Mumbai Ke Driver Dada

raat ko jaagta to hai ye sheher

lekin is jagte se sheher ko hum ghumate hain

apni laal kaali gadhi ko daudane wale

hum  colaba ke driver dada kehlate hain

umr mein thode bade hai na

to sab sadkarke bulate hain

log Mumbai doston ya parivar ke saath dekhne aate hain

parivar to hmara gaon mein hainn

to apni gaadhi ke sang hi chappa chappa ghum aate hain

passenger baithte hain to “on hire” ko neeche ghumate hain

8 baras hogye humein Mumbai aye, aaj bhi roz  naye raste dhunde jaate hain

Mumbai angrezo ki khaas pasand hai

to unse batiyate, thodi si angrezi hum bhi seekh jaate hain

kabhi pati patni aise mod par baith jaate hain

ke unki ranjish ka kaaran kya hai, jaanne ko hi taras jaate hain

kabhi doston ka samooh aata hai to apne gaon ke dost yaad aate hain

Wo laaparwahi ke pal, aish ke kya din the yaad aate hain

kisi lambi sawari mein to humne pyaar panapte bhi dekha hai

business wale baboo log phone par hi lage reh jaate hain

hum kabhi sochte hain ke najaane kitna hi paisa kamate hain

ek baar ek behad khoobsurat ladki hamari gaadi mein aakar baithi

samajh nahi paye

ki unhe dekhe ya gaadi chalayein

zulfon ka kinara unke chehre par aata jaye

hawa aisi thi ki chaha kar bhi wo use peeche na kar paye

humne bhi socha , yahi mauka hai ke hum hero ban jayein..

sheeshe ke niyantran button ko  humne jaise hi dabaya

rear view mirror mein dekh kar, wo muskaye aur sharmaye

chaahe to hum apni kahani sunate jayein

aise hi kisso ko piro kar hmara din banta jaye

Children of Lesser God

                                                         

She wipes that gummy hanky on her nose

As a speedy vehicle just misses her an inch close

Her tattered dress and dusty feet

Contradicts the smile with which she greets

Her house is the temple besides the crossing

Where the time of evening prayer is her only outing

She seems to be in her early teens

Other girls from her town have been earning through other easy means

She doesn’t know if she is scared or too full of self esteem

To not give into those filthy means

I somehow see her everyday

When I halt at the signal, in scorching sun and under clouds grey

Too early in her life, has she been told to earn

She begs on that signal, as her feet burn

As soon as any school van halts at the cross

She sees some kids frolicking, and some in their books, so engrossed

She wonders what must be in those sheets

That they become learned, and she becomes a beggar, so dependent and meek

Her curious mind asks are they so exceptional, and she just a part of masses?

She wonders if all those luxury cars that halt, drop their glasses

And pray to a different god just for a fleeting while

For she, who stays in the house of god,

Lives a life so hostile

The Dark Herd's Ploy

Running away from those ghastly feline claws,

Trying to take a breather, it hardly paused...

Again The pungent cat-Mitten Whisker had cast it in her ploy

But then agile yet Orphan Ratatouille finally breathed a sigh...

Oh! But , look closer, it had tears rolling down its beady eyes...

For it had become a laughing stock among other mice...

They hated it for reasons unknown...

They exclaimed it was blotched, disfigured and hair overgrown...

Always believingly, it would meekly smile...

But the perpetual agony was heaping as a pile...

With this mute anguish walking by its side, it had reached the street split ...

Traversing the distance it saw a house across, brightly lit...

It thought Cheese would always set its temper right...

And it shall be easy to hunt for food because the house is shining bright...

As it made its grand entry to the basin through a narrow hose...

Gliding down the tube, it walked carefully into the kitchen using its nose

But , Alas! Only to see another little Traitor Rat right beside...

Angrily it thought “why again is the world taking me on a ride!”

This other little traitor was a beautiful rat...

With Spotless white fur and sparkling curious eyes...

Both of them studied each other like spies...

But as it stepped close to feel the fur...

Its head hit the glass and it got a thorough stir...

It realised that the beautiful mouse was no one else but it...

The light of the day has this surprise well knit...

And all this while it was tamed by the Dark Herd’s ploy...

It promised itself; no more shall it dance to the worldly decoys...

It’s the ray of hope, the beam of truth that dawned upon the little Ratatouille...

Soon it shall dawn on you too...

Who said the skies would never be grey,

But there shall be splashes of spectrum to turn it blue...”

