it just went downhill with rampant stereotyping.

Ingredients in a TV Soap

1. One Tablespoon of Adarsh Bahu

Come rain, storm, deceit or an epidemic, the cornerstone of any joint family is the adarsh bahu who shalt not wither from her idealistic stance. If only god had given her some brains along with those 'family values' we would be saving ourselves from half the troubles.

2. Two tea spoons of the Vamp

A plotting vamp is the lifeline of the soap. If left to the adarsh bahu we would only see a drab version of a ultra-goody depiction of our daily lives. A vamp wins for 99% of the airtime and gets the best of make-up. Her plans never fail. She lives luxuriously. So if you want to play a character in your daily lives vamp is the one of die for. Thanks to TV soaps 'vamp' is now a commonly used word.

3. The never-say-die Baa

This eternal character lives up to the name literally. She just wouldn't die despite how many 20 year jumps the serial takes. 

4. The back-from-the-dead husband

Despite numerous assassination attempts and countless funerals, the husband refuses to take things dying down. Blown up cars and crashed flights dont stop him. He always finds some manner of escaping death. Cant blame him because maybe he hasnt watched the "Final Destination" trilogy.

Throw all this together and you have the ingredients ready !

Preparation

Open any Sanskrit/Hindi textbook and eenie-mynie-mo any word on any page. Thats the name you give to the lead characters in the soap - Pratigya, Sanskar, Aabha, Tulsi, Parvati, Om etc etc

Then open Bhagwad Gita or Mahabharata and choose a random set of Sanskrit slokas and play them at different moments regardless of their relevance to the context or content. 99.99% of Indians dont understand Sanskrit slokas and this number can only go up so nobody cares on what the slokas mean.

Constantly innovate by killing different people in the family and get their wives or husbands married off to somebody. This helps complicate things when the husband/wife return from the dead. Add memory loss and you have the perfect pot-boiler. Repeat till everybody has been married atleast a couple of times and the audience has lost count. 

Initially all the soaps tracked the lives of 'Gujju' families and once they were out of the Gujju jokes they turned to Rajasthani families. You will also find different types of BS thrown at you coated in sanskrit names - Raj Purohit, Vish-pind, Mahakaal dand etc etc. Those are the ones which put all this retardity at its peak! I wish that they took 20yr leaps every episode and died off in 5 episodes. 

The Garnishing

Why are they called daily soaps when all they do is mess up with sanity. After messing with mythology, some of the soaps have now moved to mess history. Case-in-point being - 'Jhansi ki rani'. A few others have decided to mess up song lyrics - Sasural genda phool, Sapna Baabul ka, Chand Chupa Baadal mein etc. Others have incorporated popular songs in them and have scarred us with the choreography.

The only benefactors of TV soaps are glycerin companies. I have seen better plays by kindergarten kids than these retarded TV soaps. But who's listening ?

Smacking News

More Load Shedding to be made part of NDA Common Minimum Program: BJP

BJP top brass decided to take a strategic timeout from infighting to make some sort of a election-winning strategy in view of the forthcoming polls. They decided to make 3 versions of the Common Minimum Program to effectively segment and target the vote-bank: The Hindu trance, Muslim Lounge mix and Dalit Rhapsody. 

They decided that they need to further hardline its Hindutva policy. Now along with pre-marital sex they'll also oppose post-marital sex. Since consultant engineered fake data by fresh MBA geeks claims that 90% of the Indians have sex at night, BJP govt has promised extensive Load shedding at night. 

They also claimed this would bring down fiscal deficit by reducing expenditure on building public sanitary facilities. When its dark, do your deed anywhere.  This would also reduce the demand for water. And considering that most of us drink Pepsi / Coca Cola this would indirectly make more cheap pesticide available for the farmers.

This also presents itself as a boom opportunity for several industries as the rich will buy more inverters thus increasing consumption of electricity and chemicals while the poor will use lanterns and candles. Insurance sector will also see higher demand for fire insurance. Laptop batteries will also see a higher sale. As electric-powered machines are rendered useless, demand for manual labor will also go up. The GDP growth will be unprecedented.

It is also considering to favorably look at MRF's demand to intervene and see to it that blimps replace signboards.

Pakistan gets itself Facebooked

Pakistan government has banned Facebook in the country. This was after Deoband clerics issued Fatwa against Facebook because it promotes full facial nudity. Supposedly none of the profile pics had burqa. 

