Early morning cycling is great fun. While it burns the kilos ( at least I hope it does), it also gives me the chance to scream my guts out at errant drivers, BPO cars, pedestrians, transport vehicles, autowallahs and motorcycle riders. No one is spared as I take on the role of the holier than thou vigilante spewing venom on every mistake I see people make.
4 am starts. 5 am line up. 6 am checkin to office. 10 am checkout. 2 pm line up again. 7 hr drives on rocky roads. Imagine a life where every strategy starts with Telia and ends with well Paazahar. What’s that you say ?
For most safari and wildlife tourists or enthusiasts the few days they spend in the jungle are a bliss. 4 am mornings are supposed to refresh you. The sight of dawn in the jungle just revs up your brain with a plethora of ideas. Sightings of the Tiger and Birds of prey literally send a thousand tingling sensations to your brain. Like a recent ad goes: ALIVE IS AWESOME. Indeed.
So , how do 2 companies that shaped an entire industry manage to go kaput in 2 years. Clearly Nokia and Blackberry rode the wave and fell hard. But just as you thought they had it in them to face the best in the world and resurrect from the brink, they unleash unpardonable ads. Ones that do no justice to their brands, their partner’s brands or just the wonderful products that they have just introduced. Begs the question – What are their marketers thinking ?
Birding. Funny that i didnt know that was even a word till 6 months ago. Bird watching- funnier that the word holds no relevance for the feathered species.
Birders will tell you that Navi Mumbai, Sewri , Uran and the Karnala bird sanctuary are havens for our ilk. Thing is for an aspiring / novice enthusiast there is no informed way to find out. For Navi Mumbai I had to ask my colleague who lives there to nose around, which he bless his soul willingly did.
Sachin is 39. Me 37
That says it all doesn't it. For a nation crazy about a game, for me it was this young lad all of 15, 23 years ago that made me crazy abt the game.
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kaun jeeta!
“Kaun jeeta” – Probably the most commonly question asked minutes after the match… for years the answer I most expected to hear is – India. But when the urban youth asks this question, India is most definitely not what he is expecting. What he expects is Man United, Arsenal, Barc… Oh you get the drift. The world order is changing swiftly and Cricket is no longer the only match on the tube. Player stats, goals, assists and transfers are discussed and debated with gusto and 90 minutes of time is all that young India has to invest in sport.
Legendary partnerships have been the mainstay of Mythology as well as Hollywood /Bollywood, even sport. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Batman & Robin, Agents J & K (MIB – remember), Karan- Arjun , Sachin & Sehwag Pappu and Yadav, Sathish & Nigam Eh wait! What did I just say! Let me explain. Lets’ rewind then to the jungles of Madhya Pradesh where dynamic duos like Pappu & Yadav set out every day to grant the wish of every tourist.
40 million footfalls a year. That’s equivalent to the population in Mumbai or Australia. That my friends is the amount of people visiting the 4 Inorbit malls in a year. So, if you consider the people visiting the top 10 malls in India the number is a staggering 140 million a year ! WOW. Hows that for being a people’s business. In a situation where you now have more than 3 or 4 malls in a radius of 5 kms or a catchment as it is termed and in a land where you have but a limited number of brands, therefore translating to common brands housed across malls, you would have thought Marketing would have played an important part in the just concluded Shopping Center Forum. Sadly, not the case.
FYI: the draft for this post has been saved since July 2011. almost a year and 3 mobiles later, it still holds true.
Have had my share of mobiles. More than most in this country. From Panasonic to Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry and Samsung again. There was a Motorola thrown in for a short while too. Multiple models of most of these. Black /white screens, colour, keyboard before the word qwerty even came into the picture, touch screen, java, android… used them all. IOS admittedly is a glaring miss here thus far.
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Foodilicious
Industry forums are great fun. Apart from networking which is the norm every now and then you bump unexpectedly into someone special. Not an industry giant, but one who should have been one anyways.
In one of the forums ironically titled “What is the next game changer”, as most of the so called giants were in unison as to say there is no such thing there was a lone figure with a plastic bag listening to the helplessness silently. At the end in the Q& A session he introduced himself as Mr. Shaikh Noor Ahmed… as just like you most of the people were flummoxed with his identity. It turns out Mr. Ahmed is the second generation owner of Baghdaadi the iconic restaurant in Mumbai. Content and happy Ahmed is no mood to expand his chain, much to the disappointment of my friend and colleague Rahul, who an avid foodie himself. But what Ahmed did do is regale us with some sweet nostalgic episodes of the good old times. Like the fact that Bade miyan came into being just because Ahmed’s father took an extra butcher’s permit from the British. Bade Miyan used to operate from under a banyan tree for years before setting up the joint that it has become. Or that there was an akhada just behind Taj was a long long time.It also was surprisingly pleasant to know that quality issues like taste and even food temperature are not forgotten at Baghdadi with surprise checks being done.
However as one was completely taken in by the passion of Ahmed, you couldnt help but be saddened by the fact that the sun is about to set on the iconic restaurant as the next gen of Ahmed are now well settled in Australia and the US. In fact, the one in the US is actually a computer engineer.
So, foodies savor away at this iconic restaurant coz not only does this one have no branches.. it seems unlikely that it has the will to go on any further.
Visit Baghdadi on Burrp.com
Visit Baghdadi on Zomato.com
- Baghdadi prop. Mr. Shaikh Noor Ahmed