[The Hindu] Empow(d)ered woman

‘Touch the Pickle’ for sanitary pads directly addressed and defied a ridiculous Indian taboo that a girl who has her periods should never touch the pickle jar, as it would cause its contents to rot.

Earlier, if an Indian woman was seen coming out of the closet, it was usually with some cleaning implements in hand; to make the floor sparkle and shine — before her husband brought his muddied boots home from the office. Now, it is to declare her sexual preference, not her floor-cleaner preference. Jai ho, Indian advertising!

Even as the recent Myntra commercial sold clothes woven around a story of two women (deeply in love with dressing, and each other), came the news of a shattering of glass ceilings; a noise heard around the world of international advertising. India had won the Cannes Grand Prix for a P&G campaign: The Glass Lion for addressing gender inequality and prejudices.

This brand new category created quite a buzz at Cannes, the ultimate award show celebrating the best of advertising from around the world. India, rife with gender inequalities and stereo types, seemed a happy Lion-hunting ground, and had some worthy contenders for this most coveted prize. And win India did — not once; but twice, with two path-breaking ideas for P&G.

‘Touch the Pickle’ for sanitary pads directly addressed and defied a ridiculous Indian taboo that a girl who has her periods should never touch the pickle jar, as it would cause its contents to rot. The phrase was a war-cry to challenge many other hushed no-nos that we in India know so well: don’t enter the kitchen, don’t play vigorous sports, don’t enter a temple. This provocative insight by Creative head Josy Paul’s team at BBDO, Mumbai, was the core idea that freed sanitary pads from coy references to ‘those four days’, not to mention doing away with the mandatory brand-demo every client insists on putting in; (undoubtedly confusing a lot of ignorant males that girls ‘bleed blue’ once a month).

The Indian win was even more creditable as it beat the Internet favourite #Likeagirl campaign from the American sanitary pad brand Always. After winning the Facebook Award just a week earlier, Likeagirl somehow paled into an already-heard-that-one idea. To the jury (eight women, two men) of the Glass Lions Award, ‘Touch the Pickle’ must have scored high on quaintness and Third-World charm, even as they exclaimed to the press: “This is a gender issue that impacts every single woman worldwide, it’s innovative and disruptive, entertaining and engaging…” They were also referring to the huge body of work supporting the idea — from TEDx talks to stand-up comedy routines — that made Whisper shout it out for young girls. (Curiously, not against male prejudice, but women themselves — elder women perpetuating age-old meaningless customs, despite suffering so much themselves as teenagers.) True, not one of those modern upper-class girls depicted in the ad would’ve even heard about that pickle superstition; but the insight became a curious catch-phrase to build up a huge ‘movement’ around the brand. The results were stunning too: Whisper’s share of voice went up from 21 per cent to a remarkable 91 per cent.

And then lightning struck twice in the same place: BBDO won for fighting gender bias — again! This time, not that strike of lightning we know so well telling us how to get whiter whites but a detergent brand that put laundry advertising in a new spin altogether.

The main TV commercial shows a very real-life drama unfold, even in the most liberated of Indian homes. An elderly lady comments on how far working women have come, and even shares with her friend, the fact that her daughter-in-law earns more than her son — said with a hint of pride, and no prejudice. Even if the commercial had ended right there, it would’ve been a strong message to society that it’s ok for a woman to earn more, even the son’s mother doesn’t have an ego problem… Just as we are silently applauding the moment, we hear an interaction between the daughter-in-law, busy with her laptop, and her banian-clad husband. “Why didn’t you wash my green shirt yesterday, yaar?” asks he, in mild annoyance. Three women turn very slowly to look at the man. In the moment of profound silence that follows, comes the sledge-hammer of a thought: Why is laundry only a woman’s job? Silence. Ariel. #ShareTheLoad.

