Author: manuscrypts

  • La Digue

    La Digue is only 15 minutes from Praslin by ferry, and we had chosen one that left at 11.45. We had asked for a cab by 10.45, giving us a half an hour buffer. We grew fidgety when our clocks showed us 11.10 and the driver still hadn’t arrived. We reminded the hotel owner and she asked us not to fret. He arrived at 11.15 and we got to the ferry in 20 minutes. The boat was docked but we left only half an hour after the departure time. We got time to exchange some currency, and comment on the guts of an Indian couple who arrived 20 minutes after the scheduled departure.

    Our cab driver from the Anse Lazio trip had told us that La Digue had all of 4 cars, though the Palm Beach hotel owner said it was slightly more now. But the driver hadn’t exaggerated much – this was cycle country! Made sense, the place is tiny. We walked along the main road to Le Repaire, our destination.

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  • Praslin

    Seven years since the (first and) last time we visited Lanka. Things didn’t seem to have changed much. The already horrendous start time of 3.30 AM was extended to 5 AM thanks to a flight delay. We knew this because we got a call the previous evening, but nothing on the web could confirm it. After multiple calls, we finally got through a Mumbai number, but decided to hedge our bets by reaching slightly earlier anyway. We took a Meru after a long time, and I wondered how their drivers were coping with the Uber/Ola onslaught.

    The flight was indeed delayed, thankfully we had some buffer time for the connecting flight. The airline definitely seemed to have upped its game in terms of the flight interiors at least. The rest of the journey went without incident, perhaps because I snoozed, even as D watched a movie on the 4hr+ flight. We landed in Mahe around 11 AM, and after exchanging some currency at the only available option at the airport, took a cab to Eden Plaza. Going by the exchange rates we saw there, we seemed to have surprisingly gotten a good deal!  The ferry to Praslin was only at 4.30, so we had quite some time to kill there. (more in the Mahe post next week)  We reached the ferry and got our first sighting of many honeymooning Indian couples! Rains arrived soon after with almost Yash Chopra like timing and delayed the ferry a bit.

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  • The Smoke Co.

    During our last couple of visits to Koramangala, we had noticed a Windmills Craftworks – like structure coming up on the Koramangala Club road. Once I even thought I saw vats, and assumed a microbrewery. Alas, it wasn’t, turned out to be The Smoke Co. But then again, among Bangalore’s big picture problems, the reduction of eateries serving beef is a graver issue than the number of microbreweries per sq km. So good news it is.

    We had been postponing the visit because visits to Koramangala these days meant carrying trunks – both the traveling accessory and the swimwear. The first for the traffic and the second for the rains! But during the Diwali weekend when Bangalore got itself an 80s throwback and the rain gods were taking the week off, we landed up for lunch, with B & N for company. ‘Blackboard’ specials meet high ceilings meet rich brown decor elements to create a classy and contemporary feel. The scaffolding and tarpaulin are hopefully temporary “accessories”. A zesty amuse-bouche was offered while we decided on what we would eat, and drink.

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  • Things That Can and Cannot Be Said

    Arundhati Roy, John Cusack

    Given that Ms.Roy is one of the authors, it is only fair to expect a fair amount of radical thought in the book. In just over a hundred pages, it does just that, helped by John Cusack, Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, who is described as the Snowden of the 60s.

    The content is in the form of observations and conversations with one another. Arundhati Roy is in great form as she articulates thoughts that are not only profound but also vastly out of line with the propaganda that we are so familiar with. After all, even the resistance, as she says, has been quite domesticated. I found some of her observations quite astute. e.g. how “non violence is radical political theatre” and effective only when there is an audience. Or how “human rights are fundamental rights” and should be our minimum expectation, but they have become the maximum, whereas the goal really should be justice! My favourite though was on patriotism – how a country is just really an administrative unit but we end up giving it an esoteric meaning and protecting it with nuclear bombs!  (more…)

  • The Gatekeepers

    To quote Robert Wright from Non Zero: 

    To stay strong, a society must adopt new technologies. In particular, it must reap the non-zero-sum fruits they offer. Yet new technologies often redistribute power within societies. (They often do this precisely because they raise non-zero-sumness- because they expand the number of people who profit from the system and so wield power within it.) And if there is one opinion common to all ruling classes everywhere, it is that power is not in urgent need of redistributing. Hence the Hobson’s choice for the governing elite: accept valuable technologies that may erode your power, or resist them so well that you may find yourself with nothing to govern.  

    I consider the ruling class as gatekeepers because they control the access of the remaining populace to prosperity. Across time, different entities have played the role of gatekeeper by controlling different facets that can change society’s general prosperity. To name a few, religion by controlling behaviour, government (aristocracy to democracy) by controlling the central currency and freedom of all sorts, media by controlling information,  and the wealthy, by the sheer ability to control deployment of capital, and thereby job creation.   (more…)