The saga of the slap!

In the movie ‘Two states’, which is an otherwise a soft romantic movie with a sprinkling of family drama, one scene particularly stands out from the tone that the rest of the movie has, and comes as an unexpected twist. To some people, it also comes across as a shock. The scene in question is where Arjun Kapoor, the hero of the film slaps his father, played by Ronit Roy. The reason it comes as a shock to most of the people is that rarely or perhaps never in popular culture, either in bollywood or on the smaller screen TV, has this kind of scene been witnessed before. The maximum representation of a son’s rebellion or rage has been in the form of either the son moving out of the parental house, heated altercations between the father-son duo and a sharing of a cold vibe. Even otherwise and outside the reel world, we have rarely heard stories of father-son physical skirmishes. Occasionally, we have seen a few stories here and there of son killing father in fit of rage, but these have been experience only through new paper stories rather than one’s immediate living reality. Also, these have always been discarded and termed as son going ashtray or result of lack of proper values. What is significant to notice here is that the scene in the movie reveals to us two things. One, how the new generation sees itself and two how others have started to see the new generation. Interestingly, the slap does surprise and shock most of the people watching the movie in the theater, yet it does not result in those same people rejecting it as an unreasonable and uncalled for act. In fact, everyone heaves a sigh of relief and actually appreciates it after that so as to put a stamp of legitimacy to it. This points to how the new generation/youth is seen by others as a possible storehouse of wisdom. It could very well have been interpreted as an act of rage, rebellion or indiscipline. However, the reaction of the public watching the movie tells that it is eventually consumed as an act of maturity to do what the moment demands, courage to do what is right and one that is backed by sound reason. This is evident across other spheres where the new generation is getting more emphasis or their viewpoint is asked for. In some places, they are the main decision maker with the accepted corollary being that they know more than others. It also alludes to how today’s youth looks at self. The hero could have very well just let it go without any fuss. The fact that he decides to step forward, take matters into his own hands and slap his father speaks of the confidence this generation reposes in itself. Also, he just not only slaps him and runs away rather he decides to stand his ground and look into his father’s eye after slapping him. This makes the slap not just a physical act. It also makes a point and delivers a key message from the hero that the transfer of ‘right thing to do’ need not be limited to one way from father to son. It can very well be the other way round as well. What validates and vindicates this slap as the right measure is the returning of father to his right ways and doing what a father is supposed in the end of the movie. The bigger changing societal story line that the movie narrates is how the authorship for defining the roles within the family is not limited to only the patriarch, who was always beyond question and rapprochement and how the new generation/youth has become comfortable in authoring his own role, and sometimes reminding others of their role. The movie talks about the changing fault lines between the new and old generation. One thing which remains constant as before is the happy ending to a bollywood movie.

The girl & the woman

We all have seen many examples of women being targeted or depicted for communication by brands. Be it Surf’s lalita ji or Dettol’s mother, most of the brands have preferred to portray a woman (suitable for their product categories and target audience) or the journey to becoming a woman. Very few have focussed on the girl or on the “feeling of being a girl”. The girl here means the mental make up of a girl rather than only her age. A female has two sides to her personality; one is that of a girl and the other of a woman. We shall come to the differences later, but both are not always mutually exclusive. The two sides are like the two faces of the same coin, with the decision to show which side of the coin to display resting in the hands of the person and depend on a number of factors.
When we talk of a girl, the first word that comes to mind is ‘carefree’. It’s a state of mind for her and an attitude that makes her different from a woman. This carefree attitude is reflected in the choices she makes about her social circle, hangout places and her topics of discussion. The girl would hang out with her friends (both male & female), talk or gossip about random things like clothes, friends. Two brands that have beautifully captured this carefree attitude are TVS scooty and Nokia, which feature Priyanka chopra in an ad, which talks about the things the girls do and are important to them. It makes me sad when brands limit the definition of a girl to that of a seductress looking to attract boys. It again brings the focus to her dependence on the other sex rather than showing her as an independent girl. A girl derives her sense of belonging from her friends & by being accepted by them, Where as a woman would derive her sense of belonging from her family (read husband, kids, in laws & parents). The feeling of being a girl is an ‘innate’ feeling which makes it difficult for her to explain how it feels to be a girl, where as the feeling of being a woman is a learnt feeling and can avail of a vocabulary ( has husbands,kids & in laws to look after) to be explained. There are mainly three parameter age, marriage and responsibilities that explain the transition (the transition here is not permanent and merely reflects a tilt from one state to the other) of a female from a girl to a woman. The state of being a woman will have two out of the above three characteristics most of the times. For example: my mother became a woman when she got married at the age of 21 and gave me birth at 22. Similarly a female who is 31 years old, lives with friends & has no responsibilities (my boss in my previous organisation) would think of herself more as a girl than a woman.
The inclination to go into details is a female characteristic, common to a girl as well as a woman. A girl would go into the details of her immediate surroundings & events, where as a woman would think in a more elaborate fashion about her and her family’s future, their expectation, tastes, likes etc. This does not mean that a girl would go against her family; rather it means that instant gratification and freedom are values that appeal more to a girl. She would circumvent the lines or conditions set by her family rather than breaking them. This again is showcased in one of the virgin mobile ads, where the girl plays clever to go to goa with a male friend by telling her parent that she has no interest in boys.
The state of being a girl also makes her louder in her appearance, gestures, body language which again is a function of her carefree and independent attitude. A woman in comparison is likely to act in a more sophisticated manner which gets reflected in her choice of dark & sober colours, less use of hands and a more composed body language.
When I referred to two sides of the same coin I meant that a girl would also sometimes display (though subdued) the characteristic of a woman, which the girl learns by watching her mother or other women in her family. For example, on a recent trip to trade fair I witnessed a girl of age around 5 years coming to her younger brother’s rescue from a dog approaching him and she said “ main hoon na, don’t worry” to her brother. This brings out her caring attitude which she probably learnt from her mother. Similarly, a woman would also show her girlish side at times. This would be most visible when she is put back in her old set up (among same old friends, in same situations). She would sometimes also use her kids as an accessory to live back the feeling of being a girl, for ex- a bicycle trip. The ads of brands promising wrinkle free skin or slim figure can also been seen to be exploiting this urge to relive the experience of being a girl.
Whether it is the feeling of being a girl or a woman, she brings consistency by constructing a world around herself using self symbolism (to bring internal consistency) and social symbolism (to project to others around her).

