• Whitefield Social

    We heard about its opening (in Phoenix Market City) in the first week itself, courtesy Instagram and the ” 2 Beers for Rs.2” promotion, but could drop in only a day after the promo ended. It was a Saturday night, and that meant we had to wait for more than an hour to get a table! The open area in the mall made that quite easy, and we sat gawking at people, and watching movie trailers on the giant screen outside PVR.

    When we finally did get a table, it was a community table! Thankfully, our request for a different table was soon granted. The plush, comfortable seating in the outdoor section, was most definitely better. The place was quite crowded that night, so I couldn’t really get a good look inside. But a visit later, on Christmas day morning, gave me the chance to look around, since the place was almost empty. Pravesh, who seemed to be in charge of the outlet, gave me a little guided tour when he saw me snooping around. One of the walls has a history of Whitefield (wiki-like) and another has a huge blow-up of Whitefield’s first citizens. The  bar decor includes tiles like the ones found in Irani cafes, there are some antique chairs and in essence, the place has a uniqueness even while somehow retaining the standard ‘social DNA’.

    collage1 (more…)

  • A divided existence

    A phrase I came across recently captured my ‘mood’ in both work and life spheres (links to my most recent posts) very crisply – nostalgia for the absolute. Coined by the philosopher George Steiner, it isn’t a coincidence that it reached me courtesy a Breaking Smart essay.

    As I have mentioned earlier, the entire series has given me a lot of perspective, and it’s heartening to know that the kind of thought bubbles I have are more common than I thought. There exists a dichotomy however. My perspectives are largely ‘Promethean’ when it comes to tech (and the implications of its disruptive power) in the work context. However, in the larger life scenario, I think I am quite the ‘pastoralist’, more comfortable with sustaining changes to the prevailing social order.  (more…)

  • The Kite Runner

    Khaled Hosseini

    My perspectives are a bit skewed because I have read the author’s works in reverse chronology. I think that probably explains why I found this a little underwhelming compared to “And the Mountains Echoed“. But if I move that out of the equation, then this is a good book, not just from the point of a universal human story, but for the fact that it is a window into life in Afghanistan.

    The book covers the time frame from a few years before the Soviet occupation to the post-Taliban era and covers three generations.
    The characters are really fleshed out and this is what works for the book. Amir’s loneliness living as a motherless child, his friendship with Hassan, his complicated relationship with Baba that continues even in adulthood, and his guilt stemming from what he let happen and made happen have all been well captured. Hassan is immediately lovable and the author is able to convince us that such a genuinely noble character can exist. All the others – Amir’s Baba, a complex character who never stops being a proud Afghan despite a massive change in fortunes, his wife Soraya who has her own relatively minor demons to conquer, her parents who probably fit Afghan stereotypes of an older generation couple, and Rahim Khan, who serves as a father figure to Amir and finally shows him the path to redemption – serve as perfect foils. (more…)

  • The transience of consumption & marketing

    Rajesh wrote a very interesting post recently on ownership, and how it would impact brand/marketing/purchase. My own view of ownership has undergone a massive change in the last couple of years, thanks to a combination of factors like increasing life spans, the changing nature of jobs, and the rise of on-demand services. Add to that extreme income disparity, economic flux, and technological advances that have the potential to create obsolescence faster than ever before, and I’m reasonably sure the concept of ownership is up for a revamp.

    Rajesh brings up two factors that caused previous generations to value ownership – financial success (trophies) and asset building. If I have to analyse my own motivations in the past, both of these would find a place. If I dig deeper, I also see a couple of others. One would be lack of access on demand. (eg. music/movie CDs, books, even say, photographs) You can see how streaming and cloud storage have changed this. The other subtext I can vaguely discern is ‘control’. A car, home, all lend an air of certainty and being in control. Maybe it has something to do with growing up in middle class India which had quite a lot of experience with scarcity. But in the line of anti fragile thinking, the key skill going forward would be agility rather than trying to retain control. In essence, a whole lot of cases for ownership that no longer seem relevant.  (more…)

  • One Night in Bangkok

    First published in Bangalore Mirror

    If you’re looking for a travel post, stop! ONIB is the name of a Bar & Grill in Indiranagar, run by the folks behind Plan B and Mother Cluckers. Reaching Indiranagar 12th Main is only marginally easier than getting to Bangkok, so we wanted to make sure that our trip wouldn’t be wasted, and tried to reserve a table. But that, we were told, wasn’t possible. Visa on arrival, just like Thailand! Street parking it is, all the very best!

    A sliding door and a thick black curtain lead you into a relatively small seating area, though they have used the space really well. At 7.30, we had the place pretty much all to ourselves. That meant we could really look around, after adjusting to the darkness, at what’s being positioned as India’s first Thai dive bar. The Buddha statuettes, the Muay Thai wall painting and the menu itself easily take care of the Thai part, but I think the place is a dive bar more in spirit than in actuality, judging by the prices and the décor. The bar stands out like a beacon of hope in the otherwise dim lit ambiance. Despite mostly high seating – wooden chairs – the place somehow manages to give out a plush feel. The stylish dinginess, together with the DJ’s groovy playlist based on 80s music ensures that the place has the potential to become a favoured neighbourhood joint, probably for a crowd older than the standard pub/lounge set.

    collage1 (more…)