Feed the monster.

Original image credit: http://www.designplayground.it/2011/03/toy-stories-aled-lewis/

Here comes the fun.

WIRM

Pronounced ‘worm’, What It Really Means is something worse.

A much abused word of the genre weasel, a WIRM is a something you say when you mean to say something else.

It’s usually used when one has nothing to say.

One such usage is, ‘Let’s agree to disagree’ – a classic WIRM.

What It Really Means is Please put an end to this logical argument because I don’t have any.

How Orange are you?

There’s so much you can do with a client who’s willing to play!

Here’s the intro of a game we created for Bilt’s annual dealer meet.

With Aashish Nath, Aastha Seth, Bappaditya Roy and a little help from Mr. Lucas.

UHU On the Spot!

Innovative outdoor advertising to demonstrate the multipurpose efficacy of UHU Instant Glue.

Scored two metals in Environmental Design and Ambient Media in Goafest Creative ABBYs 2013.

Copywriter: Abhishek Chaswal. Art Director: Arijit Gupta. Camera: Mukul Raut. ECD: Sainath Saraban.

Music: Sarabjit Chadha, Samrat Bee. Edit: Kriti Tiagi. Production: Achal Sinha.

Watch the video here.

 

 

Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping.

ProParant

One of the most controversial creations of ‘Inventor, Who’,
ProParant (short for Projected Parant or Proxy Parant)
is an insanely intelligent human app that learns to copy you better and better
as per your desired parenting mode
to take care of your child in your absence.
Sometimes, to an extent that’s it’s impossible to tell the difference
between a projected and the real you.

Used secretly by almost all responsibly busy parents
to maximise one’s potential in
the Age of Innumerable Possibilities.

See also, Default Mode.

If you don’t share it won’t eat you.

‘Fear not O rambling dunce’

On 14th August, 2012, one day before India’s 66th Independence Day,

I repeat these words said to have come out of Anonymouse’s mouth for the first time.

The following (hopefully, ever-updating) series of images and words

comes straight from A Voracious Vortox as a protest against mindless-control.

Please note: ‘No Hot Dogs Were Harmed In The Making Of This Series’.

 

Is that a headline?

Unreleased posters for a health shakes cafe. Created at Everest Brand Solutions. Circa 2004.

Copy: Abhishek Chaswal
Art: Shweta Ahuja

Ras Le

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBMRnQKrB50

Unreleased alternate take of a song I wrote for a juice brand.

Shared here in the best interest of entertainment and timepass.

Best enjoyed by those who know both Hindi and English.

Lyrics: Abhishek Chaswal

Music: Anand

It’s not everyday that things work out equally well in English and Hindi.

Press and Outdoor Campaign for the launch of the world’s largest Eye Care network in Delhi.

Problem: How to communicate the hugeness of a brand that has been built on the platform of care, in a new market.

Copy: Abhishek Chaswal

Art: Shekhar Sharma

Photographer: Amit Sharma

 

 

Xelicon

Xelicon is the ship,

CynTax the Great,

shot through his hips,

aboard which he dared to escape the Voracious Vortox

along with the rest of the world.

For a while

Not much is known about this uncertain period said to have existed

between the Age of Vomit and The Impending Doom.

Basically, a silent pocket of time, in which all the world’s total content was untracable

and hence immeasurable. Used to convey a seemingly long period of time.

 

Artyficial

An artist who is not.

See also: Creotive.

The Age of Vomit

It has been found written on paper!

that years after a Sustained-Release AIRS outbreak,

the world slipped into a time period known as

the Age of Vomit.

A sudden outburst of Mass Regurgitation

that changed the face of Content.

Pre AOV, Content was measured as the sum of all present OTS.

Arranged precisely in classified cubes,

a box of all the probable time photons in which a particular unit of content is present

at a mass level.

Post AOV, the OTS box turned into a Voracious Vortox.

All content  went into a blur and became immeasurable.

Just for a while.

Post which, immediately after, once again, order regained,

when the Churn System was called into place.

Regurgitation

Continuous chewing and spewing of content at random.

Sole contributor to the collective churn volume.

The primary source of energy everywhere in the Age of Vomit.

