Author: manuscrypts

  • Auckland

    New Zealand’s scenic magnificence is legendary and any trip to the left side is risky so long as Trump is around, ergo… We were only the second disaster to hit Auckland in a span of two days. We arrived a day after the cyclone Vaianu. Thankfully, barring the minor inconvenience of small shower spells, we were largely unaffected.

    Stay in Auckland

    We have aged. We know that because we now choose a Radisson/Accor/Marriott over any cutesy boutiques. Radisson in New Zealand is new. This was Red and we had perks, that helped. We had a decent view of the city, and we could comfortably watch it from that sofa. So, nice enough.

    Radisson Red, Auckland
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  • Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

    Anna Funder

    Stasiland had me hooked on Page 4, when Anna Funder nailed (in the GDR context) my fascination – why I keep reading about (and visiting) Eastern Europe. She calls it horror-romance. “The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name.“

    After WW 2, when the victorious Allies were divvying up the spoils, Russia began directly controlling the Eastern part of Germany, and in 1949, GDR was established as a satellite state of the USSR. The rhetoric of Communist brotherhood was established, which had liberated East Germans from fascism. The idea was to project GDR as those who were the innocent of Nazism, and that all the Nazis had gone to West Germany! The GDR, in its 40 years of existence tried to create a Socialist German Man, different from Nazi German Man, and from western (Capitalist Imperialist) German Man.

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  • Cahoots

    On a rainy Saturday in October, we somehow got Cahoots almost to ourselves! So we can only wonder how bustling a fully occupied version might be. With different seating areas, and a classy decor approach, we really liked the ambience.

    Cahoots
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  • Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity

    Manu S Pillai

    The alternative title of Gods, Guns and Missionaries should be Bharat Ek Khoj – the Hindu Nationalism edition. But seriously, the amount of research that seems to have gone into this book is staggering – over 220 pages of this 549 pager consist of Notes.

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  • What made us stronger, could kill us

    In the startup scaling context, a line that often gets used is “the things that got you from 0 to 1 are not the things that get you from 1 to 100“

    The thought occurred when I was reading ‘The Inner Level’, a fantastic book about how unequal societies increase status anxiety, stress, and mental health issues across all income levels, not just the poor. 

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