inflicted by those who were footprints on sand but utter disdain.
I wait for waves to wash away,
those memories, so profound ...
or wait for them to walk away,
before my heartbreak sound.
As I flip through in front of my very existence,
I wish to have undone ...
Yet I surrender in front of destiny's persistence,
where words are many but meanings none!
I collect memories from footprints of time,
where people are many but true friends few ...
yet I wait for life to sketch it's mime,
and introduce characters, new ...
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Nazia the Vampiress “The V-Bomb & BDI of Vampiricide” (Season 2, Episode 1)
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Heba Moeen
3 Comments
Disclaimer: Okhere we go, disclaimer is at the beginning … All characters in this story are imaginary. Any resemblance to anyone dead, undead, haunting or trying to live is simply a coincidence. Don't start assuming things, try educated guesses . . . if you still fail and relate them to real life characters, it’s not vampires’ fault, you were warned already … besides, the author is not paid by VAMPIRES to write this, it’s not paid content my dear, so please avoid turning it into hijacked media … =)
Nazia found herself marooned on an unknown planet though it was technologically equipped since she checked her phone to find an internet connection to her surprise. “Naziaaaaaaa!” somebody whispered her name from a distant corner, just as she turned back she saw a green monster approaching that grew bigger and bigger as it came near. The creature adorned an amused smile when it finally uttered,
“Let’s go for shopping shall we?!”
“Nooo! Ahhh shiver me timbers! Help! Noooo!”Nazia extracted the words from the deepest pits of her lungs, “Torture me no more whatever you are.”
“Well that’s sad! What kind of a female vampire are you!? Ok then … how about some pet acquaintances?” asked the green monster while producing a Macaw from his bag.
“Ahhhh! G-MOOT-P!!! GMOOTP!!! GMOOTP!!!” said Nazia jumping with joy, “GMOOTP – P!P!P!P!P! P…”
The world seemed soundless and the transmission was shut down all of a sudden with Nazia felt the ground vibrating while she was jerked, jerked off her slumber in fact, “Nazia wake up! What jargon are you using now in your Marketing nightmares again?!” asked Toots.
“I am being haunted by the Marketing Ghost of Past, Present and Future … I am writing down marketing strategies even in these theme based nightmares, and while I was writing them down there as a green monster that came out of nowhere, damn, what a semester!” Nazia slurred off while giving in to sleep melatonin again in her … head … she had a habit of having semester recaps in her dreams and this time she was resubmitting the same project while trying to find eternal marketing peace amidst Kotler and Aaker’s books.
“Hey wake up! What is this G-MOOT-P?”asked Toots in disappointment while awarding a wake up punch on Nazia’s face.
“Oh God! It’s almost midnight we are supposed to be sleeping by this time … Ok, GMOOT means, ‘Get Me One Of Those’, P here means ‘Parrot’. Now GMOOT is an occurrence, situation, rather a mindset which tells you that just because everyone else in the ‘fad’ world is doing something, you are supposed to do it too, quite relevant to social media stuff these days … and well, I dreamt of my dream parrot, it was a macaw, hence, GMOOTP!”
Toots was perplexed at what she was hearing and was anxious that the contagious vampire glow overwhelmed her friend’s identity as to her demanding to be sleeping around midnight, too early that is, but then it wasn’t midnight, it was afternoon and they were in the library after they fled their school’s garden that was embellished with fresh and stinking fertilizer, it acted as a human repellant but had an equal and profound effect on vampires.
“Oh did you check our school’s new bathrooms?” asked Toots in excitement while trying to strike a lame conversation to keep people interactive.
Scrooge was acting up a bit as well after trying his best to respond to his surrounding situation but in vain, he kept staring and admiring the pen he was holding while thinking about kleptomaniacs and the Czech people’s accusations in mind … that was the government level. “At least he stole a pen not millions at the rate of minutes spent in a meeting …” said Scrooge as thought provoking as he appeared.
“What are you talking about?” asked Faraz, looking equally bored.
“For younger readers, a fountain pen is a sort of metal tube filled with liquid ink (not toner) and tipped with a little piece of gold-plated steel that squirts the ink onto a piece of paper.” elaborated the lost in thoughts vampire, “It’s written by Andy Maslen in his book 100 Great Copywriting Ideas … so this thing I have with me is a pen … it’s mine, mine, mine! GMOOT-P … Get Me One Of Those Pens!!! Curators of pen kleptomania are found in MBA!”
“Hey vampy calm down … are you still high on vampiricide or are these your withdrawal symptoms?” inquired Nazia, now fully awake, “these lines are more appropriate for Generation Z and Generation Alpha, we at least have known the correct use of a pen but still most produce hopeless writing. If I could ever do anything for my examiners I would have tried to be nice to them by improving my ugly handwriting, it especially takes an awkward slant in exams …”
I prefer David Ogilvy’s thoughts on the truth in advertising: “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.” Added Faraz, “Just imagine how people thought drinking Slice and using Lux would make them like her, ‘advertisement bacterial disease’ …”
“Where is this conversation heading from a pen to God knows where? By the way, you vampires were lucky to be saved after that V-Bomb when one of the stupid ones in the vampire brotherhood almost told the government about your existence.” Said Toots in amazement.
