Abhijit Bhaduri’s Blog
I write about careers, skills and the world of work. The cartoons and sketches are mine.
The Charm of Raga Bhatiyar
Raga Bhatiyar is a raga you listen to as you are still in bed, in that half asleep half awake state. Almost like what the first day of the calendar feels like. A little hazy as you still dwell on the last year gone by before you wonder what lies ahead as the year unfolds. This raga is unhurried. It is a raga that is full of hope.
The Art of Choosing
How do we make choices? What goes behind any choice making process? Do you choose based on data and logic? Do you choose based on your gut? The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI categorizes people on the basis of their yardstick of making choices. To what extent is our choice making conditioned by our levels of education or the culture we have grown up in? Are there situations when people may feel relieved that they do not need to make a choice? We are continuously making choices and living with the consequences of making those choices. There are moments when we make a choice and a moment later wish that we could start again. "Choice can be a burden, but without choice, our life loses meaning", says author Sheena Iyengar in her ground breaking book The Art of Choosing. The headlines first - I LOVED the book. It is a must read. Here's why ...
The Charm of Raga Lalit
Bharatpur for me is much more than the national park. It was about discovering the flavor of Raga Lalit. That morning in Bharatpur, I woke up early. I stared out of the window and looked at the first rays of the sun. It was cold and I sat up in bed still wrapped up and snug in the crumpled sheet. The gardener of the hotel was busy watering the gorgeous flowers. His day must have started early. All India Radio was playing Raga Lalit by Ustad Bismillah Khan. Bismillah is a word used to invoke God's blessings before the start of anything auspicious. The old transistor had seen better days for sure. Yet all that did not seem to matter as the gardener went about stooping over the marigolds and showering them before patting away extra water from the leaves. The fog had not yet lifted fully. The notes of Raga Lalit wafted through the fog ...
Peepli Live
Natha (played by Omkar Das Manikpuri) and Budhia (Raghubir Yadav) are two brothers who are impoverished farmers who cannot repay their loans. The Govt has announced a "relief" of about $2000 to the family of every farmer who commits suicide. Budhia comes up with this idea of encouraging his brother to commit suicide. In a weak moment Natha succumbs to that passing thought.
Udaan
Four school mates scale the walls of the Boys Hostel to watch a seedy B Grade film Kanti Singh Ke Angoor. To their horror they discover that the middle aged man getting cozy with a woman in the row behind them is the Hostel warden. This chance encounter turns a harmless teenage adventure into the beginning of a life changing experience. Forced to come back to Jamshedpur to live with his authoritarian father who Rohan - the protagonist (Rajat Barmecha) has not met for eight years. Udaan is the story that is beautifully layered. There is the relationship among four friends that is brief but endearing. Rohan is coming back home to a father (brilliant performance by Ronit Roy) who scoffs at his poems and does not hesitate to wallop him mercilessly when drunk. Rohan is forced to sign up to study Engineering and work in his father's small run down foundry. It is grim existence for a dreamer. Rohan still manages to sit on the banks of Subarnarekha river and write some really sensitive poetry. The other layer in the story is the brilliantly handled relationship between Rohan and his 6 year old step brother (played by Aayan Boradia).
Mother Pious Lady
I have always believed that India has had two landmark events that continues to impact where we are headed as a nation. Political independence happened in 1947 and then economic independence happened - at least for the middle class in 1991 when India took the big bold step towards liberalization. I think we had to achieve political independence to make way for economic independence. I believe that political and economic freedom will clear the way for India to build an inclusive society that will help us to say that we have achieved social freedom as well. There are many ways to understand a society. When societal shifts take place, they show up in many places because the expected traditional behavior gets replaced or gets reflected in a new idiom. While some things change, at least at the surface, they tend to show up in mysterious ways. You need a sharp eye to observe these, decode them and then hold up a mirror so that others understand it too. Santosh Desai's book Mother Pious Lady tends to offer these priceless nuggets of insight about contemporary India by leveraging the insights that he has of Indian consumers thanks to his years of experience in advertising. Add to it his insightful, entertaining and pungent style of writing. Mother Pious Lady is all that.Santosh talks about advertising often (See this video) and is a popular choice as a speaker in in advertising forums in India and abroad. It is difficult to describe India and Indians in short snapshots. Here is an ad I found to be insightful and hilarious.Mother Pious Lady is a lot like that ad you just saw. It has loads of short essays that take up different elements of everyday India. If you are intrigued about what the title means, it is from a matrimonial ad that Santosh came across once :) Matrimonials are a great insight into a society. For a society obsessed with fair skin (Just look at the number of skin lightening products in India starting from Fair & Lovely by Unilever), it is not surprising to see that showing up in ads. "Wheatish complexion, slim and homely, KKB, non Manglik, 5'3", father very high govt official, mother pious lady, brother MBA with handsome salary seeks respectable marriage" is a complex code that can be understood only by an Indian. Here is Russel Peters (a stand up Canadian comedian who is of Indian origin) describing his take on arranged marriages. Or this ad for that matter...Why during any event, are hordes of volunteers wearing large badges made of ribbon running around barking orders looking very busy? Why will someone when caught jumping a traffic light yell back at the cop, "Do you know who I am??". Why is squeezing the last drop out of any bargain so intrinsically coded in our genes? Why do stainless steel utensils matter to us? Insights on food, music, Bollywood etc all find place in this book. Are all the essays equally insightful and entertaining - ummm no. But then that should not be expected in a book which has almost a 100 essays and peeks into a psyche as complex as India's.The language is witty. The symbols get decoded and little by little things that have always made sense only to Indians gets to make sense. I loved the book. To understand what economic freedom does to a society, look at how it has affected consumer behavior and then get an ad guru to describe it in an interesting manner. Mother Pious Lady does just that.
