The Amateur's Scratchpad

You trip that guy in the school hallway almost every day. It doesn’t matter, right? You call out names to that girl every time she eats in the canteen. Doesn’t matter, right? You ridicule that girl for her dark skin during every school function. Again, doesn’t matter at all, right? You call that guy a sissy every time he expresses some kind of a feeling like sadness and anxiety. Too feminine and really doesn’t matter, right?

These are very common scenarios for all of us. Teasing and bullying is almost an integral part of our growing up. Why do people do it? There’s no proper answer to that. It gives nothing but a sense of superior satisfaction to the one who’s doing it. It may be aggressive or mild in nature, it may be mental or physical or psychological or cyber bullying, the newest form of the art. But every kind of bullying has one thing in common which is the sense of satisfaction and content that the bully experiences after he/she has done it to somebody else.

About the different types of bullying:

It usually starts with physical bullying in junior and middle school. Kids target the physically weak and quite one among themselves and do things like beating that person up, taking that person’s stuff and hiding them etc. This is often passed by as teasing. That is the first mistake that parents do.
In high school, the form of bullying changes to psychological bullying where the key elements are body shaming, racial comments, slut shaming etc. “66% of the people who had admitted to bullying somebody else were male.”, says an article by Ditch The Label. This mainly happens because of how differently girls and boys are raised. Boys are always taught to be tough and masculine and is asked to stop behave or cry like a girl while girls are encouraged to co-operate, ignore. As boys are not allowed to express their emotions they automatically pick up the aggressive road to react to anything.
In college, the term is changed to ‘ragging’ where freshman students are given tasks by seniors to complete which are bizarre. This is supposed to be a bond building activity. Students who are unable to perform these meaningless tasks are pointed out and they are tortured, laughed at and ridiculed throughout their college life.
Cyber bullying is the kind of bullying where there is no end to it. One can be bullied even in a safe space like the victim’s home. A lot of cyber bullying is done anonymously. And in this case there is no particular audience. The entire world can see the victim and that might lead to a negative road where other people also join in bullying the same person.
Coming to workplace bullying, it is a mixture of every kind of bullying that there is. People try to suppress their colleagues who they are threatened by or try to look down upon someone who do not have the same kind of interest. It is also sometimes done to pull down a person who is very good at the job.

To be continued…

Let me just start here by confessing the fact that I am damn scared of Mumbai locals. When I came here three months back, pretty naturally I assumed that I would be a master once I get habituated. And then, I would also be able to do all those things that I see people doing in movies which is standing at the edge of the compartment and feeling the air on their face. Silly, I know. Would I do it? Yes! A thousand times yes.

Well, it has been three and a half months now and not a thing has changed. I am still pretty afraid to get into the compartments fully packed with jostling and yelling women. Allow me to tell you a story here. I went to Matheran, a tiny hill station just outside of Mumbai for a weekend with one of my friends. We decided to take the local back on Monday morning. That I think, was the biggest mistake of our lives. When we boarded the train it was fairly crowded but as stations kept passing by the crowd kept increasing. All hell broke loose as Dadar arrived. A woman who wanted to get into the train asked another who was standing right at the edge of the door to move and she refused in reply. The former woman jumped inside the compartment somehow and the two started fighting profusely. There were name callings, facial expressions and hand gestures which were of course, not very U/A rated. The other passengers finally had to interfere and separate them one of them pulled another’s ear and it started bleeding like a waterfall. That day, I didn’t understand the mixed feeling of fear and amusement that I went through.

The other day, again an ‘auspicious’ day when I showed the courage of taking the locals, I became the witness of another type of fight in the locals. The fight for seats. I had just managed to squeeze in between two aunties when another girl came and asked me where I would get down. She requested me to give her the seat when my station arrives. A few minutes later, another aunty arrived and requested me the same. The third world war came into being when I told her I had already made my commitment to somebody else. The aunty and the girl started fighting as nastily as they could while I sat on the spectator’s seat.

Now, you must be thinking why am I writing down all these? These are very common sights in a Mumbai local, right?

