Category: descriptive

TV Punditry

Those of you who might be following me on social media (Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIN) might know that I’ve started a career in TV Punditry over the last week. Well, it’s not that much of a career – I still need to figure out how to get paid for it.

Anyway, so I was on News9 once on Saturday (analysing exit polls) and again on Tuesday (analysing the election results). It happened pretty much at random, from a random twitter conversation:

And so Mathang (who I’d first met in 2004 when he had interviewed me for Education Times) set me up with Anil Kumar from News9, who presently asked me for my number. A couple of twitter DMs, a couple of emails and a couple of phone calls later, I had been asked to come to the News9 studio at 5pm on Saturday.

Saturday’s session was really enjoyable, and I spoke a fair bit on the process of conducting an exit poll, the importance of sample sizes and representative samples, the process of converting votes to seats, etc. A 5 minute monologue on sampling process got the anchors interested in me, and they kept coming back to me. As is my wont, I summarised the import of my arguments for Mint.

And so I got invited again for Tuesday’s post-counting session, and I’m not sure I enjoyed it that much. As the elections threw up a hung assembly, the politicians on the panel spent their time shouting at each other. I was seated in an inappropriate place – right between a loud JDS spokesperson and a loud BJP spokesperson. I recused myself from much of the discussion and was only brought in because the anchors probably thought I should be “given some lines” – an opportunity I used to comment on the parties’ election strategies.

So two TV appearances later, I must say I quite like the format – it’s good footage (literally) if not anything else, but it can be a bit painful. Writing is easy in the sense that you just collect your thoughts and deliver them at a time.

Video means that you are virtually participating in a group discussion, and need to butt in to make your point. You might have something insightful to say, but need to wait for an opportune time to interject. You might be in the middle of a long point but get interrupted by another panellist. You might wait for ages to say something but the opportunity never comes. At other times, you might get a question that you’re not prepared for.

The worst thing as an analytical guy on TV is that you need to keep referring to your data, and your analysis. So there was one occasion on each session when the anchors asked me a question to answer which I’d to write some code to answer. So each time I mumbled something and bent down to my laptop, and got bailed out by the anchor who got someone else’s view in the time I took to get the requisite data.

In any case, I want to do more of this. I also hope that like with my writing, I can some day hope to get paid for TV appearances – this is a hard job since panellists representing political parties don’t charge anything – it’s in their parties’ interests to be represented on the show.

But, some day..

A journey back to civilisation

Earlier this evening, I was at a coffee shop in Whitefield with a friend when it started raining cats and dogs. I got a message from a wife stating that it was raining insanely in her part of town, and that I should be careful while coming back. I promised her that I would wait it out before returning, and returned to my conversation.

I made my first attempt at booking a cab at 1845, by which time the rain had stopped. Uber showed that the nearest cab was 8 minutes away, except that when I tried to book it it failed to find me a ride. Ola was no better – except that it showed that the nearest cab was 20 minutes away when I opened the app.

I continued waiting, and continued checking on both platforms. No cabs materialised. And after some 45 minutes of waiting thus, I decided to get out and find a bus. My friend was surprised that I was willing to change buses to get home. “I would never do that”, he declared, adding that it would be easier for me to move back to India.

I walked up Varthur main road looking for a bus stop. It had stopped raining but there were huge puddles on the roadside, and mosquitoes buzzed all around. There was a huge crowd at the bus stop. The first two buses came at an interval of five minutes each. Both were jam packed.

It was clear that Varthur main road wasn’t a great place to be, since the bus frequency there was low – most buses would be coming from the other side of Whitefield, so it was clear that I should get to Kundalahalli gate.

Presently an “illegal bus” (an office bus picking up passengers for some extra income for the driver) materialised, and it was a good opportunity to get to Kundalahalli gate. The bus sped there, and charged 10 bucks.

As expected, there were plenty of buses, including Volvos, at Kundalahalli Gate, except that there was no room to get into any of them. Once again, there was no luck to be had on the Uber or Ola front. I even tried UberPool and Ola Share (stuff I normally never use), but nothing materialised. The only result of all that was that my phone battery drained like crazy. And it started raining as well – I was happy I had behaved like a rich man this morning and bought a new umbrella when I realised I’d forgotten mine at home.