The Churn System

1 Churn is defined as the time it takes a random point

in the extremely-existent multi-eyed content-blur

to come back to the same place.

Pre AOV, it would have taken years and years

of intricate evolution for something like that to happen.

Post AOV, it started happening all the time.

The unimaginable speed at which the regurgitation process started,

resulting in Innumerable Gobbles of Content being created, used and discarded;

it pumped the rate of evolution to such a level, it’s value became negligible.

Imagine the neatly classified precisely buzzing OTS box in the hands of an angry kid.

Like a rattle shaken till all the beads inside have turned into particles

smaller than the atoms of dust we see suspended casually

usually on a Sunday afternoon,

it lay silent, for a while.

Post which, immediately after, once again,

it started buzzing, gathering speed

till it turned into a Voracious Vortox.

Evolution changed forever.

Triggering the time we live in; this Age of Vomit,

where 1 Churn equals to infinite regurgitations per turn.

A Voracious Vortox

A multi-eyed vortex

in which content is consumed as it’s created.

Loosely referred to as content-blur.

Often elliptical, it can turn into a perfect sphere

at any point in time,

as if at will,

for reasons not yet known.

The Voracious Vortox is said to have been found buzzing at the onset,

at a Collective Churn Volume Rate of

exactly an infinite regurgitations per turn,

by none other than CynTax, the Great.

Extract from Cyntax the Great’s Farewell Speech

‘We forgot that these people we are selling to; are us.

And like machines we kept feeding the content-blur,

till our images became more powerful than us.

Resulting in a situation where it didn’t matter

what’s on the screen till the time there’s something on it.

The common ear lost ground

but for a while.

Post which, immediately after, once again, order regained,

when the collective churn volume rate reached

exactly infinite regurgitations per turn.

Initiating the times we live in, the Age of Vomit.

And now after years into it,

all of us arrive at this great moment of collective clarity

at a newly found unimaginable collective churn volume rate of exactly

0.6666666666666… regurgitations per turn!

Just about enough to escape the Voracious Vortox.

Towards original thought and pure creation.

Across the fringe in the endless greens.

For bliss and eternal newness.

All aboard the Xelicon!’

IDRJ

Established much much before AOV,

considered by all in the knowing as the final authority

on the amount of disseminated information present

on all multi-media channels

at any point in time,

the Information Dissemination Rate Journal

started out as an anonymous (not Anonymouse) hobby.

AIRS

Artyficial Involuntary Regurgitation Syndrome,

caused by Gigozome1961961, (ref. IDRJ)

a virus that infected the entire human race

with an incessant urge to regurgitate on the spot,

whatever content one consumed.

Considered by some noo-thinkers as the real initiator of the Age of Vomit,

unlike most of us who think it was CynTax the Great.

Fruit Beer

1:

Periodic plops from the loose washbasin tap in the bathroom get louder with each drop
that falls in the mug positioned beneath the persistent culprit
adding to the stillness that lingers in the room this hot Sunday afternoon.

Anant’s sitting in front of the TV on mute.
Weak wafts of air stroke the pages of an open ‘Debonair’ lying close to the beanbag on which he’s sprawled
as he switches channels every 3 minutes.
He’s staring at moving pictures on screen
as he watches a ‘He-Man action figure’
(another one of his father’s unattained childhood pleasures dumped on him as a gift)
partially visible from the corner of his left eye.
It seems to be locked in an awkward wrestling move with an invisible adversary,
looking desperately at the ceiling fan as if that’s what’s holding it down.

