Redefining luxury: Zimbab-Way Friday, May 5 2006

Consider this for reality (From an article in the New York Times):

A roll of toilet paper – $145, 750 (about 70 US cents)

Smallest currency denomination – $500 bill

(Hyper)Inflation rate – almost 1000% (Is it war time?)

Worker population – 4.2 million

Official unemployment – 70% (80% including idle farmers)

Salary raises for teachers and soldiers – $33 million a month (and that’s still below poverty line!)

Cost of childbirth – $7 million

Cost of a funeral (at its barest) – $6 million

Robert G. Mugabe – The SoB behind all this

That’s the inflation situation in Zimbabwe. Going back to the title of this post, what is luxury in Zimbabwe? Anything from bread to newspaper and meat to a cup of tea is unaffordable. How did this happen? Well, when you have a ruler like Mugabe, it shouldn’t be that difficult. Let’s see. Print zillions of worthless Zimbabwean dollars, seize all commercial farms and chase all the foreign investors away bringing the manufacturing industry to a standstill. This should result in shortage of foreign imports due to depletion of indigenous goods and foreign currency needed to buy imports, and voila! You have an economic (and needless to say, political) crisis. Keep this cycle going for around 7 years and you have the Zimbabwe of today. Pretty simple, isn’t it? And how naïve was I to think that the ingenuity of Mugabe was restricted to reducing Zimbabwean cricket to shambles!

"Normal horizons don't exist here. People live hand to mouth," Mike Davies, the chairman of a civic-watchdog group called the Combined Harare Residents Association, said in an interview. Are you sure you didn’t mean ‘hand in mouth’ Mr. Davies? From what I gather, that is the only thing that the normal population can actually afford (hopefully). And I’m certain you don’t need a couple of PhDs and twenty odd years of relevant experience to infer that!

I knew as soon as I heard the name Mugabe, that there is something evil about him (remember “Mugambo khush hua” from Mr. India?). Oh, and he didn’t stop at that. Apparently, he has come up with a kick-ass plan to put an end to this inflation by the end of the year. According to certain official estimates, this is the 7^th such plan in the past 10 years. Wondering what this eleventh hour miracle plan is? No one knows. All I know is in February, the government (read Mugabe, we all know it’s a one-man-show) admitted to printing at least 21 trillion new dollars to buy American dollars in order to pay off IMF’s US $221 million debt. Wondering what Mugabe was busy doing? Well, he was supervising the finishing of his 25 bedroom mansion north of Harare, near the plush houses of high profile ministers and military allies.

Now the interesting part (No, no really. It’s the icing on the cake). While people in cities and downtown Harare lead a life which would make the street dwellers in the hidden alleys of San Francisco or even the inhabitants of a chawl in Mumbai look like millionaires, on the other hand, in the rural areas, where subsistence farming is the only industry, millions of people are guaranteed free monthly rations from the United Nations and other donors. And isn’t that better? They’d rather have food to eat than cash at hand, since the value of the dollar is going down by the day. And the banks, which pay a meager 4% to 10% interest, are not of much help. [1]

According to the article, in Harare, north of downtown, diplomats and aid workers are financed with American dollars. Generators and bottled water are the norm, the cafes still serve cappuccino and the markets sell plump roasting chickens, albeit $1 million chickens.

As I see it, as long as Mr. Mugabe is in power, the probability of a revived economy in the near future is anyone’s guess. No matter how brilliant a plan he conceives, not much could be hoped for. I agree with the economist John Robertson, who is looking into the situation, when he says “much more inflation”. Mugab-way has always been printing its way out of the economic crisis, although that’s what brought about this mess in the first place. Quite like visiting a dentist, a vicious cycle, isn’t it? Zimbabwean cricket might cease to exist, but this way one thing is certain – Mugabe will hit the common Zimbabwean for a six! I must admit though that I’m not an expert in the political economy of the state. I’ll leave that for my dear friend, Buddha.

 

[1] Excerpts from the article which illuminate the plight of the common man:

Ms. Musoni's latest monthly bill for services from the Harare city government was $2.4 million. The refrigerator in her closet-size kitchen is empty except for a few bottles of boiled water. Christmas dinner was sadza, or corn porridge, with hard-boiled eggs. For Easter, there was nothing.

