…between the KTs and the Tams to see who gets more offended by Germaine Greer. The Tams, bless them, have already been insulted that Germaine Greer has elevated a mere Mangalorean to the master race. The contest can start properly once Mangaloreans get wild at Germaine Greer confusing one of them for people who couldn’t make a decent fish curry to save their life. We can keep score by seeing who burns more state transport buses. And if Crocodile Hunter fans want to join in, all the more fun.
I Propose A Contest
January 19, 2007
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Made Up Funda of the Day
January 19, 2007This Tam kid once went to her grandma’s house. The grandma got her some food, but the kid didn’t like it and threw a tantrum. The kid’s mother scolded him, telling him not to disturb his grandmother. The kid then said something. There was a famous singer staying at the grandma’s house at the time. She heard what the kid said, got inspired, and wrote a song based on it which then became famous. What did the kid say?
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Mallus Have a Sense of Humour
January 18, 2007I suppose you need one if you’re getting married. I got this remarkable wedding invite as a forward (the wedding itself is long over, so nothing will come out of gatecrashing).
You’ll need to click through to the flickr link to read it properly.
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Farmers Paid More
January 18, 2007Today’s Business Standard:
Good stuff. And the fact that it happened before farmers there started commiting suicide is even better.
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I Spoke Too Soon
January 17, 2007Three months ago, I blogged about Airtel not coming up with anything new, and wondered if they’d been left behind in the innovation race. Very embarassing, considering all that they’ve been doing the past month.
First up, there’s the Songcatcher service. The technology was invented in Europe a year or two ago, if I recall correctly. At that time, the application being talked about was to identify a song on the radio you liked. The service would identify it and send you an SMS with the names of the song and the artist. Not really a great business model.
But along comes Airtel, and uses it to selll ringback tones, allowing customers to skip all that painful SMSing or navigating through menus. Bam! You’ve got a commercially viable business model, and the technology finally meets the publilc. Awesome. And Airtel is so good at this- looking for existing technology. adapting it to the local environment, and bringing it to market.
Next, there’s this Business Standard report about Airtel tying up with SBI to turn mobile phones into virtual Kisaan Credit Cards. Lovely again. They’ve had a tieup with ICICI bank to implement credit card on/ through mobile for some time now, but that has just been a test project in Mumbai and Delhi. This takes it to the next level. Of course, it would really explode if the RBI regulation that restricts mobiles from being used as debit cards was removed.
And finally, today’s Business Standard article has more on the payments front. Airtel’s entered a global alliance to develop a platform for remittances over mobile phones.
The (mobile) payments business is so exciting these days that it deserves a blogpost to itself. Heck, I’d love to make a presentation on it the next time there’s a BarCamp in South India. But until then, this will have to do.
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Guru
January 17, 2007Now as a free-market fundamentalist I am of course expected to go on about how the fact that Mani Ratnam has made a pro-business, anti-license-permit-raj movie is the best thing about Guru.
But in all honesty, I can’t. The cinematography, Vidya Balan, and the music are so stellar that the ideology of the movie pales in comparison. A review can do the story justice- but it’ll never be able to portray how awesome the visuals are. The shot of the tram passing between Guru and Sujatha, the ‘Shubh Labh’ over the door of Guru’s chawl house, the sea of black umbrellas rising in protest at the shareholder meeting, the red saris at the railway platform- these and a hundred other meticulous little shots make the movie a treasure.
And Vidya Balan too. Her character doesn’t advance the story a bit, but she takes what little screen time she’s got and makes it shine. Aishwarya Rai is painful in contrast. She’s set up to be one maajor wilful chick, running away from home and all,but let’s face it, she’s too squeaky to be spunky.
As for the free market upholding, I actually am pessimistic about the thing.
For starters, the conclusion was a little too pat. Guru makes a big speech, and the opposing forces surrender. Ir reminded me of the made-for-TV Spider Jerusalem movie:
On the other hand, showing things realistically- months of sticking it out and squeezing through all available legal loopholes- doesn’t really make for dramatic cinema.
