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The air above downtown Mumbai was shattered by the roar of Sukhois, Mirages and MIGs practising for the spectacular air show commemorating JRD Tata's pioneering efforts in civil aviation and 50 years since the first Indian Air Chief Marshall assumed command.

Surprisingly, corporates have not gotten into the act. One wonders why this has not become a great sponsorship opportunity. Air India will, of course, benefit the most. Its corporate headquarters is a symbol of admiration and awe at Nariman Point. One looks forward to seeing giant Boeing 747s lazily perform a fly-past for the crowds lining Marine Drive.

One is also transported back to a similar event many years ago when an Air India jumbo circled the skies above what was known as the Queen's Necklace to show off its new livery. It was a great way to unveil the new sun logo and colour scheme Air India had opted for. This was one experiment old timers at Air India would like to forget in a hurry. One is told the project appeared jinxed. Rumours abounded that they had paid a bomb for a presentation that Garuda had rejected.

Anyway, the new corporate identity was as long lasting as the Boeing's little flight around Marine Drive. The Maharaja (to be read as the maharajas in New Delhi) decided that he didn't like his new look and that old was gold after all. Someone should tell the mandarins at Air India that the sentiment was reserved only for the old corporate identity, not for its aircraft.

Maha polls

Election fever gripped Mumbai as Maharashtra went to the polls to elect a new government.

The tone of the local advertising was significant. The BJP-Shiv Sena took the `shock' route and showed stark pictures of impoverished farmers and the like in small black and white advertisements. The Congress-NCP took the `awe' route (everyone wants to follow the US method of a "political alternative" in some way) and had large colour advertisements of truly beautiful pictures of Indira, Rajiv, Sonia and Shinde. One is almost sure the leaders will ask Prem Associates (the agency which released the campaign) for copies of the pictures for their private collection.

Quarterly results

Talk about hunting for news. With TV news on round the clock, one understands there must be a dearth of news. Yet the way the quarterly results of some companies are covered, one would think the fate of the nation rested upon it. Hats off to the PR agency of Infosys. Every three months Nilekani climbs up on a stage before a battery of cameras and gets more coverage that similar-sized corporates get in the whole year. Maybe IT is the flavour of the bourses, but TCS, in its first result declaration after it went public, got as much publicity as the election for the State of Maharashtra.

Without comment

One is told about the "inspired" TV commercial of IndianOil where the commercial starts off with "somewhere in the Himalayas" and then ends with an army officer looking down on what should be some Himalayan height and staring in awe at a typical Kerala scene with elephants lumbering past waterfalls and a pronounced South Indian dance beat in the background.

"Maybe," says a wag, "the officer is standing on a map of India and looking down on Kerala." No comment.

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