The Royal Castle

In a, Once Royal, dejected palace

A mason was summoned and hence he came

Putting the portraits of The Royal Heritage on its walls, was his aim

He promised Lady Sheen to begin the task next dawn without any fail,

He shall hence come back with Hammer & Nail

Next day, before the first spark of sun, he left his tiny shack

With all the necessary tools, packed in his tattered sack

People on his way,

Would Often say-

“Truos, careful!  Your hammer will fall off from that frayed sack anytime”

He always replied, “Like me, it is going to hang in there for some more time”

Good with directions, he reached the palace on his own and decided to begin from the side

That was bright with first sparks of natural light

As he hammered the first nail into the feeble wall

Masses of broken bricks and cement filled one side of the hall

Terrified by what he did to the royal heritage the hall stood for

He wondered should he tell Lady Sheen what she will surely abhor

Or run away and come back later and act in wonder to the masses of stone

And say “may be, in contrast to our wishes, Mighty wind’s power & will is more”

He thus planned to run away,

Come back later in the noon, and act in surprise in Lady Sheen’s sway

Later in the noon he met Lady Sheen and expressed that he was under the weather all this while

Hence could not begin the work in the morning erstwhile

Unaware of what had really happened, Lady Sheen   took him to the Dejected Palace as he covered his tremble in vain

But his pupils dilated as he saw the palace upright again

He thankfully realized it must have been a dream so obscure

Was it fiction or reality, he could not be sure

Lady Sheen thus left him there

He was relieved at all of it it being a trance than thinking that it was a dream of despair

But the Centuries old wandering souls in the Palace decided to take him for a ride

He had ruined their long standing abode, their shrine

He was only a step into the palace when he suddenly decided to run back to Lady Sheen

Because right in the middle of the flapping huge doors, he saw his own Hammer hung in between!!!

The Worse Verses

In the winter of Miami ‘Silly’ and ‘Sloppy’ met each other,
Rejection from their writer had made them grief brothers
They once dreamt of being in the love memos of the Royals
But as god would have it, they were reduced to mere soil
Dejected verses they were,
Both from the quill of Hugo the Knight Ser
The writer had discarded Silly and Sloppy for the better ones
For it was the first memo of the spur of love to the lady from the knight
All eyes were on the letter, none bothered about Silly and Sloppy’s plight...
Soon the pigeon Odball would carry the letter to the Lady’s realm
And the Lady shall be drenched in the Night’s Affectionate Whelm...
But who could save Odball from the omen in the air,
On its way, it was shot by the dreaded bird hunter called the draconian slayer
Thus for the knight, the winter of Miami ended in despair
The letter never reached the lady’s window even after his prayers
But with fading winter came rising spring
Silly and Sloppy got carried in the Upswing
On their way, they saw empires they had never seen
The dancing breeze took them to lands lush green
As Silly and Sloppy recall, they were stationed on the edge of a windowpane
When a beautiful young woman took them by her side
Shredded the dust off as she eyed,
Seeing her name on it she sighed...
The lady couldn’t help her joyful tears...
For she now knew, even the knight loves her and cares
Right then she summoned the Knight
The knight looks at Silly and Sloppy with an astonished eye
To his surprise, what never made it to the Lady was the adorned letter he wrote
Instead it was Silly and Sloppy, his half unfinished notes...
But they still were odes of confession
The first words on the scroll, the first words of expression
Silly and Sloppy had achieved what they were written for
They are memoirs of beginning; they shall now be kept safe in the Castle’s Drawer.

“ Strike Through ”

 “   Strike through    ” 

Do you remember the game ‘Lego’! a seemingly constructive game where blocks are placed over and adjacent to each other to create a master piece, and hold on, the master piece is not an abstract that looks like a vague piece of modern art but something simple, colourful and of interest to the kid like an engine, a super hero, a hut, a war tanker already given as an image to the kid on a paper.. It’s really not just about putting the right shaped block; it’s about maintaining the colour consistency and going through it. But making a new master piece required scraping it off and beginning afresh. As I have grown up and gotten closer to the avenues of being a marketer, it is fun to draw analogies that are more heart felt, much more engraved in the Lizard brain (as neurologists call it).Now imagine if you were left alone in a room only with the lego board and the blocks, and you had to imagine something and create it. How would you begin? Probably, by picturing how something in particular would look like and start with it, unmindful of the dimensions, the colours, you might alter and improvise as you go through. That’s almost how I think about market research. (Oh wait is it Marketingresearch?)  You begin with a probable picture in mind which becomes your hypothesis and then based on what you have experienced/witnessed so far, you initiate it.
   
