#i owe that man for being the bearer of good news and also his five hour doctor who essay. chefs kiss

[heffrondriving]

waking up from a 16-hour nap and immediately seeing news that russell t. davies is going to be returning as doctor who showrunner nocap just made my depression swerve into the wildest left turn

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                             Lee Minho, who is also known as Min;                                        a 22 year old son of Akbul.                                  He is a security guard at Babylon.

FC NAME/GROUP: Lee Minho (Lee Know), Stray Kids CHARACTER NAME: Lee Minho, goes by simply “Min” AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 22 | October 25, 1998 PLACE OF BIRTH: Gimpo, South Korea OCCUPATION: Security Guard at Babylon HEIGHT: 5’8” WEIGHT: 120 lbs DEFINING FEATURES: Round scar on the front and back of his left upper arm from a through-and-through bullet wound.

PERSONALITY: To strangers, Min seems cold and untouchable; a quiet figure who sticks to the shadows. He almost seems like a shadow himself, the way he sticks close to the few friends he has. He isn’t one for small talk and is rather snarky by nature, so he can come off as a jerk at times.

However, once you get to know him, he is more sassy and funny than you would have expected. He has a strange sense of humour, often employing self-deprecating or threatening jokes that he can deliver with a very straight face.

HISTORY: [ TW: death, gun violence, blood ]

Lee Minho was born to a struggling single mother. The first ten years of his life were happy, but not exactly easy- marked by tattered hand-me-downs from his slightly older cousins, meager school lunches and a shabby apartment that always seemed to have something wrong with it. But it wasn't so bad. He was very close with his mom, and he would later credit his upbringing for teaching him to be scrappy and resourceful and clever.
 Then, his mother met Kwon Wonyoung. They had a whirlwind romance, which essentially meant that one day ten-year-old Min was being introduced to this man who seemed very successful and kind and fun; and within five months, he was the ring bearer at their wedding.
 From then on, life was a lot different. They moved into a nice suburban house. Min was enrolled in a private school where he thrived. His mom started working with Wonyoung at his company. For the first time in his life, they were living carefree and comfortably. Min was able to focus on his studies, proudly proclaiming that he wanted to go to business school like his step-dad had.
 However, Min did begin to become suspicious as he grew older. Wonyoung's vague company seemed to do business at odd hours, and worked with a lot of cash. Sometimes, people who made his skin crawl came to the house to have hushed conversations with his parents. His mother, who had once been like his best friend, had withdrawn from him- still loving, but distant and distracted. It all seemed very fishy, but he was not sure what to think about it. He did not want to jump to drastic conclusions.

then, one chilly autumn day when he was sixteen, Min came home from a study group to find the front door ajar. He did not even have time to take a step closer before something hard collided with the back of his head and everything went black. When he woke up, he and his parents were tied to their kitchen chairs. Something cold and hard was pressed to his temple. He stayed quiet as his parents and the strangers in their home exchanged words.

“Tell us where the money is, or I’ll blow your son’s head off!”

“We don’t have it! It was… stolen!” Even to him, his father did not sound genuine.

“Awfully nice home for someone who lost everything. Isn’t this kitchen new?”

He saw his parents’ faces blanch, tears streaming down his mother’s face, as the man holding the gun to his head switched the safety off. He grit his teeth, hands gripping the arms of the chair so tight that his knuckles were white. His heart was hammering in his chest, the rush of his blood so loud in his ears that everything else seemed muted.

“Did you really think that you could double-cross the Bang Family and live to tell the tale? You’re not that stupid.”

“P-Please… Please don’t hurt my s-son!” His mother screamed, struggling fruitlessly against her restraints.

He saw a small movement from his periphery. The man’s trigger finger flexing. He clenched his eyes shut— but whatever he had been expecting didn’t come. Just a small, hollow click. The gun was empty. He did not know whether he wanted to laugh or scream.

“I know where the money is.” He heard himself say. It was a lie. He hadn’t even known that there was money— drug money or whatever the hell it was. But he had to do something, and he had always been a good bluff.

Maybe too good.

“That’s a good boy.” The gun lowered, and a rough hand came up to pat his head. And then the other two men in the room raised their weapons and shot his parents in the head.

Min let out a small, strangled cry just as all the lights in the house went out, leaving it pitch black. Even the glow of the moon and streetlights didn’t seem to filter in through the windows. He went to pull against his restraints, but they were suddenly undone, falling away from his limbs easily. He ran in the direction of the front door, his movements somehow soundless. When he reached for the handle, it was right where he thought it was. And then he was out in the yard, scrambling toward the road.

That was when a small group of people came out of no where, rushing past him and shooting at the men who had killed his parents as they stumbled out of the dark house. He stopped in his tracks, turning to watch the men fall dead on the porch. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell to his knees, tears streaking his cheeks. Through blurred vision, he watched a few people go into his house while another approached him and crouched at his side. A warm hand touched his shoulder, a reassuring voice saying something he couldn’t quite process. He just nodded numbly, his eyes still on the front door.

He had been by Vincent’s side ever since. Fiercely loyal to the man who had saved his life, he committed himself to helping take down the people who had ordered the deaths of his family, driven equally by a desire for revenge and a need for justice. He was basically living on borrowed time, so why not become a Dark Angel and make sure that no other families were torn apart like his was?

It took years, but eventually he got to face the people who had had his parents killed. Now an adult with some handle on his strange power over the dark, he felt confident and strong and ready. But things went wrong. One of their own was killed, a girl who had been like a big sister to him. Knelt beside her body, trying to stop the blood flowing from her wounds, he hardly even noticed when Vincent dispatched his parents. Suddenly, seeing them dead didn’t matter to him anymore.

The group drifted apart after that. Min was directionless, listless. He returned home to Gimpo and worked to dismantle another petty drug ring, but it did not feel the same as when he had been part of a group. He felt like he did not have a purpose anymore.

And then Vincent mentioned Mount Phoenix while they were chatting on the phone, an island not far from Incheon that Min had never even heard of. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so useless with Vincent around again- and besides, he still owed the man a life debt.

“Where’s this place? You mind if I crash on your couch for a bit? I’m bored out of my fucking skull.”

PANTHEON: Mayan CHILD OF: Akbul POWERS: Min has the ability to manipulate darkness- summoning it and bend it to his will. Additionally, he can move completely undetected within darkness/shadows. STRENGTHS: Street-smart, sassy, observant, stealthy, loyal. WEAKNESSES: Can come off as rude or aloof, tends to punch first and ask questions later, easily bored, lacks purpose.

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Winging It - Luke 15:32

Summary: Shockingly, attempting to destroy an angel without consulting God first comes with consequences. There is more than one way to fall, and a thousand more ways to inconvenience an angel and a demon who just wanted to be left in peace. Characters: Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon Rating: T  

Prologue and all chapters are tagged as ‘winging it’ on my blog.

A/N: Well, time to meet Larry.

***

“Have more cake.”

“Ah, thank you, I believe I am--” 

A large slice of carrot cake landed on Gabriel’s dish before the words ‘quite full’ were even out. Gabriel’s gaze shifted from it to the dog - whose name was Arthur Canine Doyle, he’d learned, Doyle for short. It was resting its muzzle on Gabriel’s knee, looking up pleadingly. A very pink tongue emerged to lick its snout the moment he looked down. It sure made itself hard to ignore.

Gabriel was beginning to suspect it was after the cake.

“... And so he asked me to marry him,” Berenice was going on, serving herself a generous amount of cake as well.  “I mean, with the papers in order, new documents and all, he really didn’t have any excuse left not to, you know? But he maintains he planned to ask all along.”

“I see,” Gabriel said, smiling a little and letting his gaze wander across the room. They were sitting in a living room, whose walls were covered in paintings of seaside landscapes; an half-finished painting was at the far end of the room. It definitely explained the dashes of color on Berenice’s jumper, and the strong smell of paint.

A chuckle, and she took a sip of tea. “We married in summer 2006 and it rained the entire bloody day, of course it did, but the ceremony was lovely. My son walked me down the aisle and everything. We also had my old dog as our ring bearer,” she added, nodding to something on Gabriel’s right. 

He followed her gaze, and found himself looking at a framed photo of the dog in question - huge and hairy as Doyle, with a long lolling tongue, but completely black. However, it wasn’t the dog to catch his gaze as much as the newlyweds standing right behind it, smiling for the camera. 

At first sight, Lawrence Brown didn’t resemble his younger brother at all. Daniel had been on the short side but broad, a full beard covering half his face, and the most elegant attire Gabriel had ever seen on him consisted of clean jeans and a flannel shirt. Lawrence’s build was slighter, and he was dressed in an impeccable suit that Gabriel was certain had to be tailored. He was clean-shaven, iron-gray hair neatly combed back, a black cane with a silver handle in one hand; the other arm was around Berenice’s waist. 

And yet there was something in the broad smile, the aquiline nose, the cheekbones and… ah, yes, the same dark green eyes. They two brothers didn’t quite resemble each other, but they did share some features upon closer inspection. It made Gabriel smile a little. Daniel would be glad to know that. “That’s a really nice photograph.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Berenice smiled. “I don’t think I ever spent so much time doing my hair before or since, but it was worth it. Towards the end of the ceremony his bad knee was bothering him, did I say it was bloody rainy? So I suggested we took the photos sitting down, but he wouldn’t have that. He’s stubborn, did I mention that?”

Gabriel smiled. “A few times,” he said, and was about to start eating the third slice of cake out of politeness - time to find out how much his stomach could really take - when Doyle’s ears suddenly perked up. The dog pulled its head off Gabriel’s knee and stood, running to the next room, where the entrance was, with a wagging tail and a noise that sounded much like ‘boof’.

“Ah, there he is,” Berenice murmured. She put her cup of tea aside and stood from her armchair. “I’ll let him know you’re here,” she added, the smile gone from her face - a stark reminder to Gabriel that he was not there to deliver an especially cheery message. It made sense for her to want to prepare her husband for what was to come.

He put the dish aside and nodded, his mouth pulled in a tight line, as Berenice quickly went through the entrance. Through the doorway, Gabriel could just hear a man’s voice asking the dog who was ‘a good boy’, which he found mildly confusing, not least because he knew dogs were unable to utter a response. Then he was cut off, and Gabriel could make out Berenice speaking in a soft tone, although he couldn’t grasp the words.

A message to deliver. It’s what I do best, Gabriel thought, instinctively reaching up to straighten his tie. Please, please, do not cry, he thought immediately afterwards. Until not too long ago, if it had been over a message God tasked him to deliver to a mortal, the thought of his words being met with tears might have been mildly awkward at worst. Now, something in his chest ached at the mere thought. 

It should be Daniel sitting here. Not me. This is not fair.

Mortal lives are short, something whispered in the back of his mind. 

They needed more time, Daniel needed more time, he should have gotten to grow old.

Ah, that wouldn’t have mattered until a few months ago, either. He had been ready to follow the Great Plan and see humanity annihilated, because it was the plan and there was nothing else he ought to care about. Billions human lives lost, Daniel’s and his brother’s and his wife’s among them; billions with unfinished business and years to live, and he hadn’t cared.

Aziraphale had cared. A demon had cared - but not him. You’re a good man, Daniel had written. Ah, if only he’d known.

In the next room there was more quiet talking, a brief silence, and then steps. Gabriel stood as Lawrence Brown walked in with a slight limp, looking at him with those dark green eyes that looked so familiar. He was older than in the photo, but there were few differences - a few more wrinkles around his eyes, his hair having gone from iron to silver, more informal clothing. The one big change, of course, was on his expression; the broad smile had changed into a polite one that barely hid the hurt, the many questions he certainly ached to ask.

And Gabriel would answer, at the best of his abilities.

Don’t say ‘fear not’.

“Mr. Brown,” Gabriel greeted him, holding out his hand. “My name is Gabriel Archer. I-- apologize for the intrusion.”

Lawrence’s smile seemed a little more sincere as he reached back to shake his hand. “Thank you for coming,” he said, and sat on the armchair in front of him while Doyle went to lay down at his feet. Berenice walked up to the armchair, putting a hand on his shoulder; he reached up to hold it, but his gaze never left Gabriel. “... I assume I wasn’t easy to find.”

Telling him both Heaven and Hell had been going crazy looking for him would have made for a truthful answer, but not a very wise one. Gabriel nodded, sitting as well. “You were not, but I-- I owed it to Daniel.”

If only I’d asked for assistance earlier, we could have found you on time. Before he died.

The name caused the smile to fade, and Lawrence drew in a deep breath, holding a little tighter on his wife’s hand. “Is what you told my wife true? That Daniel’s-- gone?”

A weight seemed to settle in Gabriel’s stomach as he nodded. “I am afraid he is. He passed away in his sleep a few weeks ago - heart failure.”

Lawrence let out all air in his lungs in a long breath, lowering his eyes. He swallowed before he spoke, Berenice still holding his hand in silent, steady comfort. “He’d have been fifty-five.”

“He was.”

“Fifty-six on the tenth of August. St. Lawrence’s day.” A shaky breath. “He was not old.”

“No, he was not,” Gabriel said, very quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Unfair, that. Margaret Thatcher lived a lot longer than that, may she rot in Hell.”

“She is.”

“Sorry?”

“Uh, nothing.”

A pause as Lawrence glanced at the photo and then back again. The pain was there behind his eyes, raw and palpable, but kept at bay. It was the gaze of someone who’d learned to deal with pain. Someone who’d lost an entire family before. Someone who’d been cast out, and had to learn to deal with it. It was a gaze Gabriel had seen in the mirror before.

“It is hard to imagine,” Lawrence said slowly, his voice a little less strained. “He was only ten last I saw him. A little boy. He still had gaps in his mouth where his baby teeth fell off.”

“I have a photo.” Gabriel reached in the internal pocket of his jacket and pulled out a photo of Daniel during a dinner for Łukasz’s birthday. It had been Fabrizio to take it, and he’d done Gabriel a huge favor by having it properly printed out; it showed Daniel sitting back against the backrest of his chair, a pint in his hand, laughing at something. He handed it to Lawrence, who hesitated a moment before taking it with a slightly shaky hand.