After having made the most of his parents’ absence by masturbating twice;
first in their bedroom in front of the dressing table and then in the living room
with the magazine he found in his father’s drawer,
Anant’s been sitting like this with no clue or intention whatsoever, for the past two hours.
Aimlessly, his tongue reaches for his lips as his left hand wanders
and starts twirling the newly sprouted moustaches of his manhood once again.
Blood comes rushing to his ears like an obedient dog.
He feels a beat pulsating in his temples and grips its perpetrator by the neck.
Random images, surprisingly entirely asexual in nature, appear wrinkled inside his tightly clenched eyes.
He takes on the task like a patient drummer waiting for the crash.
Hit light.
Like a feather and a stone in quick successions,
he feels his muscles constrict and relax at the same time for half a minute or so.
He downs the moment with a slow and silent bulge in his throat
and is about to open his eyes when an old fear presents itself.
‘What if I find everyone in the world watching me when I open my eyes?’
He knows he’s alone in the room
but finds the strange possibility of anyone looking at him right now extremely extremely humiliating.
Being just a possibility and not the reality,
it’s a haunt he finds safe to indulge in.
He swims in this thought for some time before dropping it finally.
And opens his eyes to ‘Celebrity, Who’, who is endorsing Sixx Chicks on TV.

He now lies limp; looking at the powerless Superhero by his side,
and suddenly in an unexplainable fit,
picks it up and throws it at the wall.
The impact breaks Spider Man’s head.
But there’s something else that’s got his involuntary facial muscles to twitch
and rest a twisted smile on his face.
He lets it sit on his lips for an unusually long period of time
and then withdraws it at once,
breaking into a pattern of smiling and not smiling in sync with the sound coming from the bathroom,
looking at a pale white blob hanging on to the wall from a pale white thread
that’s about to break.

Crrring!

The shriek of the doorbell breaks his meditative stance.
He sits up with a jolt,
and quickly proceeds to hide the proofs of his deeds
before the person at the door
(please God let it not be my parents, they already seem to know, I think)
can think of what he was up to all this time.
He switches off the TV, picks the magazine
and replaces it exactly where he found it in his father’s study table drawer
(3^rd last in the heap, beneath Computing Today),
tip-toes to the living room and starts rearranging the tell-tale setting in front of the…

Crrrrrrring!

…TV.

Crrring!

‘Arrrgh!’ he runs to the door almost forgetting something
and enters the bathroom instead of answering the door.

Plop!

Relaxed in his legitimate refuge,
he stands in front of the washbasin mirror.
He looks disheartened;
seeing the time it will take for the redness in his ears to recede.
Cautiously, he picks up the overflowing mug in the washbasin
and starts emptying the ‘saved water’ outside the Facebook branded blue bucket to LIKE WATER –
one of these social dramas her mother’s a part of.
The Banyan bonsai kept in the bathroom shelf catches his attention just in time.
It’s a gift his mother gave him instead of the dog he asked for.
His mother shifted the plant in the bathroom,
after she found it under his bed once,
to remind him of his responsibility every day,
‘first thing in the morning’.
It’s a relationship he nurtures by giving the wise dwarf some urea every now and then, ‘secretly of course’.
He would have loved to give some right now but his bladder’s full of after-shag piss –
a diet he considers a little too protein rich for the plant.
Instead, he pours the last remaining dregs of precious water in it.
Then aims for the silent spot in the pot,
and after what seems like a real long release,
opens his eyes without any fear or feeling this time.
The sound of the flush drowns his residual guilt in the oblivion of the gutter.

Crrrrring!

Not alarmed by the bell anymore, he turns the loose tap on.
Leisurely lets some water run on his hands, splashes some on his face, drinks some, closes the tap tightly
(still keeps the mug exactly where his mother had left it, just in case…),
and comes out of the bathroom as if nothing had happened.
Confident, that it has not taken him more than normal time to open the…

Crrrin…

…door.
It’s a surprise attack from Vihaan,
the only boy in his class who has a scooty –
a possession he shamelessly adorns as a quality.
A power with which he thinks he can get away with anything.
‘Guitar baja raha tha?’, Vihaan inquires knowingly.
The scooty keys dangling from his belt loop jangle in sync.
Instantly, in a brief image that lights up in Anant’s head,
Anant punches Vihaan in the face.
Vihaan still stands smiling;
now questioning by bobbing one eyebrow up like Stone Cold Steve Austin in The Scorpion King,
an act Anant finds more irritating than Vihaan.
A little too late to think of a suitable snub now,
Anant quickly replies with the not-smile
(the one withdrawn the very moment it’s flashed)
that he’s been practicing for moments like these,
and turns back in understated triumph without waiting for Vihaan’s reaction.
He has to take the beanbag before Vihaan does.
Vihaan, already in the second leg of the plan in mind,
goes for the fridge and starts drinking water straight off the bottle.

