129- Driving Growth through Changing Palates

129- Driving Growth through Changing Palates

I have been liking the Cadburys, 'Kuch meetha ho jaye' campaign for a while now. The TV commercials are warm, tell a story, softly tugs at your heart - whether its the eloping daughter TVC or the young teen wanting to walk the girl to her house or the young couple sneaking a conversation at the dinner table amidst family members. Over the last year or so i have also witnessed increasing instances of people giving or recieving the chocolate packs during festivals and other occassions instead of the traditional mithai-boxes. The marketing wallas would probably call this product growth through expanding usage. Within expanding usage it would be a case of expanding the number of occassions that the product can be used or consumed. I think this is a brilliant marketing campaign, which has already made a dent on the established social practices - and if the cash registers at Cadbury's are ringing, i am not surprised.

Every product we are told reaches maturity where its growth plateaus after the initial surge forward. India by all accounts traditionally has not been a chocolate consuming society. The chocolate revolution so to say, either as a sin food, or a food (if at all it can be called as food) indulgence has been a recent phenomena. Not many years ago, it was an item for the elite, particularly those who returned from the foriegn shores. Our sweet tooth was satiated by traditional mithais or sweet dishes - whether its the rice kheer and sewainyas of the north, or the pooran polis of the west or the paisam and mysore pak of the south and the innumerable milk based sweets of the east. Every region and community has its signature sweet dishes, which apart from being sweet also had some or the other food value. But chocolate is a different creature. It has limited food value, but much to the chagarin of the many with bursting waist lines, a very high calorie value. The last two decades has made chocolates the most common indulgence for children - and when they grow up, the chocolate mania in them refuses to grow up - mostly.

How does the marketing guy expands usage? Well, he gets an Eureka idea - how about chocolates usurping the space which traditionally has been occupied with the sweet dishes/foods. Imagine if after food people start having chocolates instead of jaggery or kheer or sandesh. Imagine if people start giving chocolates instead of sweets on every auspicious occassion as shagun. Imagine the consumption possible and imagine the market available? Absolutely brilliant piece of marketing.

I remember a marketing anecdote from my marketing classes. In a room full of marketing professionals the Coke head asks - 'Who are we competing against?' No prizes for guessing the answer - 'Pepsi'. The Head says ' No. Water is our chief competitor, so is tea, coffee and nimbu paani. We must mover from the share-of-wallet to the pursuit of share-of-stomach. Every time a consumer wants to drink something he must want to have Coke'. I don't know if the story is true or not but its another example of trying to expand product consumption through playing with the traditional stuff served. The DNA of occasions has been played with, altering the map of what is to be eaten and served. No wonder, the nimbu-paani has practically gone out of the welcome drink for the guest.

Any lessons for what we sell for a living folks? Think about it.

Guru   

128 Monday Musings - A tale of two citizens

128 Monday Musings -A tale of two citizens

They are separated by a good score years or so and so it can be safely concluded that they belong to two separate generations. The years that yawn between them encompass two stories, keeping together two lives disjointed yet connected, in the sense that where one ends that other ought to have begun.

She is lightly over 60, has very little formal education to boast of, but is well versed in the language of her ancestors. She is literate in a very limited sense, that her Hindi is passable but has no familiarity to English whatsoever. Her life revolves around her family, cooking, washing and buying vegetables. She has spent her entire life fufilling familial responsibilities like millions like her in the social mileu she inhabits. Every Republic day and Independence day she demands a tricolor be brought to her.She would then struggle to climb to the terrace of her house, which is a small hamlet in some inconsequential hinterland of this vast country and tie the tricolor to a unceremonious bamboo stick and unfurl the national flag with the TV antennae acting as the spinal cord that keeps it erect and flying. The family and the nieghbours treated this with indulgence for a while, some even made fun of her fascination, but now have come to accept the ritual twice a year. No one is sure if she understands the concept of a nation, or that there is any background of service to nation that runs in her family or she has had any experience that has drawn her to the strongest symbol of a nation - but come the republic day and the independence day she is resolute that she WILL unfurl the flag.