The photo of a stranger, Gabriel found himself thinking, why would he care to see the photo of a stranger? Daniel was no longer the boy he knew. He doesn’t know him at all.

“It has been a long time,” he had told Beelzebub. “We are not the beings we were then.”

“Oh,” Lawrence said, after looking at it for a few moments. His features twisted a moment - that pain again, trying to come to the surface - but in the end, he smiled. “Here he is, dear,” he finally muttered, glancing up at his wife. “My little brother, all grown up.”

Berenice smiled as well. “Almost as handsome as you.”

“I know, right? I like the beard, it never did much for my face - now that was a disappointment - but it looks good on him. He… heh. He looks like our father.”

Knowing what he did about his and Daniel’s parents - which was little, but none of it good - Gabriel was not quite sure what to think of the oddly fond smile that curled Lawrence’s lips for a moment. Nostalgia, maybe. However it was gone quite quickly, and Lawrence looked up at him again. He didn’t put down the photo, Gabriel noticed; he held it in his hands, as though unable to let go of it. “Thank you,” he said, his voice a little strained again. Gabriel managed a smile. 

“You’re welcome. I just finished what he started. He-- was looking for you.”

A shaky breath, and Lawrence shook his head. “No, he was not.”

“Huh? No, I assure you, he’d been trying for years--”

“He was looking for Alison. That was not me.”

Beelzebub, not Ba’al. 

No. Enough. They have nothing to do with any of this. Ba’al fought God and fell and is no more.

Gabriel closed his mouth, at a loss for words for a few moments-- but then he remembered the letter Daniel had written for him to memorize, and shook his head. “He was looking for you. Only under the wrong name, is all. There were things he did not know.”

I want you to know I loved you then and I love you now, wherever you are. You were the best sibling I could have asked for, I am sorry I couldn’t see that. I am sorry I never read your letter.

“... He was sorry for what he said to you. He didn’t mean it. He regretted it his entire life.”

A long pause, a sigh. “He was only a child, then. I never held it against him. It was not his fault,” Lawrence said, looking down at the photograph again. “God, he looks so different.”

“Still your little brother,” Berenice spoke softly, reaching to brush back his hair. 

“... Yes. He was.” He brushed a thumb over the photo. “I should visit him. Where is he buried?”

Oh, that. “The… funeral has not gone ahead yet. They were trying to locate his next of kin. Which would be you,” Gabriel said, gaining himself a startled look.

“Just me? Isn’t there… anyone else?”

“He was married, but his wife passed away years ago. He had... an eventful life.” Gabriel managed a smile. “I’d be happy to fill you in, if you’d like. So that you know more about him.”

A long look, and he smiled. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand still holding the photo. “... I would appreciate that more than words can say,” he replied. Berenice smiled, and squeezed his hand one more time before letting go. “I’ll be making more tea for everyone.”

“No need, I still have a cup--”

“Which you let go cold, Mr. Archer,” she cut him off with a chuckle, reaching to take it. “No, no, sit. Please. You have a lot to talk about.”

And he did, he truly did - filling in Lawrence with all he knew about Daniel’s life, the ups and downs, the happy life and marriage, the death of his wife, illness, homelessness, how he pulled himself out of it; what a good worker he was, how respected by everyone he worked with him.

And most of all he told him everything that Daniel was; a good man, a generous man, someone who’d share the last of his beer with a weird frazzled stranger he met in a park, and then let him sleep in his tent when he became too drunk to go anywhere else. Lawrence listened, smiled, and got misty-eyed - and it was all right, because so did Gabriel and he found there was no shame in that. It was a fundamental part of being human, after all. 

By the time he finished speaking, Lawrence Brown looked many things - saddened and grateful, nostalgic and thoughtful, but most of all he looked proud. “He turned out well,” he said, and smiled down at the photo. “He was always a good kid. I was sure he’d be a good man.”

“He was the best hum--” ah, wait. Not the right wording. “The best man I have known. Ah, thank you,” Gabriel said, taking the cup of tea Berenice was handing him. Behind her, Lawrence sneakily passed a biscuit to Doyle. 

“Well. It seems I ought to get in touch, then, so I can organise the funeral. I will let you know all the details so you and your colleagues can attend,” Lawrence added. “I am… very grateful to you for going through the trouble of coming all the way here.”

Gabriel smiled. “I had a debt of gratitude.”

“To Daniel, but not to me. How may I repay you?”

“Well…” All right, he ought to word this in a way that was not weird, because telling him he wanted to know more about his life so he could tell Daniel about it was not an option, unless he wished an ambulance to be called to take him. “You seem to have had an interesting life yourself. I grew curious as I searched you - if it’s not too much to ask for you to indulge my curiosity…?” 

A chuckle. “Ah, it was not as interesting as you might believe, so prepare to be disappointed. When I left Plymouth after… well. When I left it was early May - the first of May, I think. Or was it the tenth? Well, one of the two. Either way, I decided to board the first train to London…”

***

“Aren’t you going to miss London at all?”

“Ah, maybe the nightlife. But whenever that happens, we can always hop on the Bentley and go like the wind.”

“That is a slightly frightening thought.”

“Oh, come on, you know I never crash.”

“But you have caused others to crash upon occasion, do I have to remind you-- oh, this one looks nice.”

“It does, doesn’t it? It’s got a big loft, too, we can miracle it to be bigger on the inside. Nice large window, lets in plenty of natural light.”

“It would make a perfect library!”

“... I was thinking of houseplants.”

“Is that necessary? This comes with such a lovely garden, you can have all the plants you wish.”

“Ah, right. Still had my brain wired on ‘flat’.”

“Well. I see no reason why we can’t have houseplants in the library. Is that tree in the garden?”

“An apple tree? Yes.” Crowley had to admit it was an amusing coincidence. He scrolled through the photos. “Ah, that corner over there would be perfect for shrubs, and that spot in the sun… hedges all around… yes, I could turn it into something like Eden with some work.”

“Oh, and I could help you!”

“What?”

“In the garden.”

“Angel, if you so much try to go all Brother Francis again and be kind to garden pests--”

“I promise I will not, as long as you promise not to raise your voice at the plants.”

Crowley sighed. “Yes, yes, compromise. I am reasonably sure we already discussed this point. Didn’t we?”

“I think we did, yes.”

“Would be easier to remember if we didn’t keep getting interrupted to babysit--”

Aziraphale’s phone rang. Crowley rolled his eyes. Case in point.

“Ah, it might be Gabriel,” Aziraphale said. As far as Crowley was concerned, it was all the more reason not to answer the phone - if the idiot got himself stabbed in Luton it was his own problem, he’d received a fair warning - but Aziraphale picked up the receiver before he could voice those thoughts.

“Hello? Oh, Gabriel! I did wonder why you didn’t call-- oh, you found him? Wait-- Paington? How did you get there from Lut-- ah, I see. Well, that’s delightful news, isn’t it! When are you going to-- oh, you already… my, wasn’t that quick! And how did it go? Wonderful, wonderful. I’m sure your friend will be happy to know that. Is there anything more we can do to assist? Oh. Oh. Ah, you’re quite welcome, you’re quite welcome. Of course, it was no trouble at all. Take care, then.”

As the call ended, Crowley raised an eyebrow. “So, he found the bloke?”

“He did. He called to thank us,” Aziraphale replied, sounding mildly surprised.

Crowley frowned. “Us?” he repeated. The former Archangel fucking Gabriel thanking him, too?

“Yes, he specifically said ‘both of you’,” was the reply. Well, now that was… unexpected. 

“Looks like he finally learned some manners,” he muttered, and Aziraphale chuckled, nudging him with an elbow as he sat back next to him, looking down at the cottage they might just pick.

“Before it slips my mind, one thing we should check is if there’s a good bakery in the vicinity…”

***

Lawrence and Berenice insisted for Gabriel to stay for lunch.

At first he’d thought to decline, if anything because the amount of cake he’d been fed throughout the morning almost dwarfed what Aziraphale had been trying to get in his stomach with varying degrees of success - but after so long looking for Lawrence, Gabriel found he wanted to stay a bit longer. 

He wanted to get to know him a little better, gather more details he could pass on to Daniel, and answer any more questions Lawrence may have about his brother. He couldn’t answer all of them, because what he knew of Daniel’s life before they met he’d only heard about, but he did his best. 

And besides, he found it was very easy to discreetly slip food under the table to Doyle in order to keep his stomach from bursting without refusing food, which Berenice had made clear would not be tolerated. If anything, Doyle appreciated his initiative a lot. By the time Gabriel left, after exchanging numbers and thanks and with polite handshakes, it was mid-afternoon and… a pleasantly mild day overall, despite being just early March. 

It was only a short walk to the seafront, where a few people were walking their dogs or kicking around a spherical object - ah, right, a soccer ball - only to have it stolen by a dog who then ran off, forcing a couple of people to chase it. But they were laughing, so Gabriel supposed they were not especially bothered by the inconvenience. 

He sat outside a café, ordered a coffee, called Aziraphale to update him as he waited and then he pulled a small notepad from the inside pocket of his jacket to start jotting down all that Lawrence had told him about himself and his life, so that it could be passed on to Daniel. His memory used to be infallible, as that of all angels, but that no longer was the case: he retained all he had learned in his existence as part of the Heavenly host, but new information was harder to fix into his mind now that he was a mortal. 

An interesting side effect, considering that, other memories had been making a comeback.

“I know you,” he’d said once to a Virtue known as Ba’al. 

“No. You do not.”

Not the beings we were then.

Why would he care to see the photo of a stranger?

“My little brother, all grown up,” Lawrence Brown had said. 

It has been a long time. He doesn’t know him at all.

“Thank you for coming,” he had said. “Thank you for bringing Daniel back to me.”

“... Sir? Is something the matter with your coffee?”

“Huh?”

Gabriel blinked, and realized three things at once: that he had been stating in the distance towards the waves with the pen in mid-air for several minutes, that the coffee in front of him was untouched and growing cold, and that the waitress was looking at him with mild concern. 

He smiled. “Ah, I got a bit lost in thought. Thanks for snapping me out of it,” he said, and she smiled back before leaving. He picked up the mug, took a sip and ah, it needed more sugar, it was so bitter only Beelzebub could possibly appreciate-- no, best not to think of them. Not now. 

All too soon, he suspected, they would show up to demand he repaid the favor, and Gabriel would keep his word. He had to.

But for now, he would focus on the task at hand - the message he truly wanted to pass on. Gabriel put down the mug, picked up the pen, and began writing.

***

“A risk analyst? Is that an actual thing?”

“I am fairly sure it is.”

“Gabriel’s got to be shit-- pulling my leg,” Daniel Brown said, to his credit correcting himself very fast when he noticed Uriel’s raised eyebrow. Beside him, his wife seemed amused. 

“Not the career you had imagined for him?”

“Not what I’d imagine for anyone, since I didn’t know it existed. When Ali-- Lawrence left, she-- he’d-- agh, I keep fucking this up.”

As Uriel sighed in defeat - that man’s language was impossible - Liv Brown chuckled. “You’ll get used to it,” she said. Uriel was not entirely certain she was talking to her husband about his use of correct pronouns, or reassuring her that sooner or later his language would cease bothering her.

To be honest, Uriel had no plans to stay in the lower spheres of Heaven long enough to get used to any of it.

Unaware of her thoughts, Daniel Brown shrugged, scanning the message of several pages Gabriel had sent back for him. “Hope so, I keep slipping up and feeling like an arse-- an idiot, I mean. But… a risk analyst. I imagined he’d, I don’t know, boarded a plane to Australia to be a kangaroo herder or something. Not board a train to London to become a risk analyst. I can get he’s a guy but what job is that supposed to be?”

“... It doesn’t sound particularly adventurous, I agree. On the bright side, getting to him might have been a little more difficult if he lived in Australia herding kangaroos.”

“Ah, fair.”

They kept going over the latter together, and Uriel silently left the room without either of them noticing. Her work there was done; Daniel Brown may have never met his brother in life - he would in Heaven, most likely, if Lawrence Brown’s file was anything to go by he was well on course to get in - but at least he had the answers he had been seeking. 

Uriel, on the other hand, still has no answer to the questions that wouldn’t leave her alone - nor Michael nor Sandalphon, she knew that - ever since the order had come to cast Gabriel out, and they’d obeyed. So many questions, and not one answer. 

God owed them no answers, Uriel knew, and questioning was a dangerous thing to do in Heaven… yet it was all she had been doing for the past several months. All they had been doing.

And maybe it was time for them to ask those questions out loud, come what may.

***

"But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." -- Luke 15:32

***

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[the-beautiful-tsubaki]

The Ride - Sylvix fic - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 – The Duke and the Margrave

“D-Damn… you…” Edelgard had little strength of her own, and now relied only on Aymr – and her vassal Hubert – to keep herself up. “Hubert, we will retreat to Enbarr for the time being.”

“A wise decision, Your Majesty.” Hubert did not have a particularly strong build, but for his liege, he had strength enough to move her and her heavy armour.

“You will not,you wench!” Dimitri declared – proudly and viciously – while in hot pursuit of Edelgard. “You’ll fall dead before you so much as leave this field!”

Luckily for Edelgard, Hubert had whisked the emperor far enough away before Dimitri had noticed the retreat of the Adrestian army. Adding to their fortunes was a young girl – of whom nobody knew the name – frantically running towards an unaware Dimitri.

“Oh, Your Highness, thank you so much for helping me!”

Still in his fit of anger, Dimitri didn’t notice the girl, not even when she got within arms’ reach. But to his fortune, there was someone who did – and this person was wise enough to know the seemingly innocent girl’s true intentions, taking the sword strike in Dimitri’s place. “Your Highness, watch out!”

“What… Who?” Dimitri slowly turned around to find that Rodrigue – the overbearing Duke of Fraldarius – had taken the hit. “Rodrigue!”

Before Dimitri could fully comprehend the current event, Byleth impaled the young girl with the Sword of the Creator, and instantly she fell dead.

“Professor…” By this point, Dimitri’s rabid tone of voice had faded. “Thank you… I owe you my life.”

He then turned his attention to the dying Rodrigue. “Rodrigue… You damned fool. There was no need to go this far for a… boar like me.”

