Mumbai Coffee House

I took the Bandra Worli Sea Link to work a few times before today. I was quite sold on it. It cut the time to reach my first stop, Kainaz's office by more than ten minutes. And, for those interested, the taxi fare of black and yellow and Meru's is exactly the same on the Sea Link and on Tulsi Pipe. The fifty Re entry fee being the difference. Then, as Bertie Wooster would say, the scales fell. We set off by the Sea Link this morning. The sea looked very mysterious and grey. It was wet, cloudy and seemed cool and surreal. I could see the peak of the skyscrapers at the Worli Side through the mist. Smog actually but mist seems more poetic. It seemed straight out of Batman's Gotham City... dark, menacing and yet, exciting. We got off at the Worli Sea face and saw that the U turn to Worli Naka was closed as usual. I don't know why they can't be flexible and keep it open when traffic is low. The city planners don't care for the energy crisis apparently. Today was par...

I was quite amused to read recent media reports that Barack Obama plans to revamp the American education system to compete with India. This took me back to my high school days and my friends who would sit at the back in class and solve SAT and TOEFEL papers. An American education was what many dreamt of. Visions of a whole new world, a whole new way of studying with no learning by rote, subjects such as micro biology and liberal arts, lovely campuses romanced by Erich Segal in his books spurred many. I was interested too but found applying to scholarships to be an expensive affair. I don't think that I was sure of what I wanted to do in any case. So the closest one has come to experiencing an American education is through novels and films. I studied under the British System till the fourth standard in International School. I found it very tough to adjust to the ICSE system initially with its focus of exams and 'by hearting' (memorising) and compliance. A far cry from t...

I read the Bengali author Sankar's book, Jono Oronyo, while I was at Goa and was blown away by it. The way Sankar set the character of the protagonist, Somnath Banerjee, in two paragraphs, right in the beginning, is a lesson in great writing. I felt very proud to belong to such rich literary heritage when I read the book. Here I must confess that I actually read Arunava Sen's translation of the original Bengali book. It is called The Middleman in English. I have not read too many Bengali books and this possibly expalins my awe when I read the book. I know a lot of Bengalis will take this personally and would consider me a snob for admitting that I don't read Bengali books. There is a simple explanation for this. I learnt Bengali after I came to India. Uninspiring teachers, Christian schools which espoused English and a general love for English books did not inspire me to explore Bengali literature. I never took to reading in Bengali, struggled with a few Satyajit Ray book...

I read a shocking piece in The Times of India . Schools in Kolkata , the city where the sun never set on the British Empire, have legalised American English! As has Calcutta University!!!! And Bombay University Topping the list of schools mentioned in the article was my Alma Mater, St James' School , Calcutta. I did my plus two there. Is this the school where our principal, J A M, ruled as a martinet armed with Wren and Martin ? Scratching our essays with red? Making us shiver under his sophistic and pedantic attacks? He even wrote a book on English Grammar which, surprise surprise, was part of our curricula. Though, to be fair, it was a good, handy book. He then went on to Doon and Dubai but left generations of us Jacobeans guarding the Queen's English. And, he would have spotted sixty two mistakes in this post by now. Including the fact that I started the last sentence with 'and' . Call me old fashioned, call me over the hill, or call me uncle as the college kid in ...

Aamir Khan crooned this famous song from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in the late eighties, straight into the hearts of all the girls in my school. While I made collages of Juhi Chawla. Thirteen is an impressionable age. In this coming of age song, Aamir Khan's character, Raj, sang of his father's hopes from him. Part of the lyrics went as follows: Har ek nazar ka sapna yeh hai Koi engineer ka kaam karega Business mein koi apna naam karega Magar yeh to koi na jaane Ki meri manzil hai kahan Papa kehte hain bada naam karega This loosely translated means "everyone has a dream, some want to be an engineer, some want to make it in the world of business, but no one knows where I'll end up, Papa says I'll make a name for myself". This song was quite symbolic of the times we grew up in. Add doctor and CA to engineer and business and you have the career options opent to a twentieth century Indian laid out in front of you. Most of us followed these routes and earn a living,...

A few of my friends have kids who have just joined school. Or play school as it's called. The problem is that the kids are a year and a half old. Now I know that I am not a parent and therefore am not in touch with what's happening in the under two feet category. But the way I see it is that school is the end of one's free life. From then on, you are in the rolls somewhere or the other - at play school, at school, at college, or at work. The only break is if you don't work or if you are a freelancer. And that's rare. My friends assure me that these are 'play schools' - kids come and 'swim' in buckets full of beach ball, watch puppets, eat popcorn, make friends. I wonder if the poor kids know that. Do they see it as fun and games. Or do these translate into discipline and rules in their world? I guess this is how things are today. Perhaps I am over reacting. There is no doubt that parents have their kids best interests in heart. What is the hurry to m...

Chances are that if you blog and read blogs then you have a back problem too. I sincerely hope not. But it seems that anyone who has anything to do with a computer has a back problem these days. If you don't have a back problem, and I hope you don't, then I can bet my increment this year that you know someone who does (watchers of corporate India would have caught the bitter joke in this sentence). But seriously, what's with back aches? Everyone seems to have it these days. From serious ones which need surgery or steroid injections to nagging pains which just doesn't seem to go away. Some attribute it to bad postures or desk jobs. But I am sure that bad postures always existed even if generations claimed that they had a stronger spine. And desk jobs can't be new to what the Brits considered a nation of clerks at one time. When we were in college and soon after that... bad backs would be associated with the throes of passion. The rare person who had a bad back would ...