He is a young progeny of the liberalised India. He has flourished with whatever the country had provided - and amongst his friends is a common refrain, that they had succeed inspite of the country and not because of it. He mocks the government sector for all its shoddiness, ineptitude, callousness, lack of initiative, poor security, overburdening taxes and under delivery of governance. Luckily he is not alone in it. He is educated, articulate and aware. He has read all the history, has all his facts right, knows the major events of the Indian struggle of independence, can argue in favor or against the (controversial) role of all major stalwarts of the struggle with passion and eloquence. One might not be wrong to include him in the resurgent middle class, that is the pride of last twenty years and many argue, upon whom the future of this country depends.

This was a long weekend including the Independence day holiday. She unfurled the flag. He went on a holiday. 

Monday Musing 127- Co-Passenger from another time

127- Co-Passenger from another time

It has been a season of meeting very long lost co-passengers in the journey of life for me. Last time i wrote about my English teacher and this time i am going to talk about 'Pandit'.

Manohar Lal Purohit was my classmate during my B. Pharmacy days in the sleepy town of Berhampur, the coastal southern tip of Orissa, kissing the border of Andhra Pradesh. Tall, lanky as both were, the similarities ended there. He was extremely fair, almost pinkish, like the Indian version of a greek god - and i intolerably hairy. Originally hailing from the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan, he had spend his formative years in the mining belt of western Orissa, bordering on Jharkhand, in a nondescript town called Brijrajnagar. The fact that he was the only other Hindi speaking person in a class dominated by Oriya and Bengali speakers naturally brought us together instantaneously - a bond which only got cemented by the fact that we were ragged together most of the times, creating a 'brothers-in-pain' camaraderie. Since there was no hostel, five of us got together to rent a room and called it 'Sabarmati' - a decision i was instrumental in influencing, as an ode to my unusual last name. I was, however in no mood to convert it into an ashram, not in the traditional sense anyways.

Pandit, as he gradually got to be called, was going through a rough patch at that time - having lost his father and financially being supported by an Uncle, who also introduced him to the world of spiritual awakening. I am not sure if the outcome of this story would be any different had Pandit's sitiuation been any kinder to a young chap of 18. Adversity has strange effects on people and Pandit perhaps found solace in the intoxicating opiom of spirititual awakening.

He never opened his books - he had none. Every evening as others would get down to write down practical dossiers, flip through bulky reference texts, break head over complex medicinal pharmaceutical reactions, navigate through the elaborate, and frankly, extremely unromantic pharmacopoeias, he would freshen up and leave for the evening satsang in the local ashram.He would get up an ungodly hour of 4 am in the morning, around the time others would be going to bed, do his Yog-sadhna, eat his grams and be fresh as a wild cucumber as others labored to get out of thier groggy state. Exactly 24 hours prior to the exams he would enquire about the syllabus as if he wanted to study everything and then seek suggestions on the mimimum amount to be read which would give a fair chance at passing. We resented him the fact that he passed every single exam with this limited effort, while we would score marginally better than him despite late nights and excacerbated ulcers. We finally concluded that God certainly existed and that He was eminently bribable through satsangs. For every alcohol revelry we had in the house, he countered it through a equally loud Satsang, something we resented every bit, but let it be, because one God on your side always helps when facing a hostile viva-voice.

Most of us were struggling with the question of what-next after the course but Pandit was clear - he wanted to renounce the world and become a sanyasi. We were sure he had lost it, but he proved us wrong and did leave everything and joined the Bihar school of Yoga in Munger district of Bihar for future spiritual studies. That was perhaps the last we knew of him, as all of us got busy charting our own course in life. But last word was still to be spoken on it.

