Chp 426. Return of the Mizohican!

It was way back in 2007 when I wrote my blog post - No longer a Mizohican where I mentioned about how a part of me died after I finally decided to “grow up” and “let go” of my signature Mohawk hairstyle. My Mohawk was the reason why my online nick became Mizohican (Mizo + Mohicans).

Now it’s back with a bang!

So this recent Halloween, I woke up perfectly fine, smiled, walked down to my regular salon, and instead of my regular cut, I asked for a Mohawk cut. My regular stylist understood right then, and without raising an eyebrow, got down to business immediately. After that he gave me my regular head massage.



Everything happened so fast.

One of the main reasons why I decided to go all Mohican again was probably because of what my dear friend Samir said to me last Saturday.

So last Saturday was MMA FCC (Mixed Martial Arts – Full Contact Championship) that I was really looking forward to going to. I even blogged about my experience when I went to a previous MMA FCC event. On that “fateful” day, I got ready, drank a couple of quick rum shots, since there was going to be only beer at the venue.

Since the venue was in “town” side of Mumbai, I had to take an auto till Bandra, and from there switch to a taxi since autos aren’t allowed in town. That was when it hit me – a minor high BP. Maybe it was because of the humidity and that I drank too much too fast, but I decided not to push it in case it aggravated, so from the taxi stand, I took another auto back to my house, cancelling my plans.

I called up Samir, with whom I was supposed to go to the fight with, and explained about my condition. I thought he was going to stay stuff like, “duuuudeeee come mannnn”. But instead, all he said was, “(laughter) I understand, you’re an old man now (laughter)”…

BASTARD :-)

And then he went to the fight and to rub salt into the wound, he sent me photos through whatsapp as it happened, right from there in front of the freaking ring!

 



So that was when I decided… F**k this shit, I gotta go all Mohawk again, just to prove that I still got young blood flowing through me! Screw age and screw “I’m too old for this shit” shit. I can do it!

I just had one concern - I’ve already booked my tickets for home on December, and our Mizo society is a bit conservative so if I go to Church for Christmas with a Mohawk, it could get quite scandalous. So I’m hoping it will grow back in a month… hopefully, lolz.

That day being Halloween and everyone’s gonna come to office dressed as zombies and vampires (so demanded the circular mail from the HR sent to the entire office the previous day), I realized it was the perfect time to go Mizohican again.

And so here I am… :)







You have no idea how liberating it felt! It was then that I realized how much we had to bow down to societal pressures and the stigma of what people consider is right or wrong. I’ve never felt so free like this in a long long time. And there is always the advantage of saving money on shampoo! (though that is reciprocated by spending extra on facewash now, lolz)









BONUS – Yesterday, my dear friend Shweta from Crude Area launched her e-commerce portal finally and we had a little celebration over champagne and other stuff. Please do visit the website CRUDE AREA and check out all the amazing kickass artistic posters and images you can order. The art is really awesome.



Cheers :)

Chp 425. 10,000 misual fans & more to come

Last night, around 10pm, this website – misual.com, that a couple of friends and I run, just hit 10,000 fans on Facebook. It was indeed a momentous milestone for us, especially when you take into consideration that we do not profit from the site (ZERO monetization plan) while all of us have our respective jobs and manage the site part-time, and we do it purely out of good will and passion to indulge people in debates and healthy discussions.

10,000 is indeed a good number, as we have never done any promotional campaign for the site. 10,000 fans, or to be technically precise, 10,000 likes (initially, it used to be called “fans”) is not an easy achievement at all, because unlike Facebook groups, we cannot just add anybody from our Facebook friend-list to the page. The person himself/herself, will have to click the “LIKE” button on his/her own volition.



As of this very minute, misual.com has –

16,272 published posts
5,80,528 comments
16,857 registered users

Strong figures. Yes a lot of things have changed since Ben first made the site way back in 2005, shifting it from Drupal to WordPress in 2006, facing our first FIR case in 2008, and then Ben retiring from misual.com and leaving the responsibilities to us on August 6th 2009, one day after the site’s 4th anniversary. And now, we’re slowly moving into 2013, towards our 8th anniversary and the site is still growing strong.

But of course we know things do not last forever. I’ve been in the online world long enough to understand web portals and the dynamics of online platforms. Right from the days when threaded discussion forums were popular (remember those izawl.com, zoram.com days?), to the times when Drupal, WordPress and Joomla CMS forums came into being, I’ve seen many top Indian discussion forums like desipundit, blogbharti and mutiny.in rise to the top and crumble. I watched in great interest when Reddit and 4chan saw a mass exodus of members leaving their sites. Remember how popular Digg and StumbleUpon used to be at one point of time? The two sites are now more or less dead…

And then came the rise of social networking sites that had seen many hits and misses. Hi5 is now like a mediocre social gaming site after Tagged purchased it two years ago, MySpace just got relaunched recently (I love the soundtrack used) but it looks more like a music social network site planning to compete against last.fm, Grooveshark, Pandora, Spotify etc. rather than go directly up against big daddy Facebook itself, and we also saw how Orkut, which was once the reigning champ of Social Networking in India, went through a slow agonizing death and made way for the new king - Facebook.

Therefore, with the internet constantly evolving, even we have to constantly evolve if we want to survive. We have tried comment plugins like Disque, implemented Facebook “likes” on posts and comments, tried integrating the login with Twitter api and so on. But in most of the cases, since our traffic is so high, all these extra plugins utilize more resources at godaddy where we have hosted our server, leading them into taking down our site or giving us a stern warning for the umpteenth time. And like I mentioned initially, managing misual.com is purely a voluntary work, so we can’t afford to buy any server space as we are not gaining financially from this site.

Hence as of now, Facebook page is a way of coping with the technological change. I created this official Facebook fan page in 2010. Two years later, we are now 10,000 fans/likes strong. The irony of this is, when it comes to the actual work I am doing for a living, I am handling a lot of social media accounts for many of our esteemed clients (which I can’t name for the obvious reason) and many of them actually have fewer fans than misual.com, hihihi…

Apart from keeping up with technology and the trends and changes, from all my experiences so far, I think another very important factor to running a community site successfully is to make sure all the admins are on the same page with each other. I have seen my fair share of many popular discussion forums (that I was a member of) that broke up merely because the admins failed to see eye-to-eye with each other regarding a post deletion or site guidelines. And then one set of admins would leave the site, creating a similar (competing) website and so on, and both the members of those two sites would perpetually bitch about each other. I have seen this same story unfold too many times all over the interwebz.

