In their June 2010 issue, GQ chose our dapper ECD V Sunil as one of India’s 50 Best Dressed Men. A true defender of elegance, Mr. V is living proof that creative thought does not necessarily cause hipster-ism.

By our cultural correspondent Mohamed Rizwan.

Never thought we’d say this but turns out we have much to thank Bollywood for.

Last week, The Economist ran a piece reporting the declining popularity of Arabic in the Middle East. Apart from being considered unfashionable by the elite classes, young Arabs, it said, didn’t see Arabic as a language that can help them progress in life. The vast difference between academic and spoken Arabic made the idea of learning Arabic even more redundant.

So what does all of this have to do with us? Not long ago Hindi too faced a somewhat similar prospect (amongst the urban classes, of course. Rural areas around the world never abandon their local languages). As The Bold and The Beautiful and Friends seeped into our lives, slowly but surely so did Angreziyat. We became intoxicated with American culture, thought nothing of our own and Hindi soon became a cultural casualty.

But thanks largely to MTV and Channel V, being Indian, and with it Hindi, became cool again. Here were two channels celebrating our quirks in all its glory and making unrepentant, confident statements like We are like this only.

But neither could do what they did without Bollywood. It was almost as if both saved each other. After hitting some lean patches in the mid 90s, Bollywood found its new, nuanced image, along with a keenly developed business acumen (step forward Yash Chopra) and continued to grow up to the point of it going absolutely international.

Throughout, one part of the Bollywood formula remained constant – the language.

Recognizing that Hindi was our language, Bollywood, stayed true to its roots. And when Bollywood, the biggest cultural influence in the country stays true to its roots, so do we – no matter how posh our neighbourhood or how many children we have in the ‘States’ or ‘UK’.

Thanks to Bollywood, Hindi will never lose its popularity. Single handedly and almost accidentally, Bollywood has preserved the language of masses urban and rural. And one suspects, will continue to do so long into the future.

Long live Hindi.

As part of the Bonjour India festival, famous french street artists Psyckoze and JonOne collaborated with W+K’s very own Hanif Kureshi a.k.a ‘Daku’ on an eighty year old building in Mumbai. With help from ‘&then’ and other friends, Hanif and les artistes français improved the streetscape considerably. Imagine what we can do with the sprawling grey cement canvas of New Delhi.

Before.

After.

Hanif ‘Daku’ Kureshi in action. Following this project, Hanif was inducted into 156 Crew, an invitation-only international graffiti collective.

‘Put It On’ is a great example of social impact through design from two talented friends of W+K, Thukral & Tagra. Since chappals (flip-flops) and sex are an essential part of everyday life in India, T&T designed a pair of Chappals that promote condom usage and HIV awareness. You can buy just Chappals for Rs 100, and Chappals + Jaankari (information about HIV prevention) for Rs 60. After a fancy kick-off exhibition at Bose Pacia in New York, ‘Put it On’ has hit Delhi streets with a stall at Som Bazaar, where the Chappals are proving to massively successful.

Photography & snake-capturing by our field correspondent Hitesh ‘Rocky’ Malviya.

First-time visitors to our office are often surprised to find a tree-lined garden in the middle of urban chaos. What they don’t know is that the garden is populated by all kinds of beasties, ranging from small and cuddly to large and extremely life-threatening.

Oriental Garden Lizard
According to Wikipedia, ‘Males become highly territorial during breeding season. They discourage intruding males by brightening their red heads and doing push-ups.’

Oriental Garden Lizard – note red head and large biceps.

The object of red-head’s affections..lucky girl!

Mongoose
Mongooses have special kung fu skills that enable them to kill Cobras, and it’s considered lucky to see one (probably because it means that there are no Cobras around). We love and respect our resident Mongoose.

The elusive W+K Mongoose.

Rat Snake.
Large, fast moving snakes which grow to a length of 2.5m or more. As the name suggests, they eat rats, but like French people they also relish the occasional frog or toad.

Baby Rat Snake

Not so wild life

Nokia smartphone users often endure bombastic jibes from iPhone fanboys who go on and on about how cool their apps are. What they don’t know is that your E72 can run the outstanding Bruce Lee Iron Fist S60 game (free download from www.ovi.com). As any martial artist will certify, this is the next best thing to actually being on the mat. Fighting as Mr. Lee himself, you can do his trademark front-foot sidekick, sweep kicks, blocks, even punches to the groin – that’s a lot of action from a tiny 0.32MB app. Best of all, you can play this in a conference room with no fear of discovery. Because no one expects an E72 user to be monkeying around in a meeting. That’s what iPhone people do.

http://store.ovi.com/content/27858?clickSource=related%2Bcontent&contentArea=games
Please note: Iron Fist also works with other Nokia devices.

We miss you, Bruce. But at least we have this app.

Careful – this Chuck Norris look-alike packs a nasty hammer kick.

Incoming!

A very kind architectural review of our top-secret HQ that appeared as a full-page article in the Business Standard newspaper on Saturday. We are now officially ‘funky’.

India’s economic liberalization generated a lot of hype and expectation, followed by a big anti-climax as infrastructure failed to materialize. Of late though, mighty erections of glass and steel have started rising out of the dust everywhere. Across urban India, these metro stations, airports, malls, hospitals, etc. are popping up like giant shiny mushrooms. Whether this is a good, bad or ugly phenomenon is not for this blog to judge. Though one has to wonder when development will trickle beyond the metros to ‘India 2′.

It looks like a gate to nowhere….

but in the middle of a dry riverbed…

is a brand new airport! (Dehra Dun)

‘Medanta The Medicity’, Gurgaon – humongous hospital or what?

busy little builders at IGI airport, Delhi

Enough of those crisper-than-life, 3D images that advertisers seem to love so much. More of the hand-painted stuff, please. Here’s some mighty fine calendar art we commissioned for a P&G campaign. If you have any evocative (and copyright-free) shots of hand-painted advertising, send them in and we’ll post them here.

Indian Beauty, oil on canvas by Mr. Raghavan, 2008