Fashion Magazines Aren’t Dying. They’re Just the Best Marketing Scam Ever Run

Confession to start. I grew up on the tabletop of my mother’s salon, surrounded by every fashion magazine in circulation, with a hair mask on my face and zero idea that I was watching my future profession being assembled in real time. My mother worked with the likes of Javed Habib, Blossom Kochhar, Shahnaz Hussain, Ambika Pillai. The covers changed every month. I flipped through them religiously, less interested in the celebrity interviews than in the fabrics, the cuts, the strange little editorial garnishing tucked around the edges of the page. I was eight, ten, fourteen. I was being conditioned. I just thought I was reading.

And then, in 2006, in the first year of my graduation, I saw The Devil Wears Prada on a big screen. I came out thinking Miranda Priestly was cold, terrifying, and probably just a thinly fictionalised Anna Wintour. I have rewatched the film an embarrassing number of times since then. I have now seen the second one too. And somewhere along the way I realised I had been rooting for the wrong woman the entire time.

Both films keep asking the same question. Are fashion magazines dying? The newsroom is shrinking, the parent company is restless, the editor-in-chief is fighting some scrappier, faster threat. The plot wants you to believe she might lose. The plot has wanted you to believe she might lose since 2006. She does not lose. She has not lost in twenty years. The films cannot quite say why, because the answer would dismantle the films themselves.

So let me say it.

A fashion magazine is not journalism. It is the single most beautifully constructed marketing engine the consumer economy has ever produced, and the reason it doesn’t die is that nothing else has been built that can do the same job.

Here is the job, in case you’ve been living under a thoughtfully sourced linen rock.

The job is to build a voice. Then sell that voice to literally everyone.

Not a writer’s voice. Not even an editor’s voice. A Voice. Capital V. A single, season-by-season, top-down ruling on what is in, what is out, what we are wearing in 2026, and what we shall pretend we never wore in 2019. The Voice is the entire product. The photography, the columns, the cover star, the perfume samples that fall out and stain the carpet. All of it is just packaging for the Voice.

And here is what the Voice does, in order of audacity:

1. It sells quiet luxury its quietness. A beige cashmere sweater with no logo costs $2,800 because the Voice has decided, on your behalf, that beige cashmere is what taste sounds like in this decade. Without the Voice, it is a sweater. With the Voice, it is a *signal*. Signals can be priced infinitely. This is also, by the way, why “quiet luxury” is the most expensive trend of the last twenty years. They literally removed the logo and charged you more for the absence of one. Take a moment.

2. It sells luxury brands the right to charge what they charge. A handbag that costs more than a small Honda costs that much because the Voice has spent fifty years building the cultural scaffolding that makes the price feel earned and not, you know, deranged. Strip the magazines and the editorials and the cover stories away, and Hermès is leather and hardware. The price isn’t in the bag. It’s in the apparatus around the bag.

3. It sells fast fashion its entire roadmap. Zara, H&M, Shein. None of them invent a single trend. They xerox the Voice at industrial speed. The magazine declares oversized blazers, and ninety days later there’s a Zara version in 2,200 stores at €49. The fast fashion shopper isn’t buying a blazer. She’s buying proximity to the Voice, at a price she can survive. I should know. I am the case study. I started life as a Sarojini Nagar thrift girl, and today over 70 per cent of my wardrobe is Zara, with the rest divided between Mango, Superdry, Nike and Onitsuka Tigers. Zara has become the dictator of what is trending and fashionable for me, but I started by first finding those silhouettes in magazines, paired with the key pieces of their times. The magazine taught me to see. Zara taught me to buy. There is no daylight between those two sentences.

4. It sells the fast fashion shopper a lifetime spending plan. This is the genius bit, and the bit nobody calls out. The Voice doesn’t just feed her cheap blazers. It teaches her, slowly, patiently, year by year, what she’s supposed to graduate to next. The contemporary brand. The accessible-luxury bag. The “investment piece.” The first real designer item. By forty-four, she’s in Loro Piana and doesn’t quite remember when that became normal. The magazine isn’t selling her a sweater. It’s selling her a trajectory. A lifetime ladder of spending, with the Voice gently steering her up it.

If you are a marketer reading this and you are not slightly aroused, you are not paying attention. This is the cleanest funnel ever built. It runs across forty years of a customer’s life. It works on income brackets that have nothing in common. It costs the brand essentially nothing because the magazine is doing the heavy lifting and getting paid for the privilege.

