Now that I think of it, there are at least four ‘spiritual predecessors’ for this post on the blog. It began with ‘In a world of abstractions‘ (2017), followed by Peak Abstraction (2018), The Presentation of Selfie in Everyday Life (2020), and A Proxy Life (2022). Each of them are continuing explorations of how we have abstracted a bunch of real things, and created proxies by which we measure them.
Going by the story so far, it’d be fair to say that the more things we consume, the less time we have to get into details, and the more we rely on proxies. And across time, our consumption has only increased. And so our proxies have also multiplied.
Material accumulations as a proxy for wealth
Stock price/funding for a company’s health
Popularity for excellence
Price for quality
Fitness for health
Books Read (including that 5 min YouTube video) for intellect
The Status Game had been on the list for a long while before I managed to get to it. Though there were a few perspectives that I had already read about in other books, most notably Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World, and to some extent Wanting by Luke Bergis, I found the overall narrative compelling and insightful.
In The Status Game, Will Storr explores the deep-rooted human drive for status, which has existed since our hunter-gatherer days, and makes a case for how it is one of the fundamental motivators of human behaviour, and how status-seeking influences everything from our personal health, happiness and identities to cultural and societal structures.
High Brew is quite far from our standard hunting grounds, and we landed here because of a whimsical ‘staycation’. We needed a Schengen Visa and didn’t want to endure the long distance journey from Whitefield to VFS, JP Nagar with the threat of being late for the appointment. So we decided to make the journey the evening before, stay overnight nearby and walk over in the morning. While searching for a place to dine at, we came across High Brew, and it won out because of one interesting thing.
The place itself is pretty vast, with three floors of seating. If you reach early on weekend evenings, you might get a view with greenery. I was told we could even see peacocks sometimes, but I am not sure whether that is true, or simply a testament to the quality and/or quantity of beer consumed. We were too late to get those seats, but found ones with the road view that was good enough.
The interesting thing that got the vote was the High Tide Palm toddy. It was decent, but we didn’t think we wanted 500 ml of it. We also tried the High Cool Cucumber Salt Lager, and made the same verdict. High Smoke (not what you think) was smoky German, and not our kind either. We finally settled for the High Cloud (Hefeweizen) and it was surprisingly good. I think the live music helped too!
The food menu is pretty standard. The Chetti Omelette sounded intriguing and was tasty enough, but didn’t go far beyond a masala omelette. The Kurpalli chicken was described as fiery but didn’t really get to that level of spice. The Kalpasi pepper Fry also was just passable.
The bill, thanks to a DineOut discount came to just under Rs.1600 and that’s probably the most I’d pay for the overall experience. Barring the Hef and the live music, High Brew was reasonably meh. Unless you stay in the ‘hood and this is your comfort hangout, I’d give this a pass.
High Brew, 3rd Main Rd, Dollars Colony, Sahyadri Layout, J. P. Nagar
A lot of the books I have read in the recent past have to do with trying to get a working definition of life and/or consciousness. I picked up ‘Life as No One Knows It’ to get more perspectives in that direction, but it gave me something else by shifting the frame. At exactly halfway through the book, there is a line that goes “what will really be alien are examples of life (biological or technological) that have traversed a completely different evolutionary trajectory than we have.” And that’s important because if we keep looking for markers based on life on earth, we may not find it anywhere else in the universe. It’s thus important to find a framework that is agnostic of life as we know it, so that we have a measurable way of recognising and classifying signs of life/intelligence when we come across it.
Bekal, and specifically the Taj Bekal has been on the Insta feed and friends’ recommendation list for a long time. And that’s how we ended up creating a mini break for 3 nights, with the express aim of going there to do nothing.
Getting there & getting around
Bangalore has multiple daily flights to Mangalore, and it takes just an hour. Mangalore to Taj Bekal is a 1.5 hr journey with most of it on a fantastic highway. You can get a cab from the airport for Rs.2900. I had read that we could get an Uber, but I couldn’t find any.
We found Bekal Taxi Service thanks to a signboard right outside the hotel. Shyam responded promptly on WhatsApp, and gave us good rates for both the local sightseeing as well as the Airport drop. Clean vehicles, and punctual.
Stay @ Taj Bekal
We booked early enough to get a decent deal – around 17k/night incl breakfast and a 25% off on meals, spa etc. We chose to skip the ‘all meals included’ package though it could be useful if you plan to simply vegetate at the hotel. Taj Bekal is pretty enough, with sufficient (paid) activities to make that an option.
Our room was at one end of the property. We didn’t mind the 5 min walk to the lobby, restaurant etc, and you could get yourself a buggy if you’re lazy, but if that’s not your preference, it’s probably a good idea to make an early request especially if you choose a package.
The room itself was quite large, and the highlight was the swing bed on the balcony. A great way to spend your time doing nothing.
