• For the last time

    I think this idea first struck me when I was climbing up the steps of the return flight from Leh, 6 years ago. In fact, I remember pausing for just that extra moment before I made my way into the aircraft. For a change, the people behind me weren’t hustling, maybe they felt the mood too. I checked the post I’d written about the trip, and sure enough, there was a mention in the last paragraph.

    The idea is that if you were seeing someone/something for the last time, would the way in which you interact with him/her/it change? Would you be nicer, kinder, more caring, more thoughtful? In the instance above, I realised I might be seeing Leh for the last time, and wanted to soak it in just a bit longer. (more…)

  • Mumbaistan

    Piyush Jha

    Piyush Jha’s Mumbaistan has “3 explosive crime thrillers’ as a descriptor, and a blurb from Ekta Kapoor that promises “entertainment, entertainment and entertainment.” All things considered, both sets of promises have been kept.

    The first story – Bomb Day – has a set of stereotypes that one would associate with the subject – a prostitute, a cop, terrorists from across the border, a man with a past who is manipulated most of the time. To me, this was the slowest of the three novellas, but that’s only a relative measure, since you’d not be bored. The plot does keep moving, but there is a sense of predictability and cliches that seem to weigh it down. However, this is still a good “behind-the-scenes” look at the terrorists who hold a city to ransom and the law enforcers who try to prevent them from prevailing. (more…)

  • Currencies of hope

    In The Narratives of our lives, I had written about how, thanks to the advances of civilisation, many institutional narratives like religion, nation, culture etc have assumed increasing levels of importance in our lives, and how these (and our personal) narratives are probably our way of ensuring a sense of belonging. ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines‘, criticism on the concept of singularity notwithstanding, has convinced me on the cold, sanitised nature of evolution, so these days, I try to see what evolution’s play is, in these narratives.

    Thanks to a wine-induced pop philosophy conversation, I got thinking about theism and atheism. The epiphany (for me) was that they are just two sides of the same coin, and the currency was hope. Simply put, the foundation of the theist’s hope is God, and that of the atheist’s is the ability to determine his own future. ‘Our beliefs create the world we live in’, but across belief systems, hope is a critical ingredient for man’s survival. I realised that as long as we are the dominant species, hope has to hang around, or vice versa. By virtue of providing a common imaginary friend to a sufficiently high mass, religion not only addresses our need to belong, it also gives us hope. What each of us hope for is a very subjective thing, but collectively, it makes religion a really dominant narrative in many lives. When I thought about it, I recognised an even bigger force – money. (more…)

  • The Black Rabbit

    Am I the only one who finds it funny that Sunny has been replaced by a bunny in Indiranagar? Anyway, The Black Rabbit has been open for a while now, (map) and getting good reviews from all who had visited. That seemed a good enough carrot for us to ferry ourselves away from Koramangala’s ever growing dining options. They have valet parking, or you could just park on the lane parallel to 100 feet Road. They don’t take reservations during the weekend. Tables are easy to find around 7, but an hour later, you might have to wait.

    They have a pleasant outdoor sitting area, and after a little tour to take a look at the options inside, (a couple of floors) we figured we liked the outside just a little more. Thankfully there weren’t any smokers around either. There’s a fairly comprehensive liquor menu with a few house cocktails thrown in as well. We chose the Currylicious and the Cuba Libre. The first had gin, sweet & sour mix, and just the right amount of curry leaves to give it that extra zing. The latter was a refreshing mix of light rum, cola and lime juice.

    collage1 (more…)

  • Old bottles, new wine

    I recently contributed a column in Pitch on the role of mass media in building ecommerce brands. You can catch it here.