Doppelganger

“Hey, you look familiar.” In a normal sane world that sounds like a corny pick up line that one would hear in a bar. It is a line that would instigate a dozen disgusted reactions from the recipient of that line and others around.

This, however, is a story about contradictions; about my uncommon world created by too common a face.

In my world, the same pick up line has a totally different meaning. It evokes a different thought pattern. This line and similar messages have been passed on with an astoundingly recurring frequency to me. My life now seems incomplete if I go for a few days without getting the message that I probably have more than 70000 doppelgangers in this world.  Below is the list of some of the weird things that my face has been compared to*:

1. Kriti Sanon’s chin
2. Amisha Patel’s side profile tilted at 60 degrees
3. Katrina Kaif’s jawline (Seriously. I thought jawline was a trait to be admired in men)

and then the most outrageous of them all:

4. Rajneesh Duggal. Yes, that is right. I have been compared to a guy. When I was narrating this incident to me roommate,she said “Oh common! What is your problem? Rajneesh Duggal is a handsome guy.” I did not dare to share the items 1,2 and 3 on this list with her.

* For the uninitiated, I wanted to include a gallery of all the people/facial features on this list. Turns out that rotating Amisha Patel’s chin by absurd angles requires extra-terrestrial photoshop skills. Hence the idea was dropped.

However, here is a picture of Rajneesh Duggal (item 4 on the first list):

I do this mental experiment whenever I meet someone new. It involves a simple mental game with my head whether this conversation will result in a new name to my ever expanding list of doppelgangers or not. Yes, I have kept count and the ticker is inching close to 100. L. Well! That count also includes people who have known me for years and suddenly one day they have this moment of epiphany that reminds them of someone who looks exactly like me and up goes the ticker. The other day I was posed with the moral dilemma of what to do with an abandoned egg from a pigeon. My roommate, with whom I have been sharing a room from last two years, insisted that I throw it out. I am not sentimental about many things in life. But the thought that my actions could possibly lead to elimination of a life made me dilly-dally with the idea of throwing it out. That is when my roomie narrated the story of her horrible school teacher named Regina Phoonus ,who would make kids in her class throw out the entire pigeons’ nests with hatchlings in them , without any mercy. Suddenly she pauses the narration, looks at me and says, “Know something? Regina Phoonus looked exactly like you. If it is any consolation to you, she had a pretty face.”  I have made Regina Phoonus number 13, because

1. I hate that number
2. More on numbering people later in this article.

I have progressed beyond waving back and exchanging pleasantries with people who smile and hope to have a conversation with my doppelganger number 10,11,16 or 120^th for all I care.  I have accepted the truth of life with a deep sigh. This involves me having conversations with random strangers who mistake me for, say number 9 (I’ll use the term “numbers  x,y,z” hence forth in this article because the frequent usage of the word doppelganger in this article is killing me).  As a part of my little social experiment, I have started timing these conversations.  The longer these conversations are, the better I am getting at my game. One second, what game? Yes, in my twisted universe I am playing a con man who is tricking the people to believe he/she is someone else. I hope conning to be listed as an athletic event. I even get dreams of finishing 1^st on the podium and bringing a gold medal home. The genesis of this entire fantasy started when the following sequence of events happened:

1. I am walking back home after a long tiring day at work.
2. There is a lady who mistakes me for number 77 and tries talking to me
3. Very politely, I try to tell her the truth
4. She refuses to hear any of it and insists that “I do not know who I am.”

In normal circumstances, I would have added another number to my list of doppelgangers (Damn that term). But ten o’clock is not a time for anyone to pose such existential questions at me. That is when I decided to invent my happy place; the little podium with all the bright lights and crowd applauding in the background. Victory.Yeah.

Ever since I published this article, a lot of people are questioning the veracity of the facts mentioned above. Henceforth , I will try my best to collect poofs for all the comparisons made.

Below are some of them:

Below is the link to the video(one of the best parodies ever):

Really, when will this ever end?

Dynamics of a rebound

Sunset @ Gokarna

I grew up looking at a painting of a similar sunset hung on the walls of my home wall.This picture is not only an ode to that piece of art but also to the sheer joy of seeing your childhood memories come to life.

Hera

In Greek mythology Zeus,the counterpart of Indra, was married to Hera. He,however, fell in love with Io. Zeus then turned Io into a beautiful white bovine to hide her true identity from Hera. Zeus feared the intensity of Hera’s jealousy and tried to hide himself and the heifer he loved by wrapping the earth in a dense cloud, thick enough to create constant night. With daylight suddenly missing from the earth, Hera knew that her obtuse husband was up to something. Searching the heavens to no avail, she descended to earth, ordering the clouds away.

 

The Danube

Budapest, Hungary:

Dusk is a magical time on the banks of Danube. The sun hasn’t set yet but the historical monuments along its banks slowly come to life with the artificial lights dancing on the water. The reflection below the cruise liner is an amalgamation of these artificial lights and the sunset as it gradually lets the man made wonder known as the electricity enjoy its 15 minutes of fame.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Kuari Pass, Pangarchulla peak:

Mountains have a strange punish and reward policy. Just when you are about to start cursing them for your sore muscles, a view like this presents itself before you along with a faithful furry mate.