“Your Highness… Thank the goddess… that Faerghus’ last ray of hope… still lives…”

“I am no ray of hope… I’m just an empty shell where a man used to be,” Dimitri spoke with tears and a shaking voice. “I don’t understand why anyone would believe in a lost cause like me.”

Rodrigue used what little strength he had left to hold onto Dimitri while he spoke. “Well, I do. Even if… ah… all of Faerghus’ citizens hate the ‘boar’ you’ve become… I can still see the good in you – the same good I saw in King Lambert.”

Dimitri had no response to this, except for silent tears.

“My… my friend… Lambert… I will join you… as your son will bring peace to Fódlan.” So spoke Rodrigue as at long last the breath of life left him.

“Rodrigue…” Dimitri uttered before a long pause – followed by a strident cry of mourning – and it was this cry that had aroused the attention of a half-asleep Felix.

“What…” Felix felt around for his clothes and put them on. “Is that… the boar?”

Sylvain, whom the cry had awakened more, answered, “It must be… Probably brutally killed someone again.”

Still somewhat asleep, Felix made his way out the tent. Then, suddenly, the sight of his dead father - and supposedly ruthless prince mourning him – sprung Felix wide awake.

“Felix…” Sylvain spoke in empathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“…” Felix only grumbled and turned the other way in response.

“Wait! Felix, please.” Dimitri begged.

“Why should I listen to what you have to say, you boar?” Felix said without looking back.

“Because I need your help to bring Faerghus back to its former glory. I want you to become the next Duke Fraldarius.”

At those words, Felix put up a defensive expression before saying, “And you expect that of me so soon after you not only let my father die, but also after your disgusting display of behaviour? Besides, my uncle can just take over.”

“But he’s too old. Furthermore, he is only your uncle by marriage. Now you’re the last surviving bearer of the Crest of Fraldarius. It has to be you. I don’t expect your forgiveness right away – or at all – but it’s for the good of Fódlan.”

It took a little longer this time for Felix to come up with a proper response. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it after the war is over. We should focus on liberating Fódlan first, right?”

“Agreed.” Dimitri paused to direct some of his soldier to carry Rodrigue’s body onto a carriage bound for Fraldarius territory. “We will make way for the monastery and decide our next course of action.”

As soon as the Kingdom army dispersed in preparation for the journey thence, Sylvain took the chance to talk to his boyfriend. “Do you actually intend to inherit the house, Felix?”

“What choice do I have?” Felix couldn’t look Sylvain in the eye as they began the march. “If my uncle dies during this war – and he might – then you can only imagine the chaos that would ensue in securing one of Faerghus’ most powerful houses.”

“But… But…” Sylvain stopped the two from proceeding, squeezing both of Felix’s hands. “What about us?”

Felix said nothing as with a sorrowful expression he turned away. Before Sylvain could get another word in, a young boy with garb suggesting his origins in Gautier territory came running to him, shouting, “My lord! My lord Sylvain!”

Sylvain quickly dried up his tears before facing the boy. “Y-Yes? Do you need help there, little guy?”

“No, it’s Margrave Gautier who needs help.” The boy handed Sylvain a letter. “Here. It’s an urgent missive from him.”

“Let me see…” Sylvain opened the small letter and read it. “No… It can’t be!”

“Sylvain?” Dimitri took note of Sylvain’s exasperated reaction to the letter. “What happened?”

“My father requests reinforcements to Fhirdiad. Gautier and Fraldarius troops are currently there defending it.”

“I… see.”

“But that’s not all. He requests that I immediately inherit House Gautier, for fear of perishing during the war.”

“Hah! What a lack of confidence that man has,” Felix cut in.

“You’re right… Your Highness, I will… um… do what Felix is doing and just wait until after the war to inherit the house.”

Luckily for Sylvain, Dimitri didn’t seem to notice his panicked expression. “Very well. I, too, think that Margrave Gautier should have more faith in his own abilities.”

So spoke Dimitri as the army now continued their way back to Garreg Mach in earnest.

“So you really are going to give up on us…” Felix scoffed, making sure that nobody could hear him.

“…No. I have no real intention of inheriting Gautier. This war is going to drag out for a long time. The emperor has taken hold of almost all of Fódlan. We have little in the way of troops. I think we can do it, but… It won’t be easy. What, you believe in Margrave Gautier but not his only son?”

“Tch. You and your cautious optimism.” Felix smiled. “So what, you’re just using the war as an excuse not to inherit your house?”

“Precisely. But if we don’t think of something soon… Then… Maybe we really will have to become the duke and the margrave. And then we’ll have to-”

“No.” Felix stood firm as he held onto Sylvain’s hand while still walking. “We won’t. We will think of a solution that will work not only for us, but for Fódlan.”

Just as the two men began to relax around each other, he noticed Ashe’s sudden, loud voice. “Oh goddess! Sylvain, how are you?”

“Yikes!” Sylvain let go of his boyfriend’s hand. “How do you mean?”

“I heard you got gravely wounded in the last battle. Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Oh?” For Ashe, it was his first time seeing Felix since the noble’s split from the Kingdom five years ago. “Felix! You’re back! I mean… you really are back this time, yes?”

“Mm. So I see you’re still like that half-knight in that book.”

“And you’re still like the- Oh, whatever. I better tell Dimitri the good news.”

“Uh… there’s no need for that. He already knows I’m here.” Felix remained tight lipped about the real reason Dimitri so readily accepted him back into the Kingdom.

“Okay. See you back at the monastery.”

“Man, still as annoyingly cheerful as always,” Felix spoke when Ashe had left to hang out with Caspar and Raphael. “Sylvain, we really need to be careful about our relationship, especially when we have tattletales like that buffoon in our midst.”

“It’s going to be a pain, but… The war will be over – and then we can be together at last.” Sylvain had to resist the urge to hold Felix’s hand again. Little did he know, however, that a rather curious Ingrid had been watching all of their interactions from afar.

“Hmm… Those two are unusually friendly with one another.”

So were Ingrid’s words as within a mere few days, Garreg Mach Monastery was within view.

[scotianostra]

On February 8th 1587 Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.

Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantome was a member of the French nobility who accompanied Mary during her internment. He provides us with a sympathetic account of Mary's execution that begins with the arrival of a delegation from Queen Elizabeth announcing that the former Queen of the Scots is to be executed the next day:

"On February 7, 1587, the representatives of the English Queen, reached the Castle of Fotheringay, where the Queen of Scotland was confined at that time, between two and three o'clock in the afternoon. In the presence of her jailer, Paulet, they read their commission regarding the execution of the prisoner, and said that they would proceed with their task the next morning between seven and eight o'clock. The jailer was then ordered to have everything in readiness.

Without betraying any astonishment, the Queen thanked them for their good news, saying that nothing could be more welcome to her, since she longed for an end to her miseries, and had been prepared for death ever since she had been sent as a prisoner to England. However, she begged the envoys to give her a little time in which to make herself ready, make her will, and place her affairs in order. It was within their power and discretion to grant these requests. The Count of Shrewsbury replied rudely:

'No, no, Madam you must die, you must die! Be ready between seven and eight in the morning. It cannot be delayed a moment beyond that time.' " It was that sudden, very little time for Mary to prepare, a brutal way to spend the last few hours on this earth........Mary spent the rest of the day and the early hours of the next morning writing farewell letters to friends and relatives, saying goodbye to her ladies-in-waiting, and praying.

At 2 am on Wednesday 8 February 1587, Mary Queen of Scots picked up her pen for the last time. Her execution on the block at Fotheringhay Castle was a mere six hours away when she wrote this letter. It is addressed to Henri III of France, brother of her first husband. The letter was written in French, the following is a translation and is a fascinating insight into the mind of our Queen hours before her murder. Mary had only learnt her fate a few hours earlier.

Note, even though she had been forced to abdicate, and had been a prisoner of her cousin for 19 years, she still called herself, Queen of Scotland.

Queen of Scotland 8 Feb. 1587

Sire, my brother-in-law, having by God's will, for my sins I think, thrown myself into the power of the Queen my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered much for almost twenty years, I have finally been condemned to death by her and her Estates. I have asked for my papers, which they have taken away, in order that I might make my will, but I have been unable to recover anything of use to me, or even get leave either to make my will freely or to have my body conveyed after my death, as I would wish, to your kingdom where I had the honour to be queen, your sister and old ally.

Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence: I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning. I have not had time to give you a full account of everything that has happened, but if you will listen to my doctor and my other unfortunate servants, you will learn the truth, and how, thanks be to God, I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were their subject. The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, but for fear of interference with theirs. The proof of this is that they have taken away my chaplain, and although he is in the building, I have not been able to get permission for him to come and hear my confession and give me the Last Sacrament, while they have been most insistent that I receive the consolation and instruction of their minister, brought here for that purpose. The bearer of this letter and his companions, most of them your subjects, will testify to my conduct at my last hour. It remains for me to beg Your Most Christian Majesty, my brother-in-law and old ally, who have always protested your love for me, to give proof now of your goodness on all these points: firstly by charity, in paying my unfortunate servants the wages due them - this is a burden on my conscience that only you can relieve further, by having prayers offered to God for a queen who has borne the title Most Christian, and who dies a Catholic, stripped of all her possessions. As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him. I have taken the liberty of sending you two precious stones, talismans against illness, trusting that you will enjoy good health and a long and happy life. Accept them from your loving sister-in-law, who, as she dies, bears witness of her warm feeling for you. Again I commend my servants to you. Give instructions, if it please you, that for my soul's sake part of what you owe me should be paid, and that for the sake of Jesus Christ, to whom I shall pray for you tomorrow as I die, I be left enough to found a memorial mass and give the customary alms.

This Wednesday, two hours after midnight. Your very loving and most true sister, Mary R

To the most Christian king, my brother-in-law and old ally.

We rejoin de Bourdeille's account as Mary enters the room designated for her execution and is denied access to her priest:

"The scaffold had been erected in the middle of a large room. It measured twelve feet along each side and two feet in height, and was covered by a coarse cloth of linen.

The Queen entered the room full of grace and majesty, just as if she were coming to a ball. There was no change on her features as she entered.

Drawing up before the scaffold, she summoned her major-domo (steward) and said to him:

'Please help me mount this. This is the last request I shall make of you.'

Then she repeated to him all that she had said to him in her room about what he should tell her son. Standing on the scaffold, she asked for her almoner, (chaplain) begging the officers present to allow him to come. But this was refused point-blank. The Count of Kent told her that he pitied her greatly to see her thus the victim of the superstition of past ages, advising her to carry the cross of Christ in her heart rather than in her hand. To this she replied that it would be difficult to hold a thing so lovely in her hand and not feel it thrill the heart, and that what became every Christian in the hour of death was to bear with him the true Symbol of Redemption."

Standing on the scaffold, Mary angrily rejects her captors' offer of a Protestant minister to give her comfort. She kneels while she begs that Queen Elizabeth spare her ladies-in-waiting and prays for the conversion of the Isle of Britain and Scotland to the Catholic Church:

"When this was over, she summoned her women to help her remove her black veil, her head-dress, and other ornaments. When the executioner attempted to do this, she cried out:

'Nay, my good man, touch me not!'

But she could not prevent him from touching her, for when her dress was lowered as far as her waist; the scoundrel caught her roughly by the arm and pulled off her doublet. Her skirt was cut so low that her neck and throat, whiter than alabaster, were revealed. She concealed these as well as she could, saying that she was not used to disrobing in public, especially before so large an assemblage. There were about four or five hundred people present.

The executioner fell to his knees before her and implored her forgiveness. The Queen told him that she willingly forgave him and alI who were responsible for her death, as freely as she hoped her sins would be forgiven by God. Turning to the woman to whom she, had given her handkerchief, she asked for it.

She wore a golden crucifix, made out of the wood of the true cross, with a picture of Our Lord on it. She was about to give this to one of her women, but the executioner forbade it, even though Her Majesty had promised that the woman would give him thrice its value in money.

After kissing her women once more, she bade them go, with her blessing, as she made the sign of the cross over them. One of them was unable to keep from crying, so that the Queen had to impose silence upon her by saying she had promised that nothing of the kind would interfere with the business in hand. They were to stand back quietly, pray to God for her soul, and bear truthful testimony that she had died in the bosom of the Holy Catholic religion.

One of the women then tied the handkerchief over her eyes. The Queen quickly, and with great courage, knelt dawn, showing no signs of faltering. So great was her bravery that all present were moved, and there were few among them that could refrain from tears. In their hearts they condemned themselves far the injustice that was being done.

The executioner, or rather the minister of Satan, strove to kill not only her body but also her soul, and kept interrupting her prayers. The Queen repeated in Latin the Psalm beginning In te, Damine, speravi; nan canfundar in aeternum. When she was through she laid her head on the block, and as she repeated the prayer, the executioner struck her a great blow upon the neck, which was not, however, entirely severed. Then he struck twice more, since it was obvious that he wished to make the victim's martyrdom all the more severe. It was not so much the suffering, but the cause, that made the martyr.

The executioner then picked up the severed head and, showing it to those present, cried out: 'God save Queen Elizabeth! May all the enemies of the true Evangel thus perish!'

Saying this, he stripped off the dead Queen's head-dress, in order to show her hair, which was now white, and which she had been afraid to show to everyone when she was still alive, or to have properly dressed, as she did when her hair was fair and light.

It was not old age that had turned it white, for she was only thirty-five when this took place, and scarcely forty when she met her death, but the troubles, misfortunes, and sorrows which she had suffered, especially in her prison."

The account of Pierre de Bourdeille was originally published in 1665 and republished many times thereafter.

[imyourliquor-youremypoison]

Hot Blood and Cloudy Minds (Skam - Chris x OC)

Requested by anon like a million years ago (i'm sorry)

Synopsis : Chris' attention seems to have drifted from Eva to another girl and nobody knows what the hell is going on exactly, but they sure are about to find out. Nothing like a party and a bit of alcohol in the blood to make tempers flare.

Word count: 5.5k

MASTERLIST

A/N: I made this a Chris x OC, not a reader insert. Ajna is pronounced aye-nah

Ajna nudged Noora in the ribs as discreetly as she could while the blonde was holding a red cup filled to the brim with some tequila based drink according to the smell. Some of it spilled over nonetheless but at least Noora's attention was on her. She had been laughing at something Ludvik said and didn't catch Ajna's insistent stares for the last five minutes.