US President Obama was unhappy with this considering that most of his fans on Facebook are Pakistanis. To make matters more complicated Pakistan made him a offer - "We shut down all Terror camps if you shut down all Facebook servers".

Meanwhile Facebook has decided to rename itself Kitaab-e-Chehra to get around the ban. Works? Ask LeT. Err .. JuD says experts.

In completely unrelated news, Pakistan President Zardari granted pardon to his interior minister who was convicted by Courts on corruption. Mayawati now wants UP in Pakistan.

Since Facebook was banned, most Pakistanis didn't know that their cricket team had made it to the Semifinals of the T20 World Cup by beating SA. So later they found it hard to believe that the jehadis had not bombed a single place to make that happen.

Govt. of India issues advisory: Movie-Goers Beware ! 

The Government today issued an advisory especially for all the movie-going public due to increased number of cases of two epidemics deemed prominent in a movie theater. The diseases in question being CellulaRetardity & MovieSidhuism. 

CellulaRetardity is spread by those persons in the movie theater who havent mastered the art of putting cellphones on silent. They show symptoms of receiving their calls and talks like its in their living room. 

MovieSidhuism is spread by those persons in the movie theater who laugh out loud at each and every joke regardless of merit. It may also make you wonder if you are missing the joke somewhere. There is no scientific treatment available currently but some experts have suggested that shooting the diseased in the head might help. So take your shotguns to the theater next time.

Bollywood bytes

After the failure of his recent movies and success of Badmaash Company, Shahid kapoor's astrologer has asked his producers to name his next few movies as Kutte, Kulta, Harami and Maa ki Aankh. He told Shahid that only way he can have a successful love-life with Kareena Kapoor is by naming her Kameena Kapoor.

Opinion polls suggest that ToI's 'Aman ki Asha' hasnt taken off in the way they hoped for. It is believed that the major reason for its failure is that it sounds more like a sequel to the Aman Verma casting couch controversy than any peace initiative.

SmackD's express 8 news headlines

1. Mahila Swabhiman Sangh to sue the IT Sector for always releasing 'beta' versions and never 'beti' versions

2. In India 'bit.ly' to extend its services to names also. We have a lot of really long South Indian names.

3. Anu Malik says "I am on a Diet. So i refuse to eat my words or swallow my pride. Cant afford these extra calories"

4. Since it competes with Kindle, Apple shareholders demand that a more apt name for iPad would be 'iFondle'.

5. Construction sector all set to see a boom in coming future with falling input prices. This comes with improving supply conditions as BCCI shits bricks over Lalit Modi.

6. Iranian cleric says women's cleavages cause earthquakes. Mixing religion with science was never a smart move.

7. Rakhi Sawant "I wont expose anymore". Industry hopes she that she doesn't start acting.

8. In a exclusive survey done among Twitterers in India, 98% public follow celebs for one reason that they know when they are taking out their BMWs. Thats the time to stay home and not be run over.

Cycle Singh : Salesman of the Year

ITC hired me to fight the war for them in the market. To win wars you must first start by winning the battles. And to win you must fight. Nothing ever is straightforward. When you are out there fighting, remember all is Fair & Lovely in war. 

SmackD Trivial fact #1 : By the way you know you are in FMCG when you are using a TLA i.e. Three letter acronym for every terminology - POP, NTD, SWD, SCP, RBD etc etc

The new hires at ITC are called AUTs (Assistants Under Training). After training we all have to assist our commander i.e. the Branch Manager in the battles. Till then we are referred to as "ITC ke Damaad" for we are fed, pampered and well taken care of without the pressure of any deliverables. 

I was sent to learn the tricks of the trade to Nagpur branch which handles Vidharba region and Chattisgarh. To be a good leader you must be able to empathize and relate to your subordinates. So ITC puts us through every hierarchy in the command chain - right from the Dealer Salesman to Area Manager in every business - right from Cigarettes to Grocery.

A Dealer Salesman (DS) is our foot soldier. Well, not exactly. He's our cycle soldier though most of them now have bikes. A few still ply their trade on cycles especially those servicing localities with narrow roads and dense traffic. So my stint in ITC starts as a cycle salesman.

3 steps to becoming a Cycle salesman:

Step 1: Get your cycle. This HERO "new jet series" was my launch vehicle.

Step 2: Load the cigarettes in your thela

Step 3: Load the thelas onto your cycle

There you go ! In three easy steps you have now become a cycle salesman. 