Market Research Vs Marketing ResearchBefore we jump on two the necessities or un-necessities of the two, lets understand what is exactly the meaning and the difference in the two. Market Research is essentially research related to markets .i.e digging into the market trends like political, economic, social, technology trends, a comparison with direct & indirect competitors. Marketing Research deals with researching about marketing channels/techniques which aid in developing the profile of the customer who would most certainly buy our product.
 Now they are obviously not exclusive fields of research .They over lap when it comes to product pricing, competition analysis and product attribute detailing.Is Market Research really needed  ?As an MBA student , almost 10% of your inbox is filled with survey requests by friends, by  class mates, far acquaintances, and old friendships suddenly pop up  with a “Hi, how are you?” and then are diverted to “ Can you please fill this survey for me?” Today Market Research is a well-defined course in the curriculum, what is often lost in studying the course  in-depth is the why of the course? Is it an optional contemplated step or is it a mandatory prequel.
I am convinced by the need of Marketing research since the results of it are to be applied in answering the question – “How to best reach the potential consumer?” but what lies outside the purview of my understanding is relying  solely on  market research to conclude what product must be created by the company ?Had there been a focus group discussion conducted to understand if the customer needs a bulb, the answers would have been myriad, humans love to form opinions and convince everyone about them, they would say it will generate heat , it might blast and harm someone, it might draw huge power etc. If their opinions had become the underlying opinions, we could have never literally seen  light of the day bulb?   Does that mean a research may not always be a mandate? Well , if we revisit the most amazing inventions and discoveries , not all of them had been a derivation of someone sitting through and mapping the market , finding the need gap and thus telling the scientist /developer to work on it because that is not how high intellect individuals work. Hollow constraints generated by seemingly imperfect survey results might just block the thought process of the scientist/developer.
Is Marketing Research foolproof?And if at all marketing research is what is finally resorted to for understanding which marketing technique should be adopted, what still creates a gap in survey results and actual acceptance of a product by the consumer is that there is a lot of difference in being the real user and being just a respondent .There are a lot of tangents in the human behaviour which do not let him being his real self when he/she is answering for a questionnaire.  Anonymous online surveys do not gauge everything. Exceptions include tapping their first reaction to something that is aesthetically pleasing or their impulse buying behavior.



 A distant dream ?So then are we aiming something ideal, something that is impossible to achieve through Market Research?  Is it a waste resource?Well, the answer is no. What is needed is to strike through the old methodologies used in conducting both market and marketing research. In my opinion marketing research literally needs a dose of its own medicine. It needs to reposition and develop itself. It’s objectives don’t need an alteration. What probably needs to be altered is the approach towards achieving the objective. A shift from asking to observing, from questioning to an informal discussion, from insight to foresight ,from quarterly reports to 24*7 insights, from gauging purely rational reactions to partly emotional reactions because not all choices are logic or aesthetic driven, sometimes all it takes is to identify the connect a product might have with its audience . What is needed is to ‘Strikethrough’ the set procedures, step in to the unexplored because ‘inking new is always in’.

‘CELESTIAL PLAY’

Well, there occurs a play,                                                                                 

A play of life amidst that celestial spin,

                                                      From an elegant crescent to the bright disc

The moon unravels the ethos veiled in

 The canvas begins like the new moon ring,

Shielded by the armor of earth

So that no unwanted colors spill in

The canvas slowly contours into crescent,

Where possessive walls of parental care are shed,

Yet glass doors of fear stay intact,

Where old blends are trusted high

Yet a pin hole of vigor gets an alibi

Then emanates the gibbous phase

Where strokes of poise

Spread to unmapped realms

Where a voluntary thrust has created a fusion,

A fusion of colors of gut , vigor and ambitious dreams

To reach a fork

 Where ‘valley’ or ‘summit’ is just one step away..

Only you don’t know ‘which’ …

Where the inner call and noise of world pull you enough

Only you don’t know which..

 Then knocks the full moon phase

Though the casings are different,

But wisdom is assured,

Because it either gives you wings of triumph

Or crutches to endure

Hence, is the canvas of life really made?

Well, to learn and to unlearn are echoes to each other

Like series of full moon and new moon they occur again..

 Crazy has been the world, so how can celestial art be sane!!

Thus begins a novel canvas all over again,

With a thrust of new amalgams and thoughts unchained.