A glass of steaming milky syrupy tea is best served cut. One by two or two by three, it embodies the spirit of sharing and camaraderie (and more significantly a resource crunch). Come, have a sip.
The last ad of this series was released in April 2007 - the very catchy and wonderfully executed Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho ad for Madhya Pradesh Tourism (Incredible India). And in May 2009 comes another memorable ad. Some feel that the the first one was better and don't think much of the new TVC. I beg to differ, a little.
Like the last time Cutting the Chai is the first to put up the ad on the internet (I checked).
Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho was more like an ad showcasing the wonders of the state of Madhya Pradesh and inviting people to come visit. This time, the theme is similar but with a little twist, it is not an invitation for MP Tourism but an endorsement (dekho to dekha), a kind of a first person account. And the bioscope makes way for a pair of very expressive (and continually moving) eyes.
This new jingle is also very catchy, quite like the last, and would make for a good ringtone. Preview and download if you like:
Didn't post anything here for more than a month. The reasons - busy, lazy and trying to figure out.
First, shifted residence, from a spacious exclusive furnished house have moved into a one room pad. With a landlord who promised me the sun and is now reluctantly handing me a candle, I am struggling to fit in all my stuff in the limited confines. Therefore didn't feel like blogging, I need some physical space for this kind of activity. Living out of boxes is difficult but am getting used to it.
Second, am helping launch a new product at work that promises to be 'hot.' And all the heat is sapping my energies.
Third, had gone for a short break to the hills, to Nainital. Nice place. Being a hill boy it is only the high Himalayas that can now excite me enough. Ranikhet was a disappointment and regretting not going to the Jim Corbett National Park.
A few photos from there, didn't explore enough:
A bell awarded to the Kathgodam Railway Station (the nearest railhead from Nainital) for being the best maintained railway station in the 1950s (don't remember the exact year).
A Time Master Transistor clock at the hotel where we stayed The cable car/ropeway to the Snow View point. With the snow melting in the summer, it was hazy in the Himalayas and we didn't get to see anything from up there.
Probably a relic from the British era. The classic red post box.
...and the Post Office at Tallital (at the southern end of the Naini lake). This is supposedly the only the post office on a lake bridge anywhere in the world.
The Naini lake (that forms the heart of the town) as viewed from the ropeway
Lovers leaving behind their ugly marks at Lover's Point/Suicide Point (Every Hill Station seems to have one).
...and making a business out of capturing love birds on film (Deepali Photos, Lovers Point, Nainital). The digital revolution seems to have hit them hard.
A view from the hotel where we stayed.
A bird incubating her eggs on a nest. A friendly restaurant owner took the extra effort to show her to us.
Got the message. (transliteration/translation of the text in Devanagari: Kripiya mandir mein shauchalay suvidha nahin hain - Please there is no urinal facility on the temple)
Charcoal Grey Have a thirty-six-course banquet cooked for you. Shop for over sixty kinds of tulips. Access e-mail round the clock. All without ever setting foot on land. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
Mustard Yellow 100% recyclable. 100% bio-degradable. 100% self-sufficient. 100% rural tourism. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org Born 563 BC. Enlightened in 528 BC. Great passing in 483 BC. Still lives in millions of hearts. Buddha, The Enlightened One. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
Revolutionary Green All eyes on the world's fastest growing region. After all, one can't help but sit up and notice 130,000 species of flora and fauna, and almost 2 billion acres of forest. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
Technicolour For centuries Indian spices were traded and smuggled over dangerous waters and routes. Now easily available in 50g, 100g and 500g packets. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
Water Colours 232 lakes. 273 rivers. 7,517 km of coastline. Incredible India. Choose your colour. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
Tea Green Darjeeling is the champagne of teas, grown high in the valleys where the world's smallest train does its rounds. Assam is known for its full-bodied flavour, as robust as the one-horned rhino that roams in its plains. In Munnar, you could even get a taste of a planter's life in sprawling bunglows, British-era clubs with tennis, golf, bridge and of course high tea. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
It took 20,000 workers, 1,000 elephants and 17 years to build the Taj Mahal. World heritage site. Ultimate symbol of love. Incredible !ndia www.incredibleindia.org
The assembly elections in the state are quite a few months away, but from the look of the narrow and winding roads of Shillong it seems that canvassing is on in full swing. And all the parties are rooting for the same candidate.
On entering the city a huge hoarding sponsored by the state Youth Congress Chief asks you to vote. Further down into the city, the BJP has also put up banners appealing you to vote for the very same contestant - Amit Paul.
