I am serious and no I am not nuts

Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you nuts? No marks for guessing who asked this. Full marks to the journalist for the ambush. Brilliant Work!!

My blog is about the absolute nightmare that some people would have had gone through after this. The setting was apparently opening up of health club at one of the five star hotels. The organiser's PR consultancy/ In-house team would have invited page 3/ features set of media to attend I presume. Things would have probably have been going on smoothly till the time the journalist decided that it would be good fun to follow up with a question on land scam after a question on importance of Gymming/ health. I didn't see the question on health aspect on any of the channel but guess that was it based on the way the byte was going on till then. I have gone through this nightmare in my PR career a few times when the journalist meeting my client has gone absolutely off-tangent. Guess, these are perils of the career -:) and to be honest quite a few times I have seen spokespersons going completely off-subject. 

Coming back to the incident, there was always a danger that a crisis like this would happen when you call someone who is going through a controversy. I am not sure if an expected guest list was shared with media or if the journalist simply was at the right spot at the right time but the damage was done. One school of PR would probably say that this has got additional publicity for an event which was otherwise small. Well, I don't agree. 


This incident reminded me of something similar that happened with me about 11 or 12 years back. I was a rookie then working with one of India's top agencies. I don't remember the exact names but one of US's former top government officials was on board of an international Insurance giant and was visiting India. We did some interviews for him with editors of print media, wires and couple of business channels during the day. 


The last engagement for him was an interview with a prominent channel in their studio in GK to be aired live at prime time. It was also clear that the discussion would be political and not on business. So there I was sitting with the Spokesperson and company's head in India in the NDTV lounge waiting for the interview to begin. 

Suddenly, the Iraqi ambassador to India walked in to the lounge. The spokesperson was all grace and met the Iraqi ambassador very warmly but the moment he was out of eyesight he was livid on the channel for inviting the Iraqi ambassador as well. On top of that the channel was trying to put them both on the same panel. However, some negotiations later things were sorted so that our spokesperson went first and then after a break the Iraqi ambassador. Mind you this was sort of just before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. I was terrified to say the least but ultimately things went 
off well and the spokesperson as well as India head were 
all praise for our efforts.  

Disclaimer: I am not supporting any political party/ person in the incident. This is purely from a communications practitioners perspective. 

Could the "are you serious" incident have been avoided? I look forward to your comments on this. 

The Human Group

Some days ago I was very perturbed with various incidents happening in the world. Right from racist attacks, communal violence to civil wars - everything possibly disgusting was happening in the world.

I had then decided to form a group for like-minded people on facebook who take humans and humans and are not prejudiced with anything.

URL: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=104113353823&ref=ts

I gave the description of the group as below:

Those Human beings who don't believe in nationalities, races, colour, religions, castes, genders etc. are welcome to be the part of this group.

The group stems from sadness and frustration on the physical and mental violence being inflicted the world over for any of the above reasons or some other reason.

I don't know at this point of time what will be the purpose of the group and what will we achieve right now I just want humans to join in for what they were. Just Humans.
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I then sent invite to about 100 people randomly to join the group and guess what only four of my friends have joined this group. I had also thought that maybe people would search for such a group and join.

The idea for me was not to do anything with the group (maybe that will follow later) but be reassured myself and also assure others in the group that there are others who share their beliefs.

While its comforting that there are four humans in the world I am worried that there are 96 others who are prejudiced.

Is it really that difficult to leave our prejudices? Have we been too conditioned so as to not change?

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I would again request for feedback.

Happiness or Contentment

I reckon that people all over the world are craving happiness and we often hear the words "yaar - pata nahin kyon but main khush nahin hoon, kuch mazaa nahin aa raha life mein." I really don't understand what happiness are they talking about. Do we even understand what happiness is?

As in my previous post the problem with happiness is that there are no clear parameters to it. Our benchmarks of happiness keep changing with circumstances.

In this scenario I think its important to begin by understanding what really makes us happy and what does happiness mean to us? Is it being together with family? Is it reaching the top position in an organisation or is it giving joy to others? Whats that one thing that will make us happy.

Once we have understod that one factor, we should be focused on achieveing just that. We have to properly plan and be relentless in our approach once we are set on something. Write it down in front of you, break it into various milestones but work towards it.

I firmly believe that to achieve great happiness you have to under go great hard work and sadness too.

Please don't change the yardstick once you have achieved something. At the end of the day I beleive its not happiness but contentment that matters.

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In this post I have tried to debate this lack of happiness syndrome and debate how we can go ahead pursuing happiness. Your comments will be enlightening. Please let me know how you would measure happiness and your approach to happiness.

Haazaron kwaashen aisi

"Haazaron kwaashen aisi ke har khwaish pe dam nikle, Bahut nikle mere armaan, lekin phir bhi dam nikle"

This line from Ghalib more or less sums up my own perspective on life and from here I start my blogging journey.

When I was in school I desired passing out from the school quickly and getting into the college life. During college I wanted to get over with it quickly and get into a job and start earning money. Once I joined a job I started dreaming about opening my own company. Having done that today I feel like going back to the school again. I want to lead that innocent and tension-free life again when the only hassles in life used to be the Unit-Tests, Half-Yearly and Annual exams. When I didn't know what was recession or the great depression.

I want to run away from the internet and look forward to receive that cute little 25 paise postcard. I feel like swtiching off my mobile and waiting for the good old MTNL phone to ring. I then want to take the receiver off and forget about anyone disturbing me. I would love to throw away my ATM card and wait in the banks with the token number in my hand.

Ofcourse Ghalib Sahab, the problem with Khwaeeshen are that they are ever-changing. How I wish that I didn't know the meaning of Khwaeeshen at all.

To conclude I would like to quote a line from another famous poet and lyricist - Shailendra. "Koi Lauta De mere Beete Hue Din."
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P.S: Please do give your feedback.