Full disclosure, the ladder did not work on me, and I think I know why. I come from an middle-class household where the cost of something was always equated to its value. My mother was not particularly fashionable. My grandmother was, beautifully so, in saris and Ray-Bans, but that was a grammar of style I could admire and not inherit. I just received my first Coach bag last month, and only because someone gifted it to me. I have never bought one for myself. My motorcycle riding gear is more expensive than several of my most expensive garments combined, and I take more pride in it than I ever have in any piece of clothing. I wear pyjamas to the office sometimes. The ladder is not built for women like me. The ladder is built for the rest of the funnel, which is everyone, which is the point.

There is one more thing the Voice does, and this is the part the obituary writers really, really miss.

5. The Voice operates across time. A fashion magazine writes the history of a brand while the brand is being built. Twenty years later, it archives that history into legacy. Twenty years after that, it celebrates the legacy as if the brand had simply existed forever, the way a mountain exists, with no author. By the third pass the seams are invisible. The brand appears to have always been The Standard, because someone wrote down, on heavy paper, in 1962 and 1989 and 2014, that it was.

No brand can do this for itself. Hermès cannot credibly publish Hermès Was Always The Standard. Vogue has to do it for them, decade after decade, before Hermès can quote it back at you in a 2026 campaign. The legacy isn’t invented by the house. It’s commissioned, gradually and expensively, from the only institution with enough cultural authority to grant it. The houses are the monarchy. The magazines are the church that crowns them. The crown does not legitimise itself.

I watched this mechanism work in real time and did not recognise it. I grew up in the era when Femina was bigger than Cosmopolitan in India, and then watched Cosmo outnumber Femina. I watched the heroines of our times slowly disappear from the covers and get replaced by influencers. From a salon tabletop. With a clay mask drying on my face. Truly nobody had a better seat than me, and I still managed to miss the trick. 

And none of this works without the editor.

I have been writing as if the Voice belongs to the publication. It does not. Vogue doesn’t have a Voice. Vogue under Anna Wintour had a Voice. Vogue India under Bandana Tewari had one. Elle India under Nandini Bhalla had one. The masthead is the building. The editor is the load-bearing wall. Take her out and the building doesn’t fall right away, but it starts to settle. Within five years it’s just paper.

This is the part the publishing industry has been the slowest to admit, because admitting it changes the math. If the Voice is portable, if it lives inside a person and not an institution, then the editor isn’t really an employee. She’s a piece of irreplaceable infrastructure being leased at, frankly, a discount. Anna Wintour is not famous because she is Vogue’s editor. Vogue is famous, in the form it currently takes, because she is. Read that sentence twice.

The mystique, by the way, is not vanity. It’s an operating requirement. The sunglasses, the short sentences, the refusal to over-explain. Explain the choice and you reveal the mechanism. Reveal the mechanism and the spell breaks. The mystique is what allows her to keep deciding without ever being audited. It’s the working condition of the role.

So when the next think-piece arrives announcing that the September issue is thinner this year, that print is dead, that Gen Z has moved on, read it the way I do. Politely. With a small smile. The way you’d read a weather report from a city you’ve already left.

The middle is dying. The mid-tier titles, the celebrity weeklies, the mall catalogues with serif fonts. Good. Most of them were never any good.

The titles that operate the Voice and the archive, the ones whose editors carry forty years of memory in their heads, those are not dying. They are consolidating. They are doing what every maturing oligopoly does, which is tighten the apex, drop the middle, and quietly raise their rates. Most of them have also moved to Instagram, which is the platform that was supposed to have killed them, and is now the platform they use to keep crowning the next generation of brands. The form is more elastic than the obituary writers think.

The fashion magazine is not a media business. It is the most profitable, most invisible, most elegantly disguised piece of marketing infrastructure the modern world has ever built.

The magazines aren’t dying. They were never really magazines.

And Miranda Priestly, twenty years and two films later, still has her job. Obviously. I have been watching her take it home for two decades. From a salon tabletop, with my face full of clay, learning the trade by accident.

Product Idea 4: The FourSquare for Drunks, Foodies, Shopaholics and Blind daters

Hey, i really don't get the advantages of declaring ones arrival on a separate platform, but that's just me. I mean, we're very much in the technological age where a Facebook or a Twitter (or even a Google+) might just begin churning out profits from similar integration into its base apps - well du-hu;

1. Both have status updates and location Geo targeting available?
2. Both have made them selves critical for Big brands engaging with its audience in real time to own their own fan page.
3. After i update that I've 'Arrived' on Four Square - I do share it across Facebook, Twitter and at times Google+ as well.

