Jammed

We were just wondering what would happen to this thinker if he tried out his theories in Bombay traffic. Or worse still, in Delhi!

Seriously, though, he makes sense. Reminded us of our driving classes. Where on the first day, our instructor told us, in Hindi, drive as if every other driver was a ch****a. Which we have never found difficult to do.

Hitting the Gujarat and West Bengal governments where it hurts: in the wallet

This is a proposal from a friend, Anjan Ray, left as a comment on a post at the Citizens for Peace blog.

To my mind, there is only one way to deal with State-sponsored terrorism. And that is a groundswell of economic boycott activity.

When the rule of the law morphs with willing connivance of the political leadership into the rule of the jungle, it is funded by government and party cadre revenues. These, in turn, come from economic acitivity within the State in large measure.

As a first step, I have sold - and encourage you to sell - every share of any company you hold that has its headquarters in the 2 states under discussion. You can also sell mutual funds that have invested in such companies. I will be happy to provide a list and propose alternate investments if the idea appeals to all those who read this.

Check the packaging of every product you buy, and choose a different option if the place of manufacture lies within these two states.

Simple enough? Pass this on, and I guarantee you will be amazed at the impact.

Should you wish to take Anjan up on his offer to provide the lists of companies HQed in those two states and the alternate investments, he can be reached at anjan DOT ray AT gmail DOT com.

Why we're glad we work from home

Go see The 'Winners' of the Wired News Saddest-Cubicle Contest.

Top that? We can, actually. But we have a deadline. Maybe we'll come talk about it later.

Nandigram relief - an appeal

This email just in via Arka Mukhopadhyay, Trina Nileena Banerjee and others.

From: Anjum Katyal
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 8:12 PM
Subject: relief for Nandigram

Hi,
I just received an sms from Aparna Sen asking for relief materials for Nandigram victims (she specifically mentioned old clothes, children's clothes and rice) which can be sent to Mahasweta Devi's address, given below:
c/o Mahasweta Devi
W 2C 12/3 Phase 2, Golf Green, Kolkata 95. Ph: 24143033

We've been asked to forward the request to as many people as possible.

Regards
Anjum

Do please pass the word.

I had some misgivings about the old clothes, given past learnings, but sent it on nevertheless, since the folks who forwarded it are reliable sources.

I got this reply from Amit Varma:

It might be a well-meaning and genuine appeal, but in my experience, old clothes are generally the worst possible thing to give, because even poor people don't take hand-me-downs. When Dilip and I travelled in TN after the tsunami, the roadsides were littered with colorful heaps of old clothes nobody wanted. Both of us wrote about it extensively, Dilip also using the experience of previous trips through disaster-struck areas.

Of course, in this instance this specific need might exist for some reason. But in general, it is a bad idea, and I thought it fair to share that.

I wrote to Dilip D'souza as well:

What's your take on this?

I had my misgivings about this, given my learnings from the post-Tsunami scenario, not least because of your own postings on the matter. Nevertheless, I did send it on to several others. Amit Varma echoed my concerns thusly: [Amit's mail quoted here]
If you're in agreement, you may want to post a point of view somewhere.

Dilip said:

Amit is right: from Orissa '99 to Kutch '01 to TN '04, nobody in those areas wants old clothes. It's true, this is a slightly different case -- it's a manmade calamity rather than a natural one. I think we should hold off sending old clothes until we get some more info from the trenches. Maybe we should reply to that appeal asking specifically about the old clothes. (Once we get a reply, I'll post that somewhere). I'll send a note.

Money can be used to buy new clothes.

Dilip, after this exchange, wrote to the originators of this appeal, stating his concerns, and asking for clarification. He also notes that the "phone number listed for Mahashweta Devi does not work." I had got some further queries from people I had forwarded this to, so I followed up as well. After an initial reply promising more information, Anjum Katyal sent us this:

Friends,

I am sending this out to anyone in my address book who I feel would need the information, and be in a position to circulate it further. Over the past few days I have received several emails and queries about where exactly relief material is being collected for Nandigram victims. It seems that when Mahasweta Devi's phone number was called, they were being told that no materials were being collected there.

I managed to speak directly to Mahasweta di this morning and here is what she has asked me to circulate:

1. Her address IS being used as a collection and despatch centre for relief materials for Nandigram victims. For those who do not have it, it is:

W 2C, 12/3 Phase 2, Golf Green, Kolkata 700095.

Children's warm clothes, new (not secondhand) lungis and dhotis for men. sturdy saris in wearable condition, rice and dal are welcome.

2. If money is being donated, it should be sent to Account no. 24941, Canara Bank, Sealdah branch.

3. Mahasweta di has been focusing on working with a doctors' group at Nandigram. The contact person if anyone wishes to help with the health centre there in any way is Dr Devapriya Mallick, 9830510911.