My point is, there must be a reason behind people behaving like this, isn’t it? Maybe they are just so exhausted with the everyday mundane routine that this is the only entertainment they get. Maybe, they are so busy just existing in this city that these fight are there coping mechanisms. Maybe, they are so tired of proving themselves every other day that these local train compartments feel like their own battlegrounds where they want to survive as the fittest. These are all hypothetical but again some of these might be true. There are so many stories that these locals carry every day. You never know how many stories might be getting lost every minute, how many drop out of the struggle. Only the ones who fight inside out stand straight and strong- be it in the local train compartment or in life! 

Well, how many of you like the song ‘Hymn for the weekend’ by Coldplay? Or, how many times have you swayed hips to Major Lazer’s ‘Lean on’? I am a person from both the teams. In fact, Coldplay is one of my favourite bands and their song Hymn for the weekend is an even more favourite. But, there are huge problems with the videos of both these songs.

As the video of the huge hit Coldplay song opens, Chris Martin is seen travelling in an uber colourful auto across the streets of Mumbai while Beyonce is shown shimmying about in a saree from one lane to another. The auto takes Martin to some random building inside a lane which is narrower than a pin and he gets on top of the roof of the building and starts singing his song which apparently is written exclusively for India. The rest of the video has elements from the cultural bowl of India. There are tall lanky malnourished kids who are roaming around on the streets throwing coloured powder in each other, there are mystical sadhus, there are people dancing on the streets, there are Kathakali dancers dancing casually on roadsides and of course Ramleela troupes.

Now, the problem is, why are we Indians always portrayed so typically? It is not like we keep playing holy throughout the year or we dance only on the streets. One Twitter user tweeted, “South Asia is only seen as desirable when we can be used as sad-looking, dark-skinned props that throw colorful powder everywhere.” Another asks, ‘@coldplay don’t exoticize us. You’ve been to the clubs and everything. Why do you want to make it seem like all we do is dance in the streets?” It is as if generic that sadhus here keep doing yoga all day and Ramleela plays throughout the year. On top of this, there’s Beyonce who plays a Bollywood ‘Rani’ and Chris Martin goes to a single screen theatre to watch Beyonce playing an Indian heroine on screen. As if, we still do not have multiplexes! Ironically, some two or three scenes later, an actual Indian actress, Sonam Kapoor, appears on the screen for 3 seconds just to throw a bunch of flowers randomly from the top of a cliff and then run away. The band is projected as outsiders entering the country where they are not separated but are instantly integrated into the culture all by throwing some coloured powder on them. And there, stops the culturalization of the nation.

It is not only with Coldplay. A lot of other singers like Major Lazer and Iggy Azalea have used the Indian context to connect with their Indian audience. And in each and every presentation, the vibrant stereotypical India has been conceptualized. It is as if the videos are not complete without colours, flowers, sadhus and brown children.

Maybe, the band didn’t intend to portray the culture of the nation in thus way. But, it is also to be understood that India is a developing country where people do dance on streets but they go to clubs and pubs as well, children do not keep playing on streets but go to schools as well, there are very few houses with charpoys and old school posters stuck to their walls now. These ideas are just yet obsolete.

Source:

Coldplay: only the latest pop stars to misrepresent India as an exotic playground

The Great India Stereotype debate around Coldplay’s ‘Hymn For The Weekend’

Check Coldplay’s video out here:

Even until a few days back the word “Boomer” meant one thing to me. It was the name of a chewing gum that was sold when we were kids. Now, you might laugh at me for not knowing the current meaning in spite of being a millennial but well, what can you say? I’m a little old school that way. Anyway, a few days back a TikTok video of an old man got viral where he says, “Millennials and Generation Z have the Peter Pan syndrome”. They don’t ever want to grow up.” The bomb didn’t take very long to blast. Soon after, a Gen Zer (a person born between 1995 to 2015) made another video on a split screen holding up a notepad which says “Okay Boomer.” And thus, the world got a new word to churn out along with it going viral.

