• A life less lived..

    Quite a while back, I remember writing about people who, despite their circumstances, continue to plod on through life, not giving up on it. I ended it with a quote from ‘The Hurt Locker’ by James ‘Everyone’s a coward about something.‘ I added that sometimes it’s life, and sometimes it’s death.

    I was reminded of this when I read about the Goa couple‘s suicide and another one closer home – a person I knew, if only for a few months – one which came as a rude shock. In the first case, Anand Ranthidevan and his wife Deepa took a very deliberate and seemingly well thought through decision to end their lives, planned down to the last detail. The label I’ve heard several times in conversations – real and virtual – is disturbed. I don’t subscribe to that, it’s probably the reaction from a society which just cannot accept that people without any troubles could really make a conscious decision to end their lives. I can actually identify with it because in conversations with friends, I’ve toyed with the idea of driving off a cliff at say 55-60, when a life has been lived fully.

    But just like the question in the earlier post – why people continued to plod on, I am interested in the flip side too. Why do people choose to end it? In situations where the individual is troubled by something – physical/emotional/under the influence of a drug, there is probably a point where he/she feels the problem cannot be solved, and chooses to end the journey.

    The Goa incident is different because the individuals were in their prime, at least in terms of age. When sports personalities, actors etc retire at the ‘right’ time, they sometimes use the ‘Why retire now vs Why don’t you retire now’ line. Can one think of life that dispassionately? Probably, if one knew what lay after, or if one didn’t care, or thought it wasn’t worth the effort. Or when one felt that one’s existence didn’t matter to anyone but the self. Or maybe there when there was no problem worth solving. What do you think?

    until next, life </span>

  • Weekly Top 5

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  • Dugout

    Dugout has been on our radar ever since we read about the buffet dinner. But it all came together only on a Sunday afternoon, despite it being located in our regular hangout area – Koramangala. On the Jyoti Nivas College Road, Dugout occupies the top 2 floors of the building that also has Oyster Bay on the ground floor. (map) The building has basement parking for most wheel combinations, and the parking lot next to Empire is nearby anyway.

    The restaurant is on the rooftop and the sports bar is on the floor below. The furniture is functional but we felt the ambiance could’ve been better – from the placement of tables to how the buffet was presented and even in terms of cleanliness. It probably looks much better during dinner time.

    The weekday buffet (lunch and dinner) is priced at over 300 and its weekend version, with live pasta, chaat counters etc, is priced roughly double of that. But we chickened out at the last minute and decided to go a la carte from this menu. The Cream of Chicken soup is not shown on the menu, but since it was part of the buffet, we asked for a /2. It required an extra helping of pepper, but was otherwise quite good. They did scrimp on the cream, but this was taken from the buffet spread, and that probably explains it.

     

    For the main course, we ordered a Diavola Pizza and a Creamy Tomato and Smoked Chicken Pasta (farfalle). The pasta was really good, and this time there was no stinginess on the cream. Despite the looks, the tomato flavour was subtle. In fact, it was a creamy spice (paprika?) that dominated. Awesome Indianised pasta. The pizza had chicken in the form of sausage, salami and pepperoni, though it seemed that the spicy tomato sauce mentioned had taken the Sunday off. But the thin crust, cheese and chicken did their job efficiently, so it turned out to be quite tasty, especially after we helped ourselves with the (diluted) Tabasco, HP sauce, chili flakes and the (doctored) olive oil.

    Since there were many dessert options in the neighbourhood, we skipped the desserts section. The service was quite helpful as they gave us a tour of the buffet and were quite prompt on delivering the order. All of the above cost us just over Rs.850. In all, this is a decent place to hang out, especially since there’s alcohol available too.

    Dugout, 77/A, Cygnus Chambers, 3rd Floor, JNC Road, Koramangala

  • Socialblood

    Socialblood has a noble aim of saving millions of lives by connecting blood donors and recipients. In conversation with co-founder Karthik Naralasetty.

     
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  • Clear Blue Oceans

    The last week, I encountered a few ‘brand response scenarios’ – two of them in which I was directly involved, and one where I was just an onlooker. Since this is an area where I also spend considerable time, as part of my job, I thought I’d share some perspectives too.

    The first one involved a hotel booking. After reading excellent reviews on TripAdvisor and skimming through a well made website, I decided to send them a mail. For 2 days I received no response. I noticed that they were on twitter, and send them an @ message. No response from there too, though they continued to update with promos and news shares. In the meanwhile, I also sent a mail to an alternative id given on the site. After more than a week, I got a response, by which time, I had already booked another place, which responded in less than 24 hours. A deal of about Rs.25000.

    We bought a new television from a retail chain after seeing an offer in the newspaper. As the regular story goes, they delayed (from their committed time) by more than 48 hours and (uncharacteristically and quite reluctantly) I made a huge scene at their outlet. In the meanwhile, I also posted on their FB wall (as a response to the image of the ad which had lured me) and sent them an @message on Twitter. The FB response took more than 48 hours and asked me to send a mail to a certain id. The product had been delivered by then, and I told them that. The next day, a tweet response followed, asking me what the problem was. 😐 No deal lost, but no love lost either.

    In ‘Who Cares?‘, Godin talks about exactly these kind of scenarios, and from there I quote, “Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.” The third scenario is an excellent example of this at work.

    Much has been written about it already, so you can read the posts, linked to below, to understand what the Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm ‘controversy’ was all about. This isn’t the first time I have regarded Cleartrip’s approach with admiration, and for good reason. This time, not only did they thank @jackerhack who pointed them to a blog post that trashed the new initiative, they also responded to that post and wrote a post of their own clarifying what they were trying to do, not just on the post itself, but also in the comments section where many people raised questions. Cleartrip has set such high benchmarks in this regard that all of the above are now standard fare expected from them, and I probably wouldn’t have written a post. 🙂 But once again, they went further. A week after this incident, a new post announced a redesigned feature that not only solved the problem the users had with it, but made it even better with more information. The result? An update on the very post that had complained in the first place. #win

    Cleartrip was listening, but then so are a lot of other companies. The difference here is caring enough to respond (externally) and creating an organisational will (internally) that works on a user problem and solves it. Not one time, but as a process.

    until next time, know response…