The Sunday Express - EYE - December 12, 2010
I intended to say, “Have to keep car going to Shalimar hotel to meet somebody”. “Meet” became “wed”, because the w-x-y-z key is just below the m-n-o key and a carelessly pressed m became w. The phone then used its brain and said weet is not a word. So the last is extra, maybe it is wed. Why did it think of w-e-d and not w-e-e? Because like all of us, the predictive text is a creature of habit and I use the word wed – short for Wednesday – more than I use the word wee. In fact I never refer to anything as wee. Most of my friends would think that was an SMS typo. So the message read, “Have to keep car going to Shalimar hotel to wed somebody.” I am a total SMS junkie. The ability it gives me to tell people what I think about […]
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EYE - November 14, 2010
This is the story of Prince Gusting (‘Gusting’ because I thought he was disgusting and my daughter and husband didn’t). who held our family, friends, domestic staff, and neighbours in thrall and in tyranny for 11 and a half years and died last month, exactly the way he had lived- on his own terms, fighting to the last, and with an encourage in attendance. We are unused to our new freedom-to be able to answer the doorbell without five minutes of pleas and threats; to be able to eat paneer/chicken/papaya without having our elbow jerked and our eardrums shattered; to leave the house without the mandatory dash to the door to escape the furious creature trying to stop us. It is nice to hug family and friends, without furtively looking for Prince, because he disapproved of us having body contact with anybody except him. He disapproved of many things, and […]
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EYE - October 31 - November 6, 2010
Diwali shopping, and finding the mecca of the modern Indian shopper I went to the mecca of modern shopping, the new temples of modern India, this weekend to check out what Diwali shopping was like and what modern Indian shoppers and shops were doing. Here’s my amateur anthropologist’s report. There were two X-ray arches to enter the Phoenix Mills complex of malls in Mumbai one for the uber-fancy Palladium Mall, with its shops housing high-end (mostly foreign) brands and hip restaurants; the other was the entrance to the more janta malls, relatively speaking of course. Sort of diwan-e-aam and Diwan-e-khas, but diwan-e-something for sure. The queue to enter the high-end mall was non-existent, and all of us headed purposefully towards the other entrance. In both places, there was not a soul inside the high-end shops be it cosmetic, apparel, footwear, branded accessories, western jewellery, music equipment or toy stores. Not […]
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The Indian Express - November 22, 2008
The Bhargava Committee Report: A Leap Backwards (PART II) How the Bhargava Committee Report surrenders all significant control to the government After the emasculation of the IIMs through two tier board control and a careful process of selection of the “right” board members, comes the bit about the “co-ordination” that the pan IIM super board will do amongst the IIMs, bringing them all down to the lowest common denominator. The report preaches the doctrine of ‘sameness’ across all IIMs, ignoring the idea that strategically, differentiation is what makes the larger IIMs collectively more competitive. IIM C chose a more analytical, quantitative orientation while, IIM A, pursued a more generalist program, inspired by its original collaborator, Harvard Business School. IIM B has gone the functional and sector specialization route. In recent times, IIMA has chosen to launch a one year executive MBA and a one year program for policy makers and […]
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The Indian Express - November 21, 2008
The Bhargava Committee Report: A Leap Backwards (PART I) The IIM review makes a case for tightening the government’s tentacles The report of the IIM Review committee is finally out. If this were a student report it would get an A on “describing the current problems”, a C on all the sections they call “our analysis” – a C and not a D because some of the arguments made in the analysis are brilliantly tautological. As we tell our IIM students, if the analysis gets a D, don’t even bother to check your grade on ‘quality of recommendations’ – even if they make sense by some fluke, please go back and do your analysis – diagnosis again, with more rigour and depth. On integrity and intent, this report gets a straight F. The key thrust of the recommendation is that the boards governing the IIMs be configured in such a […]
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