Month: March 2009

  • ClayPot

    The Thippasandra version of this restaurant has been around for sometime now. But we’ve never managed to go there. So, when we saw an ad that announced the opening of a Thavarekere version, we didn’t waste much time in checking it out.

    When coming from Dairy Circle, take a right turn on to Thavarekere Main Road (this is the road opposite Prestige Acropolis -Dairy Circle side/diagonally opposite the Dairy Circle entrance of Forum/right next to the SKC outlet). Keep going down this road, soon you’ll find Prestige St.John’s Woods on your left, and after about 200 m, you’ll find a fork in the road. Take the one towards the left, and then take the first left turn, and you’ll find Claypot on the left. Yes, like a lot of Mallu things, this one is quite left oriented. šŸ™‚

    ClayPot is the typical ‘no frills’ Mallu neighbourhood restaurant, though it serves North Indian, Chinese and Kerala cuisine. The first two are what we call Mallu versions of these cuisines, which would include things like Dall fry, Shreaded chicken with capscum, baiging chicken (sic sic sic), but then if you’re looking for perfection in such matters, you shouldn’t be here. This is the place to be when you want to gorge on Mallu stuff.

    We ordered a Malabar style Chicken Fry, a ClayPot special chicken curry, a Karimeen Pollichathu and to go with all of that, an appam, a couple of mutta appams (egg appams), and a Kerala Porotta. The Malabar chicken fry is cooked in the best cooking oil in the world (for us mallus) – yep, coconut oil, and comes adorned with crisply fried onion. There are three pieces in one portion and is quite non spicy, that, I’m guessing is a rarity here, though to be fair, they do mark the spicy stuff with a chilli icon. The ClayPot special chicken curry is a white gravy with boneless chicken in a coconut milk base and is garnished with a full boiled egg. It looks harmless but is quite spicy, and the portion is more than sufficient for two people. Karimeen (Pearl Spot) Pollichathu is fried fish with a thick masala coating which is tomato and onion based with a strong Kokum (Kodum Puli) flavor. This one is delicious, but super spicy. The appams as well as the porotta turned out good too. We wanted to try some mussel dishes, but they’d run out of the stuff.Ā  They did have some quail dishes, but I’m sure that if we tried to squeeze that in too, it’d be our stomachs which would be quailing!!

    All of the above cost us just over Rs.350. That would tell you the story. You come here to have some excellent Mallu food without burning a hole in your pocket. While they have some North indian/Chinese veg options, I’d recommend this place only to hard core non veggies who can handle spicy stuff. There are many many more options that they offer in the Mallu cuisine part, and we’ll definitely go back for more.

    ClayPot, #1/1, 1st Cross, Thavarekere, BTM Layout. Ph: 42190344/55, 9632227355

    Update: Heard this one’s now closed

  • The lift

    Heā€™d never tried it. But circumstances were such that he really had no alternative. He was stuck at a party that was ending, and he didnā€™t have a cab. He didnā€™t know the hosts well enough. Hers was the last car to leave. He would attempt a pick up line, just so heā€™d get dropped.

    until next time, careening character

  • A rocky future ?

    The video that marked the end of Rocky Mountain News, a daily newspaper in Denver, would have a sobering effect on anyone who’s worked in the industry. The newspaper printed its final edition on Feb 27th, 55 days short of its 150th birthday. And there’s no succour when The Business Insider points out a list of 9 newspapers that are likely to fold. Newspapers in the US are still in shock at how an industry that was once really profitable seems to be on the path of extinction. Gawker is a good place to keep track. The reasons for decline are many – the rapid technological advances, changing consumption habits, newspapers not reacting early enough – to name a few. That’s a track we have walked several times, so I shall move on.