And of course loyalty among the users build up and people start picking their sides during an online battle that includes mass spamming and DDoS attacks on each other. Take for instance the recent 9gag – 4chan /b/ war, or 4chan’s “Operation Overlord” against Tumblr. Another good example of a relationship gone sour would be LulzSec’s attack on 4chan, the infamous /b/ Civil War due to Boxxy, and the war between Backtrace Security and Anonymous group. Backtrace was once a part of Anonymous.

If the admins don’t have a high level of tolerance and cannot stand each other, or vehemently disagree with each other on various issues, then one can only expect a storm brewing up. Luckily, for misual.com, it’s as if all of us (the admins) share a single brain :P

So, this is just a quick update to announce misual.com crossing the 10,000 threshold, and in spite of us losing traffic due to the popularity of Facebook, we still have a very significant and sizeable amount of loyalists who visit the site every day.

Yes, be ready to accept the fact that one day, misual.com will go defunct. This is the online world we’re talking about. Everybody keeps moving on. Nothing stays permanent in this world. Every day I wake up with the thought that misual.com will no longer see any activities. In fact, 7 years is an EXTREMELY long life for a website considering how many sites have died till now. But as long as it is still active, I along with the other admins will try our best to keep the site alive and kicking. Of course one of these days, it will go down, afterall, this is the online world. But I promise you this - if we’re going down, we’re going to go down fighting :)

Cheers!

Chp 424. Networking dinner III: Spanish Surprise

So last Friday I took part in my third Coral Networking Dinner event. The theme was “Spanish Surprise”.

I have blogged about Coral Dinner before, you can check the detailed post here: Networking dinner II: Mediterranean Cuisine, guaranteed to make your mouth water, especially if you are a Foodie.

So as I have mentioned before, Coral Dinner is an exclusive networking dinner event, held at Prahlad Kakkar’s bungalow. Mint even described it as a Snooty Foodie’s Club, as it is held just once or twice a month, and we have to confirm our reservation days before. There are only around 10 seats. Once the limit is reached, the others get on a waiting list, in the hope that one of the participants cancels. When a participant cancels without a valid excuse in the last minute, he or she gets blacklisted and cannot take part in further Coral dinners again.

It’s aptly called Networking Dinner because we all go alone and meet other participants for the first time and we start talking about different things, and then as you keep talking about this and that, more often than not, you’ll end up finding a link, like you have a common friend or you have worked on the same client before etc etc… while at the same time enjoying the delicious food the hosts are serving. The cost of the dinner is 1200 per head.

The participants this time were:

Murtuza –  Angel Investor
Kumar Jhuremalani – Founder of pet pujaris and professional Game Tester
Shubada Lele – Owner of Shubh Yog Kendra, yoga specialist for special disease
Shivram – Director for a leading financial company
Neetu Prasad – Analyst at a telecom company
Sarang Kulkarni – Works at Lacadives, the dive shop
Pawan Deokule – Managing Director at Digicat Digital Marketing Pvt Ltd
Megha Goyal – Founder of i2Cook and Head Chef at Coral Networks
Kima – Lover of Old Monk, Creative Trailblazer at Webchutney Pvt Ltd

Yes, as you can see from the array of different professions, it was indeed a very interesting night as we all shared our experiences and stories.

The theme this time was “Spanish Surprise”, which means everything was going to be Spanish.

The moment I reached and met the others, I was served Sangria, which is red wine punch with chopped fruits. Meg used Shiraz Sula for the wine, and both golden & red apples for the fruit. It was very refreshing and stronger than I expected as it hit my head on my third drink. The non-alcoholics had guava juice natural from Auroville.



So as the conversation got going, I found out Shivram was an alumnus of IIM-Bangalore and I told him I dropped out from that institution and we immediately bonded, talking about L-Square parties, placement, professors, pranks etc…

Meg served the appetizers soon, and for vegetarians there was freshly baked organic bread with romesco sauce… I love the sauce… I asked if the bread is also called Spanish bread, and she said no because Spanish bread is actually a Filipino sweet bread… Ahhh my knowledge about food just got a little bigger. Romesco sauce by the way, is quite controversial, so I’ll just put it here before anybody argues with me – It is a Catalan pepper sauce. Catalans take it as an offence when people call it a Spanish sauce, because of the whole Catalonian nationalism issue in Spain…



For non vegetarians, there was Tortilla De Patatas (which basically means Spanish style omelette and potato pancakes), which tasted like no eggs I had ever tasted before. It was really smooth and easy to swallow, as it melted in our mouths quickly. I tried my best to find and identify the savoury of any distinct spice in my mouth, but failed to do so, so I just took another sip of my Sangria and enjoyed the food without trying to analyze it.



And then my favourite – parsley prawns sautéed in oil, garlic and parsely with a squeeze of lime. Murtuza and I quickly became close friends as he and I were the only ones eating prawns that night. And boy, the two of us alone gorged through the entire serving, lolz.



Shubada Lele, the yoga specialist shared very interesting stories about her line of work, and how she even spent many months in Burma, learning about a specialized form of yoga. We even discussed about the Mizos, the Chin people and how there are many people from “Zohnahthlak” living in Burma.

Kumar Jhuremalani shared a lot of his travel experiences in South America, and as it turned out, he used to work at Resultrix, where I know a lot of people. Apart from being a foodie and the founder of Pet Pujaris, a popular foodie group, he is also a game tester and avid gamer. I told him I’m also working on a game project right now, so we activated our Geek Mode and spent the rest of the evening discussing all types of games and the gaming market in India.

The main course was soon served, and there were two options - Seafood Paella and Vegetarian Paella. Paella is a traditional Valencian rice dish with vegetables, saffron, olive oil and other seasonings. Seafood Paella is very popular, especially in the East coast of Spain.



We finally ended the night with Sponge cake, topped with cinnamon spiked cream. It was absolutely yummmm. Your mouth is watering right now, right? :)



As the night ended, around 2 in the morning, we all bid each other good night and Meg told me to take the remaining seafood paella home as I loved it so much. So I happily did that, and the next day, I had the same food again, along with omelette, fried in my own style though, not Spanish.



This was the last Coral event of this year, so I can’t wait for next year when it resumes again. What new cuisine will I get to taste? Which new people will I get to meet? Only time will tell, I guess.

Cheers everyone :)

All Photos courtesy Megha Goyal, except of course the last pic :P

Chp 423. Those good ol cassette days

My dear blog friend John Ruolngul’s latest post update [Thank God for Cassettes!! (and Music)] inspired me to update my blog with this post.

