Year: 2009

  • Kungh

    The BJP central leadership is in a crisis state. In the state of Karnataka, the BJP government has dissension in its ranks. Its a bad time for the saffron party, but all that didn’t stop us from visiting Kungh, a restaurant on Castle Street, serving Kashmiri cuisine. Eh, connection?  From Pampur, thirteen kilometres from Srinagar, where it is cultivated, it comes to us – Kungh (pronounced Kong), Kashmiri for saffron. 😀

    To get there, get on to Richmond Road at the beginning (Lifestyle) and then take the right on to Castle Street. Some set of government guys seem to be digging there for that treasure, but you should get parking in one of the side lanes.

    This is the second ‘Saffron‘ we’ve encountered in Bangalore. Its an absolutely unpretentious place and somehow manages to convey a very homely feel, which is reflected in the way they treat customers too. They suggested dishes and combinations, told us what would be sufficient, talked to us about the ‘wazwan‘, (which I remembered reading in Salman Rushdie’s “Shalimar the Clown”) and generally made us feel absolutely comfortable.

    So, on to the menu. There are starter options in veg, cockur (chicken) and maaz (lamb). The veg options consists of paneer, cauliflower, potatoes and mixed veg. (Rs.50-100). In chicken, you can choose from the special fried chicken (waza cockur), the boneless tandoor grilled chicken, (troosh cockur), the spicy version (talith cockur) or a cashew grilled version (kaju cockur) (Rs.150-200). In lamb there’s Tabaq maaz (fried ribs), seekh kabab, barrah kabab, or the pasanda kabab. (Rs.150-250)

    For the main course rus (gravy) options in veg consist of bottle gourd, brinjal, palak, mushrooms, potato, priced between Rs.75-100. In chicken you could have qorma, malai or kungh (Rs.150), and the mutton options consist of rogan josh, dhaniwal qorma, marchwangan qorma, rista (dumplings in spicy gravy), or the yakhni/goshtaaba. (Rs.175-200) There are also a couple of daal options. (Rs.50-75) To go with that, you could choose from roti/naan/phulka or rice (steamed/kungh or kabab pulao) While we went through the options, they gave us a complimentary kahwa. Amazing stuff, that!!

    We started with a seekh kabab (“minced lamb grilled in tandoor and fried). Extremely well made – smooth, cut into small rings, and with enough flavour to make it probably the best I’ve had in Bangalore. I was tempted to order a waza cockur, but there were too many things to try out in the main course. So we ordered a Kungh Cockur (spicy gravy), a yakhni (“lamb dumplings in yoghurt gravy”), and to go with that a naan, and steamed rice. We ended up ordering one naan later. The chicken dish was excellent, but the yakhni was definitely the pick. A great combination with rice. The meatballs were extremely soft, the ‘melt in your mouth’ kind, and had a good combination of spices that lent it a very unique flavor. Highly recommended.

    In addition to dessert options which included kheer, phirni, khubani ka meetha and a badam meetha, you could also try the kungh lassi/nimbu, kahwa, sheer chai, or the noon chai (salted tea). I asked for a khubani ka meetha, but was persuaded to change my mind to a badam meetha, and it didn’t disappoint. D had a kungh sweet lassi and she’s got a new favourite drink. 🙂

    All of the above cost us Rs.700. Definitely worth a visit, for a unique cuisine and some excellent service.

    Kungh, #332, Castle Street, Ashok Nagar Ph: 41126043

    Menu at Zomato

  • Real time status

    Busy with waves, of the non-Google kind. 😀

    until next time, surf around and get back next week 🙂

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    until next time, island this week, i land next week 🙂

  • Brand equity in real time

    Media Post reports that Yahoo’s latest campaign caused its perception among U.S. adults to fall steeply – apparently, YouGov’s BrandIndex, which tracks daily consumer perception of brands, found that Yahoo’s buzz score had tumbled from 35.4 on Sept. 22 to 25.5 as of Monday. Acknowledging India’s growing significance, the $100 million (global) “It’s Y!ou” campaign was rolled out in India too – y!ou couldn’t have missed the “disruptive” frontpage takeover of multiple mainstream dailies or the TVCs. My views on it were expressed in <140 characters

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    Before you take me for some kind of Yahoo hater, I’m not. (Actually, I’m quite a fan of the Carol Bartz style of no-nonsense management – typified by the last few lines here) In fact my irritation with them stems from their relative disinterest towards a few tools that were original pathbreakers and that they’ve had for a long time – most importantly ‘delicious’, but I’ve written about that earlier, and some work on that service has happened since. So, anyway, Yahoo, this is not about you, you were simply a prolongued prologue, and a good example.

