Recycling 2020

Imagine a newspaper cartoon of the cacophony of climbing humans each trying to move up while few on top are pushing the ones below them down – making it even hard for them to stabilize or climb. Sounds more like insects struggling in a Darwinian cauldron titled “survival of the fittest”.

Yes! It is difficult for anyone to reach to the top of his/her field. It does require a lot of talent, hard work, sacrifice, politicking, networking, frequent smiles from lady luck and above all a fire in the belly. Some have a seemingly unfair advantage as their parents feed them with bright shiny silver spoons!

To me this “seemingly unfair” is not “really unfair” because of my belief that the Nature can’t be unfair. How can it be as it maintains everything so beautifully –so well synchronized, despite humans trying their best to upset the cart. To my mind, there is more to this ‘seemingly unfairness” than what meets the eye. The cause of this effect could be possibly the “karma theory” – you are free to act but your actions bind to you – these actions shape your energy, your frequency, or your aura. When the body dies, the aura remains affected by your actions and when you are born – this karma-affected aura becomes the cause. The effect being where and how you begin your journey in this cacophony of climbing humans.

Coming back to the point, except for the “flash-in-the-pans” who could be as superficial as the Poonam Pandeys of the world, most successful people have had something in them.

The point I want to make is that once you have reached there, the fire in the belly subsides but a new fight begins – to sustain - somehow sustain – what you have is this brand created by you and your focus is how much you can milk it. Some keep adding value to themselves and brand grows, for others a downward spiral starts – there can only be so much milk in the udders!

I was disappointed by two biggies on their latest offerings – Chetan Bhagat & Shahrukh Khan.

Just finished reading Chetan’s “Revolution 2020” and was surprised how Hindi movie-like it was! Seemed he is only milking his brand now.




What has he done – took the story of Amitabh and Shashi starrer “Deewar”, changed the smugglers’ background to education system, swapped the character of Maa (Nirupa Roy) with a heroine Aarti who unlike the Maa has some grey shades as differentiator! The remaining story and the emotions remain amazing same with characters just changing names/professions– like the Dawar Seth becomes a politician. Even scenes are copied like – the anti-hero Gopal itching to tell the hero Raghav in Bachchan style – “dekh tere paas kya hai, mere paas bangla hai, gaadi hai..."




In the end the anti-hero has the same question – “main tera achcha beta hoon na maa?”

Sri Shahrukh created a squid in Ra.One. He even exposed his limitations as an actor by portraying a Tamilian Techy who looks and talks more like a north Indian Raj (except few times when he suddenly remembers he have to behave like a Tamilian!) ditto his robot act where the Robot suddenly starts looking and behaving like a human.




But being the King Khan, he milked his brand name like no one else can do, to make the movie a hit even before it was released. He rode his way laughing to the bank riding on more than 30 consumer brands using Ra.One ads plus the sale of overseas rights, satellite rights so on and so forth, notwithstanding the teary distributors and yawning public.

To be fair to him, he at least accepts what he does as he commented in an interview after the release that ‘yes, he made it an overnight success but it took 20 years of hard work!’

both the offerings were “hit”, I am sure both Chetan and Shahrukh would know that they would need to deposit more before withdrawing further to arrest any decline in their brand name.