Sparkling Sprite

a slip of mood into my alter ego

Playing the Youth Card

What is it with cola giants and the youth??? Every brand strategy begins and ends with us mindless overgrown children. If you did your research right you would know that we're not as intellectually deficient as you make us out to be(ok may be some of us are dumb...but stop generalizing!!!) This is the usual scenario at a cola company's brand placement meeting:

Exec 1: "The damn dentists are telling all the lil kids no more cola or your teeth will rot and that means injections. The tiny morons are now averse to our product. We've lost out to cavities."

Exec 2: "What about grown ups? People who either brush before sleeping or don't really care what happens to their teeth."

Exec 1: "Well...they used to think it was cool to always have a bottle of cola in the refrigerator. That is, until all the aunties started following stupid diets. And now the whole pesticide issue, so even the uncles have switched from rum n coke to gin n tonic."

Exec 2: "Damn farmers with degrees in chemistry! So what now?"

Exec 3: "umm...I have an idea. What about the youth? They don't give tuppence bout what anyone says anyway...and they sure don't seem to care about what goes in..."

Exec 1&2: "aaaah"

With this started the whole youth campaign. GenX= Generation Next, followed by GenY= Generation Youth(I'm guessing). I would forgive someone for thinking these were gene-altering beverages.
This brings us to Youngistaan, or rather, Dumbistaan(courtesy, M from M&M). Acknowledging our "cool" quotient isn't going to get you any consumers.

Colas are BEVERAGES!!!!! They DO NOT determine whether I'm cool or not. These ads are trying to take peer pressure to another level altogether. I like colas. I like colas because:
1. They are cold(sometimes)
2. They are sweet.
3. They are fizzy(although i know a lot of people who wait for their cola to go flat before drinking it)
and most importantly....
4. these things are LOADED with caffeine!!!!! and everyone knows Caffeine+Sucrose= major adrenaline rush
*author's note- you're just dumb if you didn't know why you're insomniac after a bottle of pepsi...they say refreshing...i say Caffeine Addiction.

I am under no illusion whatsoever that colas:
1. make me "Cooler" than Bollywood stars(ref: Uncle)
2. are more desirable than my significant other(ref: Thumbs Up TVCs)
3. make me so convincing as an extra-terrestrial that parents are no more an obstacle in my love/sex life


so seriously, the day any of my "peers" starts giving a damn about whether I drink a cola or not, I'll eat "my can", I promise!

My Virtual Umbilical Cord (and no, this is not about the progress in medical technology!)

The age of the global citizen...half my childhood buddies are all over the world...i know at least one person in every continent(maybe even antarctica..i wudn't be surprised) friendships made for life...with only a geographical barrier...bridged by something as technological as the internet.

Technology and relationships don't mix, like cold steel and heartfelt warmth maybe? Well, I'd beg to differ.
School friends, college friends, colleagues, friends' friends, a lot of alliances you would best forget but there are just as many that matter so much. My best friend in 6th grade who left for boarding school in Jaipur. Or another bestie who moved home to Kiwiland when i was 13. My first crush who has lived in Toronto since we were 10, but i got in touch with again 8 years later...all thanks to Facebook.

With such fast paced lives and with everyone in a different part of the world it's difficult to catch up for even a cursory drink, making the Boozemail application one of the largest used on Facebook. With newsfeeds giving you a play by play update on your friend's lives(which you can update the settings of to ignore lesser acquaintances, and bring your inner circle into the limelight) to building an entirely virtual social life for the simple reason that, having a real one that functions the same way, is plain impossible.

Facebook is what binds me to my old friends and actually helps me get closer to people I never got a chance to bond with earlier. You may realise that you and a casual friend may have similar interests from the groups you join, the applications you prefer, and a million other things considering Facebook is so customised you can read a person's personality just by visiting their profile page. for eg. Karun and I studied in the same class for 6 years in school, casual friends, but he only realised i was a fellow fan of The Doors when he read my status message. It simply said, 'Bianca is: stoned immaculate'

Friendships are born out of sticky situations, escapades, lurid stories brimful of laughter and tears. Getting caught for bunking maths class and playing basketball instead or talking about your dreams and your passion over a cup of coffee while watching a beautiful sunset cannot be recreated even with the best graphics. We bond through sharing good times and the not-so-good (rather horrible, horrendous and torturous) ones and this is not an emotion that transmits through an LCD screen. So when you think about it, Facebook is nothing close to the real thing, but it's one hell of a replacement when the real world is out of reach.

Tribute

trembling....i realise how wrong we can be. we dislike, loathe, even hate without a second thought. i was told to keep faith that it was for the greater good. but reason overtook and clouded my immovable belief. they said they were good, they said they knew! it was pure solid proof, it happened before my eyes, i saw that last look of fear, of betrayal in those twinkling blue eyes, how could i be wrong? the rock i'd leaned on was gone, but did that mean i should have shed all that that very rock had taught me. mere childish rivalry had beguiled me and i was prey to prejudice. there were smoldering kinders of trust but i tried my best to extinguish them. now, m glad i never succeeded. i should have known, he loved her didn't he? but i feel the repercussions....its over, irrevocable....and i weep...

hmm...

was reading the fountainhead(again) and dint finish it(again)...but had to give this excerpt a mention....right in the beginning, on pg. 16, is one of Roark's first bit of expression that gives u an insight into his "monstrous" ideas.

"Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important- what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right- so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand."

This got me thinking.
Why do I not accept my self-worth? Why must I deny my abilities and fake humility in order to be a good human being? Why do we thrive on acceptance? Why is there is a right and a wrong way of being offbeat? Why does the system get me down? Why is something cool and something else not? Why have I always been told that the competition is better than me? Why does the competition affect me? Why is it that when I know my purpose, suddenly I'm insane? and why is it that if realization of that purpose happens to bring me worldly success I'm eccentric, a genius?
You would probably say something redundant like, "man is a social animal." Well, is he?
Why do we make such general statements?

Why is everything so B&W???
Where do I put my shades of grey???

News Muse

According to Wikipedia, “News is any new information or information on current events which is relayed by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.”
This definition is being taken in the very literal sense by the media which continues to spew out pointless crap and we lap it up like an IIT student would a law of Newton’s. Now, news is just an excuse to make money off the classifieds. The real issues aren’t even visible through this mist of pseudo-journalism. I apologize for not conjuring up a more novel example but let’s give a thought to how victories and defeats in cricket end up as first page news but no one gives a damn about the deterioration of our ecosystems.
During a lecture in 12th std Hindi a few months ago, the usual soporific state of the class was disturbed by a discussion by my professor. He told us that he was now afraid to let his 13 yr old daughter read the newspaper in fear that she would be influenced by wrong ideals and lose all the traditional Indian sensibilities instilled in her. Prof. Shukla then went on to say that, when he was young, parents encouraged their offspring to give great attention to the news material of those times. Those magazines had words of inspiration, speeches of motivation and articles of insight that helped the youth of the day base their life principles on.
But now, the entire scenario has taken a 180 degree flip. The mass media is now only a mouthpiece for bad tidings like murder, rape, fraud, fall-outs between families, partners of corporate firms and film stars turning into delinquents. Asking your child to read the newspaper is like asking them to play with fire.
The lighter sections of the paper now consist of a whole load of meaningless gossip that the paparazzi keep churning out. As I had discussed at work, try as I may to avoid the Hurley-Nayyar wedding fiasco, updates on their “amazing, celebrity lives” stare out at you from every news dailies. But the sky rocketing of interest rates of housing loans that is affecting the economy right from the monthly budget of the working youth to the entire nation’s course of banking is being ignored like a weak student in a class of geniuses. No one cares two hoots about the socio-economical progress of mankind.
Eventually it all boils down to us, the readers. We can’t blame the establishments for publishing futile information. Nobody asks us to accept that kind of reporting, we do it all of our own accord. Given a choice we would rather read about Jennifer Aniston’s next beau than the depleting ozone layer. We prefer the leisure sections full of cheesy humor and articles about how to understand the opposite sex. Reading how to cope with our senseless existence lures us against reading about the disintegration of our social system. So, we shall continue with our BTs, HTcafes and DNA After Hours, while the editions keep increasing in size with more and more supplements added to them day after day to persuade a different sect of readers into choosing their moronic ranting over others’. And as the papers pile up the only consolation is that we now earn more while selling off the old stacks every month.

LOST!

Once again this morning I was faced with what seems to be the bane of every girl’s existence- what should I wear today? I decided it was time to shop as all that I owned was probably last century. Not one to follow tiny ripples in the stream of fashion, I dragged one of my fashion-slave-friends along. She went on about how this was all the rage right now and how that was sooooo IN!!!!!!! By the end of the day I decided to go back to my basic grey denim capris and black top.
None of the clothes I’d seen had suited my individual style at all. That’s when my blatant idiocy struck me like a water balloon. I was looking for my unique taste in the very clothes which practically everyone was going crazy over… I can see where I had trouble. But then again don’t we do this with life too? We try and please everyone by doing what they like and expect personal happiness at the same time. This is why we’re so confused, with the world and within ourselves. We’re trying to gain acceptance from our peers, become the pride of our parents and conform to the norms of society, all the while wanting to leave a mark, make a distinct impression in the sands of time, full of footprints.
The reason we teens are misunderstood today, and always, is because of all this self-contradiction, all this internal conflict. We cry when we are alone, abuse our minds and bodies, all for some respite. We worry, we dramatize, we rant and we weep. If only we knew what we wanted out of ourselves, there would be no need for all of this. But if we did know what we wanted, we wouldn’t be human now, would we?

“Oh, why d’yu havta go n make things so complicated
I see the way ur actin’ like ur somebody else gets me frustrated
Life’s like this you
N you fall n u crawl n you break n you take whatcha get
And turn it into
Honesty and promise me I’m never gonna find you fake it…no, no, no…”
-Complicated, Avril Lavigne