Food is my first love.
I can say this with a lot of commitment and conviction knowing full well that my wife, my daughter, my mother, my sister and three people who I call friends and who have stuck with me through thick and thin for the last 5 years to the last two decades do not read blogs:) [That is what I call freedom of expression].
I am agnostic about food.
I use the word not in the recent sense of technology but in the original sense of religion [techies are using a lot of serious words without understanding them nowadays]
I love food irrespective of where they origin and who cooks them. That is agnosticism for me.
I am religious and dogmatic about food.
Food should be good to taste and made of good ingredients. That is what I mean by I am religious and dogmatic about food.
Armed with the above parameters [again a word which is pythagorean but currently being used by IT project managers], for the last one year I have been hunting for good eating places in Mumbai.
Again, I must mention that my search for good food in Mumbai is not dependent on a) Times Good food guide or Vir Sanghvi's Rude Food or any such tome [I think they are fake]. My tongue and pockets are the best judge. b) secondly, I have my biases: However good a dal is it cannot be sweet, for example, you cannot make a sphageti bolognaise with chicken mice, for example, and there are not diet sweets.....
With such huge biases I have drawn up a list of places where I would like to visit again and again. The list is random:
1. Mondy: Value for money for so called continental food and reasonably priced booze. [Leopold is horrible but the cylinders they serve their pitchers are interesting]
2. Copper Chimney [Good Indian veg and non-veg food, they make their rotis with atta not with maida] Please avoid Delhi Durbar in Colaba if you know your food.
3. JafferBhai: best Mughlai takeaway if you know what to order and if you do not compromise with your mughlai dishes [no salt no chilly types keep out]
4. Taj Mahal lunch buffet [if you like cold cuts and salads for lunch there is no better place than this. They also have a wide selection of "Indian" dishes from Kolkata to Goa]
5. Ivy Bistro best value for money, preparation and excellent wine. Must try the red and white port here. The costs are a real steal here and the bakery stuff is the best
6. Gordon House: The best Indian Chinese in the Chinese restaurant in the ground floor.
7. Sports bar buffet lunch on a late Friday afternoon with beer: Good value for money and you can just gorge on the salads and soups.
I am still working on the list and will update whenever possible. Also, I forget the names of some places which I liked: E.g.; the small place in Malad where they served exquisite chilly meat balls [beef]; or the numerous takeways which are great value for money Or even my local bar ani restaurant where they can prepare a chilly chicken to order.
Please do not take my views lightly if you care either for your stomachs or for your wallets, since my opinion is based on spending my hard earned money and experimenting on my rather mature stomach.
Last but not the least: If you love bengali sweets please not got to sweet bengal try visiting Brijwasi instead.
Bon Apetit
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
CEOs Salary and Generational Vision
The Prime Minister in his inimitable style seemed to have set the media on fire. Just one match stick was enough... At the annual general meeting of a large employers' body Dr Singh, among other things, mentioned that CEOs should check their own salaries and generally refrain from conspicuous consumption.
Since then I have read at least three CEOs from three generations all connected directly or indirectly with the employers' association mentioned, come up with typically generational answers: CEO in mid fifties India Chairman of a top consulting firm: 70 per cent agrees with PM 30 per cent disagrees in a national daily. CEO/promoter of a telecom giant just enterning his 50s; 55 per cent disagree and 45 per cent agree with the PM's views again on a national daily. CEO/Promoter of a tech company in his early 40s, competely disagrees with the PM and calls it a demand and supply situation. if there are better schools and colleges training better CEOs and ensuring their steady supply the cost of hiring them will go down, this was in a blog.
All complicated arguments to drive home a simple point to the Prime Minister who is a very 1960s honest man, like many of our fathers. Just to digress a bit and profile such a man. No income outside salary. if you were in government, low salary and low tax, in private sector high salary and 90 per cent tax [if you do not believe me ask any CEO of private sector company in the 1960s]. Only people who made money were doctors and lawyers [but their income too was limited by the poor paying capacity of their clients and a doctor's fee was anything between 2 and 10 Rs and they played the volumes game those days]. What was the mindset of such men. They were brought up in the nehruvian tradition of nation building, sacrifice before consumption. The biggest social achievement then was to show others how much you have sacrificed. Cars were not needed, air conditioners were almost a sin, eating out was waste of money etc.
