Kartik Iyer and Praveen Das of Happy Creative Services, the Bangalore-based thinkshop that dreamed up the One Small Love music video this time last year, tell us how it all started and what jump-started them into doing something different, positive and creative to draw the line.

You don’t have to be happy to be a Happy guy but it helps, as at least one of the two founders demonstrates.

Join these uber happy folks at One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore, a concert to celebrate expression, happiness and other wonderful emotions with music, food and free speech.

Come to Opus in the Creek, Whitefield Road, Bangalore on February 14. Entry is free.

Draw the line. Spread the love.

The post One Small Love – Kartik and Praveen draw the line appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

Most TAAQ insiders and many outsiders know that Happy Creative Services, the hot little Bangalore thinkshop run by Praveen Das and Kartik Iyer (yes, he of The Higher Iyer Show), was instrumental in putting that big horrid insect (mercifully quite dead) on the cover of This Is It. While we had our suspicions that it was a visual that they hurriedly adapted from a sunk pitch for Mortein, all was forgiven when we actually saw the men at work taking macro shots, hunched over a roach that had been very lovingly put to eternal sleep.

This time last year was really busy for us. Java Jazz was on the horizon and we were busy trying to take the next plane out without having to pay our own way. The Mangalore pub incident evoked a strong response from various quarters – the Pink Chaddi Campaign being the most celebrated of them. When NDTV’s Barkha Dutt hurriedly convened a ‘We The People’ in Bangalore on Feb 14, we were invited to be onlookers as a lot of Bangalore’s hottest (under the collar) and coolest (by glam sunglass quotient) gathered to thrash out the issue. It was here that we performed the first bars of One Small Love publicly for the first time.

Happy tried our patience when we were more preoccupied with getting our airline tickets and accommodation at Jakarta sorted out with the festival organisers. In the middle of all that, they shot a video, got it edited and sent it up into the free (if somewhat firewalled) world.

One Small Love was born. On Happy’s blog, the lads wrote:

TAAQ appeared on a talk show on NDTV where they hummed a few lines from the song (The show was hosted by Barkha Dutt, and was in connection with the Mangalore incident). TAAQ set off to Jakarta after seeing the first cut. After 10 years of penning down some brilliant songs, here they were – running out of words to express their joy. Their way of approval was a big, happy smile…

For Happy, it was the first music video produced in-house. The excitement was palpable. The whole team celebrated with the customary Old Monk (One small gulp is all it takes in a tired world)…

Read the entire account here along with a nice photo-story.

The post The 'Happy' story behind One Small Love appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).

In our small, tired world, there’s too little space for anything. And then we cram in terrorism, recession, traffic jams, politicians, elections, pink slips, pink chaddis, climate change, crop failure…

Where do we draw the line?

Stop, for one small moment…
Think one small thought…
Do one small deed…
Say one small word…

Draw the line. And put the smile back on the face of your day.

Change your Facebook profile to the smiley for today. And then download the song off www.bangalorerock.com. Let’s see how far you can spread the love.

One Small Love was performed and recorded by Thermal And A Quarter. Thanks to Happy (www.thinkhappy.biz) for the creative on the video and director Ashvin Naidu of Avakkai Films. Great work, guys!

The post One Small Love – the video appeared first on Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ).