Category Archives: Society

The Complicated Question of Mumbai vs Delhi

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Which city do you like best, aamchi Mumbai or saddi Dilli? Ask this question to anyone and they will have an opinion, even those who have not seen either place. Having spent time in both cities, let me be presumptuous enough to offer my take on the evergreen topic of Mumbai vs Delhi.

  1. Definition: land of business vs land of babu-dom
  2. Pace of life: quick and busy vs slow and easy
  3. Pollution: no visible dust or smoke vs “quick, I need to get a mask!”
  4. Traffic: escapable using the local train vs you’ve got no choice but to sit and curse away your time
  5. Auto rickshaws: black and yellow vs green and yellow; and the latter run on CNG
  6. Auto rickshaw drivers: charge by the meter vs fleece the passenger in direct proportion to his/ her ignorance of Hindi
  7. Capriciousness of auto wallahs: Ah, now that’s one parameter where both cities are equally exasperating. You are lucky if the place you wish to go to matches the place the auto wallah wants to go to.
  8. Temperature: uniformly comfortable throughout the year vs always hotter or colder than you’d like it to be (No wonder then that people from Delhi find Ahmedabad’s winter “pleasant”, as I complained in this post on what I dislike about winter)
  9. Rainfall: flooded roads vs desperately waiting for the rains
  10. Culture: “this city is for everyone, literally” vs “this is my city, what are you doing here?”
  11. Suburban train: dirt cheap (no pun intended) but efficient vs posh but inefficient
  12. People: mind your own business vs “I’ve got all the time in the world to stand and stare”
  13. Rent: resign yourself to the reality of effectively giving away an iPhone each month vs take comfort in the fact that you don’t give away even a smartphone each month

P.S.: The genesis for this post lies in a question: which city is better, Delhi or Mumbai?

My immediate answer was that I did not know enough to comment. For instance, I didn’t know till about three years ago that the h in Delhi was silent. And yet, my answer was not fully true. For one, you don’t need to know much about something to form an opinion. (Think of some of our dear politicians. Or some b-school graduates.) Indeed, if I could form an opinion of Istanbul without as much as stepping foot on Turkish soil, why not on two cities in India that are no longer alien to me? (In case my fairy godmother with her magic wand is reading this, Istanbul is one city I’d like to spend some time. Orhan Pamuk just has a way of weaving reality and dreams so closely that you forget to distinguish between the two.)

Moreover, I was ineffectually trying to be diplomatic because the questioner happened to be from Delhi and I am, if anything, mildly in favour of Mumbai. There, I have given away my opinion, if it wasn’t already clear! But I dare say Delhi is beginning to wield her old-world charm on me.

There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Safe Bet

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Chennai Super Kings or Delhi Daredevils – which team do you support? It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon as we discussed this on our way to watch one of the first matches of this year’s IPLTwenty20. “I have no regional favourites. I will go with Chennai Superkings – that’s a safe bet,” said yours truly. After all, CSK had been the champions last year.

At the entrance to Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, we were surprised that even the most mundane and harmless items were not allowed inside. To give two examples: umbrellas, on a rainy day, and coins. And so we had people dropping all their small change into boxes like those placed in temples. So it’s not just the big bucks that get IPL rolling in money!

On to the floodlit ground, and we found that the seats held water half an inch deep, due to the rains (which thankfully stopped in time for the match). Having shelled out a considerable sum of money for a seat, why is a spectator not even assured of a place to sit? It cannot be too difficult to find a solution to this problem which is inevitable in a roofless stadium. Something as simple as handing out tissue papers at the entrance would do the trick. In fact, even arranging for a goodie bag for every spectator is just as possible, given the scope it offers for marketing and advertising.

I was thrilled to be in a stadium for the first time in my life. (Yes, I have watched cricket on TV and in local playgrounds, and mind you, this includes serious matches where everyone is attired in white; I have played cricket in school; it was simply that going to a stadium to watch the game had never figured in my scheme of activities.) The match began. The first ball was bowled, and that’s when the first player of CSK was run out. To me, this highlighted that in spite of cricket being a more individualistic game compared to say, football or basketball, co-ordination between players is of paramount importance. Moreover, being run out is one of the consequences when batsmen take a risk and sometimes, the bet isn’t safe, and you just lose it.

