Blogathon Day 19: Typical conversation between a woman and her hairstylist

I bet 90% of you have the same conversation. Every single time.

Woman walks into the famous hair cutting place where she has taken an appointment days in advance and has been looking forward to breaking the boredom from her mane. She is made to wait for a few minutes before she is given a seat in front of a large mirror. If the staff is pleasant, she is offered coffee. Then walks in the stylist.

Stylist: Hello, I am XY. May I know your name?

Woman: I am AB.

Stylist: Ok. AB. Tell me what you want. What are we doing today?

Woman: I don't know. I want a new look. I am very bored of my current curly hair/frizzy hair/flat hair/straight hair/U hair/V hair etc. etc.

Stylist: (running her fingers through her hair). Ahan. When was your last haircut? Do you want the same cut?

Woman: (Remembering that it was between 4 to 6 months ago).. hmm.. I think 2 months. No, don't do the same one. I want something different this time.

Stylist: I am thinking layers.

Woman: Don't make it very short. I want to keep the same length. And it should be low maintenance. I don't have time.

Stylist: Ok.

Woman: And I want little bit of volume. And something in front.

Stylist: Ahan. Ok. Lets first wash your hair. Please come this side.

Then while washing her hair the stylist will ask what shampoo she uses and weather or not she uses a conditioner everytime. Maybe also how often she oils her hair.

Back at the chair. Snip Snip begins.

Stylist: Have you considered colouring/rebonding/straghtening your hair?

Woman: No no. I tried it once, it spoilt my hair. I lost so much hair since I moved to this town/put certain treatment/changed water/had kids

Snip. snip. And then blow dry.

Stylist: We are almost done here. I will now show you from behind how it looks. Its easy to maintain. Just after you shampoo in the morning, blow dry rolling your brush like this and take in inwards/outwards. When you go to a party, you can try this parting. Or otherwise, just let be naturally like this.

Woman: Looking at her hair in the mirror. Wow. Looks nice. Thanks!

And then she walks out, feeling like a model, with pretty much her old haircut, just refreshed and hyper blow dried.

Blogathon Day 16: The ultimate wishlist of an online shopper

Half way through the Blogathon!

Cougar town has this episode where Jules and Elli drink some wine and look at clothes and shoes online. I love that episode. I love doing that too. Window shopping online I mean. Today I am going to list down 5 things that make me happy. They are so beautiful, lovely and purely for pleasure. And for envy.

They are top on my dream list. Right next to publishing my own book. That is what I am going to do with all the money I make writing.

# 1 This Prada calf leather tote



# 2 These katespade metallic heals

# 3 These citrine stone and diamond earrings

# 4 This awsome wingback fireplace chair for reading and an appropriate ottoman to go!



# 5 The most sophisticated sewing machine ever made - Brother Quattro 6000D!


:) :) ;) ;)

I am getting goosebumps. Bye.

Blogathon Day 15: Modi flies with Salman

One, I am writing this post first thing int he morning from work. My bosses don't know that, but the sheer pressure of daily updates keeps me distracted all day. So I am getting it out of the way first thing.

Two, the subject of the post is more positive than I am. To drive Modi crazy traffic you know.

So, I have always praised the marketing skills of Modi Ji. The guy knows how to drive the masses, or to say, majority vote bank. He has a super dedicated team of online fans that promote everything he says or does. Then he has a Twitter account to wish people on different festivals - some of those festivals you wouldn't even have heard of.

Yesterday, he bragged about his meeting with Salman Khan and his participation in Uttarayan. I'm sure you all heard about it. Now, me thinks, there is a bone for both in this. Otherwise, this unnatural meeting can't just be shooting accident.

Modi's agenda is clear. He is going all the way with clearly polarized majority votebank as well as large corporate's support.  But for some strange reason he is trying to create this camouflage of peaceful co-existence with the minorities.  This may have something to do with his vision of becoming a historical figure. He just doesn't want to be PM. Even Machiavelli could do that. But he wants to go down  history books. He wants to be popular, and probably that is why he is posting pictures of himself reading ET with Obama's book by his side.  And taking Salman Khan out for Undhiyu lunch. What kite is he flying? Or will this kite fly?

On the other hand, beloved Salman, your fans are bedazzled. Has it got something to do with securing your position in the event of the imminent Modi-raj? With all the legal hassels you have been involved in, it might just help to be on the good side of the devil. We understand. But hope you know that your heartless participation and kite flying is going to buy him same number of votes as AAP's Kumar Vishwas' praises of Modi during his past Kavi sammelans. In the meanwhile, hope you enjoyed pulling a few strings in Gujarat.

Blogathon Day 14: Small town quirks

Choti ungli pe nachai gee tujhe.. yeh hai small town girl!

Other than that, there are many more quirks of living or growing up in a small town. Some of those were brought back while discussing milk supply chain at work today. Maybe you also remember those.

# The time when your milkman used to bring the cow to your house, milk the cow in front of you and then your mother would haggle with him that the bucket in which he was collecting milk already had water in it.

# The days when your older brother /cousin would prepare for a mega kite flying competition and you would feel honored to be his trusted assistant, holding the roll of manjha between your elbows running behind him all day.