Placebo

Because there are some Friday nights that deserve weird limericks and some good wine. 🙂

Once there was a bottle of Noir Pinot
Haughty thing had a big ego.
In moderation was she had
Two glasses, she made you glad
Finishing the bottle, you realized she was just a placebo.

Entrée

 

When humour is the only escape mechanism

XJF391500 Mr. Pickwick, a character from ‘The Pickwick Papers’ by Charles Dickens (litho) by Clarke, Joseph Clayton (Kyd) (fl.1883-94); lithograph; Private Collection; (add. info.: ‘The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club’; Samuel Pickwick; Charles Dickens (1812-70)); British, out of copyright

 Different minds react to a major loss in different ways. Conventional wisdom says you need to go through the five stages as per the Kübler- Ross model. Every subconscious, however, is different in expressing or assimilating these stages. Denial, among  these, has the most vivid form. My personal tragedies often mold denial into humour. Having undergone a break up recently, a torrid one that too, my brain was working feverishly towards going from one stage to another, not necessarily in a particular order. As the mandate is, denial came soon. It ended up throwing this ludicrous imagery that helped me implicitly vent out both my anger and sadness. The imagery was rather a small sequence starring Mr. Pickwick from the Pickwick papers. The actions involved a rotund Mr. Pickwick with extremely tapered legs jumping on a piece of glass till he manages to shatter it to pieces; Mr. Pickwick being my indurate ex and the piece of glass symbolizing my heart. Over the course of time as the wave of denial recedes , the imagery has still lingered in my head. The interpretation, however, has changed. Mr. Pickwick is my alter ego now and the piece of glass has become allegorical of any residual feelings I have towards him that need to be smashed into pieces.

Volkswagen Beetle: Case of an ugly duckling that became an office pin up!!

The last year’s Beetle ad showed a beetle racing through the jungle amidst a zillion other insects. The Beetle finally stops with a voiceover saying “it has arrived.” The car wasn’t featured anywhere in the ad except for the end which had an outline of the car. It was an excellent trick to keep the viewers hooked on till the end as they kept waiting for the car to appear. The ad was highly influential in making Volkswagen win the CLIO 2012 global advertiser of the year award.

Beetle ads have always reflected Volkswagen’s global vision of being the most innovative high-volume brand. The 1959 “Think Small “ Volkswagen series of advertisements were voted the no. 1 campaign of all time in Advertising Age’s 1999 “The Century of Advertising”.However, Beetle’s journey over the years has not been an exactly smooth ride.

In 1950’s, marketing the beetle was one of the biggest challenges of the advertising world. The economies all over the world were teeming with large families and baby bloomer children. The automobile market targeted these big families with big cars. Beetle, on the other hand, was seen as small and ugly. The location of its manufacturing unit at a plant built by Nazis did not do much to build a positive image of the car.

Accepting the preconceived notions and turning them around in your own favour does require some intelligent marketing. Beetle followed the same approach by firstpositioning itself as a small car against its competitors. Then it went ahead and turned the simplicity and minimalism of the car into its Unique Selling Preposition (USP) by a series of “Think Small” advertisements. The print advertisements reflected the brand sentiments with a small image of a black beetle against a huge white background. The text and fine print that appeared at the bottom of the page listed the advantages of owning a small car. The campaign was nevertheless one of the most successful ones in the advertising history. It not only lifted the sales but created something more valuable for Volkswagen; a lifetime of brand loyalty.

 

Beetle or the Lady bug??

The New Beetle always had the stigma of being a lady’s car attached to it. According to a research site TrueCar.com, New Beetle remained the highest selling car among the female buyers in 2011.The affordable prices; small cute rounded corners and the flower vase mounted to the cabinetwere perhaps some of the features that reinforced this image.

Beetle has tried to reposition itself on a number of occasions to cater to the not so fair gender as well. The classic example remains the launch of beetle in India in 2009, where it targeted the young married couples with the tagline of “Fittingly Expensive” gift.Volkswagen conducted a research, in which it found out that the purchasing power of the young individuals has increased over the years. Hence they can afford to spend money on purchasing expensive gifts, especially for marriages.

With its latest 2012 edition, Beetle is determined to shed this stereotypical image and is trying to reposition itself as a car for men as well. The curves of the car have been attenuated; the bulbous dome has been flattened and it is in effect a slightly bigger car than the previous version. Oh… and the bud vase is gone too.That’s not all; the 2012 Beetle has a newslap- happyad campaign designed by Deutsch/LA. Set to the tunes of Shirley Ellis’ “The Clapping Song”, the ad shows the patient driver driving around the town and getting high fives from a motley crew consisting of the looming truck driver, the friendly construction worker, the cop on horseback, the cheerful little girl, the well-coordinated dog, and of course, the obligatory pretty woman. A little male bonding over high-fives never hurt anyone. Right?If the sources are to be believed the number of male buyers for the car since Sep2011 was up to 49% which is a one-third increase compared to the last year.

Beetle has indeed come a long back from being called ugly to fetching more flower power and finally renovating itself as a guy’s high-five buddy.