Anant kills the short noisy glugs of chilled water with TV volume.
How would Vihaan look searching for his teeth on the floor spouting out blood howling instead, he thinks.
He’s about to stomp on his victim’s trembling hands
when Vihaan says ‘Chalein?’

The scooty keys jangle to save Vihaan’s life once again.
They always do.

2:

From the narrow lanes of their block to the main road,
right from district park, behind the temple
near the newly erected not yet established
quiet and empty DDA market
that shares its boundary wall with the deserted factory
that looks as lifeless this exceptionally hot Sunday afternoon
as it looks any other day,
their meaningless meandering ends predictably
at Bhatia Juice Corner.

But they know their secret haven is not safe anymore,
looking at the pace the market’s picking up.
They also know the culprit well.
Bhatia’s Beer. 100% v/v non-alcoholic fruit beer you have to have.
The word’s spilling so fast it’s scary.
Luckily today, there’s no other customer. Unlike the last three times,
when they had to drink their escape elixir in Pepsi glasses.

Who discovered this beer first is a claim
that stands disputed between them
since the first time they met here.

‘Aur aaj ye settle ho jaayega’, Vihaan says,
struggling with the scooty staaa…n…
his eyebrow just a breath away from disappearing inside his head now
Anant finds the chance to clip the mighty arch just before it crosses the hairline
too tempting not to hold the scooty
just before it falls …d.

‘Tujhse toh kal tak bhi nahin hoga’, Anant slaps the favour on Vihaan’s face.

‘Theek hai wapsi tu chala lena’, Vihaan tosses the scooty keys at Anant
returning the favour as if it’s some kind of plague.

‘Peeney ke baad toh tere bas ki bhi nahin hogi’, Anant takes the keys
but not the favour.

‘The favour’ waits for a while, hanging in the air between them
before it can’t hold on on its own anymore and commits suicide.

Bhatia Juice Corner is half asleep.
As ever, Bhatia’s round face looks like an undecided basketball
balanced on the rim of a hoop.

Both Anant and Vihaan turn to the corner in the shade where the cane chairs sit.
Their feet have an unusual urgency about them.
Each step taking them to the unique place
that’s close enough to be far from home.

The cool shade immediately takes the load off their eyelids.
Now all they need is…

Anant’s quick to raise two silent fingers.
Basketball comes to life for just a second,
tips off Kaju,
and then slips into its precarious perch once again.
Kaju takes time to respond. It’s the heat.
Unless Kaju’s really as slow as he looks, that is.

At last, Beer’s here.

Anant wets his lips in involuntary anticipation.

Vihaan attacks the glass at once.

Anant’s centred on the drops of shame simmering in the glass.

Vihaan:  Glug glug! Ah…

Lucid memories swell up deep down, deep-down inside.

Vihaan: Glug glug! Ah…

All that he was drinking to forget comes back to him in painful detail.

Vihaan: Glug glug! Ah…

And takes him to his parents’ bedroom.

Vihaan: Glug glug! Ah…

Last night.
How peaceful they looked in their sleep.
How calm.
How human.
How perfect.
How real.

Glug glug glug. Ah…! Vihaan puts down his glass with a thakk
that breaks Anant’s concentration.

Chadh gayi kya? Hahaha…, Vihaan’s vulgar laugh pierces his ears.

Anant takes it all out on his beer and kills it in one go.

O! O… Wrong decision.
His head’s getting out of his hands now.
Should have controlled himself.
Last night’s visuals explode in his mind.
His parents are not going to like it when they come back
and see the shit he’s left behind.
His heart becomes a pea,
a football,
and then a stone
within a second.

‘Chalein?’, Anant gets up.

‘Eh…?’, Vihaan’s eyebrow jumps.

‘Chal raha hai?’, Anant’s dead serious.

‘Ek-ek aur?… O…okay’, Vihaan finally reads Anant’s tone.

3:

Anant’s listening to the wind in conversation with the hair on his helmetless head,
nodding toVihaan’s constant blabber.

