late night rambling !!

So here I am in Chennai FINALLY after a looong gap of five seriously long months...though this five month period had three 31 day months, Feb came to my rescue and made it even..

I always feel so much at home just stepping into the lounge of Kamaraj Airport, which btw is supposedly renovated. However I feel the main lounge has become only more crampy, considering whatever little I am able to recall of my joyous airport visits during childhood, to see off dear & close ones..may be its because as a child, airport visits were a luxury and a rare event and the airport dimensions had a multiplier effect...and then now the pre-paid taxi service has made life so easy that in an ideal scenario, it jus takes max 5 mins to hit the road - adjustments for luggage handling, queue etc have to be done practically...nevertheless well organized !!

Chennai welcomed me with a nice cool breeze (I was coming from Mumbai, so its all relative)..was damn tired and wanted to doze off for sometime in the cab, but the cabbie made sure IT DOESNT HAPPEN !! it was clear that, for him, Chennai road seemed like a Monaco race track..had a lighthearted chat with him and said "yetho signal irukkardhunaala vandi nikkudhu!!", meaning "if not for the signals the cab would continue its juggernaut"..nehow he got offended I said that, and took it as a personal comment on his professional skills..

This time even though my visit to Chennai is really SHORT, so many things happen and yet again I seem to have something interesting to say or pen down !! bless BLOGS!! My cozin jus got married and I am so happy for him...to cut a long story short - CUPID JUST L-O-V-E-S OUR FAMILY !!!!!

And here's the weekend and I should give it to my appa for somehow magically making me watch late night Doordarshan classics ..before watching there's a dog fight to change the channel to some very stale tamil comedy and movies that is bound to be watched the umpteenth time..but at the end of the day you would thank someone like my father to knock in some taste for sensible movies (this time it was Girish Karnad's 1970's Kannada movie, "Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane") ..my college friend who is a self acclaimed film afficianado, rates my movie taste at GRADE 'B' with himself obviously at 'A'...thankfully my ratings should increase now (as though I give a damn neways..LOL)

As much as I am loving to continue writing this blog, the image of vengaya vetha kuzhambu, lemon rasam, appalam, kathrika podi curry, which amma has promised for Sunday grand brunch is so inspiring me to sleep - so that 90% of the next 10 hours should fly past quickly. Less cruel haan, wat say !!

HOME SWEET HOME !!!

Tchus !!

The hahaha of "ha" !!

coughs...and more cahoughs...oh and then I realize I am not coughing...actually I am “cahoffing”...It’s the sound of someone trying embarrassingly bad enough, to belt out a "ha" sound...Its high pressure situation...It’s like when Chandler's shouting at the back while Joey takes a piss…OMG! I realize I just couldn't place a simple "ha" correctly between syllables...believe me it's not like "arrey boss!! It’s after all a simple ha"...If you can't give the correct "ha", just go hang yourself...It’s as different as "shit - sit"…

Once we room mates were waiting for a taxi, when an empty taxi zipped past us...I, in my "killer" Hindi said, "woh taxi kaali hai na! kyun nahi roka usse"....and my friends who by then are in ROTFL mode, sarcastically says "he he! We know the taxi's black”... and several more rounds of LOL! LOL! Then I realize I was supposed to use K-H-A-A-L-I...then I am like so frustrated and ask my friends ‘Why is there so many kaali's a) kaali b) khaali c) gaali’, and one friend adds another one "khaali" which is like "he/she ate"... I was diligently registering it my grey cells, just when this another bugger clarified that it’s like "khaa-li" ... two separate words and not the same...bechaara, he didn't know that it's all the same to me...

And btw I was almost threatened of losing my offer if I aint gonna pronounce my firm's name rite...yeah it’s not Anand Rathi (as in the yester year hindi/tamil film actress), but RAAT-HEEEEE...oh puleeeeezz...

Let’s see another dimension of this cursed "ha"...Some words are pronounced the same in English-Hindi....like "bhook-book", hmm...”chuck-chaka"?? Hehe...ok ok!! that was little exaggerating...but then why leave Tamil, we have "thaali" which can mean a sumptuous palate in Hindi, but then its Mangal sutra in Tamil...let’s consider a south boy-north girl marriage and let’s assume the only common language is English...imagine the newlywed saying "I don’t like the thaali to her in-laws" or the guy telling her that "the thaali hurts during the night" and she might just misunderstand that he is complaining of indigestion! BECHAARA-that-he-is!

neways I am going back to Worli sea face and immerse myself and do "Saathagam" to get the perfect "ha"..Till then its "Shreeram" - if neone calls me Sreeram...gonna kill them - signing off!