Many television viewers are by now quite familiar with the name. Amit Paul is the Shillong lad who has made it to the final two in one of the numerous TV musical talent shows - called Indian Idol. And for the hill state of Meghalaya and its sleepy cosmopolitan capital Shillong it seems to be the best thing to happen since January 21, 1972 - when the state of Meghalaya was carved out of Assam. For a city with its soul soaked in music the zeal expressed in support of a local lad coming to the verge of getting a ticket to the 'big league' might not seem surprising. But the feverish excitement over a TV show is something that someone like me finds tough to comprehend.
People from other cities from where boys and girls have been contenders for the big promises of the talent shows might have been witness to similar phenomenon. I also had, last year, when Debojit Saha from south Assam had gone to the SaReGaMaPa contest on Zee TV (he was the eventual winner but not necessarily not the most talented of the lot) and I happened to be on a visit to that part of the country.
Amit Paul is already an icon in Shillong. Almost everyone is talking about him all the time. From the barber to the taxi driver, the point of discussion is Amit. Giant screens have been put up all over the city so that people can watch 'their boy' in action. MLAs and MDCs (Member of District Council) are falling over one another to sponsor free PCOs from where the public can punch in their votes for Amit.
Rallies in support of Amit are a daily affair and the crowd at the one when Amit came visiting home is said to be the largest that the city had ever witnessed. The last time Shillong saw people turning out on the roads voluntarily in huge numbers was when the body of Kargil martyr Captain K Clifford Nongrum was brought home.
Amit t-shirts line shop windows and his posters are best sellers (though some organisations have urged them to be distributed for free). Wherever you look in the city you cannot possibly miss one face with a slight stubble looking at you from all directions.
The swanky touch-screen mobile phones are no longer the latest show-off here, it is the number of votes that one has cast for Amit. An elderly gentleman who occupied the seat next to me in a local taxi (taxis in Shillong usually ply on a sharing basis) said that he voted 500 times. Others have reportedly sent over a thousand votes for their home-bred contestant. And the voting continues throughout the night.
To have a first-hand look I walked through the semi-deserted streets to one of the free PCOs at around midnight to discover a huge crowd there. People of all ages, pre-pubescent girls and elderly grandmothers all queuing up in a pleasant September night to vote for Amit. Occasionally some slogan shouting in support of Amit breaks the silence of the night.
For a city which is used to shutters downing a couple of hours after dusk (the sun sets early in the east) these energetic midnight ventures by the young and the old is indeed welcome.
What else is also welcome is that in a communally divided and sensitive society like Shillong's the success of Amit Paul has brought about an unprecedented sense of togetherness.
Amit Paul is Bengali, his family owns a renowned clothing outlet in the centre of the city - Shankar Brastalaya - and at the forefront of the campaign in support of Amit are the Khasis (both communities - Khasis and Bengalis - over the last few decades haven't shared the best of relations). Now both, along with the numerous other communities who inhabit Shillong are making a collective effort towards realising the recently realised dream of a city-bred Indian Idol.
But then there is also a dark side to this tale. Amit's competitor for the title of Indian Idol is Prashant Tamang, hailing from Darjeeling, and sceptics believe that Shillong's Nepali community (a sizeable one) is voting for Prashant, while according to them the loyalties of of all the people of Shillong should be with the city and not the tongue one speaks in.
In case Prashant betters Amit in the vote count there are apprehensions of disturbances in Shillong, which has fortunately been quite peaceful (communally) for the last few years.
To add to all the confusion are rumors of free SMS services being provided by mobile operators leading to many people sending as many SMSes as possible. Apart from the freebie seekers there are many deep pockets abound distributing free pre-paid cards to anyone willing to punch in the SMSes in Amit's favour.
Amidst all the brouhaha it is obvious that there would be a few who can see though this maniacal euphoria (thankfully there are). These few realise that the producers of the show are merely triggering the upheaval of regional emotions and filling their (and the mobile operators') coffers and are also aware of the real value of such talent hunts at a time where every channel boasts of one, if not more such shows. They also try to recall the previous winners of such shows and the oblivion where most of them have disappeared into and also the process of multiple public voting which turns a so-called democratic exercise into a farce.
A local columnist Patricia Mukhim is believed to have ignited the fire for Amit through her columns in the local newspapers. Then socio-cultural organisations took over and even the government couldn't resist from staying behind. The Meghalaya government has declared Amit Paul the 'Brand Ambassador of the State of Meghalaya for Peace, Communal Harmony and Excellence' (see the adjacent image of a copy of the letter from the Chief Secretary) and even the Governor signed his fan book.
With many of Shillong's lasses already publicly expressing the desire to marry him, Amit might just face another problem of plenty. A Sikkim-based businessman has announced a Rs One crore funding for voting in favour of Prashant. There are also rumors of the government employees of Sikkim contributing a day's salary to the kitty for Prashant.
May the best man win, but they seldom do in the farce that these talent hunts are.