An airport bus appeared as a sort of a saviour. It was empty, and the conductor said passengers not headed to the airport weren’t allowed on it. I offered to buy a ticket till the airport, and was allowed on. The conductor said I best get off at the next stop (Marathahalli bridge) given where I was headed. He charged me Rs. 16.

So at every step I got closer and closer to civilisation. Kundalahalli Gate was civilisation compared to Varthur Main Road. Marathahalli was civilisation compared to Kundalahalli Gate. Another illegal bus there dropped me to Domlur (Rs. 20), and under normal circumstances that should count as “proper civilisation”. Except that the design of the Domlur flyover means that it’s rather desolate and dark and unwalkable under it. So I needed to reach the next stage of civilisation, which I did when yet another illegal bus dropped me to Richmond Circle (the driver demanded Rs. 15, but I gave only Rs. 10 since I didn’t have change).

At all stages, I continuously tried to get cabs and autos, but perhaps due to tomorrow’s state elections, none materialised. Most of the time I was on one road (Old Airport Road), and most sections of it are rather badly lit and seem unsafe and “rural”. This was a journey I would have never done if I had been with family.

And the mode of transport was bimodal – three of the five buses I took to reach home were “illegal”. Two others were the most expensive Volvos. The last leg of the journey was completed on yet another airport Volvo, where the conductor made no fuss of letting people in, and not only gave me change for Rs. 100 (ticket cost Rs. 37), but also gave me 5 100 rupee notes for a 500 rupee note I handed him.

The entire journey, from the time I started hailing the cab to when I opened my door, took exactly three hours. A cab would have cost me upwards of Rs. 500, but my bimodal transport cost me Rs. 105. Frankly I would’ve been more than happy to spend the former amount for the pleasure of getting home an hour and half earlier, and being able to do something productive on the ride home.

But then it’s not often that an NRI has an adventure such as this!

NRI Diaries: Volume 2, Number 2

I’m writing this while chomping on a bar of Amul Colombia Classique Black Single Origin Dark Chocolate. You read that right. Amul now produces single origin dark chocolate (55%) using chocolate from Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela (!!!).

It was only six months back that I first came across the concept of single origin dark chocolate, when a (then) colleague in London offered me some Haitian dark chocolate he had bought at Waitrose. I had been bloody impressed, and fallen in love with this brand of chocolate then, but now I’m reminded of what my father used to say – that there’s nothing that is not available in Bangalore “nowadays” (to put that “nowadays” in context, he died in 2007).

The said bar of chocolate was purchased at Namdhari Fresh, which I visited with the express purpose of checking out what exotic foods are available in Bangalore nowadays (and Namdhari is hardly the place where you get the most exotic stuff in Bangalore nowadays – it just happens to be within walking distance of my house).

And now I see that several kinds of cheeses are available here – apart from the “usual” Cheddar and Mozzarella, you get Feta and Halloumi as well. Well, Feta we used to get back in 2016 as well, though not always (which prompted an entire chapter in my book), but this is the first time I’m finding Halloumi in Bangalore. It’s expensive, though – INR 640 for a 150 gram block (if I remember correctly). To compare, a 250 gram block of Halloumi costs GBP 2.25 (~INR 200) in London.

On my long walk to “flowth block” today, I felt like an NRI. I felt like someone who’s visiting India from abroad, and who is very impressed with the “energy” and growth. A couple of my old favourite restaurants had shut down, I saw (La Casa and Gramina Thindi, for those who want to know), but there were also loads (and loads) of small cutesy places that had opened up. There is plenty of construction activity, and plenty of investment in the city. Some of the investment will surely go under, but a lot of it will produce outsized returns. In a way, compared to when I left last year, based on very tiny anec-data, it seems like risk-taking ability of people in Jayanagar has gone up.

Another piece of evidence of the vibrancy of India is in the mobile internet space – I was telling a friend I met today that before I moved last year, I had a package that provided me with 3GB of data per month. The pay as you go plan that I use now offers me 2GB of data PER DAY! And I pay a fifth of what I used to pay in 2016.

