Archive for the ‘Humour’ Category

Wrappings

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

This is too funny. Shifting from India to Canada and writing applications, emails and letters in a tone that suits each country.

India is full of - I would be highly obliged if, Please give your kind attention, Your prestigious instituition.

Canada is more direct, repectful but to the point. I began writing a mail and as soon as I got too polite, it sounded sarcastic and suspicious! For example, in a letter to a faculty member, saying ‘Could you please let me know my marks ?’ sounded very huffy and angry and this-is-the-least-you-could-do.
Lol. In India it would be just the right thing. Canada is like - I was wondering if, Would it be possible to, I would prefer, Please accept.

Canada is - I want to know my marks please.
India- I wantED to know my marks please.
As if its not a pressing issue. I dont really want to know my marks. I just wanted to. And if you have the kind time to kindly go through the files and let me know my marks then it would be wonderful and I would be highly obliged. But if you don’t have the kind time, then I will just have to ask you for my marks using a polite Plan B.

Internship at Ogilvy

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

When you intern at an ad agency you begin by being an awful mixture of juniority and confidence. You dont want to step on any toes, you want to grab lots of work and be a star so that they exclain “Lord, how were we doing without you in the first place!”

Things are different and one learns that the earlier part of an being an intern is more about twiddling your pen, thumbs and ears. Once you fit in a little more and still have no work, except to take any hypothetical product and make up an imaginary brand and think of ads for awards, the internship becomes an expensive lunch. Rs 50 auto fare to work. Rs 50 lunch. Rs 50 back home. The learning experience: priceless!

Week 1: This must be the beginner’s lull. Soon I’ll be yelling out something about deadlines across cubicles, finishing off work in a jiffy, saying that I simply must drag my famished self to lunch now, shelving designs - each a masterpiece!

Week 2: Making a comic strip about an intern’s experience (or the lack of it).
Week 3: I was given two thorough briefs on Monday and one arbitrary project which required whim and madness and tangential thought on Tuesday. The latter brief seems custom made for me as i have spent 3 college years and frustrated adolescent years before that, bemoaning the fact that nobody understands the crazy me and i that i keep having to put my fantastic thoughts through the dummy filter so that they may fit in and be understood by Junta. So in week 3, lots of work. no ideas.

Week 4: No ideas. Done a little bit of copy checking. Lots of coffee. Socializing in the office.

Week 5: Lots of ideas. The design engine chugs inside me. Just like that! Life’s Rolling just about (checks wrist watch) NOW!

MORE to come as my internship is going on. The fifth week is where I am at now.

Week 6: Last week of internship. Officially

‘The intern’ comic strip coming up soon.

after college fest - NIFT ka Spectrum

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

so spectrum was fun…

 

i dunno if u felt it as much as i did..this whole wave of Malvika makeover..

 

Hey guys, thats the real me.. the slop u see everyday in track pants and the toothpaste-smudged black jacket is the exception. Heh heh. Diva Naturale

 

I enjoyed undue advantage of my size and power and all that and won the badminton singles tournament. Apart from pride and glory and blah, blah my incentive was lotsa money to do things that my parents just wont consider funding. However, its been no use. I think i am going to get loreal vouchers.

 

I already have 20 vouchers or so from winning HAM (Half a Minute). They announced that I win a voucher worth Rs2000. ‘Not bad’, I thought as I smiled an oily one and shook hands with SS Trading company ka representative.

 

Few hours later, open envelope to find 20 vouchers of Rs 100 each. the vouchers cant be combined. so now, I have this delightful opportunity of getting 20 hair gunk things done to my hair of about Rs 100 each before march ends. With this kind of budget something reconciles me with my ex-barber - shambu. he charged only Rs 5, did the whole job in one’s backyard as the morning birds chirupped and mangos ripened. An excusable shortcoming in his method was that he gave everyone short haircuts. really short. he was the same guy the hospital close by had employed to give neurosurgery patients a scalp shave before their skulls were cracked open.

 

No, and i am not distributing these vouchers around. RBM has been really useful. How about starting an on-campus bidding thing?

 

Or could it be really possible that this 2000 divided by 20 funda has been an innocent mistake on the part of those who have done so much in the last three days to bring to a boil the spirit of competition, talent and youth?

 

‘The Worx’ of FC was diminutive but a big success in this that we finally put up something. FC sem 6 suddenly had a face. it became an enity to consider. the sunny patch we would be found lingering, pestering Lola ma’am and quickly finishing coffee at suddenly became karm-bhoomi.

 

WHy? why? why? Shibani kashyap (she really does need all that support of background stage dancers) and band of boys.

 

Oh but something great happened at a personal level for me this spectrum. i felt music again. Music had become a dirty word. It meant just one of the 3 things to me:

 

1. Tonk(neighbour) ki car ka punjabi lyrics as we swerved on delhi roads in his car. it was concerned with the deep emotions farmers feel as these booze over tubewells in fields and miss their girlfriends.

 

2. karan johar, yash chopra and ‘dil mein baji guitar’ strains that raucously lull me to sleep everynite in my shared flat.

 

3. The five songs that aditi bandhu (flat mate) has looped and played since august 2006. Crash into me, Mr crowley, Mama i’m coming home, no more tears, wake me up when september ends

 

I usually avoid the rock band competition unless the drummer is cute. but this time FIRE EXIT had me glued and headbanging. They were free of the angst and skeletal ghouls of ironmaiden. They performed understandable numbers like ‘Will you be my girl?’ They had such self compositions that built up the music in me from inside. It was all a rumbling and simerring. i hope it wasnt just the heady mix of good weather, crowd and music and they’ll be just as good when i listen to them next.