“Ajna! Look what you made me do!” She exclaimed, holding the drink away from her shirt. “What is it you want to tell me?”

She was shaking her hand to get rid of the spilled tequila.

“Did you tell anything to your friends?” Ajna asked softly, leaning against Noora.

The music was loud, there was no need for whispering but being stared at for most of the party made her feel a little paranoid. The annoyed eye roll she earned was an answer in itself.

“Are we talking about this again? I told you, Ajna-,” Noora said, putting her clean hand on her arm. Ajna pouted and gave her doe eyes. “-I'm not telling anyone as long as you want to keep this on the down low. Even if I don't understand why.”

Ajna looked down and crossed her arms on her chest, resting her beer inside her left elbow. She was aware of acting a little on edge sometimes and that her friends must be fed up with her constant vigilance.

“Why do you ask?” Noora's tone became worried when her friend didn't answer.

“It's Eva, she's been glaring holes through my head for over a week now, I don't know why, and it's starting to get to me,” she admitted. Noora immediately searched for Eva in the crowd but Ajna yanked her back towards her. “Don't look at her, she'll know we're talking about her!”

“I'll go talk to her later,” Noora promised. “I'm sure it's nothing.”

Just then Ajna felt an arm drape over her shoulders and she shut her mouth. She will have to settle for Noora's reassuring gaze for now.

“Why so serious?” Chris chuckled in Ajna's ear, pulling her to his side as he uttered the words to her ear. It tickled her, made her laugh – Chris took this as a sign to continue. Pushing aside her hair he leaned in and nuzzled her slightly, giving a quick bite to her ear lob.

“Chris,” Ajna said, using her scolding tone. He knew that voice and stopped his shenanigans.

“We're at a party Ajna!” He protested. “No one's looking, and those who are won't remember a thing in the morning. Get that broomstick outta your ass.”

“Hey, it's not me who wants to keep this- this whatever under the radar,” Ajna argued, poking Chris' chest with a little grin on her face. “You could at least act like you give a fuck.”

“I give many fucks,” Chris replied, looking almost insulted that Ajna would suggest he didn't care about their 'whatever'. His words seemed to sooth Ajna's worries but her smile dropped the second he said, “I so wanna kiss you right now.”

A number of arguments against him doing so popped in Ajna's mind but the truth was that she also wanted to kiss him senseless, and when she opened her mouth to tell him to behave and stop his teasing, no words came out. Her brain shut down the second her eyes glanced at his lips. Damn it, they were at a party, Chris was known for making out with girls at parties, nobody would think anything of it.

To Chris' utmost amazement and pleasure, Ajna's hand shot up to grab his neck and pull him down. Surprise made him part his lips and not even a second later they crashed against Ajna's for the kiss of a lifetime. Ajan's back hit the wall behind her and Chris' body pushed up against hers, trapping her in a kiss she had no intention of escaping from. Her arms found their rightful place around his neck. The whole duration of their seemingly never ending embrace, everything around them was blocked out, reduced to some insignificant background noise.

Except the second Ajna's eyes opened, she was once again met with Eva's unfriendly glare from across the room.

“Shit!” She cured under her breath, pushing Chris away from her and keeping him at arms' length.

“What? Is something wrong?” He asked, the usual boyish grin on his face quickly replaced by worry. His hand shot up to her face but she pushed it again.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me!” Ajna swore out loud this time. “Can't you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Worry was now clear on Chris' face, his eyes scanning Ajna's entire body as if he was looking for some injury.

“Her Chris! Eva trying to pin to me that wall by sheer will!” She was growing angrier every time she caught her looking her way with this scornful expression on her face. “I didn't even do anything to her, I barely know her. Noora introduced me to the girls once but that's it!”

“Eva?” Chris was frowning now. “You say she's been doing this for how long?” His tone turned serious and it did nothing to help Ajna relax. In fact, it raised a big red flag in her head.

“A couple weeks, why? Is there something you haven't told me?”

“Listen-” Chris began and Ajna knew with this one word that she wasn't going to like what would come out of his mouth next. She knew this 'listen', she has heard it before, it was the 'listen' that was unfailingly followed by bad news. “-I didn't want to upset you, but...”

“...but?” Ajna encouraged him. “But you knew something was off with Eva and you kept it to yourself?”

“You didn't say anything either!” He argued and although he had a point, she wasn't willing to admit it. “This is not the right place to argue. We'll talk about it later.”

“Fuck you!”

Ajna hit Chris' chest to push him off of her and walked away to get something else to drink, clearly beer wasn't doing it. If she wanted a chance to live through this party with Chris hiding stuff from her and Eva acting like there was a target on her back, Ajna would need something much stronger.

“Ajna!” He called after her but she didn't turn around.

She needed a second to settle down and breathe, away from the Penetrators' dirty jokes and Chris' attention. As much as she loved being the only girl Chris looked at, she was not okay with him patronizing her and acting like everything he did is to protect her and keep her from getting upset. Because that definitely made her upset. He needed to stop pretending he knows better.

There was protective Chris, who worried about his girl's well-being and wanted to make sure she was alright, and then there was overbearing Chris who became defensive and closed in on himself whenever things got out of hand. When he was face with the realization that he couldn't control ow other people acted around them – other boys lurking around Ajna, other girls hitting on him any chance they got.

He needed to fucking man up and ask her out then maybe he won't have to worry about other guys hitting on her, and she won't have to deal with angry, jealous stares from all the girls at Nissen, from 97' to 95'.

“Hey!” Ajna jumped in surprise, nearly dropping her red cup hen someone put on hand on her shoulder without warning. “Sorry, did I scare you?” Noora asked.

“'s okay,” she reassured her friend. “I was just thinking...”

“Listen-” she started and for the second time in under fifteen minutes, Ajna cursed that damn word that never announced anything good. “-I talked to Eva to find out what was bothering her.”

“Hit me with it!” Ajna sighed, rubbing her eyes with her thumbs before remembering she was wearing makeup. Noora cringed slightly, obviously not happy to be the bearer of bad news.

“I think she's after Chris,” she admitted.

“You think?”

“Well, she didn't say anything directly, but I know her enough to read between the lines. She's not angry at you or anything, she didn't even realize she was glaring at you until I mentioned it.”

“Great, so I didn't do anything but I'm on the wrong end of her death glare and she's after my boyfriend!” Ajna exploded, letting her anger speak for her.

“Boyfriend?”Noora repeated with a little grin that said she saw it coming.

“Don't smile like that, he didn't ask or anything, my tongue slipped.” She rolled her eyes. “We'll graduate before he grows a pair.”

“Why don't you ask him? Chris, do you want to be my boyfriend?” She tried to mimic her voice.

“Oh c'mon, where's the fun in that? And you're missing the point, Noora,” Ajna told her, looping her hand around her friend's arm and leading her away from the bar. “Chris is a fuckboy, he's fucked over many girls before, and my way of making sure he's not fucking me over is to have him ask me out and not the other way around. If he likes me enough to put aside his whorish ways, then we'll talk.”

“You guys have the weirdest relationship,” Noora said. “You have been together for months, Ajna!”

“You don't need to remind me, I remember clearly the last few months of sneaking around and not telling anyone about us.”

“You act like he makes you wait on purpose but I honestly don't think he has any idea what he's doing. Ever thought that maybe you were the first person he wanted to be serious with? You should have seen the way William acted when he was chasing after me, boys are stupid when they are in love.”

Ajna raised an eyebrow and glanced at Noora, sending her a disbelieving look. She was merely trying to help but what she said was simple extrapolation. As much as Eva having her eyes set on Chris was a valid theory, saying that Chris Schistad of all people was in love with Ajna and desperately trying to find the right way to ask her out without screwing up, that was too far-fetched for her to believe.

“Are you drunk Noora? Do you hear yourself? This is Chris we're talking about!”

“I know,” she cooed softly and brought her arm around Ajna's shoulders. “But think about it, he's different with you. It has to mean something.”

“It does. It means he finally found a girl dumb enough to engage in a relationship based on hooking up and ordering pizza at ungodly hours every other day, without asking to make things official.”

“You're too negative but it's alright, I have enough positivity in me for two,” Noora said, obviously thinking Ajna just threw her some challenge. “You need to have faith in your relationship, otherwise who else will?”

“Chris is not easy to follow sometimes, believe me I do my best to maintain whatever's between us afloat. So many girls throw themselves at him as soon as I have my back turned, it's tiring.”

“Yet another reason to put your relationship out there, it'll draw a line. But- you do trust him, right?”

“Of course I trust him, that's not the issue. I think he doesn't trust me. He's always angry when a boy other than one of the Penetrators' talks to me, and he keeps things from me because he thinks I'll throw a tantrum or whatever.”

“What did you do earlier?” Noora asked with an eyebrow raised.

“You saw?” Ajna groaned. “I only walked away, I didn't throw a fit.”

“Everyone saw,” Noora laughed. “But it's okay, we couldn't hear you. What was that about?”

“I told him about Eva giving me the death glare and he reacted like it didn't surprise him at all, apparently something's been going on behind my back and he didn't feel the need to share it with me,” Ajna explained. “How the hell am I supposed to react? Just give him a free pass because he 'didn't want you to get upset'?” She tried to imitated Chris' voice for the last part, causing Noora to smile fondly.

“I get it, but I still think you should go to him, find out what happened and talk it out.” She patted her back. “I'm going to see the girls now, I'll leave you to your task.”

“My task,” Ajna huffed. “Can I get a drink first?”

“No, a sober mind is what you need. No go ahead.”

“Oh, well, look who's there,” Ajna mumbled to herself the second Noora disappeared in the dancing crowd, and she turned around to go back to Chris.

Eva was standing right next to him, giggling lord knows why. Chris leaned towards William and whispered something, making a cringy face. From where she stood Ajna could only imagine what the conversation was about, but she saw William nod and look around as if looking for someone in particular, his eyes eventually landing on her.

He gestured her to come over and Ajna felt the need to point at herself, silently asking if he was talking to her. William rolled his eyes and gestured again, setting her in motion at last. Her resolution to stay sober, talk to Chris, and forget about Eva like Noora advised her to was already faltering. Eva was laughing loud enough to be heard over the music, and Chris' eyes roamed around the room in order to avoid her eyes. When Ajna reached the small group, William kindly offered her a cigarette. Thinking that it might help her keep her hands away from the alcohol, Ajna accepted. They had opened the window behind them now, because of the smoke.

No sooner was the cigarette between her lips that Chris pulled her to him and held up a lighter for her.

“Thanks,” Ajna mumbled, relieved that he seemed glad to see her, though still irritated at having Eva jump on the first occasion to hit on Chris. Couldn't Ajna take her eyes off of him without having a flock of horny ladies gathering around him? Was it even worth it?

“You okay babe?” Chris asked her, looking just worried and sorry enough to wipe away Ajna's doubts. It was like he could read right through her, there was no keeping her emotions to herself with Chris, she was an open book to him.

She wanted to tell him that she was not okay at all, that she was in fact furious and that this party sucked, that she wanted to go home and fuck him into oblivion, hopefully reminding him that he belonged to her and no one else. But he smiled at her, and the party wasn't that terrible, their friends were here and the music was fine.

“I'm good,” she told him, not sure if he would buy it. He raised an eyebrow. “It's nothing to worry about,” she assured him, easing his concern a little bit.

“You guys are soooo adorable,” a voice cut in their little aparte, cooing in an exaggerate manner.

Eva still stood on the other side of Chris, a bottle in hand. Ajna did not see what it was but it sure wasn't beer. Eva was famous for finishing every party on the floor of a bathroom, piss drunk. She never saw it happen first hand and did not want to.

“I get why you hook up, two attractive persons like you-” she kept on rambling incoherently. “-makes sense!”

“Eva, why don't you go back to your friends, they'll get you a glass of water,” Chris tried to push her away but she lacked balance after a few drinks and she obviously had no problem with snuggling Chris' side even though he had his arm around another girl.

“Water? That's my water!” She raised her half empty bottle, showing them her prize. It was red wine. “Do you want some?” She asked, leaning further in.

“You should really sit down,” Ajna told her, finally speaking up.

She never understood the girls who stood idly by while someone tried to hit on their boyfriends but now she got it – it was anger. Utter indignation that made her entire body tense up and her jaw clench so tight she couldn't speak. It was fear of saying something harsh that she would regret later. She had to force herself to take a deep breath before speaking. Eva was drunk, she would never act like that under normal circumstances.

“You're drunk,” she told her.

“I'm not,” Eva protested. “Chris, tell her! We're just having a good time. Booo! Party pooper,” she kept on leaning against Chris, making him stumbled back a few steps and let go of Ajna.

They drew the attention of the people next to them who stopped their conversation, probably hoping for a scene to happen, something that would spice up the party.

“Eva! Eva, stop!” Chris told her to no avail. As much as he tried to detached her from his side she would not budge, sticking to him like glue. “Ajna, look-”

But Ajna shook her head. She wasn't in the mood to listen to excuses, she wanted to see results. It might not be fair to him but she wanted him to try harder. It was one thing that Chris wanted to keep their relationship secret outside of their closed circle, but letting Eva openly hit on him like this, that was a little too much to ask of her.

“Ajna,” Eva called her name. “That's your name! I forgot, stupid me!” She hit her forehead with her palm and turned to Chris. “Are you an item? I know you fuck each other, I can see it,” Eva laughed to herself, giggling as if she had just cracked the funniest joke of all time. Instead of laughing, the people who heard her flinched and tensed up. Ajna could feel Chris' stare on her, and William's hand behind her back, showing her he was ready to walk her out if she wanted to.

“Ajna,” Chris called her again, her eyes meeting his.

“Why do you care so much? It's none of your business,” Ajna snapped at Eva before remembering she vowed to be nice – sort of – because she was Noora's friend and did not do anything to her apart from still pining after Chris. Which Ajna could not blame her for. Except she wanted to. Damn it.