“We are lucky to have corrupt people governing us to have tampered products, the Vampiricide they got manufactured for us had limited amounts of phenyl oxalate ester to react with hydrogen peroxide in us, eventually we all could not glow and the situation got consumed by the law of diminishing returns after they got a chance of depleting foreign exchange reserves and pocketing millions on a per minute basis depending on the duration of meeting minutes with scientists”, explained Scrooge, “That means if you have a business meeting with these people for 30 minutes, they would demand Rs. 3 million for the time you took and then obviously you can’t have money and vampires both at the same time!”
Nazia was listening with vigor and thrill when she finally added, “ … but you know what? One of them tested it on herself and got the ‘Cat Cow Disease’ it’s spreading like wildfire among these people only, it can’t affect normal humans or even us for that matter!”
‘What’s a Cat Cow Disease?” asked Toots.
“It’s when you pounce like a wild cat on innocent people and stare like a cow and keep screaming hysterically while being on the verge of biting somebody’s head off, see this is what they become, it’s not an animal, it’s not a human, it’s definitely not a vampire … I wonder what then it is.” Mentioned Faraz:
Just after the V-Bomb, vampires got to be hunted through ‘aggregation and correlation’ online which means that even if you don’t mention your correct name and email ID’s on websites, you still get tracked for the correct information based on other websites used commonly in the past and even current information helped, one can’t type incorrect data everywhere, there is no escape. The hunting activity had been built upon behavioural targeting (based on vampire attributes) after segmenting vampire activities, such as hanging out after fourth time slot classes, taking smokers in laboratories for blood oxidization before consuming their RBC’s and flying ofcourse. ‘Phorm’ was picked upon that is actually the term used to describe behavioural keywords derived from a combination of contextual page analysis and search terms to screen down to the right users, in this case, vampires (curators and producers most importantly).
Toots was trying to decipher what these night riders were trying to tell her, “But what were the strategies and their implications, I don’t get how they weren’t successful and you people lucky enough to survive.”
Nazia shot her amused looks, “See had they read ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding’ or followed the teachings of Al Ries they might have been on the right track and got us dead. Applying extensions and adding too many lines to a brand had them lose their focus while they made sure that government is worst than vampires, they might get rid of us but not themselves. What was the use of diluting the category and introducing repellant for baby vampires, repellants for male vampires and repellants for female vampires and also pills to keep vampire phobia down.”
Faraz’s take on this was even more jargon equipped, “First of all Vampiricide was introduced as a product, however, it had inelastic demand and was very expensive for quite a number of humans, there was hardly any value for money hence minimal value equity, still brand equity started building upon the awareness built and more brands were introduced, for example, ‘New & Improved - Mr. 10% Vampiricide’ … however, category development index in terms of the population to begin with was already low, when new brands were introduced the utility to consume more started diminishing. Now the brand development index wasn’t impressive either as they all failed to distinguish well. Thus, they were marketing and targeting to get ‘indifferent customers’ mostly who saw these brands as nothing more than just a commodity. ”
“Oh my goodness! What in heaven was this detailed explanation was for?” Toots went on saying.
“You asked for it!” said Nazia and hugged her, “We are alive and we are together!”
“Hey Nazia, why did you register for summer courses? Don’t you have a life?”
“Actually during the Summer Semester it’s more peaceful, classes aren’t that overcrowded with female backbenchers discussing their wardrobes and teachers don’t recognize our breed because they are too happy with less humans to teach for Electives while discussing how many passed or failed their course the preceding semester …” Nazia tried to explain, “And just when this stupid unemployment is as it’s peak …
“It’s Monday, It’s Tuesday lalalala, gotta fly, gotta fly!” Shazia barged in all of a sudden with her excited brain cells, ever since an elective the last semester she had become obsessed with Rebecca Black’s song, something Jazz’s silly new TVC seemed inspired from also. And she couldn’t stop counting her Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Ahhh … Phew … as stupid as the song sounds … It’s Tuesday and I’m typing, oh well, I’m typing and typing … because we have power supply on.
“Silence please! You keep the … Silence! Silence on … the … table or leave!” shouted the librarian.
Just when he finished saying what he had to, Scrooge pulled out a straw from his pocket and flaunted it with a huge smile and geometrically designed sparkling while teeth.
“I know it’s a straw … food and drinks are not allowed either, now what are you going to do with it?” asked the librarian who seemed quite annoyed with these people’s presence while adding to the Theory X individual librarians get to be.
Nazia knew for a fact that Scrooge kept his newly whitened canines for occasional moments only and preferred alternatives at times and she couldn’t forget the sweet toothed prey whom they had almost forgotten about (First Season 1). “Get your vampire instincts ready, you can’t love others until you love yourself.” Nazia told her friend with utmost glee.
They all got up and marched towards the door to leave.
“I will see you tonight then … I have given up on cats (First Season).” Scrooge told the librarian who shot him looks telling him that he was nothing less than being insane.
A PR and communication professional, an occasional blogger, and a hobby artist. A nature obsessed, wannabe
travel aficionado who wants to explore new horizons!
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