BRAToSPHERE

Category: Uncategorized

  • An Ideal Holiday

    Writing this in the middle of greens, surrounded by the majestic hills, snow-capped mountains and a calm serene sound of the water flowing through the mountains. The birds chirping like they are singing to each other with their melodious voice and the mountains as their audience. The scene is perfect.

    I am in a small Village, Called Naddi, close to Dharamsala, atop a mountain. A small tiny village and a scenic eco-hotel in the middle of the Himalayas is exactly what I was looking forward to.

    I am here on a short weekend holiday escaping from the hustle bustle of the city. The last eight months have been chaotic if anything and in the constant hustle bustle, you miss out on the small moments of life. These short breaks help one rejuvenate for the ensuing time to come.

    What is an ideal holiday? Well, it means different things to different people. It means different kinds of places for different people – beaches, Mountains, Historic places, pilgrimage, etc..

    Irrespective of the kind of place, my ideal holiday is one where I just get to spend time in peace with myself. An idyllic setting – be it a beach or on a hill, in a scenic location – be it in a AirBnb or a star hotel, with a good book for company along with a wonderful companion. Perfect.

    I would spend all day doing nothing or like I call it, “Chill” all day. This feeling of nothingness makes me achieve a lot. I catch up with all my reading and writing and more importantly with all the thinking for which I always yearn for precious little time in day-to-day life.

    Of late, in addition to the nothingness, Airbnb has allowed us to mingle with the local community and understand the local customs and their way of living in a better way. Like our stay in Sri Lanka last December where we met a wonderful young couple – Lankan guy married to an Australian woman and now settled in Galle. Their story was so romantic and inspiring, something the bland sameness of a hotel can never offer. These small nuggets of the local life leaves us enriched post the trip and gives a feeling that we have always belonged here.

    Always, when I return back from a holiday, I am inevitably asked what all did I see and do. “I did nothing. I just chilled!” is my standard answer which baffles many. But that is what I did. Other than maybe hopped a couple of cafes browsing through different leftover books over cups of coffee.

    Well, this is my ideal holiday and I totally enjoy it and look forward to it.

    What is your ideal holiday?

  • Welcome Subscription Economy

    Why own a car? When you can Uber/Ola everyday to office in a more cost effective way?

    Sounds familiar? Welcome to the new generation. A generation that does not believe in owning and would rather rent it out. Welcome to the “Why own, when you can rent” generation”.

    This generation believes in accessing anything anywhere on their fingertips in the most easy way. I don’t want to be stuck not having my car in the middle of the day. I want my car at a touch of a button.

    Welcome Uber.

    Similarly, i am not going to wait to get home and look up for that 4 year old CD to listen to that song. I want it on my fingertips.

    Welcome Apple Music (or well, gaana.com f you prefer)

    Welcome to the Subscription Economy.

    According to Zuora , Subscription Economy means – “the new business landscape in which traditional pay-per-product (or service) companies are moving toward subscription-based business models”

    This model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but off late has been in use by many other business models.

    Rather than selling a product individually, a subscription model asks the consumer to pay a periodic fee and gets him/her access to the entire gamut of services/products available. Repeat billing ensures subsequent revenues and the consumer is happy having access anytime anywhere.

    Off late, i have been a part of this economy without actually knowing that i was becoming one.

    The magazines and the newspaper subscriptions always existed alongside the cable TV subscription. TataSky recharge was a regular expense to watch uninterrupted TV. This was 2012.

    I wanted access to all of the channels irrespective if i would ever watch it. My monthly bill was around 800 rupees. I was happy. I hated the sight of the screen which says i did not have access to a particular channel.

    In spite of this hefty amount i was not completely satisfied. I wanted to be able to watch any movie any time, and not at the slotted time.

    Welcome TataSky Record.

    Wow! I can record my favourite shows and watch them at my leisure. The latest blockbuster making its world TV premiere at Sunday 9PM? No issues! I can still attend the party on sunday night and watch the recorded movie post the party, late sunday night.

    I was happy. But still not quite satisfied. I had limited space on the Set Top Box, and i hated deleting stuff i have seen once. What if?

    This is where the new age takes off completely.

    Welcome Hotstar.