It is easy to understand how this ad resonated with every member of the jury, even without cultural contexting. In 90 per cent of urban Indian households, laundry is considered a woman’s job — not just for ensuring promotions at work for the husband, or an impromptu dance with the adoring slave-wife, as she puts out the tightie-whities to dry. Housewives almost always operate the washing machines…as many men, it appears, who so love the knobs and touch-screens of their cars and music systems, can’t figure out the dials of washing machines, and anyway who has the time to separate coloureds and whites and dainties. Perhaps a dirty secret of even first-world Western households…

In a witty ad campaign that uses humour rather than strident berating, P&G pushed guilt-struck males into sharing the load, and even earn bragging rights, by blogging about it in a contest that took off like a washed handkerchief in the wind. Extensions of this huge core idea found their way to celeb fashion designers endorsing their labels, quite literally: “Can be washed by both men & women’’ said the label at the collar. Next, the most watched-space for young men and women was hit too, with Ariel. “Will you Share the Load of household chores with your partner” appeared on online Matrimonial websites. A moment for reflection for every male chauvinist contemplating marriage, for sure.

The banter-with-a-serious message continued with encounters with newly wed celebrity couples. The message Share the Load, percolated to many other household chores. The dabbawallahs of Mumbai carried the message on their shirts, even as they delivered lunch-boxes (lovingly filled by the wife at home, perhaps). But even as one senses the fun the agency must’ve had coming up with this good-humoured washing of dirty linen in public, the dazzling results came in: sales registered an increase of 60 per cent as women must have added Ariel Matic to their shopping cart to further remind the man of the house that it’s not about who wears the pants but who washes them too.

Cannes awards apart, we can look back on the past year and recollect a number of gender-benders that have hash-tagged their way to fame. Havells had ideas as endless as their gadgets. One laugh-out loud example: at a girl-seeing-ceremony, the mommy-ji laments that her darling phoren-returned son seeking a wife suffers so much in his bachelor life abroad, stepping out even for coffee. Thump! The defiant girl firmly places her coffee-maker before the startled boy, saying take this one and settle down, no visa problem either; as she herself wants to be a wife, not a kitchen appliance. Havells#Respectforwomen. Undoubtedly!

The much-hailed Titan Raga went on from its widow re-marriage theme, to showing poised single women moving with the times, despite running into ex-lovers at airports making dumb observations (“we could’ve made it work, if only you’d quit working”). Nimrit Kaur’s amused rejoinder said it for all of us who encounter retrograde male attitudes.

The Airtel wife-who’s actually-the-boss. The Bournvita competitive mom. The Fastrack convention-defying teen. The HDFC parent-supporting daughter. The Sofy imnotdown Gal.

What a different face of the woman of today! One wonders if planners in ad agencies arrive for work with a checklist in hand, ready to pin their next advertising message on a sharp arrow that carries a gender issue shooting out of TV screens. Well, we’ve had them push the pay-packet envelope already with the Ariel ad, but why, wonders my friend in advertising, didn’t they push that Whisper insight to a far edgier level than the rather unheard-of but cute ‘Touch the Pickle’ superstition? Isn’t ‘Enter the temple’ the more real and prevalent issue to highlight?

Meanwhile, it is refreshing to take the conversation away from the clichéd fairness creams and powders that once represented the empowered woman. Or the ‘empow(d)ered’ woman, as a wag put it. With gender-fighting enzymes and ego-boosting enhancers, Indian advertising is firmly keeping stride with today’s aware Indian woman.

Indu Balachandran is the author of Don’t Go Away, We’ll Be Right Back: The Oops and Downs of Advertising. Email is indubee8@yahoo.co.in

The article  was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/indu-balachandran-on-the-bold-new-face-of-women-in-indian-advertising/article7460411.ece

[The Hindu] Love thy enema

Indu Balachandran bemoans the menace that is Auto Correct....

I hear that Android cell phones and iPads are leading to a lot of broken relationships. I don’t mean those old days when people discovered amorous texts sent to spouses by secret lovers. These are all sincere loving messages from husband to wife, girlfriend to boyfriend…which an evil fiend called Auto Correct is totally messing up.

Consider what my pal Mona got from Shyam, her long distance boyfriend: “You are too fat. It’s getting more painful by the day”.  Mona doesn’t believe it was a devil inside the phone that turned the word ‘far’ to ‘fat’ and Shyam wasn’t sending her an indirect message.

And here’s what Rajiv got after his fiancé left on an overseas assignment: “Decided to stay in hotel bed all day. Must be some Germans I picked up in the plane.”

And here we are, thinking: Hey! Look how a smart phone is helping me cut time! It even thinks and types the rest of the word. In fact a study showed that on an average this function saved 22 seconds from every text sent — time that could be spent usefully for other things in life.