    A couple of weeks back, when writing about Wave, I’d wondered  “is brand equity an excuse/surrogate for thin value, and exist only in theory, or until the last good product?” This entire activity above somehow reminded me of that. Brand equity, and the lord knows there’s no shortage of definitions. (ignore the newspaper brand references)  So why did I think brand equity is now a surrogate/excuse for thin value?

    Every brand that enjoys good equity now must have provided ‘thick value’ at some point of time, to its audience. At some point though, did the ‘brand’ take over, and the focus become more on perception management, rather than as an aid to retaining/attracting customers. Is that the reason why brands in many industries cannot find a way past the disruption they’ve been facing – because they’ve been focused on creating brand equity basis communication and superficial value additions, and sticking way too close to the specifics, like competition, and not bothering about the generic fulfilment of a need?(classic example, newspapers and news delivery) Somewhere did brand and marketing communication start dominating the proceedings, at the cost of the basics – a product solving a need/a distribution that increases convenience/the factor that built the equity in the first place? And then did they shortchange consumers by putting a premium on the brand’s equity without delivering value? While trying to build the emotional connect and create a value perception beyond the commoditisation, did the means become the end?

    Take Yahoo for example. By an unfortunate coincidence, last week, GMail replaced Yahoo Mail as the most popular email service in India. I can imagine why. Like many others, I have multiple Gmail ids, and a Yahoo id too. While I open Yahoo because of a couple of e-groups, GMail is my primary communication centre. It has never been static, features and tools have been added to a point where I wonder how I worked without them. (try operating in basic HTML for a while) I checked Yahoo out again, with as fresh a perspective as i could, and didn’t find anything that could make me consider a shift. I still use Delicious a lot, and it still has a lot of equity (in my mind) going for it. Yahoo’s brand campaigns have nothing to do with it.

    Maybe the concept of brand equity had some merit when the audience didn’t talk to each other, but as WOM keeps getting bigger,  push brand communication is bound to become more meaningless. As consumption patterns change, needs change, distribution systems change, as real-time becomes the norm,  and exit barriers and costs for consumers come down, relying on a static and uni dimensional concept of brand equity is bound to be harmful. Also, with fragmenting media, fragmenting audiences, and an increasing importance for ‘my experience’, brand equity will be different things to different people at different times, and even the hazy setof objective measurements in vogue today, would be rendered ineffective. (Yes, it might have been the same before, but in an earlier era, consumers did not talk to each other, and it was easy to push the brand’s equity on to consumers). (Generalising, but) Take a look at the communication and taglines adopted by brands, their superficiality, the efforts that go into forcing the tagline’s emotion/value into the actual value provided, and thereby build/increase brand equity and you’ll see what I mean.

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    Perhaps, product equity will be the only measure that matters, and brand equity will be earned and burned real time, as consumers share feedback and rely on their trusted sources for updates, and historic performances will decrease in significance. (when the Fail Whale comes out on Twitter, evangelists become bloodhounds, or whatever..you know what I mean) And so perhaps, from a brand perspective, its about time that meaningless communication took a back seat, and we went back to the basics of brand equity, that may mean redefining the roles and responsibilities of everyone associated with ‘brand’ as a function. Because if you’re good, they’ll talk about you, and if you’re bad, they’ll talk more about you 🙂

    But you know what, I had more fun when i thought about a parallel. Thought leaders. Replace ‘brand equity’ with ‘thought leaders’ (or personal brand equity) and tell me what you think. 🙂

    UPDATE: Yahoo hires a new agency, tells Ogilvy “It’s not Y!ou”.. Damn, that was fast!!

    UPDATE 2 Meanwhile, a homepage redesign gives them 9% more page views and 20% more time spent.

    until next time, equitable solutions..

    Bonus Reads:

    Braggarts take over the web

    Almost unrelated, but an excellent read – Jerry Yang’s Advice in Interesting Times (via @mukund)

  • Arbor

    Sometime back, when I’d written the post on Onam, I’d mentioned a story that deserved to be told. About an old school pal R who has composed a wonderful soundtrack for a recently released Malayalam movie. He’s been composing for over 2 years now, probably more if you count the non-film work he’s done, but when I listened to this soundtrack, I was glad to note that I was proud of him. No, not pride by association – of knowing him, but actually proud for what he’s done for himself. I was glad for him. And so, I was glad for myself.