Pandit met a girl in the ashram he went to, who incidentally had come there with very similar ideas of spiritual journey. I am not sure if i can call it love, but something blossomed, and they decided to get married - much to the obvious consternation of family members. Niether had the quaintest idea how will they earn thier livelyhood. But married they did get and came to Bangalore and spent the next decade or so in various ashrmas, pursuing the path of spiritual awakening, living the ashram way of life. If this decade was strugglesome, as every bone in my body tells me it should have been, Pandit did not make any mention of it. Last year they were blessed with a lovely daughter, Devashree. As of now, both manage to live happily on what they earn teaching Yoga.   

I met Pandit at Bangalore after my graduation for the first time last fortnight - a very different co passenger from another life. I may have had disagreement with his way of life then, but today i am convinced that there is not one right way and more importantly he had as much right to pursue his course as much as i was entitled to.

As i look back at him and myself, I am clearly and surely inspired by his conviction to have the courage to live life the way his heart led him to; to pursue his way even at the face of extraordinary adversity, persevering with it against all odds and being happy with the choices he had made. He may have a few material aquisitions less than us, but i bet he is no less happier.

Let a hundred Pandit bloom.

Guru

126- Monday Musings – Thank You ‘Niharika Miss’

126- Monday Musings – Thank You ‘Niharika Miss’

The day before yesterday I talked to my English teacher from school, almost after two decades. She located me. As I saved her number on my cell as Niharika ‘Miss’, who is surely not a ‘miss’ anymore, but to a mind that will remember her as she was experienced well over 20 years ago, will perhaps always remain a miss.

Niharika Miss had joined our school immediately after her Masters in English literature from Utkal University in Orissa and belonged to Bhubaneswar and was one of three imports from Orissa as the school management changed during my last three years there. For an extremely ‘bihari-tribal’ mix of linguistic influence, the addition of Oriya was only to cause a bit of flutter. She was young, freshly out of her college, in hindsight I can clearly see she was nervous, though she tried hard to put a brave and confident face, into her first job and in an alien place. Her 5 feet 2 inches frame did not help much as a few of us already towered over her. To make matters worse, she was to teach us English, which to put it mildly was not quite our strength, neither was there any desire to make it so.

I remember the first spelling she corrected for me was that Bhubaneswar was not spelled ‘Bhuwaneshwar’ as I had phonetically written. I was battling with an English handwriting that was somewhere between pathetic and horrendous, so during summer break she gave me ten 100 word essays to be written. If she was not impressed by the product of my limited linguistic abilities as she should have been, then she did not let me know it. She tried to put a 25 paisa fine (the same 25 paisa coin that has gone away from circulation last week) every time someone spoke in Hindi during her class, needless to say with little effect. I remember asking her audaciously if advance payment could be made for the fines that will fall due as there was no intention on our part to talk in English.

Once I went to meet her where she stayed and she was trying to explain why we should be reading English books and I spotted a small book on her table with a girl and a boy picture on its cover – something that made that book quite read-worthy to my young mind. When I asked her if could borrow it, she looked a bit flustered but gave in. Many years later I realised I had attempted to read a Mills & Boons title. Thank God I did not complete it.

It was a very happy day for me to talk to her – after all those years. As years went by, I did fall in love with the language and went an extra mile to develop a working proficiency in it. I have no doubt in my mind that the seeds were sown much earlier in a manner inconspicuous enough, that only a great teacher can do.

Thank You ‘Niharika Miss’. I owe you more than you can ever imagine, and more than I can ever tell you. 

Guru

125- Monday Musings Growing Down

125 Monday Musings - Growing down

Normally one grows up - the process of entering adulthood, with all its perks that appears like the El dorado of limitless freedom to a childs mind. For a decade beginning maybe at the age of 8 to almost 18, one wants to grow up fast, cursing the years for not ticking away fast enough and then by the time one is in the mid 30s, one curses the years for ticking away too fast.

My daughter is almost five and she inhabits a strange stage of her growing up - a little more than a toddler and a little less than pre-teens. We watched hers (and mine) first 3 D movie, Cars-2 the other day in the multiplex nearby. I am sure she discovered a new world called a 'big TV' as she puts her in her unique expression, but more than her, i discovered a new world of child entertainment.