“Listen girls, we should talk about this somewhere else, let's not start drama he-”

“Girls are always drama, that's what you told me!” Eva cut him off. “You know when you invited me to the Penetrators' parties to hook up with me.”

There it was. Ajna's vision became blurry and William moved his hand to her shoulder and squeezed it. She threw her cigarette out of the window.

“What are you trying to do Eva?” Chris asked her, visibly annoyed now that she brought up their past little fling in front of his current girlfriend who is not officially his girlfriend but who he considers like his girlfriend anyway. “If this little act is meant to cause trouble between Ajna and I you can go!”

“Don't be so sensitive, I'm only telling-” she stopped for a second, looked like she was about to throw up but then continued “-I'm telling the truth, 'is all.”

“Well I already know everything that's to know about your brief fuck buddy relationship with Chris, there's nothing else to say,” Ajna told her more calmly. “Now you need to step back and go sober up, you're making a scene, everybody's staring at you.”

“I don't care,” she replied. “So bratty...” She commented on Ajna's personality, mumbling it to Chris as if he would agree with her. He let her lean against him because he highly doubted that Eva could stand by herself at this point, but raised his hands to show Ajna that he was not touching her.

“I'm not doing this,” she mouthed to Chris and he replied with a quiet “What do you want me to do?”

That's when Ajna grabbed Eva by the arm and yanked her away from Chris.

“Hey! Don't touch me! It's your fault if you're dating the biggest man whore in the entire school, can't blame me for giving it a try,” she giggled despite the harshness of her words. “Keep hoping but he'll never give you what you want! You're just another easy girl he beds, maybe a bit more frequently than the others but you're not better than me!” Eva began to raise her voice, pointing her finger at Ajna who stepped back to avoid her sticky finger. “He'll ditch you for the first pretty girl he sees, like he did to me!”

“I'm out of here,” she told him, hands raised to keep him at a distance.

“I know better now, I know he wants to hook up with no strings attached. What do you say pretty boy, you still know the way to my house, right?”

It was Ajna's turn to want to throw up. Luckily for her William took it as his cue to lead her away from a drunk and horny Eva, leaving Chris to deal with his ex friend with benefits on his own.

“Don't pay attention, it gets messy when she's had one too many drinks,” William told her to make her feel better.

He wasn't very good at this but at least he tried, which was more than Chris did tonight. Was it that difficult to tell a girl he wasn't interested? That he was taken? Couldn't he push her away once and for all? How did he think Ajna felt about this? Like fucking shit, that's how.

Anja could understand that he tried to be cordial and avoid drawing in too much unwanted attention to their little trio, but at some point he had to realize being nice wasn't going to work. Eva was looking for trouble, and maybe the alcohol helped tonight but she had been leaning dangerously close to making a move during the past weeks, when she stared holes in Ajna's head.

“Stay calm, Ajna,” William told her, cigarette tucked between his lips. He took her to the back of the house, by the kitchen door to get some fresh air away from the music and the people. “She won't even remember this tomorrow.”

“Doesn't make me feel better,” Ajna grumbled, taking a drag of her own cigarette. A vice Chris did not share, though he learned to always carry a lighter around. “If Chris doesn't deal with her, I'm afraid I'll have to do it.”

“Wow, you're really mad,” William observed somewhat amused by the whole situation. “I get it, okay? Been there, done that. But Eva's a nice person, just give her time to get over him.”

“How much longer?” Ajna blew out the smoke. She was restless, almost hopping where she stood until William placed a heavy hand on her shoulder to make her still. “I'm patient, but I have limits. If it were the other way around Chris would have lost his cool already.”

“Yeah but Chris is a hot blooded idiot,” William laughed. “You're the one keeping him in check. I'm sure you can deal with Eva without having to go full dark no stars on her.”

“You speak like Noora, how much time have you been sending with her?” She teased him, earning a slightly embarrassed but fond smile. “Oh right, you're moving in with her.” He didn't answer to that; they stayed there and finished their cigarettes while Ajna's blood pressures went down. “I hate to be that person but I don't know how much longer I can stay here knowing that Chris is inside with Eva.”

“Don't you trust him?” William asked plainly, not even looking at her. He threw the cigarette out, watching it extinguish.

“Why is everybody asking me this?” Ajna wondered out loud. “I do. It's got nothing to do with trust. How is it a sign of mistrust that I get upset when another girl hits on my... friend?”

“Your friend, yeah,” William laughed. “No, you're right. You have every right to be upset.”

“And what? Aren't you going to give me some advice?” She snapped at him, but he didn't take offense, only smiled.

“You don't need it,” he assured her. “Go in there and get your man.”

Ajna bit the inside of her cheeks, pondering the pros and cons before realizing that there was only one pro: getting Chris back, and that it outweighed all the cons, like for example having the girl squad on her back for being mean to Eva or something similar. She groaned and lit down her cigarette in the ashtray, shooting lightning at William with her eyes.

“You suck at pep talks by the way,” she told him before leaving him behind and walking back inside the living room.

She walked passed Sana and Chris Berg laughing over two beers, then Isaac who was dancing with Even, until finally she reached the corner of the room where all the Penetrators drank together. The window was still open, but no one stood there anymore. Chris and Eva were gone.

As panic began to bubble up someone slammed a hand on Anja's shoulder, making her practically jump to the ceiling.

“Hey, it's me,” Chris told her before grabbing her arm. He led them to the couch, shooing away some of his friends to make room for you two to sit down. “Where have you been, I've been looking for you!”

“I was in the kitchen with William. He convinced me that murder wasn't the solution to our Eva problem,” Ajna replied coldly. “Speaking of, where is she? In a closet somewhere, putting her underwear back on?”

The look he gave her spoke volumes – he was not amused. He squinted his eyes and scoffed. Chris grabbed an unopened beer on the coffee table and took three long gulps before meeting Ajna's eyes again, still looking highly pissed.

“You accusing me of cheating?” His brows shot up and he gave her a point-blank look. Ajna couldn't look away if she tried.

“Cheating,” she repeated, chin up, defying him. “Wouldn't that require us to be together first?”

“Don't be like that!” Chris snapped this time, not tiptoeing around the issue. “I get it, you're mad at me, I'm a fuckboy who sleeps around and doesn't deserve you, I get it. But this is not on me, I didn't answer to Eva's flirting, you where there you saw it happen!”

“Don't be like that now, who said anything about you being a fuckboy? I never called you that! Even if you prove to be one sometimes,” she scowled and Chris huffed in contempt. “And this thing about not deserving me? Where the hell does it come from? This is all fucking bullshit!”

They were now full on arguing on the couch in the middle of a party. No one but the Penetrators could hear what it was about and they had the courtesy to look elsewhere and speak over them.

“Oh c'mon, you're the smart and pretty girl who likes bad boys, you know this won't last,” he said. He took another swing of his beer and didn't notice the look of hurt in Ajna's eyes. “You'll get tired of me.”

“What about you stop whining like a little bitch and let me decide what I want to do?” Ajna asked him with a slap to the back of his head. Chris protested and held his hand where she hit him. “The only thing I'm getting tired of it you behaving like an ass when we're in public.”

“What are you talking about?” His angry tone now turned distraught. Helpless. What has he done wrong? He thought he had it all good, all figured out. He thought Ajna was happy with him.

“I'm talking about us, Chris. I'm talking about all the girls trying to get in your pants whenever I look in another direction, and about the fact that I feel like shit. Like an important game is playing before my eyes while I'm benched.”

“Fuck Ajna, no metaphors please,” Chris requested, forehead furrowed in confusion.

His hand reached out and slipped into hers and squeezed it. Ajna hated that this simple gesture put her at ease despite the doubts clouding her mind. Chris' familiar hands were warm and reassuring – she could feel the ring he always wore on his pinky finger.

“No metaphors?” She said, her mouth a bit dry. Chris nodded, not taking his eyes off of her for a second. “I feel like I'm just another one of your flings. If you don't think you can show yourself at my arm then say it, because I'm not dealing with this anymore.”

She felt bad for saying this but as long as Chris wasn't officially off the market, Ajna would have to deal with other girls throwing themselves at him.

“What, that's it?” Chris asked in a nervous laughter. Relief overwhelmed him – he thought something serious was going on, he was starting to believe he was about to get dumped when it was the opposite.

“What? You don't think I'm being needy and too demanding?” Ajna asked, not too sure what to make of his reaction. “Not gonna scoff and tell me to go whine somewhere else? No make fun of me?”

“You're silly,” he finally told her. “You should have just told me. I'd be happy to show myself at your arm.”

Ajna's brows arched and her mouth opened, asking a silent question.

“I thought you only wanted the sex part, if I'd known you were in for the real thing I would have asked,” Chris clarifies.

“What kind of signals did I send for you to think that?” She questions, still not believing her ears. “This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Chris!”

“And what should I say? You thought the same of me,” he argued, both of them now staring at each other in utter incomprehension. “Over half of the girls who hit on me only want that. I'm just a dildo attached to a warm body.”

“Gross,” Ajna said, a small smile now stretching her lips. “So... we've both been complete fuckwits, great. Now what?”

“Now you're my girlfriend,” Chris stated confidently, already putting his arm behind Ajna to pull her to him.

“Just like that?” She wondered. It was a little disappointing to be perfectly honest, she was expecting something more, something grand.

“Actually-” Chris held a finger up and paused. Ajna waited for it, her eyes switching between his hand and his eyes, she was trying not the reciprocated the shit eating grin n Chris' face though she herself felt like smiling so wide it'd split her face in two.

A faint scream of surprise escaped her when Chris dived towards her to pick her up and plop her down on his lap. Before Ajna could ask him what he was doing, Chris placed a hand behind her neck and made her lean down, crashing his lips against hers in front of everyone. The beauty of it was that nobody seemed to care particularly, expect some of the Penetrators who believed it their duty to cheer and make kissing noises next to them.

Chris broke their embrace only long enough to say, “like that. Now I'm officially your man.”

“You better be,” she grinned and bit on her lip before pulling him up towards her lips for another kiss, claiming him as hers once more. Ajna smiled in the kiss, as did Chris.

This party wasn't so bad after all.

If you like my work please consider buying me a coffee <3

A/N: I love Eva, and the way I wrote her for the purpose of this oneshot does not reflect how I see her as a character. Also I apologize if Chris is a bit out of character, I tend to write my characters a little too mature for their age, especially since my other Chris story is a post-Skam fanfic about 23y-o Chris.

A word to the anon who requested this: The way you wrote the request made it sound like the story was more about Chris x Eva than Chris x OC (or reader) because a lot of the stuff that you described involved how Eva felt and what Eva did, so I had to twist it around a little bit to put the focus on Chris and Ajna. I hope that's okay. Also I didn't include all the details you gave me because that would have required a much, much longer fanfic and I do not have enough free time on my hands right now to start an entire fanfiction based on a request like I did with Off Limits. I don't generally start my stories the way this one does, but it would have been pages long if I wanted to write the context before starting to write the party scene. Anyway, I hope it lives up to your expectations! Xx

@s-kamimagines @bathshebaa @golden-guide @arieschris @noyellie

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[sonofhistory]

What do you know about Georges Washington de Lafayette

All sources from Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger: 

Georges Washington de Lafayette was born on December 24th, 1779. Adrienne wrote to her husband rather icily at his army camp. She offered sarcastic recognition of her husband’s many responsibilities in the military, she scolded him or not being with her and their new child. The baby’s full name wsa Georges Louis Gilbert Washington de Motier Marquis de Lafayette, he would always call himself George Washington Lafayette. The one he was named after, George Washington, became his godfather.

May 1781, Adrienne wrote that Georges “nearly died teething” and left her “weakened by anxieties”. During Gilbert de Lafayette’s second-to-last visit to America in 1784-1785, his returning ship ran aground and repairs delayed his departure home for a week. General Greene and Henry Knox had come to see him off, and the three spent long hours together reminiscing with Alexander Hamilton. Lafayette urged Greene, Hamilton and Knox to send their boys to him in Paris for several years of European education. He promised in turn, he would send his own boy, George Washington to them. Lafayette said he wanted his son educated at Harvard.

Unlike other European parents, Adrienne and Gilbert did not keep their children at a distance with tutors; they adored their children openly, embraced them spontaneously and showed them off to all their guests. Benjamin Franklin listened with a smile as seven-year-old Anastasie and five-year-old George sang children’s songs in English. Georges used to also help his father attach his sheathed sword and other military trappings.

When Georges was ten years old, one guard unit sought to make him an honorary second lieutenant, his father turned the honor into theater: “Gentlemen,” he proclaimed to the assembled militiamen, “my son is no longer mine; he belongs to you and to our nation.”–and the troops roared as Georges stepped forward and stood at attention in his snappy-looking new uniform in the Paris guards. Felix Frestel was his tutor, starting when he was eleven years of age; he was a principal of the College de Plessis, his father’s secondary school, the Lafayettes retained him to tutor their son privately until he was old enough to enroll in classes.

During the Reign of Terror, while Gilbert de Lafayette was in prison and Adrienne was just being arrested. The police nearly to their home, Adrienne ordered a governess to flee with ten year old Virginie to a nearby farmer’s house, while thirteen year old Georges and his tutor Frestel rushed into the woods and fifteen year old Anastasie hid in a secret in cubby in one of the towers. Unaware of her husband’s fate, Adrienne (on house arrest) grew fearful for the survival her only son–the only person who could inherit his father’s name and fortune. Every once and a while, Frestel would descend from the mountain hideaway late at night and report on her son’s health and his future. They agreed on a plan to obtain a false license and passport as a merchant and go to the port at Bordeaux with Georges, who would feign the role of his apprentice.