But I find I now spend an extra four minutes on every message, checking, back-spacing, re-typing, re-reading anything I send out, in morbid fear.  Especially after what happened a month ago to my colleague Harish. He was in a rush that morning, but didn’t postpone sending his sympathies to a former office pal, who had just lost his dear father. “Just heard the sad news. I offer you my condoms”.

He’s wondering if he can sue some genius in Palo Alto who created the evil algorithm to turn the intended word ‘condolences’ into ‘condoms’ .

During the low-technology era, i.e. the years before 2010, we relied on a good old assistant in our comps called the ‘Spellchecker’ that gave us alternatives to pick from, and it was still in our control to change the word or not. For instance, when I typed “Hi Chetan!” to a lawyer friend of mine, ‘Spellchecker’, which hates Indian names, would underline it in red and prompt me to correct that to “Hi Cheat!” Or when I typed “Dear Shoba Aunty”, ‘Spellchecker’ suggested I perhaps meant Dear Cobra Aunty.

But then came revolutionary advances in messaging with phones and tablets being able to read our thoughts and pre-guess what our next word might be.  It’s because phone technology got jealous of Google, which had an uncanny sense of what we wanted to search for, each day on the net. Suppose I wanted to look for new medical advances on the Common Cold bugging me for days. I would start typing “Co… and suddenly I would become the world expert on “Commonwealth Nations, and their impact on geopolitics and environmental issues” in the time it takes to sneeze.

So our phones too decided to smarten up, and guessed words and sentences for us, based on the first two letters typed. This can lead to alarming situations. I’ve heard of this message a guy got, from his girl: “I’m lesbian in 30 minutes.” It was a painful 25 seconds by the time the corrected message came: “Sorry! LEAVING I meant…”

Being a Short Message Service essentially, phone technology  tries to keep words shorter and sweeter to save time. Take this message received by a lady executive from a business associate: “I will meet you in the buff at 1pm at the Coffee Shop.”  Must have been a relief to see him fully clothed later at the buffet lunch, I’m sure.

Or when one elderly lady messaged another, after the passing away of their retirement home’s manager. “We feel his abs even today”. When she realised what  she had sent,  she retyped the sentence. Only it went out as: “We feel his asbestos even today”.

Still, the brilliance of these phones-that-think continues to astound us, even if one types several letters correctly. But I do know of a Yoga teacher whose ears are permanently red after she sent this out to a whole Whatsapp group: “Due to unfortunate circumcisions, there will be no Yoga class for 2 days”.

But what I am puzzled about is: these hi- technology phones should at least get technology words right, right?  Alas,no.

My cousin Raju nearly jumped off a bridge after realizing he’d sent this message to his boss: “No free wifey in this hotel. Got to pay every time. They are charging me a bomb for just one hour of use.”

indubee8@yahoo.co.in

This article was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/indu-balachandran-bemoans-the-menace-that-is-auto-correct/article6471258.ece

[The Hindu] A matter of life and debt

TOPICS

lifestyle and leisure

We spend so much on luxuries, we can't afford the necessities any more.

I was in the newest super-mall in town. It was a day when the sensex had done a dive that would have qualified it for the Olympics, but strangely, all around me, I saw only prosperity; with many happy people shopping away at the utterly plush designer stores... Hey, didn't the sensex figures depress you guys today? I wondered. Looks like it had driven them out in even greater numbers to buy more fancy lifestyle stuff.

And so I have come to this conclusion: Even in the midst of life, we are in debt.

But later, in the lift going up to my flat, I bumped into Shanks. “Why so glum, Shanks?” I asked my usually cheery and witty neighbour.

“Oh, my wife and I finally figured out how to cope with our monthly food bills,” said Shanks. “One of us has to stop eating.”

Starving for luxury

Now that did seem a bit extreme. But I soon found that this is exactly what is happening to a lot of people like us. We spend so much of money on luxuries, we just can't afford the necessities any more.

And when we casually say at parties, “A lot of my money is currently tied up in the market…”, what we mean of course, is the supermarket. We dash in for a quick five minutes just to pick up, say, a humble box of cornflakes — and return an hour later with five varieties of super-powered, enzyme-fortified, fibre-boosted, crackle-enhanced breakfast cereals, a different one for each day of the week. All because the super-mom-like lady wheeling her cart just before us, picked up five such boxes.

