Safar Badnamah: Season 1, episode 7 . . . “Unity of the Crows”

Sunday, May 30, 2010 Heba Moeen 9 Comments

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After  KESC’s blessed morning alarm of load shedding I was woken up by a call from my school and I reluctantly left my sweat soaked pillow to get to the call. I was asked to meet someone in the administration department.
The wonders of load shedding and the stress caused during the semester was such that I was neither a night owl nor an early bird, in fact I was both and during late night and early morning studies Gmail was always there to accompany me, it’s just one of my very good friends that scares loneliness away. And another interesting thing about my semester nightmares was that I couldn’t even stop thinking while I was asleep and used to get the entire . . . literally the entire day’s recap in the my nightmares! A very interesting character in those nightmares was my Advertising teacher, although he is the best teacher for this course and I would advise my 10 generations to study from him, some of us had developed a phobia related to Commander Safeguard, yes he resembles him . . . J
So coming back to my travelogue . . . I left home and waited for the bus making sure that I keep the weapon with me, the most essential item, a shield with me against this weather  . . . yes my miniature perfume so that I stay a tolerable social animal. . . Well animal is something I become at times in a public bus; one has to be equipped with trace amounts of rude temperaments while travelling in public transport if my readers know what I mean.
What I didn’t realise and finally realise after being there in the bus for 10 minutes was that I had forgotten my school ID card without which I could be deemed an outcast . . . a recognizable student but truly an outcast without an identification to proof my SZABIST existence. I did some cost benefit analysis and found out that I would only lose Rs. 16 if I go back home but walking back did appeal to me so I decided to take the risk and get myself in a do or die situation.
In the meanwhile a lot has changed on the roads. .. Yes the billboards, especially those adventurous Mountain Dew billboards, they are pretty decent when you compare them to their pretty indecent TV Commercials. The dust cloud, the ‘in your face’ train engine like the ‘in your face’ extreme weather . . . It’s all really amazing. I wish I could take a better picture of the billboard but the driver took a sudden turn and my mobile phone felt awfully cheap trying to take a picture from the inertia affected bus.
When I reached school, I just counted the number of guards at the entrance and felt ridiculous at the sight of the majority of them being there, it just seemed that all of them had poured in from the other campus as well. This was the second time I had forgotten my Id card, the first time, well this week only when I forgot I took undue advantage of my duppatta behind which the card usually is, hence, male guards don’t question much. I gave my purse to be checked near the detector and just barged in. What really made me really feel bad is when I lied to the guard, he asked me for the card and I said, ‘Let me just take it out from the purse’, and I went in . . . Oh the ‘heart pounding ferociously’ moment stayed for a while . . . but I finally made it inside . . .Ahhh Prison Break ! :P
 A few days back I got to have a chance to snap a picture of Sting’s billboard and it is one piece of Art, it’s eye catchy, the colour stays in your retina for long and attracts people more, this is one of the concepts relevant to marketing and advertising. 
The journey back home is often painful and scary and it becomes scarier and horrible when the bus gets to take a route from Jinnah’s road which is roadless and helpless at the same time. There were and still are barriers at both ends of the road which have now left a little room for buses to pass by and in a capitalist world co branded with the sights of police men’s bribe consuming swinging belly’s no chance is spared at consuming bribe at this turning point . . . well the tangent of hopelessness. In order to let the bus drivers take a direct turn towards Regent Plaza at the cost of our lives, these moronic, bribe consuming police men often ask for Rs. 30 as bribe and let them drive through. As the flyover starts, the road at both sides finds itself completely absent and finds it’s potential existence in the future, if you remember the topic ‘Plateaus’ from class VII geography, you would recall that there is a plain area and a sudden steep portion then . . . ‘Dhuzzzzzz’ and yes that’s how the ground is over there. God knows how many times the driver put his foot on break and lift the bus off the ditches with the overcrowded vehicle and the angle swayed from 90 degrees to even 60 degrees may be even 45 . . .
The potential fall of a few stinking people on me made me say my prayers silently, I recited the first three kalmas and regretted forgetting the other three. Though this wasn’t the first time I expected such a sandwich death, the thought of perishing on some KPT under construction site really got to me . . . arrrghhhh!
Finally as the bus turned towards the what we can call ‘road’ I felt thankful to see Regent Plaza again in my continued life . . .
As I was walking home after getting off from this adventurous vehicle I felt moved at the sight of unity displayed by a bunch of crows. One of them had probably just suffered a squeezed death and all the crows from around the trees came mourning together creating too much of noise. They were all together and united at the mutual suffering . . . a brother crow had died and there seemed to be no discrimination and the unity shown. Can we as a nation not even be like these crows?

9 comments:

Mrs. Sting Pepsi !

Monday, May 24, 2010 Heba Moeen 5 Comments

Photo Courtesy: Frame Photography

5 comments:

"Creativity Committed Suicide !!!"

Saturday, May 15, 2010 Heba Moeen 2 Comments


Creativity committed suicide through 'Above the Line' activity when it saw it's end approaching . . . courtesy Omore and Walls advertisements, let alone be Tarang that was making it feel nauseous since quite a long time. When Walls Badami advertisement was put on air, creativity got spat out from the agency's mouth just like the kulfi was from the actor's mouth when he was talking towards the end of the advertisement . . . this is when creativity got lactose intolerant and had initially freaked out because of the milk monster . . . the gentleman created by Owsum. This resulted in a completely 'Awesome' and fatal suicide thought, so let's not beat about the bush right now about how it felt about it.

Creativity had initially thought about taking a 360 degree turn for hanging itself, then thought about drowning itself with the help of ‘Through the Line’ activity but finally resorted to wrist slashing as a result of ‘Above the Line’ activity on air (in these advertisements) thus showering it’s guilty blood on the respective ad agencies  . . . it might now take a few years for offspring creativity to prove itself with the help of the story telling approach regarding it’s deceased ancestor.

If Omore could follow the Matrix death and Walls Badami a resonance fit then it surely was the end of the big idea . . . the good big idea  . . . as in the big big idea! If they could relate it to  slice of life then creativity showed them the slice of it’s own demise  . . . this low involvement/low feeling approach led to real low feelings regarding self esteem and security needs in relation with creativity’s neighbouring peers and it felt ridiculed in the social media by people . . . by sharers . . . by over sharers who share it’s misfortune with their own peers . . . Oh what an inevitable suicide!

All the agencies’ horses and all the agencies’ men couldn’t pile up the scattered and ignored Creativity ever again. It died! Oh it died! It had already killed itself when the agency came again to make sure that they shoot it so that it never wakes up by any chance (Omore gave the last blow through their super-ed Matrix Dance over Creativity’s dead body).

“Over my dead body!” exclaimed Creativity once, that’s when these agencies started developing ideas how they would capitalize through their obnoxious ‘rough cuts’ on such carcass . . . there ended up a factory of thoughts without any vision. . .

The media vehicles for these advertisements proved to be a coffin carrying vehicle for dearest Creativity which is no more among us . . .

Eventually, it cannot be denied that since it committed suicide it went directly to hell where it continues to commit the relevant said suicide everyday at the constant rate of frequency and the decided percentage of reach. . .

2 comments:

"Confession of an ex - convict (mass murderer)"

Thursday, May 13, 2010 Heba Moeen 0 Comments

“Every day I die . . .”

Every day I die,
Every day I live.
My past thoughts that keep on asking why,
 might never forgive . . .

Whenever it’s time to turn over a new leaf,
I look at my affected branches;
It’s when I decay with overwhelming grief,
And start dying again.

I try to look ahead,
but cease to exist,
whenever I glance back.
These thoughts can’t resist,
from continuous taunting . . .
All they do is make me regret!

Forgive me at last!
How else should I beg?
For every day I die,
every day I live . . .


0 comments:

Little Tim died . . .

Wednesday, May 05, 2010 Heba Moeen 4 Comments



Little Tim died in the arms of his best friend, 'Loneliness' . . . 
his past led to a self induced passiveness.
Till his last breath he had a tumour growing within,
though not physically present it made him weak and thin.
It was a tumour of past secrets,
that made visible his bleeding heart's invisible tears, 
for every silent moment invoked his worst fears.
The entire world seemed to be his friend,
while hardly few proved to be the true ones till the end.
Tim wanted to share the cause of such silence,
reveal his self destructing secret and acknowledge resilience.
But his time came too soon,
when loneliness let go of him during a dark night brightened by full moon.
Little Tim is now dead!
His few friends mourn,
while the rest of the world shows the tears it shed . . .

4 comments:

Safar Badnamah (Season1,episode 6) . . . "I own SZABIST . . . Hey wait! Somebody else owns it too"

Sunday, May 02, 2010 Heba Moeen 4 Comments

This Friday as I was going to school, I decided to start revising my Experiential Marketing course for the exam the same evening. The day was hot and humid with a dry breeze mingled with the engine stench and moronic smokers’ cigarette smoke in the bus.
Thankfully I had got a nice seat to sit in the bus and was enjoying the not at all crowded bus of the evening. For a change, the flyover at Regent Plaza has tried to make life more miserable and prone to a longer route. However, the speed it has been made with scares the passive smoke ridden lings out of me, especially when I get to see the not yet joined joints up above the world so high targeting potential traffic. . . hush, hush . . . no worries . . . it’s still work in progress.
As the bus neared, Cantt Station, I was amazed and surprised and awe struck at what I saw on the bus glass . . . it was a car sticker on this public bus and not a usual car sticker . . . It was Szabist car sticker . . . though with the ‘T’ taken away. I am part of SZABIST, I own SZABIST . . . but hey wait, somebody else owns it too . . . but why is it owned by a public bus? How did the sticker go and paste itself to the public Bus? Who took the ‘T’? I just wonder.
It just seemed so funny that I couldn’t stop myself from taking a picture . . .



The billboard at near Punjab Colony then grabbed my attention, It belongs to Gul Ahmed and I must say, the dressing shown is pretty vulgar . . .


What do you call such a dress? Well if it is a dress in any way . . . Does it give a picture of it’s target market? Maybe it’s skimmed prices have helped the brand develop it’s market and this is their target market now with it’s see through fabric . . . There’s a big question mark.
When I’m sleep deprived, I try to observe things and billboards around to keep myself from falling asleep. There is another very attractive and luxurious sort of billboard where Candi has advertised it’s chocolate chip biscuits, it’s an ‘extreme close up’ of the biscuits that produces a mouth watering situation . . . anyway it was hot and I was thirsty. I hope they work on the brand’s taste just like they are working on it’s promotion.

4 comments: