Time runs, break its legs

It feels like last week when I landed at the Bengaluru International Airport but I now find myself sitting on my couch in Glasgow and writing this post. It is so true that you cant keep a track of time when you are having a good time. In fact I was watching the myth busters recently and I wonder if they can actually test this myth about time. Atleast for me, it didn't seem like one. Before you even get some time to recall the events over the last month with a SAW like ending and soundtrack being played at the back of your end, you find yourself saying adios to all your loved ones.

I still remember the scenes from the terrace party just the 2nd day after I landed. I had hardly recovered from the jet lag which had got aggravated as a result of my nocturnally awake habits and the last thing I needed was a bad hangover. Lots of similar parties followed thereafter with the last one ending on a porky note. A month is too long a time for a guy like me to do a bit of shopping and too short a time to burn all the greasy fat gained as a result of succumbing to gluttony. I went high on meat over the month and ended it on a wild boar marathon. Sometimes this even reminded me of the movie Taxidermia.

Meeting people after a long time will lead to a lot of unexpected outcomes. Either you end up feeling better that you have not turned out to be as fat as them or realize that you are turning old as all your kiddo brothers and sisters have become taller than you. It actually reminded me of that so called awkward age during adolescence when you experienced a lot of things for the first time. I still remember the time when I had made a guy realize that he had 2 good friends in his right and left hand. Before you know it, you are out of that age it just seems like yesterday when you were loafing around in the teen age. I had come up with an axiom long back which stated "If you were to divide your lifespan into 4 equal parts, you realize that the 2nd part is the most important part of your life". The things that you do in this part influence your future and people find this sweet spot during their twentys. I'm currently in my mid 20s  and know that the honeymoon period is over and its now time to get down to business. With numerous ideas buzzing in my head, all it takes is one small idea to make it big and would love to read this post about 5 years later. 

P.S -- Watched The Social Network today evening. Like Like and Like

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The 'Bra' of Branding

A bra is an article of clothing that covers, supports and elevates the breasts.

Going by the definition, the 'bra' is an integral part of branding and metaphorically speaking does the same job of elevating the business as done by bra to the breasts. I'm definitely not going to include any images of Victoria's Secret for this post just to increase the traffic or flirt with my readers' hormones and stimulate the flow of natural juices. Even though I might have slightly done that by now, I'm sure you would have enjoyed fantasizing some voluptuous, busty bosoms. If you haven't done so, you can always use the 'qVik Search' on the top to treat yourself for some eye pleasing visuals.

Getting back to business, I honestly believe that broadminded women will be able to relate appropriately to this post. For convenience sake, whenever I use the term big breasts, you can relate them to the big businesses having a turnover in millions. Similarly small breasts can be associated with SMEs. Big is always not necessarily better. The super size option is not only unhealthy in McDs but also in real life. With big breasts come loads of added overheads and even though it might look great from outside, one really needs to talk to that person to understand their problems. Google offices and the salary might seem like an "opportunity which you want to grab with both hands", but you do not get to know about the 60+ hours of work that people are putting in every week so that you can type "How to pick up girls in a bar" and probably help you score. Just like a breast which looks at numerous aspects like shape(C,D), size(32,34,36), strap, color before its finds its suitor, every business needs a customized branding strategy to make it look better. While the core aspects of a business are taken care of by a different department, the department of brand management looks into numerous aspects like brand image, positioning, social media strategy, advertising and appeal created by the brand. Once all these factors are worked out properly, a customized branding strategy is adopted. If this goes wrong it can lead to a lot of adverse effects in the future like decreasing the rate of brand recognition and recall similar to a bad fitting bra leading to back aches and undesirable, unattractive outlooks with undesirable protrusions.

Some of the SMEs, at some point decide to become a player in a different market by increasing their size. Either through integrations or acquisitions or by increasing their capital, many firms take that big risk of going all out knowing that a failure will lead to a permanent dent to their image. Similarly, some of the women who are adipose challenged in their upper body and who are unhappy with this condition decide to take a vital step in order to entice a broader segment of the opposite sex. Some of the cosmetic surgeries might help them achieve the desired results but they forget the fact that big is not always better. This in turn leads to all the problems discusses previously. A considerable solution is using the push up or padded variants. The upside of this approach is that it projects the entity in an appealing manner and until one gets close to it, it is hard to actually estimate the value of the assets. Numerous firms have adopted this approach by projecting themselves as a player in the different league and have actually done well as a result of the right 'bra' used in branding.

This post was in a way dedicated to the problems faced by women which some of them find it tough to discuss even with their closest pals. Most importantly dedicated to the realization that the toughest problems have the simplest of solutions and one has to know where to look :P.

