Comrade Chakra

The wrong message:- “Police identified the arrested as Venkatesa Prasad (25), a native of Perambalur, who is pursuing a master's course in business administration.” ”Prasad was nabbed after the police spotted a media advertisement placed by Amir and Prasad to get clients when they shifted base from Mannady to Triplicane recently. They had released an advertisement that they are offering massage to customers, especially women.” Read full report. So often you find the media going gaga about the smart MBA types coming up with innovative business ideas. Can one get any more innovative than this? The young Venkatesa Prasad , bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, hit upon this brilliant idea. He decides to get paid for stuff that most of his fellow male students would be ready to pay for…massaging women. If you read the full report (no pictures alas), you’ll find that they actually started small and became popular by work of mouth sorry, make that word of mouth . As with any start-up th...

The car I drive is registerd in Jamshedpur (JH registration for the uninitiated). Needless to say in Bangalore I am a little wary of the traffic police and have been mostly lucky in escaping scrutiny. However, in the last 6 months I have been stopped thrice on the roads and asked to show registration certificate and road tax receipt. Now here’s the interesting part, on all three occasions I have been stopped by the same cop. This guy is in his early fifties, grey-walrus moustache, salt and pepper hair part hidden by a helmet, wears the Khaki uniform and rides a Hero Honda CD 100. His modus operandi :- Picking out a non-KA registration vehicle, he asks it to stop. "Show road tax receipt… come with me to Police Station, ….RTO’s car is coming just behind me… you have to pay Road Tax of INR 30,000/-" is his opening pitch in staccato English. He closes with " Ok. This is last time. Give something quickly" …palm outstretched. First time he made me stop at Inner-rin...

I was in Melbourne the past couple of weeks. The highlight of the trip was not the work I did there (well…..it never is honestly). It was more like the people I met, the things I did and offcourse the food I ate. Sample this:- Everything has a beginning, middle (a big one if it’s me) and an end. It was no different for Mr Lobster. It began with being pulled away from a siesta with its friends in the aquarium…(see picture) finding its way into my hand and surprise, surprise….in less than 15 minutes it comes before me in peices....looking very different but in a somewhat similar hue. In one of my rare moments of decency I decided against photographing my plate after I had the lobster. You can well imagine it was not a pretty sight. Incidentally I could only have half of it and dutifully asked the rest to be packed for take-away. After a couple of days, as dutifully I took the packet out of the fridge and threw it into the dustbin. What is interesting is the photograph of the tools with...