Year: 2013

  • Work from….

    (image courtesy: Dilbert)

    Sometime back, Marissa Mayer [disclosure: I’m a giggles fan 😉 ] created quite a flutter with her decision to get Yahoos to stop their work-from-home arrangements. This seems a performance linked decision and across the web, you will find various perspectives on it. This mix of perspectives continue on the employee side as well. Working-from-home brings its own set of pros and cons, and one can debate it from both sides.

    As with most everything, there can hardly be a single solution that fits all, and there are various subjective elements on the employee and employer sides that need to be considered. This is especially so in the social era, when corporations will be compelled to align business objectives with a purpose that consumers and employees can identify with, and work cohesively towards.  (more…)

  • Soul Kadhi

    First published in Bangalore Mirror.

    “A recipe has no soul. You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.” Thus goes the quote, and it should apply to any dish. But with the advantage of hindsight, I think we should have started with the Murgh Hussaini Shorba or at least tried the Kadhi Pakora later – the former for chicken soup’s bestselling association with the soul, and the latter for the restaurant’s name. They probably contained the soul connection that we missed in our entire meal. In fact, such was the standard of the fare that, several times during the meal, an (almost) homonym flashed through my mind – kadi. It means ‘bite’ in Tamil and Malayalam and also has a genre of jokes named after it. The next few paragraphs should provide ample explanation of why this thought crossed my mind!

    Soul Kadhi is housed in the same building as ‘Under the Mango Tree‘. (link has a location map)  It’s a small lane but you should find a place to park without much difficulty. Valet parking exists too. The decor is friendly enough, and those winnows on the ceiling are a nice touch. The music was all 90s Bollywood evoking bouts of nostalgia. Just loud enough to be heard clearly, but subtle enough to allow conversation.

    Though there were soups in the menu, and some chaats as well, the starters sounded more promising and provided more options. So we began with the Banarasi Seekh Kabab. Soul – holy city – auspicious start, you know. Though presented well, they turned out to be like cutlets in taste, and some parts were burnt as well. The overall crumbliness didn’t help either. The Tangari Kabab had a marinade that wasn’t really bad, but its interiors hadn’t been introduced to the masala. In fact the interiors didn’t seem to have been introduced to cooking in general. The Murgh Gilafi Seekh was particularly bland and the mint chutney didn’t seem interested enough to save it either. By this time, we were ready for a fight, and the Pind Baluchi Tikka proved a worthy opponent. It put up a solid battle against our collective ravaging canines and proved to be a tough opponent! Despite its faults, the Mahi Tikka Ajvaini stayed true to its origins. The fish was salty enough for us to believe that sea water had actually seeped into its very soul. (more…)

  • Friendship grants

    In Rediff’s review of Kai Po Che, there’s a line that goes “Quoting from Bollywood, impromptu excursions and taking each other for granted without guilt is the prerogative of buddy-dom,…” That’s probably arguable, but if it is right, I now understand why my buddy count has been low since inception.

    The first – excursions – I think, can be handled. That’s despite my obsession with planning. 🙂 The second is a completely different story though. I hate taking people for granted and if I end up doing it and realising it later, I get guilt pangs even after apologising. It probably comes from the premise that I hate being taken for granted and thus the “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” gets applied. (more…)

  • The Algebra of Infinite Justice

    Arundhati Roy

    For a few years now, I have heard everyone – from sections of media to people in my social stream call Arundhati Roy everything from a Naxalite lover to a development hater to a deranged person, the last instance during the happenings in Kashmir. In fact, these days whenever there’s an issue of national interest with a scope for polarised opinions, I find many people asking about her take, just so they can heap more ridicule. And though I have never really been a fan of her award winning work of fiction, I have admitted to myself, and to a few of my friends, that I have found it difficult to objectively fault her arguments. After reading this book, I have realised why it is easy to hate her – she holds up a mirror in front of us, the kind of mirror that tells us how our apathy and desire to follow the path of least resistance is responsible for the larger problems we see around us.

    And she does that not just in some moral high ground, philosophising sort of way. She does so with historical perspectives and economical contexts and most importantly, hard data. And therefore, it is not easy to ignore her when she talks about the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the costs of what we call progress and the greater common good, the background games played behind the ‘developmental’ activities we see around us, America’s war against terror, the beginnings of fascism in India and how all of these are linked. The writer in her is in full flow, using sarcasm and wit to telling effect, to (ironically) show the seriousness of the issue. There is something very vulnerable about her when she talks about her dislike for the ‘writer-activist’ label.

    So the next time, I hear something said against her, I am going to ask the person if he/she has read this book. They may not agree with her, but at least this will give them perspective and basis their interest, they can look for counter arguments. What I seek from them is exactly what I seek from myself – an acknowledgment of one’s own role in the issues of today and developing the strength to not look away.

  • Happy Wholly

    There are 2 versions of this post! If you’re reading this version, pretty much nothing has changed for you, especially if you’ve subscribed to the blog. If you’re a visitor, you’ll see a little more content – things that have thus far resided at the Work blog. I decided to unify the two blogs after a lot of thought. Lots of aspects were considered, since the other blog is a pretty opinionated 6 year old! But in the end, there’s only one me, and while I might have more identities across the web, the unified blog will represent most of what I have to say!

    I’ll be removing the Networked Blogs app soon, and integrating better with the Facebook Page I created a long time back, but never really used! Will have that up and running by next week, so do ‘Like’ 🙂 I have already changed the feed urls, so those on an RSS diet don’t need to do a thing. I will be creating a combined feed, and options for individual categories as well in the next few weeks.

    And of course, what shift without renovation? So we’ll have a new design coming up – nothing drastic, but a little better connected to www.manuprasad.com, which will continue to be the identity aggregator, but in a different avatar! Soon!

    until next time, over and in 🙂