Brotherhood (maybe even sisterhood) of the cafe

I have always preferred to work out of cafes. There is some romanticism about working from a cafe - a sort of uber coolness about telling the stuffed shirts that old classmates have become, that you 'work' from coffee shops while they slog away in tiny air conditioned cubes in glass buildings. Even the Rowling lady wrote the first few installments of Harry Potter in a cafe in her neighbourhood.

There used to be a time when I used to be the lone guy in the corner with a laptop slogging away, often referring to notes on sheets of paper. Proudly telling people how I wrote the basic businessplan of a venture on the back of a tray mat at the Shivaji Park Barista in mid Mumbai.

Now even the Mahaveer Nagar Cafe Coffee Day has atleast four people working at any given time. The rest of the cafe crowd ignores us. Sundry couples think of us as nothing more than furniture and I suspect the staff thinks of us as some strange animals. But the brotherhood of the cafe grows stronger. In the last 6 months that I have been working from home and cafes, I have made friends who are joined by the murkiness of the coffee we drink and the one plug point we share. One of us has even invested in a multipoint outlet so that the one power plug point can be shared by atleast 6 people at the same time. We have shared anti virus software, video conversion software and even notepads, though I may never know all of them by name.

We share the burden of the traffic of Mumbai, of not wanting to be stranded on the road wasting hours getting to work, when work can be done at these cheery bright cool coffee shops.

If you pay attention to the spillover conversation you will realise that the sales of cosmetics is down by 24% in the festive season. That cost per square feet of a flat in Charkop is about 200 bucks lower than Kandivali. That dal wada in Poisar at 4 pm is best had with adrak waali chai.

I think one of these days I will start a community of people who work on cafes all over the world. For just a dollar you can access credits and discounts to the chai and food - payable via your mobile phone.

Any VCs listening?

Big Girls, Small kitchen (NSFW)

Am hungry! the half a croissant and a bowl of halfhearted salad sandwhich at Cafe Coffee Day vanished within the hour of eating. This morning I had no option but to swallow down a bowl of muesli (sugar free version) and I hated myself ever since. Now throughout the day I will be hungry and grouchy.

It must be something to do with me being a food fiend. I can live on coffee and sandwiches for ever. Or dal chaval papad pickle. But sometimes I need to eat food thats made with a lot of love and care and all that. Not that the regular fare is made without love - am sure the maid loves the three and half people at home enough to not poison us with her tender love.

Being the fool I am several months ago I decided to start cooking on Sundays. So far I have alternated between biryanis, pastas, cous cous, chinese mallu style and a whole bunch of cakes, tarts, cookies and desserts.

Last Sunday was memorable for a compote of plums that I managed to make without burning my fingers. Its quite simple - walk into the Malad Hypercity or Inorbit Spencer and look for the juiciest plums you can find. Hypercity sells it in cling wrapped containers, three at a time. Get back home, unwind and when they family decides that you are going to vegetate, get started with a thick bottomed vessel.

Wash, remove the pits and slice the plums into thin wedges and throw them into the vessel. Thrown in two star anise flowers and about a quarter cup of sugar. Squeeze in some lime, lemon whatever. Add some water and cover the vessel, forget the whole damn thing for about twenty minutes. When you come back you will find that the sugar had dissolved into the water and the plums have gone all mushy. Gently stir around and let mash reduce to a nice thick consistency. The plums would have let out a nice scarlet red colour.

Cool the compote. Now walk across to the nearest shop and pick up a good sponge cake. ( I forgot to pick up the cake in Hypercity). Crumble the cake until it resembles crumbs, do not press them. Fill some nice glass bowls with this cake crumb halfway through. Now get the vanilla ice cream ( we have this lying about in the fridge) and scoop a nice round volume out. Pour the syrupy compote onto the icecream serve. You can soak the cake crumb with some rum or with some bitter coffee. The combos are perfect.

It worked. This morning my mom asked me if she could pick up some plums!

And sometime ago I discovered this blog about Big Girls, Small Kitchen and reading it made me hungry :)

Tarakshi & Kaa deserve to be kept alive

Sometime when she turned 2 and 1/2 I started telling her a series of bedtime stories about a 8 year old girl called Tarakshi. She finds a baby crow who has fallen off his nest and broken a wing and takes him home. She thinks of many names for this little crow and finally settles on Kaa.

Kaa sleeps while sitting on the bedpost and tucks his beak under his wing to keep it warm (he forgot to tuck the beak in one day and it caught a bad cold). The two eventually find a way to talk to each other and end up making friends with the people who live in the tamarind tree outside Tarakshi's balcony.

And they have adventures of all kinds, mainly about small things that a three year old wants to know and their friends - Kooie the girl crow who is Kaa's cousin, Mignon the sparrow who has four babies - ChiChi, Maana, Tara and Crystal, Speedo the Snail, Ribbit the Frog who lives in the puddle and Scratchy and Floffy the squirrels who live on the terrace, Bunty and Moongi the two ants.

She is 4 and a 1/2 now and in this time I must have told her a story everynight when I have been in the city. Once or twice I have told her a small story over the phone too. The stories are extempore with sound effects and all. She thinks Tarakshi and Kaa are real, and relates to the two. As she grows she has started making up situations and events purely out of her imagination.

One of these days I need to put those stories down in a blog somewhere. Find an illustrator and make sure they are made immortal. Some day I will find the time to do it.

