Exclusive: Twitter India’s first-ever Creator’s Week is here

Get dating advice, find out places in Bandra you can have a good meal for under Rs 140, and hear sounds from everyday life turn into music. Twitter’s first-ever Creator’s Week has a lot in store. Here’s our pick.

In a first, Twitter in India will host a Creator’s Week — a five-day online showcase of the various creative ways young Indians are using social media (Twitter, Vine and Periscope, to be more precise) to create content and engage with people.

On board are around 20 personalities with varying degrees of virtual fan following, across segments like food, music, lifestyle, comedy, and romance. The usual suspects, though, are missing. So, no Bollywood biggie, revered cricketer or controversial politician.

“We’re now seeing a dramatic change. In the last two years, there’s been a lot more attention to food, and the conversation around topics like indie music and comedy have exploded. Chefs, models and comedians have emerged on Twitter. Creator’s Week represents the arrival of these creators,” says Rishi Jaitly, VP-Media, APAC and Middle East, Twitter.

The theme of the Creator’s Week is #EveryCharacterMatters, because, you know, it’s Twitter, and you need to make the most of its 140 character limit.

Here’s our round-up of creators to follow:

Motherly advice on dating

Stand-up comedian Aditi Mittal has many on-stage avatars: A-blah Nari, Dolly Khurana and Dr Mrs Lutchuke. It is the “psycho” Dr Mrs Lutchuke she has chosen for the Creator’s Week. As Lutchuke, Mittal will play agony aunt and dole out advice on dating.

“The name is a play on the Hindi word, chutkule,” Mittal explains, adding. “She wants to help the youth and is keen on fostering love between people. She is well-intentioned but misguided.” Misguided, we wonder? But then, Mittal reminds us Lutchuke is not an actual doctor. “Her degrees are PhD, LSD, MS Word.”

Dr Mrs Lutchuke’s Twitter bio reads: ‘Don’t feel shy beta, I am like your mother only.’ So, while Lutchuke is nearing 60, Mittal says she is extremely open-minded. Twitter users need not hesitate in asking her any sort of question. Mittal says, “She even has a class called the beginner’s guide to lovemaking.”

We’re impressed. But can Dr Mrs Lutchuke sort you out if you have questions related to modern dating apps like Tinder, or queries on how to approach a guy or girl you like? “Yes,” Mittal asserts. “She’s very ‘with it’.”

Follow @DrMrsLutchuke on June 15

Eating cheap in Bandra

A posh suburb where real estate and restaurant prices are at an all-time high, Bandra is not exactly popular for its cheap eats. But food blogger Kalyan Karmakar of finelychopped.net, will take you around the area and introduce you to pocket-friendly establishments. Karmakar will do a series of videos using the Periscope app, and feature meals you can get for under Rs 140.

The price cap of Rs 140 is a play on Twitter’s 140 character limit. “When I came to Mumbai, I had just started my career and was living alone for the first time in my life, in a PG. Making every rupee count was important. Nearly 20 years later, the same values still matter to me,” he says.

Karmakar, who often uses Periscope, will do a breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner trail. He plans to cover small to mid-range priced restaurants — some could even be street side places. “These are places I go to eat in or order from,” he says. The cuisines covered will be from a mix of communities: Goan, Mangalorean, Bengali and Punjabi.

Karmakar’s focus will not only be on the food, though — it will also be on the people. He says, “To me, food is all about the stories behind it and, in whatever I do — blog, tweets, vlogs, periscopes — I try to bring alive the people behind and around the food I eat. That includes chefs, home cooks, restaurant owners, family, friends and the people I meet while I eat. Basically, the characters in the world of food who fill my life with happiness.”

Follow @Finelychopped on June 14

Finding music in the mundane

The sound of a horn in traffic, of the chatter in your workplace, of a railway station, of a beach — will all be used to create music. Chandigarh-based composer and producer, Siddharth Sharma (stage name Dub Sharma) will use the concept of ‘found sound’ to make music out of everyday sounds. “Basically, you pick up sounds from around you or a city and compose music.”

Dub Sharma, whose EDM mix of Kanhaiya Kumar’s azaadi slogans went viral early this year, will invite users to send videos or audio recordings from your neighbourhood. “I might use someone whistling in place of a piano, a door banging shut in place of a kick drum… and if someone’s making a dosa, I might use the sound of the pan as a snare drum. It’s all about using the real world as musical elements,” he says.adding that he often experiments with the concept.

For Creator’s Week, he will weave all the sounds into one track, or more, depending on what users tweet to him. “These will be shorter tracks — around a minute to a minute and a half,” he says. And will it have lyrics? “If users send me particular phrases or words that are typical to their city, I might just use it,” he says.

Follow @dubsharma on June 16

Log on

The microsite everycharactermatters.com will house all the content created under Creator’s Week