Now, the conflict between young and the old is not new. It has literally been like a tradition, a ritual where old people have blatantly thrown dirt at young people for being different from them. And by different, I do not mean that whatever the young crowd does is correct and whatever the old crowd does isn’t but, I mean the ideas or the mindset that the two groups perceive. The Gen Y has his habit of dismissing anything and everything that comes from the younger generations. We understand the way that generation grew up when the world was much more toxic, much more discriminant and in an environment like that, there was not much exposure about what the rest of the world was doing. But, that doesn’t necessarily give the older general the permission to “shitmouth” us at any given point of time (‘Shitmouth’ is a millennial ‘lingo’, FYI). Honestly, there are a hell lot of problems with the older generation. And the even bigger problem is that they are not ready to accept it. These people neither believe in climate change, equal rights, LGBTQIA rights nor do they believe in facts like people can get actual jobs with dyed hair or tattooed arm. Frankly, millennials and Gen Zers wouldn’t have had problems if the boomers didn’t interfere. But, they did and how long would this “impatient” generation would have waited? After they have collapsed under the bullying statements of the old generation garbed in the form of advice/suggestions? Hence, came “Okay Boomer”. Now, they use this phrase to shut up anyone over 30 who says something condescending about them or about the issues they believe in.

The “#Okay Boomer” hashtag after it was coined on November 14, has been already used 732 million times. Chloe Swarbrick, the New Zealand politician shut down an MP at the Parliament when he interrupted between her speech with the Gen Z reference. Celebrated designed Shannon O’Connor designed a hoodie which reads “Ok Boomer. Have a terrible Day.” 2,000 of those has already been sold at $34.99 a piece. Titania McGrath, the alter-ego of comedian Andrew Doyle says, “Old people are super-problematic. They don’t know what “non-binary” means, most of them aren’t vegan and they’re not on Instagram, which means we can’t be sure what they’re up to.”

Having said all that, let me just mention that it’s not like we as a generation are the best and are floating on a cloud taking pride in how conscious we are about the various issues going on about us. It’s true that we are on our phones almost all day, we use weird filters of cats and dogs, we use “lingos” that nobody understands, we believe less in commitment and more in Netflix & chill and we look at a hell lot of memes but along with all these we are also aware about n number of things. We understand bullying isn’t nice, body shaming is not good, looking down upon on someone for not knowing something specific isn’t great, that climate change and global warming is real, that there are still countries where women are not allowed to go out of the house. These are issues that everybody should understand irrespective of age or generation. Okay Boomer will die out in a couple of days and something new will come up but the inner messaging that the phrase has given out is very important for everyone to configure.

Source:

‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations

Titania McGrath: Woke warriors need just two words to put you oldies in your place — OK boomer

A Deep Dive Into The ‘OK Boomer’ Row

In PR, we often hear about how important is media relations. Be it a new story, a controversy, a big buck event or even a very small piece of news, you will only get your coverage if you have strong relationships with the media. Hence, anybody who joins the industry is taught the tricks and ways from the very first day itself to build their contacts with the media and how to leverage them too. But, in this digital age where press releases and print newspapers are dying a slow death, what will you do wasting your time in building relationships which will be of no use to you. Now a days, journalists do not wait for your press release anymore. Neither do they wait for someone to confirm the news for them. There are enough technologies and software through which they get their share of information and before you could even complete even the headline of your press release, the news has been covered. So, why should a PR professional take all the hassles of going to media rounds, updating media lists etc. in spite of knowing that it’s not a necessity anymore. But, is this really true? Do media relations not matter anymore in 2019?

“Having a good rapport with journalists does not necessarily mean that you’ll get coverage even for the stupidest of news. Media Relations in PR still matter as long as the news you’re providing is serving a purpose and is authentic and relevant.”, says N.S Rajan, the founder and CEO of Ketchum Sampark. Just like us, media too has evolved drastically and it is still evolving every single day. Neither is media limited to our typical print and television media anymore and nor is media relations limited to making friendships with journalists. Media relations now includes everybody from journalists to editors to bloggers to influencers and even micro influencers. You never know whom you might need. Also, the days of genuinity aren’t completely eradicated. People are still excited when you show unfeigned interest in them. Thus, when you remember a journalist’s anniversary or an influencer’s birthday and send them a small token of love, there are high chances that you’ve made your mark. This way, they are inbound to you. In you time of need, they will also help you with whatever they possess. Not only that, but people care a great deal about authenticity. So, when you have an established relation with a media personnel, its likely that you’ll get all authentic news even if they are confidential.