Yes, I miss the good ol days when our lives revolved around tape cassettes. And how we always used to carry a Reynold’s pen with us, to rewind or fast forward the cassette as we didn’t want to waste our walkman battery’s life. Was Reynold’s pen popular back then because it was actually a good pen, or was it purely accidental that the pen happened to fit inside a cassette perfectly? A little case study needs to be done here.

Much has been said about cassettes. You can read John’s blog above, or you can move over to my ex-roomie’s post about cassettes which is funny and nostalgic.

Over here, I’ll just update this post with a few pictures I took today.

After reading John’s blog post, I immediately scavenged through my old junk, and dug out my cassette collection! Yes my current flat mate says I’m a hoarder, and unfortunately that is true. I have A LOT of things I carry around with me all the time because I cannot throw them away due to too many sentimental attachments and sweet memories. So imagine me who move from one city to the other many times carrying my entire past with me wherever I go… hehehe… yeah, the “movers and packers” bill is always quite a lot.

So here it is, a soon to be extinct species of the music industry…

 

Though I was brought up on glam-rock and glam-metal, like most Mizos who’re born in the late 70’s and early 80’s who were crazy about Guns n’ Roses, Def Leppard, Warrant, Firehouse, Cinderella, Nazareth etc., there was a rebel side of me that was really into heavy metal too. Slayer, Testament, Helloween, Dio, Danzig etc. were some of my favorite bands.





Ozzy was my idol back then, not because of his onstage gimmicks as it wasn’t that easy getting access to music videos back then (remember Headbangers Ball on MTv?), but rather because I fell in love with his voice. And I’m probably one of the few people who prefer Megadeth over Iron Maiden.



And then came the transition to “Nu-metal” like RATM and Limp Bizkit in the late 90’s. “Significant Other” was the first Limp Bizkit album I bought, though I have no freaking idea where it is now… I even bought a cool Korn tee-shirt, which was probably the second musical band tee-shirt I owned, after a GnR tee-shirt I bought in the late 80’s.



OSTs were another category I also collected back then. I swear I had at least more than 50 movie soundtrack cassettes at one time, now all gone due to assholes who never return borrowed cassettes. Whenever I watch a new movie (those were the days we actually used to go to movie theatres to watch new releases as internet access was either unavailable or expensive), I always paid attention to the background track numbers while the movie was playing, and then decide whether I should buy the OST cassette or not.



Here’s my Mizo cassette collection. My first Mizo band album was “Tribal Power”, which apparently is now lost in oblivion. Love that band… I bought a Nunui cassette from Nunui herself when I met her in Bangalore during a dinner party at a friend’s place. I’m sure she won’t even remember me or that incident anymore, lolz.



Here’s some of my mushy love song collection… it has songs like “Cherish” by Kool and the gang, “Donna” by Ritchie Valens, “Drive” by The Cars, “Rise to the occasion” by Climie Fisher etc… I miss those days when every house party always used to end with a slow jam session, with every couple holding each other and swaying slowly to songs like Lady in red, I wanna know what love is, Sailing, True colours, Listen to your heart etc etc…



And what would a cassette collection be without the Christmas albums? :) They complete the collection… they’re the most sought after albums during December and then remain untouched for the other 11 months of a year, lolz.



And here are a few other albums from my collection. I remember buying the Evanescence album, but by then, it was already the era of mp3s, and having a lot of Theatre of Tragedy songs and other symphonic gothic bands with female frontman like Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, Sirenia, Within Temptation etc, I clearly failed to understand the hype Evanescence made.



And oh, yes, there was a phase when I was really into gangsta hiphop too, lolz. But by that I don’t mean the rappers of today who think rapping is only about disrespecting women and calling them ho’s and acting like a thug while wearing pants up to their knees… My generation of rappers were actually talented, with the likes of 2Pac, Bone thugz n’ harmony, Dr. Dre, DMX etc… and lolz, apparently I used to call myself “Kill Boyband” Kima back then, haha.



So why do I still have this “junk” with me? Like I said, I guess it’s because of the emotional attachments I have with them. Each cassette tells a story… Like for example, one of the more recent cassettes I bought had this scribbled inside…

Daddy – Curzon Court B’lore, Quaterly Hols ’98 – ’99



I always write things like this on all my cassettes, just to remember when I bought them or with whom. When I read the one above, it filled me with warm memories immediately. Back in 1998, my dad flew down from Mizoram to spend my school’s quarterly holidays with me in Bangalore, instead of me going home. As most of you may know, I’ve always been in a hostel away from home and family most of my life, so that particular holiday, I really bonded with my dad.

The two of us stayed in this suite at Curzon Court, which is a prominent hotel right on Brigade Road. And then one evening, our family friends Pu Rinsanga (now retired IAS) and his wife came over to our room to play cards with dad, while I went out with their son Hminga, who was also my friend and classmate. That night, we pub-hopped all over Brigade Road, and finally we tried this street drugs called laddoo, which was pretty popular back then. It’s apparently sweetened bhaang. After that, his friends came along and we went to visit a haunted temple at a very deserted forest outside the city, as there’s a rumor that a spirit would chase those who came to ring the temple bells at midnight. Our aim was to ring and run away as fast as we could.

Hehe, I was so bloody drunk and stoned at the same time that when we reached the venue and rang the temple bells, everybody ran as fast as they could while I just sat down on the steps not giving a f*ck about anything. Lolz. That morning, around 2-3’ish, Hminga and his friends carried me all the way up to my hotel room, made me stand up against the door, rang the bell and ran away because they were afraid my dad would scold them. That night was the first time dad ever saw me wasted, and I was trying my BEST to act sober and walk straight and speak without a slur, lolz. The next morning, when I woke up, dad gave me a full bottle of ice cold water and it felt SO good downing it. After that, we went shopping.

See, I remembered all that just by looking inside the cover of all my cassettes. Each one has a tale to tell.

So these are my tape cassettes. What about you? Still have yours? Hit me back.

Cheers.

Chp 422. Warriors Of The Rainbow

When I told my friend I was going to watch this movie called “Warriors Of The Rainbow”, his first reaction was, “Dude, haha, the name sounds a bit gay, don’t ya think? Rainbow warrior? Seriously?”

Lolz, well, I never thought of it that way. I don’t have anything against gay pride, but that doesn’t mean I must watch gay movies just to show my support to the rainbow movement.

“Noooo idiot, this movie was recommended to me by a friend with whom I share similar taste in movies. He told me to watch it definitely... He’s the same guy who recently told us to watch “The Flowers of War” which you initially thought was gay too because of the FLOWERS but it was an awesome movie, remember?”