That's why it's not a joke anymore, when we hear that these days the most expensive vehicle to operate, per mile, isn't a gas-guzzling Cadillac, but a chrome plated four-wheeler we all use regularly: the supermarket trolley.

And those annoying Joneses are not just living next door, smugly whispering “Keep up! Keep up!” They are everywhere: At those supermarket aisles in front of us, at parties, at offices, at restaurants.

And before we know it, we too want to add way more style to life, and brighten our middle-class lives. We'd much rather fix an appointment at “Niki's Hair Haven”, than drop in at the barber for a quick trim around the back; drive all the way to pick up bread from “ Le Boulangerie”, rather than send our watchman out with a bunch of change to the corner store; we'd rather spend two hours at “ Mimi's Nail Boutique” rather than quickly clip them while reading the morning's papers; and drive our beloved vehicle to “ Toni's Car Spa” for some soapy pampering, rather than hose it down ourselves on a Sunday morning.

And when we're eating out? “Yes, do get me a bottle of ‘Qua' please…” we say poshly to the waiter, perhaps believing an ad we saw on TV that this precious bottle of pure mineral water was personally filled in sleek bottles by several tiny dancing elves, living in the pristine Himalayas…and so we pay the equivalent of an entire meal for three at an idli joint just for this one bottle of water alone.

So much in a name

And, of course, the same reckless behaviour occurs when we start ordering the food. We are captivated by this description in the menu that says, “Sun-kissed, farm-fresh legumes in a nouvelle Meditteranean blend, grilled to a perfect crisp in a gentle dip of bakery-fresh crumbs, embellished with spring-dew cilantro and tomatino”; whose common name is, of course, the vegetable cutlet. (My maid Hamsa makes these with leftovers, in a jiffy.) However, we wait 45 minutes in this elegant restaurant, and finally two tiny brown circles arrive in a huge white square designer plate, there's a zig-zag line of sauce along the side, a tiny sprig of coriander, and a tomato decoration skilfully cut and shaped to look like the Sydney Opera House. “Wow!” we exclaim. It's all so much like being the judges in Master Chef Australia! But there are strong chances we are going to be eating curd-rice as soon as we get home, so that we don't wake up hungry in the middle of the night. Or to combat the heart-burn we may feel, when we think of that bill we paid in the end.

Despite these experiences, I am already filled with curiosity about a new upscale hotel that's serving ‘authentic street foods of India'. What an idea, sir-ji. Basic, non-fancy food, but with five-star cleanliness and comfort! The whole gang is planning to go there for a good gobble for our next celebration, but their bill that will gobble our money may well make us wonder if the ‘street' referred to here is Dalal Street.

Meanwhile, those fabulous stores in the mall are continuing to stock up the goodies, luring us in all the time.

No wonder my pal Shanks has begun to feel that he has too much month left over at the end of his money.

Indu Balachandran is a travel columnist. Email: indubee8@yahoo.co.in

This article was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/a-matter-of-life-and-debt/article2517600.ece

[The Hindu] Forgot Password?

Creating a web account is no big deal. Can someone say keeping track of passwords is as easy as that, asks Indu Balachandran

L ast week, someone asked me for my mobile phone number. A mild panic set in. “Give me yours, I'll give you a missed call…” I said. But that cruel person caught on. “Aha! Forgotten your own number, have you? It happens, it happens…”

Well the reason why numbers are refusing to stay in my head any more is because they have been slowly edged out of their residence in the left side of my cranium by a number of intruders, and these intruders are called Passwords.

There are so many of them jostling for space, all yelling Remember me! Remember me! that I am wondering where to go and get extra RAM space in my brain. Only then will I ever keep track of my Yahoo password, my ATM password, my online railway booking password, my Credit Card protected password , my Cheap Airline Ticket password, my Movie Ticket Booking password, my Theatre Club password, my Investments Portfolio password, and not forgetting, my dead pet cat's name. Some sites even ask you for that.

Those days

When computers first entered our lives, it was all so different: I had only one password to let me into the exciting cyber-world. It was so easy to remember (perhaps because my password was ingeniously called PASSWORD). Those eight letters would magically gain me entry to my mail. Soon I kept the very same password for every new website I discovered.