Hence that makes its a;

1. Double Go for Facebook which tries to seek out user payment information and most likely to have users already have photos to tag along with updates as well.
2. Double go for Twitter since it literally mirrors Four Square but only people talk way more within the similar word limit updates about other things as well.
3. And a double go for Google+ which due to its Google Play app stores integration any how has a very large base of user payment details in its records.

So hey, if you want to give real time discounts, you might as well do them where people are engaging actively in conversation about their lives.

= WAIT, before i go any further, let me just clarify that i pick these platforms since they have already earned dominance in the market and brands are very dependent on them today despite heading down a more holistic and native engagement approach themselves to re-capture the audience that already eats, sleeps, breaths on these platforms. =

But what connects these four platforms in reality anyway (FourSquare included)? At least philosophically any how.
The re-assurance that you aren't the only one trolling the internet or streets alone at any given point or day and night or time. When we see a acquaintance also partying... or a fellow social media friend also updating a new post or status update while we are, we feel a sense of belonging. That being said, think to yourselves, do you actually know all your twitter followers personally? Or the people who begin following you on Four Square for that matter? You might relate to them because you might belog to the same city, or have the same content consumption interests, or even simply cause you both like beer. 

Yes, strange as it may seem its the truth for many. (and whats not to celebrate about liking beer anyhow?)

Beer remind me of one such event that is actively using this as an opportunity to really create an organic buzz out there. Kingfisher beer! Every heard of the KFC Beer Fests (secret events)? Random people from across the internet and geographies co-create the buzz and then meet up in person on the day of the event! And how do they engage or why do they enjoy these events?
- Because they love beer,
- They interact as their Twitter handle names and much less as real people,
- And because they all managed to get on the invitation list of this secret event with free beer, food and beer chugging competitions.

What does the brand do in turn?
1. Gets lots of meaty posts, videos, photos and usage of their handle name and brand name across internet through these events.
2. Great brand recall, greater brand recommendation and WOM.
But that's just the start.
More can be done. Much more.

Lets begin by identifying the key take always from KFC Beer Fests;
1. They manage to engage with their online audience offline.
2. They reward their online fans in real time.
3. They manage to connect and unite beer lovers of each city they carry out these events in.
4. They strengthen their audiences emotional connect with the brand.

I have a feeling i get over excited about concepts sometimes and talk too much about one subject or topic. Moving forward.

SoDelhi recently also organised a treasure hunt across Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, India using Social Media. Another win.
In turn it managed to accumulate a large number of foodies and city dwellers from Delhi to follow their page.

But here, these brands are creating a burst of events that really gather audiences and not necessarily engage them in real time. A hit campaign sure but a hit app or platform?... 

The idea: imagine being able to connect with the drinking community of a city or multiple cities in real time. Maybe lets say digitaliz the concept of car-o-bar. If I'm alone and i want to drink, what if i could connect to my foursquare and ping my location and what I'm drinking to the world and get real time feeds of people in and around my city drinking the same thing at rhe same time? Yes yes legal hassles in setting up something like that for a new player, but what about the Carlsberg and Heineken's of the world? 

Will it really mean too much effort to integrate with any one such existing platform for lets say the winter season, when everyone is celebrating, no ones wants to be alone and everyone enjoys a party. 

How about letting people start it? 

What it will potentially take? 

On foursquare's part - a section division of arrivals to eatires, gyms, pubs, shopping centres to name a few as broad categorization. (feed viwing division is as it is down as per how close or nearby another person) 

On part of the brand - lets say Carlsberg; to own that section for specific key cities and rewarding their fans for every pint they buy from a pub. If more than lets keep a benchmark numner of 100 people are updating their drinks update in a specific city 'drinking or celebrating with a Carlsberg', maybe an instant party or invite-an-extra-friend along with yourself to a spontanious jam event can be organised? Rules: get your bill stating your drink, plus you get only Carlsberg drinks at the venu. 

Ok, lets take another example. Imagine all these young shopaholic girls updating their location to a mall of a city. If more than 50 people tweet their arrival to a certain mall, maybe the brands in that mall can own up too a flash sale. The details of which can be visible to the users of FourSquare on the (currently non existant but easily manageable) brand pages. 

And what's more. You actively get users to use your platform for real time rewards. You let users or the masses to create the need and brands to supply for these needs. Social likes and brand mentions go up, you spend less on paid publicity and you get better word of mouth. 

Lets say maybe this is phase one in such a direction. Maybe lets say you want to create a positive word of mouth (WOM) for a destination or product or maybe you want to increase sales of certain outlet or product on a certain weekend. What do you do then? 

User journey mapping can go something like  this - 

- Check into a location. 

