Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Trudged all the way to the aforesaid Reliance WebWorld outlet at Flora Fountain.
Holy cow, someone must have been reading this space because
a) Broadband still appears lofty to me ( this is my interbal locus of control etc )
b) There IS WATER at the Flora Fountain
c) The Reliance damsels and lads have switched to the Rahul Dravid school of customer orientation--suave, courteous
Moreover, they even have a Customer feedback form ( which of course merrily eschews all known facets of Marketing Research that I had heard of ).
If this is the impact my humble epistles have on a behemoth like Reliance, I can only dream on and fantasise that if the evil R had helped me get this thing started earlier, I may even have prevented the Iraq invasion
( Joking , joking, the R has been a Heavensend , an apostle of light and wisdom )
More morbidly, I get the gradual feeling that I am being watched--now that I have incurred the wrath of the Ambanis and the Arabs, my future hangs by a thread.
Was delighted beyond measure to catch up with two of my oldest surviving schoolfriends ( surviving= living in India ) on Saturday. Sameer, whom I have known since 1985 and Anil since 1992. We shared an interesting meal at Rama Nayak ( whose expose follows) at Matunga. It is a veritable wonder that all of us found that each had not really changed--despite half a dozen changes of location and family situations. We blabbered on in Anil's 24th story flat in Sion reliving the good old days in Madras.Hope to meet up with these guys more often now that all three are expats in Bombay.
Now we shift the scene to Rama Nayak, one of the more narcissistic refectories that I have had the privilege of dining in. Apparently, the scene is, one is required to buy a token , pay the money and wait for the powers that be to let the starved beings enter the altar of refreshment. Surprisingly, instead of the single-step processing that the likes of McDonalds swear by, this sagacious bloke follows batch processing. Now the most stupid of grub analysts would conclude that people like to chew the cud at their own pace, not finish their meals in shepherded multitides. So the outcome is, one waits inside the bally place hungrily awaiting some victual culmination. And then, the tables and benches are so narrow that a person of my proportions strives and sweats to get in ( needless to say after the meal one gets bigger and wider and the level of difficulty increases ). Yet, it has an admiring clientele borne by the newspaper clippings proudly proclaiming to be Bombay's first Udipi joint.
Matunga is more Madras than Madras--tawdry film posters, tacky shop signs, lots of pickle packets at outlets. The first time I saw it.
The folks have moved into the Panvel abode ( an own house, at long last !). The expected bickering and bantering on furniture positions, TV angles is still on.
Just a line on "Madame Bovary", Flaubert's opus--it's a simplistic tale but the author manages to engage the reader into taking the side of the protagonist ( which an indolent blurb-viewer may not have done )--replete with loads of detail and minutae, I find it perplexing that someone could describe a situation or a vista so very eloquently and completely--so different from the shotgun conclusions that today's writer draw with every phrase, every sentence.
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Holy cow, someone must have been reading this space because
a) Broadband still appears lofty to me ( this is my interbal locus of control etc )
b) There IS WATER at the Flora Fountain
c) The Reliance damsels and lads have switched to the Rahul Dravid school of customer orientation--suave, courteous
Moreover, they even have a Customer feedback form ( which of course merrily eschews all known facets of Marketing Research that I had heard of ).
If this is the impact my humble epistles have on a behemoth like Reliance, I can only dream on and fantasise that if the evil R had helped me get this thing started earlier, I may even have prevented the Iraq invasion
( Joking , joking, the R has been a Heavensend , an apostle of light and wisdom )
More morbidly, I get the gradual feeling that I am being watched--now that I have incurred the wrath of the Ambanis and the Arabs, my future hangs by a thread.
Was delighted beyond measure to catch up with two of my oldest surviving schoolfriends ( surviving= living in India ) on Saturday. Sameer, whom I have known since 1985 and Anil since 1992. We shared an interesting meal at Rama Nayak ( whose expose follows) at Matunga. It is a veritable wonder that all of us found that each had not really changed--despite half a dozen changes of location and family situations. We blabbered on in Anil's 24th story flat in Sion reliving the good old days in Madras.Hope to meet up with these guys more often now that all three are expats in Bombay.
Now we shift the scene to Rama Nayak, one of the more narcissistic refectories that I have had the privilege of dining in. Apparently, the scene is, one is required to buy a token , pay the money and wait for the powers that be to let the starved beings enter the altar of refreshment. Surprisingly, instead of the single-step processing that the likes of McDonalds swear by, this sagacious bloke follows batch processing. Now the most stupid of grub analysts would conclude that people like to chew the cud at their own pace, not finish their meals in shepherded multitides. So the outcome is, one waits inside the bally place hungrily awaiting some victual culmination. And then, the tables and benches are so narrow that a person of my proportions strives and sweats to get in ( needless to say after the meal one gets bigger and wider and the level of difficulty increases ). Yet, it has an admiring clientele borne by the newspaper clippings proudly proclaiming to be Bombay's first Udipi joint.
Matunga is more Madras than Madras--tawdry film posters, tacky shop signs, lots of pickle packets at outlets. The first time I saw it.
The folks have moved into the Panvel abode ( an own house, at long last !). The expected bickering and bantering on furniture positions, TV angles is still on.
Just a line on "Madame Bovary", Flaubert's opus--it's a simplistic tale but the author manages to engage the reader into taking the side of the protagonist ( which an indolent blurb-viewer may not have done )--replete with loads of detail and minutae, I find it perplexing that someone could describe a situation or a vista so very eloquently and completely--so different from the shotgun conclusions that today's writer draw with every phrase, every sentence.
