Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’ is a brilliant movie adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book about the real-life (mis)adventures of Christopher McCandless.
I had been dying to watch ‘Into the Wild’ ever since I read about it in the April 2008 issue of David Report. So, I was delighted when GK brought over the DVD for our Saturday Night Movie Marathon session. It is such sweet serendipity that reaffirms my faith that the universe reaches out to give you whatever you ask for.
The Saturday Night Movie Marathon turned out to be exactly what I needed after working all day on another big presentation.
To begin with, fewer people turned up — and, while twenty is perhaps the right number for a party — five works better for a movie marathon.
Then, GK turned up with a few DVDs of his own and we decided to leave aside my lineup of classic World War 2 movies and watch ‘Into the Wild’ instead.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of being off consumption is the difficulty of maintaining an active social life.
When you take away the context in which social interactions happen — eating or drinking out, or going out for a movie or a play — you basically make it really difficult for people to spend time with you.
A home-cooked meal, or a walk along the sea, works well once or twice, but, eventually, your friends are likely to tire of such simple pursuits, even if you don’t.
The other night, a lady friend was combing her hair in my bathroom when she decided to investigate the state of my toiletries instead.
She made appreciative sounds when she saw my Bvlgari body lotion and Burberry perfume, but was much perplexed when she couldn’t find any aftershave lotion.
Here’s a more or less faithful reproduction of the conversation that followed –
Lady Friend: (clearing her throat) Which aftershave lotion do you use?
Gaurav: Actually, I don’t use one anymore.
Lady Friend: (resuming her inspection of my toiletries) Oh! So, you use an aftershave gel. Those are good too.
Yes, that’s what I said –
I’m the king of the world!
Yes, you heard it right —
I’m the king of the world!
Once more, with a little ‘yay!’ at the end —
I’m the king of the world!Yay!
I hope you remember how it feels to stand up and shout it out –
I’m the king of the world!
If you have forgotten, here’s Leonardo DiCaprio himself to remind you –
The problem with being off consumption is that you can no longer buy a ‘treat’ for yourself in order to snap out of a bad mood. Being off consumption means no comfort food, no self-gifting, no temporary postponement of pain by the rush of adrenalin triggered off by that perfect purchase.
But I knew that when I went off consumption. I knew that, to resist the temptation to buy, I’ll basically need to be happy all the time. I also knew that I’ll face my first big test as soon as I hit a bad day.
The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption gets its first interview in Indian daily Hindustan Times.
Last Tuesday, when Riddhi called me to say that she had read my blog and wanted to do an interview, my first (very audible) reaction was –
Ah! Finally the first interview! It has been fifteen days since I started the experiment and I was beginning to wonder why nobody has called for an interview!
To her credit, she didn’t sound shocked at all.
The interview was published yesterday on the front page of the Delhi edition –
The April 2008 Issue of David Report: I Shop Therefore I Am (via TreeHugger and Santosh Maharshi) identifies some of the trends that led me towards my off consumption experiment:-
- From conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption.
- From brand-consciousness to background-consciousness.
- From synthetic to organic.
- From mass-produced to hand-crafted.
- From global to local.
- From short-term to sustainable.
- From fashionable to durable.
- From valuing things to valuing insights.
- From fitting in/ standing out to being.
- From buying more to buying less.
- From doing more to doing less.
- From multi-tasking to down-shifting.
- From buying to sharing/ exchanging.
- From owning to experiencing.
- From having to giving.
Undeterred by my earlier escapade with ‘The French Touch’ festival, I returned to the Alliance Francaise auditorium on Thursday evening to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film ‘Le Petit Soldat’ (’The Little Soldier’).
Set against the backdrop of the Algerian War, the film narrates the tragic love story of Michel Subord and Anna Karina who fall in love in spite of belonging to warring terrorist groups. The film pulsates with the same restless energy as ‘Breathless’, my favorite Godard movie, which was screened at the festival earlier on Tuesday. So, in spite of the little anti-climax at the end, when the DVD stuck and wouldn’t play, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, or at least the part of the movie I did watch.
During my year of being off-consumption, I’m not allowed to watch movies, plays, or concerts, unless they are free.
However, I’m discovering that Mumbai has a wide variety of free entertainment to offer; all you need is the inclination, and a copy of Time Out Mumbai.
But it was not Time Out, but a flier someone thrust into my hand as I walked out of the Alliance Francaise auditorium after watching Godard’s ‘Little Soldier’ that led me to the Little Theater at NCPA on Friday evening to watch Surabhi Sharma’s documentary film ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’.