From the category archives:

Indian Culture

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 on [...]

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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 seem [...]

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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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Bangalore Slums

February 5, 2009

Responding to a query at the Anthrodesign group, I collated this list of projects/resources on slums in Bangalore. Does anyone know of any other projects or research being done in this area? Do let me know. Thanks!
- Book: Living in India’s Slums : A Case Study of Bangalore/edited by Hans Schenk. Delhi, Manohar, 2001, 311 [...]

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Why I am deleting comments

November 30, 2008

I’m getting a huge load of comments around the politics of religion, of division and hate at my last few posts on the Mumbai terror attacks. While religion and politics may have a lot to do with the state of our world today, my blog’s not the forum to air or feed these divisions. I [...]

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… and then there was Light

November 28, 2008

Picture source – The Big Picture. More amazing pictures on the site, many are visceral and disturbing.  Description of this image: “Schoolchildren hold candles during a vigil held in memory of the victims of Wednesday’s shootings in Mumbai, in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad November 27, 2008. Elite Indian commandos fought room to room [...]

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