The first over was over (pardon the irresistible pun) and I was in for a surprising discovery: after every over is bowled, the bowling and batting sides exchange ends of the pitch. All these years of watching and discussing the game, and I was oblivious to this!

In games at school and college, I have never noticed this movement of players. And on TV, such irrelevant activity gets no airtime when there is advertising dying to be aired. I knew that the bowler changed after each over while the ad was shown, so that one of the fielders became the bowler and the fielders reconfigured their positions. But I couldn’t imagine the batsmen changing positions during the ad break. And yet, now it seems that the game couldn’t be otherwise. Switching sides and positions is integral to sports such as badminton and tennis as well. This only goes to show that all of us, in our own different ways, sometimes remain unaware of even the most obvious facts unless we view things using a different lens. (If this sounds like “consultant-speak”, that’s unintended but inevitable.)

Watching an IPL match at the stadium also meant gaining bragging rights to having seen Sehwag and Irfan Pathan and Dhoni and others. Not that it meant much. I saw a bit of what it meant for Sehwag to be “in form” and to rain boundaries all over the field. And then there are things you don’t notice unless you are in the stadium – someone using the wide open skies to fly a kite (which soared higher as the game progressed), the way the graphic of the bikes in the ad display for Hero MotoCorp “ran” around the stadium at times when the entire advertising space was given over to Hero, even as the loudspeakers played the movie song tu mera hero (once upon a time these advertisements were static banners made of flex!), and the big screen lighting up with phrases such as “massive hit”, “clever shot”, “awesome hit” and so on at every possible opportunity. Not to mention some spectators screaming out to their “Peetu” (that’s Kevin Pietersen for everyone else). I could have done with some commentary, though.

The match itself was quite one-sided and the Daredevils won it without playing even 15 overs. So my “safe bet” did not work out. Ah well, it was, after all, merely cricket. (Did I just utter a sacrilege?!) As Rhett Butler said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” For those who do, the match highlights are available on the IPL site here.

P.S.: If you don’t know who Rhett Butler is, you need to read Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Or at least take the easier way out and watch the movie.

This Too is Guerrilla Marketing!

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What happened at the end of a recent panel discussion on ’empowering adolescent girls’ as part of the annual conference of the Indian Philanthropy Forum can only be termed “guerrilla marketing”, although it might not fit the conventional definition of the term. We were an audience of about 200, three-fourth of this being women, from relevant organisations, business schools, the press and others. Given that the event happened at the Taj at Colaba, Mumbai (you know why you know the Taj), the audience was an appropriately privileged set.

The panel had just finished its discussion and it was time for questions. Suddenly, a lady in the front takes the mike, and says (and I quote verbatim):

“Hello everyone, I am Aparna Piramal Raje.” Oh ok, the name sounds familiar, I think. “I studied at Harvard Business School and I speak up because that’s what they have taught me at Harvard Business School. I am lucky to have been born in the family I was…” She then highlights some very commendable points on empowering women, such as holding “two half shifts” instead of one single shift on the shop floor, in order to enable women employees to balance work with family needs.

All is well and good, and it seems that she would end her words soon and pass the mike. However, we are in for a surprise. APR holds up and waves a newspaper. I cannot decipher the name from where I am sitting, craning my neck. She says, “If you really want to empower women, read a newspaper whose editor is a woman.” The logic isn’t very clear to me, but no explanation is forthcoming. “Both Mint and <another business newspaper> are edited by women.” (She took the name of the other paper, but I no longer remember accurately what I heard.) “Between the two, Mint has more ethics. And so you should all read Mint.”

With that, APR’s monologue is done.

You don’t believe this happened?! I agree, the whole story does sound incredible. The audience did not utter a word. The mike was passed and the next question taken up. While leaving the hall, I noticed that on a table beside the exit were placed a pile of free copies of Mint. Mint does not figure among the “key supporters” of the conference as listed on the Forum’s website.

I later found online that APR is a columnist for Mint, and dare I say, a very loyal one too.