When Adrienne was released by Elizabeth Monroe’s manipulation, James and Elizabeth Monroe both aided Adrienne in acquiring a fake passport, ID and changed Georges name in order for him to be able to travel to the United States undeterred. Monroe obtained government counterstamps on their passports for them to go to America, with the boy traveling as “George Motier.” Adrienne gave Frestel a letter for president Washington written in French, which she hoped the American president would be able to read and understand:

[Translated French-English] “Sir, I send you my son… It is deep and sincere confidence that I entrust this dear child to the protection of the United States (which he had long regarded as his second country and which I have long regarded as our sanctuary), and to the particular protection of their president, whose feelings towards the boy’s father I well know. The bearer of this latter, sir, has, during our troubles, been our support, our resource, our consolation, my son’s guide. I want him to continue in that role… I want them to remain inseparable until the day we have the joy of reuniting in the land of liberty. I owe my own life and those of my children to this man’s generous attention… My wish is for my son to live in obscurity in America; that he resume the studies that three years of misfortune have interrupted, and that far from lands that might crush his spirit or arouse his violent indignation, he can work to fulfill the responsibilities of a citizen of the United States… I will say nothing here about my own circumstances, nor those of one for whom I feel far greater concern than I do for myself. I leave it to the friend who will present this letter to you to express the feelings of a heart which has suffered too much to be conscious of anything but gratitude, of which I owe much to Mr. Monroe… I beg you, Monsieur Washington, to accept my deepest sense of obligation, confidence, respect and devotion.”

At Olmutz prison, Adrienne coaxed the prison commander to let her write to specific family members, whom she had identified with each letter obtain approval. He read every word she wrote and rejected a letter written to her son. The received occasional news from the outside, the rest of the Lafayette family heard Georges arrived safely in Boston in September of 1795. Adrienne did not know was that her son’s arrival plunged his godfather, the American president, into a potentially embarrassing political and diplomatic situation that posed dangers to the Lafayette family. George Washington was unable to publicly offered sanctuary to Georges in the America because the French might consider it a threat to their neutrality. Washington decided to leave the boy in New England until the government recessed later in the year and he could move to Mount Vernon. Washington asked Massachusetts senator George Cabot to enroll young Lafayette incognito at Harvard college, “the expense of which as also of every other means for his support, I will pay.” Washington also wrote to his godson: “to begin to fulfill my role of father, I advise you to apply yourself seriously to your studies. Your youth should be usefully employed, in order that you may deserve in all respects to be considered as the worthy son of your illustrious father.”

In America, Georges studied at Harvard, was a house guest of George Washington at the presidential mansion in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at the Washington family home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Young Lafayette chose to make his way to New York where he waited in hopes to join Washington in Philadelphia and lived with the Washington’s for the next two years. He also stayed with Alexander Hamilton in his New York home.

The Lafayette family, Georges’s two sisters, his mother and his father were released from prison in 1797, but it wasn’t until 1798 that Georges was able to return to France. In February, on a sunny day, Georges–who had just turned nineteen–arrived back in Europe to the embrace of his family; he also brought with him a letter from George Washington. His father had not seen him in six years. Initially at Cambridge, then a few weeks with Alexander Hamilton in New York, before going to the Washingtons in Mount Vernon after the president’s retirement. On his return to France, George first went to Paris, where he found only blackened stone shell of his beautiful boyhood home on the rue de Bourbon. George’s arrival in Holstein revived the spirits of all exiled families.

“He is perfect physically: tall, with a noble and charming face. His temperament is all that we could wish is all that we could wish. He had the same kind heart that you remember, and his mind is far more mature than is usual for his age.” Lafayette wrote to his Aunt. Virginie wrote to her as well, “My brother is grown so tall, that when he arrived we could scarcely recognize him, but we have found all those qualities in him that we always knew. He is just as good a brother as he was at Chavaniac. He is so like Papa that people in the streets can see immediately that his his son.” While attempting to retain the family land that the Lafayette’s lost when it was all confiscated, Adrienne returned to Paris for a second time to try at negotiation–this time she brought Georges with her, who, she believed might intimidate government clerks more than Virginie.

Georges also was a prod at his father, who was writing his Memoires and who would grow impatient when Georges wasn’t there to coax him to write it. Mid-1799, Gilbert grew impatient with Adrienne’s constant absences, “It is two years today, dear Adrienne, since we left the prison to which you came, bringing me consolation and life… How can we arrange our spending the winter together?”

In the Spring of 1802, George Washington de Lafayette married Emilie de Tracy, the daughter of Destutt de Tracy, a renowned philosopher who had served in the Constituent Assembly with Lafayette and as a cavalry commander under him at the frontier in 1792, just before Lafayette fled France. Pere Carrichon, the priest who had blessed three of Adrienne’s family members as they marched up to the guillotine, performed the ceremony. After the wedding, the Lafayette’s and the de Tracy’s went south together for a long visit to the Chavaniac–”to share our new found happiness with our old aunt, who still had all her faculties,” according to Virginie.

Italy rebelled against French rule and Georges and his brother-in-law were called to military service. His mother and his father were responsible for caring for his wife, she had just given birth to a little baby girl. He served as a second lieutenant in the French Army under Napoleon Emperor Napoleon blocked every promotion for Gilbert’s son and sons-in-law, prevented them from ranking up in the army despite the highest recommendations of their commanders. During one battle, George suffered a minor wound saving the life of General Grouchy to whom he was an aide-de-comp for and had given up his horse for during battle.

1805, Russia and Austria joined Britain in a new coalition against France, but French armies swept northward through Austria and crushed a combined Austro-Russian army at the decisive battle of Austerlitz in Moravia (now eastern Czech Republic). Two days later Austria sued for peace, and the Russian army limped home to Mother Russia to lick its wounds. In 1806, Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army at Lena and extended the French empire eastward to Warsaw. With peace at hand, with no chance for promotion, and with their military commitments complete, Georges Washington and his two brother-in-laws resigned their commissions. Although his father grumbled at the emperor’s pettiness, Adrienne rejoiced to have the boys home safely; she wanted no more knights in the family and reveled in the presence of the three young couples and their children, all of whom made La Grange their permanent home.  

August 1807, Georges and his father went to visit the elder Lafayette’s Aunt Charlotte and inspect the Chavaniac properties. In their absence, Adrienne developed terrible pains and high fever; she began vomiting uncontrollably, unable to retain any food or liquid. They moved near Paris and Lafayette and George raced up from Chavaniac from La Grange. Both refusing to leave her bedside.

In March 1814, George introduced his father to the young duc d’Orleans. 1821, they both returned to their home on the rue d’Anjou. In his father’s later years Georges was always hovering at his side. Georges helped him with his Memoires and his voluminous correspondence. At six each evening, the courtyard bell sounded dinner, and as many as thirty people poured into the huge dining room–Lafayette’s children and grandchildren. Virginie and Anastasie sat opposite their father as hostesses, Georges always sat beside him. 1820, thirty nine year old Georges and Lafayette organized a group of young liberals into a new political club, Les Amis de la Liberte de la Presse. In the Autumn of 1821, King Louis XVIII posted spies outside La Grange, considering arresting Lafayette and Georges.

On Gilbert de Lafayette’s last trip to America, Georges accompanied him. “My brave light infantry!” his father cried out once, “That is exactly how their uniforms looked. What courage! How I loved them!” In an accident, a boat they were taking sunk and they were assured into lifeboats and rowed to shore. At bunker hill, Lafayette gathered soil from the ground, placing it into a tiny flask and told Georges to sprinkle the soil across his grave when he passed so that he would be apart of two countries when he was buried. Throughout most of the trip, he stayed close company with his father’s secretary, Auguste Levasseur. They visited Mount Vernon again and Georges got to meet Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. 1826, Lafayette and his son thought of America and sailed away towards home.

In 1832, Lafayette sent Georges back to La Grange to help Anastasie and Virginie cope with the needs of the family and the villagers,while he remained in Paris to help the government deal with the emergency. During the battle of the Bastille, Georges managed to hustle his father from the fighting and blood. After the death of his father, Georges Washington covered his father’s coffin with the dirt they gathered at bunker hill.

Georges Washington de Lafayette had five children total with his wife, Emilie de Tracy:

Oscar Thomas Gilbert Motier de Lafayette (1815–1881) was educated at the École Polytechnique and served as an artillery officer in Algeria. He entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1846 and voted with the extreme Left. After the revolution of 1848, he received a post in the provisional government; as a member of the Constituent Assembly, he became secretary of the war committee. After the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly in 1851, he retired from public life, but emerged on the establishment of the third republic, becoming a life senator in 1875.

Edmond Motier de Lafayette (1818–1890) shared his brother’s political opinions and was one of the secretaries of the Constituent Assembly and a member of the senate from 1876 to 1888.

Natalie de Lafayette who married Adolphe Périer, a banker and nephew of Casimir Pierre Périer.

Matilde de Lafayette who married Maurice de Pusy (1799–1864, son of Jean-Xavier Bureau de Pusy).

Clementine de Lafayette who married Gustave de Beaumont.

None can direct agnatic claim to the Lafayette name. It disappeared after Georges sons both died before having a male son. He spent the remaining years immediately following his father’s death organizing Lafayette’s letters, speeches and papers and compiling together his Memoires and more of his writing which was published in a six volumes in Paris in 1837-1838 he retained is seat in the Chamber of Deputies until the summer of 1849, remaining a loyal member of the ultra liberal minority his father had organized to oppose the restrictive dicta of King Louis Philippe. He lived to see the third French revolution of his life in 1848. 1848, Georges won reelection to his old seat in the Chamber of Deputies, but he failed to win the following year. He died in November 1849, never achieving the celebrity of his father.

[dpr-lahore-division]

With the compliments of, The Directorate General Public Relations,

Government of the Punjab, Lahore Ph: 99201390

No.1906/Zafar/RANA

HANDOUT (A)

PRESIDENTS OF THREE REGIONS OF PTI AND GENERAL SECRETARIES UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CHIEF ORGANIZER SAIFULLAH NIAZI CALL ON CM

LAHORE, December 15:

                  Presidents of three regions of PTI and General Secretaries under the leadership of Chief Organizer Saifullah Niazi called on Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar at CM Office today in which matters pertaining to improving party affairs and coordination were put under discussion and proposals to make PTI more vibrant and effective at grassroots level also came under review. It was also decided during the meeting that in order to improve governance, the process of mutual consultations will have to continue on permanent basis. Usman Buzdar while talking on this occasion said that workers are valuable and worthy asset of PTI and their capabilities will be fully benefited. Office-bearers and workers of PTI are our pride. Due works and grievances of PTI office-bearers and workers will be redressed on priority basis. Usman Buzdar said that he will undertake visits of districts soon and will meet PTI office-bearers and workers by visiting every district. He further said that he will continue the process of holding consultations with the party office-bearers for resolving problems of the masses and full importance will be given to the proposals of party office-bearers as well as implementation will also be done on their practicable proposals. In order to provide relief to the people and for the provision of facilities, party office-bearers and workers will be contacted. He said that the doors of CM Office are always open for office-bearers and workers and we will advance forward shoulder to shoulder in our journey for serving the people of the province. Focal persons will be deputed for improving further coordination, he added. I have no other agenda except serving the people of the province, he stated. Every work is done on merit in Punjab and in spite of doing criticism for the sake of criticism, the performance of Punjab is far better than all other provinces, he emphasized. Such elements will continue to criticise and Punjab will keep on advancing forward. We are serving the people with good intentions with dedication during our fifteen months. Record legislation has been done in Punjab Assembly in a short span of time. Previous governments piled up huge problems after coming into power during past thirty years and time for displaying pomp and show has gone. Now only work is performed with true intentions, he maintained. Necessary steps are being taken for holding local bodies elections and we intend to hold these elections during initial months of coming year for which expeditious steps are being taken. According to the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan we want to make Punjab with regard to good governance a model province, he stressed. Chief Organizer of PTI Saifullah Niazi while talking on this occasion said that we will work jointly in order to further strengthen PTI and the process of streamlining the party at grassroots level is further being expanded and good results will surface after taking decisions jointly with mutual consultations. Those who called on Chief Minister included Central Senior Vice President Arshad Dad, Central Vice President Umar Sarfaraz Cheema, Central Deputy Secretary General Umar Mir, Central Joint Secretary Musaddiq Ghuman, Secretary Good Governance Punjab Ijaz Minhas, President Central Punjab Ijaz Chaudary, President Northern Punjab Sadaqat Abbasi, President Southern Punjab Noor Bhabha, General Secretary Central Punjab Ali Imtiaz Warriach, General Secretary Northern Punjab Dr. Hassan Masood and General Secretary Southern Punjab Ali Raza Dreshak. Chief Whip and Member Punjab Assembly Syed Abbas Ali Shah was also present on the occasion.

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No.1907/Zafar/RANA

HANDOUT (A)

CM MESSAGE ON EVE OF 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF MARTYRS OF APS

LAHORE, December 15:

                  Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar in his message on the occasion of fifth anniversary of martyrs of Army Public School Peshawar has said that students and teachers of APS laid down their precious lives for the sake of attaining great objective. Those brutes who committed barbarity five years ago with innocent children have met their logical end. The great sacrifices given by students and teachers will bear fruits who embraced martyrdom during APS tragic incident. Exemplary unity of the whole nation has come to surface owing to great sacrifices being laid down by the martyrs in the war against terrorism. The great sacrifices of martyrs have induced a new spirit and courage in the hearts and minds of the nation. In order to achieve great objective of maintaining peace, the blood of innocent children has attained fruition and our dear homeland has been blessed with peace owing to unprecedented brave sacrifices being laid down by the audacious children and teachers of the nation. He further said that the children of APS have written a history by shedding their blood in order to make Pakistan secure and peaceful. The day of 16th December will always refresh the memories of great sacrifices being rendered by the martyrs of APS and the nation will never forget everlasting and unforgettable sacrifices of the children and teachers of APS. The whole nation got united in the war against terrorism owing to blood being given by innocent children. Martyred children and teachers are heroes of the whole nation. Usman Buzdar further said that there is no room for terrorism and extremism in Quaid’s Pakistan. The whole nation is paying rich tributes today to the great and unforgettable sacrifices being rendered by the martyrs of APS.

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With the compliments of, The Directorate General Public Relations,

Government of the Punjab, Lahore Ph: 99201390

No.1910/Zafar/RANA

HANDOUT (A)

CM TAKES NOTICE OF FIRING INCIDENT AT RETIRED ARMY MAN’S HOUSE

LAHORE, December 15:

                   Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar by taking notice of firing incident at the house of retired army man in the premises of Kakrali Police Station Gujrat and also sought a report from RPO Gujranwala. He further directed to take stern legal action against the accused persons. He further directed that the accused should be brought in the firm grip of law as soon as possible and provision of justice to the affected family should also be ensured. A case has been registered against the accused for doing firing on the notice taken by Chief Minister Punjab. Police officials visited the house of the affected person and assured him complete justice.