The one candy marketing

If you ask any brand manager, what is your ultimate goal? Nine out of ten times, his answer would be, ‘brand loyalty’. Different marketers swear by different tactics to attain this nirvana of brand loyalty. Just last week, I was spectator to a candy being used by one of the chemists in my local market. The significance attached to this candy here is more symbolic than literal, the reason for which we shall soon find out. Now, this chemist that I was referring to is no ordinary medicine seller. He is there since the past thirty years, selling medicines and other over the counter products. He has, over this period, evolved into a trusted chemist, who not only delivers prescribed drugs but also advises people on other issues. These issues could range from the most effective drugs, to who are the most bankable doctors in the vicinity of the locality etc etc.

But, all these years, things have not been hunky dory for him. Just like any other business, he has had to go through his fare share of competition, which in this case is two shops (also chemist shops), with each one on the left and right side of his shop. The walls of these two shops share a common wall with this chemist. Now, this could be any shop owner’s nightmare or a blessing in disguise? Let us see why.

Being adjacent to each other makes it very difficult for these three chemists to conceal their orders from the other two competitors. Just to give a hint of the physical proximity these three chemists shops share, if a person goes to any of these chemists and asks for a medicine, and in case the sales man tells him that the medicine is not available, then the sales man in the other shop can easily overhear this and call the customer to his shop, proudly telling him that he can offer him the drug in question. The kind of market faced by these three chemists can easily be placed on the extreme right of the socialist-capitalist continuum, except that the product in question is a tightly regulated one.

This is where my chemist takes away the game from the other two. He understood the fact that to sustain himself in the same locality, he has to not only win over new customers from competition, but also retain his existing customers. He invented his customer relationship system before this term got famous among the big Indian retailers and MBA’s like us. His CRM programme is one of the best I have seen and is second only to my local panwala’s, which I would talk about in some other article.

All he does is, takes out a candy from under his counter and hand it over to his customer without taking any money for it. The type of candy that a customer gets depends on the demographic and psychographic profile of his customer, which he matches perfectly to the database of his customers stored safely in his brain, out of bounds of all the viruses of digital nature. The surprising thing is that he manages to instil the same teachings in all his salesmen, who perform this ritual with equal aplomb. Let us see in detail how it works. Suppose a person goes to his shop and that person has a small child with him, then he would take out a sweet candy and would nonchalantly give it to the kid. If the customer is a smoker, which he somehow finds out, then the candy in question would be a mint one. If the person making the purchase is suffering from cough & cold and makes it evident by coughing a couple of times in his face, then the sales man would, without reprimanding the person for not showing the expected mannerisms while coughing, give him a ‘halls’ or a ‘vicks’.

