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METRO
FEATURE
Celebrating
India
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| AD REVENUE:
Contest winner Trikaya Grey |
The
first prize (don't gasp): Rs 10 lakh. But the super stiff competition
meant that the two conceptual frontrunners, ad outfits Trikaya Grey of
Delhi and Concept Communication of Mumbai, tied for the top. So they decided
to give each one of them an equitable deal of Rs 7.5 lakh each. (Delhi's
R.K. Swamy was third but Rs 5 lakh isn't bad either.) And there was more
than just rewards for best-run campaigns at india today's all India ad
contest, "My India My Pride" to celebrate 25 years of publishing
and to arouse the feeling of pride at being an Indian. At the award-distribution
night at the Taj Ballroom in Mumbai on December 2, compered energetically
by stand-up comic Mehbano Kotwal of the raunchy-humour fame, many captains
of the ad industry, including HTA's Mike Khanna, Sam Balsara of Madison
Advertising and Enterprise Nexus' Mohammed Khan, congregated for the silver
anniversary celebrations. Jazzy Infra Red, currently Mumbai's hottest
band, set the mood when Prahlad Kakkar, Sunil Alagh, Neerja Shah and Shekhar
Suman took to the floor. And if that wasn't enough, a pack of irrepressible
singers came offstage and began to cajole the slightly surprised guests.
But Nina Pillai, Manoj Bajpai, Poonam Dhillon, Rashmi Uday Singh and Pinki
Virani remained unmoved, preferring the ease of round-table talk to the
energy of strobe-lit swings. Writer-columnist Shobha De was more eloquent:
"What an elegant and clever way of saying thank you to those who
provide the bread, butter and jam to us mediawallahs ... the advertisers."
That just about sums it.
-Natasha
Israni
"You
have to have loved and lost"
 When
Dana Gillespie, Britain's "Queen of the Blues" (you guessed
it-she's the daughter of legendary ragtime reveller Dizzy Gillespie) flew
down to Mumbai, jazz junkies just couldn't stay away. Correspondent natasha
israni caught up with the diva and spoke to her about her music as well
as her deep-rooted Indian connection.
Q. You've
said that blues should be sung by an older person. Why?
A.
Because
you need to have spent years of singing in smoke-filled bars; to have
reached the lowest low and the highest high. You have to have loved and
lost.
Q. Tell
us about your Indian connection.
A.
As a youngster my Saturday nights were spent listening to Ravi Shankar.
Later Mohammad Rafi's songs inspired me to do fusion. So I recorded Move
your body close to me, an Indian influenced song. It shot to No.1 in Europe.
Q. And
your belief in Sathya Sai Baba?
A.
I read a book by him a long while back and I came to visit him in Puttaparthi.
And since the last seven years I've been making at least one trip a year
to Puttaparthi.
more...
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METRO TODAY
Ayodhya
is an issue that is pre-determined. And it matters little in the present
fuss that the foremost casualty is the truth, writes INDIA TODAY Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 