Social Media Marketing

Dear Friends,

This month marks our 3^rd Anniversary of the Creative Writers blog.

Creative Writing

The journey began with the first publication and the Times of India interview and coverage of the coffee table poetry book “Expressions“, but it was only by end 2008 that we got an idea to get other writers too to add their ideas, experiences and stories and share them in such a large platform.

As the readers and comments kept increasing, with more inputs, critique, suggestions from all of you, we added interactivity, free registrations for comments, Premium memberships and so on to the creative writer blog.

Today, we proudly stand at 183 –Posts, 973 Comments with 11 Authors and scores of Categories under varied subjects of “Technology, Career, Education, Gadgets, Life, Passion, People, Marketing, Online Media, Art, Legends, Freebies, Social Media Marketing……..”

We sincerely THANK all our dear readers and of course our wonderful authors who have contributed their time and skills to us and have been a part of the Creative Writing family.

Hope you have enjoyed a good read. It will only get better!

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Below are the stats to the Top 30 Posts from all time:

Top Posts for all days “March 2007 to March 2010”

All Time – March 2007 – March 2010

Title                                                                                                                                        Views

1. Coffee – A case to begin all cases (2123 Views)
2. Why So seriousssah……. (493 Views)
3. SHOLAY in Facebook Style (388 Views)
4. Google wave – Part 2: Adding & tagging Attachments (331 Views)
5. My Trip to Aurangabad- The City Of Gates (112 Views)
6. Of Forbes India’s 100 Richest: Top 10 picks from our readers (197 Views)
7. IIM Indore my blog: The Life at IIM I (187 Views)
8. Online Creative Writing Contest for Students is HERE! (183 Views)
9. Charlie Chaplin (179 Views)
10. Married but to caste and religion (175 Views)
11. Twitter & Facebook: Why SNS? (174 Views)
12. Pulau Tioman, The great journey ( 170 Views)
13. IIM Indore – IRIS Break Free – Klueless Game (169 Views)
14. ET Awards 2009: For Corporate Excellence (158 Views)
15. ‘Kudos’ to an amazing artist “Kseniya Simonova” (157 Views)
16. Standard Chartered 2010 MUMBAI Marathon (155 Views)
17. Touching a million lives, but only ONLINE (154 Views)
18. A Southie’s Life Rocks (or is it on the rocks) (154 Views)
19. Transitions in Life (152 Views)
20. BLINKX: Video Search engine: Don’t “blinkx” anymore (153 Views)
21. 26/11: Mumbai Terror Attack – Saluting the real heroes (152 Views)
22. Warli Art India: UK Art Council: A journey, for Art’s sake! (152 Views)
23. Google Wave is here (150 Views)
24. Le Tour de France 2009 (145 Views)
25. Social Media Marketing for your business: Unleash….. (143 Views)
26. Working Women & Parenting (142 Views)
27. Social Media Marketing (SMM) – From root level, Why it will work? (141 Views)
28. The Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010: My Dream Run (138 Views)
29. Save Indian HOCKEY!!!!! (135 Views)
30. The Adventurous Land and the half blood Man: Having the Elixir (135 Views)

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TECHDIVINE Creative Services

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Married, but to caste and religion

Loves labor lost

A spectacled middle aged woman of average height and looks with tears streaming over her eyes was declaring with emotional fervor: “even in my next birth I want be Mr.’s wife”. The audience was watching this with respectful and emotional silence and clapped thereafter.

I was watching a TV Program on inter caste and religious marriages and the emotional ravages brought by an intolerant society or family on such personal relationships. Some of the experiences described were even more melodramatic that some of the Tamil movies and serials I had watched. Some of the more interesting experiences narrated were :

• senior police officers sensing threat to the lives of the newly wedded couple belonging to different caste/religion, on their own volition,  gave shelter to them in the police station for the night,
• parents living in the same street refusing to recognize such rebellious offsprings and crossing the street to show their displeasure,
• locking newly married daughter in rooms (like Pran in some old movies),
• marriage conducted in a cinema hall while a Kamalahasan movie was on (the parents were outside the theatre keeping a watch on their children) and marriage vows thereafter strengthened in the Hanuman temple outside the theatre.

The persons who were describing their travails in love did not look like Ranbir Kapoor or Shahid Kapoor nor were the middle aged women resembling yester years’ film heroines. My mental image of falling in love was restricted handsome men and women with filmy looks and dashing behavior. Ordinary men and women normally toed the parental/community line and gave vent to their fantasies in love through films, dramas and books.

I imagined falling in love with some of the girls I used to stare very hard in school and college. I tried to extend the scenario further. I imagined taking any one of them (several is too expensive) to a movie near my college. There were two cinema halls nearby. Both were awful then and continue this status even now. The tickets cost between Re.1 and Rs. 2. I used to watch all the movies which were released. Perhaps I would have had to take a fifty percent cut on the number of movies I watched. Would romance have bloomed in darkened, dingy and sweaty theatre with only fans circling reluctantly?  Love is blind but may still perhaps seek physical comfort, dampening any ardor. What about pecuniary limitations? Would I have shared the daily dose of the exquisite Mysore Masala or puri bhaji (I alternated between these two dishes everyday) at Vishwa Mahal for an uncertain relationship? Perhaps, I would have asked her to take a soldier cut (my generation’s code for equal sharing).  What would her view be on my smoking unfiltered Charminar? Is it a macho thing or ugh, ugh!!   On the whole, looking back, all this seems too much trouble for uncertain rewards- mental or physical!

I still have my college ID card. The photo stuck to that shows (in my view) a hungry looking desperado, wearing shirt with wild design which even Aamir Khan would have hesitated to wear in his Movie Rangeela. But then, such outrageous dresses were the “in thing” then.