And this has set off another wave of entrepreneurship, since this has resulted in a massive spike in the amount of video consumption (the friend I was talking to today quoted some impressive numbers in terms of this growth).

Earlier in the day, I took my wife’s old scooter to move all round town for a series of meetings. Based on anec-data (once again), traffic actually seems to have better, at least in parts of old Bangalore that are now served by the metro.

I might have a different opinion of Bangalore’s traffic tomorrow, though, since I’m headed to Whitefield (not taking the scooter there, though).

NRI Diaries: Volume 2, Number 1

We were welcomed with the mildly warm mildly humid air of Bangalore as we walked out of the airport early this morning. It was that nice kind of humidity, that makes you feel good without breaking a sweat.

The exit from the airport had been rather smooth, except for a bit of a wait at the baggage carousel. Passport control, which had taken 30 mins during our December visit, took 3. No questions asked anywhere.

The airport taxis seemed rather disorganised, though, with random (non-licensed) taxis standing in the same rank as the licenced taxis, and drivers shouting to attract customers. This is a departure from the usual practice at Bangalore airport where the taxi rank is rather well organised!

First order of business after landing at the in-laws’ house in Rajajinagar was to go for breakfast, which was at CTR. The driver of the first auto rickshaw we sat in insisted on filling up gas before he dropped us. So we jumped out and let him have his gas instead.

The vaDe at CTR was average. The masaldose was good but not great. Based on recent samples, I’m once again in the Vidyarthi Bhavan camp in the great north-south dose battle. The dose there during my last visit in December had been brilliant. I’m going there again next week.

I had a work meeting in the afternoon. Over the last year or so in London I’ve consistently eschewed the big chains in favour of the numerous independent hipster cafes the city is littered with. Suddenly, here I was at a loss in terms of meeting venues – not finding anything beyond the chains in the area of town I’d to go to. I finally picked Coffee Day Square at the Tiffany’s junction, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Then, for the first time this season, I’m getting to watch the IPL live. Living in the UK, where cable TV subscriptions are not a thing, I’ve hardly watched live sport. I occasionally buy day passes on Sky TV to watch football, but taking a specific subscription just to watch IPL doesn’t seem worth it.

And as it happens, my in-laws have only once channel that shows live IPL – Star Suvarna Plus, with the channel’s specialty being Kannada commentary! While it’s pleasant to hear fresh voices describe the cricket, somehow it feels weird listening to Vijay Bharadwaj and B Akhil talk about the game. And I didn’t feel this way when listening to Kannada commentary of Ranji trophy matches on radio in the early 1990s. As I write this, I’m watching on mute.

Oh, and I’m still yet to adjust to the time zone change. At 3:30 this afternoon I was wondering why the IPL game hadn’t yet begun, and while writing this at 8:30 I’m wondering why the Guardian hasn’t started its MBM on the Atletico-Arsenal game yet!

Finally maybe it’s because it was a shorter gap between India visits this time (4 months), but I feel less like an NRI. I’m not too fazed by the heat, and most of the day has felt “rather normal”. Maybe I’m getting used to being an NRI!

Relative pricing revisited

Yesterday I bought a pair of jeans. Normally it wouldn’t be a spectacular event (though one of my first blogposts was about a pair of jeans), but regular squatting has meant that I’ve been tearing through jeans well-at-a-faster-rate, and also that it’s been hard to find jeans that fit me well.

Basically, I have a well-above-average thigh and a well-below-average arse for my waist size, and that makes it hard to find readymade pants that fit well. As a consequence I’ve hardly bought trousers in the last 2-3 years, though I’ve been losing many pairs to the tear in this period of time.

And so when I found a pair of jeans that fit me comfortably yesterday I wasn’t too concerned about paying a record price for it (about 1.8 times the maximum I’d ever paid for a pair in the past). In fact, I’d seen another pair that fit well a few minutes earlier (and it was a much fancier brand), but it was well above budget (3 times as expensive as my historically costliest ever pair), and so I moved on (more importantly, it came with a button fly, and I’d find that rather inconvenient).

Jeans having been bought, we went off to a restaurant at the mall for lunch, at the end of which the wife pointed out that the money we paid for the lunch was more than the difference in prices between the two pairs of jeans. And that if only we would avoid eating out when it’s avoidable, we could spend on getting ourselves much more fancier clothes without feeling guilty.