Chembaite or Munnaite ????????

Sounds not so funny a title right? Is it just to GRAB ATTENTION !!!!! [not to mention my insane efforts by posting my blog address on Gchat, Facebook, Orkut] .. hmm .. still puzzled though? let me give you some idea about the month’s happenings..

Yours truly arrived in Mumbai [yeah guyzz.. I am gonna earn my bread n butter here for some time] and

much delightful is that the city welcomed me [you know that feeling...a gentle, positive vibe] and

I witnessed what it really means when they say “Mumbai doesn’t stop L-I-V-I-N-G for god sake”. It’s that time of the year when as a Chennaite I would have felt really happy for a change in weather. Forward to Mumbai, cabs ply with half their tyres immersed in the puddle created, people are knee deep in water and believe me nothing stopped functioning or ceased to exist in Mumbai. Who gives a shit about whether the “dadar - eastern line” has become non functional or not. [legs, auto, bus and ofcourse T-A-X-I (eeeeeeee),Fort chalenge? Cabbie nods, you get in and off you go. When myself and my colleagues quizzed a cabbie how many cabs run in the city, no wonder he said 1 lakh] and

my worst of dreams came true when I was “chilloued” by a cab-driver, for giving mixed signals, courtesy my “pandit level” hindi and

I am working on a lot on excel nowadays – (aap sochtha, mein zyaada kaam karta hoon) – hmm shayad.. the working goes like this. One sheet for hindi nouns, another for FSHW (Frequently Spoken Hindi Words), another for verbs and tense, and yet another for prepositions. Frankly I don’t know how many more sheets will be appended, but believe me when I say, I haven’t worked so dedicatedly for learning a language to get my tense, grammar, pronunciation rite [even for my mother tongue, Tamil] and

continuing from where I left at Chennai, my friends from the fatty brigade of wada, dosai, onion pakoda got some competition in Mumbai in the form of wada paav, pyaaz bhajji and

you guess, who’s started cooking ;-) The root of my inspiration lies within lot of facts, that I wanted to badly continue my new found passion during my exchange program to Barcelona, and that my cunning soul wants all of my “pathla dosts” sharing apartment with me to put on oodles of weight [2 bottles of oil used, innumerable kgs of potato cooked and it goes on] (and that includes my Hindi tutor Jammy! Ingratitude you would say!! Help that poor soul! He cooks along with me!), and

not to mention, of course I am in the savings phase of my life [who gives a damn if it’s the same rice, dhal, potato-pyaas curry, rasam all through the week. Who wanna dine outside !! ]. It seems Einstein once observed that the “eighth wonder in the world” is the power of compounding. So my fraands, start making some savings and do some investments [ok. if you are puzzled still why this observation, that’s my pitch as a representative of financial services to make you guys create wealth] and

you know what, seriously I don’t give a damn about being a chembaite or a munnaite, becoz Mumbai cabbies are gonna continue extending their friendliness, I am gonna gobble up wada paavs as diligently as ever, be awed during the special monsoon life, while at the same time thrown into nostalgia of the Marina beach, “mulagai bhajji”, Captain’s ossum flicks, Rajni frenzy, dear tam friends and all…

Oops…have to get up very early tomorrow for an important meeting. Gracias for a patient reading, watch out this space for some more L-E-G-E-N-D [wait for it] A-R-Y stuff [yeah... HIMYM rox]

:D

Interesting "issue"

Lets start with what's hot and special in Chennai "NOW"..Apart from the usual reply that "Chennai itself is soooo hot yaar" types , I could come up with

1. Chennai Super Kings led by aggressive Dhoni - news is that he is shaking a leg with "Ilaya Thalapathi (Young Knight)" Vijay and "I am slim now" Nayanthara for a promo directed by Rajeev Menon
   
2. Steaming hot coffee in Saravana bhavan - evergreen :D
3. hmm..come to think of Kollywood, we have Genelia or may be even Illeana, considering "Jalsa's" tremendous run at Sathyam Multiplex
4. oh!! how can I forget the soon to come AR Rahman live in Chennai this Sunday

However the "hottest of all" award should go to the "India's Masthead", the Times of India - quite close to 30% English speaking population in India read it, which no other competitor has achieved - which is keen on following it's strategy of, "I try to monopolize whichever market I step in". Chennai proved to be an elusive market for this Indian newspaper giant, and some officials at Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd have even accepted the fact that moving into Chennai was like the "Final frontier". It's quite obvious that everybody would want to have a share of this "big apple pie" (let alone not screw up the consumer habit and tastes, a la American Pie shtlye !!!, by offering a lot of blahh and sexed up material in the name of news).

