• Bombay Time

    Thrity Umrigar

    Bombay Time is like an old group photograph, in which each face can be zoomed to tell its own story. In this case, its a wedding where each character starts reminiscing about their lives so far, each life intertwined with others, and creating patterns, each story teaching its own lessons.
    While its set in Wadia Baug and among Parsis, the stories are more human than community specific and applies to any large group of people that grows up together and grows old together. Its a warm read that shows the paradox of human lives – its futility and its pricelessness, and lessons that can be learned only by living.

  • Vicky’s Tava Lounge

    I had seen it on my way to China Pearl and had bookmarked it then for a visit. For those not well versed with the Koramangala eatery landscape, here’s how to get there. When coming from the MG Road side, take a left from Forum, continue straight till you see a temple and a park right after it. Take a right (one way), if you don’t see a Samsung showroom on your left in the first 50 metres, you’re lost, repeat the entire process. If you do, proceed until you see a Unilet showroom and a ‘Cottons by Century’ on your right. Vicky’s is opposite the latter.

    The Tava lounge is on the second floor, and they also have a Continental cuisine joint on the floor above. Since we felt like having desi stuff, we decided to stop at the second floor. We were quite early, so we easily managed to get seats. Since there are many options on the same road, I think you can afford not to make reservations, the phone number is anyway not working 🙂

    Vicky’s has been in the restaurant business since 1935 in kolkata and Bangalore (Church Street and Hennur road, funny, never noticed the former), says the menu card. Meanwhile, the interiors have been done very well, with some Fab India seating also thrown in, for the Indian touch. In essence, the work lends the place a soothing cosy ambience. Three of the tables also offer a good view of the road below (always love to eat, watching life pass by) 🙂

    Since it was another rainy night, we decided to go for a Shorba, against the common practice of starters in desi dine outs. They have about 3 options, including one veg, we chose the Murgh Badami. It was extremely good, with some unique flavor, in addition to the almond. Even with a ‘by two’, the quantity was quite sufficient. They also offered us some complimentary munchies while we were waiting.

    The menu does not offer a range of choices for animal lovers, they have around 3 options for sea food, 4 for poultry and other meat each, but significantly more for the other kind of animal lovers – vegetarians. For the main course, we decided to try the Murg tava Pyaz, which seemed to be the chef’s special mix of spices, pickled onion and boneless chicken. Since we were told that it would be a thick gravy, we also ordered a Machi masala. To go with it, we ordered an onion kulcha and an aloo kulcha, followed later by a Naan. The food is simply amazing, with both the dishes competing for attention and share of gut. Although it looked like the quantities might only be just right, it turned out to be very filling in the end. The Murg has a very distinctive taste, and is a definite must-have. Meanwhile, they were also nice enough to get us some Chaas, on the house. The only snag was that, all this didn’t leave us enough space for dessert, though they have a fairly good mix of Indian as well as Continental stuff.

    All of the abvove cost us about Rs.650. This is definitely a good place to visit for some tasty North indian food in a pleasant, cosy setting.

  • Social Media Marketing/ DM 2.0

    There’s a very interesting post I read at WATBlog, interesting because while I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve not been able to put my finger on it correctly. Harshil, in his article has, and while he’s not answered his questions by way of solutions, the issues that have been raised are quite fundamental.

    To summarise, it’s mostly about the ‘abuse’ of social media, by treating the platform as well as the communication on it, as commodities. The current usage, if i read it right, is that a brand manager knows he has got a filtered audience thanks to say, a common interest, but the way he communicates to them, is just another rendition of what he does through say, dm. Which essentially means branded spam. And that doesn’t bode well for social media, definitely not in the long term.

    I agree, wholeheartedly. But I also feel that it speaks a lot about the times we live in. In this age, when attention spans are in a downward spiral, how many brand guys are willing to look at a long term view of brand equity? If buzz is the buzzword, is it a sustainable thing? Or is it seen as something which has to be milked for all its worth?

    Most companies have a very ROI way of looking at marketing. I’m not being judgemental here, in some cases it might be even justified. To simplify lets look at two scenarios – an old product and a new product. In the case of a new product, how many stakeholders would be willing to buy the story of a social media marketing strategy whose tangible returns are in question? In the case of an old product, the immediate question would be why bother with these fads when we have TV, print and Outdoor. Oh, you are digitally passionate? Fine, adapt it for some Orkut Shorkut also.

    The ideal scenario is when Social media marketing, and internet in general, would stop getting treated as another item in the adaptation checklist of a marketing campaign. because its not for campaigns, its for the brand and will span not just many campaigns, but perhaps many stages of its lifecycle also. When you have a group of passionate users (of a generic service, not even a brand) in say the ‘adventure’ space (that was mentioned in the Harshil’s post), the idea should not be to send a one way communication to them. Stop thinking of it as a messaging service, instead get them to share experiences, be a facilitator for their treks, provide free gear, get feedback, improve the product, become an active participating member in the community, figure out the long tails, make customised products for specific interests, make them feel so damn good about the product that they take ownership, become evangelists, and even recommend it to friends of their who may not even have made it to their social media group. Yes, every brand guy should ideally look at tangible gains, but are you willing to let go first, and learn some patience?