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No.1911/Zafar/RANA

HANDOUT (A)

CM TAKES NOTICE OF TORTURE ON A CITIZEN BY ARMED MAN

LAHORE, December 15:

                  Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar after taking notice of committing torture on a citizen by an armed person sought a report from CCPO Lahore. Chief Minister directed that legal action should be taken against the arrested accused and all aspects of justice should be fulfilled in this case.

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Expert: This is going to be an exercise in redefining fascism after meeting with socialists on the hundredth anniversary of the great revolution. In the early 1900s, the Italians who invented the term Fascism also described it as estato corporativo, meaning: the corporate state. Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power. — Benito Mussolini Then you have that great liberal, giver over of social goods from the rich, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who once described fascism as The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by … a group, or any controlling private power. Or, I could use the old dictionary as a standard bearer for the concept: Webster’s — 1. Often capitalized: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition 2. a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control Heading Out Into Portland, Now Known as Resistance City Numero Tres It seemed like fun, going to Portland’s International Socialist Organization’s meeting at Portland State University on a blustery Northern Oregon Saturday. You know, the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and the Trotsky lovers packed into a small space at the state university. . . . Mostly young people, about 60 in all, in a basement at the student union. The glorious PSU farmer’s market was in high swing just outside with all those ethically-raised kale stalks, free-range lamb chops, trauma-informed cared for llama chunks of feta, and pole-caught tuna ripe for the taking. Bourgeoise, professors from the halls of academia, couples young and old able to afford the high cost of apartments, condos and homes in the area, looking for local stuff for chow that night. One of my former clients – Shawn – came up to me from the burgeoning crowd and asked how I was and stated how it was great to see me. He’s homeless, again, living in alleys, but looking fine, job ready, that is. “You were right,” he said. “Those social workers did nothing for me. Put me in jobs that start at 10 pm and finished at 4 am. Two-hour one-way trips, man, and no public transportation to get to them.” Fascism is Globalization of Cultures, Crimes of Capitalism, Thought The ebb and flow of Capitalism, when a guy like Shawn – 40 – is mingling with the bourgeoisie, and his hopelessness is the very foundation of capitalism and the fascism of the financial institutions riding roughshod over all corners of the globe. Yeah, I’d say that banks and even investment companies are part of the cabal of fascists now running the world – why in hell do the neo-fascists of the world need storm-troopers at home (they have them, though, don’t they, in the form of a drone-ridden, militarized and digitized surveillance state) marching up and down main street USA looking for radicals, Communists, labor unionists, etc.? The morning at PSU was one where speakers and audience responders all tried to force the word fascist into the box of old history, of those stormtroopers and Nazis and Gestapo and smoldering gas chambers. It was sickening, really, to hear some of the rationalizations, how today’s America isn’t even close to fascism, when, in fact, it is a fascist system, tied directly to the above definition of corporations calling the shots in and out of government. Here, more sickness, which is the monopoly control and structural violence and murder these perps carry out with their $2000 jackets and $500 pairs of shoes. This is the new face of fascism, or at least the face of the corporation is much much more powerful than in old Adolph’s or Benito’s time. From the Intercept: Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speeches, but an even bigger Wall Street player stands ready to mold and enact her economic and financial policy if she becomes president. BlackRock is far from a household name, but it is the largest asset management firm in the world, controlling $4.6 trillion in investor funds — about a trillion dollars more than the annual federal budget, and five times the assets of Goldman Sachs. And Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, has assembled a veritable shadow government full of former Treasury Department officials at his company. Fink has made clear his desire to become treasury secretary someday. The Obama administration had him on the short list to replace Timothy Geithner. When that didn’t materialize, he pulled several members of prior Treasury Departments into high-level positions at the firm, which may improve the prospects of realizing his dream in a future Clinton administration. Fink has also promoted the privatization of Social Security, while mocking the idea of retiring at 65, which is easy for a business executive who sits at a desk all day to say, rather than working on an assembly line or as a waiter. Fink owes his initial backing at BlackRock to Pete Peterson, the former commerce secretary who has been at the forefront of the campaign to cut or privatize Social Security. He sat on the steering committee of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a stalking horse for Peterson’s ideas. Fink also opposes efforts to reinstitute the Glass-Steagall firewall between investment and commercial banks, as does Clinton. Again, one hundred years later. Recalling the past:  Lenin and Trotsky didn’t view the Russian Revolution as the beginning of “socialism in one country” given the country’s low level of economic development. It was the opening fissure of calling for a world revolution. Western capitalism was facing collapse due to the disastrous effects of World War I. Two years later, the Bolsheviks launched the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 to bring together millions of workers and young people rallying to support the Russian Revolution and rejecting the social democratic parties who had betrayed the working class by supporting WWI. In the United States, the Socialist Party came out in support of the Comintern and went on to create the Communist Party. more here, 1917 Revolution! 2017 marks the centenary of this world-historic event. This site is initiated by the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) to celebrate the October revolution and the transformation that it heralded – politically, economically, culturally, concerning questions of gender and sexual equality and in many other aspects of working class life. We defend the October revolution against the class hostility, distortions and outright lies perpetrated by the ruling class, the capitalist media, right wing politicians and parts of academia. In particular, this site aims help introduce the new generations moving into struggle and looking at left and socialist ideas to the crucial lessons of October. The 2017 Pacific Northwest socialists were in the lower depths of the old university building, readying for an all-day conference. And a few from Seattle, and plenty of “comrade this” and “comrade that.” Colonized Minds, Not a Pretty Thing, No Matter the Political Stripe I’m not here as a conduit of constant bashing or criticism, that’s for sure; however, in this exceptionalist society, where the revolution (in their minds) is won on Facebook and with a turn-out of people at the plaza protesting Trump and Hillary, I’ve got a different eye for things as a 60-year-old. I never thought forty years ago, or twenty, that I’d be pulling out the old and wizened and retirement age (I never will retire) card. In fact, I am not really old in my thinking, but the six decades and few borders crossed might put me in just a different mind space than those younger people who have gone nowhere physically and who have been colonized. Colonized and set up by the controlled opposition, many, even radicals, with good intentions, are galvanized by a very deep state, deep intelligence insurgency/apparatus, deep psychological discombobulation set around the power of transnationals and globalists to control every move, every financial transaction, every blink positioned at the screens they’ve forced many of us onto in order to be, that is, be informed (sic) and be connected (sic). It’s not even funny being in groups of people who are smart and know their “Russian Revolution History” (sort of) but still lash out on fools like me who deride Facebook or Bill and Melinda Gates or Amazon. Little things are microcosms of the state of things in my mind. Two fellows from Seattle figured prominently in the eyes of my own discontent with these people occupied by the huge cabal of transnationals globalizing control of us. While the ‘Globalizers’ may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this “civil society mingling” does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement. An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City [1999-2001] are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer. This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the ‘Globalizers’ to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who plunder the Globe.”  (Michel Chossudovsky, The Quebec Wall, April 2001) Don’t get me wrong:  I’d rather have a bunch of socialists in a basement pontificating about the petite bourgeois and the ramifications of the lesser evilism of American duopoly politics than being with a bunch of hoarders of Buffalo wings in a hoppy watering hole arguing about the targeting call on the defender for the Oklahoma Sooners against the OSU Cowboys. I know the average Joe and Jane/Julio y Juanita, in this country, is so-so tied to the crass commercialization of their lives, and their every waking thought seems to be tied to some retail transaction, or fear generated by the fake media and Holly-porn. When I am around people who at least reject that, who are at least trying to strip away the political psychosis and consumer addiction, I feel a sense of ebbing calm. The alternative to this is mind warping: The stuff I hear daily on the MAX or on buses, well, it’s definitely the Fight Club all over and over again: God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.” — Tyler Durden, The Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk Yeah, so I am down with getting it on intellectually with young and old arguing and debating the next way to push ahead with a unified front. The idea of young and old thinking hard about an alternative to this madness of capitalism is rather compelling. In the context of this hyper-militarized society (pre-Trump) and a culture that holds tightly to its exceptionalist and white supremacist pedigrees (pre-Trump) and has been lobotomized by the culture of celebrity and the allure of money (pre-Trump). I believe, though, the biggest issue I would take away from this all-day event was the ad nauseum of speakers attempting to define fascism tied to a very narrow time in history, tied only to the likes of Hitler or Mussolini. One history professor, a socialist who writes for the various publications of the socialist order, sort of went on and on about fascism, sticking to the Hitler script, sticking to the limited genocide script, and as always failing on several accounts to talk to younger people about  just how and why this country was created, or why capitalism was created – on the labor of slaves, and on the elimination of the Native Americans. This fellow – a self-described Jew — just could not accept the reality of America, before Trump, already was setting the stage for all the right conditions for a new fascism, and this fascism, for sure, is not of the same character of that of past forms of fascism, where the brown-shirts and  storm troopers and gulags and concentration camps were front and center part of some regime run by a single charismatic character. Systems Control: The Controllers Act Anti-Fascist None of us deep thinkers believe for a moment that Trump is Hitler or Pence is Mussolini. We know that the systems in place controlling entire ecosystems, countries, the poor, those systems are the neo-fascistic elements of population control, eugenics and mind pollution. This professor just could not get past the fascism of 1930s Germany and Italy as his linchpin for defining true fascism. As a lot of revolutionaries teaching with tenure, he caved, fearing tying the Jewish and Zionist project in Israel to any form of internal and exported fascism and global control. It’s unpalatable how Zionists and Israel get a pass every single time. Or in the case of self-identified Jews, the Holocaust industry has colonized them to not give Israel and Zionists abroad (in the USA) one iota of discredit, or credit for this quickening globalist and financial-media-military control of the other – outside their own stolen lands borders. Of course, in the context of the conference, tied to the 1917 Revolution, the professor’s repetitive connotation of fascism and the conditions to meet it seemed so irrelevant. Again, a thing to behold, really, the revolution 100 years ago. I know for a fact few, if any, persons outside the activist-socialist frame even knows about the centennial of the revolution or what the revolution signified and literally encompassed. Additionally, I give it to the young people in Portland Saturday talking about revolution and next steps forward in this media and political battle around the alt-right racists and fascists is a hell of a lot better than hearing educated (sic) men and women go on and on about the sex-rape-harassment-assault stories coming out of Holly-Rape. Here, Phil Gasper from the current International Socialist Review: The Russian Revolution in October 1917, led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin, is the most important event in history for revolutionary socialists. For the first time, a revolution led by the working class won power in an entire country and began attempting to construct a socialist society based on the ideas of workers’ control and real democracy. For a brief period there was a glimpse of what such a society might look like, before the experiment was destroyed by civil war, foreign intervention, economic devastation, and—above all—the failure of revolutions to spread successfully to more economically advanced countries. This led by the late 1920s to the entrenchment of a bureaucratic dictatorship in the infant Soviet Union. A decade after the revolution’s initial amazing success, the dreams on which it had been based had been destroyed. ….. There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the revolution, but pride of place must go to Ten Days That Shook the World, originally published in 1919, by the radical American journalist and socialist activist John Reed. Reed was present in Petrograd during the October Revolution and gives a vivid blow-by-blow account of what took place in the days preceding and following the seizure of power. Stalin hated the book because it barely mentions him and correctly portrays Lenin and Trotsky as the revolution’s key leaders, but Lenin wrote a short introduction in which he unreservedly recommended the book “to the workers of the world” and praised it for providing “a truthful and most vivid exposition” of key events. But back to modern fascism. I talked about the conditions set forth around a neo-fascism. Naomi Wolf, who was on my radio show, also set forth the conditions in her book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. That book came out 10 years ago, and I had her on my radio show for an hour, prefacing her visit to Spokane for a literary event, Get Lit! She has been lambasted, denigrated and vilified for even positing how under Cheney-Bush, our country vis-à-vis US Patriot Act, illegal wars, presidential powers, media control, and the complete blending of private mercenaries and war profiteers into USA government. Here, her conditions for fascism’s germination: * Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy * Create a gulag * Develop a thug caste * Set up an internal surveillance system * Harass citizens’ groups * Engage in arbitrary detention and release * Target key individuals * Control the press * Dissent equals treason * Suspend the rule of law And this is it, really, at the ISO conference, speaking to people who think fascism is only with one strong-arm moving a society into knee-jerk, xenophobic dictatorial, mass incarceration, disappearances, and one minute of hate. Amazon, The CIA, Every Retail Transaction in America, The Post I brought up Jeff Bezos, Amazon, my work in Seattle protesting his libertarian fascism, his dominating the globe in retail transactions, despicable treatment of warehouse workers, his project to run everything through an artificial intelligence and robotics lens, tax evasion. I talked about his media ownership of the Washington Post, his monopoly on book sales (and what gets read). The concept of this fellow being the richest guy in America and his company’s tax dodging. This fellow is a wizard, master fascist. If the United States derived its might primarily from its economic power, the Washington Post would enjoy the same degree of international influence as, say, the Xinhua newspaper of Beijing. The two countries have roughly comparable outputs, with China’s GDP being about 80 percent the size of the US economy when adjusted for purchasing power, according to the IMF. But a large part of what makes the United States a unique superpower is its role as the world’s military hegemon, reflected in part by its roughly 1,000 overseas bases. (China has none.) It is this added power emanating from the Pentagon that helps confer an outsize authority to the opinion pages of the capital’s major paper. The Post’s status as a weathervane for the political winds of official Washington makes its views—unlike those of any other paper serving a city of a mere 630,000—virtually required reading for much of the world. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for the Washington Post—but Amazon is being paid more than twice that by the CIA. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos purchased the Post in August 2013 for $250 million, his acquisition provoked concerns that the paper’s reactionary posture would only harden further. The Post’s dim view of whistleblowing accorded well with Amazon’s, for example. Under Bezos’ directorship, Amazon had stopped hosting WikiLeaks on its web servers hours after receiving a request from the office of then-Senate chair of Homeland Security, Joe Lieberman, in the wake of the news outlet’s publication of State Department cables. “So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website,” wrote FAIR’s Peter Hart (FAIR Blog, 8/6/13). Even more troublingly, Amazon had recently secured a contract to host secret data for the Central Intelligence Agency—a deal valued at over twice what Bezos paid for the Post (Huffington Post, 1/8/14). So one month after the editorial board urged a halt to Snowden’s leaks on US spying efforts (including, presumably, to the Post), the newspaper announced that a financial beneficiary of US spying was to become its owner. As media scholar Robert McChesney (IPA, 12/18/13) analogized: If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation—say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government—the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. Billionaire Internet mogul Jeff Bezos seemed to understand this when he made his first foray into the industry by acquiring the Post, the go-to newspaper for Beltway policymakers, and not, for example, the Los Angeles Times, which boasts greater daily circulation. And therein lies one under-acknowledged key to understanding the Washington Post editorial board’s foreign-policy stances: As beneficiaries of the prestige and reach that come with worldwide US dominance, board members would just as soon advocate for policies that run counter to US power as they would trade places with their counterparts at, say, the Denver Post. And yet this bipartisan support for Washington’s supremacy, which the Post mirrors, runs counter to the public will. A Washington Postblog post titled “Team America No Longer Wants to Be the World’s Police” (9/13/13) highlighted two polls showing that by a 2-to-1 margin, the US public disapproves of its government taking “the leading role among all other countries in the world in trying to solve international conflicts,” and disagrees that the US “should be ready and willing to use military force around the world.” So naturally, the editorial board must ignore the general population (not to mention its majority-minority hometown) as it cleaves to elite opinion. The board’s unwavering allegiance to US leaders’ belligerent Middle East policies and the surveillance state’s unchecked power prompts it to deprecate the Post’s own investigative journalism and undermine its ethical standards. Bezos’ recent takeover as owner threatens to only solidify this trend. I didn’t have time to cite these passages or the article from FAIR. The idea of disrupting a meeting at a university of young and old discounting militancy, defense, and offensive maneuvers to fight the enemy, well, I have been there many times. There were the typical anti-Black Block theses and those against Antifa. This crop of revolutionaries never mentioned the Cuban Revolution, and that Revolution was about taking out the fascist armies of the Baptista Despot, a figure only in name for the mafia, both legit and underground, running Cuba. Nothing about the 50th Anniversary of Che’s murder by Murder Incorporated. What happened during this socialist meeting was one fellow stood up in his bright Seattle Plaid Fall Colors and hipster eyeglasses, and then he patronized me. By first  stating he works for Amazon in Seattle, for more than a decade. “Sure, 60 year old radical (me), Amazon has many problems of controlling way too much of the market, and the owner, Jeff Bezos, does have problems with paying his fulfillment center people fair wages, and sure he has a lot of clout in Seattle, but he is just a plain Jane capitalist, not a fascist.” Really? Then the speaker presenting the talk about “what to do next to rally against Trump and this new regime,”  Chris, also from Seattle, likened Jeff Bezos’ views and ideology to innocuous capitalist philosophy, akin to most mainstream  democrats, like Hillary, and his concepts of how a city (Seattle or wherever he takes his next campus crap) should be planned and organized are parallel to his own, Chris’ that is. This is the smoke and mirrors and the con game these very powerful and insidious folk like Bezos deploy, on a global scale. They colonize minds. Imagine, a so-called radical, 10 years working as a slave for Amazon and this other socialist defending him. This fellow, the first one, is a worker, a coder/engineers for Amazon, was defensive. And he should be – many people do not work for Amazon or use his insidious services. Some never have or never will, yet, ten years at Amazon, and he has only passing criticism of Bezos, and for what? Being just a plain old capitalist with liberal ideas, so therefore how can he be a fascist? Hell, the entire cabal of movers and shakers in Seattle wrote a letter of apology to Bezos begging him to come back.  Luckily some council members did not sign this letter:  Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant called the letter “disingenuous and craven.” Sawant said she was stunned to see some of her colleagues suggest that “Amazon’s billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, are feeling unwelcome” in the city. Instead, Sawant said, it’s “ordinary working people, even the middle class, that is quickly getting pushed out of the city” due to skyrocketing housing costs. Fascism Wrapped Up in A Swoosh and Amazon Smile  This is what Sinclair Lewis wrote in 1935: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.” (It Can’t Happen Here). And this is what Huey Long said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” The “cross” is the marketing swoops of Nike, Amazon, Intel, Boeing, Microsoft, Google. This “wrapped in a flag” metaphor is really the lives of millions, dead, wrapped in the paper (debts) of predatory capitalism, inside the Inside Job, the hacks, the Trojan Horses of an Obama working the midnight hours for Goldman Fucking Sachs, et al. The “anti-fascism” is the anti-Trump regime, the liberals and neocons and neoliberals fighting economic and military wars against China, Russia, Cuba, Iran and any other country coloring outside the lines of the United Fruit Company on steroids. It’s as if these socialists do not understand the concepts of US Murder Inc., Hit Man Extraordinaire, and the Death of the Liberal Class. They hearken back to Hitler and the despots, these warring and grinding monsters supported by the capitalists, Christians and Zionists. These socialists forget that blacks were not allowed to join unions, that women were treated like dirt and that this country and their own measly successes in America were stacked on the backs of slaves, of the expropriation of cultures, lands, peoples, the natural world. It’s good to see Wolf, fifty-five, still out swinging, in 2017, looking at what happened during that big sleep under Obama, how all those leftists and liberals were unconscious, happy to see the multiracial part of their cultural wars won, with Obama and his extra-articulate policies that added to Bush Junior’s setting up of a fascist country, a state of constant war. This is a new fascism, bred by the likes of the Marketing Moguls, by the CIA, by the multinationals working to destroy democracies around the world. This is a world that is humming with the trillions in money only a few have, and the power and corridors of military-science-education-media they control. No – I was mad at my own leftwing tribe. All of January, people on the left would confront me with dazed, grief-stricken expressions, as if they had just emerged from a multi-car pileup on a foggy highway. “How could this have happened? What will we do?” I couldn’t even bear to participate in those conversations. Finally I started explaining my rage to my closest friends. I had been screaming about the possibility of this very moment for eight years, since I published a piece in the Guardian titled “Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps” and wrote a book based on it, called The End of America (2007). Under George Bush Jr, the left had been very receptive to the book’s message about how democracies are undermined by the classic tactics of would-be authoritarians. But once Obama was elected – “one of ours” – I had to spend the next eight years yelling like a haunted Cassandra, to a room the left had abandoned. I had yelled myself hoarse for eight years under Obama about what it would mean for us to sit still while Obama sent drones in to take out US citizens in extrajudicial killings; what it would mean for us to sit still while he passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that let any president hold citizens forever without charge or trial; what it would mean for us to sit still while he allowed NSA surveillance, allowed Guantánamo to stay open, and allowed hyped terrorism stories to hijack the constitution and turn the US into what finally even Robert F Kennedy Jr was calling a national security surveillance state. At least near the end of my participation of the event, an older guy talked about the golden era when pickets, strikes, walk-outs, slow downs, boycotts, blockades and the like were weapons to take on the bosses, like Bezos and any of them, fighting us, the worker, from collective bargaining and collective action. That era in America is gone in the security state, in a place that hobbles young and old with debts, threats of debtor’s prison, fears of bad credit and never reaching up to the mainstream media’s depiction of Keeping Up with the Joneses. When a word like fascism is reserved for outright thugs like Benito and Adolph, we know that nuance and deep critical analysis is what the new socialists want, instead the age old calling a spade a spade. Really, Gil Scott-Heron, lives on: The Revolution Will Not Be Facebooked (Televised) You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials, Because the revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox In 4 parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother. There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8: 32 or report from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving For just the proper occasion. Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised. There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat. The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run, brothers; The revolution will be live. The Fascists Taking Over Won’t Be Televised! http://clubof.info/