Unity Motize, 64, lives with her 65-year-old husband, Simeon, in Highfield, a middle-class suburb turned slum not far south of town. The couple occupies one room of their three-room house. The second sleeps two sons, their wives and their two infants, all left homeless last May after riot police bulldozed the homes of hundreds of thousands of slum-dwellers. A 23-year-old son and an unemployed daughter sleep in the living room.

Mother and daughter make as much as $10 in American money each week by selling vegetables, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. But the profits are being consumed by rising costs at the farmers' market where they buy stock. "Like potatoes," Regai said. "I went last week, and it was $500,000 for a packet. And when I went this weekend, it was $700,000"

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Gone in 60 seconds Tuesday, May 2 2006

 

I’ve wanted to write about this for sometime now. Just when I was beginning to question the creativity of people in general and ad-film makes in particular, something absolutely brilliant caught my eye. It’s the new Airtel ad. In a world where every second ad on the TV makes you wonder about (a) the number of celebrities we have these days and (b) the extent of torture the human mind can successfully resist, Airtel comes out with inspiring stuff. I’ve been an airtel-ad fan ever since the AR Rahman ad came out (minus most of the shahrukh ads). But this one makes the others seem like some miniscule wannabe air-time hostages.

It’s all of 60 seconds. It’s in black and white. Not a word is spoken in the ad. No, it’s not a silent ad; there is faint instrumental music playing in the background. It still follows the “Express Yourself” theme that its predecessors successfully upheld. But once you watch it, you know it’s special. The fact that I’ve seen the ad just once and remember it as clearly as anyone speaks volumes. So here’s what it is like:

It begins with the Satyagraha Movement march of Mahatma Gandhi. The caption at the bottom of the screen reads “Two words can bring down a regime”. Next it’s Martin Luther King delivering his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, and the caption reads “One dream can change the world”. Then it moves on to umpire David Sheppard giving someone out, and the very next frame shows a dejected Sachin Tendulkar walking back to the pavilion. This time, the caption reads “One raised finger can break a billion hearts”. It’s followed by a snapshot of Winston Churchill showing his famous victory sign after the Allied forces defeated the Fascist ones. The caption reads, “and two can win a world war”. Then it moves on to the youth, with the next scene depicting some youngsters with a sledge-hammer, breaking down the Berlin Wall. The caption goes, “one act of defiance can spark a revolution”. Then it moves on to someone who looks like Mother Teresa, with an under privileged child and the caption goes something like “one touch can instill faith”. Then it’s Dalai Lama, which is accompanied by “a whisper can inspire hope”. Then it’s Lata Mangeshkar followed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the respective captions accompanying them read “some voices can move a nation” and “yet some others can dissolve boundaries” [1]. The concluding scene shows mostly young people holding candles to form a giant peace symbol accompanied by the caption, “one hundred thousand candles can end a war”. And then the famous Airtel theme plays and the screen goes black with the following message:

“That’s the power of Human Expressions. Express Yourself”

Simply brilliant [2]!

This advertisement defies the conventional norm of using star appeal and cheap, useless, mindless matter. It plays on human emotions. All the different scenes are those associated with emotions, and Airtel does a remarkable job of bringing all the events together in a coherent manner. I’ve tried looking for the ad on the web but to no avail. Also, throughout the ad, there is no mention of the services they provide, the entire focus is on what they believe in. For once, they got it right; it’s about the consumer, and not about the company. This, I believe, is what takes this ad, and in turn Airtel, a notch above the rest.

I don’t know how long it has been since the ad was first aired in India. But here, in Singapore, last week was the first time I saw it, during a Bangladesh vs. Australia one-day match. It comes as a breath of fresh air among the mostly good-for-nothing ads that hog precious air-time these days [3].

[1] I am not sure about the sequence in which the last few scenes I described appear. But I’m definite that I haven’t missed out on any scene.

[2] Except for four shots (David/Sachin, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Lata Mangeshkar), the ad-film recreates moments that mostly changed the course of history. Scenes of public jubilation, the epic scale of the Satyagraha march, the concluding scene of hundreds of candles forming the peace sign – all of them were actually recreated. According to K S Chax, National Creative Director, Rediffusion, it was made sure that they had the highest degree of authenticity.