- Brands send you ongoing contests for exclusive flash sales. 

- WOM camping - you put up your next update on why this is a great store for winter wear and share it across your FB, Twitter and Instagram pages using a certain hashtag. 

- Go to the store in real time. 

- Show this to the billing counter post shopping. 

- Cashier varifies and gives you a special additonal discount. 

- You get a personalised shout out from the brand pages across all mediums for visiting. (this also makes sure that those who dont know about the event, also find out) 

A happy and suprised customer always follows brand pages in 80% scenarios. You don't even need to force them or be suggestive. 

Maybe you raise your own bench mark next time by increasing the numner of check-ins required to generate these kinds of events. Over time gathering larger footfalls. 

For general do gooders - such platforms can be part of the safe drinking initiatives. (park to the side and inform fellow drinkers where the cops are located at night) hey? it can work, people try being heard on Twitter like this all the time. While wenting their frustration and also being allies to random city dwellers also on the same platform. Its a network that counts. 

Oh i almost forgot the blind-daters. Imagine drinking alone or wanting to go out on a safe party night. But having no one to do so. What do you do then? 

You update your status. You send an open invite a friendly mob for company. (A fellow drinker it always a friend, expecially post a few drinks.) You basically end up with a dinner with strangers night which is self generated by users rather than a community. All a brand needs to do is use the gender and location filters to validate and make certain a ratio of men and woman is in place and thay there are updates from more than 7-10 people at a time. Output: You meet new people, you make new friends and it remains safe. And its totally up to you to stay or leave post meeting the people who show up, :) win. 

"No regrets" generation.

You date so much that then it doesn't matter. The concept of being someone's first or being someone's last has become diminishingly insignificant over the decades. How we look or they looked, what they did, how we acted, all seems fine to us. In that moment when we were happy we were ok so we don't look back to ever say "oh god! Look at who I was or who I was with!" Ever.

That, simply because we regret less, we're wiser, we learn from our mistakes (or maybe not) but we defiantly seem to want to make a lot of them for our own 'good'. But we're happier with ourselves, we judge less and don't care about others opinions as much as our own. We carve out our own personal identity and have no fear or hesitation in putting it out there for the world.

We believe in fate and destiny even if our view is very broken or skewed. But who says the meaning shouldn't have changed over years? Hence sometimes they go unnoticed or unappreciated by the previous generation but we do know better. And let me refocus, 'we're happier'.

We actively engage in discussions about and give more time to understanding the difference between then and now in context to ourselves yesterday and today and then between out generation and the previous. Which is a good thing, cause while we recollect, we don't nestle. We're ok with outcomes and just fine with where we end up. Hopeful for better, but just fine. We don't think much of the future like our previous counterparts. We know it'll be different but as far as personal human dynamics go, we have stopped making assumptions. We know we're moving at a much higher speed than someone in our shoes even just a decade ago and hence were ok with comparison with the past, with what has already existed than assume about the future. 

As shallow or empty the words "No regrets" may sound, it makes perfect sense to us. To us it means giving everything sufficient chances and enough heart that when we look back to it from the future we never wish we could have done anything better or left out any scope of effort we didn't put in to think maybe we lacked somewhere.

We're far more dynamic and adjusting and calmer and open about our wants, desires and the way we intend to bond with people and places we wont wait for the rest of our lives to see, time we can put aside or even the amount of risk we can readily take for all kinds of things important to us.

Live, Love, Drink, but don't forget to rethink.

Lets put the notions and trivialities of our daily lives aside.

You job, my friends, your car, my phone, our hobbies, our families, our friends, our enemies, who we have now become or who we pretend to be. 

What does it leave us with?

A bundle of emotions, memories, opinions, conclusions, resolutions and feelings. 

Now lets take away the facade of ego, pride, revenge, jealousy, ill feeling, pre-convinced notions, political and cultural alignments and competitiveness. 

What does it leave us with now?

Reason, honor, honesty, practicality, our core personalities, all clinging the hand or rather the little finger of the grown up us. 

In short, it leaves us venerable. Child like, confused, sensitive, lost, hesitant, emotional. 

now take a deep breath. 

Try sustaining this frame of mind.

Let the overwhelming feeling of putting up notes and masks of self defense settle, till you begin to breath easy, till your pulse rate normalizes again. 

Now think of me. Picture my face. the touch of my skin, the curls of my brown hair, looking into my brown eyes... enough thats enough. 

Now in all honesty ask your self. 

Do you really hate me? Or want nothing to do with me? Or treat me like a stranger?