    All (or at least most) shows are now all online. I just need a good high speed broadband connection.

    I am now off TataSky completely and HotStar, Netflix, Amazon Prime and the good old youtube have become my go to place for all visual media. The Apple TV i bought from Berlin is the best buy of last year.

    This is not limited to the visual media alone. Other aspects of life are being engulfed by the subscription model gradually.

    Don’t know which song to carry on the limited space on the iPhone? No issues.

    Welcome Apple Music. (120 rupees a month is a steal!)

    Can’t make up your mind on which magazine to buy/subscribe. Take it a step further.

    Welcome Magzter Gold (get access to all (rather most) magazines as they are published, at the click of a button)

    What do we welcome next?

    p.s.: Even Amazon India offers a subscribe button on most essentials.

  • The Study Desk

    After many many years, i now again have a study desk. After spending a good half of the sunday morning cleaning up the trash that had got compiled on my desk, here i am. Sitting on the very same chair with the laptop on the same classy table that i had bought more than six years back in Hubli.

    I always had a study desk right since my school days, as far as i can remember. I just did not like the idea of having a study board sitting on the ground or on the bed. I needed a table and a chair to be super productive and my corner in the corner room of our house was my enclosure to dreams. The perfect room like i recall it now.

    I am sure everyone believed that their room during their growing up years was just the perfect room suited to them and so was mine. The corner most room in the house, with no access to balcony and no attached bathroom. I had to give up the balcony room as the computer could not be kept in that room to avoid the risk of corrosion from the sea air and i had to make a choice. The room with the balcony and the bathroom? or the room with the computer? I think the choice was simple!

    My room was the smallest one in the house with just enough space. I had my study desk in one corner next to the window and the computer on the other side, with the single bed in the middle. I would juggle from this corner to that corner in my inquisitiveness and those days of dial up internet connection. Getting access to the Digit Archives CD month on month and installing and uninstalling random software provided on the CD took up hours and i enjoyed every bit of it.

    Recently, on my holiday at home, my Mom recalled my ways during my undergrad days. I would not get out of the room for hours sitting at the same study desk for hours together lost in between the books and the computer. Mom would serve snacks and juice in the evening right into my room and even the aarti jyothi would be brought into my room as i just refused to get out of it. Dinner would be served and kept on the table with the standing instructions – eat it before you sleep. I would. I was hooked.

    It was not the computer. Back then, with slow internet speeds and not many social networks (Orkut was famous in the final years of my engineering), the computer did not have much attraction. I think the overall setup and the whole quest of being completely organised and the drive to complete and strike of stuff appealed to me right since then.

    The fascination with the desk continued and i ensured that my desk and chair remain the cleanest and most accessible place in my hostel room during B-School. My room would turn into the party room eventually but the desk and the chair would remain unharmed. That was my favourite corner and no one would disturb it.

    In my trainee period i could not afford the luxury of a desk at home in my nomadic life. As soon as i settled, i got myself a lovely office desk and a luxurious office chair. I convinced myself with the spends with the argument that this would be my home office. I was posted in Hubli and did not have any office space. The arrangement worked beauitfully. I would be glued to my new office desk-chair setup all day, returning to the mattress only to sleep.

    I carried the setup to Mumbai, and due to the space constraint had to keep my TV on the desk. There was no other space available for the TV, and neither was any other place available for the desk in my small 400 sqft 1bhk. I would occasionally put in my writing pad and the laptop on the desk, wrestling space with the TV, but the arrangement never worked.

    The same setting continued in Gurgaon, where i had a bigger place but no desk initially to place the TV and wall mounting in a rented apartment is not a good idea. I eventually did wall mount the TV but then the desk turned into a dump yard of all trash in the house. The desk landed up in the store room as other furniture made its entry.

    There were frequent suggestions of throwing the desk out of the home but i remained adamant. I loved the desk and hoped that one day it would be back to its glory.

    img_3570That day is today. The desk is back where it should have always been. My Study Room. With a couple of magazines laid on top and the window overlooking the green expanse of the society, it is the most suited place for this piece of wonderful furniture that has served me for long.

    I am now hoping the productivity levels to increase and looking forward to more frequent updates and an increase in my writing levels.

    The desk and the study table is the best furniture investment i have made.