He nodded.

Ahh… The Flowers Of War.  Such a tear-jerker. One of the best movies I have seen this year.

Whenever I’m about to watch a foreign language film, I always do a quick research online first. The director of TFOW was Yimou Zhang, who directed three of my all-time favorite Chinese language movies - Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower. But I was a bit skeptical as all those movies were during ancient China, whereas TFOW was during Japan’s invasion of Nanking in 1937. Will he be equally good in making a post-modern era movie? Christian Bale was in the movie and it had a good rating on IMDB so we decided to watch it. Oh, what an awesome movie it was!

 

The conflicts between the convent girls and the prostitutes were captured and portrayed beautifully. The movie depicted humanity at its finest, about how some of us are like savages in the worst of times while others sacrifice themselves for a noble cause.  I highly recommend you watch it too.

Now, coming to the topic of this post – Warriors Of The Rainbow.



When we watch something extremely touching, even if we are the most testosterone pumped up male, sometimes a tear involuntarily rolls down our cheek (unless of course you’re some sociopath devoid of any human emotions and feelings). For me, while I was watching WOTR, there were at least more than ten occasions when I had to wipe the tears off my cheeks. The last time something like that happened to me was when I watched Hotel Rwanda many years ago.

WOTR really really touched me because, being a Mizo, I found so many similarities between our Mizo tribe and the Seediq Bales. We’re both head-hunters, collecting heads of the people we killed in battle to display our feat, and at the same time we’re not like the headhunters of Africa where headhunting is more related to cannibalism over there. We both fought against other clans of our tribe regularly, living separately at our respective villages headed by a chief. We have our own territories or “hunting ground”, and we love to celebrate by sitting around a fireplace and getting drunk while dancing with the womenfolk in rhythm to the music beat. The men do the fighting and hunting while the women do the cooking and weaving. We were animists, and the Seediqs believed in something like an afterlife beyond the rainbow.

I know, I know, that is pretty much a common tribal trait across the world, especially a warrior tribe. But watching the movie gave me goosebumps and I had this really strong feeling of kinship with the Seediqs.

The Japanese took a long time to conquer them, wherein they lost thousands of troops against a few Seediq warriors because of their jungle warfare tactic and unconditional courage and love for their homeland. Similarly, the British army took a while to conquer our tribe even though they had far superior weapons and artillery.

The movie is based on a true event called the “Wushe incident”. Well, there’s this recent Mizo movie released in Mizoram about the historical massacre of Khawnglung Run village, which is also based on a true story. Below is a trailer of that movie –



Yes you’ll see so many similarities between the Mizos and Seediqs, though the two film scripts are very different (one is about a struggle to rescue the love of his life, while the other is a struggle to lead the people he loves to freedom from the invading Japanese forces)



Of course there is a huge difference in the production quality of the two trailers displayed above due to the amount of money and talent invested in the projects (plus, the executive producer of WOTR is John-fucking-awesome-Woo). But it really feels good to know the Mizo film industry is coming up this fast.

At Warriors Of The Rainbow, you will see how clans perceive each other, and how people will do anything to protect their land and family. There are awesome fight scenes, and very moving scenes too that will guarantee a tear to fall down.

Do watch it when you can, you will not regret it. I’m ending this short post with a few more pictures of Warriors Of The Rainbow.

Pic source: Rotten Tomatoes

Chp 421. How Mizo am I?

I’m sure if you've been around a lot, away from your comfort zones, your “people”, your “natural habitat and environment”, you must have asked yourself this question at least once, “How [insert the ethnical group you belong to] am I?” Or worse, somebody asked you that question right to your face…

Because if you belong to a particular group or community, society expects you to have some trait or personality of wherever you’re from, no matter how many times you’ve broken away from the stereotypic mould and created your own avatar.

I’m a Mizo. And one of the things that kinda irritate me a bit is when other Mizos say, “Mizo nih chuan…” English Translation: “If you are a Mizo, then you should…”

I hate that line. In fact if I’m with a couple of Mizos and somebody starts their sentence with that particular line, I just shut myself off completely. On one hand, we are complaining about how people generalize us or how we are not given our due recognition, but on the other hand, we are not taking any attempt to assimilate or do whatever we want to do, out of one’s own free will and volition, with no bondage to cultural shackles or societal norms. That choice of freedom is up to every individual… and it is uncomfortable when people look at me differently just because sometimes I am “not very Mizo”.

What does “being Mizo” mean?

That fact that I hate TEA seems to get on the nerves of many Mizos. “Either you’re a 7th Day Adventist or you’re not a Mizo, how can any Mizo hate tea?” is the question I face many times. Why can’t a person just dislike tea? Why do people always try to force me into liking tea so much, just because it is the unofficial State drink of Mizoram? I don’t like tea, and that is the path I have chosen. Live and let live.

I was brought up in Tamil Nadu. So from the time I was small till I graduated from Engineering College, the first thing I always drank in the morning was coffee. Filtered coffee. So I became a coffee lover. An addict. And tea wasn’t appealing to me because of that, even though almost every Mizo drinks tea (except the 7th Day Adventists of course). And as I have pointed out in my blog earlier too, when I say I love Ice Tea, then the first question people ask me is, “How can you love ice tea and hate hot tea??? That doesn’t make any sense!” and again I have to reply, “You like chilled beer? Yeah? Well do you like hot boiling beer too? No? I rest my case.”

Similarly, I’m supposed to like every Mizo dish. If you’re a Mizo and you don’t like the traditional Mizo dishes, then they call you names like a snob and “in ti changkang” and somebody who is ashamed of being a Mizo… 

Seriously??? Questioning one’s patriotism and loyalty over… taste buds?

I love bekang and nghapih and a lot of stinky dishes. But at the same time I am not a big fan of the bitter veggies, which one can find in almost every Mizo cuisine. And I don’t like being forced to like those, because I really can’t. Being a Mizo does not guarantee me to like them. And if I prefer, say, a five course meal at an expensive 5 star restaurant starting with the proper appetizers and wine and ending it with the perfect dessert, instead of our local Mizo cuisine, does that make me a snooty prick? Or even worse, a turncoat to one’s root?

No, for various reasons: One, I’ve been working my ass off every day for the past so many years so that I can afford such food on a regular basis. You reap what you sow. Two, It’s a matter of taste buds. Of course to me the Hotel food tastes better but does that mean I eat only such high-end cuisine or exotic dishes? Hell no, if I want, I am content with just rice and dal with no other side dish. I am that simple. In fact I can survive eating just roadside vada-pavs or samosas for days, so don’t you ever judge me on that.