When i put a smile on your face, when i awkwardly conveyed my feelings, when i hurt you with dead honesty, when we just spoke about life and the future, did it want to make you change? 

To leave me alone, to see me as a habbit, an addition that needed to be put an end to?

Didn't we put ourselves out there, agreeing to risk the pain and hurt when we began to be friends at all?

On our best days, happy days, did you for even for a moment feel that it was probably going to be the happiest you'd ever be?

I did. And even if you decide to lie now and say you didnt, i know you did. 

But now coming back to reality, i am glad we've both grown. 

I suppose there were more realities and lessons and evolutions our personal character had to take till we made that one last final commitment. 

I feel more confident, driven, i have lesser mood swings, i dont feel the need to be subtle about how i feel or what i need to convey. I am unafraid to shine, i am proud be me myself more than ever. 

I am not guilty, and i have stopped being harsh on myself. I can have anything in the world, or resist anything in the world if i willed myslef to. And for once, i know what love feels like. 

You do too dont you?

You have seen the difference between feeling extreme affection, love and lust for another person haven't you? You do indrestand the difference when you try your best to convert one into another out of pure excitement or conveniance or inconvenience or a story to tell in your tomorrow? 

But in all human nature and false anger and prideful conviction we don't agree or want to agree they are all different, it just stages. 

We want to belive that the both of us, it was just another time. 

That better is yet to come.

We have better right now or it could be. 

Even when we know it can naturally exist or already exists elsewhere.

I have come to realize how broadening of our individual perspectives or rediscovering who we are or what we want to be do doesn't necessarily have to do with traveling far and wide to look for it. 

That sometimes, it merely is a realizations that comes to us after committing the same mistakes over and over again sometimes. 

When we find time to go over our entire lives, sometimes realizations don't come from new experiences, merely acknowledging old ones. 

And in that exact moment sometimes you realize, that the answer might as well lie in the newness of a fragile relationship, but it sometimes already did exist in the past and in the present and we feared taming it. 

Taming the essence, because it would take long sessions of reconciliation, baring our souls to the known, being known, without opportunity of pretense bending and bowing both backwards and forwards. But for what?

Only for that one thing that really matters. 

Love. 

So how afraid are you really? Of taking a good look at your own life and the life that has been and that could have been and making something of it thats real, permanent and not in passing. 

They say draw the line at the sacred number 30. 

Life, love, womanize, but if you cant find it in you to stop then you never will, and the best things would have long past you. 

Hopefully now, coming back to reality of as you exist, you need to find the time to look back at what matters, what didn't and where the truth lies and go on to pursue it in time. 

Or i hope you do. 

Or for lords sake have peers with enough sense to help knock realizations back into you. In time. 

Zombie, Vampire and other things that scare me

Wondering if I've every been vocal or verbalized being zombie apocalypse paranoid..

Well not that I can remember. But yup...in my mind, I zombie proof every place I go, look for escape routs, check door strengths and blocking methods for SOS purposes.

Hey. Its a legit fear ok?.. The rising up from the sink after splashing your face to find one standing behind you!

After all, zombies unlike other mythical creatures are a byproduct of medical testing and 'things going wrong' in deep dark parts of big chemical plans or medicine research or army weapon development centers in some part of the world. Maybe our part of the world where human number in population strength is anyhow too high and a missing few can easily go unnoticed.

Well its not I don't have my own theories for vampires about being deficient in nutrients and further more the genes that breakdown and absorb sunlight and hence have to remain nocturnal and come out only in the dead of the night (or moonlight).

Yes, I think the most realistic things after zombies are vampires. But I'll come go that later.

What I do believe before zombies is in cannibalism. And it sure as hell freaks the shit out of me. Someone out there is currently reading this while chewing on a finger of a person half frozen in their fridges right now. Think about that. ... Or don't.

But what is one thing that ties zombies, vampires and cannibils together? They are dependent on human flesh and blood (involuntarily or by choice)

While a zombies body is disintegrating continuously and its own organs have become useless, probably due to organ failure or shock they undergo at time of inception or infection or contamination, a vampire I feel might not be able to similarity reproduce blood by itself and hence needs a dilation or blood transfusion and their body's over time have adapted to environmental conditions in such a way that it can perform blood transfusion through their front teeth itself. A fresh flow of blood..every week may also explains very good skin. Hmmm.. (No wonder beauty treatments around the work are moving towards it)

Fir cannabils it might be a lifestyle choice but it links back to zombies that maybe just maybe human flesh really is so tasty at the end of the day that ones you start consuming it, you cannot stop.