By the way, today, Tarakshi and Kaa play a trick on Tipsy their puppy dog :)

A different sort of Dusherra

For the fifth year running I forgot to pick up marigold flowers, loose leaves of gold (sona patta - it's a leaf that is given on Dusherra day as a token of good luck and is supposed to symbolise gold) and pedhas meant for the pooja in the morning at home which are then distributed as prasad along with some coconut. As usual at 7 in the morning there was a mad rush to buy everything and sane mithai shops do not open. So we returned home to a rather annoyed better half and mother. That is when I decides to make the prasad at home. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Puffed Rice lightly toasted - 2 handfulls
Grated coconut - half a cup
Black Sesame seeds toasted - 2 TbSps
Raisins - half a cup
Broken Cashewbuts - half a cup
Any fleshy firm fruit - I opted for an apple - chopped - half a cup
Jaggery or Brown sugar - 1/4 cup grated or seperated
Sandal powder - 1 tsp
Rose Water - as per discretion
Camphor - half a tablet crushed
Honey - 1 tbSp
Ghee - 1 tbsp
Gulkand - 1 tbsp - use rose petals if gulkand ot available or even marigold flower petals

Now mix everything starting with the puffed rice and serve it one spoonful at a time to everyone who comes and see their expression. My daughter loved it.

It was different and it was a great start to the day.

Hope you find your devils to kill too. And not just in your heard but also in your heads.

Two disasters in one evening

Disaster No 1:

I usually fight with my daughter for the tv remote - I win at around 9:30 pm when she finishes dinner and no longer has any of her cartoons running on the four channels she follow. And then I turn to MasterChef Australia. I drool!

And then there was gurbani, rona, dhona, mataji, patiji, drama, hamming, heartbreak!! See anything familiar? If you were not aware (not likely) of what MasterChef India was all about you would be confused as to what the big deal was all about. They all cry, curse, plead on any sundry reality show, what was the big deal here? And where was the class? Maybe, just maybe, the fault lies with the production house, who must have brought in people who know nothing better. Just add some naach gaana, and there hit ho gaya. Am waiting! and will someone get rid of the gelled hair of all the men? unless ofcourse there is money and sponsor involved.

And am waiting for the dekchi to be sponsored and the tel to be sponsored and the @%#$%@$#@ gas to be sponsored.

And Akshay decide what you want to be, Gordon Ramsay or a wimp. You cannot be both. and I hate you now for wearing that flowery shirt - reminded me Ratish Makhijani from college.

Disaster no 2

Rakhi Sawant Ka Insaaf : it made my skin crawl. Maybe this is entertainment for the masses! And if the masses want this then they deserve all the other crap on TV.

Extending Nandini Ramnath's column: Animated Discussion

Nandini Ramnath is always entertaining and most of the time she echoes questions about the movie world that comes to mind when you normally think about the layers that infect movies / entertainment / television in India.

In her latest column Stall Order in Mint Lounge titled Animated Discussion she asks why Indians do not make great animated movies like Wall-e or even the Disney Fare.

Why do we recycle the same 2/3 mythological stories over and over again and at that in a shoddy manner that even my four and half year old knows that My Friend Ganesha is 'so ugly' while her latest BenTen fascination extends beyond her regulated 2 hours of TV time.

I have often wondered why we do not have any sitcoms that go beyond the old school of tried and tested. Are we to believe that the Friends / Off Centre / Two and Half Men / How I met you mother kind of people do not exist in this part of the world? I think the real answer lies in the way the industry functions - cartel like with crony centric thinking. You want to see the thinking sessions / ideation rounds you are welcome to play voyeur at one of the coffee shops near Samarth Vaibhav building in Lokhadwala Andheri West, or at the new Costa at Seven Bungalows, in Andheri West. I know this because I have spent 5 years in these coffee shops working while around me 'story ka twist' or 'hatke treatments' are discussed by grown men and women who live in this world but believe that their version of India is actually correct. I have seen young men and women start off with great concepts and within 3 - 4 months fall back to the tried and tested. Have heard some well known names in content take the mickey out of these guys by telling them that if you stick your head out you will never get work. And that is true.

So while we lament that Japs have better ideas we swat anyone with a better idea in our backyards. I assume it is because we fear that the guy with the new ideas might actually succeed.

There is tremendous potential in creating concepts and themes that are about India and which can be identified by most people like me who now depend on VOD to get their fix of 'entertainment'

Or maybe there is the need for these people with interesting ideas to look beyond broadcast. Its time for content creators to look at handheld devices, alternate screens as distinct distribution vehicles and create channel, promote channels like TV is promoted. Coming soon on your Ipad may not be such a bad thing afterall.

In the meanwhile....

Two years from my last post ... My daughter turned four and a half. self promotion has two new tools - twitter and facebook. Avataar turned out to have a disney story at its heart and wow tech. Star Trek rebooted with a spanky new crew and a very iMac look. video content owners still do not have a clue about what to do with their assets. Aol is wooing Yahoo! microsoft is trying to be google, google is trying hard to do everything - do not be surprised if in the next 5 years you have cars, tv sets, electricity, and pretty much everything else with the Google logo.


Life goes on I guess..

Here is what I intend to do with this defunct, but now alive blog - comment on the headlines and try to make sense of whats behind the headlines. Hopefully I will not abandon this blog again.