This trick might seem simple but it works in mysterious ways, through which he wins the loyalty and trust of his customers. All of us know the special place a child has in the family in any culture and especially more so in our culture. When a sales man, who’s basic job is to give a medicine in return of the money, assumes a different role and pops out a candy (the symbolic reference that I mentioned earlier is manifested here because in doing so he is noticing more then the mere economic transaction and complements the role of the nurturer by taking care of the child), the customer reciprocates with his loyalty due to the warmth generated by that gesture. And this gesture doesn’t cost a bomb to the chemist. The cost of that vital candy is easily recovered by the 20-40% margins that his business gives him and is a small cost if one were to calculate the life time value of that customer.

This is how he manages to keep his customers happy, when the customers actually go to his shop to buy a product that one could never be happy to digest. This is how he manages to retain his customers, even when the waiting time on his counter is more than the waiting time at his competitors. This action might look simple and easily imitable. But most of the business men often forget the simple fact of life, which is, everybody feels happy to get recognised and acknowledged in special ways. My chemist apart from ensuring that I recover from the cold I am suffering from has ensured that I will never forget this insight. I think it’s a good time for me to pop out a thankyou note for my chemist.

Opportunities created by shortages

The name India brings different images to our mind. Some like to call it the land of beggars and snake charmers. Some call it one of the fastest growing economies. There are others, who would identify it as the IT capital of the world. However, the Idea of India that catches the fancy of the pessimists, the critics of India and most importantly, the population control activists, is that of India with a billion people.
This set of billion people has been a hot topic of debate in the recent past. Policy makers and corporate leaders, describe these billion people as India’s demographic dividend, which will lead the charge in taking India from being a developing nation to an accomplished developed nation. The contrast to this can be seen in the views often expressed by our disgruntled economists and fiery social activists, who see this billion plus population (especially the poor ones and those living in rural areas & small towns) as a drag and at the receiving end of injustice meted out by government. They often cite the non-inclusive nature of policies as one of the strongest reasons for skewed economic development, which often leads to disturbances in the society and prevents India from realising its potential.
However, nature has its own way of balancing things. This realisation dawned on me a couple of day’s back, while reading a news story in one of the news daily. Scorching industrialisation in the urban areas has left little space in big cities for companies to set up new businesses. The article that I was referring to brought out this truth again, with spokespersons of some of the biggest IT companies stating their inability to find land banks in kolkata and being forced to scout for land in small town for their new ventures. This news will definitely give a glimmer of hope to people fighting for the balanced economic development of India and its inclusive growth, as this kind of move will result in improvement in physical infrastructure of those places and also in creation of a lot of direct as well as indirect employment in these often neglected but equally promising regions.
We will get to hear more such announcements from numerous other companies in the coming days, as our urban space has become highly saturated. Another reason, that will make it more appealing for companies to give these small towns a serious look is rising real estate prices in the urban areas. I hope that this kind of measures will alter, some, if not all, of the negative connotations attached with the ‘billion plus nation’ that we are.

Our common ancestors

Though we human beings are considered more intelligent than animals (leaving a few species), but still they are capable of teaching us a thing or two. So, this piece draws its inspiration from animals instead of my own life. The idea struck my mind a couple of day’s back, during our lion safari at Nandan kanan zoological park which is situated in Orrisa. The interaction with the guide and other forest officials gave me enough ideas to make the following connections. A change is always preceded by a phase during which we realise the need for that change and is followed by a phase that ensures that the change is sustained and maintained. Lewin came out with a model that depicts the three step change process. This theory of Lewin’s helps us in gaining a structured understanding of the change. The good thing about theories is that they can be applied to explain any phenomena. I shall attempt to do the same here. Like humans, animals also find it very difficult to come to terms with a sudden and a big change. In fact the very fact that they are not as intelligent as humans leads me to think that they find it even more difficult to adapt because the humans can reason and see the rational. The animals lack the reasoning ability. The journey from a forest, which is the first home for animals and also their natural habitat to a zoological park where they are kept against their will, to be seen and subjected to undesired human attention, is a long one. This is huge change for those animals because the change is symbolic of the two extremes, one of which is, how they would like to live their life and the other extreme being how they would not like to do it.

With time all of us and the people behind the change have started appreciating the magnitude of the change these animals face. The forest officials or the people behind this change do certain things which if put into perspective resemble the three phases of Lewin’s theory. The animals, when they are taken out of their natural habitat are not put into a zoo directly. They are, on being captured, put into cages. This unfreezes
them from their present state and tell them what is in the offing. It unfreezes them in the sense that it dawns upon them the realization that their safari days, where they could enjoy unrestricted movement, are over. Even the lion comes to know that he will no longer be an independent king of the forest. He will be a king without power to hunt on his own, which he really enjoys. This reflects the power shift that results from the change.

Once the unfreezing is over, they are put into their new homes. These new homes could be of any size, depending on the total space available with the locality (the zoological park). This represents the desired (for officials, not animals) change. They now live at the whims of the zoo officials.












