Arvind: My friends say that two guys cannot finish one bottle by themselves
Me: Rubbish..
Arvind: Really, lets buy one..
Me: Ok.. Give me one Pepsi bhaiyya
That 250 ml bottle stared at us like a challenge. I looked at Arvind. Arvind gulped, then me , then Arvind, then me ... it went for a couple of minutes.. until we were burping like dragons... people passed wierd stare at us. We realised the bottle was still just half empty. The wavey logo of Pepsi looked like a smiling devil mocking at our incompetence. More than that it was the Rs. 3 that was going to cost our misadventure. Me and Arvind shouted together, " Jai mata kiiiiiii..." In the next few minutes we finished the bottle. Hi-Fives were all around... It was during the ten minute walk back home, we realised our mistake as the burping went overboard and we had tears in our eyes..... That was June 1990... I was 8 and Arvind was 10...
Pepsi went on roping in many famous personalities from Aamir Khan till Dhoni to make a name from themselves. As per the FDI guidelines they should have been listed on the Indian bourses long back, but its the amounting loses that has sent them pleading to the North Block exempting from the regulatory hassles (Stop boring readers with this rubbish and unwarranted information). They spent most of these losses in "marketing" themselves.. branding... whatever...
I think people themselves are brands. Like this intersting conversation with another friend of mine with whom I was having (most of my conversations are interesting, else I dont have it...)..during the converation I said, "You know what, you have so many ideas and you think so much you could be... a super hero.. brain woman..hohahhao"..she responded, "ohh puleasseee, you are just cynical... you know what cynical man... if at all I become a super hero, I will pulverise your cynical thoughts with my brain waves.." the laughter continued for some time.... But I realised that we do infact brand people...
Like one of our college professorsss.. lets not take names... this "self-proclaimed" economics professor who downloaded jazzy PPTs from net and who on the click of the button while making the presentation would have no semblance of reality as to which graph will appear before the class for him to explain...this guy was called "Phantom".. Like Phantom you would never know when, where and how he would appear to make a surprise inspection..... Like the skeleton ring, he would carry the inspection sheet and would fine people..... the most peculiar thing about him were his spectacles. They were thick rimmed and covered his entire face. You could see his eyes popping out of those two sockets.....
Like Mr. Ankur Aggarwal, a renowned batchmate who was the first one to ackowledge love in our Alcatraz called "Symbiosis" was called Peter F Drucker... no not because that he was an equally astute management thinker... but once during an intellectually stimulating and stormy session on Marketing strategy (During which most of us were also strategising... in our dreams..) Mr. Aggarwal woke up from a hibernation spanning some 2 hours and asked a question that stumped even the professor who on hearing the question for a second thought that he was in a chemistry class, "Sirrr.... what is the content of fatty acid in the soap..".... the lecturer replied, "class dismissed"
Or our very own Atanu....Atanu as I have mentioned in my earlier blogs is a 6 foot dark and bulky guy...... People mistake him to be bouncer of a renowned club in Delhi. But he is not. He is a gentle giant. A cetain cynical guy in one of his satirical mood called him "Whale". For a while we despised this certain address to Atanu. But then once we saw... Atanu lying on his stomach, with his legs in the air.. flapping as if he was in water and his two hands resting his body and also typing on the laptop..... yes, he did resemble a "Whale"...
Very close a senior colleague of mine was called "Gabbar".....His mere shout could send tremors on the floor he was shouting in..... horror stories of people quitting on him shouting are still famous....I have been a victim myself on a number of occassions, but I think I turned out to be the "Achilles" heel.......
Or Kisaan.... his distinct style reminded us of a farmer who never had a good crop.... even if the Monsoon was 100% in the country, his particular patch of land would remain bereft of water......he was so distrssed that he had wrinkles on his forehead like the lines on a cursive writing practice book....
I think when we name people, there is of course a certain level of humour involved, but its because all these "named" people represent a certain emotion, an event, style, passion and wht not... people with no names are actually quite boring people... trust me... so if you do not have a name already... its time you got one.......
While walking down one moonlit night in Mumbai near Inorbit Mall, Arvind asked me, "you remember the pepsi incident"... "I sure do", I said...." "Quite exciting for us at that age...." Arvind said..... Arvind asked, "What is exciting for us at this age?"......"Mondegar", I said..... We both smiled at each other......
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