• Collective bargain

    “The way they speak about dinosaurs now, a few years later, that’s how they will talk about the mill workers”, says a character in City of Gold, a Hindi film by Mahesh Manjrekar, adapted from a play by Jayant Pawar. Its based on the Great Bombay Textile Strike. A decent movie, with some great performances and with its share of stark realty, though parts of the second half had a Bollywood melodrama hangover. I guess the response at the multiplexes (many of which are ironically what the mills gave way to) wasn’t really great either. But it was a story that had to be told.

    The subject has interested me earlier too. To be precise, in 2005, my last official trip to Mumbai. The office was at Peninsula Center, and when I looked out through the windows, I could see a few chimneys. I wondered enough to come back and read up a bit. I was curious because amidst the RGV underworld flicks and the contemporary images I had of Mumbai, this seemed to be a part of history that had never figured in conversations. A legacy that seemed to be buried in the collective consciousness.

    A single movie might not really be enough to cover the individual lives that were affected, though it does try to portray a microcosm. But as the line in Frost/Nixon goes “You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot.”

    Though it is said in a different setting, and context, the connect I sensed was legacy. How a person is perceived by a later generation. Artists have their paintings, actors/directors/crew have their movies, politicians, sportsmen/women have their auto/biography/memoirs, authors have their books, musicians have their music, they have a better chance at being remembered by a larger number of people, long after they’re gone, a better chance than us, the commons. A  collective’s legacy would be the place and time they lived in  – the larger picture, their collective actions, the people who became popular, the events that shaped the future. What happens if a collective chooses not to remember, or chooses to remember only parts? Who does it matter to then?

    until next time, decadent chronicles

  • Oh, numb!

    While I was handling the high frequency burping that signifies the completion of the meal above, my phone rang. It was an ex-colleague, but more importantly, dear friend and a fellow mallu. I picked it up, expecting a loud ‘Happy Onam’ from the other end. She was working, and wanted a person’s number. I wished her a happy onam, and without missing a breath, got a “Oh, I forgot” response.

    That perhaps typifies this generation of living-outside-Kerala Malayalis. That’s a generalisation, of course, and a huge one at that, because thankfully, I know many of my fellow Keralites who religiously go home every Onam, come what may, and have a blast. But as every Onam passes, I can feel it slipping away.

    Ten days of holidays – a cousin reunion, the hustle and bustle of a sadya preparation, to a day taken off from college to visit a relative’s house for the sadya, to figuring out which new movies are being shown on the telly for Onam and scanning the papers for a restaurant that serves a good sadya, obviously it wasn’t just me who grew up.

    I suspect that it might not get any better, and as a statement in Malayala Manorama went,  I might even get used ‘eating a sadya in the mind’. This generation still has its (mostly office) pookkalams and the sadya. For those that come later, the sadya will perhaps just be a meal by itself.

    until then, happy onam 🙂

    PS: The legend, the Ram Gopal Varma version, and the tag.

  • Rendezvous

    A rendezvous that took quite some time, though its just a few minutes away from home. Rendezvous Euro Restaurant is on 80ft Road, right before Barista. Here’s a map. Since there are enough side lanes around, parking is not likely to be a big problem.

    Its more a friendly neighbourhood place than anything you’d come halfway across town for. But that also means that whenever I’ve passed by, I’ve seen it completely packed. We reached there a bit early, a little before 7.45. That, and the rains meant that we were among the first to arrive. But by 8.30 it was getting filled fast.

    Rendezvous has a warm dimly lit ambiance, with some good retro music in the background. Nothing elaborate in terms of decor and furniture, but neat and a great place to sip a beer and watch Koramangala life passing by. The menu is mostly Continental, with some Chinese options too. You can take a look here.

    The rain meant that we had to start with a soup. D and I shared a Mexican soup pot and my sis asked for a Cream of Chicken. Our soup, though described as a broth, was quite thick and creamy , and had salami, chicken and boiled vegetable with some cheese, that added a little zing to it.

    We skipped the starters and the Chinese options and got busy trying to choose from a range of steaks, pastas and burgers. I asked for a Chicken Crepes, D ordered a Peppered Chicken Pasta and my sis ordered a ‘Gold and Red’ burger. The Crepes were conspicuous by their absence, but the tangy mushroom sauce, and the spicy mashed potato ensured that I wasn’t left too disappointed.

    The missing component continued in D’s Peppered pasta, so D did a DIY with the pepper on the table, but apparently it still remained bland.So this turned out to be a disappointing choice.

    My sis’ Gold and Red burger turned out to be a mixed bag. The Gold half, which had cheese and salami was apparently good, but the Red half, with a cold chicken salad was given a cold shoulder. She also felt that the salad may have been her age. I was the only one not complaining much. No comments on the lines of ‘you eat anything’ will be tolerated. Hmmph. I was too stuffed for dessert, though there was even a marble cake, and the others weren’t too sure what would land up on the table.

    All of the above cost us just over Rs.700. The service was quite prompt. I think it serves as a good hangout joint, so this goes into a no gain, no pain category.

