When I had read about Shyam Benegal directing a movie with Shreyas Talpade in the lead, it was called Madhav Ka Sajjanpur. And I wonder why the title was anglicized later to Welcome to Sajjanpur when the story is perceived and described through a village erudite called Madhav. And indeed traces of the original title still remain on the censor board certification displayed before the movie starts if you pay attention.
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A Report from Kochi
My business trips take me to places in and around India and it’s exciting to meet new people and enlighten them on the delicate facets of design. Though my sojourns have been curbed drastically by the company I still managed to sneak in a few days to go to Kochi on a deputation.
I had a tough time digesting the idea of working in a world renowned holiday destination. It was a pathetic feeling to say the least, that I would be ignoring the swaying palms, the flowing backwaters and the gentle breezes. An impossible situation like you’re sentenced to 5 days of imprisonment albeit in a hotel room, all by yourself watching STAR World! Even the gods would have laughed at my apathy.
The Revival of SurfUnion
I was in a discussion with a friend last weekend at her swank new office. Suddenly we came across a point in social networking and SurfUnion popped up in my mind. If I ever come out with an autobiography there’s sure going to be a chapter dedicated to SurfUnion — a designers forum of which I was a proud member and an architect. Unfortunately the founding of SurfUnion is more interesting and worth discussing than the way we managed it.
In late 2003, five of my close buddies had wanted to do something worthwhile. We were at best designers with creative skills but worked out of home; some of them like me on a paltry sum. On the night of October 2nd, we launched a ‘designers only’ forum hiring some space on Buttclencher’s server. We decided to call it ‘SurfUnion’ or a group of surfing designers. The name took the imagination of all the admins as we liked to call ourselves and later we were joined by many. One of them was a geeky guy nicknamed Bane and was located in Colombo. Five of us – myself, Kreativea (Aadesh), Buttclencher (Raunaq), RanTen (Ranajit Tendolkar) and FlashKid (Isaac) operated from Mumbai. Thus we had a majority stake in the decision making process while LimeIce (Gursimran) located in Delhi and Ryche (Fahd) in Kolkata completed the admin lineup. The fabulous tagline of ‘We put the Desi in Design’ was suggested by Ryche in one of our online sessions. During our tenure, we arranged competitions and meetups that helped bring varied talents face-to-face.
TCS and Mumbai Marathon 2008 : Will you join us?
The annual Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2008 is just a few days away – 20th January 2008 to be precise. This year Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the associate sponsor of this mega event which is unarguably Asia’s largest marathon. TCSers are preparing wholeheartedly to run for their organization and many of my colleagues will be participating for an NGO (non-government organization) or a cause which is closer to their heart. It’s obvious that winning or competing is the last thing on their minds.
On the other hand, I had the privilege of offering my creative skills to the official TCS Mumbai Marathon 2008 website on the Indiatimes.com portal, which has details on our association with the event and more. One can submit stories, pictures and videos from the marathon which would be showcased in the galleries post event. Happy surfing and hoping to see you at the Mumbai Marathon 2008 this time.
The 'North' Indian Wedding Tour
I have been travelling a lot these days. In fact this whole month was a marriage tour for me to north India. Last week I was in a town called Sirsa in Haryana attending a wedding ceremony in the family. A week before that I was in Delhi where my colleague from TCS took the nuptial vows and it gave me an opportunity to visit Agra and the Taj. It has been a great experience to see the north Indian style weddings which are quite different (read lavish) from the other parts of India.