Special addition: [September 19, 2007] In fear of excommunication by fellow Shillongites and the possibility of being denied entry into the city in the future for daring to question the concept of TV talent shows at a time when Amit Paul has made it to the finals of Indian Idol 3, here's an attempt towards pacifying the die-hard fans of Shillong's latest singing sensation - some childhood and teenage photographs of him (Don't ask me whether I voted for him or not).
One of the little excitements during our school days was to gaze at the film posters - on the walls of the Shillong Civil Hospital - as our rickety school bus brattled by. The posters usually changed every Wednesday or Thursday and had a rectangular piece of printed paper pasted atop providing details about the name of the cinema hall and the show timings. There were only a handful of cinema halls - Bijou, Payal, Dreamland, Mini Dreamland (below Dreamland and popular for B-grade stuff) and Anjalee (for all the foreign flicks). There was a Kelvin too (very popular with my parents as it showed Bengali movies), but then it burned down one night, and Singhania Talkies which the Ramakrishna Mission took over and turned it into a library. Besides there were the military run theatres (Rhino, Soltee and the like).
After Kelvin turned into ashes, I hardly ventured into the dark environs of the theatre and by that time the VHS revolution had begun. We pooled money and rented video cassettes and the VCP. It was a regular affair every week (sometimes on all days of the week) and there was hardly a film from that era that we would've missed (only the ones with 'scenes' in them, as it was more of a family show). Come back from school, change fast, gobble something and rush to the neighbour's drawing room which served as our theatre for many years. But we didn't like to miss the posters on the walls of the Civil Hospital. Usually printed versions of hand-painted posters, where often an untrained hand gave the hero a villanish tinge or add some unwanted kilos (at the wrong places) on the heroine. The artists took extra care in accentuating the muscles of the hero and the bust of the female lead. The vamp gave them more liberty. With the popularity of photographic images on film posters, the look might have gotten better, but the feel is amiss. Every poster painter (even MF Hussain was one) had his unique take. I watched in awe as a giant Amitabh, Govinda. Anil Kapoor or Mithun towered over me from the top of Dreamland Talkies. Red with anger or pink in love, the blue of the evil, the brushstrokes said it all. Now missing from the walls these hand-painted movie posters are found inside art galleries ready to be the prized possession of the highest bidder.
Another source for film posters for me was Screen (bought every week by my brother), it didn't (then) have any of the movie industry masala that the other magazines carried. It was more about the business of making movies and selling them. For me the full page broadsheet posters were a big bonus. After my brother lost interest, I started getting the copies on my own. If I remember right, it cost me Rs 5. Then I too ventured off the filmi fare. Years later, I couldn't find it on the vendor's display, only to realise later that the look had changed (like so many of the newspapers and magazines).
The film poster as a medium of advertising is intriguing. At a time when there was no television (or the internet), it was the posters which let the public know about the forthcoming releases. Newspapers also carried miniature posters where they announced the show timings. Even Chitrahaar (that great favourite on Wednesday and Friday nights) displayed the poster of the film before playing the song.
Here's a little tribute to the almost extinct art of hand-painted film posters, featuring ten milestone Hindi films (I like the term Hindustani over Hindi as an adjective for Bollywood movies):
[Click on image for a larger view / download options]
A few photographs from my visit to the Taj at the last puff of 2006.
From the Archaeological Survey of India plaque outside the monument:
The Taj Mahal was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (reign 1628-1658 AD), grandson of Akbar, the Great, in memory of his queen Arjumand Bano Begum, entitled 'Mumtaz Mahal.' She was niece of Empress Nur Jahan and grand-daughter of Mirza Ghias Beg "I'timad-ud-Daulah" Vazir of Emperor Jehangir. She was born in 1593 and was married to Prince Khurram (Shah Jahan) in 1612. She died in 1631 on the birth of her 14th child, at Burhanpur where she was temporarily buried. Six months later the body was transferred to Agra and finally enshrined in the crypt of the main tomb. Shah Jahan who died in 1666 was also buried here. The Taj Mahal is the mausoleum of both Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan. Originally styled as 'Pauza-i-Munavvara' and 'Rauza-i-Mumtaz Mahal,' gradually it became famous as Taj Mahal and Taj-Bibi-ka-Rauza (the Garden Tomb of the Taj Queen).
It is sited at the right bank of the river Jamuna at a point where it takes a sharp turn and flows eastward. The location has a correct orientation for the adjunct-mosque, minimum thrust of water, and above all, a large natural lake to provide it with a continuous protective cover of moisture. The river with 30 feet deep clean water was thus a constituent of its original design.
Originally the land where the Taj Mahal stands belonged to the Kachhwahas of Amer (Jaipur) and was acquired from them in lieu of four havelis. The construction began from the foundations. A network of wells was laid in the sub-structure to support the huge building. Masons, stonecutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome-builders and other artisans were requisitioned from the whole of the Empire and from Central Asia and Iran. While bricks for internal skeleton were locally made, white marble for external surfaces was obtained from Makrana. Semi-precious stones for inlay ornamentation were brought from distant regions of India, Ceylon and Afghanistan. It was completed in 1648 in 17 years, at the cost of Rupees four crore (40 million) when gold was sold at Rs 15 per tola (11.66 grams).