Thanks and regards
Anjum Katyal

Word-spotting

We saw a couple of dandy neologisms the other day, and we just have to share. The beauty of these is that they don't require an explanation. Well, okay, with the first one, a portmanteau, you need to know that "shloka" is a Sanskrit word that means a verse, usually a prayer. (See the Wikipedia definition for more details.)

Here you go.

Shlokaneering
Spotted on the Sarai Reader List, in a mail from S Fatima

Wantrepreneur
Spotted on Valleywag; can't find the exact post or author, alas. here (Thanks, Hanisha)

Not for kids

This story in the Guardian (no mentions yet in the Indian media) gives the lie to claims about child labour being banned. An extract:

Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.

Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.

Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using child labour. It announced it had withdrawn the garments involved while it investigated breaches of the ethical code imposed by it three years ago.

The discovery of the children working in filthy conditions in the Shahpur Jat area of Delhi has renewed concerns about the outsourcing by large retail chains of their garment production to India, recognised by the United Nations as the world's capital for child labour.

Link courtesy Shefali Srinivas on Facebook. Shefali also point to this video, and notes that it was posted months ago.


Gap Unveils New 'For Kids By Kids' Clothing Line

So much for GAP's being unaware.

Please see also this CRY press release, which says that India has the largest number of child labourers in the world.

In praise of bowel nosodes

We just discovered (thanks to Poonam), that Indra Sinha quoted us in a piece in Tehelka. Not by name—he calls us "a book blogger" though the quote was from one of our columns—so we can't claim blog cred for that, but what the hey.

[And completely ignoring the previous statement he then blithely proceeds to claim cred..] It's the second time in our little life that we acquired improved social cachet thanks to the man.

Background, you say.

Well, y'see, we're a fan. In our former profession, the man is a legend, especially in India; more so in those days when copy was still mostly literate and in one language at a time. We, like most other copwriters we knew, adored his work; we even had one of his ads framed up on our wall. (Those of you from the Profession will know what we mean when we tell you that the title of this post from that ad.) And we devoured his Cybergypsies at some point in the 90s. Around the same time as he was publicising an ad contest he was spearheading for the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

We were cynical at first, in our cool advertising kind of way; after all, ads for social causes (or 'public service advertising' as they're called in the trade) were hugely exploited by agency Creatives in search of awards. Contests were an excuse for Creative Departments to kick off the traces of Client and CLeint Servcing and go wild. Sure, some of the ads were even released. Causes or NGOs would be found (or, sometimes, invented) and hot, self-indulgent creative, designed to catch the eye of other Creatives, and never mind if any one else gave a damn, would be released in obscure publications or channels, usually in December (just before the eligibility period for ads for the year ended; and just in time to mollify disgruntled Creatives who had spent the year Making The Logo Bigger) and then beeyotiful prints on Zanders Matte would be taken and sent off to the awards juries in January. There was ad we remember from the Show Books that sent up the whole genre: the visual was a hand dangling a dog's carcass, and the headline said "here's my dead dog, now where's my award" or something very much like that.

But this contest was different.

The jury consisted of social workers who were on the ground in Bhopal. And the conditions specified that the ads had to be run in mainline publications. typefaces and logo were specified too, and the prospective contestants were told precisely what pictures were available for use.

When we wrote in asking for copies of said typefaces, Indra wrote back saying he'd made a mistake. He didn't want to promote font piracy by giving away a commercial typeface, and so he was removing that condition from the contests rules.

We had just been reading Cybergypsies, and we told him of that in the course of our correspondence. We enjoyed the book very much, relating not just to the bits about advertising and his causes, but also to the cyberaddiction to the point where it gets in the way of your life (our addiction was chat; yes, this was before blogs, or Facebook). We told him of this, and got a very kind reply, whereupon we proceded to bombard the man with more email, all of which was graciously replied to.

Came the time for the contest results to be announced, and we, like most of Bombay's Creatives, were among the hopefuls at the conference. We didn't win, alas. But, after the formal part of the evening, when the free (as in, the agency paid for our tickets) wine and munchies were floating around, emboldened by a glass of bubbly, we went up and introduced ourself to the man, and we were pleasantly surprised when he remembered our name. The next fifteen minutes or so were spent in animated chat about the web—which was still young then—and much else that we can't exactly remember—we, like the web, have aged—which he seemd to enjoy as much as we did. After a bit, looking around, this blog noticed that there was a ragged half-circle around us, composed of some of the Profession's leading luminaries, including, among others from our own agency, our National Creative Director, all looking tentative and slightly bashful. Slowly it dawned on us. And so we, lowly flunk from the salt mines, introduced our boss's boss (and others) to Mr Sinha.

Mr S, tough luck. And believe us when we say we were rooting for you, and it wasn't just so we can continue to drop your name. As you can see, we pretty much dine out on it already.

Sabbahiaticaltus

We haven't been blogging here much, have we? Did you miss us?

Hello? Anyone out there? Hello?

Your opinion..

..of the new Citizens for Peace site is earnestly solicited.

The Senility Prayer

Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

[Via email from Ingrid Srinath.]