The last part is refreezing the new change. This is done in order to ensure the longevity of the proposed change. In case of animals, this refreezing is done some times by formal training methods, where they are taught to perform certain movements or acrobats to make the more intelligent species (humans) laugh. Their new fixed food timings, continuous exposure to the audience and lack of interaction with other animals, reinforce the change among them. By now they know that it is here to stay and have adapted perfectly to it. But like some tough humans, who resist the change and prefer status quo, these animals also protest against it. They protest using methods like not eating food, destroying things around them, becoming violent against others etc. The difference between humans and animals about which I spoke in the beginning, seems miniscule now. They share similarities in their protest methods and perhaps lend credence to the fact that both of us share ancestors. This similarity makes me feel that it was worth observing and writing it.

Prisoners of habits.

We often refer to the means-end theory when we talk about consumption. The consumption is akin to achievement of goals. The ends are the goals that we set for us and the means are the ways of achieving those goals. The consumption choices we make are used as means to develop a social construct which helps us in projecting the desired images. The images here represent the goals. Similarly all our decisions are driven by the goals or the desired states. The goals can further be divided into long term goals and short term goals, with the long term goals being less prone to change vis-à-vis short term goals. If I look at my own life, then the goal has always been to become successful at whatever I do, so as to be able to live my life in a manner that takes care of a healthy lifestyle. The short term goal is to finish MBA successfully, get a good job etc. Getting a good job has become difficult with the economy hitting reverse gear. The falling economy has forced us to revaluate our assumptions and question our choices. Though it has not changed the long term goal but has definitely resulted in doubts sprouting up about the short term goals. With the changing goals, the means also demand that they be modified. The means or the mindset with which we came into this MBA is no longer applicable to present state. For example- quality rather than quantity has become the determining factor for recruiters while recruiting. This obviously calls for an enhanced emphasis on quality from us. It becomes imperative that we actually spend more time studying than we were doing earlier. However, the realisation has not resulted in much action from us. This is mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, I do not know what kind of goals would fit the situation and secondly, the means are difficult to change because I have become a prisoner of my habits. Habits which are formed over time are stopping from moving me towards renewing transformational. My adaptive orientation towards this change is the one of reactive, which is characterised by lethargy to act proactively. I tell myself that whenever and whatever the time brings, I will decide my response then and there only. However, the changed environment demands that we envision all the possible outcomes and keep ourselves prepared with appropriate responses. To be ignorant of the changing environment is one thing, but to know that the environment has changed and still not respond is another, which is also self defeating. I hope writing it down and expressing my anguish, directed at my self will shake me out to move out of my comfort zone.

How we became a better basketball team.

Situations or tasks that involve teams often depend on the interrelationships of individual for its success. I realised this when I was in school. I was involved in many team sports like volleyball, basketball and cricket. My school life revolved around sports and studies played second fiddle to it. I was passionate about sports but the sport closest to my heart was basketball. I started paying basketball when I was in sixth standard and soon became part of the senior team. Though we had very good players and looked a solid team on paper, but somehow the performance of the team did not live up to expectations in matches. The sport basketball demands great level of team coordination, which was missing in our team. Though each one of us knew that we needed to play as a team but we did not implement it on the field. As the captain of the team that became a big worry for me. I tried to analyse the reasons behind these symptoms in order to discover the problem. The problem was simple, which is quite common across all of us. All of them longed for appreciation and recognition from the coach. Somehow my coach and I over emphasised the task and ignored their needs. The problem was not that the coach was frugal in recognising our performance. But the fact that aggravated the problem further was that the coach was biased towards me or seemed so to other players of the team. This was mainly because I was the only player in the team who had played nationals. However, that did not mean that the other players in the team were in any way inferior. All of us were equally good. I realised that the situation needed to be corrected. The thing that further hampered our interpersonal relationships was that this excessive appreciation directed at me made it difficult for them to trust me. This trust was very important because basketball is a game that requires coordination. Just one player can not make baskets. All the players of the team move together.

I felt that discussing this problem with the coach might disturb him because that will require him to change his thinking and also he might look at it as a challenge to his wisdom. So, I started pushing the other players forward in the eyes of my coach. I started appreciating them not only during matches but also during practice sessions. They finally started trusting me. They saw that I was with them and recognised their skills. This trust was evident from their actions and changed body language. They started coming to me with their problems. We also started going out together after school. This was something that was not happening earlier. My coach also started recognising other players and started treating us all equally. Though after that we did not win any major tournaments, but the improvement in the game was very much visible. The most visible change was that we all were now enjoying the game. I believe this intervention, which was a very basic one made an impact on our attitudes.