Yellow in my life …… the sequel.

 

 I had written a blog titled ‘Yellow in my life’ about 10 years back. And here is how the yellow still continues to dazzle me…..

https://hesh-iyer.blogspot.com/2016/07/yellow-in-my-life.html

 Yesterday, it yet again was a momentous occasion for me when I boarded the brand new ‘Yellow Line’ metro, which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister just 10 days back. This stunning cute little tube was dodging me for over 2 years now. Originally slated to be launched in 2023, I was thrilled at the prospect of going to my office at Electronic City using this metro – as that would have been a door-to-door service for me – without the hassle of catching the only office bus that would leave at 8 am sharp or without worrying about driving through the peak hour traffic that would get worse on a rainy day.

As the launch kept delaying, quarter after quarter, it missing the deadline of 1^st June 2024 was the last nail in the coffin as I was to retire from service on the 30^th June 2024. So, finally I retired last year, burying my long-standing desire of traveling to office on a metro, beneath those mammoth pillars of the double-decker metro line mocking at me.

My love affair with trains goes back to the childhood memories of my long journeys from Kanpur to my native near Kumbakonam, via Chennai, during summer vacations. It used to be a 2-day affair providing us an unforgettable experience of socializing with co-passengers while traveling through half of the country. The fun was in sharing each of these experiences with my school friends, who were mostly local and had either never traveled on a train or had just made a trip of a few hours to their respective native towns. Some of these stories were real and few were pure fiction to impress my friends.

My village was just behind the Tirunageswaram railway station, which was only 6 kms from Kumbakonam town. Most of the village folks and kids would travel to Kumbakonam every day for work or for their schools. As the schools in South would reopen early in June, unlike the ones in Kanpur that opened every year on the 8^th July, most of my playmates would start going to school towards of end of my vacation. Seeing them off in the morning at the station (I am not sure if there was a concept of platform ticket at that station but in any case, my first cousin was the station master there), I used to be amazed and used to feel envious about the fact that one could even go to school on a train - while I just walked to my school back in Kanpur.

Over the years, circumstances forced me to rely more on flights than those chugging beauties for my travels but my love for them never faded. Therefore, it was no surprise that once the metro came near my home in Bangalore, my preferences for the malls or eating joints quickly changed to the ones that were closer to a metro station. I couldn’t go to school or to work on a train / metro but no one could take away my pleasure of riding on a metro for a cup of coffee.

Knowing perhaps my love for the trains and having heard my unfulfilled desire that I expressed on my retirement day, my colleagues invited me for a talk to the office yesterday. And having enviously watched my colleagues traveling to office on the metro last 10 days, I finally had my day yesterday. And true to their style, what a beautiful infrastructure has been created by Infosys for the convenience of its employees. An exclusive exit from the station, a long 200 meter fully covered exclusive corridor hanging on the air, protecting them from rain or shine,  directly landing into the campus on to a large airport like lounge with those familiar x-ray machines and the turnstiles. What a privilege for these employees – who may or may not even recognize that.

Well, the yellow beauty did ditch me by not arriving ahead of my retirement but my first kiss of the beauty will remain etched in my memory – what a great experience it was, traveling in comfort and landing straight into the Infosys Metro Plaza on the campus. And I hope this wasn’t the last kiss.

 

None of the Above

 

In college, I took several competitive tests, some with serious intent and others just for the heck of it. Most of these used to consist of multiple-choice questions. While it was fun attempting most of these tests, one thing that invariably perturbed me was the option – None of the Above.  It not only caused confusion, it also restricted me from smart-guessing answers to numerical problems, particularly where the speed of response mattered a lot. One thing that I learned while hiring candidates in my organization was that we should know what the candidate knows and not what he doesn’t know. Therefore, many years later, very recently, when I was setting up the question paper for my MBA students in a college, I made sure that there was no option for NOTA.

The mischievous NOTA has continued to hound me years later as well. Despite all the articles that I have read and all those videos that I have watched from contemporary psychologists on women's psychology, I have continued to commit mistakes. These psychologists warn that when your wife complains about something, it is not to seek a solution from you. You just need to listen and appreciate the challenges. Unfortunately, I have built and lived through my career by finding solutions for my clients and therefore, the very same natural instincts that helped me build my career have repeatedly failed me at home.

Very often, my wife would run out of ideas for the evening meal. As she would grumble about it, the solution provider inside me would come with multiple options. I would rattle out options of Paneer, Aloo-Matar, Lentils, or Sambar. And, lo and behold, she would dismissively pick the NOTA and would end up making Kadhi-pakora. I will have no problems with the option but just that not meeting up to the challenge would sometimes hurt the solution provider in me.

When it came to buying a gift for someone, she would seek my suggestions. Acknowledging the NOTA risks, I would generally refrain from making any concrete suggestions. But my wife had worked for long in the corporate world.  And like a pro manager, she would remind me that one of the traits she liked in me, before our marriage, was my choice of innovative gifts. And I, like an overzealous software developer, would jump into my solution mode. But all my suggestions of bouquets, clothing, gadgets, and curios would finally end up the NOTA fate.

But as the much-cliched adage goes, every cloud has a silver lining. I am sure, at some point, my wife would have been presented with a list of suitors by her parents for her marriage. And instinctively, she would have responded with a NOTA. And then, as I approached her directly, with the sole and solitary option, there was no space for a NOTA.

