Wordly & Worldly Wise by Vanishree Bhatt

We are living in times where innovations are mostly tailored for the Gen X and millennials, pushing the baby-boomers at the dire end of the spectrum! The tone of brand marketing and social media advertising are usually in favour of younger audience.   However, workplaces need not mirror this generational shift, agree many employers and recruiters, globally. Age is no doubt just a number. And about 56 percent of the employers are revamping their policies to appeal to a multi-generational workforce, proving the baby boomers and traditionalists are definitely cut out for full-time roles.   If you disagree at first, I get it. The intrigue of social media and science of virality is what that makes the younger generation tick. And, the rate at which the new workplaces adopt new trends, tech fads and even buzzwords that come and go, the thought of cementing millennial and even centennial (those born between 1994-2010) seems like a much palatable option. On a second th

Until very recently (about four years ago), I thought that hashtags were some meaningless, 'tag along' tools to state the obvious. On Facebook, I was still getting used to certain images of  a distinct quality that were being shared with a long list of words following the '#' symbol. Each of those words and its synonyms described the objects in the picture which anyone with myopia could see and fathom without wearing glasses. This was my first reaction.  But my biggest curiosity was the separate folder titled, 'Instagram' that contained all those images, overplayed with words following the #. It was quite bizarre for me to find a girl pouting in red lipstick overtaxing her post with #poutylips #pout #redlips #redlipstick, etc.  Now, I may have been a Luddite when it comes to accepting social media platforms besides Facebook and moving on from a basic to must-have smartphones. But (thankfully) I was not too naive or imaginative to assume that t

New Year is around the corner and naturally, its the perfect time to either guilt-trip or laud ourselves for the decisions made and promises kept throughout 2018. To skip all the bitterness, avoid panic attacks of underachievement and frustrations about unmet goals, it's important to make resolutions that are not far-fetched. Since 2018 was surprisingly a rewarding and pleasant year (wrt work and some aspects of my personal life), I concur that it was all because of sensible thinking and being less aspirational when making resolutions. I precisely remember taking a mental note of the things I wished for myself when the previous year ended on a very bad note. My new bucket-list had all things that were all quite elementary and included areas where I sensed an 'urgency' for change. An inner-voice succinctly outlined my goals for most of 2018 and set the context for the positive changes to help me cruise through the year. Leaving aside all philosophical idea

It is an internet-driven world and networking for the millennial generation clearly means, reaching people online. Long-lost families have been united, friends and lovers have met, businesses and professionals have connected by the mere act of searching, browsing profiles, and clicking the invite/add button! Somewhere between staying proactive and digitally literate to connect with the right individuals on social media, there lingers a subtle doubt-- are we stalking? Years into the writing (content development) business, I noticed how a small change in my LinkedIn profile could get views and new connections. Unlike my naive, optimistic, and much younger self, the new me is aware that the majority of the online attention I receive across social media platforms is the result of my connections' curiosity and insatiable need to network. On the other hand, stalking prevails as an uncomfortable truth that every professional like me with a certain degree of online visibility wo

As promised at the beginning, my blog space is meant to express the less accepted, uncommon ideas around us that prevail as common in our daily life.  Sleep deprived and recently declared insomniac (surprisingly after all these years of being a sound sleeper), I couldn’t help but spend many of my nights meant for brain rest, abuse itself to find a rather convincing explanation to one of the most common situations that I and many of us face. It is an issue that one often comes across in our cultured, socially-conditioned and emotionally sentient human life. The puzzling but equally disappointing topic I am talking about is the pain of ‘walking the one-way street’! Now, the phrase, 'walking the one-way street' is not just about the matters concerning the deflections of a broken heart or stories of the glorified, unrequited love that we read in the short story, Was it a Dream by Guy de Maupassant. To me, finding oneself in a one-way street in the middle of a journey, commitm

Movies are made every day in India. Visions of perfect lives are created and plots based on real issues and illusion are narrated. While many fail miserably, some successfully gain the right recognition from its both, mainstream audience and critics. The regular audience that comprise of the common man contribute to the crème of earnings and the great reviews by the critics help in upping the ante of the Indian cinema. In a nut shell, it's a thriving industry where stars, story-tellers, film-makers, businessmen and artists are born, crushed, shamed, lauded and worshiped in a continuum. Simply put, it’s a mini universe of repeated nebulae and supernovae with super heroes, villains, vamps and common man with uncanny invincibility that come and go. However, in a much smaller yet dominant part of this 'universe', the world of melodramatic soap opera exists predominantly as a compelling medium of influence for the households and families. More importantly, it serves as a