The thing is, I like variation. I like my food to rotate, you know. And that is why sometimes I think I will never fit in a typical Mizo household, where for breakfast and dinner, we eat the same food every day for the rest of our lives. Like I said, I can manage with Mizo dishes, but I need variations now and then, otherwise life gets too… simple and plain and… a bit boring. I’d like to rotate my breakfast or brunch with poha for one day, upma the other, then dosas and idlis on some days, then sandwiches on other days, followed by puri bhajji or chole bathura, and then maybe a Mizo full course meal, again followed by cornflakes and pancakes or even just bread and jam, and then back to poha again and so on…

Similarly, for lunch or dinner, I can of course have a Mizo meal, but again, I’d like to rotate it now and then with maybe a Chinese meal, an Italian meal, Indian meal with rotis and other bread, or even go for a simple shawarma or pizza and so on. I am a foodie and I love trying out new cuisine, and I have indeed tried out different varieties of food from all across India… That was the way I was brought up, and when one is well past his 30’s, it is indeed very hard to change suddenly and adapt to something else permanently. 

Another situation that makes me contemplate a lot is when I help out my fellow Mizos… being a close knitted society, we of course feel comfortable when we are with other Mizos even if they are strangers. And so, it is very common for one Mizo to help out another Mizo, even if they are meeting for the first time… And when I do that, others call me a good person. The thing is, will I still go that extra mile and help out another stranger if he is not a Mizo? I probably won’t. So does that still make me a good guy then? Probably not.

To me, that is a bit like the faith related question I’d really like to ask some of the Christians I know online (you know, the ones who quote Leviticus 19:28 and brand me a Devil worshipper just because I have tattoos all over my body, but conveniently skip the previous verse Leviticus 19:27 that prohibits man from cutting off his beard and side-burns) the following questions… “Are you NOT committing murder (or rape or burglary etc..) just because the Bible tells us not to do so as it is a SIN… or are you not doing it because it is a wrong thing to do? Because deep down in your heart, in your conscience, in your mind, you know it is bad and wrong?”

But no matter how un-Mizo I may seem to some, a part of me will always forever be Mizo. Because after all, that is who I am. I always talk about our Mizo culture, customs, traditions etc. whenever I am among a group of new people, informing and educating them about who we are and what we do and so on. Because it warms my heart to talk about my roots.

So does “being a Mizo” mean it’s only about the food we eat, or is it more about a higher calling, about how we are proud of our heritage and how seeing other Mizos who excel in different walks of life makes us happy deep down inside? Is “being a Mizo” only about the tea we drink, or is it more about how much we love informing the world about who we are and even going to the extent of scouring the internet everyday just to correct misconceptions people may have about us?

At the end of the day, I think “being a Mizo” means doing whatever you love doing, out of sheer passion, in whatever way you can. To find a connection and bond with other Mizos, which need not be only through traditional cuisines. To feel ashamed when you read the news about another Mizo getting involved in drugs or prostitution. To feel the pain when you see scores of your fellow Mizos fleeing a particular city. To feel elated when you get to know about a Mizo achieving something noteworthy in his/her line of work. To feel a deep kinship every time you come across a Mizo name in the newspaper.

Just the other day, during the ongoing Juniors National Hockey Championship for Girls, Madhya Pradesh thrashed Mizoram 12-1. The top scorer for Madhya Pradesh, who scored a hat-trick, was Ramngaihzuali Ralte, a Mizo. Another Mizo girl Lalruatfeli Hnialum too scored two goals for Madhya Pradesh on that same match. Yes, they just happened to play for a different state and there can be many reasons behind that, maybe they were brought up in MP, maybe they are currently studying there, maybe they have better sports facilities which can help them in their career, it can be anything… but a part of me felt pain. I know it’s not supposed to hurt (maybe) but it did. If, say, for example, Maharasthra beat West Bengal and the best player for Maharasthra happened to be a Bengali, I’m sure not many Bengalis would go, “How could you do that to your own people…” But in my case, it was hard to ignore the disappointment. Maybe it’s because we Mizos are still a very small community and the entire population of Mizoram is less than the population of Andheri East here in Mumbai… Maybe…

Of course I still remember what one of my friends once told me… If we are supposed to act as Indian, as one unit entity as a whole without keeping our ethnocentric roots and respective States first, then why do we keep having these National tournaments and competitions that pitches one State against another?

Hmmm… Food for thought maybe?

In the meantime, let me go reheat some of today’s leftover ham and salami pizza garnished with my own stash of bekang and ratuai pickle, and topped with good ‘ol spicy vaihmarcha rawt dip from Mizoram. Yummm!

Bon appétit to you all…

Chp 420. Goal United: Transfer Market

Bwahaha here’s another blog update nobody’s going to read, judging from my previous post, Goal United: Third Division :P

But I just want to put this out here too…

Now that the new season is starting for everybody, most people are trying to buy better players so that they will stand first in their league or not get relegated etc…

My advice? Unless you are planning to be the number 1 in your league and get promoted to the next division, DO NOT buy any players right now!

Because right now, the transfer market is CRAZY!

Everybody wants better players, and so everybody’s trying to outbid each other.

A normal midfielder of age21-23 and strength of around 3.0 was available for around 1 million a few weeks ago. Currently, people are bidding for such players to as high as 3 million!

I have almost 6 million is stash now, still deciding whether to concentrate on infrastructure or buy expensive players. But even if I’m going to buy better players, I will definitely not do it now, seeing all the craziness in the transfer market.

Money is precious, save it.

As mentioned in my previous post, I just got promoted to the third Division and I am currently the weakest player in my new league in terms of team strength and value. My plan right now is to use my existing players and play against the big teams in my league while setting team effort to 125% and 150%. Yesterday was my first league match against a player whose main 11 team strength was 36 (mine is just 30). I won! Lolz.

Yes of course, setting team effort to higher than 100% would mean higher chance of injury to my players, but that’s better than wasting a couple of millions on players who will not be that expensive in the next few weeks. That’s the risk I’m willing to take.

So that is my tip of the day :P

Wait. Hang on. Wait for the transfer market to cool down. Wait for all the other players to exhaust their cash reserves. And then, BANG, swoop in and buy top players at a much cheaper rate!

Cheers :)

Chp 419. Goal United: Third Division!