But more than pat resolutions, what makes me gloomy is that there are so many idiots ot there whose takeaway from the movie will be that the only way a business succeeds is by breaking all the laws.
Still. Some people will still get the real message. That no matter what stupid laws the state erects, economic freedom will find a way to triumph. First they ignore you. Then they call you mad. Then they fight you. And then you win.
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The Lighter Side of Linguistic Chauvinism
January 16, 2007Oh, this is hilarious. A couple of months ago, when I first landed up in Bangalore, some bugger had been putting up Tamil nationalist graffiti all over Bangalore. The two main graffiti were ‘Read sacred Thirukural first and then Da Vinci Code’ and ‘India recognise Tamil Eelam – an Hindu country’. Nobody knew who the hell was doing it, and the local Tamil Sabha or suchlike said that they wern’t behind it, but that they were in full agreement and sympathy with the mysterious graffitist. Actually when it comes to reading the Thirukural before ‘The Da Vinci Code’ even I am in agreement with the chap. But I digress.
The twist in the tale came today when I went for lunch. One of the graffitos was actually right opposite the Adigas I go to. And some enterprising KT1 had altered it to his own purposes- by scraping off ‘Tamil’ and writing ‘Kannada’ in its place.
I’m still trying to decide whether this is unmitigated brilliance or unmitigated cheapness. On the one hand, making your regional and linguistic rivals2 do all the dirty work, and then making only the bare minimum changes so that your pet political cause is advertised instead should be applauded for its audacity. On the other hand, if you’re serious about your own nation state, resorting to such half measures is not the done thing. You should be whitewashing the first offending graffito and then writing your own. Especially because in this case the scraping hasn’t been done perfectly, and the ‘L’ of ‘Tamil’ is still visible, making the whole thing look like ‘Kannal Nation’. Which actually puts me in mind of ‘Kannalanae‘.
1‘Kannada Types’, for the uninitiated.
2The KT-Tam conflict is over too many issues to mention, but the most prominent ones are the distribution of Cauvery river water, the proper size of a coffee tumbler, whether Bangalore or Chennai is the quizzing capital of India3, and whether Rajnikanth is KT or Tam.
3In their hearts, the Tams know that it is Bangalore. Which is why they want to annex it.
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Juvenile Labour
January 16, 2007
The photo was taken at the Fabmall outlet in Garuda Mall. There was a holiday for Sankranti, and a bunch of mothers were shopping. Their kids weren’t as taken with the delights of organic jams and cotton kurtis, and amused themselves by setting themselves up as meeter-greeters on both sides of the door. Customers coming in would receive ‘Hello, sir!’, and people leaving would get ‘Goodbye Ma’am!’ or ‘Thank You, Come Again!’
Eventually they got bored with that and started a furious tug of war with the door as a rope.
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What I Read Today
January 15, 2007Premium Milk and Construction Workers: ‘Brands, like water, find their own level’. I love this line.
Horror and Freedom: Unmitigated fundaes. You know, this is probably why Professer Myers is left-liberal.
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How CEOs RG their Mumbai employees
January 15, 2007A friend was in town this weekend to quit his job (he was based out of Bangalore, but had to give his exit interview and return his laptop in Mumbai). Over dinner, we came up with the following insight:
CEOs will want to live luxuriously and have a minimal commute everwhere they are, but only in Bombay will it end up screwing other employees. In Bangalore, the CEO will buy a 5 bedroom luxury flat in Indiranagar, and the employees will have 1 or 2 BHKs in JP Nagar. The CEO will have a ten minute commute to MG Road, and the employees will have half hour commutes or so.
But in Bombay, the really successful CEO will demonstrate his success by living on Marine Drive and Cuffe Parade with a ten minute commute to his Fort office. And since all the employees can afford is Andheri, they’ll get buttfucked in the locals.
(Ed: This was written back in October when I was still based in Mumbai. It’s made it’s way out of the backlog only now.)
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