The FOMO Economy

 

There has been quite a hullabaloo about the growing Concert Economy in India. A few music concerts in the past few weeks have been extremely popular and have raked in good moolah for the organizers. Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Bryan Adams, Dua Lipa, and our own singers like Dilit Dosanjh and many others performed to an overflowing crowd. A few analysts, however, have attributed this to the FOMO (Fear of missing out) factor.

There are legions of genuine music enthusiasts who live and breathe these artists.  At the same time, there also are many piled-on audiences who have little or no interest in music. They are there just to enjoy the extravaganza and experience the other surrounding fun and frolic associated with these events. The investment of time and money is worth the Instagram-worthy moments that it offers.  Over the last few years, enough has been spoken and written about the experiential holidays and experiential gifts. This is just a part of such an experiential event that no one wants to miss out.

The current craze of experiencing the mega mahakumbh event is another such example. Yes, there is a religious sanctity attached to the event. Yes, some devout believers would have never missed even the 12-year occurrences over their lifetime and this was a rare 144-year event.  But going by the current number of devotees who have already taken a dip in the holy confluence of rivers over the last one month, it is much beyond that. Many are otherwise faith agnostic but have not missed this opportunity to be part of this. Just because they wanted to be in the count and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to secure social media hits.  And then more followed, perhaps, due to the same FOMO factor.

Last week, another familiar event took place. The delightful spectacle of state elections in the national capital. And as it happens, the media circus of the counting of votes and the announcement of results was no less than a gala event. From high-decibel anchors to mild-mannered philosophical experts and from sagacious psephologists to political rivals at each other’s throats – they were all there on the TV to make their points. For some, it was an intellectual feast and for others, it was pure entertainment. In India, we carry strong opinions on our cricketers and the judgment of the selection committee as also on the polity and the broader voter response during elections. Therefore, an election doesn’t pass off merely as a process, it evokes emotions for some and provides validation of stand for others.

I was wondering, if there will be a time when even the election result analysis will not be limited to the TV audience, it may well become another extravaganza hosted by these anchors in large arenas. The euphoria involving such detailed analysis, the leads, the ups and downs, and the results will all be watched live by the audience. Like the award functions, the event will blend politics with other fun, frolic, food, and drinks to keep everyone engaged. Social media posts and the relentless FOMO will ensure the cash registers keep ringing. Who said democracy couldn’t be entertaining?

O Marketing!

The other day, while driving, I was trying to change the channels on my car stereo to listen to some good songs but all that I got was the standard FM channels that mostly played the latest sponsored songs and tunes. Not to take away anything from the new tracks and their composers but listening to the same tunes the entire day, across different channels, was too overwhelming. I longed for the old Vivid Bharati kind of broadcast that played popular songs on listeners’ requests. Unfortunately, the Vivid Bharati channel was playing a talk show then. 

Branding and Advertising always existed in my childhood but Marketing as a skill and a critical function emerged more prominently in the post-Manmohan era. Over the years, corporate marketing has moved from a tentative experiment to assuming a CXO-level function across organizations. Be it an everyday selling of consumer goods or a niche software product, the marketing function plays an important strategic role. 

In the current digital era, however, the lines between marketing, influencing, and lobbying have kind of blurred. The marketeers today seem to be taking an easier path by relying heavily on influencers and lobbyists – who seem to be playing a larger role than the pure marketeers. Do a Google search on any product or service, you invariably find a few sponsored offerings matching your search. The social media influencers have created such an aura around them that the otherwise well-educated and skilled youth also consider switching their careers to this new-found profession that gets them a much higher and seemingly easy buck. 

The lobbyists have existed for long – to influence the policymakers at corporate levels. It is legal in some countries, while in others it is a covert operation. But social media influencers are all in open. Be it page-3 of a local daily, a book review, a health column, a new launch brand, a new-found super food, a new restaurant in your neighborhood, a new fashion trend or a new weekend tourist destination – all of these are pushed by a bunch of social media influencers. The new term for them is ‘content creator’ and I read somewhere that we have 2.5 to 3.5 million of these content creators in the country now.  And you don't even take it with a ‘pinch of salt’ as another influencer told you that it was not good for your BP.  While genuine marketing is like going to a well-stocked and attractively colourful fresh vegetable market in the morning, the influencer-led business is like going to a dimly lit vegetable vendor at night and getting a few rotten pieces passed on with your buy.  There is no accountability whatsoever. The influencers don’t overtly represent their recommendations but they do have a vested interest most of the time. 

As late as this morning, a cousin of mine shared in the family whatsapp group, the details about a temple in Bithoor – an obscure little town near my birthplace Kanpur – and asked me if I knew about it. Frankly, in my 20 years of childhood and schooling days, I had heard of Bithoor only in the context of Nana Sahib and Rani Laxmi Bai. But surely, it is the social media influencers who had pulled out ostensibly an architectural and religious gem from the hinterland up north and presented that to my cousin down south in Chennai. So, it is not all bad with the social content creators, perhaps. Building a base of followers is the stepping stone of an influencer – and that’s where, possibly, some genuine knowledge sharing or marketing happens. 

Like the might of a crowd-pulling politician or a movement, the power of an influencer with millions of followership cannot be undermined. And, like the dread of a hafta-seeking local goon, the million-followed influencer shouldn’t become an all-powerful hafta-seeking digital goon. The authorities need to streamline this new skillset of influencers before it becomes a menace, and the genuine marketeers should draw their territory to stay clear of the thin bordering line.