# Your neighbour with the highest building in the locality, whose terrace everyone would collect for the annual Eid moon sighting

# The uniform clad postman who visited your house every few days on a bicycle and brought inland letters from relatives far and few

# The discreet cyber cafe visits

# The only single after-school hangout that served pizza and burgers, where all your friends ended up giving their birthday treats

# Your scooty, that had a name

# The rickshaw, that wasn't auto

# Your parents always knowing everyone, through some distant relation or other

Well, those are just a few. Im sure there are many more. Do you remember any?

Blogathon Day 13: Things that were cool 10 years ago

There were things that cool folks did and showed off. And the rest of us just looked in awe. But then came a flood of herd mentality and too many people started doing those things, so much so, that even the perpetual "chomu" also managed to get his hands into these. That's when these things stopped being cool. The list is below. If you have been doing any of these things for less than 6 years, chances are you are in the herd. But then, who am I to stereotype anyone?

#1 Sporting a goatee

Despite the odd fitting leather pants and super tight shirts that made the look unbelievable, the goatee on Aamir Khan in Dil Chahta Hai proved to be a far bigger fashion trend than Kajol's hairband in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. From being a metrosexual man's mane, it went on to become the small town low cost fashion statement. There came different variations of it to gel with Chomu sense of style. And thats when it stopped being cool.


#2 Owning a DSLR

The price tag on DSLRs kept the herd away from these for a long time. Only the rich and famous could afford it. But facebook put so much pressure to put up great pictures every few days, that people started cutting eating-out bills to save up for the camera. Once purchased, albums with names such as "random clicks", "just like that", "my experiments with my camera"etc etc. littered facebook walls full of meaningless half cropped, modified and filtered images.

#3 Running a marathon

Not everyone could dream of running a marathon, not even a half one. Firstly there were not so many. Only few towns in India organized these and had limited participation. But then with free corporate sponsorship and marathons being held in every city, town, mohalla, and locality, everyone finds a marathon or two to run in. Even if you do a 3 to 6 km dream run, you could post a picture with a number pasted across your chest!

#4 Holiday in Europe

Going to Europe for a holiday was a thing for politicians, film stars and Ambanis earlier. But now thanks to Kesari travels, even old uncles and aunties have group tours in under 1.5 lakhs!






Given all the then cool things are out of question, wonder what are the cool people doing now? Entering politics maybe.

Blogathon Day 12: How to make a 500 crore movie?

First there was the coveted 100cr club. Then certain three idiots came and made the elite status a matter of aam admi. Since then, year after year, Khan after Khan (and certain superheroes!) are upping the count by a crore at a time, with the latest Saahir Khan making 500cr at the box-office.

This crazy number-game made me remember a time when we were advising a Bollywood client, trying to crack the formula that predicts how much business a particular film is going to do. There were several factors that were considered, and data for films released over the last 5 years was analysed. Regression analysis was done to come up with the correlation between these factors. But honestly, the formula was crap. We couldn’t predict nuts. And that Bollywood client had 3 films in the pipeline, only one of which released and tanked without anyone noticing.

But if there were to be a formula for making a 500cr movie, what would it be? Well, let me give it a shot. I consider myself an experienced consumer of films, and a consultant, and also an Indian, so obviously, I have an opinion on everything. Here’s my opinion on what makes a 500cr movie -

1. The K word - Either have a Khan in your film (can be Mrs. Saif Ali Khan, but not Imran Khan or Irrffaan Khan) or the main character is to have a name with K and have special powers. This condition is necessary but not conclusive.
2. Create so much hype that the first weekend is fully sold out in advance. And when that it done, there will certainly be those desperate souls who couldn't get tickets during the weekend, and hence would keep the demand for the week going, along with college bunkers, illegitimate lovers, and stingy people who watch movies during weekdays because the tickets are cheaper 
3. Lobby and coerce and scare other films to move their release dates so that there is no big release one week before and atleast 2 weeks after your film. This way, cinema hungry audience will have no choice but to go see your movie even though Vigil Idiot would have already ripped your movie into 5000 crore pieces, and every single person coming out of the cinema hall would have put a fb status with disappointing emoticons. 
4. The rest is simple math. Number of screens you release your movie in, and the price of your ticket. If the movie survives for more than 2 weeks, then you make atleast a 100cr on conservative scenario and 500cr in an optimistic one. 

Here is a quick calculation with the optimistic scenario (click on image to enlarge):

Just to put things in perspective, Dhoom 3 released in close to 5000 screens, the largest release for any Indian movie till date. Avatar released in 14,000 screens. Ticket prices for Dhoom 3 went as high as Rs. 900 for IMAX screens. And don't even talk about the overseas revenue, where ticket prices are way higher.

500 crores in today's times, prices and scale may actually just be ordinary rather than exemplary. But who cares, as long as the popcorn is hot!

Blogathon Day 8 : My musings

I’ll be honest here. I am sort of running out of ideas on how to make daily vanilla prompts into funny posts. Its kinda exhausting. I am afraid that if I keep depleting my humour resources at this rate, I might be running out of fuel soon. So for today, I choose to digress from the prompt and name this post after the most generic, commonly used, rarely interesting, most boring subject line ever. Ever ever. “My musings”

I have no clue of what I am going to write about and my thoughts at this point are as scattered as the popcorn from the paper popocorn bag that burst inside the microwave. I faintly remember naming one of my posts musings years ago. I was lame then. I had no content to write about.

I am still lame, and back to being content-less. I could just make a chalu post and get away with it. No one would know. Who reads my posts anyways? But I am a content driven writer and I endeavor to provide my readers with nothing less than 100% good quality material.

Or wait, did I just make one?