    Let me also add an uncomfortable angle to this, the human one. How many brand guys would think of being married to the brand beyond say, 5 years? (and thats optimistic). So, what looks better on the resume? A measurable short term activity that yielded a quantifiable response, or a strategic long term activity thats still in nascent stages?

    until next time, socialising ain’t easy

  • The Cybernauts

    Was reading a book a few weeks back – The Cybergypsies by Indra Sinha, which was a kind of autobiographical take on the early days of the internet, thats starting around the mid eighties. Its a tale of the early cybernauts, their addiction to the internet and how their real and virtual lives fought each other for attention and threatened to engulf each other.
    It took me back to the turn of the century, my early days online, when the net of Indra Sinha was well on its way to becoming the worldwide web it is today. It reminded me of the a/c internet cafes, visits to which were not so frequent because of the steep costs, and the dimly lit computer labs in the university which had only the unreliable vsnl connection.The days of IRC and chats with unknown angels and merlins and superboys, the arcade games, the imaginary worlds created among friends across geographies, in a way, it was almost the kind of life the early cybernauts led.
    And when you were asked what exactly you spent hours in front of a computer for, you really couldn’t explain what made it so worthwhile. The days of usa.net and eudoramail and theglobe.com, names which have bitten cyberdust quite a whileback. I still have a friend from those days, almost a decade of only virtual friendship, well, almost, since she sent me flowers for my wedding 🙂
    And then came the initial days of blogging, and friends made on rediffblogs, people whom I did not know really, but with whom i shared thoughts, and rants. And, that, i guess where virtuality started ending and reality started taking over. There were blog meets and the imaginary worlds created carefully gave way to the cafes of the real world.
    It took a turn with orkut and co, where the networks were used to get in touch with people you already knew in your real life. And these days, on twitter, i meet a few who i used to know during the rediff days, but gone are the days of anonymity, for my linkedin profile would readily tell people who i was in the real world.
    i miss those days, because there was only communication and a conversation among equals then. No virtual celebrities, no social media experts, no snobs, everything was virtual, your imagination and thoughts were the only thing that mattered, virtuality was a shell you could retreat to when the real world became too unbearable. Its different now, virtuality and reality are too enmeshed, and as with everything else in the world, behind every virtual interaction, there is a real intention. This must be Cybernauts 2.0

    until next time, really virtual

  • India Still Shining

    I’d written a post earlier on local sites. Happened to come across another one yesterday. Its called indiashines.com.

    To summarise what the PR note had to say about the site, the need gap identified is a social network plus site which understands the “diverse language, cultural and regional requirements” needs and one that’s therefore customised to Indian needs. Hmm, so what all does it offer? The typical social networking offering of connecting with friends and family and sharing photos, videos etc along with privacy tools, a classifieds (including jobs), options to customize home pages with regional weather, photos, jobs, maps and news. And of course, how can anyone not have blogs? 🙂 They’re saying exactly what you’re thinking – “YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, Craigslist, Flickr, Monster.com combined with the Weather Channel on one website” and localised. And wait, recommend it to friends, and you’ll get a rupee per friend.

    Few small things that I thought were well done –  it automatically took me to a Bangalore page, but with the option to change my city, and thats quite a lot of cities thats listed there. The weather, the map, the profiles are all bangalore. They have done a very decent job on the news, by taking feeds from sites as varied as Techtree, the Hindu, Exchange4Media, HospitalityBizIndia and all Bangalore specific news. All of these worked for Agartala too, so its a pretty good job.

    The photos, music and videos are a bit dicey- though it changes with cities, the content somehow doesnt match. eg. Tamil movie trailers in Agartala. The classifieds and ‘deals’ haven’t been worked on yet because irrespective of city, apun sirf Mumbai dikhayega!! Thats on the homepage, though. Once inside, it shows local content.

    The community part is very interesting. A small digression, I was able to navigate inside quite easily even without logging in, and that includes browsing profiles. Thankfully, I wasn’t allowed to judge whether they were hot or not (yup, its prominently displayed in the profile) without logging in. The layout and items inside (testimonials, upcoming birthdays etc) reminds me a lot of Orkut. But hey, they even have a ‘Poke me’ button. But wait, its not just all ‘Add to shopping cart’ from other sites eg. something very interesting i noticed – imagine your blogger account being connected to Orkut and posts coming in the newsfeed in your profile? Thats something these guys have done. Very interesting.

    Now, while you have groups, the listings and ratings feature in Yahoo Local is not to be found here. But a mashup of this and Yahoo Local (hey, no harm in thinking of possibilities) would create that locality based social networking phenomenon that I’d want to see. Who do you think has better chances at getting there first (humour me, just assume they want to), the above mentioned entities or Tolmolbol?

    until next time, tol mol aur bol 🙂