It was the best of times....

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”

Charles Dickens

Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens may be a century too old to be really relevant today but some things never change. The story of love between two cities. My story is somewhat the same, not in the violence and intrigue of the French Revolution but in the heartbreak and the joy, in the tensions and the anticipations. But the story can wait for another day. Let me just share with you one small but mesmerizing snippet.

We met in Delhi, doing our MBA together. Me, from the backwaters of Kerala; she, from the hills of Uttar Pradesh. Why and when I fell in love can barely be put in words, let me tell you all how I proposed. Here goes.

We had just arrived in Bangalore for our internships, a place where I grew up and the place I consider home base. All my good friends live there and we have been together a long time. I had been there for two days now and they were already fully briefed and very shocked that I had finally taken a girl seriously enough to put in any sort of effort. She was in Bangalore for the first time and had not yet met my friends. They were dying to meet her too.

It was Valentines Day in two days and I was worried about creating an impression. There is this amazingly beautiful hilltop called Skandagiri, a one hour ride from Bangalore and easily Bangalore’s best spot to watch the sun rise. On a beautiful day, one can see the sun rise up through the clouds forming a carpet below the hilltop. For some beautiful minutes, the clouds are no longer in the sky but form an endless ocean of white below our eye-level. We can see the sun pop out through these clouds as the sky slowly begins to light up in shades of orange and red. A sight worth the two hour trek in the dark through narrow steep paths needed to get there.

So we made a plan for my first real Valentines Day proposal. Our key USPs as we saw it was that Bangalore was a new experience for her. Also the fact that she does not recognize my friends would make the plan much easier to execute. I promised to take her to the most beautiful place in Bangalore to watch the sunrise. I told her that my friends would not be able to make it and would join us later. I did, in passing mention the 6km climb but didn’t really push the point. I did tell her to wear trekking shoes though. She never says no.

The day before was spent in shopping and putting the plan in place. All credit to my sweetheart girl friends who hand held me through the process of selecting the right weapons to take to this battle of life. Gifts and fancy items seem Greek and Latin to me.

It was a normal cold Bangalore night when I picked her up for the ride to Skandagiri. My friends had planned to leave a little after us and overtake our bike along the way. We did consider some light hearted banter when they crossed us to spice up the occasion but we decided on playing it safe unless we give the game away. It was a long cold but adrenalin filled ride in the cold, covered from head to toe in wool. Falling ill would really not do. When my friends passed us halfway through the ride without even a backward glance, I knew the plan would work.

We reached the base of the hill at around 3.30 AM and had two hours to get up the hill in time for sunrise. It is a steep and somewhat dangerous climb using flashlights but we were not the only ones there. The narrow pathways had numerous groups, gangs like my friends as well as couples like us. Almost two hours later, we were at the top, all tired and warmed up in the chilly air. Like so many others we were now waiting for sunrise with hot tea, steaming Maggi and my sometimes terrible jokes for company. She was pretty tired already. I was counting on her being tired so as not to recognize any of my friends by mistake from their photos. I felt she almost looked like a lamb going to slaughter. Not the best analogy I know.

While she was resting, I was texting and coordinating with my friends. The whole plan had to be set in motion as soon as the sun rises. It helped that we had been here numerous times and knew the place well.

Soon the sky started showing the first rays of light. It was indeed a beautiful day, one as beautiful as any I had seen. I led her to the most beautiful spot on the hill, one from where the clouds could be seen in three directions stretching out to the horizon. Rays of light were shining through from the east reflecting off the clouds in myriad shades of gold. She was already mesmerized and could not stop staring except for the odd photograph. I led her to another spot, a kind of secluded corner of the hill with just as good a view. Here there were huge concrete slabs, kept there like some modern day Stonehenge where groups could pose and click awesome pictures with the amazing sunrise as the background. In the middle was one huge flat slab, kind of like a table at the corner of the hill. I slowly led her to it, distracting her with the view and inane chit chat. On it was kept her Valentines Day presents, a small shining ring decorated with bouquets and chocolates and a small note with her name and three words on it. I had spent some real effort on the calligraphy. Taking her right next to it, I showed it to her and she was shocked. She literally started competing with the sun on who could be redder.

And the timing was perfect. The day had begun to shine bright as she checked out her surprise smiling and blushing like a kid. I was waiting for her to finish thinking “Damn, I love her” and “Wow, I actually managed to get this done”. As she came back to me giving me a long hug, with a huge grin and moist eyes, I knew it had all worked out.

But I was not done yet. I asked her to come with me and check out the place further. On every pole was painted a heart with her name in it and a rose stuck on it. I had some good artists among my friends. She once again was really impressed but this time she asked the right question.