And since a zombies brain is dead due to lack of circulation of blood that also is a factor for disintegration of their own bodies, it's probably their natural evolution to graduate to human flesh over other animal flesh.

Yup, these are the kinds of thoughts that go through my head when ever I think of either, or, and of the three.

Though while vampires and cannabis can be reasoned with at some levels, I feel I most fear zombies because of their lack of though and direction and utter lack of pattern and un-predicatbality really.

Some inspiration: Part 1

Be Kind

Written by: Charles Bukowski

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused
to see. not their
fault? whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted life
among so many deliberately
wasted
lives
is.

Busines Idea 1: Traveller cafe and not just namesake!

This concept is Delhi, IN centirc. 

1. For whom: Travel company / independent hospitality industry person looking for a new venture / cafe concept. 

1.1 Will need three key people - a travel partner, a cafe partern, a marketing / digital partner. 

2. Catering to whom: anyone keen on traveling to India / various parts of india 

2.1 Primary audience - foreigners 

2.2 Secondary audience - local travel / photography / food junkies. 

3. Name: Traveller's Cafe 

3.1 Ironically this name is vacant, at least in Delhi NCR scenario!? Checked Zomato / googled 

4. Business model: to create an secondary opportunity/market to organize and cater to forgein clients and travelers for a travel company but thought a more legitimate approach while simultaneously also earning revenue from a cafe business. 

5. Cafe positioning: Location! location! location!: Pahardganj

5.1 To catch the market where they feel most comfortable.  

5.2 Also giving them a feeling of being self initiated rather than being duped by being dragged directly from airports and railway stations by traver agency 'cutters'.

6. Why: most travelers coming to Delhi read the lonely planet guide which specifically tells them about the places to stay (Pahardganj) and what to expect for cheap travel (cost) and how to bargain etc. 

6.1 Hence opportunity of creating a non hostile environment for capturing travel leads as the positioning is of a cafe. 

6.2 Agent can take them there rather than bring them to the travel shop from airports / railway stations to 'freshen-up'.

6.3 Also travelers who go stay there are otherwise smart / difficult to cater to or capture. 

6.4 As large traveling groups the over all cost of the trip also goes down which can again be shown as a 'USP' of the cafe.

7. Cafe concept: to cater to:

7.1 basic finger food from all over india i.e.: chats and snacks - conversation starters. 

7.2 Secondary menu to be world cuisine based (pricing according to Paharganj market pricing). 

7.3 Cheap alcohol. 

8. Back up model: even if the cafe fails as a travel company, it is an independent business model which can sustain itself to the catered market in that area.

9. Marketing model: For testimonial based reinforcement - that others have done this and come back alive!

9.1 Interiors to have walls on contributions from group travels of visitors + comments.

9.2 Polaroid photo shots for all paying customers with comments on how their visit to India has been so far. 

9.3 To hold small relics from all the visits with dates of visit / journey. 

10. Social page: Can work on 'powered by' model. 

10.1 Front end to be called: Traveller's Cafe on Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest, Blogger and Zomato. 

10.2 In details / about section of the pages the same can be called 'powered by _ _ _ _ travel company. 

10.3 All articles and photos to be back linked to the travel partner site pages. Help with site traffic flow / building. 

11. Trip models: 

11.1 To host group travels for locals as well as forging groups. 

11.2 To make customized journey's - crowd sources destinations. 

11.3 Invite photo walk groups, adventure sports enthusiasts and related audiance for monthly, quarterly, half yearly trips.

12. Major marketing spend: 

12.1 Online: Zomato / bookmyshow / FB ads / google ad words / seo / mailer's /social media intern / depending on chosen rout/partners. Can use step by step or in phases expansion model. 

12.2 On ground: newspaper brochures and mats with updated upcoming travel plans to be put under class of the table or as mats. (to act as news letter's.)

13. Business model suited for: Travel company, someone enthusiastic about food and beverage industry.

14. Challenges :

14.1 Finding rent-able real estate in Pahardganj on long term lease. 

14.2 Ways of not letting other travel agents and brokers enter the cafe or breaking away client. 

14.3 Licensing - would it need only food and beverage or also travel company permits? 

14.4 Cracking MyBar concept for cheap booze and liquor!?  

14.5 Other unforeseen challenge from investors point of view. 

(i.e.: - will he be comfortable disclosing it as his own business to partners? (If any) 

- Will new partners be chosen for this venture? 

- Tie ups for further business to near by hotels and guest houses will he earn or travel company?) 

I guess i'm just a enthusiastic traveler? This should work! Comments / Suggestions anyone? :) 

'Do you believe in magic?' The story of my initiation.