    What are newspapers doing to survive? A few examples. The Hearst Corporation, which publishes the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Albany Times Union, and has interests in an additional 43 daily and 72 non-daily newspapers, is going to charge for some of its online content. The New York Times fights on, bringing out something new on a regular basis, the latest being the version 2 of their popular iPhone app, which offers extensive support for offline reading. (via RWW) It is also starting a neighbourhood blog project, which will have content from editors as well as citizen journalists, and they are planning to target local businesses for ads. (via TechCrunch) Across the pond, FT reports that the UKā€™s top regional newspaper groups have banded together to negotiate with the government as they seek urgent help to save further titles from closure.Ā  Meanwhile, The Guardian has announced its Open Platform, which will allow developers to use its content (from 1999)Ā  in myriad ways. The more interesting part is what it statesĀ  on the Partner Program page “You can display your own ads and keep your own revenue. We will require that you join our ad network in the future.”A very innovative approach!!

    Even content reccomendation services, like Loomia, used on sites such as WSJ, are looking to get revenues for their publishers. Meanwhile, advice is pouring in, from all quarters. Social Media Explorer has an excellent post on how journalists can leverage social media. This Mashable post shows “10 ways newspapers are using social media to save the industry”. This not only includes suggestions, but also tools that are available for free. I know at least a couple of journalists here who also use Twitter for story ideas, opinions etc.

    Debates still rage on the role that newspapers play in the community, and whether its loss is something much beyond that of just a source of news. One view is that society is losing a watchdog, and that stories are reported because of full time journalists, and that in a world, where all content is free, no news gathering will happen, because there is a price to it. But there are those who think otherwise. This is a good read, on that counter view. Some recent studies would support the latter. In fact, it raises a good point about revenue, which we’ll come to in a while. But both agree that to survive, newspapers have to quickly figure out how to factor the net into their business model, whether it is too late, only time can tell.

    As this article points out, the two revenue sources of newspapers – circulation and advertising, are linked. When content becomes free (the net has forced that) people are no longer interested in paying for it offline, which essentially means that advertisers don’t get the reach that they used to, from newspapers. And projections suggest that its not just offline ad revenues that are in a free fall, online newspaper ad revenues will continue to decline in 2009. Whether the state of the online component is a function of recession, is debatable. After all, when it comes to advertising on the net, even the biggest of newspapers have a formidable foe – Google. Google, which is now putting ads in GoogleĀ  News, when you search for a particular topic. Remember that Google news is only an aggregator, and as of now, there are no updates of revenue sharing arrangement with the news sources.

    Newspapers are still producing content that people want. Only, there are other sources too now.Ā  More than the assets required to generate the content (editorial staff and related infrastructure expenses), it is the delivery platform (press, newsprint, and even the distribution) that is costing the newspaper. Now consider this, with rapid technological advances, it is becoming easier for newspapers to generate the same content, and perhaps at a lesser cost (fewer reporters combined with crowd sourcing, for example) There is still some cost involved in this, and so, it is debatable whether all the content generated should be given free online. If some thought can be applied to utilising other delivery platforms which are cheaper, a revenue model scalable with costs incurred could be achieved. In any case, newspapers never made money out of content directly. They built audiences around the content they provided, and then leveraged that audience to create a revenue model in which advertisers paid to reach that audience. Maybe it is time to rekindle that relationship with the customers and give him more options than the ‘one size fits all’ newspaper.

    The time is ripe for Indian newspapers (especially the English dailies) to do some experimenting.Ā  I wonder if its a good idea to treat the newspaper’s web presence as a separate business unit. Rather than blindly putting all the news available in the physical paper online for free,Ā  start from scratch on the web, have a separate news gathering process (or attribute a part of the overall cost to this unit), start figuring out the requirements of consumers, allow some customisation,Ā  (the net allows a lot already, but its still worth a shot in India) play around with local/sub local content, (they’ve to work fast on this one, since Twitter is also working on local news updates)Ā  work on the digital delivery platforms, deliver more targeted consumers to advertisers with customised solutions rather than broadcast style ads, and maybe a fate similar to the US counterparts can be averted.

