Monday, June 25, 2007

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Did Himesh always look like this ?

Strange thought. I am now used to of finding Himesh in his traditional stuff and a cap, always and I often used to wonder that when this guy gets his cap off, probably never.

So I thought more and my common sense, whatever of it is left after all these years of testing all kinds of code (you can read some of my software testing tips at http://test-software.blogspot.com), tells me that there must be a time when this middle class born Gujarati would not have spotted a head-gear.

So I hunted and found what, well the old Himesh look. Look at some of these pictures and you would get a good break from the monotony of this current look.

Just this and I actually wanted to write this as a post, well I thought why not. He is riding really really high and with every new day I am growing a liking for his songs, my two year old daughter Pihu now recognizes him, probably I taught her that as part of ever-educating-juvenile-dad, and also knows that he is the guy behind songs like 'ek baar aaja aaja aaja aaja aaaa jaaa' and 'a aa ashiqui mein teri'. He has been around long enough to carve a world for him, infact he directed music as back as 1988 (Bandhan) but was hit only by 1998 with Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya. He did few TV sops as well for Zee and our motherly channel DD. So its not an overnight or couple of years of hit movies to get where he is now. Enough of my justification for liking him.

Coming back to my daughter, I really wonder whether she would be able to recognize him w/o his head-gear. Enough Himesh, go get a shaver, you look much kewl-er and neat without this.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

It happened in India - By Kishore Biyani

It happened in India is a candid and close book by Kishor Biyani, the king of retail as often called by lot many with every growing day. This book which is sort of a young biography of Kishore is co-authored by Dipayan Baishya.

Kishore or KB as often referred to in the whole book starts with telling the Big Bazaar story esp the 'Sabse Sasta Din' campaign of 26 January 2006 and it reads like one hell of a fiction. I wont leak the story but how much you can imagine a grocery store can make by selling Atta, rice and low priced tops and jeans. They do sell TVs and Washing Machines but these are not the ones which get picked up in large nos. Ever heard someone who wanted to buy one AC, actually ended up buying three of them. This happens all the time for folks who go to Big Bazaar to buy a T-Shirt or a Juice can or even a shampoo.

Coming back to fiction, the first story is very well sold to readers and that sort of binds you to read the remaining book. Some of the things which KB talks about are how there store are never a few steps up guarded by a inhibitive security person or on how not to have long aisles and how the concept of having mini-bazar is so much common sense. One of the things which everyone keeps telling us is that when WalMart or other such biggies come here with their expert inventory systems, people like KB will go bust. Well after reading it doesn't seem like as KB tells us stories and stories on how we need to Indianize things.


After the big bazaar story, KB tells us about his background, how his parent came from Bikaner and setup shops in Mumbai as traders. He is a Marwari like some of the other big businesses but he didn't chose to do what his parents were doing. He dabbled in many things, from tailoring patlooons (yeah thats what it was called way back) to setting a fabric factory.

You would be surprised to know that KB even produced a movie called 'Na Tum Jaano Na Hum' followed by another flop and decided to stop. He talks about the future and the 'future group'.

Pretty easy and good read for all. He finishes with another equally fascinating fiction which they pulled off next year on 26 Jan 2007.

Read it.