Mumbai Coffee House

I saw a tweet at 2 am a couple of nights back. A friend tweeted saying that people were throwing stones on the streets of Bandra and that she had a scary ride home. Soon there were others tweeting about 'riots/ stone throwing' on the streets of Bandra and Khar and asked people to stay home. Some wondered about the relevance of asking people to 'stay home' at 2 AM. But this is Mumbai. I retweeeted some of these tweets too. Then I switched on the TV. All the English news channels were showing repeats from the Grammy Award ceremonies from earlier in the day. Even the ticker didn't mention the stone throwing incidents. Ditto for Aaj Taak, the only Hindi channel I could think of. This was twenty minutes after the tweets started. No surprises that the newspapers didn't mention this the next morning. But 2 AM was well after papers were put to bed. I guess news travels fastest on social networks these days. Within that, possibly on Twitter. I didn't see a ment...

I went to my first Tweetup last night. It was a Mumbai Twitter's meet. From what I understand, a Tweetup is when folks who Tweet meet up, talk in real life, eat and drink, largely Dutch. No agenda. Hopefully. The hash tag was #5s . It was at 5 Spice, Bandra . As close to home as it gets for a chronically lazy socialiser. Problem was that I was done in by Mumbai's freezing winter (apparently hit the sub 20s. Centigrades). I doubted that I could croak out even 140 characters. So I stayed home and ordered Green Thai Curry from Thai Baan . The only folks in Mumbai apart from Thai Pavilion to make a half decent Thai curry . I sat at home chatting with K and a friend. My heart was at 5 Spice as I kept scanning the tweets on the tweetup. Then this flashed from @TalkorTweets @finelychopped hey there is a popular request for u to be at this tweetup guys want to meet even if you are feeling sick. I had to go. I donned a jacket though I couldn't find my muffler or monkey...

Warning: Geeky post ahead I recently opened a Facebook Page for my food blog, Finely Chopped . A blogger friend wrote in today saying that she'd just discovered this page. She said she was wondering why I had stopped putting food updates on Facebook. Till she found the Finely Chopped pages. And then said that this was a good idea as I could reach out to a larger number of like minded people. So why did I start a Facebook page for the blog. Well let's go back to more than a decade and a half and about twenty five kilos less to a balmy afternoon in Calcutta's Presidency College . PR or Dr Prasanta Ray, an urban legend and head of our Sociology Department was taking our class. One of those rare teachers who could connect life with education. Reason why I remember a lot of what he had taught then. PR was discussing the book of a rather intriguingly named Sociologist called Tom Bottomore . If I remember right, Bottomore said that each individual has a number of socia...