    until next time, newspaper

  • Siddhartha

    Herman Hesse

    Somewhere in Pankaj Mishra’s ‘The Romantics’, there’s a conversation about ‘Siddhartha’ and it being a reason for a Westerner’s interest in Buddhism and India. A conversation, not my view šŸ™‚ That, and the fact that it also finds mention in Mishra’s other book ‘An End to suffering’ is primarily what led me to the book.
    The book is best described as the story of an alternate version of the Buddha, and the Buddha features in the story too, including a conversation.
    The message is perhaps like a quote I read somewhere, which amounts to “There are many ways to the top of the mountain, but once there, the view is the same”
    The arguments are compelling, and makes you think, not just about the end, but also about the ways in which you get there. I especially liked the thoughts on the concept of time, the ‘goal vision’ obscuring everything else, and ‘the opposite of every truth is also true’.
    Forget Buddhism, it is an excellent read on life, what we strive for, and my favourite paradox – the meaningfulness and the meaninglessness of our existence.

  • One of an unkind šŸ˜

    We met an acquaintance when we’d gone for a movie last weekend. During the interval, he bought two largeĀ  colas – one for him and his wife, and one for us. For reasons I considered valid (only one of which was that I considered the thing addictive and didn’t want to tempt myself at the beginning of the summer) I had to say no – a thanks but.. polite no at first to a curt no finally. When the movie ended, he walked out, one cola stilled clutched, and a sheepish smile thrown at us. I felt very uncomfortable, more so because I didn’t really know him and didn’t explain to him why i said no. I had, with my silence, rebuffed, what was a nice gesture from him.

    I hurried back to catch ‘Boston Legal’, and it was as though the cosmos wanted to rub it in. One of the cases under trial in the episode was that of a sorority expelling a member because she was socially awkward. The interesting part was that lawyers on both sides were essentially very nice people…. with personality disorders. Jerry, who appears on behalf of the sorority president has Asperger syndrome, and uses another personality to overcome his awkwardness and Clarence, who appears for the defendant, has multiple personalities, each of which is a defense against more aggressive people. Though I supported the member – Marcie Cooper, who I felt was wronged, I found Jerry’s closing extremely touching

    College is also about preparing students for the outside world. Last time I checked, itā€™s pretty tough out there. Thereā€™s the old adage, ā€œNice guys finish last.ā€ Thereā€™s some truth to that. I happen to know opposing counsel is a fundamentally kind man. Sensitive. He chose to exploit my Aspergerā€™s syndrome to win this case.

    My very best friend, a lawyer I had a case against not too long ago, he, too, exploited my Aspergerā€™s. Heā€™s a very good man, who opted for cruelty as a strategy.

    If Marcie Cooper comes out of this experience thinking that people can be cruelā€”even the kind, sensitive
    onesā€”if sheā€™s learned that she will be judged not simply on merit, or the content of her character, but on how she looks and socializes with others, sheā€™s gotten an education, one that will serve her in life. This is a free society. People get to choose their friends, clubs get to choose their members. Sometimes itā€™s very ugly and unfair. Thatā€™s . . . life.

    And I could imagine how the kind sensitive ones could be cruel. Perhaps its the result of a majority of humanity taking advantage of their kindness and sensitivity, or being insensitive to it, or trampling their kind acts and emotions in the races they run, or laughing at what would be deemed their idiocy.

    And I wondered- in educating children for life, will parents have enough time and patience for teaching their children the importance of being humane, while still instilling in them the smartness that would enable them to know when someone takes advantage of them? Or will they choose the easy way out and teach them to be rude, to unfairly demand, to snatch by might irrespective of right? And create a race of inhuman beings who wouldn’t spare a thought for those who are perhaps not as strong as them – physically, emotionally or in terms of social skills.

    I’m no angel, but i try to prevent my own unkindness. I usually ask myself “how would I feel in the other person’s shoes”, but there are some situations when for some reason, I cannot adhere to my own rule. I feel very guilty on such occasions, because I feel that through that act I might have started a chain. Someday soon, I hope to make it up to that acquaintance, for I am sorry. I truly am.

    until next time, transactions in kind