I’ve written about relative prices in the past, especially about the Big Mac Index, and how it doesn’t make sense because of differential liquidity. After moving to London, I’m yet to come to terms with the fact that relative prices of goods here is vastly different from that back home; and that I haven’t adjusted my lifestyle accordingly leading to inefficient spending and a possible strain on lifestyle.

Food, for example, is much more expensive here than in India (we’ll use official exchange rates for the purpose of this post). The average coffee costs £2.5 (INR 225), which is about 10 times the price of an average coffee in Bangalore (I’m talking about a good quick cup of coffee here, so ignoring the chains which are basically table rentals). The average weekday takeaway lunch costs £6 (INR 540), which is again 10X what it costs in Bangalore.

Semi-fancy meals (a leisurely meal at a sit down restaurant with a drink, perhaps) are relatively less costly here, costing about £25-30 per head compared to INR 1200-1500 in Bangalore, a ratio of about 2X. A beer at a pub costs about the same, though cocktails here are much more expensive.

The alternative to eating out is, of course, eating in, and most “regular” ingredients such as vegetables and rice cost more here, though cheeses (which are relatively less liquid in India) are actually cheaper here. Milk costs about the same.

Controlling for quality, clothes cost about the same (or might even be less costly here when you go for slightly more fancy stuff). Electronics again cost about the same (they come through the same global supply chain). Contact lenses are more expensive here (though the ones I buy in India are manufactured in the UK!).

In my book, I have a chapter called “if you want to live like a Roman, live in Rome”. It’s about how different cities have different relative liquidity of goods. Similarly, different cities and countries have different relative prices, and long-term residents of these places evolve their spending to optimise for their given set of relative prices.

And when you move cities or countries, if you don’t change your lifestyle accordingly you might end up spending suboptimally, and get less welfare from life.

Once again this points out problems with international price indices being constructed based on a particular commodity, or set of commodities. For not only are different commodities differentially liquid (as I pointed out in my Mint piece linked above) in different places, but also the “standard consumption basket” also varies from city to city!

And if a Delhi-ite consumes lots of apples, and a Bangalorean consumes lots of oranges, you can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison in cost of living in these cities!

A year of wiping arse near the Thames

So it’s been exactly one year and one day since we moved to London. Exactly one year ago (one day after we moved here), I wrote about why Brits talk so much about the weather.

The last one week has been among my most depressing in London. Between Tuesday and Friday, the only times I stepped out of home was to the store round the corner, for grocery shopping. The wife didn’t step out of home at all. The daughter accompanied me on one trip to the store. Between Tuesday evening and Saturday morning, there was a layer (or few) of snow on the ground, thanks to the Beast From The East.

This wasn’t the first time in life that I’d seen snow fall – that had occurred in early December when we were similarly snowed in one Sunday, and had run out of supplies.

This apart, another source of depression was the latitude – between early November and late January, it would get dark insanely early here – around 4pm or so. It would be especially cruel on weekends when we’d be home, to see it getting dark so early. I would take walks in the middle of work (I was working for a company then) to make sure I at least got to see some sun (or white clouds!).

Weather apart, one big insight about London after a year of living here is that it’s a massive sprawl. For example, I live in a 2-storey house, with a backyard at least 100 feet long. And this is typical of all the houses in my area. Roads curve around and have plenty of cul de sacs, giving most residential neighbourhood a suburban feel. Check out the satellite picture of my area here: 
Until I moved here last year, I had assumed that London is an “urban” and dense city, given what I’d seen in 2005 (when I’d stayed in South Kensington) and the fact that the city has great public transport and congestion charges. As it turns out, the neighbourhoods are really suburban and low density. Residential areas are really residential, and you need to go to your area’s “high street” if you need to shop.

In the suburbs, most people have cars, which they use fairly regularly – though not for commuting into the city. The area I live in, Ealing, for example, has brilliant public transport connections, but is fundamentally built for life with cars. We currently live in a 1880s house, but are soon moving to a more “urban” apartment in a building that used to be a pub.