In all, it covers an area of 60 bhigas. As terrain gradually sloped from south to north, towards the river, it is laid out in descending terraces. At the southern point is the forecourt with the main gate in the front and tombs of Akbarabadi Begum and Fatehpuri Begum, two other queens of Shah Jahan, on its south-east and south-west corners, respectively. On the second terrace is a spacious char-bagh garden divided into four quarters by broad shallow canals, with wide walkways and cypress avenues on the sides. They are studded with fountains which were fed by overhead water tanks situated in the adjoining Bagh Khan-i-'Alam.
The main tomb is placed at the northern edge of this garden, to tower majestically on the river. It integrated the Taj with the blue sky, and provided it with a beautiful natural background, which was constantly changing from sunrise to midnight. The changing colours of the sky descended softly on its white marble and it looked ever new at every moment. This newness is the secret of its beauty.
The main tomb was designed under the guidance of the Emperor himself. It marks the perfect moment in the evolution of Mughal tomb-architecture and only its composition is novel. Thus the minarets are detached and placed to face the chamfered angles (corners) of the main tomb. Its perfect proportions were evolved in wooden models and, though it is such a gigantic building, rising to 285 feet from the river level with 187 feet width (of the main tomb), it looks in fact like a small model. Its geometrical symmetry is also unique. On its sides are red sandstone Mosque and Jam'at-Khana, architecturally for a contrast.
Though it has some wonderful specimens of polychrome inlay art, in the interior: on the dados, on cenotaphs and on the marble jhajjari (jali-screen) around them, and on the exterior on the spandrels of the arches, this ornament is sparce and minimal, and it does not play any role in the total aesthetic effect of the building, which is totally architectonic.
It was efficiently maintained by expert architects and engineers with the help of skilled masons, gardeners, and other workers, until it fell on bad days, in the 18th century AD [Portion of text whitened out. Probably refers to vandalism by the colonial powers. A mention which perhaps wasn't to the liking of some]. The British replaced the original gold kalash finial in 1810 and, the Taj was once - during the regime of William Bentinck - put to auction only for the value of its marble. Fortunately this sacrilege was averted. The Taj survived, although in bare skeletal form without the imperial coverings. Since the Archeological Survey of India was established in 1861, it is properly maintained and conserved.
One of the most beautiful creations of man on earth, it is variously admired: as a 'Materialised vision of Loveliness,' a 'Dream in Marble,' a 'Nobel Tribute to the Grace of Indian Womanhood' and a 'Resplendent Immortal Tear Drop on the Cheek of Time.' It symbolises India's composite culture. It is reckoned among the wonders of the world and is inscribed as a WORLD HERITAGE SITE by UNESCO.
According to a rough calculation based on the figures mentioned above, the cost of construction of the Taj Mahal in today's currency would be around Rs 2,604 crores (Rs 26.04 billion), the US currency equivalent would be approximately $651 million.
In comparison Delhi's ostentatious Akshardham Temple took Rs 200 crores to build.
In this age of AIDS (and also unwanted pregnancies), it is good to see a condom bar coming up in Chandigarh. Le Corbusier might not have thought of it, but that adds another reason for me to hasten my much delayed visit to the city.
Having stayed in the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh, for over two years (been visiting right form my childhood) and travelling quite extensively all over the state, I find this wonderful advertisement for tourism in MP all the more appealing.
So far have been to Jabalpur, Bilaspur (then MP), Bhopal, Indore, Ratlam, Sehore, Bhimbetka, Maihar, Bhojpur, Pachmarhi, Sanchi and of course, Khajuraho (twice over). Enjoy the multi-splendours of Madhya Pradesh in this bioscope of an ad.
Behta paani jhilmil dekho Dharmon ki mehfil dekho Hindustan ka dil dekho… Ta thaiya taa…
(Come prepared Madhya Pradesh The heart of Incredible !ndia)
Speaking of bioscopes, there is a documentary on The Bioscopewallah by Prashant Kadam. I've heard a lot about the film but haven't watched it yet.
Update:(June 28, 2007) The popularity of the aforementioned TVC has led to a print campaign which essentially showcases the ingredients of the TVC in a comic strip format (with a few additional places added): [Click on images for a larger view]
The last ad of this series was released in April 2007 - the very catchy and wonderfully executed Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho ad for Madhya Pradesh Tourism (Incredible India). And in May 2009 comes another memorable ad. Some feel that the the first one was better and don't think much of the new TVC. I beg to differ, a little. 
