The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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I miss my iPod Nano.

Before I lost it two weeks back, my iPod was inseparable from me, like a part of my own body.

I would wake up and pick up my iPod from its JBL dock to listen to a podcast or two on the pot. I would take it along to office, so that I could slip on the earplugs when nobody was looking and cocoon myself from the noise of phones ringing all around me (my own phones are always on slient mode). On my walk back from office, I would listen to another podcast or two, or some songs, if it was a particularly tiring day. On the evenings when I ventured out again for an evening walk, I would connect my iPod to my Nike Plus shoes and take it along. Finally, as soon as I stepped back into my house, I would plug my iPod into its dock and listen to it until I fell asleep.

Almost forty people turned up for my going away party. The first guest — GK — arrived at noon on Sunday and the last guests left at 3 am on Monday morning. So, it was a marathon fifteen hour long party and I can’t recall the last time I had so much fun!

Like all my parties, it became a digital marketing conclave — with Rajiv, Harshil, Saket, Aalaap, Netra and Chhavi turning up, amongst others — but it was an eclectic mix of MBA types, musicians, dancers, models, and writers.

The guests loved the idea of taking away five things they wanted, but they were really generous and brought more things (aloo paratha, dhokla, wine) than they took away.

GK hosted the movie marathon in my bed room, and even convinced some people to watch Bernardo Bertolucci’s five hour long epic 1900, but I was busy playing host and could only watch part of The Big Heat.

My friend Mohan (from indi-rock band Agnee) sang for more than an hour, people got drunk and danced, it was almost perfect.

I even went live on air on Radio Mirchi in between, to talk about my off consumption experiment.

At any time, there are about twenty posts queued up in my mind, waiting to be written. Sometimes, I do write them, but days after they were meant to. Sometimes, I tweet them instead, use 140 letters where I should have used a thousand words. Sometimes, I end up not writing them at all.

This is a post I almost didn’t write.

I was recently profiled in Indian daily Mid-Day for a story on how online and offline relationships have merged for young people in India —

I had given the interview almost six weeks before it was published, and, as I read through the interview, I was reminded that being a host is at the core of my social life, both online and offline.

The thing is, I’m not really naturally social. I’m often uncomfortable in large groups and I’m terrible at small talk. Over time, however, I have realized that I like being the host, that my preferred social style is to connect with people on a one-to-one basis, on my blog, or at my house parties.

Even though I know that I can’t satisfy everyone all the time, I try.

So, when I realized that the response to my offer to give away everything I own to one lucky reader of my blog wasn’t a unanimous “wow!”, I listened to constructive criticism from friends whose opinion I value, and made a few changes.

First, I realized that I was being presumptuous in thinking that my giving away everything I own will change someone’s life. Even though everything I own is, well, everything I own, I realized that it will only be second hand household stuff, even junk, for the person who wins it. So, instead of telling me “how my giving away my life will change your life”, you now need to tell me “what you will do with my stuff”. It will be great if you actually use everything, but it’s okay to sell it off or give it away, as long as you have an interesting story to tell.