• Heal the world.. in 140 characters

    This week, Twitter has a rendezvous with reality. While examples of Twitter based real aid abound – Twitter has helped build a well, provided help to an abused woman and her child,  there’s a cool Social Action and TwitterFeed mashup, this is the first (that i have come across) organised global attempt to use the Twitter network to make a tangible difference. Twestival, if you haven’t heard already. February 12th 2009, in your city. Well, at least one near you.

    On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

    You can take part by attending the twestival, uploading or buying music at twestival.fm, taking part in the tee design competition or donating. The Twestival site gives you all the details, including the person in your city organising it. Here’s Bangalore, for example. Mashable has a good post on the New York version. Twestival is gathering steam as you read – LiveEarth is now the global broadcast and video partner.

    While this is a great attempt to make a tangible difference at a local level, I’m sure that with entities like Twitpay and TipJoy, we’ll find ways to overcome geographical constraints and connect our social currency with real currency. Meanwhile, on a tangential note, there’s something I came across on Twitter – twipple (i heard that naughty thought :p ) (the plan of action via adrants)

    a microblogging cross between Simon Says and Pay it Forward. Once a critical mass starts following @twipple, the latter will deploy “short, fun, positive tweet instructions to do something kind in public,” like smile at a stranger, give money to a street musician, or whistle your favourite tune.

    While I do write about brands and the business conundrums of social media, I firmly believe that the true power of this phenomenon is in the human network we are creating. People, who I trust will not just use the medium for self serving purposes, but also to leave our world a better place.

    until next time, 140 characters can make a difference

  • The French Quarter bistro

    Flanked by music (Planet M) and coffee (Barista), The French Quarter bistro is located on the 100 ft Road in Indiranagar. When coming from the Koramangala side, this is immediately after the CMH Road-100 ft Road junction on the left.

    We called to reserve in advance, done smoothly, with a casual “see you in the evening, manu” thrown it at the end. There went the stereotype of French snobbery I had in mind.

    The flyover construction has left the area in a bit of a mess, but parking for two wheelers, thankfully, is not a problem. Though we didn’t find a maitre’d like the one in Spiderman 3, we were allowed to choose a table that we found comfortable. Nice. The ambience is very relaxing, high ceilings with a couple of palm trees, soft music, and bistro style comfortable seating. One is bound to linger here for longer than the food warrants. And while we waited for the food, they served bread and butter, and replenished it a few times too.

    We started with a French Onion soup , which is “beef consomme with cheese croutons”. Its a thin soup and a milder flavour than I’d anticipated, but still good enough. For the main course, in addition to the items on the menu, there’s also the Plat du jour, that you can find on the blackboard. Though all reviews stated that it was a salad + entree combination, there wasn’t a salad to be found. I’m still curious.

    So, D ordered a “Pan seared red snapper in lemon butter sauce served with herb rice” (regular menu) and I ordered a “Chicken a’la King, with herb rice”. We experimented a bit with Tabasco sauce and thankfully it turned out fine. They serve moderate portions and despite appearances, they’re quite filling. I was hoping to have some chocolate crepes, but unfortunately they didn’t have it, and strangely, I wasn’t tempted by the chocolate mousse cake. I confess I’m a bit worried about that.

    Before the billing, they ask you if they can include Rs.10 – to be given to Akshaya Patra (a cause for underprivileged children), a very good initiative. All of the above (no mineral water) cost us just over Rs.800, including a service charge of 10%. Extremely pleasant service, great setting and decent food. Definitely worth a visit.

    The French Quarter bistro, 298, 100 ft Road, Indiranagar. Ph: 080 42171998

    Menu at Zomato

  • An idea called Home

    …and sometimes you turn back to look at your past, it looks right back at you, there’s a smile of understanding, and you decide to move on…

    As i looked around the room, i could see the images flash – hunting for the missing single white uniform sock which was mocking me from somewhere on the stand,  climbing up on multiple stools to nail that Ash poster on to the wall, numbering new cassettes and arranging them on the cupboard shelf,  skeptically viewing the computer when it was brought in, and then spending hours browsing, adjusting the angle of lying down on the bed to watch TV in the other room while pretending to be studying, gazing fondly at those hard earned trophies and remembering the exploits that earned them….an almost endless stream…

    There has been at least one occupant since then, but ‘I’ can still be found there, after all i spent close to a decade there… memories buried amongst books, clothes, and all those assorted things that are part of the everyday existence… forgotten heroes… part of a story that once used to be called home…

    As i left the room, there was an uneasiness that gnawed at me… it happened during every goodbye, but somehow this time I felt it was different.. and a few hours later, as i opened the door of our current place of residence in Bangalore, and gazed around in affection at the familiar settings, I sensed an understanding of the uneasiness, and remembered the words from ‘Garden State’ that I tend to quote often

    You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone
    … You’ll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. I mean it’s like this rite of passage, you know.
    … I miss the idea of it. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.