[3] I wonder if Arjun Singh is planning on introducing a 50% reservation for ads made by OBCs, or better still, for ads made on/about SC/STs and OBCs [Insert phrase: one that rhymes with ‘clucking bell’]. Wonder what its impact would be on the quality of the ads these days, or the lack of it rather. To start with, gifted ad-makers like Kartik Smetacek, who wrote this commercial, director Ravi Udyavar, who is the person behind the original Express Yourself commercials, and award winning photographer Prashant Godbole, who worked on this project, would cease to exist.

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How Kaavya Viswanathan wrote a book, ‘internalized’ McCafferty’s idea and got busted Thursday, Apr 27 2006

Born in Chennai, India and raised in Scotland before her parents migrated to North America – This is the story of a 19 year old Non Resident Indian (NRI) Harvard sophomore called Kaavya Viswanathan. The teenager shot to fame in the ‘chick lit’ world when she was paid $500,000 for a two-book contract with the publishers Little, Brown. Following that, she reportedly got a movie deal from Dreamworks in California. The first of the two books, titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, hit the stands recently.

Now for the interesting bit. On April 21, 2006, The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s own news publication reported striking similarities in the novel to two of Megan McCafferty’s best-selling novels (2001), Sloppy Firsts (2001) and Second Helpings (2003), published by Crown, a division of Random House (and I thought Sean Preston Federline was an amusing name!).

Consider this for similarity – On page 6 of McCafferty’s first novel, she writes: “Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it’s gotten me.”

Page 39 of Kaavya’s novel reads, “Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn’t gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two.”

Another striking example – At some point in the first novel, McCafferty writes: "Though I used to see him sometimes at Hope's house, Marcus and I had never, ever acknowledged each other's existence before. So I froze, not knowing whether I should (a) laugh (b) say something (c) ignore him and keep on walking."I chose a brilliant combo of (a) and (b)."

"'Uh, yeah. Ha. Ha. Ha.' I turned around and saw that Marcus was smiling at me."

Kaavya’s main character, Opal, bumps into her love interest, Sean Whalen, and the two spy on one of the school’s popular girls. Kaavya writes: "Though I had been to school with him for the last three years, Sean Whalen and I had never acknowledged each other's existence before. I froze, unsure of (a) what he was talking about and (b) what I was supposed to do about it. I stared at him." 'Flat irons,' he said. 'At least seven flat irons for that hair.

''Ha, yeah. Uh, ha. Ha.' I looked at the floor and managed a pathetic combination of laughter and monosyllables, then remembered that the object of our mockery was his former best friend. "I looked up and saw that Sean was grinning."

In the first statement regarding Viswanathan, who is majoring in English, Robert Mitchell, director of communications for Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, told The New York Times on Tuesday: 'Our policies apply to work submitted to courses. Nevertheless, we expect Harvard students to conduct themselves with integrity and honesty at all times.' How lame is that? Does that serve a purpose? He is actually contradicting himself.

Further ‘information gathering’, as Mitchell calls it, and not ‘investigation’ as Bloomberg reported, revealed that there are at least 29 such instances of similarities between the novels. How dumb can one be? And it really beats me to imagine how on earth she made it to Harvard. Apparently she is majoring in English Literature. Talk about living an ironic life!

Only time will tell what happens of her and her chick-lit career. As of now, the publication houses are negotiating the issue since this has hit McCafferty hard. As they say, no news is bad news! The controversy is apparently helping sales of the book, the Globe discovered. On Monday it was ranked 178 on Amazon.com; on Wednesday it was 68. It has reportedly sold about 5,000 copies across the United States. The plagiarism, if I may call it, has devastated McCafferty. Reportedly, she is 'not sleeping, not eating.'

Things are not smooth for Kaavya as well. She has taken a few days off from Harvard after making a brief appearance on the NBC television channel's popular Today show, telling its hosts: 'When I was writing, I genuinely believed each word was my own.' (Yeah right! And we were just born yesterday!). You made it to Harvard. That in itself should warrant a better excuse. Ay! Ay! Ay! The shame it brings on the hallowed name. No wonder the publishers of McCafferty’s novels slammed her lame apology. But I’m not complaining. It just goes on to strengthen my innate belief that humankind never ceases to amaze!

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