But a geek pal of mine was horrified that I had a password called PASSWORD in the first place. What a ridiculous thing! Even a moron could hack into that, change it at once!!

So I picked a good four-letter word. (The word in fact was GOOD, not what you just thought of). But suddenly, those stern doormen at these gates of entry got annoying. “Your password must have at least 2 numerals” said one. Oh no! So I decided to do some numerology to see which numbers I could choose. I went to a Numerology website for this, but first I had to enrol. And guess what it asked for? Yes, that's right.

Fed up of always hitting the “Forgot Password?” button to get anywhere,

I decided one day that there'd be no more fancy passwords for me. My name would be my password.

So under “Type your new Password here” I put my own name.

A rude red message started flashing immediately: “TOO OBVIOUS!”

These cyber-doormen who check our passwords were getting increasingly judgemental, even cheeky.

So I randomly looked around, and picked a name from the TIME cover lying next to me. “OBAMA” I typed. “TOO WEAK!” was the prompt response. Obama? Weak? The American people were not going to like that…

Ok then, how about just GOD. “Too short!” it said. I tried to make that OH-GOD, exactly what I had just exclaimed. “Try something better!” said the mean message again. Now who could be better than God?

This went on and on, till I finally made up a very rare combination of letters and numbers in a secret mystifying code that even Dan Brown would have gone crazy trying to crack.

“You did it! CONGRATS. Your Password has been successfully CHANGED!” flashed on my screen. I was flush with triumph. There was even a sweet smiley button on the screen that winked at me twice.

The trouble is: with all that exhilaration of getting it right at last, I forgot to write down this amazing password I had just invented. So I've got to hit “Forgot Password?” and start all over again. But forgetting a password can be useful sometimes.

I was overjoyed at an email I received once from a certain ISSAKA BANGU from Nigeria, promising me $4,000,000,00 from an African bank , just by giving him my Bank Account and Password. I suddenly couldn't remember what it was, in all my excitement.

And that story has a happy ending; I wasn't rendered bankrupt by day's end.

But I am sure I am better than my pal Tina with this password thing in computers. And when Tina can't figure out something she never hesitates to ask Customer Care for help. This is what happened to her:

Customer Care: What's on your monitor now, ma'am?

Tina: The smiling picture of me next to the Pyramids in Egypt.

Customer Care: Er, well, what I meant is: what stage are you in logging into the internet?

Tina: I typed in a Password but nothing happened…

Customer Care: Are you sure you used the right password?

Tina: Yes, I'm sure. I did exactly what I've seen all my colleagues do.

Customer Care: Can you tell me what password you typed in?

Tina: Sure. Six dots.

Meanwhile, I must tell my pal Tina that she and I are not alone in our confusion over Passwords. Here's what I read about this woman who was asked why she had such a long password:

mickeydonaldtomjerrylaurelhardylondon.

Apparently she was merely following that website's clear instructions : “The password must contain at least six characters and one capital.”

Indu Balachandran is a Travel and Humour columnist. Email: indubee8@yahoo.co.in

This article was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/forgot-password/article1117726.ece

[The Hindu] Objects with no objective

A look at the mysterious insides of our cupboards and drawers.

WITH reality shows getting more and more bizarre, here's one more idea (and if any TV producer is reading this now, quick, grab the idea it's free)..It's about Living In Transit. And before anyone leaps up and says "Ha! But that idea has already been done in a hit Hollywood movie called `Terminal'" where Tom Hanks lives for weeks and months under the watchful eye of a camera in an airport transit lounge, feeling homeless, here I'm talking about a Living In Transit situation in each of our homes. In our cupboards, in our drawers, in our shelves...

Unanswerable questions

The reality is: we all have some strange Homeless Objects everywhere. Just sitting there. And if a candid camera went deep into our shelves, our desks, even our handbags, we'd see them all in real focus. And perhaps ask such searching questions: Why has this Calcium Sandoz box, shaped like a dog, with nothing inside, been sitting in the shelf below our telephone, doing nothing for months, may be years? Why is a small packet of negatives of somebody's passport pictures taken in 1993 sitting in between this row of pickle bottles on top of the fridge? Why, oh, why is this corpse of an old emergency torch that succumbed to its own emergency and died in the 1980s still peering at us every time we open the drawer where socks are kept? (Perhaps it's there because in the TV cabinet's extreme corner, there are five assorted batteries, either dead or alive it's impossible to tell whose place of rest hasn't been disturbed for three years, and these could possibly give the old dead torch a new life... but who has the time to try this life-giving experiment?)

