No Hyphen No Fun

Hyphens, are were fun. Sad, they've killed some 16,000 of them. That's leap-frogging leapfrogging into the past. Huh. Perhaps CNN-IBN themselves(now, this one is with the hyphen) could definitely pick up a thing and a quarter from here.

Death Of A Great Brand Or Birth Of A Greater Brand?

Change is good. Definitely. Hutch is now Vodafone. Good? Not very sure. More than its SIM cards made it into our mobile phones, Hutch - the brand, had made its way into our hearts. Not entirely impossible, but it will be very difficult for Vodafone to replace Hutch. Let's see. We'll let the brand do the talking. Of course, we'll do the talking ourselves. Using their phones and services, that is.

It was an interesting experience last night, being a witness to perhaps one of the biggest brand transitions of our life time happen on the ground. Transition it was, of the Hutch signboards being replaced by those of Vodafone.

The Hutch signboard. Perhaps one of the very few still left in the city at that time of the night.


Loosening Tied Ends - I


Loosening Tied Ends - II



Call Disconnected


Dialing A New Number


Connection Established!


Call Continues


New Up, Old Down!


New Connection Firmly In Place.


While I was taking these pictures, the owner of the shop of which the board was being replaced was giving me a very menacing stare. Apparently, he was under the impression that I was from Hutch/Vodafone and was agitated with the fact that his shop's name was wrongly printed in the signboard! Talk of a deal running into billions of dollars and not enough attention to such important details! Hope they get it right soon.

Rebranding at this scale always comes with some very amusing stories. That of UTI Bank Axis Bank, for example. Do not know how much the re-branding exercise cost them, but it definitely cost them much more in Karnataka. Everyone saw the Axis Bank boards with a certain patch covered and over-written by hand, due to a mistake in printing of the boards.


PS. Here's the Hutch Is Now Vodafone TVC. Decent, but not as nice as the Hutch commercials. Wonder if there will be any at all, as nice as the Hutch commercials.

Oh! It's September 11 Today? The Mumbai Trip Update

I do not know what hidden energy was it that made my dead-twice-over brain to remember that it is September 11 today. More so because our flight back to Bangalore was canceled at the last minute, at 6:59 am IST to be precise. A technical snag, apparently because of a bird-hit. Interesting coincidence, we get a lot of time to rest here in the Airport and it is peaceful here. Scary!

I'm not sure if I am alive. If I am not alive, how the hell am I writing this? I think(think? Can I? Then I must be alive!) I'm living on the Mumbai air, the highest quality oxygen one can ever breathe. There is something about this place that draws me closer to it and makes me fall more and more in love with it everytime I visit this place or stay here.

Carrying back from Mumbai - memories of those days in Mumbai with Scott, Cafe Leopold, Cafe Mondegar, Mahalaxmi, Haji Ali, Raghuram's Scraping Wealth At The Bottom Of The Pyramid and Missile In The Toilet Bowl theories, Trishna, Momos with Kaak, sweat, heat, rain, Desi Chicken at Harish, Mocha at Juhu, that and all that!

Update: Reached Bangalore safe and mentally unsound sound. The day was quite eventful - starting at 5 am, three security checks, sneaking out and back into the airport, the slow and patchy internet connection which we paid for and the really fast internet which was available for free! Have I figured it yet? Here's an attempt though. Mumbai is very humbling, the more one discovers Mumbai, humbler one feels. Mumbai makes one's survival instincts stronger, makes us aware of the fact that no hard work is hard work enough. There's always someone else working harder than one is. There's so much energy, hope and optimism in the Mumbai air. One might be the queen of any land, but while in Mumbai, everyone is the same. But for the Queen of Englad though, they built the Gateway Of India!