    R and I share a history, which starts with a shared birthday, so it used to be that our ‘color dress’  days in school used to be the same. He also used to stay in the university campus, which, in case you haven’t noticed, is a constant handle for my nostalgia trips on this blog. R was obviously a very good singer, actually he was a little beyond that grade too. I still remember the time when for some class talent show, R and I were asked to teach group songs to our respective classes. R did a fantastic job, while i just taught the class the song – everyone sang everything. The difference was harmony. I didn’t know it then, I understood it later. Meanwhile, like me, R also played cricket. My tryst with that bloomed late (high school) and lasted only a few years,  as far as official teams went. I wonder if he did something about it. Oh, okay, I just read through what I wrote. No, I refuse to make myself an underdog on my own blog. 😀

    The learning part of school life was obviously the most important, not by choice, but still….and as those primary/secondary class reports would show, I used to be the topper, modesty be damned. Add to that, the school junior hockey team, quiz, debate, Dumb C later, and being the quorum filler for things as varied as Malayalam recitation and News Reading (yes, we had that as a bleddy competition item, would you believe it!! Maybe I should sue that school, those certificates can be quite embarrassing) and you could imagine why my attention was spread thin. But wait, let’s not overcompensate. 🙂

    Anyway, R and I parted ways when i changed schools, though we used to meet later for most of the inter school festivals, where on one hand, I’d be shouting out Dumb C guesses, and minutes later, would be desperately trying to remember the lyrics for the next few lines I had to sing for the music competition. Once I also noticed him in the Western (Group) music part of the competition, and I went WTF (the school kid equivalent actually) on why there wasn’t a Bollywood part, since the only English lyrics i knew then were …..erm, nothing. 😐 After school we completely lost touch, and a nice little music rivalry, in which he used to kick my a** regularly, except for stray upsets, ended.

    A few years back, a nostalgia wave hit our batch, and a classmates e-group was created. Nice people that they are, they sent me an invite and I joined, even though I’d spent only 5 years in that school. That it remains my favourite school is a fact, though. Anyway, that’s where I heard the news that R had composed his first movie soundtrack, back in 2007. And now begins the role that R played without his knowledge – the reason for this post.

    When i heard the news, a part of me was happy, but that was only a small part. The larger part was insanely jealous. This wasn’t like any of the stars/celebrities I regularly read about, I knew this guy, I had shared the stage with him and competed with him. And here he was, on the way to becoming famous, while I sat blogging about paths not taken!! That was when I looked at myself, and really bothered to take an objective look- as objective as i could be then. I realised it wasn’t the first time that this insane jealousy had happened. From wittier one liners to cooler jobs, the feeling had expressed itself many times, with different people. Sometimes fleetingly, sometimes for long stretches. Each time, it lasted till the mind gave itself a reason to stop being jealous, on why there was a flip side in their lives too. Bizarre ones sometimes, in desperation, but reasons nevertheless.

    But from then on, I have been watching myself. It happens now too, in fact, on one front it is worse, because the proliferation of social networks means that there are more people I am now connected to – Twitter updates, Facebook statuses, vacation photos, all have the potential to get me launched into a ‘why is his shirt whiter than mine’ phase. All this, when on most fronts, I have nothing to complain about in my life, silly twist in my neck, notwithstanding. Initially, I tried to control the envy, give rational reasons – what I have gained and what i have missed on, and deliberately shut out things which would make me well, insanely jealous. From experience, the control is a myth, and the worst part is that it creates layers of denial. The massive risk is the day when it explodes in your face.

    So these days, I don’t control, I admit to myself that I’m jealous, and wherever I can, i tell the other person too. Thereafter, the interaction is a delight. I get to know the hard work they’ve put in to reach where they have, I realise I can be genuinely glad for other people, and there is a sheer joy that can be experienced. Sometimes I am rebuffed by people too. I have also realised that the more i acknowledge, the lesser I get envy attacks.  I still get them sometimes, but I think the path is right. On a tangential front, I am also trying to leave expectations from myself open.

    A strange thought occurred to me while I was writing this. Maybe its just me,  but with this sudden outburst of sharing and connectedness, are we increasingly living out a life that we want to portray to others? A “Hey look, I am happy, everything is perfect in my world” approach. Even the sad statuses are filtered, like the ‘negative things about yourself’ in job interviews. 🙂 How much of the happiness is in the sharing, in the feeling that others might be envious? Are we going that way? If I don’t share and don’t expect any returns, but I can still be happy about something I have experienced/done, would that be joy? And as a next step, if I can  go through the same experience without the baggage of expectations, would that be the objectivity I seek? Each second a new life? Beyond conditioning? Possible?

    R’s story loop needs to be closed, eh? On request, he has sent me a karaoke version of a song I liked in the movie. I have promised to sing the vocals… for myself. And a story that deserved a joyous ending. 🙂

    until next time, R bit ends for now 🙂

    PS: For those reading this on the blog, see that new thingie right below this. USE IT :p