This post will be a bore to most of you, but I just want to put it out here :)

I’ve been playing Goal United religiously for more than a year now. It’s like a football manager game, but a whole lot more fun and exciting than the average such games.

At Goal United, I get to manage my players, train them, trade them, improve special skills and talents, buy better players, upgrade my stadium, manage my financials and staff upkeep, focus on youth team, arrange my formation depending on who my opponent is, strategize and think two steps ahead of other players, and so on… A day doesn’t go by without me logging in at least once.

I started from Division 5, and was the champion that very season. A season lasts for around three months, and we play 22 matches, twice against every other team in our league. This was the final table position then, when I completed my first season at Division 5. (The name of my team is BoomBoom FC, boom boom as in the sound a cannon makes when it fires. A cannon as in, the gunners, Arsenal FC)



Notice my players, and see how “basic” they were then…



I got promoted to Division 4, where I ended up third that season. Hence I didn’t get any promotion or bonus so I remained at Division 4 for another season. As I continued playing, I was still learning about the game on my own because Goal United, which is also developed by Travian Games,  maker of the popular browser based MMORPG game “Travian” that I used to play many years ago, didn’t have good support and guide. So last season as I played Division 4 again for the second time, I rocked! I almost had a perfect season without drawing or losing a single match, but the guy who was in second place played a very strong team with high effort and bonus cards when we met, and I lost to him at his home stadium by ONE goal :(

But the final outcome was pretty good…



Also, compare my squad now to the squad I once had when I was in division 5 and you will see a vast difference in talent and strength.



Apart from that, I have already mastered a few game tactics like Kick-and-Rush, Counter-attack, Defensive Wall and Offside Trap, thanks to the fact that I login everyday to train my players. I still have to master Pressing, Powerplay and Over the Wings tactics, but all in good time…

Now that I have been promoted to Division 3, I take a look at my current league and realize I am the weakest player! Lolz…



I am so going to get humped, starting tomorrow which is my first match of the new season. But I have around 5.5 million bucks in my savings currently, and I am still undecided whether to invest that in stadium development so that I will have more spectators coming for the match (hence higher income) or should I buy better players who will be strong enough to face the onslaught of these teams in my new league?

My main aim this season is to NOT get related and go back to division 4. Of course there’s no bloody hell I can win or be in the top 3 this season because of the strength of the other players in my league, but I MUST win a few matches so that I am in the middle order towards the end of this season and NOT in the relegation zone.

My only worry is, two of my best players, Di Cola and Pallotta, both Italians, both defenders, are 28 and 29 years old respectively (every player age by a year every season, and once they turn 30, their skills and talents turn negative, hence younger players are more expensive than older players even if they have the same strength value).



With Di Cola and Pallotta becoming old, I have to buy players for their replacement. I already bought Trevisani, another Italian, for a large sum of money because he’s young and he has a charismatic personality, making him the ideal person to captain my squad but that alone won’t seal the deal. Von Rutkowski is another favorite player of mine, a midfielder who showed courage and leadership in times of trouble, who is slowly approaching his prime, but I have already bought his replacement, the young Korkmaz, who’s so far my most expensive purchase.



My 23-25 years middle order age group is kinda ok… nothing impressive but yeah, they played a huge role in letting me win Division 4 last season. I’m just disappointed that Datta and Sivakumar, two of the only four players remaining from my original team, are improving their strengths at such a slow pace, in spite of start almost every league matches. The only time I rest them is when I have a friendly or practice match.



Finally, my 20-22 years age group, the group that I am proud of the most. Being a hardcore Gooner, I think I have really passed on Wenger’s philosophy by concentrating on the youth. And that paid off handsomely. I have Korkmaz, who was my top scorer last season, and new Polish striker Zakajto who quickly adapted to Indian climate and became a penalty specialist. There’s Yemkov, my reliable goalkeeper transferred from Russia who was the reason why I had the least number of goals conceded last season, and our new captain from Italy, Trevisani. Apart from that, there’s also Saraf and Suchitra, two new players I promoted from my Youth Academy after a long observation. Not much experience, but they faced the old boys with much confidence and courage. These people are going to be the foundation of my team in the long run and I am really proud of them. In fact their overall strength of 15.8 is actually more than the 23-25 age group whose total strength is just 15.6

Ok enough of my team for now. Let’s look at my new league in Division 3.

Like I said, I am currently the weakest in this league, but I have 5.5 million bucks so if I decide to spend it on players, I am sure I can bump up the ladder. At the same time, I studied the squad of the other players, and looking at the strongest guy in my league, I immediately saw this…



Four of his players are already in the negative, five other players are on the borderline, and another five players approaching that borderline. This guy CLEARLY did not plan for the future. So, who knows, anything can happen and I may not get relegated this season after all.

Wish me all the best guys! :)

Also, wishing my Gooner friends Zara, Rha Ralte and Chhana COYG who started playing this game this season (Division 5) and hope they will have a good experience as I did and maybe we’ll all clash in the same division one day :)

Chp 418. Loneliness

 

“Just because I’m not alone, doesn’t mean I’m not lonely”…

That was on the Hallmark card I sent to my “girlfriend” back in School, a girl I just met twice, but somehow, we were a “couple”… I remember that line because I really loved it. Those were the days when we used to write letters on actual paper and put stamps on the envelope and then wait everyday for the mailman to see if she replied or not…

20 years later, she’s probably settled down now with a husband and three kids. But that line kinda made me think a lot. Are we really lonely in today’s world?

The other day, I went with three of my friends to our favorite watering hole at Bandra – Banana Bar. While I was out smoking at the terrace, our regular waiter came up to me and asked, “Sir, can I ask you something?” and I of course said yes. “Sir, the four of you are having such a great time, laughing and all, but you’re all just looking at your phones… it looks very funny from here!” Which made me realize… yes… it must be funny for somebody observing us, and unfortunately, that is how most of us are today.

We can update our facebook or twitter statuses and upload pictures and videos from almost anywhere now… keep in touch with old friends while we are with a different group of friends. Share what we are eating with friends or family on facebook, pinterest, instagram, or even create a tumblr or posterous blog for that purpose, making us feel as if our friends are right there with us even if we’re sitting all alone at a restobar.

Hell, even the most private moments like when we are in the loo, we are always connected. I’ve stopped reading the newspapers while I’m sitting on the throne, and instead browse through news sites or take part at discussions forums from my mobile. The other day, my colleague from office sent me a whatsapp message, “Hey, is that you inside the loo?” and I replied immediately by clicking a photo of my legs and rolled-down pants, “Yes”.

