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A Family Portrait
The old man turned the key to the door slowly so that it would not make any sharp noise. Yet, he couldn’t prevent the annoying clack at the end of the turn. He stepped inside to find his wife fast asleep on the sofa-cum-bed with the the TV on mute. He took the remote from… Continue reading
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Poop goes the Podcast
If you’re walking in the streets of Mumbai, you develop a certain skill, that of avoiding doggie poop. After a given time, it becomes a muscle memory; you learn to identify the object irrespective of its state of disintegration, and adjust your stride accordingly. Then one fine day, an expensively adorned cute little puppy and… Continue reading
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Rage Baiting Campaigns are here to stay
Rage-baiting is technically defined as a deliberate “the manipulative tactic of eliciting outrage with the goal of increasing internet traffic, online engagement, revenue and support.” This behaviour is on steroids these days, thanks, but no thanks to Elon Musk’s tactic of shoring up engagement on twitter, presently marked with X, by sharing meagre revenues with… Continue reading
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Six Word Stories
Someone posted a six-word story on LinkedIn (where? Yes, there – it’s full of motivational stuff, you know). I put out some fictional six-word stories as comments. Here they are. Wait, she said, ten years ago. Then the rain washed tears away. He asked. She gave. He left. Accident, he claimed. Murder, they proved. Bring… Continue reading
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Liberation
The day started bright and sunny. The MET department said no rain was expected as did my intuition. So I left the umbrella at home – managing a backpack and a handbag in the Mumbai trains was bad enough, I thought, As it turned out, by mid-morning, it was so bad that the principal opted… Continue reading
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JioHotstar and the Zen of Domain Name Management
TLDR: Full version Ever since l’affaire jiohotstar.com broke out, there has been a lot of discussion on domain names, squatting, gen Z chutzpah and the dozen ways Reliance could have used the issue for PR and made themselves look like saints. If you missed the whole story, this is what happened: An unknown young man… Continue reading
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Happy Birthday Babu Bhai!
This is a rant that I posted recently on LinkedIn. Nothing great about it; I’ve ranted often but what I like about this one is that I typed this entirely with my right thumb in stalled traffic at Chheda Nagar Junction while staring at these ‘chamcha’ banners, of mostly unknown faces wishing random politicians on… Continue reading
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The Open Door
We must have been on the fifth slide. The presenter stopped mid-sentence with his mouth open and his face white as a sheet. He was staring at me as was everyone else in the room. I wondered if I fell asleep or something. I mumbled a sorry, and asked him to continue, only to find… Continue reading
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The Barber’s Assistant
Once upon a time, in a kingdom that once stood near where you are right now, there lived a king and a queen. The kingdom was small enough for a man on a horse to cross in a week, but large enough to have everything its people needed. To the north and east were mountains… Continue reading
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Who’s Afraid of GenAI?
With OpenAI’s announcement of Sora, it seems as if the conquest is complete: text is done and dusted, images too, and now video. Generative video has been in the works for some time, but with Sora, OpenAI has taken a leap and shown us the possibilities. There is no looking back from here, is there?… Continue reading