I happen to be one of those Indian people who misses god but only when there's a need. Need based prayers when I'm scared or too angry and mostly when I've misplaced something. (which happens a lot) No wait, I also happen to think of god when things begin to go too much my way. I suppose then I miss or think of god out of fear. And force myself into a silent prayer. 

I pity myself sometimes for being such a tangle of emotions and schools of thought, especially since I don't entirely follow anyone of them. 

Like sometimes I don't believe God exists at all. Yup, the watchmaker analogy of intelligent design made for a purpose as proposed by William Paley accordingly to which - when simply put - means, if there exists a watch with its complex design and functioning, there must surely exist a watchmaker. i.e.: a more superior being that held the capability to design such a thing to begin with. And thus far, I haven't met anyone who knows our creator leave alone knows where he lives. 

That being said, I still enjoy belonging to my Hindu cult and follow religious practices as advised by our guru / master, such as always being kind, not harming or killing other beings how ever big or small they might appear, not eating meat and eggs. Depending on only plans and dairy for survival since they are both replenished and if required add the least amount of negative elements to our karma cycle (plant killing - 1 element in opposition of human killing - 5 or animal killing which is 4, bird being - 3 and insects being 2 if you get the drift) why I do this? Because man is a social animal and we start to realise and acknowledge the importance of staying or being part of a community only once we become more aware of who we are, what independence is and develop basic survival instincts. After all, as kids we aren't really entitled or aware of the concept of co-dependency or religion or community, norms, rules,security  etc and we just do as we are taught or as we are taken care of. 

I believe the best magic is elaborately created illusion and visual story telling and nothing more. Nothing less. I appreciate the art. 

I think all those baba's who can make crippled kids walk or the blind see again is all staged. Or in a way - i also appreciate how they manage to use their act as a way to derive the courage in people to do what they themselves thought impossible on their own. 

I know that sometimes - people just know things. Be it about themselves, or sometimes about others. Like i very accurately and sure shortly told my sister the instant i found out she was pregnant that they were going to have a baby girl. Nine months later they did and she still asks me why i was so sure. I cant say why, but i knew. Just like sometimes in movies they quote - 'he knew he exactly how he would die or when he would die and then he did, exactly like he used to say it. Sometimes, some people just know things. There no sure logic to it. But they just know.  

Which brings me to my faith in partially believing in fortune telling being related to expression reading and horoscope apps being build on algorithm that uses probability while randomly throwing pre-fed database of predictions thought their interfaces which can either be a hit or miss but mostly accepted by us people as we want to believe in or usually end up building co-relation between our life and the said prediction about the day, month or year ahead. (Usually also occasionally swaying decisions and life choices because of what we believe to already know based on them) Cruel trick i tell you.. Especially why i dislike 8balls, however fun or addictive they might be when you're looking for answers in the unknown. 

At the same time i also believe that god, the so called higher manifestation who we hold so superior in our eyes and minds, give multiple shapes, name and meanings to is actually a projection of our own strength  and hope from whom we draw higher energy and hope from. 'In knowing we are secure, when er don't believe in ourselves, but surely someone else does', even when we haven't really verified its/his existence ever. And in the end - when something happens in our favor we thank the all mighty, or start and coincidental good luck and when it doesn't we blame it on past bad karma or bad luck. 

No no. don't call me naive. I'd like to believe in magic, in something out there that's greater than us, a more evolved and much more advance and intelligent life force. (yup, i liked the theory and concept as explained in Prometheus) So this next para is about my initiation of faith or lets say magic and my take on it. 

Before i begin, let me also state a few words of wisdom; "When you whole heatedly want something, the entire universe conspires with you to make it possible, for you to have it."  

So. What different are the Indian concept of Kundali reading and matching? That's one are that recently baffled me. My brother-in-law recently downloaded this kundli reading app. Which tells one about their life in general, human traits, personal characteristics, lucky days, numbers, colors apart from generating health predictions, monetary predictions, relationship or love life predictions and work/education life predictions apart from being able to match traits with another person based on ones name, date of birth, time of birth and place of birth. 

ironically, while he sent me mine, knowing my practicality and frame of mind he happen to say - well, we have been practicing this for hundred of years, so it might not be fully accurate, but there must be something right or correct in it? I accepted the logic with open arms and tired to read through what came next with an open mind. 