Now what do you think of this?! Here was a “guerrilla” who struck audaciously to “market” her product. Was it right? If it was not right, was it wrong? Why even bother? Right or wrong, it’s an interesting world!

When Beer is Cheaper than Water

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Talking to a former colleague the other day, an interesting point came up: that beer is way cheaper than water in Germany. Well, I haven’t verified this, but I am inclined to believe it, especially at the time of Oktoberfest. I am reminded of one of those emails that somehow linger on like ghosts in the cyber-sea, rising up for a breath in our inboxes at unpredictable intervals – this one starts by telling you that India is a country where lime juice is made of artificial flavouring while dishwashing liquids have real lemon extract in them.

Now, I might have read the above factoid on Facebook as well, because Facebook is one huge wellspring-cum-megasink of material which gives you the fake satisfaction of having thought of something serious when all you did was think of some clever comment for a friend’s photo. (A quick aside: the other day, an article in The Hindu mentioned that “most Facebook users have low self-esteem.” You can find the article at http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/internet/article625076.ece till it vanishes. I would think that most Facebook users love to hate Facebook.)

Getting back to the initial point. This Antoinettesque phenomenon reveals itself elsewhere as well. And I am not necessarily talking of cars being cheaper than bikes. How many times have we longed for a sip of water, only to find that the only thing that gets drained faster than the bottle is our pocket? And this, at a railway station where there is a drinking water fountain right next to the shop where you bought the bottle, but you just know instinctively that the fountain must be avoided at all costs.

Fast food is cheaper, easier to find and more aggressively marketed than healthy, balanced meals. A taxi ride is more easily accessible than a bicycle for rent (if at all the latter is ever available) or even the healthiest and cheapest option of walking – for when roads are in pathetic shape and footpaths non-existent, jolting over potholes is preferable to twisting your ankle in an unexpected pit on what passes as the footpath. Moreover, the car that looms around the corner is any day a greater hazard than the cardiovascular illness that five minutes of walking might help avoid.

Now that the Commonwealth Games is near, no writer can desist from taking a jab at the glaring inefficiency and corruption. Or is it indifference and complacence? So you read about sports equipment allegedly procured at unbelievably high prices, while sportspersons of all hues decry the lack of attention paid by authorities to actually advancing sports in the country. As for meeting deadlines, even Octopus Paul would refrain from predicting whether the preparations for CWG would be completed in time or not. Bill Gates supposedly once said,”I like pushing things to the edge. That’s often where you find high performance.” Is there some unsettling inference to be made here? After all, the much touted jugaad philosophy might yet save the games and whatever is left of names and faces. Or will people heed voices of popular writers and boycott the nation’s time of reckoning?

All this has to be taken with a pinch of salt, for the highly fashionable “paid news” system in the media has made it difficult to decipher news and views from sensationalism and cleverly-couched mudslinging. Talk of turning on its head the old adage of fact being stranger than fiction. Fact is now not a stranger, but a really close ally of fiction.

PS: I shudder to think of what would happen if any of the millions of fans on Facebook’s Facebook page happen to read this article. Or, given declining attention spans, even the first two paragraphs. But I am smug because they are too busy for that!

PPS: Yeah, I agree. The title seems rather sensationalist…

The Labyrinth

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A Harvard Business Review article ‘Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership’ (September 2007) piqued my interest. It made intriguing reading for someone interested – sometimes indignantly- in issues of women empowerment (for lack of a better term that can express all the complications involved in gender disparity and its consequences).

Start with a very basic question. Why is it that there is far more commentary on the appearance of women who are public figures, when compared to men of the same stature? Perhaps this point has not even struck you before.

And move on to more striking issues. Consider the corporate world. Starting from subtle notions on capabilities of women leaders to blatant prejudices, there is an entire range of issues that women in leadership positions need to tackle on a continuous basis. This is not to deny that some women manage to navigate the labyrinth successfully. But for most women leaders, it is almost as if success requires a combination of circumstances that is harder to come by than in the case of men.

Where do the solutions to this situation lie?

Excerpts from Obama’s speech in Cairo

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Some excerpts from Barack Obama’s speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009:

“So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace…”

“…we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

“We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.”