Keep Rocking India!!

I'm happy to be in Bengaluru :-)...for one reason and only one reason...it is undoubtedly the music capital of India.

Despite the 1000 things I don't like about the city NOW (6 years back when I first landed here...it used to be so much more fun!!)...the Music scene in the city is simply awesome.

Still fresh from the hangover of the just concluded NH7 weekender with 60 f*&^%g bands doing their stuff over 2 days...I am ready for more. Since I missed out on a landmark event of  'THE METALLICA' playing in Delhi coz of some obscenely stupid and deeply insulting reasons....I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I might not be able to see some good live gigs in India. Those 4 hours that I waited there for Metallica to take the stage with my fellow metal-heads seemed like 4 lifetimes coz I feared in my heart that they might not come back to India anytime soon or may be never....

Since then Lamb of God, Korn, Megadeth, Santana, Children of Bodom, Testament, GNR, Periphery...to name a few..have played here in India and I have had the chance to attend quite a few of them...man I tell you what an awesome feeling it is to be there in the moshpits (my blog feeds on that very feeling)...of these guys..I know all of you rock mongers and metaladdicts will share my excitement. What's more encouraging is to see our desi bands flourishing as well along with the international scene. Every weekend there is some gig happening...new bands being formed and given equal opportunity to test their mettle with the veterans and international acts... the sight is simply heartwarming. I mean I have seen the era of College Fests Circuit, Independence Rock and GIR when the bands themselves used to man their booths pre and post their mostly covers driven performance to sell their cheaply recorded stuff (if they were resourceful enough) and promoting themselves. Now I see these guys using social media and online commerce to their benefit...

I picked up the last edition of 'The Rolling Stones' magazine and it was so nice to see it full of pieces on the rising Indian acts...my complements to the editors and a solemn request to keep up the good work. Indian Rock scene needs a lot of support and patronage from all of us. The way we are going today...i'm sure not far in the future we'll see a few of our very own bands making it big on the international scene.

I pledge to support rock and metal in any way I can and make a Call to the Arms to all the metalheads...

...Let's keep Rock and Metal alive!!!

My respect...\m/ \m/

Aloha Friday!!

Friday's always brings cheers to me...and I'm sure to all of you as well. 

For one, its the end of a full week of slogging on work...sort of marks the beginning of a temporary short lived Freedom. Secondly, it also means the freedom from formal dressing....

Yes! How all of us workhorses would love to get out of those creased trousers and crisp shirts and that pain in the neck Tie that reminds us time and again that we are salve to this grind. Friday is the FreeDay...well for most of us. My deepest commiserations with the brethren who are not as lucky as some of us.

Sitting today in office, dressed in cool casuals and delighted by splash of Color around me, I wonder who was the wise guy that came up with this million dollar idea. Yes, it is a "Million Dollar" idea alright as it actually gave birth to the need for a new kind of dressing and thence put the [F] in Fashion and dollars in the banks of apparel manufacturers.

A bit of research (it's Friday guys remember...so kool off...don't give me that 'you don't have work to do' looks) led me to an interesting story behind the concept of Casual Dressing in the workplace or shall we say Aloha Dressing!!

We are all familiar with those flowery Hawaiian shirts (actually called as Aloha shirts) made popular by Nelson Mandela...well these shirts get the honor of being the first 'casual dress' in the workplaces. The concept originated in Hawaii in 1947 when the workers in the City of Honolulu were allowed to wear Aloha shirts for a part of the year. In 1946, the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce funded a study of Aloha shirts and designs for comfortable business clothing worn during the hot Hawaiian summers. Subsequently, the Honolulu Mayor passed a resolution allowing their employees to wear sport shirts from June–October. 

In 1962, Hawaiian Fashion Guild began to promote aloha shirts and clothing for use in the workplace, particularly as business attire. Their campaign was called "Operation Liberation", as a part of which, the Guild distributed 2 aloha shirts to every member of the Hawaii House of Representatives and Senate! Subsequently, a resolution passed in the Senate recommending aloha attire be worn throughout the summer. The resolution stated its resolve to let "...the male populace return to 'aloha attire' during the summer months for the sake of comfort and in support of the 50th state's garment industry." Of course this was majorly backed by the motivations of the Hawaiian garment industry to sell more shirts. So what began as a marketing stunt went on to define the work culture.