  • A matter of Rats – Book Review

    Amitava Kumar. The name demands respect. and book with his name on the blurb commands immediate attention and possibly a call to action. To read it immediately.

    As soon as i had discovered this book, at an airport book store i guess, i knew i had to read it. It was written by Amitava Kumar, and about such a personal narrative. his own town. Patna. And with my connection with Bihar i just knew i would be interested.

    On my recent March trip to Bihar, i got to see live what it is like, in the hinterlands. My travels there allowed me to travel across the villages in Taxi’s and general trains. A life full of hope is all that i could see. Aspiration builds in right from childhood. A hard internal desire to get out of the place i guess. And Education gets unparalleled attention by far. Post the trip, i read through the book just to realise that there is much more to Bihar.

    The rather obscure title of the book – “A matter of Rats” gives you the sense that it is going to be interesting. I had long back read about this interesting downtrodden community in Bihar called the Musahari’s, or Rat Eaters. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCAoBjfaEbE gives you a better picture. (Do not watch if you get disgusted easily).

    Amitava here talks about rats in a myriad ways as part of lives of people in Bihar. The chapter skilfully manages to evoke the chaos, filth and the stark reality in the lives of people there. The other chapters talk about life in Rural Bihar and Patna and their vagaries.

    The small short book is a easy read and in all the chaos and the myriad ways of life, this book stands out to bring the stark world of Bihar – a state of colossal failure and chaos. It is not only the past of Bihar that is in ruins.

    The book is narrated from three perspectives – one, people like you and me, who are city bred and after completing studies have moved out of the state. Second, is of people who due to lack of proper education have not been able to do very well, but have still managed a decent life by escaping out of the state, and third is of people who are still there out of compulsion and disdain and continue with their own way of life.

    Overall, this book does not stand out as one of the best from Amitava and looks more like a string of essays put together with a common theme of Bihar. It could be a newspaper series.

    But yes, it stands out as one of the finest narratives in English language on Bihar. (Probably because there is so little written about the state in English litereature)

  • Animal Farm – Book Review

    An all time Classic. and totally deservedly so.

    Such a simple language and such a powerful story relevant even 70 years post it has been published. This says a lot about the book and the author and the times we are living in. Some things, like inherent human behaviour, just does not change.

    The story in itself seems like a short fairy tale (the initial book run had this in the book tagline) of an animal farm where the animals revolt against their owner. At the outset it sounds like a children’s book (and apparently it was rejected in the US with many publishers claiming that there would not be any market for children’s book). But a children’s book, it is not.

    The story, in brief, is about a animal farm and the revolution led by some animals to overthrow the owner and take control themselves. Beginning with the Animalism commandment that “All Animals are equal”, the pigs gradually promote themselves to a higher authority citing different reasons. The leader Napoleon convinces all the animals on the subsequent luxuries and unfairness doled out to them. All the time making all animals feel that they are a part of a bigger purpose and thus should be working hard to achieve it.

    The windmill plays a central role in the whole story, where the entire efforts and the politics goes behind the building of the mill, which is expected to bring in good fortunes for the farm. With lies and connive, eventually the commandment turns to “All Animals are equal. Some Animals are more equal than others”. In the end, there does not seem to be much difference between the earlier human owner and the present tyrants who run the farm.

    The story in its simplicity explains quite a thing about human behaviour and the tenets of socialism.

    Reading through the book felt like it was written for the present day North Korea. There is a tyrant ruler who makes everyone believe that it is all for their own good, and has gradually taken the whole country to ruins with rampant poverty and famines. In all, the King and his aides still lead an extravagant life untouched by the poverty around. One can very well imagine how this would have all started.

    The beginning of most communist states starts with the repeated propaganda of “Capitalism is evil”, “We need to take power in our own hands” and the eventual violent takeover of the state. With the power now in the hands of a corrupt few, the whole region goes towards darkness. Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Mao’s China or the present day north Korea, all of them relate to such a beginning.

    The book and the story remains as relevant today as it was a century back. And it serves as a grim reminder of the fallacies of inherent nature. Power corrupts.

    Am now curious to read the other classic by George Orwell – 1984. Recently read somewhere about this book – “It is a warning, and not a firkin’ guidebook”. Looking forward.