London being a sprawl means that it takes a long time to get anywhere, unless you’re commuting directly in or out of town. Most tube connections are radial, which means that if you need to visit someone in another neighbourhood it can take a long time indeed. As a consequence, I’ve hardly met my friends here – with the one I’ve met most often it’s been at an average frequency of once in 2 months.

The other thing that’s intrigued me about London is the pubs – those in the middle of town are all mostly horribly crowded, while those in the suburbs are really nice and friendly. There’s this one place close to home where I go for my football matches, and where we once went for a Sunday roast (yes, pubs here offer baby high chairs!).

Other pubs in the area look inviting as well, and make me wonder why I don’t have “area friends” to go to them with!

Finally, coming to the title of this post, when we were house-hunting this time last year, one of the things I looked for was a house with a bidet or health faucet. We were told by the agents that such fixtures weren’t normal for rental housing in the UK. After we’d moved in, we asked our landlords if we could install a health faucet. Once again we got the same reply, and that we were free to install them as long as we took them away when we moved out.

So as it has happened, we haven’t really “washed arse in the Thames“!

 

NRI Diaries: Day 3

The longer I’m here, the less I feel like an NRI and the more I go back to my earlier resident self. You can expect this series to dry out in a few days.

So Saturday started with a reversion of jetlag – I woke up at noon, at my in-laws’ place. One awesome breakfast/lunch/brunch (call it what you want – I ate breakfast stuff at 12:30 pm), it was time to get back home since I had some work at some banks around here.

I decided to take the metro. The wife dropped me by scooter to the Rajajinagar Metro Station. The ticket to South End Circle cost Rs. 30. The lady behind the counter didn’t crib when I gave her Rs. 100, and gave change.

Having used the metro as my primary mode of transport in London for the last nine months, I’m entitled to some pertinent observations:

  • Trains seemed very infrequent. When I went up to the platform, the next train was 8 minutes away. And there was already a crowd building up on the platform
  • Like in London, the platform has a yellow line and passengers are asked to wait behind that. But unlike in London, the moment you go near the yellow line, a guard whistles and asks you to get back. I’m reminded of Ravikiran Rao’s tweetstorm on Jewish walls.
  • For a Saturday afternoon, the train was extremely crowded.
  • My skills from an earlier life of expertly standing and grabbing a seat in a BMTC bus were of no use here, since other passengers also seemed to have that skill
  • My skills from the last few months in knowing where to stand comfortably in a crowded train were put to good use, though. I managed to read comfortably through my journey
  • It took 20 mins to get to South End. Another 10 mins walk home. Not sure this is quicker than taking a cab for the same journey

Afternoon was spent running around banks updating mobile number and Aadhaar. It was all peaceful, except for Punjab National Bank asking for a physical copy of my Aadhaar (which quite defeats the purpose! HDFC told me to update Aadhaar online. ICICI did it through ATM!).

In the evening I let go of some more vestiges of my NRI-ness. I got the water filter at home cleaned and started drinking filtered tap water. And then I went and had chaat at a street gaaDi. I promptly got “spicy burps”. I guess it was the masala powder he added.

I quickly made amends by going to my favourite jilebi stall and belting jilebi.

Then I went to meet fellow-NRI Paddy-the-Pradeep for coffee at Maiya’s in Jayanagar. We ordered bottled water, discussed first world economics and made jokes about NRIs carrying around bottled water. And then we walked out carrying the leftover bottled water as a NRI badge.

On my way home, I went to a nearby bakery and got plain cake, nippaTT and Congress.

All is well.

NRI Diaries: Day 2

NRI Diaries: Day 1

NRI Diaries: Day 2

I know this is a day late, but the reasons for that will be apparent by the end of the post.

Day Two (15th December) started with waking up at 9 am – jetlag had clearly not worn off. I was going to be late for my 10:30 meeting and started getting ready in a hurry only to see a text from the person I was meeting that he was late as well.

Once again I took an auto rickshaw for breakfast. Meter showed Rs. 35. I handed a Rs. 100 note. Driver said “no change”, and didn’t seem to mind when I told him that I’ll get change from the restaurant I planned to eat at and that he should wait. I bought coupons for my food, and brought back Rs. 50 for the auto guy, and he promptly gave me the change.