And speaking of private moments, there’s this really funny Japanese dude on Instagram that my colleague Emma follows, who updates his followers with pictures of the women he’s currently sleeping with! Lolz. And the caption goes, “Hi. Today I am sleeping with Izanami. She is from my office.” or “Hello my friends. Today I am sleeping with Masuyo, we met at a pub last night. She is a very nice girl.” and you see a photo of him with the particular girl under the blanket waving and smiling cutely at the camera. And don’t be surprised by this, because we already have serial entrepreneurs like Cindy Gallop who are trying to socialize sex and make sex a part of social networking.

Social networking and easy connectivity have really changed our attitude and perception. We have become more impatient. Remember how a few years ago, we would call the girl’s hostel from a local PCO booth and fix a date, and then we would be there at that time and place to meet the other person? If the other person hadn’t shown up yet, we would just wait and wait, patiently. And then mobile phones became affordable for everybody and suddenly we would sms each other “Where are you now? Where are you now?” every goddamn minute if the other person’s running a bit late.

Now, it’s all about GPS. We track each other from our phones to know where the other person is in real-time! What happened to all the patience? And what happened to the feeling of being alone? One look at my Google Latitude and I see my friends everywhere across the city, some moving, some static, some together (if you know what I mean), and some close to where I am, suddenly making me feel like I have company because my close friends are nearby.

When people asked me (back when I was staying by myself), “You live alone?” I would reply, “Yes. But funny thing… I never feel alone.” …which is true because my phone never stops with all the notifications. Man is a social animal, and today’s technology has really bridged the gap between long distance and real-time. Now that I have moved in with two roomies, things are STILL the same. “Somebody just rang the bell, can you please open the door coz I have a freaking hangover” was my tweet to my roommate, separated by just a wall. “Here’s a pic of the breakfast our cook made for us this morning. I’ve uploaded it at Yelp and gave it 4 stars. Are you coming out of your room to take a look?” was another message sent to another roommate.

And even when I am staying all alone in this new house, it just feels like all my friends are right next to me. “Oh you’re watching that movie on hulu? Let’s sync our streaming so we can watch it together” messaged a friend of mine thousands of miles away. And then we would activate our skype just to know we’re watching the movie together, or even take it to the next level by inviting other friends online and having a group video chat with them at G+ Hangout. Sometimes we would even sync our music playlist through last.fm and other such software/devices so we know we are listening to the same stuff, or even host a radio channel for our friends so they can listen to our collection in real-time.

With 4G coming soon, things are even going to be easier and faster than this. Look at the gaming world even now. Most of the games I play from my mobile today are MMOs – Massively Multiplayer Online games, such as MMORPG, MMOFPS, MMORTS etc. I can play many games with my friends or even strangers across the world while I’m staying all alone locked in a dungeon (just a figure of speech because I’m sure there won’t be any signal inside an actual dungeon :P ). Remember 20 years ago when we were writing letters to our sweethearts, the only way we could play video games with our friends was if they were sitting right next to us?

Maybe today’s mushy hallmark e-card should read “Just because I have all these friends on facebook, twitter, G+, whatsapp, BB, instagram, skype, etc… doesn’t mean I am not lonely”.

Now, that would be a killer slogan, tailor stitched for the romantic youth of today.

Cheers.

Chp 417. Sex Education

It’s a known fact that young girls are advised by their mothers about sex, menstruation and all things related to that at a very early age, because of the obvious reason. But when it comes to young boys, we all know things are not like that.



The other day I was catching up with an old friend of mine who now has a 12 year old son (and no, my friend is of the same age as I am… Dude just happened to get married off early - Arranged marriage), when the topic moved to sex education. When was he planning to tell his son about the birds and the bees?

His immediately reaction? “Hell no, not now. It’s still way too early!”

…which kinda made me chuckle because by the time I was 12, I pretty much knew everything about the forbidden three lettered word. That’s the “advantage” of being brought up in a boarding school. The age of adolescence clearly overlaps the age of innocence in most hostels.

I was in a hostel from Class 1 in Mizoram. And then when my folks felt I was prepared enough, they moved me to a hostel in Calcutta when I was in Class 3. And class 7 onwards I was in a hostel in Tamil Nadu.

So when I was 12 years old, let’s see, that would be the year 1992. Class 6, St. Thomas Boys’ School, Khidderpore. Yup, that was the year our hostel warden (Aunty Rich) raided my trunk and confiscated my collection of debonair and chastity magazines!

And no, I wasn’t the only one who “peaked early”. A lot of my friends had such magazines back then, hidden between their bed sheets and mattresses. I just happened to be the unfortunate one who got caught. With a dormitory shared by boys of different age groups, facts about sex and the female body parts were frequently passed on from seniors to juniors.

Hehe… I was shitting in my pants when my mom flew down from Mizoram to take me home for the summer vacation. Aunty Rich must have told my mom everything, but my mom never said anything to me. Eventually, I changed schools after that incident. We applied for admission at Montfort Anglo Indian School, Yercaud, down in Tamil Nadu and I nailed the entrance tests.

When I was in class 8 there, one of our subjects for English was Macbeth. Our teacher, Sir Aldrin, was just reading the part:

Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,

…when I raised my hand because I had a doubt.

“Yes Kima?” he asked.

“Sir… so far we have learnt that… the Macbeths do not have any children…”

“Yes…?”

“So how could Lady Macbeth lactate if she didn’t have a son or daughter?”

The whole class erupted in laughter and Sir Aldrin asked me immediately, “And how DID you know about that?”

…which put me in a really tight spot because I couldn’t exactly tell how I knew (and of course years later I found out some women can indeed lactate even if they haven’t given birth due to stress, hormonal imbalance or pituitary tumor, but that’s a different story).

And in class 9, Stephen, who was the only Mizo classmate I had, his parents gifted him a book called “Boy’s Talk”, which had everything about sex education, advised from a very religious point of view. As we all went through the book, we just laughed and laughed because we already knew all the things the author was trying to tell in a very calm and understanding tone, lest we get shocked or something…

See, that is hostel life. Our folks do not have to give us uncomfortable lectures about sex because we learn about it from our friends and seniors. Of course we usually started off wrong, like when we all assumed women have four holes, one for poo poo, one for pee pee, one for making baby girl, and one for making baby boy. But then our seniors showed us pictures and videos, enlightening us. And then later, we would return that favour by showing the pics and vids to our juniors. And they in turn became the torch bearer of such dark knowledge. Circle of life indeed.