Having said all that, this shouldn’t be expected that since the media person is a friend, he/she will carry anything provided by you. The news that you give them should have some information that is directly or indirectly useful to the audience. Ergo, to conclude, no matter how advanced technology becomes or how far the digital age extends media relations shall always be significant in the PR world. The only thing to be kept in mind is that whatever news you put on a platform or disseminate should be bona fide and germane.

Today in the newspaper, Mumbai Mirror, I came across an article about Indrani Mukherjea, the woman accused of murdering her daughter. The article talks about how she has stored 400 litres of water inside her miniscule cell at the Byculla prison which is her current address.  This article took me five years back in the year 2012, when a spine chilling story about a 25 year old girl working as an executive for Mumbai Metro One came in front of the media. Her name was Sheena Bora, the daughter of Indrani Mukherjea, an HR consultant and a media executive and Siddhartha Das. So, what was the story?

Sheena Das Bora and her brother Mikhail Bora were born to Indrani Bora (formerly known as Pori Bora) in Shillong, Meghalaya. As the two kids started growing up, things turned ugly between Indrani and Siddhartha. Eventually, Indrani left Siddhartha and asked her own parents to take care of her children. She moved to Kolkata to study computers and stayed as a paying guest while Sheena and Mikhail lived with their maternal grandparents in Guwahati. In Kolkata, Indrani got married with a man named Sanjeev Khanna and even had a daughter named Vidhie. But then, the duo, soon got divorced in 2002. The same year Indrani met Peter Mukherjea (formerly known as Pratim Mukherjea), one of India’s most influential executives who was also handpicked to expand Rupert Murdoch’s business in India. Peter and Indrani met whimsically through ad film maker Alyque Padamsee and in no time, two apparently fell in deep love with each other and were ready to get married! Peter, already a father of a 18 and a 22 year old son was ready to adopt Vidhie, Indrani’s daughter from her earlier marriage to Khanna.  Fast forward four years, in 2006, Sheena gets to know about her mother and moves to Mumbai to stay with her. Indrani introduced Sheena to everyone as her sister and not her daughter. Anyhow, Sheena, started studying in St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and then in June 2011 she joined Reliance Infrastructure as an assistant manager.

It was in April 24, 2012 that Sheena suddenly “put in her written resignation”. The same day, Rahul Mukherjea (Peter’s elder son from his earlier marriage) received a break-up text from Sheena’s number who he was dating at that point of time. On being asked, Indrani said that Sheena had moved to the US for higher studies. After 24^th April, Sheena wasn’t seen again. The police finally started investigating on Rahul’s insistence. Almost nothing was found for another one month except only Indrani’s driver was arrested for the possession of illegal weapons. Finally, when the police report came out it mentioned that on May 25, 2012, Sheena’s neck was strangled and her body was thrown out of the car in an isolated spot in a forest in Raigad and it was set ablaze.

The case went on for three years and in 2015, Indrania and Peter were accused of killing Sheena and the duo was put to jail. Coming back to the present, Indrani apparently has mental issues and that’s the reason why she keeps hoarding water inside her cell in Byculla prison. The case is still going on against Indrani and Peter and why she killed her own daughter is still a big mystery to the public. Nevertheless, the point here is the mental structure that Indrani must have had before committing such a heinous crime. Does education not matter in criminality? Does parenthood not matter at all? Do people forget about how the world would perceive them when their deeds come into the fore?  

Source:

Indrani Mukerjea has stored 400 litres of water in a tiny cell in Byculla prison

Here’s What We Know About The Who’s Who In The Sheena Bora Murder Case

Police seize suitcase, Mumbai psychiatrist paid off: All we know about the Sheena Bora murder case

The year was 2007. Although, the global retail giant Amazon had already started spreading its wings, it was still not the go-to place for confused Indians. In this circumstances, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, two IIT Delhi graduates who also happened to be colleagues at Amazon thought of giving birth to their own e-commerce brainchild. They named it “Flipkart”.