The meeting in question was on the other side of Silk Board, and I was dreading the commute. Surprisingly, the commute was rather smooth, taking less than 20 minutes from Jayanagar 4th T Block to HSR Layout. Along the way I got to hear the driver’s life story as he was constantly on the phone with a friend of his.

Traffic was worse on the way back from the meeting (started from HSR around 1230 pm). Took nearly an hour to get home (Jayanagar 3rd Block). And along the way I saw this:

I honestly miss this kind of stuff back in the UK, where I find people taking “data science” too seriously (another post on that sometime in the future).

Lunch was swiggied. Main course came from Gramina Thindi, It’s a tiny restaurant and doesn’t have a computer, so it’s not integrated into Swiggy’s ordering system. So swiggy actually sent a guy to the restaurant to place my order, and he waited there while it was being prepared and then brought it home to me.

I totally didn’t mind the Rs. 35 “delivery fee” they charged on top of my Rs. 55 lunch.

Dessert was from Corner House. Cake Fudge was as excellent as usual. Made a mental note to introduce this delicacy to the daughter before this trip is up.

And then it was time to go launch my book. Sales of the book are not exclusive to Amazon any more – it’s also available at Higginbothams on M G Road, which is where the book launch happened.

The launch was at this nice outdoor backyard of the store. I spoke to Pavan Srinath about some of the concepts I’ve described in the book. After that I signed copies, trying hard to get a wisecrack for everyone I signed for. I mostly failed.

The highlight of the launch was this guy zipping across the venue right behind me on a scooter, and then loudly honking. He was followed by another guy on a bike.

After the launch function was over, the wife and I decided to head to Mahesh Lunch Home for dinner. We took an auto. The guy at MG Road demanded Rs. 80 (ordinarily an exorbitant amount) to take us to Richmond Circle. We instantly agreed and got in.

He may have had some sense of seller’s remorse after that – in that he probably priced himself too low. So he drove slowly and, as we got to Richmond Circle, he said it would cost us a further Rs. 20 to take us across the road to Mahesh. We paid up again.

Something’s seriously wrong with Uber in Bangalore it seems. Out of six times I’ve tried using the service, I’ve got a cab within 5 minutes on only one occasion. On a few occasions, it’s been upwards of 10 minutes. And when the app showed that the nearest Uber was 20 mins away, we simply decided to take an auto rickshaw.

Except that we’d not bargained for drivers refusing outright to take us to Rajajinagar. One guy agreed and after we got in, asked for Rs. 300. This time, with our stomachs full, we were less charitable and walked out. Some walking and more waiting later, we were on our way to Rajajinagar, where I spent the night.

Oh, and it appears that the daughter has been afflicted by NRI-itis as well. She bears a red mark on her cheek following a mosquito bite.

NRI Diaries: Day 1

So I arrived in Bangalore this morning, after nine months in London. This makes this my first visit to India as a “Non Resident Indian” (NRI), and since foreign papers quite like getting opinions of India from NRI observers, I thought it makes sense to document my pertinent observations. I should mention upfront, though, that nobody is paying me for these observations.

The day began after a very short night’s sleep (we went to bed at 11 pm British Time and woke up at 7:30 AM India Time, a total of three hours) with a visit to one of our favourite breakfast establishments in Bangalore – Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room.

It was the daughter’s first ever auto rickshaw ride (back when we lived here we had a car and she was really tiny, so didn’t need to take her in an auto). She seemed rather nonchalant about it, occasionally turning her head to look outside. The auto ride cost us Rs 30. We gave Rs 100 and the driver asked us if we didn’t have change. Living outside makes you unlearn the art of change management.

We got our usual table at MLTR and were greeted by a rather usual waiter plonking three glasses of water on our table. We politely declined and requested for Bisleri.

After breakfast, it was time to get connected. I went to a medical shop near my home which I knew offers mobile phone top up services. Topping up the wife’s phone was rather straightforward, though it took some time given the crowd. During my fifteen minutes at the medical shop, at least six people came requesting for mobile phone top ups. Only two came asking for medicines. India seems to be getting healthier and wealthier.