His mind’s too crowded to receive anything.
Slowly, the white noise of the wind forms a kind of audio screen,
on which, random thoughts start to dance in front of his eyes
in crystal clarity.

He has to clean up before they come home.

How could his parents use one of these ProParant things on him?

How could they cheat him, their own flesh and blood?

What about the real feelings he’s felt for these projections all this while?

Wasn’t the Doctor’s prescription he found in his so called mother’s bag,
proof enough?
‘SillyCon Implant’ it said clearly.

There was only one way to be sure.
And didn’t he find out the truth in the end?

But if the bodies that lay on his parents’ bed are not his parents,
what was the red-coloured liquid that trickled out of their skulls?

Machines don’t bleed? Some hyper-real skin NV had said.

Or maybe these ones do?
Who knows to what extant technology can ape reality nowadays?

Maybe his parents opted for some really advanced model
so nobody comes to know?

All for his sake, they’d say.

Anyway, there was only one way to find out.

He has to confront them when they come back home tonight.

No. He’s sure they’d never understand,
no matter how high up he sets the moral ground.

No. He can’t let them know what he’s done.

He has to clean up the room before they come home.

The sound of the shrieking siren tears the busy audio-screen
and stabs Anant’s head deep and sharp.

A cold sweaty claw crawls on his back.

He wakes up with a jolt and finds himself on Vihaan’s scooty,
being followed by a police siren.

Abey… chadh gayi kyaaaa…!, Vihaan’s words become audible
just for a moment after which the siren takes over.

How the…?
His mind fails to find the dots that could connect
to form a reply to this question.

His right hand grips the accelerator tightly
and twists it till it can’t go no further.
The gap between them and the siren increases.

Main mazak nahin kar rahaaaaaaaaa…!, Vihaan’s threat ends in a plea.

The siren comes next to them in a second.
As if saying, ‘I’m not joking either’.

There’s nowhere to go but ahead.
Or maybe not!
A left turn!
Anant steers the scooty at full speed.
Their knees almost kiss the road.
The arc’s wider than it should have been.
Their bodies go tense in reaction.
Mind freezes.
Everything looks as if it’s in slow motion.
Anant doesn’t realise when his right foot applies pressure on the brake below.
The machine responds effectively,
making the rear wheel wobble in an ugly manner
causing their centre of gravity to lose its point.

The siren continues to wail somewhere in background,
unaware of the red splatter on the road
that matches with the one
on the bed sheet in Anant’s parent’s bedroom.

Phantom Cigarettes Gang

 

1:

The first sweat bead hangs helplessly from the neck.
Big blue collar soaks it in reassuringly.
Fully.
The fibre responds.
Snack time.
Strange tasting soot usually follows the salty grub it’s started getting every now and then now.

Mehta walks to his office now. Ms. Mehta made it mandatory.
After the near death experience she went through
when Mehta was going through a near death experience
3 months ago,
68 pegs down,
one January night,
in a party (thankfully she says) at home,
it’s prohibited for Mehta to drive. Forget drink.

‘Walk.’
It’s a verb Mehta finds useless even to say.
Still he has no option but to take the noun between his tired legs.
His cabin’s AC’s still not less than a few hundred feet away.
It’s exceptionally hot today even for June
(That’s not even a human being, he thinks; near-death-night’s residue still alive in his brain.)

Life inside a factory township has its benefits.
Living next to your workplace is not one.
Definitely not when one is the Chief Engineering Officer at the world’s first and last manufacturing facility
of Phantom Cigarettes.
Especially this exceptionally hot Sunday afternoon.

Key hollow Mehta Jeee…! the voice of Sukant Bhattacharya trails off with his cycle.
‘Cycle.’
Another useless verb.
His buttocks clench instinctively.
As if trying to avert the sudden situation about to happen in 7, 6, 5…

Phatt!

The burst of the cycle tyre resounds like a desi katta.

Sun filters through Lucky’s hair.

Sukant Bhattacharya gets up confused.

Goldie looks away.

There’s nothing wrong with the tyre.

NV passes a remark no one gets.

Mehta comes running. ‘Kya hua?’

Maalbharo smiles.

A desi katta does sound like a tyre burst.

 

Contd…