Happy Diwali + New Year!

Happy Diwali and New Year from the Chor Bazaar Team.
2012

Happy Independence Day India!

  

Happy Independence Day India, 65 years and many more, from the Chor Bazaar team.

Start Your Breakfast Religiously

Some Hindus live a pretty hectic life and we tend to put off our morning Puja to catch the train, bus or beat some traffic to get to work on time. Bad Hindu!

Well we have a solution that may make your local pundit salivate? Thanks to the folks at Burt Impressions Toasters. They produce toasters which scorch various kinds of impressions on your toast. They have options to produce your own custom impression as well so you can upload your family vacation picture and share the charred image on toast with your friends when they come by for brunch. I'm sure it will spark some sort of conversation at that table and when they leave your presence.

Imagine being late for work and you grab some toast. At least this toast bears an impression of Ganesh Ji. One can pay homage and pretend that the toast is Prasad. The Hindu inside of you has managed to pray and provide sustenance in one shot. Just don't make a BLT or the opportunity of Moksha may pass you by. Bad Hindu! 

They have covered most religions and have Jesus Toast just in case you skipped church because you were too hungover from the partying the night before. Bad Christian!

The monetary damage is not that bad either and frankly these toasters could make an excellent present for someone that you want to play a joke on. The Ganesh Ji impression toaster is $31.95 and you can even pick your accent color to match the tiles in your kitchen. Yay!

What we couldn't understand was why the Jesus Toaster is cheaper at $29.95. What's up with that Burt Impression folks?

Hinglish Revealed

A while back we wrote about the Indian Ministry of Tourism's campaign called Incredible India. It seems that they have come a long way and are suddenly becoming innovative.

Let me introduce The Hinglish Project by DDB Mundra Group in Mumbai, India. Their project recently won a gold prize at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012.

The Hinglish project utilizes a typeface that makes the Hindi text less intimidating for the estimated 5.7 million tourists that visit India every year. The statistic of 5.7 million was shockingly low to me as New York City alone is projecting almost ten times that at 51.5 million for 2012. The Incredible India folks may want to learn a thing or two from Mayor Bloomberg. Regardless, let me get back to this project. Through the use of typeface design, DDB Mundra Group states:

We created a typeface that would make Hindi less intimidating and more friendly.Through this unique fusion-font design, you can tell the phonetic sound of a Hindi character by looking at the corresponding English alphabet superimposed on it. While this font cannot teach you how to read words in Hindi, it demystifies individual letters.

With the Hinglish Project, Incredible India became the only tourism board in the world to help create a typeface for foreigners to familiarize themselves with native language. The website became popular with foreigners and locals alike.

If one goes to The Hinglish Project Website, they generously provide their font for FREE! They are also selling some products but sadly you have to email them for inquiries and cannot purchase directly. Time for DDB Mundra Group to get their e-commerce site up and running. One needs to eat and we hope that the Indian Ministry of Tourism paid them.

Something tells me that the Indian Ministry of Tourism made DDB Mundra Group use the slogan above which can be found in the postcard section of their site.

[via Random Specific + Cannes Lions Festival]

Bollywood Art Project - Mumbai aka Bombay

On recent travels to India I noticed tiny blips of urban art taking place. This is probably attributed to Western influences but nonetheless it seems to be taking on it's own agenda.

Thanks to a post on Facebook by Beth from Beth Loves Bollywood, I discovered Mumbai's Bombay's, Bollywood Art Project aka BAP. BAP is the Brainchild of Ranjit Dahiya and Tony Peter, according to an article in Blouin Art Info.

According to BAP's Facebook page, they are an urban public art project that aims to transform the walls in Mumbai into a living memorial to Bollywood. BAP reverts to the 70 year old tradition of Bollywood hand painted posters and signs. A dying tradition that has been overtaken by vinyl banner printing. The retro sensibilities have been lost through mass production of signage and loose their gritty nature.

The “Anarkali” Mural at Chapel Road, Mumbai. Get a sense of the scale by the passerby that is standing in front of the mural.

A homage to "Deewar" with the king of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan. Nice work on the perspective.

Check out BAP's Facebook page and Twitter feed for updates.

We look forward to seeing what's on the horizon for these folks.

Yoda Fire - Dhalsim T-shirts

One of the most intriguing characters in the video game Street Fighter is Dhalsim. We imagine that he was the product of some video game developer of Indian origin who felt that an Indian presence was required in Street fighter. Where else would could a diesel yoga master who uses his "Surya Namaskar" powers to kick some ass and throw fire come from? During my many travels to India, I have shockingly never come across this ability. I wish some yoga ashram tough how to become Elastic-Man and throw a kick from across a 50 foot room while levitating. Sign me up!!!

His skull necklace erroneously reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) when guests were offered chilled monkey brains. This is highly unlikely delicacy in, India. It did however conjure curiosity amongst my classmates (non-Indian). When the movie released I was asked if my family and I consumed chilled monkey brains? Needless to say I cursed Steven Spielberg for a long time. I wish I was wittier at the time. My response would not have been to shy away like I did. I wish that I could have had a spontaneous response like this one:

"Yeah, my family and I live in a teepee and consume chilled monkey brains during half moons. We buy the brains from the local supermarket. The monkey brains are only sold to "Indians" and we have a secret "bhoob...bhoob...bhoob" call that allows us to purchase the exotic meat in bulk. Sadly, as of recent there has been a shortage because the local zoo where they breed the monkeys is cracking down because the monkeys are now becoming endangered. If I keep eating monkeys, the next generation won't know who the hell Curious George is? Quite devastating. We are only allowed to eat monkey on Christmas because everyone celebrates Christmas.

What's amazing is that Street Fighter was released in August 1987 (Almost 25 years old) and people are still into it.

TeeFury a site with a 24 hour limited run of each design produced recently had two Dhalsim t-shirts produced by two different artists.

T-shirt design by SYNDICATE on TeeFury. Kind of hilarious and not playing off any Indian stereotypes which makes it fly or should we say float like Dhalsim can. Damn I want to learn that skill. Flying carpets and chilled monkey brain as so 1980!

T-shirt design by TeeKetch on TeeFury. This was produced second and not the better in my humble opinion. Does TeeKetch really need to use that Hindi-esque font that he/she probably snagged from some fonts'r'us website? The font doesn't work with the clean circular references in the rest of the illustration. TeeKetch almost, subtly created a "Chakra" which could have made everyone wonder why they have a feeling of wholesome one-ness. It could have been magical.

I wonder if Dhalsim had the ability to cook chilled monkey brains with a single blast of "Yoda Fire"?

T-shirt Blogging Offsite

We don't really blog about t-shirts on Chor Bazaar Workshop even though we are a t-shirt label. We venture outside of our shop to keep us sane. Imagine working at a silk screen press all day and having conversations about the viscosity of the ink all day. Nobody wants to hear that. Cotton thread count is also kind of boring.

I do however blog about t-shirts. Thanks to Andy on his site, Hide Your Arms. The site is frequently updated with an abundance of indie/designed t-shirt and t-shirt content. 

If you are interested in having a t-shirts reviewed then feel free to him me up at info(at)cbaz(dot) com.