Rajneeti
Prakash Jha the director of Rajneeti, is a multi faceted person. From his first documentary made in 1974, his body of work spans more than 25 documentaries, nine feature films, two television features and three television series. My favorite would have to be Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne, a popular Hindi TV comedy serial based on James Thurber's novel The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In 1989, he took a sabbatical from films, and moved to Bihar for four years, during period he formed two organizations, Anubhooti, which trains young people from region, in film making, and Samvedan, in Champaran, to promote small and micro industries. The National Award winning film Gangaajal (trans: Water of the Ganges) made in 2003 based on the infamous incident in 1980 in Bhagalpur, Bihar when 31 undertrials were blinded by cops pouring acid in their eyes. Prakash Jha is no stranger to storytelling. Rajneeti (Trans: Politics) is a blend of the great Indian epic Mahabharat, some elements of dynastic politics of India's ruling party and generous "tributes" to The Godfather.
Mass Market Novels at Two Dollars
According to Yahoo News, 'Books such as 'Almost Single', 'The Zoya Factor', 'Bombay Rains' and 'Keep off the Grass', 'Married But Available', 'Secrets and Lies', and very recently 'Keep the Change Year After Year' have been a series of titles from Indian authors for the Indian audience that end up doing big numbers,' Lipika Bhushan of Harper Collins said.
The Hurt Locker
Husband and wife both get nominated for Academy Awards. Husband's film has already grossed up big bucks and big awards. The bets are on. Everyone knows that no woman director ever wins the Oscar for being the Best Director. Especially when the husband is James Cameron who has made movies like Titanic and the runaway success called Avatar. She tends to make these action movies. A woman making an action flick in Hollywood may get appreciation but not the big award. The big night is here and the Oscar for the best director goes to ...
London Philharmonic and KCP4
If there was one musician in KCP4 who really plays oblivious of the crowd, it was the pianist Mike Herting. He listens to the opening vocals and then peers close to the keys of the piano as if just the way the diamond merchant would look to see that no precious stone from his collection would be missed. He mumbles to himself, he hums the note that he is playing and then with each improvisation, experiences the bliss that comes from playing good music. By the time the song is over, his hair is dishevelled, his specs are foggy and he looks more like a scientist emerging from his lab. But oh what talent... he was just incredible.
Ishqiya
Director Abhishek Choubey first assisted Vishal Bhardwaj when Vishal was shooting for the children's film Makdee in 2002 and then was the Asstt Director for him in The Blue Umbrella, Maqbool and Omkara. Ishqiya is Abhishek Choubey's debut film as Director. The much acclaimed Kaminey last film by Vishal Bhardwaj (Kaminey) also had Abhishek doing the screenplay. ISHQIYA sees Vishal and Abhishek teaming up with Sabrina Dhawan to write a crackling screenplay that makes for a film that is will remind you of Omkara and Maqbool in terms of its stylised story telling and powerful music.
Three Idiots
What do you get when you take an author like Chetan Bhagat who writes bestsellers, a director like Raju Hirani who directs hit movies like the Munna Bhai series, an actor like Aamir Khan who knows not just how to act but also can teach many MBAs a thing or two about how to market a film to the masses? The answer is 3 Idiots.
The McKinsey Way
Some books never lose their relevance. This is one such book. This book written in Feb '99 continues to be relevant even today. Ethan Rasiel, an ex-employee of McKinsey, gave us a peek behind the curtains of McKinsey, arguably the world's most high profile consultant. Like all things high profile, there are myths and legends that are borne out of such larger than life reputations. More than 18,000 of their alumni work across every sector in 80 countries - they have no central office! They boast of alumni (see list here) like Kenichi Ohmae, Tom Peters, Helmut Kohl to name a few. At Business School campuses across the world they remain a coveted (and controversial) employer. They So what makes The Firm (as they like to call themselves) special?