I’m not saying learning about it that way is a good or bad thing. But a hell lot of us graduated without having any proper sex ed, and yet, we all turned out ok.

So how did you learn about sex (and I am not talking about your Biology classes). When was the first time you became inquisitive about the opposite sex and wanted to know about the things adults do to each other in bed? When did you start questioning your sexuality? Did your folks ask you to sit down because they have something important to tell you? Or did you learn about it from a sleazy magazine or Nancy Friday novel on your own? Or was it a senior from school who enlightened you?

Let me know in the comment section below, I’m mighty interested in knowing about your experience.

I’m also tagging all my regular blog friends and you can blog about your experience in your next post with the tag #myfirstsexEd in the topic name, and put a link back to my post in your post and I will then put up your link on this very post (comon, this habit of tagging blog friends and asking them to write about a particular topic was very popular back in 2005-07).

Remember, it’s all in good fun. Plus it will give you something to write about if you have a case of the writer’s block. Cheers.

Chp 416. What I really do for a living

This is just another of those personal blog updates about me, but I think I have to put it out here because I have come across too many people asking me what exactly do I do for a living when I tell them I’m a copywriter at a digital advertisement agency. And of course I don’t blame anyone for not knowing because the digital industry is still quite new.

When there is lack of knowledge, it is quite understandable that people end up assuming something else.

I still remember back in 2004 when I got my BE degree in computer science, my friends and family in Mizoram called me up all the time and asked me to fix their broken computers and printers or reinstall Windows for them! Urrmmm… that’s not what we were taught. In fact I’m sure many of the toppers from our batch who got offers from Cisco, Microsoft, Infosys, Wipro etc. wouldn’t even know how to assemble a PC from scratch.

And when I got into IIM-Bangalore in 2005, my dad was utterly disappointed at me for doing a diploma course because the course degree was not even recognized by AICTE. “If you want to get a real MBA degree, I’ll ask one of my old friends to help you get admission in a proper college”, he told me. :) But one good thing about that misconception was, when I dropped out a year later, my dad, who by then had learnt about how prestigious the IIMs actually were, couldn’t reprimand me for quitting because I reminded him “hey, no big deal Pa, it’s just a diploma course” :trollface:

So now, coming to the present… who what do I exactly do?

Using the internet, I arrange escorts for politicians and VIPs in Mumbai, running a brothel of Eastern European and Russian girls. 

Nah, just kidding. :P

No foreigners in my brothel actually, because they’re kinda expensive. My girls are all Indians.

Nah, gotcha again.

I work in a digital ad agency by day, and fantasize about running a brothel by night.

Ok that is the half-truth. :D

I work at webchutney, which I may have mentioned a couple of times in my past posts. I started as a copywriter trainee, to junior copywriter, to copywriter, to senior copywriter all in less than four years. Here are a few myths people have about me that I have to debunk (these are replies to actual questions people have asked me before):

1. No, my work is not about checking if a product or advertisement has violated any copyright laws. I’m a copywriter, not a copyrighter (if ever there was one).

2. No, I do not spend my time copying texts for other people. Copy + Writer = yes, I can see the logic behind your assumption, but no, that is not what I do :)

3. No, the amount of actual writing I do is extremely less. Digital media and Print media are quite different. Print ads are more copy rich and visually rich. Digital ads aren’t like that. When was the last time you ever saw a static digital advertisement filled with text?

4. No, just because I work in a digital agency, I’m not the dude who spams you with junk mails like how to enlarge your penis by a few more inches. :P

5. Yes, some of my past work did involve creating some of the marketing emails you may have received in your inbox or spam folder. But all my clients were high-end, with an exclusive mailing list. If you received a mail from Gokulam & Sons, promoting their computer accessories at 20% discount, then that was not from me. But if you received a mail from, say… Barclays Bank rewarding you with a holiday in Seychelles for spending more than 10,000 credit points, then yeah, it was probably me who created and sent that mail to you. But again, all this is just a very small percentage of my actual work.

6. No, my blogging has nothing to do with my work. In fact most of the top copywriters in our industry do not even blog. I blog purely out of passion (though it really helped me in getting this job because my blog was like a resume).

7. No, I cannot create a website for you. I mean, it will take me some time to do that as I know a little bit of this and that, but that is not my core expertise. In a digital agency, there are three main verticals – the client servicing & business development department (these are the pretty people who deal with clients directly, interact with them and build up relationships or suck up to them, get briefs and feedback etc which they then pass on to the rest of us. They are the poster boys and girls of our company), the tech department (these are the guys who do all the coding and programming and all things geeky, the behind-the-scene guys, the ones who can actually build a site for you, using just one hand), and then there’s the creative department where I belong. We are the freaks and vagabonds of our company, the ones who brainstorm all day and come up with ideas and strategies for a pitch or campaign. Our department consists of copywriters, designers, illustrators, visualizers, animators etc. Creativity is mandatory here.

So I hope things are clear now. And like I said earlier, I do not blame you at all if you don’t know what copywriters do. In fact, when I first joined this company as a copywriter, I didn’t even know what copywriters were supposed to do! [read the hilarious confession here]

And that’s not all. Working in the digital industry, the internet is constantly evolving. Hence we need to constantly change or adapt to the changes. The copy style, the design style, the technology, everyday, something new comes up. I really feel that the work a digital agency copywriter is supposed to do cannot be defined. Hence the reason why my current designation at webchutney is “Creative Trailblazer”. Yeah it’s a made-up designation, because most of the work I do is different from what many mainstream copywriters do. 

Apart from brainstorming and coming up with new ideas, I work mainly on copy (the text and content that appear on a site/banner/mailer). I’m also actively involved in strategy building, research marketing, sitemap and wireframe designing, I’ve even designed a couple of websites myself, done video directing & editing for clients, handled their social media accounts (facebook & twitter updates), and even handled the backend maintenance for some of our clients all on my own. And right now, I am working on a game project in the role of a Game Producer, and I have my own gaming team, both here in our Mumbai office and Delhi office. So… yeah… it’s hard to explain what I exactly do in just one word :) Hence – Trailblazer :)

The main point is, at least I have pointed out the things that I DO NOT do. :)

Let me know if you have any questions about my line of work at the comment section below. This is how a simple me makes his humble living here in bustling Mumbai.

And oh, last but not the least, there’s one more myth I wish to debunk – No, I am not making any money from the popular Mizo community site misual.com that we run. Me and all the other admins of misual.com are not taking in even one single paise. We do not have Google ads running, nor are we accepting any advertisements. That is how we decided it should be and that is how it is. Cheers :)