In 1965, Bill Foster, the President of the Hawaiian Fashion Guild, started a campaign for "Aloha Friday", a day when employers would allow men to wear aloha shirts on the last business day of the week. Hence was the official humble beginning 'Aloha Friday' in 1966.

From there on the fashion spread to California first and then became a worldwide norm. Hell....it even inspired a song!! Check this out - 

Another interesting snippet - most of the IT companies had a strict formal dress code right from the beginning. During the 90's dotcom burst... a number of IT companies actually used  it as a "No Money" perks ploy to cheer up the workforce. So the freedom that Honolulu workers got in 1950s came to the rescue of the poor IT guy only in 1990s. 

So men...we all owe it one cool dude from Hawaii called Bill Foster. I say three cheers for the man and his noble soul...without him... Fridays wouldn't be the same.

Thank God It's [Aloha] Friday!!

End of a Soap[y] Affair - life and death of Indian Soap Opera

Hello everyone...I am your very own Soap Opera talking...and I am no more!! 

Yes, you heard me right, I'm gone..vanished..disappeared..killed..murdered. 

By who you ask? 

By YOU...you unfaithful, promiscuous, wandering audience...who else? You change your TV preferences like a thing of fashion. You give in to fads as easily as a wannabe teenage...it is you who have pushed me over the edge. 

I still remember the first time I opened my eyes. It was in 1984 that I was born as 'Hum Log', India's very first soap opera. Well, I may confess that I am an NRI and a Green Card holder because of my American origins. It was American Press in 1930s who gave my kind of programs this name. My first name 'Soap' comes from my advertising fathers who convinced some mad soap manufacturers to sponsor my earliest avatars in Americas. My maiden name comes from the art form 'Opera' that brings the irony of a mundane day in your life in the form of a highly dramatized story line. But as with any other thing of external origins, I too have been adopted in India with warmth and love and molded into its own cultural fabric like I have always belonged here! 

I cherish the time when all of you used to run to the only television of your locality with clock work precision to watch me. I felt like a movies star running packed shows week after week. Thanks to you people, I lived for 154 episodes of Hum Log and left indelible memories in the history of Indian Television. But it was just the beginning of my journey, Hum Log started the Soap[y] affair of Indian TV viewers with me. In-fact I have also been cited as a major reason for the quick adoption of TV sets in the late 1980s and credited with introducing another revolution - the '2-minute noodle'. Yes it was I who first brought the Maggi noodles to your lives and kitchens.That was the first commercial I had run during that time. Now you see how long back we go together and what influence I have had in shaping up your culture!

Hum Log was just the beginning, Buniyad, Ramayana and Mahabharata followed and went on to break global viewership records. Rajni, Shanthi, Udaan, Tipu Sultaan etc kept you coming back to me for more. By 1990s I had become the pivot around which your daily lives revolved around. I became the savior of the otherwise boring life of a housewife and also an binding force that bought not just a family, but societies together at one time, at one place - the TV. Those were my glorious days. 

Satellite TV brought a fresh breath of air and more choices for me as well as you audience. With Satellite TV came the most definitive phase of my life - the K- Phenomenon. Balaji telefilms with Ekta Kapoor re-packaged me with mega sets, glamorous faces, wicked vamps and what not. Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahoo thi, became the our answer to the Bold and the Beautiful. Many more Ks followed - Kkusum, Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki and many more hits after hits. 

Just as I thought I was here to say YOU betrayed me. Some one came with an idea of Reality TV and YOU latched on to it as your long lost love. What started as a flavor of the week with Sa Re Ga Ma Pa as the Singing reality show has now snowballed into an addiction. Because of YOU, the boundaries between entertainment and voyeurism are being blurred. Cheap thrills are winning over genuinely good content. Some one else's pain, shame, fear or embarrassment has become your Prime Time entertainment. Your kids are making role models of teenagers making mockery of our social institutions, relationships and language on the national television in front of your own eyes!!

Well if that's what you want, then I have no place in your life now. 