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Krescendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article

[wlreports-blog]

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications

  India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications

Decision making is crucial to all dynamics that involved in the ecosystem. Over the years, I have come to realize that it takes a combination insight and foresight to make the right decisions.

  The evolution to this philosophy has taken a few years though. When I started out as a young professional, like most others, I was only executing the decisions made by seniors. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that each cog in the wheel is an important aspect of decision making. An organization is only as good as its team. Gauging situations correctly and being able to think laterally are other important aspects that have helped me immensely in being prudent about the decisions I make today for myself and on behalf of my clients. A project or an accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career? The most significant accomplishment during my career was the launch of Piramal Sarvajal, seeded by the Piramal Foundation in 2008. It was a unique mission driven social enterprise that designs and deploys innovative solutions for creating affordable access to safe drinking water in underserved areas. Sarvajal is at the forefront of developing technologies and business practices in the safe drinking water sector that are designed to make a purely market-based model sustainable in both rural and urban deployment conditions. The mileage generated for the project not only garnered attention of policy makers but also corporates and apex bodies in India. It also had the privilege of being mentioned as the most promising initiative in a White House press release. How do you integrate corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility as a part of your business strategies? We are an integrated communications agency and are actively involved in providing communications strategy and support to large corporate houses and Independent charitable funds. As part of our giveback to the community we undertake pro bono projects for NGOs involved in development of the underprivileged, on a regular basis.

India's Transformational Leaders 2019 - Ganesh Somwanshi, Kresendo Communications What has been your driving force or philosophy in life? ‘Knowledge is Power’ is the philosophy that I believe in. Increasing one’s knowledge of just his/her own domain is simply not enough. Knowledge of one’s clients businesses, relevant sectors, geo-political conditions and overall global business trends are a must to stay competitive. Keeping to this philosophy, we at Krescendo strive to provide knowledge powered insightful business solutions to our clients and partners. What are the other philanthropic works you are involved in? Some of the prominent works that we have undertaken are as follows: Peace On Wheels  –  World’s first Mobile meditation van  Impact - This initiative came to my mind and was the result of close study of the stressful lives that millennials lead due to over digitization and increasing work pressures. With this noble concept of we took meditation to those who are stressed, right to their door step be it home or work. The initiative was launched in partnership with Jawaharlal Nehru Udyog Kendra in Pune, Maharashtra, India by the Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare and Development department Wings Rainbow in partnership with Humsafar Trust- India’s First and only LGBT driven radio cab service Impact - Post launch got an appreciation by The U.S. Consulate, Mumbai. Special invitee to attend a round table discussion on LGBT Issues in India along with EXIM Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg which was organized by U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai. The dignitaries present for the round table were Radhika Primal, MD, VIP Industries, Matt Beven, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Nisaba Godrej, Director, Godrej Industries and Pallav Patankar, Director, Humsafar Trust. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Launch and free distribution of India’s first beetle flavored condoms for sex workers in Mumbai Impact – Ground level connect with sex workers to understand their problems. Conducted AIDS awareness workshops and educated them on the repercussions of unsafe/unprotected sex. How do you define success and how do you measure up to your own definition? Success is a result that one sets out to achieve. According to me process is the key element that helps one keep checks and balances and ensures success in any sphere of life. A systematic approach to designing solutions is imperative to ensure and maintain a successful success rate.  However, it is also very relative in nature. What may have seemed like success five years ago, maybe irrelevant today. Hence I reset my success metrics every year to ensure that I cover, knowledge, experiential growth along with business. We are constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. In other words, we strive to do more with less. Tell me about a recent project or solution to a problem that you have made better, faster, smarter or less expensive? Our entire proposition at Krescendo is about providing better, faster, smarter, cost effective solutions. Krescendo started out as a pure play Public Relations agency and within three years of inception moved on to become a wholly integrated communications company that provides reputation management, brand strategy, digital media solutions, advertising and production, content management services to name a few. We have now also moved on to providing strategic partnership consulting as well. This ensures that all communications are seamless and cost effective. As the most recent testament to our evolution as a turnkey partner, we launched India’s most reputed online music learning school, Shankar Mahadevan Academy in Singapore. For this project we scouted for a local partner, brokered the alliance with Maharashtra Mandal Singapore and also designed and implemented communication campaigns to reach out to the entire ASIA market. Our carefully designed and implemented strategies witnessed a stellar response from ASIA and had the highest recall value during the launch and post launch phases. Enquiries grew manifold; student traction ratio increased thus making it a successful launch. In your opinion what is the most significant aspect of leadership? Leadership qualities are tested the most during the time of a transition. Clarity of vision and dexterity of the strategy that goes into the decision making at such a crucial juncture, defines great leadership. In my opinion, the most significant aspect of leadership is the ability to understand flux, convert it into actionables and inspire your team to collaborate and produce winning results. Your perception of an empowered society. How far your industry has/can contribute for the same? An old adage makes a lot of sense here - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.” Empowerment of the society is the only way to building a strong and successful nation. Our industry has been an evangelist for empowering the society ever since inception. Apart from creating new job opportunities and being equal opportunity employers, we also are the information bearers for the society who empower them make better informed decisions in life. PERSONAL GRID One thing you wish to change and one thing you wish to retain about your industry? Paucity of skilled workforce is something I would like to see a change in. As our industry becomes more sophisticated, cross functional and global in nature, industry ready skills is the need of the hour. Mediocrity has no space here and I wish to see that change. Thoroughness in approach to solutions is a vibe that is auguring well for the industry and I wish we retain that and even better; take it a couple of notches higher. One thing you have to let go off as an entrepreneur/leader? Since the day I have become an entrepreneur I have let go of feeling the need to micromanage work. Whom do you owe your success to? I owe my success to Ajay Piramal and Swati Piramal of Piramal Enterprise for believing in me and making a difference in my life and also, my parents and family who believe in my dream and stand by me as pillars of strength. Best thing about your job? Best thing about my job is that it helps me be on track with what is happening around the world in real time. This profession has made me a smarter, better organized professional and gives ample opportunity to add true value to brands that impact us daily.  A message from you to all the future entrepreneurs/leaders? Entrepreneurship is a huge responsibility. It means that while you will create jobs and help the economy, you are equally responsible for the people who join you as they believe in your vision. There is no short cut to success. As entrepreneurs you might come across many challenging situations that seem overbearing. Self-belief and relentless pursuit of excellence will bring rewards for you and your partners. Be diligent. Read the full article