“Who did all this?”

That was my cue to shout “Guys!!” and all my friends who were roaming about pretending to be nobody came bounding in. They were just as pleased as I was with the success of the whole plan. She really was floored and could barely utter a word when all my friends started congratulating and pestering her. She did manage to say “No more surprises please”.

It was an unforgettable day. She will vouch for it. Long lens cameras had ensured that every moment was captured for the future. We spent the rest of the day clicking photos and roaming around as she came to know my friends.

We did not speak much that day, but then we had decided we have our whole lives in front of us to do that.

And we knew that life would be so much less fun without some real good friends in it.


Written for Close-Up Cupid Games 2015
http://cupidgames.closeup.in/.

Life is a dump!

Waking up in the morning today, I was royally pissed off. I landed my feet directly on yesterday’s leftover pizza. Well not the pizza exactly, that was well digested by then, but the half empty ketchup sachets and plastic wraps. Irritated, I pick them up and throw them out of the back window cursing myself for not doing so last night when the neighbors were sleeping. But that’s okay. They had given up on me long ago.

In fact the dump behind my house is a mystery in itself. Other than the belief that gravity will bring down anything I throw it that general direction, I have no clue what or who is across the wall. But no more about the dump. The pizza has made me hungry. Breakfast involves shifting through a forest of empty, semi empty and non empty packets or cups of food and drinks. The oldest at the back (some have started decomposing and becoming a part of the fridge like those dead sailors in Pirates of the Caribbean) and the latest in the front. In my fridge it does not matter if the cup is half empty or half full, it only matters if it’s drinkable or not.

So I find some bread, cheese and some soft drinks that have become too soft with age and I am ready to get ready for office. As I have time, I thought I’ll clear the fridge a little. Looks pretty challenging. But I get it done and now I have my kitchen floor looking like a veritable dump. I am pretty sure the dump I was talking about would not be much different. Okay so I have to clear this now. I shove everything into some huge polythene covers and wonder where to put them. They are a little too big to throw out of the window. And I am absolutely positive I will not be carrying them anywhere near the designated garbage bins in our area. In fact I don’t believe anybody but cows and dogs use them anyway.

So I thought, let me just go down around and behind my flat and throw it over the wall from there. All that hard work and I've decided to anyway take a peep over the wall. How bad can it be? So I throw the bags over the wall and climb on a railing to take a peek.

And what do I see. There is an small colony of people living (living is really not the right word) in a narrow channel between two apartments. The walls hide them from whoever might evacuate them and they have built themselves small tents between mounds of garbage thrown from the apartments. No I was not the only one, it was a dump for half the people staying there. These people had to suffer litter thrown at them all times of day, their kids running around and playing in stuff animals would barely suffer.

And almost all the refuse there is plastic. They cannot even discreetly burn away the garbage without the apartments coming to know about it.

Do they have any choice? If they are noticed, they will be blamed for their lack of hygiene, as a health hazard to the rich and pampered throwers of waste over walls and will have nowhere to live. Those who have made the place dirty will never be held responsible, it will be those who try to string a miserable life together in the dump that shall be punished.

So much for the peep. While one part of me is relieved to be among the rich and pampered throwers of waste over walls, another part has just got a rude awakening. The dump had from being an unknown drop point for all the crap I generate had just turned up as a symbol for all the trials and travesties of human life.

I refuse to preach before I practice. I need a new place to dump my waste. 

Written for "The Great Indian Litterbug"
by Times Of India - http://greatindian.timesofindia.com/

I hate Pimples!

Always wanted to write something putting myself in a girls designer shoes. This is me thinking like a girl, trying to be as real as I can make it, watering down my multiple perceptions on how impossible they really can be. As you all know, they are not supposed to be understood....
Here goes.


It was a normal day’s morning. I woke up late, my hair was as much of a mess as ever and I was sure to be late for office. Had slept late and so my head felt groggy. It took me two peeks at the mirror to notice it.

Have you even seen one of those optical illusions where you notice nothing at first but then once you see it, it stands out and seems to be jumping into your eyes. Well it was the same feeling. But this was no image, it was my own reflection and the thing jumping out at me was my biggest fear, my most hated disease; a big, red, juicy, throbbing PIMPLE!

In one second, in the mirror, my whole life flashed in front of me. I have had just three pimples before this, but all of them were just as big and bad and all seem to come up only on my forehead, standing out like flashing red lights on white ambassador cars. The first time, I did not worry too much until my friends started staring at me as I I just grew a pair of horns. I was just in high school and my girl pack spent the next twenty minutes telling stories of their aunts or neighbors with pockmarked faces who never get a second glance. I had nightmares that day though mom told me it was normal.