    ….for even as you smile in understanding, there’s the pain of moving on, of losing touching with the ‘you’ who once were, of acknowledging the paradox of Time – which caused you to change, and the room to remain relatively unchanged..almost frozen in time….perhaps a keeper of memories that you couldn’t find space for…

    until next time, a room with a point of view

  • Space

    James A Michener

    ..the final frontier. To me, space has been an abstract, with a few perspectives molded by the science fiction I read. with this work, albeit a novel, James Michener gave me a lot of tangible snippets of how humans working in this wonderful scientific field have evolved over time.
    From the time of the Second World War, when creating rockets that would destroy opposing forces and cities was the priority to a nation’s obsession to place a man on the moon, during the Cold War, to NASA and later scientists who grapple with manned and unmanned explorations and the possibility of life outside earth, this book, as with all of Michener’s works, is one vast canvas.
    And mirroring, and perhaps concluding a debate in the book, (man as a measure of success..and interest) Michener uses the lives of the politicians, astronauts and the scientists working on the missions to show the universal nature of man’s self doubts, his trials, tribulations, joys, sorrows, successes and failures. Personal battles – with self and others, mingle with professional clashes to make the story..human. A few real life figures like Sagan and Asimov get a mention in this work of fiction.There are some wonderful hat tips to some excellent works in sci fi.
    In tackling Space, Michener also draws attention to other profound things – evolution, religion, culture and gives some amazing perspectives on questions that each of us carry within us. A wonderful read, that re-created the awe and splendour that the cosmos invokes, and reminded me of the fundamental paradox of human existence – the preciousness in finite time and the meaninglessness, in the infinite.

  • Bollywood.. a jungle out there..

    The best line on Chandni Chowk to China would have to be this one on Twitter by Ramesh Srivats.  It said, “I think Warner Brothers should change their name. They never warned us about CC2C”

    That, and the launch of two (more) Bollywood centric websites – CineCurry, by Percept, and Big Oye, by well, BIG, and two posts which talked about the usage of the web for marketing a couple of  ‘Coming soon’ Bolly films – Delhi 6 ( by Karthik, who also uses this to give a few good thoughts on how to use social media to promote film music), and Dev D (by Mayank, who talks about all the ways in which the movie has been marketed), and a conversation I had recently, set me thinking. Not on the marketing of movies on the web or social media, because there are quite a few tools out there, all/some of which can be used in tandem depending on the content and intended audience (Dev D’s work is a great example, replace it with Devdas, and you’ll see how it won’t work), but more on what I call the ‘stage of conversation’.

    The analogy that got used in the conversation was quite simple – long before the Foodworld/Spencer/Spar/Star etc genre of retail came into existence, there were the local kirana stores. They were functionally quite fine, and also had the extra perk of a personal touch. I am not sure how they have fared post the arrival of the big brands, but from a subjective experience, I prefer the big branded outlets these days. There’s some convenience factor that plays a role in this choice, as well as the experience itself. Now it could be said that the choice depends on a lot of other things – geography, for example.

    But what was the analogy for? Bollywood content websites. Along with the names I mentioned earlier, there also exist portals, like Bollywood Hungama, Glamsham etc, community driven ventures like PFC and individual blogs like Blogical Conclusion and WOGMA (which have their die hard followers. eg. er, me ) There is a plethora of content, good or bad is a subjective thing. You’d see everything from the kirana store to the branded store there.

    Now, the net equalises a lot of things, like the geography, but in terms of content, it is not an equaliser, since the big guys can bring in resources there that a smaller entity will find difficult to scale up to. There is also a level of synergy  that the larger entities can achieve (more easily) with others in the value chain, ( eg. Big Oye has rentals taking you to Big Flix, and a ticket booking tab) and in essence, make it a sort of one stop shop.

    So, with most films having a site, and the virtual Bollywood malls, and the groups on social networks, and the microblogging on Twitter, and the smaller specialist sites, is there a long enough tail (and time) that will allow all of these to co exist? If there is, what will comprise the large head? Is there any other news vertical you can think of, where such a scenario exists?

    until next time, content might be king, but…