Airtel decided to reassign my number to someone else so I needed a new SIM. I asked the medical shop guy for a Reliance Jio SIM. He spent ten minutes trying to log in to his Jio vendor app, and I gave up and took my business elsewhere. This elsewhere was a really tiny hole in the wall shop, which had a fingerprint reader that enabled the issue of a Jio SIM against Aadhaar authentication. The process was a breeze, except that I consider it weird that my mobile number starts with a 6 (the number I lost was a 9845- series Airtel).

Waiting at the hole-in-the-wall also made me realise that standing at shopfronts is not common practice in London. Thanks to high labour costs, most shops there are “self-service”. It’s also seldom that several people land up at one shopfront in London at the same time!

Losing my old number also meant I had to update the number with banks. I started with State Bank of India. The process was rather simple – took no more than 2 minutes. While at it, I asked about Aadhaar linking of my bank account there. There seems to be some confusion about it.

For example, I heard that if you have multiple accounts with the bank, you should only link one of them with Aadhaar – which defeats the purpose of the exercise, if one exists! Then, joint accounts need only one Aadhaar number to be linked. The linking process also differs based on who you ask. In any case, I encountered one rather helpful officer who completed my Aadhaar linking in a jiffy.

Then, my book is launching tomorrow which means I needed to buy new clothes. I landed up at FabIndia, and as is the practice in forin, I kept saying “hi” and “thank you” to the salespeople, who kept muttering “you’re welcome, sir”. While at it, the missus discovered that FabIndia now has rather explicit sales targets per store, which possibly explains why the salespeople there were more hands on compared to earlier.

Later in the evening, I got a haircut and a head massage. The last time I visited this salon, it was called “noble” (a rather common name for haircutting shops in Bangalore. Like Ganesh Fruit Juice Centres). Now it’s called “nice cuts”. The head massage was fantastic – I miss this kind of service back in the UK. I also borrowed the inlaws’ car and drove it around and even managed to parallel park it – nine months of no driving has done no harm to my driving skills.

Hopefully I’ll have more observations tomorrow.

London’s 7D

In classes 11 and 12 i had to travel every day from Jayanagar to indiranagar to get to school. There was a direct bus that took me from just behind my house to Just behind my school. This was 7D. But despite my mother’s insistence that I take that, I seldom did. For it took such a circuitous route that it would take ages.

I’m sure that someone has done a survey of bangalores most convoluted bus routes, and if so, 7D would fall close to the top there (the only bus that I imagine could beat 7D is 201).

So rather than take 7D I’d take one of the many buses bound to Shivajinagar and get off at Richmond circle, from where I’d get 138 to take me right behind school (or the double decker 131 to take me 10 mins walk away in the other direction). The changeover at Richmond circle was rather simple (no walking involved) and this process would help me save at least 15 minutes each way every day.

Now I’ve figured that the London Underground has its own 7D, except for the fact that the route is not circuitous – it’s simply slow. I live in Ealing and my office is near Victoria so the most direct way for me to travel is to take the district line. It takes 35 minutes and runs once every 10 minutes (the line splits in two places to frequency to Ealing is low).

On most days I don’t travel directly from home to work since I drop Berry to her Nursery on the way. So taking the district line straight from Home to work is never an option.

Yesterday I was ill and so my wife took Berry to her Nursery. So I travelled directly to work. And for the first time ever since I joined this office I took the district line on the way to Office.

I reached Ealing broadway at 8:02 and Just about caught the 8:03 train. The train rolled into Victoria at 8:40 and I was in Office at 8:45.

Today once again I was traveling directly from home to work, and reached Ealing broadway station a few seconds later than yesterday, just missing the train I’d caught yesterday. I had the option to wait 10 minutes for the next district line train or using what seemed like a convoluted route. I chose the latter.

I took a great western railway train to Paddington, where I walked for about 5-7 minutes to the bakerloo line and got it. I got off the bakerloo five stops later at oxford circus where I changed to the Victoria line, and got off two stops later at Victoria. The time was 8:35!

In other words I’d left later than I had yesterday, changed trains twice (one involving a long walk) and still reached five minutes earlier. And all the time traveling in trains far less crowded than an early morning district line train headed to the city!

I hereby christen the district line as London’s 7D. Except that the route isn’t anywhere circuitous!