Adios my good old friend...my viewer on whose stories I have lived my life.

Adios...may we meet again...in this life or another.

The Rise of the Indian Workhorse

On a lazy Monday afternoon, I'm frantically having a go at my laptop's keypad in the large premises of a big IT company. A sudden flash of light, breaks my attempt at the record of typing most words in a minute or something. No, it's not a flash of enlightenment that the great Siddhartha encountered under the Bodhi tree but only my smart phone blaring away with a call from my friend. He asks for my evening plan and almost in an auto reply mode I tell him that I'm working late today. The dude accuses me of giving in to the bonded labor and tries to prod the rebel in me.

He's off the phone but I feel he may have been a bit successful in meeting his ends. I'm now asking myself - How did we come to this? When did it all began? And not only me, but how did the entire India succumbed to the 2nd wave of slavery, if I may call it?

From a country known for its snake charmers, mysticism, religion, spirituality and festivals for most part of the 19th and 20th century, how did we suddenly come to forefront of the economic growth and political prominence. Every single person I know, with the exception of very few, everyone seems to be rushing to meet some ends.

Ever wondered what made this remarkable turnaround in India's economic and political fortune?

In my view, the 2 words that have played pivotal role in this are  - Computers and Liberalization -  in that order. While a lot has been spoken about Liberalization a.k.a Economic Reforms of the 1990s, I am intrigued by the impact this word "Computer" has had on the changing the fortunes of India and the Indians.

Interestingly while the early origins of computing and computers saw germination in late 1800s in the western world, India saw its first computer only in 1960s when the Indian Government bought over the EVM EM from the erstwhile USSR. It was used for scientific research primarily at that point in time.

Our very own TATAs, like every other industry they entered, were the first ones to see an early potential and this is when the TCS was founded in 1968 in Mumbai. In my opinion, this was the most critical turning point in the history of the Indian Enterprise. With its inception, a large number of Science and Maths graduates immediately found a use of there knowledge beyond teaching and research. The western world immediately smelled an opportunity and recognized the inclination of "Indian" brain for the Computing and related field and the cheap expectation of wages. They also realized that unlike our western counterparts, our value system is such that for the love of the work, the employment and the historical baggage of working in western owned enterprises with non-existent labor laws, we would be willing to slog. And as it were, this turned out to be so true. This was the rise of the Indian IT Workhorse.

We immediately latched on to this new field of work that suited both our intellect and temperament. Over and above that, it also fulfilled our aspiration of "White" collar professionals working in neat and clean offices, wearing nice clothes mimicking the westerners way of living. You will not believe it, but in just about a 5 year period post India got it's first computer, as many as 10,000 Indians had settled in US by 1970. TCS was followed by CMC, Patni and Wipro entering into the fast growing Indian IT scene.

Since then we have come a long way. IT/ITES sector is a major driver of the National GDP and IT/ITES forms the majority of the GDP from the "Services" sector. I wonder if the choice of the word "Services" to describe the Indian IT sector was a re-affirmation of our expectations with ourselves or a mere coincidence as against the reference to this sector as a High-Tech industry elsewhere.The focus outside has been more on innovation, invention and indigenous product development while the "Services" left over has been thrown towards Indian IT companies. Though the things are changing fast here in India, but to me this "services" classification carries the essence and the reason of how and why,even today, after proving to the world our might in IT, still carry on with an absolute servile work culture.

It will be interesting to know that while a US IT professional spends 8 hrs at work, their Indian counterparts spend on an average 12 hrs with out overtime on their own volition or on pressure from their seniors while earning only 1/5th or 1/7th of their US counterpart. While every reason for holiday is rewarded with celebrations, we are expected to forgo our socio-cultural priorities. Is there any logic or rationale to explain this discrimination? Yes, it is our own doing in a way because it is WE who have decided our subservient position in the ecosystem, WE have decided how much we will work and what cost and it is WE who have sold ourselves out much to the liking of our western counterparts.

It's time that the Indian IT workhorse overthrows the in-considerate and insensitive west influenced jockeys and reclaim its rightful place at the podium or else relegate itself forever to carry the donkey work of the west while they enjoy all the leisure that this fast progressing world has to offer.