P.S - A lending ear is better that a staring eye.

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Movie Reviews - Endhiran

"Dude its Rajni, its A.R Rahman and its Shankar and it can't get better than this" was probably the buzz ever since the project of Endhiran aka Robot was announced long back. With tickets  for the movie being priced in thousands of rupees, true fanatics would even sell their kidneys to watch the movie on the first day. No doubt the graphics and animation were of great standard but what about the story and what about the Rajni factor?

With people generating a fetish for producing insanely high budget movies, once a producer decides to succumb to thins kind of BDSM, it's hard for him to pull out midway. Frankly speaking, the majority of the expenditure went into special effects which literally dragged the movie close to 3 hours. The attitude of the producer looked like, "Dude I've paid you a lot of money for these special effects and I'm gona have my penny's worth by filling the movie with all possible special effects to the last scene". Mr.Producer will probably have the widest grin on his face as he got back all 150 crores he spent within the first 2 weeks. 

For all those who are thinking of watching the movie, please wait for few more days when you can watch it on the small screen. For all those who have already watched it, I'm sure you wouldn't have been totally happy for the money you spent. For all those who have booked your tickets and are waiting to watch the movie, these are some of the things you have to be prepared for:

1> The metamorphosis of Ash from Miss World to Miss. Flabby Aunty.

2> Eye catching male breasts of Rajni.

3> Blatant product placement of numerous well known brands which scream out loud " I am the best, please buy me ".

4> Mosquitoes conversing in Tamil/Hindi/whichever language it is dubbed into.

5> Below par music and songs in which the great man tries too hard to dance.

6> Ash trying to ape Fergie with her skin tight leather pants which is a total failure, thanks to her married woman structure(also refer to 1>).

7> Amazing shots of Machu Picchu. Probably the 1st time this location is shown in Indian cinema and Mr.Producer has made sure that the whole song revolves around the same background to get the best out of the crew's travel expenses.

8> No typical Rajni style and dialogues. A newbie probably starts to wonder if all those Doom-Mongering yet highly possible statements about Rajni are actually true.

I'm sure many of the Rajni fans would probably disagree with all the above statements but then again, being a true fan isn't it your responsibility to expect the best and critique the rest? I personally felt that this was Shankar and Rajni's worst movie in terms of quality but probably the best in terms of commercial appeal. Hope someday in the future, before I take my last breath, I get to relive the aura of Rajni with a meager budget movie and a thought provoking story by Shankar.

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Life at a flyover junction

I have been very fascinated with the way the flyovers at Hebbal and Indiranagar have been constructed. They not only succeed in confusing a first timer but also meddle with their sense of direction. One either heads north to turn east or heads west and completes a loop to turn south thus making them a visual treat from Google maps but not before leading many people in the wrong way. The ones who planned both of them were very close in constructing a paradox or sending the vehicles to a state of limbo. When you are at crossroads, it is easy to see the path in front of you but when you are at this kind of a flyover junction, even though you eventually see your future path, it is the direction that you take that matters. You might want to trust your gut feeling and risk everything or take a leaf out of a wild stranger's book who made you read that book in the first place.

Everyone at some point in their lives go through this phase and I never thought it was going to happen to me so soon. One of these roads is of a career change in which even though I know which road I want to get on, deep down I know that I have to take some calculated risks. This loop also has small deviations in terms of the "salary slip" and "geographic location". Even though I have got on this road at least 150 times over the last 6 months and got off, I'm very sure the D-day to complete it is fast approaching. There is another route which threatens my existence in a particular country. My choice ahead is to either let the "visa power" run out or extend in asap thus jeopardizing my monthly quota in my savings for Nando's chicken and other censored worldly pleasures.

One of the most important roads in this junction is regarding companionship and its intricate details. Even though I would like to sound like a pessimist and say that I don't intend to exchange rings more than once in my lifetime and have also zeroed in on that unfortunate innocent creature, it actually gets more complicated than you can think. Suddenly movies like "Meet The Parents" and "Meet The Fockers" look more like a horror or in the best case, a thriller family drama rather than a funny comedy movie. Even though I can't imagine my dad to look or act anything like Dustin Hoffman, he has only started to remind me more of Don Vito Corleone. He recently made me an offer that I couldn't refuse and am only hoping for "Aal Izzz Well" at the end of it. One day you are a student with the only aim being to see the clock tick 10 so that you can just about make it to the cheaper morning show in a theater. The next day before you even realize what happened, you find yourself in a flyover junction with hundreds of vehicles honking and whistling past you with not much time to make your decision. Even though I know that the journey is going to be tough, I have made mine, have you? Do it before it is too late and at give your heart a chance to do all the thinking.

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