I grew up on hindi comics, coming from the hindi heartland that i did, on Chandamama, Amar Chitra katha, Bahadur, Mendrake and Betal. It was only when i was past 20 and went to a college that i came to know that there were iconic toon characters in the English literature for children - of the likes TinTin, Archies, Tom and Jerry, Barbie, so on and so forth. In fact so miserable was my knowlege of what the English speaking child feasts on, that any conversation between Keerat and her mother, who thankfully had an exposure to this world in her formative years, made me feel like, if not an alien, definitely a bumkin. Last two years has been quite literally growing down years for me - the journey of an adult to understand the context of child entertainment.

It is in this context that i have come to know household icons like Ninja Hathori, Shuzooka, Doremon, and have actually seen a few episodes of Tom & Jerry, Oogie the cockroaches, and not to forget Chota Bheem, who my daughter summarily and much to my horror announced that she is going to marry. This process of not only becoming familiar with these characters, but actually getting down to watching them, as the control of the remote in most cases rests with Keerat, has been a quite an experience. I cannot remember most of these names while i am clearly expected to, and my ignorance is rubbed on by a (un)holy allaince between Keerat and my better half. Rarely i have found myself more wanting of fundamental competence than situations like these.

So we watched the 3 D movie, needless to say, something i was not asked nor expected to be asked. After a while of wondering what in Gods name was i doing wearing those funny glasses, i realised that this was one hell of an experience. Withing 20 minutes of watching technology create a magical experience and the story line suspiciously resembling a la'  James Bond plot, i was possibly more immeresed into the movie than Keerat. I know for sure that she will not the one to plot the next sojourn to the multiplex for a 3 D extravaganza.

If growing up was fantastic, my growing down is magical.

Guru

124 - Monday Musings - Go write your book

124 - Monday Musings -  Go write your book

I was invited for by an old colleague Hariharan Iyer on the occasion of his book launch, his maiden dalliance with creative writing. Let me tell you a bit more about Hari as we all fondly call him.

Way back in 2003 when I had just joined as a training manager in Max New York Life Insurance in Mumbai,  I received a call from an acquaintance of mine asking me if I could be of any help in finding a job for a colleague of his. I asked him to send this guy over out of politeness, as I was not sure how somebody at my position could help someone. On a balmy afternoon Hari, who happened to be that guy searching for a breakthrough, came to my office. As one thing led to another, Hari joined Max New York Life as a training manager on my referral a few months later and I made a neat 12000 rupees as a referral bonus, a bounty that Hari never forgets to remind me of. Our careers moved on from there and Hari soon rose into prominence owing to oratorial talent, his ability to create human connect, and his uncanny ability to move people from their stupor and act. Not that it was easy to negotiate with the personality of Hari, as someone who loved the sound of his voice, as someone who quite genuinely believed in his own sense of uniqueness. When excited he could be garrulous and it didn’t take much to excite him. In an industry based on numbers, he would declare his disdain for numbers, something that surely did not earn him approval from his bosses. As I said, he was quite full of himself and his healing abilities, he went on undeterred. He mixed life insurance training with Reiki healing, of which he claimed he was a beneficiary and hence its proponent, with great results. As he kept on growing, his belief in his innate greatness only became stronger, something that, to put it mildly as he might read this sometime, - was not shared with as much enthusiasm as he believed it deserved.

He moved to Kerala from Mumbai and then to Delhi to become the Zone Training Head, a fairly good professional growth story. Then suddenly he quit and returned to Mumbai two years ago. He quoted different reasons at different points of time - that he was suffocated, that people did not understand him, that his leaders just did not inspire him that his frequency was different from the one that had approval, so on and so forth. He had no job at hand and I for surely thought that he had lost it. I was sure that his self love had acquired self delusional proportions. We were in touch and he dabbled with quite a bit in the last two years to keep the fires burning - from free lance insurance training, to training consultancy to Reiki healing to Multi Level Marketing business. His delusions continued because he wanted to heal the world, spread happiness, promote holistic living, and create happy spaces and other mumbo-jumbo that such people are often found quoting.