But, it isn’t so easy to launch an e-commerce platform overnight, right? So, the Bansals invested a mere amount of Rs. 4 lakhs from their own pockets and started as a book retailer. The idea being so raw and the budgets being so constrained the founders had no other choice but to deliver the products themselves in their own scooters. Their first customer was an engineer guy from Telengana and in the same year the company delivered 20 shipments. Flipkart was officially in business. All these was happening from a two-bedroom apartment in Koramangala, Bangalore.

It was only in 2009 that Flipkart experienced an exponential growth. It received its first investment of $1 million from Accel Partners and in another little span of time, $10 million from Tiger Global, a hedge fund in New York. But, as the struggles were, the founders did not have everything organized on a silver platter. This was around a time when Indians were still not comfortable with technology or giving away credit card numbers or even buying things without touching or feeling them for that matter. These two came up with the idea of Cash on Delivery (COD) and also launched a 24×7 after-sales service. With these two features, customers could at least put their trust in the brand. Even if something goes wrong with their orders, they could contact the customer service at any given time of the day. In the same year, the company extended to Delhi and Mumbai and their employee headcount shot up to 150.

The company kept extending their arms to the different sectors of retail in the next two years and in 2012, they finally launched their tech branch. Now, they could sell any electronic gadgets online. In the same year, they launched the feature of pre-ordering books. The first book was The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. The brand was not only expanding but it was also making shopping easy for the mass by making everything available in a single platform at affordable prices. Eventually, it took over fashion platforms like Myntra and others too like LetsBuy.

Just like any other good thing in the world, Flipkart too has its black patches. They also went through the hassles of investors and their investment money, the issues of copyrights and ownerships. But, this would be undeniable if Flipkart is not given its deserved appreciation. There are a number of e-commerce players in the market today. But, Flipkart paved the path for their commences and gave the others the needed nudge to take the first step.

So? It was 4.08 a.m on the clock. We had already fought like crazies and were on our last leap. We still hadn’t decided what to do with each other and there was a blinding silence between us. I could hear the low whirring of the fan in your room even over the phone. It was the later part of November, right? That’s why both our fans weren’t in full speed. The weather was moderate, neither extremely hot nor extremely cold just like the relationship we had at that point of time. We didn’t do what to do with ourselves. To stay or to leave? I looked at the ashtray beside me. “I smoked too many, again. Mom would kill me!”, I remember myself telling you. But, this time you didn’t give your usual answer which was “If you understand so much, why do you do it?” Instead, you just said you wanted to end this, whatever this is and hung up. I didn’t cry. I didn’t get angry. I just looked up at the ceiling above me, looked at the fan and listened to its whirr while I felt the blood rushing through my ears making them warm. You were gone! Suddenly, I felt like taking a walk and I got up.

Once I was out on the road, I saw the light and smelled the fresh air. It was so new for me to be not smelling the damp of my room which reeked of smoke and paint. I started walking and then increased my pace. On my way, I saw the old man who supplied us milk every morning and I remembered how I saw him after ages because I would be asleep most of the time when he delivers in the morning. I saw our newspaper boy, I saw some familiar faces stealing flowers from other people’s gardens, I saw our neighbour’s kids going to school. A nostalgia spread all over me. I remembered how I would see these people daily while going to school and now it’s almost like a decade away. I increased my speed further…

After a point, I started running. I put on my headphones and played some music. My head bobbing to the tunes, my feet yearning to the rhythm. And as fast as I ran, the music kept getting louder in my ears, my heartbeat higher and my pace faster. It reached to its maximum when I started feeling my cheeks getting wet. I hid my face and started running back towards home. As I was about to enter the gate, I clashed with my dad face to face.
“Don’t cry for what is not worth. Grow and make yourself so worth it that people have to cry for you and not the other way round.”, said my dad to me, after a month of not talking to me, probably to the market.

Yesterday was Children’s Day. Quite normally, I didn’t remember about it. After all, I’m not in school anymore. The days of celebrating children’s day and getting free chocolates and cookies from school are long gone. I wouldn’t be reminded also if there were no posts on different social media platforms about it. This is the trend now a days. People share their embarrassing childhood pictures, some become a little nostalgic reminiscing about the days when they celebrated back in school, some simply put up statuses and stories on how one should never forget or discard the child in themselves. On the whole, all this hullabaloo about this particular day made sure that I didn’t forget completely about it.

