Month: March 2012

  • Marathon Baba

    Disclosure: Fingerprint! Publishing sent me the book for review.

    Girish Kohli hasn’t passed out of the IITs or IIMs, does not have a day job and cannot be found on Facebook or Twitter. He is also the author of the only book in the world based on a pair of unused running shoes. Just as the author has broken the template of the typical Indian author, his book also manages to be completely out of the regular trajectory of Indian fiction.

    There are indeed characters that one might encounter in other works, in fact, the author has pretty much used all the stereotypes that have been abused in Indian popular culture – the strict dad, the mother waiting for her son to return home, the first love who remains evergreen in memories, the corrupt cop, the spirituality cult, and so on, but it’s the sheer verve and trippy narration that makes this book totally unique. It even includes poetry, or at least rhyme.

    The tale puts a twist to the perspective people have towards running away from problems. The story is about a man who runs across the country for seven years, turns red (no, literally), starts an ashram and gets stuck in a plot (literally and figuratively) of his own making. The author takes routine mundane occurrences and objects and converts them into surreal text or throws them against bizarre yet believable props. (the shoes, the Naxalite kidnapping) The humour that lends sanity and insanity to the proceedings is also not on a single track – it moves from wordplay to satire (the City of Slums, Suryakant the Mega Star) to even campy on a couple of occasions. In fact the entire theme of the book seems to be irreverence. Just as you begin to wonder if you’re going to completely lose it, the author injects a dose of real explanation to the happenings. IMO, the best part of the book are the character descriptions. Characters include the shoes too.

    My advice would be to read the book at a single go. At 255 pages, it’s not really a marathon, but you have to keep running to be on the same page as the author. There is always a feeling that some subtext is slyly watching you turn the page. Not a run of the mill offering, this one will give your brains a run for their money. 😉

  • Curry Meen

    Curry Meen has been on our radar for quite a while, but considering that we live in Keramangala, with multiple Mallu food options, we had been ignoring it. Thanks to a sale at Bangalore Central and my excitement towards checking out the Bangalore Metro, we zoomed in on Curry Meen, which is close to the Indiranagar Metro stop. The restaurant is located on the Double Road between CMH Road and BDA complex, Indiranagar. A not-so-accurate map here. It’s actually after that 5th Main junction when going from CMH Road.

    Parking wouldn’t be very difficult. There’s space inside the compound, as well as options on the road outside. We saw an inactive Dosa Counter downstairs and some minimal seating on the ground floor, and proceeded to the first floor, which offered a decent view of the relatively uncrowded Double Road. On the way back, we also noticed that they had another room upstairs, where seating was available, but whose lights were switched off. 🙂 They’d probably open it only if required.

    The menu can be found here, and is a bit of a Malabar-Chinese collaboration. We were here for the Kerala food, so we focused solely on that. The Mussels were not available, so we marked our protest by ordering a Hot & Sour Chicken soup and then started the actual meal with a Jinsi Chicken Kebab (half) and a Malabar Fish Fry. The soup was a homage to the pepper trade from Malabar, and our eyes watered at this historical hat tip, and for other reasons. The Jinsi Chicken was an attempt at Pakodas, it seemed, and a failed one at that. Avoid! The (seer) fish was quite good with a spicy masala coating.

    For the main course, we asked for a plate of appam, a Malabar Paratha, a Fish Moilee and a Kozhi (chicken) curry. I’ve tasted several poor versions of the Fish Moilee, but this one was an outright disaster. The appams didn’t help either. The chicken curry was thankfully quite tasty, spicy and seemed like a relative of the varutharacha curry, but without the coconut. Figure that. The Chicken Biriyani was served with an egg (extra points for that) and was reasonably good.

    The staff didn’t seem to be from Kerala, but that didn’t hamper the experience much. They were quite prompt. All of the above cost us just over Rs.850. I think I’ll stick to our Koramangala favourites.

    CurryMeen, No:218, Double Road, 1st Stage, Indiranagar,  Ph:42283999

  • Green Evangelist

    Green Evangelist aims to ‘evangelise’ sustainability through the ‘humanware’ aspect rather than the ‘techware’. In conversation with founders Sejal Sheth and Latha Sankarnarayan….

    [scribd id=84602869 key=key-25o0y2t76pj5kyhguclg mode=list]

  • Human Brands

    Trendwatching’s trend for March 2012 is quite an interesting one – ‘Flawsome‘, driven by brands becoming more ‘human’ and the fast rise of transparency. It’s quite an irony – this ‘fall out’ of the era in which people are trying to be brands and making sure that (even) their Facebook Timeline (in addition to LI, Twitter etc) showcase them at their best/ a perfect life. Yes, I’m generalising.

    I think, more than anything else, this trend is forced on brands by the sheer volume of conversations that are generated in/by social media. Even the best, most conversational and favourite brands/organisations – from Coke to Google to Twitter to Apple etc have their flaws. These cause different challenges for different brands eg. web centric companies generate conversations because of their ‘location’  and more is expected of them because they are digital natives; ‘offline’ brands are forced to engage and include this in their brand DNA. Since bad experiences are expressed more than good ones, ‘flawsome’ is an inevitability.

    The excellent opportunity in this, if brands get the communication right, is to not just being able to involve consumers in correcting the flaws, but in also evolving a league of customers who will actively speak for the brand, because of a sense of ownership they can be made to develop. The other opportunity is to target better and build a set of consumers who can identify with the brands’s attitude and philosophy. This would not just have an effect on communication, but also on vision and processes across the board – product design, customer care, hiring and so on. ‘One size fits no one’ is something that brands could take more seriously now.

    As a brand marketer, and one who is active on social media, I’d love the freedom to say ‘Damn, that was a #fail. But hey, we tried” 🙂

    until next time, winsome brands

  • Now Running

    Already running late, and three minutes into the ride, she realised she had forgotten her purse…and the tickets in it. Cursing, he paid the auto driver, asked her to wait, and started running. Easier than getting the auto to go back. As he ran, the coincidence was unmistakeable. The tickets were for Paan Singh Tomar.

    (Based on a true story. No really!)