That experience scarred me for life. That along with other girls my age who were just as terror struck. “I just broke a pimple”, “I got two together, twoooo!”, “that mark is still visible, will it ever go??” were call signs to days of chronic depression and zero self esteem. The other two times I had a pimple before, my support systems used to be cosmetics, skin creams and hours of shedding tears in front of the mirror. It did not matter if they covered the pimples, they were there to cover my torn self esteem.

But now I am a little grown up. At least I like to think that way. I do not have the time to spend hours crying in front of the mirror. I have half an hour to drag my sorry face to office and I cannot spend it crying. Though I can feel my eyes welling up, I also have to make my hair and select my clothes. Do I not have a single suit that matches with a big red pimple? I could so easily sit here and cry.

But as I said, I have grown up a little. Having a pimple and a job seemed better than having a pimple and no job. So a little makeup, a regular red suit and off I was to office. I was late anyway so I took the time to go to the shop nearby and buy myself a new face-wash. My old face-wash had cheated me, betrayed my trust and given me a pimple; I shall never touch it ever again. Seeing myself in the shop mirror depressed me again but the cosmetics and face-wash section got my spirits up again. One thing a girl never loses confidence in is cosmetics and beauty care products. If one fails, there is always another, with an even more perfect celebrity endorsing it. And they do work, no matter every guy gets a shock seeing my collection of beauty products. Some work better than others.

Mom used to tell me, just make sure your face is clean and not oily. So I keep washing my face. I just bought myself a new face-wash, and that’s something I can use all day. It stays in my handbag and I make sure that every time I walk into a ladies room, I give my face a gentle cleansing. It refreshes my face and my confidence. I work hard all day, at least my face gets its share of freshness. The pimple doesn't bother me as much now that I know I am treating it well.

It will be gone in a few days, and I shall once have more time to select the perfect suit and put on the perfect eyeliner without my eyes welling up. And I intend to make sure it never comes back. My new face-wash is going to be my personal bodyguard against it happening ever again. I feel so much better already.



Written for Garnier.
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bit.ly/GarnierPureActiveNeemWebsite

Service Retail - An Overview

The Indian organized service retail industry can be considered to have grown from having taken its baby steps to having begun to blossom in its youth. Today one of the major verticals of service retail, the wellness and beauty industry has seen the entry of multiple organized players turning an entirely neighborhood business into a battleground for growth and innovation.

Service retail, to be more specific, the business of selling an intangible service directly to a customer at a fixed location has multiple limitations with respect to its perception and scale-ability while at the same time can boast of numerous advantages, the most important being high margins and lower operational costs.

Brand value for service companies has always been a difficult hill to climb as the common customer fails to register the importance of the brand in the value that has been provided.  With results being intangible (beauty is in the eyes of the beholder while health is always judged on one’s sacrifices to attain it) the credit more often than not goes to the client touch point – the stylist or the gym trainer. Imagine the credit for an excellent perfume going not to Brut or Chanel but to the saleswoman who suggested it. Hence brand building remains a huge challenge, affecting both the valuation of companies as well as single location scale-ability. For example, a successful product retailer can easily build a 50,000 sq.ft. mega-store with multiple SKU’s and brands while even the best beauty and wellness retailer is limited to a maximum of a 5000 sq.ft. carpet area.

This disadvantage is offset by large margins, generated by lower product costs and operational expenses. Saving in logistics, inventory, shrinkage etc leads to much lower bottom lines enabling companies to increase the number of outlets much faster. Thus we see the major players growing in numbers exponentially. In the beauty segment, the major players are easily able to open 50 to 60 outlets in every large city (in some cases more than a hundred) as capital investment costs are low and monthly expenses even lower. The franchise model has ensured that lack of capital need not be a hindrance to brand expansion if the business model adds value to the investor.

But being a localized business, no service retailer can realistically have a customer catchment of more than a few kilometers in a city. Thus the threat of competition is high and saturation in a major threat. The huge margins available have led to heavy price wars hitting the top lines while the importance of word of mouth publicity in brand perception has led to no brand being able to leverage its successes in new markets. Intra-city growth has been easy for all players while inter-city expansion is a major roadblock.

Though there are a lot of problems to be ironed out before any brand in any of the service retail verticals can claim to have reached a level of stability, the outlook for the industry remains highly positive with a growing middle class with deeper pockets driving demand and an increasing number of players driving supply. While product retailers increase their dependence on services to differentiate themselves from the competition, service retail in itself will soon hold its own in the Indian retail space.