I may have had huge differences in the philosophy of what he was promoting, partly because I cannot relate to it, and partly because I thought it was too much of risk - but what I just could not disagree with was his passion. When he spoke, he spoke as a man who truly believed in what he was saying. There was no way one could doubt the strength of his belief and he pressed on. A few days earlier he called abruptly and said that he wanted me to write a testimonial for his first book. I quite literally fell off from my chair. The bugger had actually done it. I read the book, wrote the testimonial and today attended his book launch. Well, I do not think that his book is earth-shatteringly original or breathtakingly brilliant. It’s quite an ordinary book by literary standards. But what is extraordinary is the faith in his work that Hari has, that he actually got around writing a book about and getting it launched. This is truly uplifting during times when we do not tire of telling ourselves all the reasons why things cannot be done. He has demonstrated the power of will, conviction and belief in our dreams.

The renowned scholar Asghar Ali Engineer came to launch his book. And I feel like shouting at the top of my voice – Go write your book!

Guru

123- Of Mangoes and Rains

123- Of Mangoes and Rains

There are somethings that we enjoy doing not because we like doing them now, but because we liked doing it in the past. It is the memory of it that is the real source of joy and not the activity itself.

We go to an old city or an old neighbourhood and drop in a particular restuarant for a particular dish or a tea corner with quite ordinary cookies or a paani-puri waala or a walk through a park or a street, or a visit of an old theatre, or we revisit a tourist junction we go and visit all the places we had visited in the past. The same thing is at play in each one of the above - we are not enjoying the current taste or fun or beauty as much we are enjoying the memory of that joy. This is not to say that it is not any less enjoyable today, but it is the sweet something that it creates, the lingering after taste of a time gone by, mostly romanticised as the good-old-days, that is the source of that glowing abstract feeling called happiness. Revisiting it now is perhaps the umblical cord that connects us with what has been left behind, when everything has flown by,  providing us with a sense of rootedness or a semblence of permanence, in a life where one realises that nothing is permanent.

If only Youth knew and Age could! They say growing old is not a choice, but growing up is optional. I also have a feeling that growing old is not a particularly enjoyable process. It brings along with numerous disillusionments and shattering of myths - that daddy is not the strongest, that parents are not immortal, that heart breaks, that bad things happen to good people, that relationships are not permanent, that evil exist, that good people often do bad things, that there are so many things that were taught in the moral science section that are observed more as exceptions than as rule and that being good is not a default options for human beings but a choice that is fraught with struggle and requires more courage than an average man on the street has; so on and so forth. As life moves from one painful discovery to the next, its likely that an unencumbered and unblemished soul becomes a casualty. The loss of innocence is the greatest personal sorrow for each one of us, which ironically and tragically enough we are not even able to bereave or lament publicly.

So when we reach the tea-stall, eatery, paani-puri wallah and the park, street or neighbourhood, we feel a desperate need to connect, and sometimes to our horror that place has actually moved on, just as we have. They do not have any duty towards us to remain as they were, but we laden with our own need for an anchor want it to remain as it was many years back - because its being as it was, gives us some semblence of continuity and permanence. This anchor holds us back, roots us, provides something to hold on to, when everything else around is flowing by like sea planktons. Only a handful of us can attain liberation in being comfortable in the rootlessness that i describe above. Most don't event know or understand leave aside articulate what this need for continuity and permanence is like. They suffer and agonise but cannot explain why. But when they do visit these old place and enjoy the old pursuits they feel a sense of happiness and joy.And that keeps fuelling their need to keep going back, again and again.

It is in these contexts that i become a glutton when it comes to Mangoes and when it rains incessantly in Mumbai. May the Mangoes always smell the way they do and may the rains lash on my windows forever.

Guru