You never know

I read somewhere that junk is something that you keep for over 20 years, and throw away two days before you need it. That's why I'm still safely keeping the left ear handle of a pair of sunglasses I owned when Mrs. Gandhi won the elections (Indira, not Sonia). What if the rest of the glasses pop up suddenly one day? So back goes the broken left ear handle inside our kitchen draw (now don't ask me why the kitchen draw it's always been there, that's all).It is this gift of foresight that anticipates possibilities in the future that encourages us to hold on to old, yellow Bank Of India challans of money deposited in 1978-79. What if we want to suddenly check whether or not we deposited a cheque for Rs. 375 received from UTI in September 1979? The challan book is right here inside this (zipless) GRT jewellery pouch, where we have also kept a handy kit of a foldable toothbrush and toothpaste given by Lufthansa, a brass knob of a cupboard that once fell off from our house in Kilpauk where we lived 14 years ago, a watch that has stopped exactly at 3.10 in an unspecified year, a paint brush stiff with rigour mortis with green paint that has died in its bristles, a plastic pouch with a picture of Lord Venkateshwara, and a crumbling folded piece of paper with clear directions of how to get to "Tilak Raj", a tailor in Darya Ganj who stitches great blouses within a day (I left Delhi 22 years ago, but this may be a useful address to pass on to anybody in Delhi).And it's also time to come out of the closet, if you'll pardon the expression, on the clothes we cling on to, even if they may never cling on to us as they do on those hot models on Ftv. One of these days we'll surely sort out why the cupboard is overflowing , but not just now; there's a big sale on at Lifestyle and we haven't a thing to wear for tomorrow's party... But should the Reality Show chaps ever show up in your house suddenly, I hope you have good explanations ready for why this thing is there and that thing is here, all around your house.And the next paragraph is going to make us all say, "Oh no! Don't let the cameras go into that box, please!"

Remedies for every illness

Too late my friend, says the reality camera, as it relentlessly seeks the one box of impossible-to-throw-aways every single household in the world has kept stooged away and yes, you better come right out and admit you have this one too it's the In-House Pharmacy of left-over medicines no patient ever has the patience to finish taking (despite nodding earnestly that we will at the doctor's clinic) to cure a bout of laryngitis, arthritis, hepatitis, synovitis or colitis or just a good old fever. Somewhere in this Box of Cures is a handy remedy to every ill in the world. However, should we wake up in the middle of the night and imagine that we are getting, say, malaria, and immediately rummage around and swallow a remedy from this handy emergency box, our own expiry date will immediately follow, as the expiry date on the foil clearly says December 2000. But do we throw away this dangerous box next morning? You know the answer to that one.Meanwhile, should the Reality Show guys ever come near my handbag, admittedly a dwelling house for several random, mysterious objects that I cart along wherever I go, I have some pat answers to any question that may be thrown at me."Why do you still have this ticket stub to the Shankar Mahadevan Concert that finished over a year ago?""Because I have written down an important phone number on it"."So why don't you just transfer the number into your mobile, or even a phone book of which, incidentally you have three in your bag?""Because I can't remember whose number it is!"Even the toughest Reality Show guys cannot argue with that one.

More things

And the relentless camera may well go on snooping further into my bag, but I have ready answers, should they find the two raffle tickets from the Porur Ladies Club Annual Fete of 2004 ("I think I may have won an Idli Grinder, but I don't know where to check") or five unused tokens for the Giant Wheel at a Dizzyworld ("we may suddenly go there while driving on EC Road") or the DVD of "Madagaskar" from Tic Tac ("I'm too scared to return it as the fine by now must be over Rs. 3,000") and a green stapler ("so that's where it is!").Meanwhile, while you look around your own house just now, and wonder about the purpose in life of about one hundred Things staring back at you, enjoying the art of doing nothing, I am happy to say my own life is going to change. I have just picked up an amazing book called How To Unclutter Your Life. I am going to read it one of these days as soon as I find it in my handbag. It's definitely in there, somewhere...

This article was featured on http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/objects-with-no-objective/article2275004.ece