The Times of India started circulation on April 14th 2008 at Rs.2, and quite naturally The Hindu is now being circulated at Rs.2.50 (it was Rs.4 before, for some special reason, as though it never expected a credible competition capable of bringing about a price war). The competition has brought some new flavor and quality, which was very evident in its first Chennai issue.


Times' editors have been harping on this customization aspect that has helped them achieve wide circulation in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai etc and its believed some poaching has already been done.

Though the paper has indeed got a fairly decent response over the first week (coupling its circulation with ARR show coupons etc), it's been studied that changing consumer habits in this industry is a very tough thing, for eg. if we take the operating system we work on, consumer's still prefer working with Windows, even though we may get pissed off to press "ctl+alt+del" when we don't know what happened and then waiting for computer to reboot. However, Gartner has reported that Microsoft has a big task ahead of itself to retain its market share (from Linux, Mac) as consumers are preferring OS that are more agnostic to applications running over it (lets have this argument though it is applicable more for techies). So its observed atleast people might change preferences if another product is satisfying with good functionality and great performance. Though it is not fair to compare the OS and newspaper market, its not that unfair either, since its as hard to make a person shift preference to another newspaper just because it's selling quite cheaply (the discussion is more bordering on emotional elements people attach to the 'daily', like 'hot coffee + hindu crossword' or 'after jogging + Editorial /politics+ Chai' or 'steam bath + home food + Friday review'. There is an inherent assumption that the content is not diluted for lesser price). So may be Times of India has a chance after all...

Another important issue is whether Times of India can sustain its "low price entry strategy". The discussion though applicable at the national level, I am restricting to how it may affect in the Chennai context. The industry depends on imported "Newsprint" for 55% of its usage. Many big dailies like Times of India use this high quality imported print. The not so rosy picture is that current newsprint costs 1000$/ tonne internationally (an increase of close to 50% over last two years). The dailies (english and regional) have already expressed their views that, the rising production costs could be met by

1. Reducing no. of pages or suppliments
2. Resorting to low quality indigenous newsprints
3. Passing the costs to advertisers (ads might become costly)
4. Passing on the cost to consumers

Considering Chennai, the first two options may not be possible for established big national dailies (quality concerns, and obviously they cant do away with the sweet smell of fresh newspaper in the morning). Third option is not a great one as ads might go to a competitive bidder, as Chennai is not a monopolised market. The last option is to be taken seriously, as Times of India can resort to that option for Chennai in near future if it is not able to see breakeven (considering huge circulation risks in achieving target and consumers aversion to shift preferences). Its not that improbable considering Deccan Chronicle has raised its issue price by 50 paise over last few years.

However these are still early days, and lets wait and see whether Times of India will emerge victorious and how other dailies counter attack "content-wise". The commodity prices not seeming to coming down, interesting things are to unfold in this industry !! Bless Globalization !!!!!

" Reel or Real "

I am compelled to continue with this short post - thanking everyone for the tremendous response for my blogging debut (read as 3 comments, and one of which was mine)


Scene intro: "Security !! Where the hell are you guys ? atleast keep away these fans falling over me. sheeesh....

(to fans): Wait wait, guys, I will definitely sign, don't worry...

A fan, while signing autograph for her, says " Sir I can't believe it was your first blog, what a great stlye, full of humor, wow! do continue writing !!"

Anti climax: huhh..Suddenly I notice that someone from the crowd has started to abuse me for reasons very much unknown - hmm, may be this person is special to the girl, for whom I just signed beside her tatoo (hehe..obviously on her request)

suddenly I see sun rays hitting me in the eyes, I try to open my eyes slowly, lo n behold ......

Climax: Neways you all know what happened, it was amma near my bed, blasting me for having a tight nap till late morning 7.00 am :P (and poor me, people say that I am being very unreasonable this summer hols)...hey hey hey, however amma was sweet enough not to follow cliched filmi style of pouring water over my face :D