The next scene I imagine is bringing home a girl from same religion but different community/caste (another religion is beyond my imagination). I bring home a girl studying in second year of college (first year of Plus three in today’s parlance) along with me and declare  my honorable intentions (towards that girl) in the presence of my parents and brother. I can imagine my father’s fury, my mother’s bafflement at this extraordinary initiative and my brother’s anger at extending a hobby or pastime into a full time reality.  The girl would have run away immediately and the relationship would have had a premature and painful demise on that day.

On a more serious note, the impact of the program was higher as ordinary persons had gone through an extraordinary experience and were declaring it in a public arena. One good point which the anchor made was that the emphasis in each of the person’s narration hinged on merging their identity with another caste or religion and not retaining their own post marriage.  Why can’t each person continue to live as earlier retaining their own identity and leaving their children to select their path? The chief guests attending the program explained how they implemented this concept in their life of a mixed religion marriage.

What matters most in a religion or caste in our day to day life? It is certainly not concepts of the sort described below.

Dvaita – mean dual(two distinct – atma and God/Pramatma). The proponent was Madhvacharya.

Vishit-advaita – Qualified(Special) – advaita. It is similar to advaita, meaning both atma and paramatma are one/similar in nature/quality(being and consciousness) but not in quantity(paramatma is infinite).

Mostly it is the pattern of behavior, rituals followed, community oneness and familiarity with one portion of the society to which we have a sense of ownership, identity and belonging. We enjoy the familiarity and the memories these observances bring to us and want to continue it to the next generation. One example of this is the number of temples abroad and the sincerity with which the rituals observed there by Indian emigrants. An even better example is the caste and community based organizations in Mumbai which celebrate various festivals with pomp and splendor which is sometimes absent in our respective places of origin.

The question which reverberates in our minds is how we ensure that some part of our way of life which we believe is beautiful and is to be retained for posterity. One source of optimism is the presence of the younger generation in many arts, callings, religious institutions, places of worship in more than expected numbers. The next is the inquiring minds of the present generation which while giving up blind and unquestioning acceptance of our generations, is willing to explore further in finding out what is beautiful about our respective heritage and are willing to toil for it.

When I speak to the younger generation, I find a yearning for marrying for love and not because the identified time has come and it is “your duty to get married.” One person told me with great disappointment that the intense hunt for a suitable spouse did not yield the desired level of success. The middle class society’s quest to earn a living –whether in metro or tier two cities- leaves little time to go close enough to another human being to take the decision to spend rest of the life with that person.

But then times are changing.  But they are changing slowly. We still see ads of the following kind:

Wanted Bride: only very beautiful, fair & slim, up to 24 years, from middle class or even lower middle class with educational qualification like graduate/ undergraduate or even  plus 2 for—–.

I would love to hear the younger generation’s response to this. Do give me your views on the same.

Regards

Anjeneyan

2Sides of Life

My mother was a homemaker (to use a modern terminology). I do not recall a time in my childhood when Ireturned to an empty home and made my own snacks or lunch/dinner. I grew up taking for granted that mothers are always at home to receive their children. The outside reality slowly sunk in and I realized that women who went to work also were mothers whose children bid them good bye each morning and waited for them to come back to relate the days adventures.

I recall one blog written by a TV Newsreader which is particularly fascinating. This is two years old blog, but timeless in terms of contents and I am giving below a link to it.

Working Mothers: On IBN

The comments in response mostly from women are equally interesting. They are worth reading.

In today’s context when female education is emphasized and they are equal or should be equal to male in terms of opportunities and abilities , it is not fair or correct to tell a woman that her main job is to be a “homemaker” rather than fulfill her personal and professional aspirations. At the same time, children in the early and formative years require close attention from at least one of the parent. This need not be on a 24/7 basis, but ideally should cover a significant portion of the children’s waking hours and their time spent in the house. As the children grow up, the degree and span of attention could vary and reduce.

I am seeing in some cases grand parents being substitute parents. Some grand parents are frequent flyers to gulf and USA to care the grand children. I always wonder whether the parents bond well with children brought up by others? Do grand parents have the same energy they had as parents? Is’nt it a a bit tiresome for grandparents to do once more what they had done over three decades back? Would they not be looking thru the prism of values and mores which may not be relevant three decades later when the children become adults?

“Quality time” seems to cover the nature of attention needed, but at the same time indicates cliché or an overused word. I tried to imagine myself to be a parent with two children of varying ages between 5 and 10, tending to them after a full day at office and traveling for nearly 3 hours a day. Besides this there would be domestic chores to attend. How much energy would a person have – whether the parent is a mother or father- is hard to estimate? Would they tell stories from Ramayana or Mahabharata or read Tintin comics before the children go to sleep? How much of their day at school would interest them? I realized that I would do much less than what a working parent does today.

Perhaps the issue is not working vs non working mothers. The real issue could be how much of a bonding exists between the children and parents. I have seen fathers substituting for mothers who are sometimes more busy due to the nature of their jobs.

Children need and demand attention. Some times the attention they seek disturb others who see some distortion in relationship without identifying what could be the cause. Whenever I see such distortion, I wonder what would they grow up to be as adults. Do children of working parents demand more attention and carry some level of unfulfilled emotional needs? I don’t know. But I have certainly seen some children seeking more than needed attention.

The bottom line could be that when we bring another human being into this world, as parents we have a responsibility and duty to ensure that the child grows up to be a good human being and be able to contribute to the society in a positive manner. So when our children become adults, we should be perhaps be able meet this standard, at least in our own hearts.

Anjeneyan

Image Source: ANVClicks