Anyone heard of Pepsi Studio?

I have a friend who works with Pepsi in a country I won’t tell you about. And to make sure he doesn’t lose his well paying job and his kids don’t end up in a Madrassa, I will not name him either. A few years ago he spoke to me about a very exciting project he was about to start work on. It involved music, it involved Pepsi, and it involved a musician he really really respected.

The same friend came to me, a few months later, dejected and angry that Pepsi had turned down the idea of a music show with one of his favourite musicians.

While this guy was a good friend I didn’t make much of his problem and definitely didn’t understand his anger. Then around 2009 I discovered Coke Studio. And yesterday it hit me, like a ton of bricks. Like those text book epiphanies that can make your eyes pop faster than 18 espressos. Suddenly his anger made sense to me, only it manifested itself as schadenfreude for the misery of my least favourite people in the world. Marketing minions.

Pepsi had just passed on Rohail Hyatt, the same guy who later went on to create Coke studio. Coke studio was an idea that originated in Brazil, but the popularity it enjoyed in Pakistan is beyond measure. And I’m not even talking about the thunderstorm that swept across the internet.

Wonder if Pepsi gift wrapped the guy though, when they sent him to Coke. Such classic corporate-unimaginative-beliefless-spineless-loser hacks. I would have gone on for longer but I think those guys have learned their lesson. And they probably learn it every time someone forwards them a link, or they catch a glimpse on TV or hear a song popularised by Coke Studio.

Ha ha ha!!! Makes me want to go find them, when they are feeling like miserable pricks, point at them and laugh.

I hate the airport named after the young lady in the picture

This post started as hate for Delhi airport, which promptly turned into research and the fortunate stumbling upon this image.
Image 'borrowed' from the Wikimedia Commons. Besides: According to The Indian Copyright Act, 1957 (Chapter V Section 25), Anonymous works, photographs, cinematographic works, sound recordings, government works, and works of corporate authorship or of international organizations enter the public domain 60 years after the date on which they were first published. Indira married Feroze on March 26, 1942, you do the mathematics. In your head.

Here's an idea for world peace.

Take that little chunk of land, that little sliver between Israel and Egypt that's causing all this friction and create something meaningful to end the menace. Send in the finest dancing talent from across the world, and start a gentleman's club that's the envy of the free world. Charge a bomb at the door, an arm for a lap dance, a leg for the VIP room.

And call it The Gaza Strip.

I know. I'm gonna rot in hell.

The arranged marriage Vs. The Stockholm Syndrome

This is a satirical comparison of the Classical Indian Marriage and the Stockholm Syndrome. Like all satire it may hold some truths and like all truths it may even be universally applicable.

The condition of the docile Indian housewife is a milder form of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Let's look for some similarities:

The husband/hostage-taker goes out for work and the wife/hostage is alone. This is when she feels trapped the most.

The wife/hostage can and wants to run away but finds a liking for her husband/hostage-taker even more when she has the opportunity to do so.

When they start living together the husband/hostage-taker is merely being humane by providing. And the wife/hostage slowly goes from wary to trusting. And trusting to loving.

There could be many more parallels. But the point I'm trying to make is that the Stockholm Syndrome works on an individual level while the traditional Indian arranged marriage works as a concept that can be mass produced with similar results.

Here's a quick step-by-step guide -
• Find a girl in a socially/financially weak household
• Arrive on horseback with loud intimidating music and fire crackers
• Scare them into letting you take the girl.
• Oh! and instead of waiting for the ransom till you release the hostage,
you take the girl and the money at the same time.

In actual terms this form of hostage taking where the man brings security and the woman luck, is a far more cunning arrangement. And I mean arrangement in the strictest possible terms. This arrangement has scale, it transcends all social class and the most menacing of all, it is socially accepted.