    Rendezvous, 15/1, 80 ft Road, Koramangala 4th Block Ph: 25631177

    Menu at Zomato

  • The path to transparency

    Google Me is already showing great results, even before its launch. Maybe its the fear of whatever-it-is-going-to-be that has made Facebook release a couple of tools a few days back. 😉

    Facebook Live (via), a live video streaming facility, with features like a live feed, and ‘ask a question’. More interesting is the app that will allow regular Fan Page administrators to add this to their page and the embedding on other platforms – Twitter, Google Buzz etc. But what I’d really like is for Facebook to get into proper video distribution- create an app that will replicate what the Justin.tv and Ustream apps for Facebook achieve. So brands/organisations can stream everything from say, earning calls to new store openings to special brand ambassador promos and so on. Think of the engagement possibilities.

    Notes. I have never found Notes very interesting at all – maybe because I blog a lot. So, except for the occasional note, or using it to get the blog feed into Facebook, my usage has been limited. For long, I’ve been asking why Facebook doesn’t allow me to tag Pages that I need not necessarily have ‘Like’d (in the Facebook way) , but would want to still tag in a status. So I couldn’t do say, “visited the @Wrangler store” as a status unless I ‘Like’ the Wrangler Page. I still can’t, but now I can do this in Notes, and I can add photos too. As ‘Location’ looms, it’ll be interesting to see how brands deal with this.

    Even as the opportunities for brands to engage increase, I can’t help but feel that its also moving them to some inevitable levels of transparency. The good part about all this for brands, though Facebook may not be the ideal way to do it, is a certain accountability that it creates for people who create content and comment on the brand, thanks to identity.

    A few weeks back, Surekha, Mahendra and I had a good commenting session over ‘The Age of Transparency‘ on Reader, an article that talks about the implications of transparency on individuals, society, government, companies. While we’re still far away from a stage when transparency is a default and ubiquitous feature for people, brands and organisations, it might well be a reality in a few years. Like Surekha mentioned in her comment, it wouldn’t do any good for a brand to engage only because it can’t afford not to, but then the question is, will brands/organisations see the trends in the evolution of these tools and more importantly society in general, and be objective enough to start rewiring themselves? Or maybe the ‘forced’ presence and the opportunities that new tools provide will act as a good catalyst for the required change.

    until next time, anonymous comments are fine too 🙂

    Bonus Read: Kapil Ohri’s well researched article on Indian brands on Facebook, (and my earlier post on social media and the scale of organisations) 🙂

  • leg godt

    Sapphire (toys- retail chain) opened a store in Koramangala recently, and lies on my route to practically anywhere. That means that giant Lego display and I stare at each other almost everyday now.

    Lego and I go back more than a couple of decades. As always, no age jokes, okay? 1984, to be precise. Remember, I wrote about it in ‘The Foreign Object‘? Like I’d mentioned then, the loot from dad’s US stay was rationed out over a long period of time. Perhaps the only part that was exposed completely in the beginning were Lego sets.

    The first set had arrived by a special package even before my Dad or the suitcase reached Indian shores. This was a trailer set, literally, and included a motorcycle too. But the real treasure was the lengthy catalog that came along with it. I quickly set about marking the ones that I wanted and sent it back to Dad.

    Now, I suspect that my Dad, from whom I have inherited my skills, being the kind of shopper for whom a ‘milk and bread’ trip to the local grocery store is a mammoth effort, because of the number of choices that present itself, must’ve extrapolated my interest, seen a huge range of Lego sets, and decided that nothing served as gifts to my cousin set (both sides of the family) better, though the age bracket was anywhere from 2 months to a decade. That meant that when he returned, the suitcase had a disproportionate range of Lego sets, and I wangled, via sulks/sobs/means of affection, the right of first choice, and a cancellation of the original, carefully made, catalog choices .

    In later days, I began to wonder whether it was a choice I might’ve been happy without, because each set had something I really wanted, and despite my arsenal of negotiating tactics, I wasn’t allowed to open the boxes and ‘exchange’ pieces. After various levels of filtering, I finally kept a digger-tipper combo, a medieval catapult, and a medieval castle set. My medieval set soldiers only had swords, shields and spears, and I hated missing out on the one with bows and arrows, but it was all about box sizes and number of pieces.

    Though I was a stickler for not mixing up the pieces in storage, they were allowed to be social and mingle during playtime, and the four sets often gave rise to space crafts which were launched with catapults. (#2 kind of behaviour here) The magnum opus, thanks to a Star Trek/ Space Station Sigma overdose, was a space station, with motorbikes, driven by medieval soldiers, and defended with swords and shields. The tiny spears were also taken to school regularly as part of a superhero costume – they fitted between fingers nicely and could be pushed out using the palm for super-punches. Of course once the punch landed, the spear was pushed back and the palm hurt, so it was discontinued.

    Much later, the Lego sets were passed on to cousins who were more than a decade younger. The stories remained, pushed back, as a life was built. And these days, when I see the Lego display, I am tempted to go in and check out the sets, maybe they have those Star Wars sets here now. Wonder how much they cost now, never had to wonder about that, back in 1984.  The price of growing up.

    until next time, toys are us 🙂

    PS: Lego owes its name’s origin to leg godt, Danish for play well