Post a brilliant overdose of yesterday’s leftovers and todays right-unders from my dabba kindly walloped together into 1 sq ft of vertical space without mixing and overflowing into each other,  I came across a tweet that mentioned that women (and in some cases men) are updating their FB status with color(s) of their bra, underwear, or err… nothing. Bluddy guaranteed to make the staidest or weirdest of us sit up and take note I guess. I promptly went out to all my followers list and popped an eyeball at the status mesg update feed there. Wonder o Wonders, nearly all, all of ‘em had updated their statuses with colors.

Drool !!

And then the twitter dams opened up to tweets, catcalls, witticisms and all brouhaha! Check these out

@rameshsrivats Censored scene in Deewar Parveen:Mere paas gaadi hai, bungalow hai, tere paas kya hai. Neetu: Mere paas bra hai

@thecomicproject : Asian Paints could tie up with a bra maker & promote breast cancer awareness .. girls with a mischievous look saying “mera wala red”/colours

@bombaylives: Pantone Colors is next

@manuscrypts: tweets abouts ze bra crossing limits!!

@fartingpen: One needs to overcome brariers in life

I don’t think I have ever, ever been so excited to hear about bra-episodes, even during those amazing, acne-filled, teen years of mine. This probably has been the best bra-gging that the women of the world and the bra have done for themselves. They have broken down bra-rriers that existed, in the mind probably, and the twitter world as one, starts speaking words about cup, words that never, ever slip via the lips.

Bra-Zeal is in #umbra should roll

The poster people of Mumbai.

For them, the world is an eyeball. And every wall that can take their size of communication is an asset. Religion holds no bar for them, neither does locality or status of residents. This army works mainly through the night when they can do their deed unhindered, unnoticed and slips away at the first peep of dawn.

No area is too far away, no wall, however already cluttered is to be spared. They work for ridiculous rates, involving only labor and the cost of gum they prepare of wheat and other things that are discarded. The pastes they prepare for gluing their posters is stronger and more resilient than most brands that claim such awesome powers of bonding and adhesiveness.

The question is, can they, who do this to make money for people who look to advertise for extremely CHEAP rates, be called vandals?

I think not.

The recent case of the wallproject (#wallproject on twitter) has had me raising eyebrows, not for anything other than the fact that these poster plasters are called vandals. Face it … they can’t afford hoardings, they can’t afford to buy or lease media. They way they see it, they’re just adding color to otherwise peeling, unmaintained facades that proliferate in Mumbai city.

For me, these posters are not the problem. Believe you me, there are areas in Mumbai, walls and facades, that would look really, really horrible without them.

But then, they chose to do it on the #wallproject.

So you, a busy tax payer have spent a day indulging in your painting skills, and demand compensation for this labor and all else going waste cuz someone slapped his poster on the space you painstakingly painted.  So what if its commercial in its own way? (I remember this amazing pict that said ‘absolut mumbai’ … isn’t that advtg too?)

Methinks the idea isn’t to punish this industry. The idea however, is to hold those to task that use up public property wantonly through this media, and pay nothing for it at all. The wall publicist, who is told “chaap do ye is shaher ke chappe chappe mein” is not to be blamed for his miniscule rate of Rs. 2 per poster sticking, but the production house is.

Grab ‘em, make ‘em pay Rs. 100 per poster per day even. And employ the poster pasters … the Govt would be doing a far, far better thing that it has ever done before.

For note, we can’t do without posters on some walls walls that our current municipalities and govts are too “poor” to notice or maintain.

I have been seeing a HUGE number of tweets, reports, mails etc from all over the place, where more and more cos, especially media are registering themselves on twitter to feed their stories online.

I wonder whether this is another domain name like boom about to happen?

Twitter recently gained popularity for taking on “reporting” of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Thousands of people fed their bits into twitter, and were read by thousands more.

Post that, there seems to have been a serious BOOM in terms of people rushing in to create IDs with their brands and so on.

Probably, the fact that twitter cannot and will not ever be a “Sole Service” provider, will dampen HUGE investments. Identi.ca is already started doing pretty well, and so is Plurk.

Whee !! Demographics going to play a role again here?

The Mind Boggles ! And more n more thoughts come tumbling out.

Sanjeev Sarma

2) That ISI will never ever participate in un-earthing the Pak (or made in Pak) connection. That their chief isn’t being sent is proof enough.

3) That Raj Thackeray has come into limelight again, via millions of SMS’ all over pronouncing him a coward for not bashing terrorists up, the way he bashed up Biharis and UPites.

4) That for some strange reason, not a single bollywood name cropped up in the list of guests, hostages, etc at the Taj. Thought that was their favourite joint? Did they choose to stay away on this one day? Were they warned about it? Stupid muses, but valid ones too, I guess…

5)  That amusingly, because of the Chabad bldg connection, it was thought that Mossad is at work. (Twitter, twitter)

6) That the online community proved far more sensible and mature, than hysterical and over dramatic journalists, who took their camera to every dog farting and calling it a threat and a blast …

7)  That one still doesn’t know how the IB was not aware of such a massive attack, and the planning that must have gone into it, or the landing of ammunition enough to support a mini army.

That Indian media must necessarily go a long, long way towards honing their reporting skills, and must be sober, mature, tuned down and impassive in reporting such matters. That they must not screw up by airing ops that might have caused loss of life amongst troops participating in them

9)  And that finally, its going to be another “forget it, those guys will drown in their own sh*t” funda, and that no one is going to do anything about why Dawood is still moving around openly in Karachi, or why LeT top honchos are allowed to go around scot free making public speeches against India.

The above is pure rant. And its based on truth/logic/info provided.

Sanjeev Sarma