• Mind your language?

    Aachi Masala’s ad – Malayalam transliteration from Tamil – has been providing unintentional humour for a while now. It reminded me of Karthik’s post on Quartz a while back- “How brands are hurting themselves with pan-India “Hinglish” ads“. 

    The crux of the post is marketing effectiveness and how, by not communicating in the language the audience uses every day, the communication is losing its effectiveness and its ability to persuade. “Advertising is not mere communication. It’s persuasion” is a reasoning that’s hard to argue with. The common justification given my marketers are apparently “everyone knows Hindi” and “cost”. I wondered though – can marketers be that callous? Could there be other reasons? A brief thought exercise followed.  (more…)

  • The Mechanical (The Alchemy Wars, #1)

    Ian Tregillis

    What a thriller! The blurb on the cover has the high priest of epic fantasy – George R R Martin – calling the author ‘a major new talent’. The book indeed delivers to the compliment, and if the first volume of the series is any indication, it promises to be an extremely interesting ride.

    I am not really sure what genre the book would fall into – speculative fiction seems to be the safe choice. Given that it seems to be set in the early 1900s, and the title, I had thought steampunk, but somewhere in the book, the author alludes to steam power not having caught on, and relegated to the pile of forgotten technologies.

    There is definitely robotics and artificial intelligence involved – “Clakkers” having been developed in the 1700s. One of the principal characters – Jax, a Clakker – reminded me a lot of R. Daneel Olivaw from the Foundation series.
    Alternate history it is, because the Dutch are the major super power – the Empire, thanks to a “monumental breakthrough” in technology by Christiaan Huygens. They are locked in a stalemate confrontation with the French, whose court is riddled with internal politics. The Dutch seem to have mastered a technology that combines clockwork with alchemy, while the French have focused on applied chemistry.

    A Protestant vs Catholic tussle is also quite evident, complete with ‘church police’ in the form of a special kind of Clakkers called Stemwinders.

    The mechanics of the plot are racy and intriguing by itself. But the author takes it up a notch with philosophy – what constitutes sentience, and free will? The ideologies of Descartes and Spinoza play a significant role, with the significance and influence of the latter being an instrumental part of the narrative.

    It is quite amazing how the author has done justice to all these themes by integrating them into the plot. I am definitely hooked!

  • Lord of the Drinks

    Given the name, the ideal location would’ve been the Ring Road, but this one is in the Mahadevpura part of Middle Earth. Specifically, Phoenix Market City, and just so you don’t wander and get lost, its large signage is difficult to miss when you’re standing in front of the mall.

    We were early and got ourselves a table on the first floor that gave us a view of the mall’s front yard, and the road beyond. The table seemed to have started early, without us, and was already wobbling when we joined its company. We shifted to a less wobbly one. The seating is comfortable and the decor and the high ceiling lend the place a distinct look and feel.

    Since my regulars were unavailable, I opted for a Black Jack Whiskey, and D got herself a Cucumber & Basil Sangria. Black berry, ginger ale and lime juice actually worked well with the whiskey. I found D’s sangria a little too sweet for my liking, but since she didn’t agree, everything was fine!

    The food menu is elaborate and you’ll be spoilt for choice. We finally mixed cuisines and went with a Spicy Chicken Katsu and Kalonji Mutton kebabs. The first had shichimi and tonkatsu (spelled wrongly in the menu) sauce which made it perfectly spicy. They were also generous with some surprisingly good wasabi. The pepper malai added a zing to the mutton kebabs though the Malabar parantha (sic) was quite off.

    The Spicy Chettinad Chicken Pizza sounded promising and though it wasn’t spectacular, it did a fairly good job. For dessert, we had the Boozy Cakesicle – it’s difficult to get a combination of Old Monk and chocolate wrong, and we weren’t disappointed.

    The bill came to a little over Rs.32oo. The staff was friendly and prompt, and the playlist added a nice lounge feel to the ambiance. The price might be justified given the setting and location,  but there’s plenty of competition around – from Social to Shizusan.

  • #Bibliofiles : 2019 favourites

    Preface: Every 2 months, we buy 7 books. 6 that I choose, and one for D. 3 fiction, 3 non-fiction. From experience, 6 is my balance between Tsundoku (piling up without reading) and abibliophobia (running out of books to read). In keeping with the pattern, the list below has 6 books that I enjoyed this year, from the 36 I read. For a lark, the text has been limited to 66 words each. 😉 (more…)

  • The Evolution of Everything

    Matt Ridley

    For a while now, I have believed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is the most paradigm-shifting idea to have emerged from a human mind. On a related thought journey, I have also shifted from determinism to free will and back to determinism, all in a few years. This book connects both these thoughts, and is fundamentally an argument for evolution and against creationism. It argues that change is incremental and emergent and has a momentum all of its own, as opposed to the idea that it is directed by a person or a metaphysical force like God. (more…)