SmackD Trivial fact #2 : You know you are a Engineer if you are thinking that we can rationalize the load distribution on both sides of the cycle for optimal pedaling effort. If you are ... God help you !

A cycle salesman mainly sells to the 'Paan Dukaans' aka 'Paan Thelas' aka 'Paan ki Tapris'. So we were on our way cycling through the streets of Nagpur visiting various Paan dukaans and selling cigarette packs to them. 

Different thoughts cross your mind when you are cycling under the hot sun through those streets. No No No ! You philosophical junkies. Your whole life doesn't flash before your eyes ! Just thoughts and nothing deep.

 

SmackD Trivial fact #3 : You know you are a MBA if you are looking at the relatively impoverished streets and wondering how you can extract value from the bottom of the pyramid. If you are ... Get a life or go get shot !

By the way we all know Cigarettes are not allowed to advertise on popular media like TVs, billboards etc. The only place you can 'brand' is on/inside the paan dukaan. 

We visited about 40 odd outlets during the day. In the morning if you got on that cycle thinking you were the ultimate street smart MBA in the quest for limitless power, by evening you would be a collective noun for tired muscles looking for a place to park that sore ass. 

While you are cycling through those streets, people look at you in amazement. Such well-dressed guy on a cycle ? They must surely be thinking what all our educated-but-unemployed youth must do today just to survive :)

Two days later I upgraded from a non-mechanized two-wheeler to a mechanized two-wheeler i.e. a bike.

Then the day we had to sell Non-Tobacco Division (NTD) products i.e. in layman terms choclates, chips, biscuits etc I was upgraded to a mechanized 3-wheeler.

After the ultimate path-breaking exploits in the Nagpur cigarette market, the Branch Manager has upgraded my Designation from Assistant Under Training (AUT) to CHairman Under Training (CHUT).

Anyways, these 5 days introduced to me a world I never imagined existed. It is an eye-opening experience and the true take-away from all this is a sense of respect and empathy for the men who do this everyday.

PPT - Pre-Planned Torture

We have all seen numerous presentations - loved a few but mostly suffered because of them. What is it about them that makes them so lovable as well as highly irritable? All of them are made on MS Powerpoint so lets not blame Bill Gates for this one.

There was time when these powerpoints had a point. Now whenever I see another ppt I literally go "WTF ! Not another retarded ppt. Please God. Please !" Most PPTs can serve their purpose by using just the handouts since the presenter is simple reading out from them. No added inputs from him. You sit there and wonder if you are in a nursery school and the teacher is reading out the lullaby to you.

Powerpoint has been given this cult status mainly by MBAs especially the ones plying their trade in the Consulting trade who live by the motto "If you cant convince them, bore them". They show all sorts of graphs, throw in all sorts of numbers/facts and excruciating details in the introduction which the audience doesnt care two hoots about. Why dont those morons get to the real part of analysis and the recommendations? 

Marketing guys are not far behind but better only because they are trying to con us and not bore us to death. Their idea of pain is making fancy names and terms for simple tasks. Pasting brand posters is called "Activation strategy". Profit making is called "Value Capturing". The list is endless.

All said and done you can put any presentation in the world under SmackD's 2x2 matrix of PPTs. 

There are two aspects to any presentation - Presenter and Content. A combination of both determines what we gain out of the PPT.

1. Cool Hand Luke (Good Presenter :: OK Content): The presenter would keep his audience engaged through jokes and some neat articulation. But at the end of the presentation you would heaping praises on the presenter but in reality you do not have much of a take-away because he/she just entertained.

2. Master Yoda (Bad Presenter :: Good Content): Totally opposite of the above. The Presenter in most cases would be outrightly boring but if we are able to look past that you would find that whatever he is presenting is really good and you walk out richer in terms of understanding/knowledge. If only he/she could articulate they would leave you with a positive after-taste.

3. Death Angel (Bad Presenter :: Bad Content): They are the ones chosen by the devil himself to deliver "Death by Powerpoint". Boring content. Lifeless speaker. You would prefer being flogged ass-naked in public than sit through a minute of such presentations. To make matters worse these presentations will be longer than any average presentation and the pace would be painstakingly slow.

4. RockStar (Good Presenter :: Good Content): These are the ones who make a powerpoint presentation orgasmic and leave you wanting more. They are clever, funny and articulate well. They keep it simple enough and the PPTs are usually written in spoken english as if every point was speaking to you.

So where do in SmackD's do you wanna be?