DesiReflections

India Chapter of the International Advertising Association’s (IAA) has recently announced instituting the IAA Leadership Awards to honour individuals in the fields of Marketing, Advertising and Media who have made enormous professional contributions and delivered business success to their companies. The awards will be given annually and the first grand on-ground function has been scheduled for February 2013 in Mumbai. Manish Tewari, Union Minister of State of Information and Broadcasting, has consented to be the Chief Guest. It is expected that over 500 senior marketing, advertising and media professionals from all over the country will attend the awards function. The IAA Leadership Awards celebrates the individual’s innovative thinking and performance excellence that lead to outstanding success of the product/brand. The awards also indirectly seek to acknowledge the fact that the disciplines of marketing, advertising and media have to come together for a brand’s success, by hav...

Our next stop in the town was Umaid Bhawan Palace. I heard   about this iconic palace cum luxury Hotel for the first time when Business Tycoon    Arun Nair and famous Hollywood actor Liz Harley’ much hyped wedding was solemnized here. Reportedly the couple coughed up around 100 crore rupees on the dream wedding. It is a different story that it was not the first marriage for both of them When people saw the opulence and grandeur of this palace, in the visuals of that marriage,   suddenly the traffic of tourists increased substantially. Arun and Liz Harley, Thanks for inspiring me to visit Umaid Bhavan Palace   We travelled to the palace in a friends’ car. We were told that the major part of the palace is converted into heritage hotel and it is managed by Taj Group. Only a part is kept by the present Maharaja Gaj Singh for residential purpose. A much smaller part is converted into museum.   It is   In...

How many younger people in India   know   that in 30s, 40s there was a Heroine in our infant Hindi Film   Industry who was predecessor     to the tribe of   Arnold Schwarzenegger   and Amitabh Bachchan. Australia born Mary Evans, to whom most of the Indian like me know as Hunterwali or Fearless Nadia may have looked like the girl next door with blond hair and blue eyes, but she spent the 1930s and 40s acting in some of Bollywood's biggest action films. Tall and athletic, the soldier's daughter from Australia’s city Perth, wielded swords and whips and did all of her own stunts. It is strange, Nadia was a huge star in India but never made the celebrity pages in her homeland till few months back. In the 1930s, just when the silent era was giving way to the talkies, there appeared on Hindi film screens a blue-eyed blonde who caused men to piss in their pants. Among the first of cinema’s audacious feminists, she challenged male domi...