And/Or

And/Or

The Inscrutable Art of Underselling

Bela Negi, Editing 1997

A few years ago, I gave an interview for the post of television producer. I had excellent recommendations, the interview being only a formality. I went in to negotiate for a higher salary than the channel was offering me. I came out with neither, only the demoted offer of the post of an associate producer instead. My job responsibilities were the same, but (of course) the salary was a lot less. My crime – I had refused to hard-sell myself. The interviewer had thrown several baits my way, prompting me to say something earth-shattering about myself. I had, however, continued doggedly in an understated and self-effacing style, prompted by an archaic belief that that was the best way to impress people.

I covered up that sinking, foolish feeling with some heavy talk that reeked of artistic snobbery, making it seem that my behaviour at the interview was by design. Of course, my friend who had recommended me in the first place could not understand this metamorphosis of an otherwise overarticulate personality into an extra modest interviewee.

A friend who has spent several years in marketing analysis in the US, says that this verbal modesty is a chronic hurdle that stands in the way of professional Indians everywhere. I would say, and I was relieved to find that I was not alone here, that this is a trait common to most FTIIians.

A typical FTTIian job-seeker is found mumbling in the interview room, making faint allusions to his/her experiences here and experiences there, with some director or artist whose name s/he seems to be perpetually on the verge of forgetting; pretends not to notice or hear any compliment made by the interviewer, or looks surprised; refuses to answer any question with a plain yes or no; and seeks to underplay any odd achievement that has sneaked its way into her bio-data. And – most aggravatingly – she/he makes getting into FTII sound so easy.

What are the reasons behind this addiction to underselling that refuses to go away? Modesty has got nothing to do with it, of that one can be certain, for any FTIIian worth his/her salt believes that s/he is the best thing that happened to cinema, individually and collectively. Anyone who has met an FTIIian in a party situation, at a seminar, or over coffee at a roadside dhaba – anywhere except a job interview – will know what I mean. He will leave the encounter with the feeling of having escaped the clutches of a superior man from Mars.

If you asked my American friend, Indians prefer modesty simply because you cannot go wrong there. Selling yourself is an art that requires training and risk-taking. It seems that, after all, the FTIIian typifies the Indian intellectual – artist, idealist, aesthete – contemptuous to the ways of the corporate world. In short, a snob – hoping everyone will notice him without having to do the hard work or seeming to care. Having to represent or sell oneself is so, oh so… gauche. It is a matter of principle – artistic reticence versus corporate verbosity.

Perhaps the afterglow of having studied at The Institute leads the FTIIian to presume that merely this fact should be as sufficient a recommendation as any that come. Having graduated grants him entry into a elite group that he has contructed in the private world of his intellectual fancies.

As partner of an ad film production house, I have been chastised in the past for harming buisness with fatal statements of self-effacement. In times of quick fire-and-hire, it seemed there was room only for the brash breed around me engaged in a constant exercise of pumping up their images and posing brazenly as overachievers. These were people from other institutes and polytechnics who understood and knew little, but were wedded to the ways of the real, money-making world.

And if, many a time, any of us felt they were getting the better of us – even if, in our opinions, they were without qualifications or an iota of talent – it was because of these:
“Hi, I have taken up an office in Bandra” – read, “I am calling from the office that hired me five minutes ago as production assistant.”
“I am looking for a Producer for my film” – read, “Yesterday my friend narrated a five-minute concept to me.”
“I just finished shooting my film in Ladakh” – read, “I was fourth assistant to the production head standing in for an absentee.”
“I did a course in cinema in New York” – read, “I was visiting my cousin in New York and walked in one day for one of the open lectures in the film school there.”

I don’t know if their overprojection did them any good in the long run, but it definitely inspired a plan in me for all future meetings and presentations:
- Every two minutes I would throw in references to esoteric European cinema.
- Always refer to myself in the honorific or corporate plural
- Mention all possible future projects as fait accompli
- Refer to all projects in the past, even where I was associated as a lowly assistant, as ‘my projects’ and ‘my films’.
- Drop names at every possible opportunity.
- In the trend of revering popular art and films, OD on mediocrity and hold it up as avant garde.

I could tell you how well the plan worked, or if it worked at all… but on second thought, let us keep it my ssssecret.

To round it up, being a decent human being and all that, I would not like to see another FTIIian having to live through my own bitter experiences, and would, therefore, recommend that the Institute teach some amount of the marketing expertise which comes so naturally to students of lesser schools (necessity, after all, being the mother of invention for them).

No instruction is worth as much as the example. So, after a hiatus of two years, I am getting back to work, starting with promoting the scripts that I have at last managed to finalise (read been formulating). And therein lies the test. I think I should now be signing off, since that dormant virus of FTIIian underselling seems to be catching back on…