From the category archives:

Indian Culture

Hacking Life – the India Way

February 7, 2012

Hacking Life – the India Way is a presentation I made at Microsoft SCS 2012 in NYC in January.  Here’s an introduction by Stuart: In this presentation Dina makes a nice case viewing “hacking” as a generative construct for thinking, and an organizing principle for life … hacking life and living … rather than it being just [...]

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Convo Kids 2012 – A Journey of Discovery

December 23, 2011

Am quite excited that we’ve finally launched this project!  In short, it is a year long research and immersion program with 12-21 year olds in India.  We’re really looking for 5-6 sponsors  - to help kick it off the ground – personally I believe that one of the key benefits (apart from the actual understanding [...]

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Gems from my maid – she keeps me real

September 24, 2011

3 random gems from my wise maid this morning.: Gem 1: We were discussing an imminent death in one of the TV soaps. She says:  “People die only when they get a better role & more money. Wish that happened in real life”!  Karma redefined? Gem 2: [[Warning: this is a graphic one engaging all your senses!]]. She burps [...]

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Me? Free. You? Not!!

August 14, 2010

And still, it’s Independence Day in India tomorrow. (Today is Pakistan’s Independence Day – reaching out to all those devastated by the Pakistan floods.). Our media is full of the obligatory ‘cliched’ thoughts on freedom – corruption, poor governance, terrorism, naxalism, separatism, communalism, overpopulation, poverty etc et etc – ably supported by commercialization of the weekend, with obese [...]

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Texting and Learning

April 11, 2010

My new Yoga teacher speaks no English. He’s young, and comes from a small town in the North. He’s moved to Mumbai to make a living. And still, he communicates via SMS so well, and has evolved his own form of English. I asked him how come he doesn’t text in Hindi, he says its [...]

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#TEDxMumbai – my quick reflections

April 3, 2010

I had a lot of fun today at TEDxMumbai. Was great to catch up with old friends, and made some new ones. The speakers were quite interesting and moving especially when they were ‘presenting’ through the narrative of story; some of them really worthy of being on any main TED stage. I tweeted that I [...]

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Gogola to Googlle – yet another Google line extension in India??

January 3, 2010

Hehe. From Gogola ice creams to Googlle Institute of Software Studies, where you can even get a special Googlle certification! I wonder if Googlle Institute came before or after the real Google’s 11th anniversary celebratory logo on 27 November, 2009??

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Will it kill us?

September 5, 2009

Leon Benjamin argues that command and control organisation is actually killing people, in a post titled “How public companies are killing their own employees”. “I was working in Bangalore with Tesco a few years ago. I remember having conversations with successful upwardly mobile young Indian technologists about new houses, cars, holidays.  I pointed out that [...]

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The old, the not-so-old, and many facets of the new

August 31, 2009

I took this picture of Dhanaji Dongre, the farmer we visited during our Nokia Life Tools immersions, on my test N97 (which has a pretty cool camera but a lousy touch-screen esp. when compared to the iPhone). He is taking a picture of the crew on his own little camera phone, who in turn, are [...]

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Gogola – Google’s line extension in India???

July 9, 2009

Hehe – saw this in Bandra today. I like the detailing – the search bar says “Golas made from mineral water ice”; the address bar “httt://www.gogola.in/”. Even the status bar at the bottom isn’t spared! Golas are India’s answer to ice slush, very colourful, tangy or sickly sweet and just delightful especially in the heat.

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India Elections’09 2.0: did online campaigns & social media work?

May 19, 2009

The verdict is out. An article at Business Standard (link shared with me by @aparnaray who writes Newsmericks and who encouraged me to blog my thoughts) called Impassive Indians reveals findings from a study conducted by IMRB International on the impact of the political campaigns on youth in India. What’s evident from this study is [...]

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Mumbai voted the Congress in, despite 26/11

May 16, 2009

Why? It’s an interesting question. One raised by Harini Calamur through a tweet on Twitter -”#indiavotes09 – 26/11 obviously did not impact the elections in Mumbai. Congress clean sweep!” My hypotheses on why that happened: Perhaps because I feel that the people of Mumbai do not want more fear and hatred and negativity being imposed [...]

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India Votes 2009 – First Thoughts …

May 16, 2009

The lazy blogger in me taking the short-cut and pasting my tweets on the election results here. I am thrilled at the UPA victory and more, about the nature of the mandate from the people, for several reasons that I will try and summarize here: 1. Indian voters are smarter than we think – they [...]

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Voted.

May 1, 2009

I did. Got to the Municipal School at Khar Danda at 2.45 pm (my registration is still at my Carter Road address) and it was complete chaos. All we had with us was a little chit (printed with my name and address handwritten on it) which had my serial number on it – 793, but [...]

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