Usually I'd say when some app or fortune teller or card reader reads out my personality traits or tells me about my self i feel its just a whole lot of words and ways of saying the same common things that can be used to describe anyone. i.e.: common stuff that everyone can be classified with. But this time, shit got real. I was expecting much more trivial stuff but instead it was actually quite accurate. Especially about my health, my nature, my physical built etc. OK, so that's like the pre-build up for the story to follow this app wants me to be believe was my first thought? But i ignored it, for once. 

What got to me was the kundali matching bit. And since i had an entire past to verify the details against   i can safely say, 'maybe' i got it all wrong. Maybe there are somethings that defy logic. At least my understanding of it. 

Like the bit about matching the 36 leafs in both humans involved in kundali reading. They say the more number of leafs that match - the better the outcome of compatibility and marriage. My brother in-law's and sisters case - only 14 leafs matched yet they are one of the happier or happiest of couples post marriage that i know. (my sister didn't want to marry him at all - but that's a story for another time)

Now, like i mentioned earlier - sometimes the universe conspires with you. To give you or send across a message you most need at a particular time in your life. It has its way of reaching out to you at the exact time of your need. I suppose you just need to be open minded about accepting these signs and signals. 

He sent me the kundali match of my beloved ex and me. He said since we didn't know his time of birth he tried almost all permutations and combinations and yet (giving it margin of error even - since it is an electronics app) it threw an extraordinarily good result! In worst case it threw 28/36 and best case 30/36. Which for normal people and things is unimaginably high! And despite which in the end conclusion, it advised we don't get married! Since i was kind of struggling with this one boy, i suppose it was the universe's message to me to finally let go after a long 10 months of holding on. (which had been unrealistically long for me, even by my own standards and logic's of time to get over instead of rebounding phases) 

It also very clearly explained that despite being the perfect fit for each other in every accept - be it mental stimulation, physical attraction, consistency in mutual love, respect and loyalty for each other, emotional dependency, bringing each other happiness, smoothness in living together or satisfaction in bed, we both lacked or rather scored a zero in this one department, which is called 'Nadi'. Now since i have a 4 year long experience of knowing my ex. both as friends and a partner i related to it. What it said was - the closer we grew - the more bad luck and misfortune we would cause or bring upon each other. Which has been the case i suppose all along. And i mean quite severely. Unimaginable amount of pain and misfortune to be stating it lightly! 

This helped me in two ways. Being at peace with myself for the past, the falling apart and letting go bit of our relationship. And giving me hope for the future. As much as i love the boy and always will, i also believe in the concept of there being up to 7 soul mates in any given point in time in life that one can stumble upon in a single life time. I guess what ever i do now, I'll never let him get that close again.I wouldn't want to deliberately cause harm to anyone as my guru advises or even for my own personal gain as a fellow human being? And since it also said a thing or two about my future i believe there are other soul mates yet to be found. 

My next objective so is to explore this concept of Kundali and also Naadi astrology. (not to be confused with Nadi as mentioned above) which is an art of ancient lead reading based on ones thumb impressions. After all, there's no logic is believing in something without sufficient proof, data or logic to support it. And we were made intelligent to be able to question everything with a why rather than blindly following it to ones convenience. (even though it is what i did, for now! because i suppose i needed to hear something like it.)

Product Idea 1: Lava Lamps - Bring them back!

Problem:
Younger TG uses mosquito repellents as a need based item. Not a voluntarily buy.
Usually hidden in a corner of the room.
Uses up an entire plug point in any given room.
Cannot be left on longer as the smell isn't so great - to most - bearable.

Solution:  Air freshener + Mosquito repellent machine =  As a show Piece that does more!

How: If a company decided to take out a limited edition series of Lava Lamps in which the enhanced smell based mosquito repellent can be placed in the base of.

Hypothetical reconstruction in parts (top to bottom): 

- Lava lamp top
- Lava lamp fluid area
- Lava lamp bottom
- Lava lamp bulb
- Lava lamp switch / knob + are for cord for powering the lamp and mosquito repellent.
- Lava lamp base - with insert-able / replaceable pod.

Secondary uses as part of promotion/ communication:

- Can be used as a night lamp - helps put one to sleep.
- Is soothing both to look at and cause of the pleasant smell.
- Safer for kids - they wont ever forget to switch it on again!
- Teenager friendly - isn't tacky and doesn't smell medicinal, help keep room odor out.
- For all age groups really - Can be used as a show piece or furniture / normal  lamp for home decoration.

Suggested sizes: 

1. Workstation or for side table - 1/2 feet tall
2. Home decoration for side tables - 2 feet tall
3. Room corners - 4 feet tall

Possible sellers / brand connects:

- Mosquito repellent companies
- Light companies
- Electronic / home appliance companies