Great men these were, but at the end of their generation they left behnd a divided and inequitable society and to be fair to them some of them like the Prime Minister himself realised that this model had failed to deliver and consciously chose to move on to another direction that of economic freedom and liberalisation... creating a generation of people like us who now look like frankenstiens eating into the nation's entrails by those who created us.
In this debate neither side is wrong. These are two different ways of looking at things: While the PM looks at the 2000s with his prism of 1960s [not sure how to handle it] the generation of 1980s and 1990s looks at it through their own prism [agains not too sure how to handle it].
To get back to the point. What were the CEOs in their own generational way trying to tell the Prime Minister. I think two things: a) there is a generational gap in thinking and perceiving reality. Please let our generation run the show. You have handed over businesses to us, now handover the politics and economics of the country so that we get a chance to show how it is run in the new regime. b) Economic prosperity is not percolating not because of excessive freedom of privileged classes, but because of lack of freedom of non-privileged classes and non-privileged sectors like agriculture. c) please do not behave like Indian crabs by pulling down those that are going up in life.
I was was in positive awe of my father, his honesty, hardwork for a PSU, commitment, sacrifice, simple lifestyle. But never really bought into his philisophy. Like millions others of my generation. And as I grew older and had a stronger voice did not fail to mention to him at times that a) if he had taken care of himself he would have ensured a much better life for his family [I really do not know how much better since I and my sibling and my mother are doing pretty well in life:)] b) my generation has no human heros: self success is the only hero always looking for a new heroine: money.
Jai Hind
Since then I have read at least three CEOs from three generations all connected directly or indirectly with the employers' association mentioned, come up with typically generational answers: CEO in mid fifties India Chairman of a top consulting firm: 70 per cent agrees with PM 30 per cent disagrees in a national daily. CEO/promoter of a telecom giant just enterning his 50s; 55 per cent disagree and 45 per cent agree with the PM's views again on a national daily. CEO/Promoter of a tech company in his early 40s, competely disagrees with the PM and calls it a demand and supply situation. if there are better schools and colleges training better CEOs and ensuring their steady supply the cost of hiring them will go down, this was in a blog.
All complicated arguments to drive home a simple point to the Prime Minister who is a very 1960s honest man, like many of our fathers. Just to digress a bit and profile such a man. No income outside salary. if you were in government, low salary and low tax, in private sector high salary and 90 per cent tax [if you do not believe me ask any CEO of private sector company in the 1960s]. Only people who made money were doctors and lawyers [but their income too was limited by the poor paying capacity of their clients and a doctor's fee was anything between 2 and 10 Rs and they played the volumes game those days]. What was the mindset of such men. They were brought up in the nehruvian tradition of nation building, sacrifice before consumption. The biggest social achievement then was to show others how much you have sacrificed. Cars were not needed, air conditioners were almost a sin, eating out was waste of money etc.
Great men these were, but at the end of their generation they left behnd a divided and inequitable society and to be fair to them some of them like the Prime Minister himself realised that this model had failed to deliver and consciously chose to move on to another direction that of economic freedom and liberalisation... creating a generation of people like us who now look like frankenstiens eating into the nation's entrails by those who created us.
In this debate neither side is wrong. These are two different ways of looking at things: While the PM looks at the 2000s with his prism of 1960s [not sure how to handle it] the generation of 1980s and 1990s looks at it through their own prism [agains not too sure how to handle it].
To get back to the point. What were the CEOs in their own generational way trying to tell the Prime Minister. I think two things: a) there is a generational gap in thinking and perceiving reality. Please let our generation run the show. You have handed over businesses to us, now handover the politics and economics of the country so that we get a chance to show how it is run in the new regime. b) Economic prosperity is not percolating not because of excessive freedom of privileged classes, but because of lack of freedom of non-privileged classes and non-privileged sectors like agriculture. c) please do not behave like Indian crabs by pulling down those that are going up in life.
I was was in positive awe of my father, his honesty, hardwork for a PSU, commitment, sacrifice, simple lifestyle. But never really bought into his philisophy. Like millions others of my generation. And as I grew older and had a stronger voice did not fail to mention to him at times that a) if he had taken care of himself he would have ensured a much better life for his family [I really do not know how much better since I and my sibling and my mother are doing pretty well in life:)] b) my generation has no human heros: self success is the only hero always looking for a new heroine: money.
Jai Hind
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