The entire day went away as usual. It was in the evening that something happened with me and that shifted the paradigm of my perspective. I was standing at a grocery shop buying something when I felt a tug at my shirt. When I turned around and looked down, I saw a little boy of hardly four or five standing with a muddy rose in his hand. He looked at me with his buttony eyes, his hair uncombed, his face almost greyish with dust and mud. He stretched his hand and gave me the rose. At this moment, I felt a little unsettled because the kid did not ask for money. He just kept staring at me with his eyes which felt like it would tear through me. I didn’t know what to do. I neither had any chocolates nor cash with me to give to him. So, I offered to take him to the cake shop nearby. At first, he got very embarrassed, his dirty little cheeks blushed with a tinge of red and he hesitated a lot. After a little persuasion, he agreed to go only if I would take his two best friends as well. He ran like a torpedo before I could finish saying yes. As the four of us entered the quaint little café cum bakery, their eyes sparkled with the yellow lights. I asked them what they would like to eat and all of them got shy and started giggling amongst each other. I got them some pastries and shakes and started a little chit-chat during which I casually mentioned that it was children’s day. All of a sudden, they stopped eating and looked at me blankly, a huge question mark drawn all over their face. And then one of them said, “Baccho ke liye bhi kuch khaas din hota hain didi? Uss din sab bacchon ko chocolate milti hain? Humein toh nahi pata tha!” (Children have a special day too? All of them get chocolates in that day? We didn’t know!)

I was taken aback. We are still celebrating even after having passed out of school so long before and these kids who are merely four or five are unaware of the entire occasion. After they were done eating, I got them chocolates. They lit up with unadulterated happiness, their faces breaking into enormous smiles till the ears. The tiniest one who gave me the rose grabbed the chocolate and ran straight across the road to his house which was basically a torn tent on a corner of the footpath, with two or three almost shredded rugs laid on the ground. He showed the chocolate to his mom with a bucket of excitement and pointed at me. His mom, called me from the other side of the road and then handed me a little piece of sweet, probably the best thing they had in their household and then blessed me for almost a hundred times. I could see the gratitude in her eyes.

As I walked back home with the little piece of sweet in my palms, I felt a lump near my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t cry. My mind kept circling around the kids, the lives that they’re leading, the leftover food that’re eating, the little joys of life that they’re missing out on. We never missed a children’s day in our life. Even if wasn’t children’s day, we would get chocolates without even asking. I wondered what these little souls go through every single day. I wondered if I would ever be able to do anything for them ever. The more I wondered, the bigger that lump got. And then ultimately, I felt a sense of relief when two thick teardrops trickled down my cheek…

Communistic or individualistic- which is better? The debate between communistic and individualistic society has been going long. While some people believe in the primacy of a communistic society, many others are hardcore believers in the upper hand of individualism. So, which exactly is better than the other?

Communistic society as well as the individualistic society both have their advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the communistic society teaches collectivism and on the other, the individualistic society teaches to focus more on oneself. Almost half of our generation is growing up in an individualistic manner whereas our parent generation grew up in collectivism. People often belong to groups, voluntarily or involuntarily. We belong to a social structure, a social strata, an age group, a religious affiliation, race, nationality and so on. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one should follow all the aspects of collectivism.

It is often said that kids who grow up in a joint family are more open to sharing, are more open to criticism as compared to those who belong from nuclear family. This is also often said and noticed among those who are the single children of the family. The ones with siblings are more mind-free. People from the communistic society are also more aware of their surroundings and pay more attention to the interest of others. The individualistic society signifies particularly on oneself and the people belonging from there are not really bothered by others or their interests. Kids who grow up in a nuclear family with working parents tend more towards depression and anxiety and the main reason behind this is that the parents do not spend time with the kids.

On the contrary, individualistic people grow up taking care of themselves and they learn the importance of self-love and self-care which is very important. So, it is not really debatable that which is better because both of them has it pros and cons. And the societal status of a person doesn’t really matter in respect of how good a human being he/she is.