Posted inExperience Food Place

OG Variar and Sons Bakery Rajajinagar – experience

Me and my friend visited OG Variar and Sons Bakery in Rajajinagar, Bengaluru last evening. According to my colleague's brother, butter biscuits, cashew biscuits and rusks had to be tried. My friend's cousin said that the place is "walkable distance" from Rajajinagar metro. But then, the place is NOT so walkable distance from the Rajajinagar metro station. But that's the nearest metro station to reach this place. I guess we took around 15-20 minutes to walk from the metro station…
Posted inEducation

Karnataka Government decides to shut down 10 new universities: Lessons to learn

Karnataka Government has decided to shut down 10 new universities that were established in the last 5 years. Mandya and Chamarajanagar Universities are two among the many new universities that were decided to be shut down. They will be merged with their parent universities. So Mandya and Chamarajanagar Universities will be merged with the  University of Mysore. This reminds me of an event mentioned in the novel Jugaari Cross written by Poornachandra Tejaswi. In the novel, the protagonist would be…
Posted inPhilosophy

Coming out of “binary thinking”

The moment I say "binary", you may just remember 0011010111000 from your computer science classes or the "base 2 system" in the maths classes. Instead of getting so technical, let me take you back in time to the 15th century when the glorious Vijayanagara Empire flourished in the Deccan Plateau. In the court of the emperor Shri Krishna Devaraya, there was a witty poet, scholar and advisor to the king - Tenali Ramakrishna. Many of his stories are a part…
Posted inMusic Plagiarism

Nadeem – Shravan were just unethical businessmen disguised as composers

If you can think of some of the biggest Bollywood / Hindi hit songs from the 1990s, they were all composed by the duo Nadeem & Shravan. Most of their songs were on T-Series (initially) and later on Tips. If you go through YouTube or Spotify playlists, you'll find Nadeem & Shravan songs dominating at least half the playlist. For a long time, I believed that they were wonderful composers. And then I discovered over time that almost every major…
Posted inWork

The myth of “come early, leave early” timings at work

These days, many work places have introduced the policy of "come early to work and leave early from work". Basically, the work timings would be 7am to 2pm or 8am to 3pm. Employers cite many advantages to the employees: When you come early, there's less traffic on the roads. So you can commute quickly to work. When you leave also, there will be less traffic. So you can reach home early. You get extra time in the evening for doing…
Posted inMusic

Sai Abhyankar’s Sithira Puthiri song

A few minutes back, Sai Abhyankar's new song "Sithira Puthiri" was released on Think Music channel. Three days back, Think Music team released a promo video featuring social media influencer Sameeha Mariam, famously known as TechPotate. I thought this girl would feature in the main video. However, they gave us a surprise. I opened the video and it gave me the vibes of 90s indipop era. The video has Sai Abhyankar checking out an old painting of a girl and…
Posted inEducation Teaching

Shifting goalposts for lecturers in India

Being college lecturers / professors in India is already riddled with many issues. University Grants Commission (UGC) is the apex body that controls Universities and college education in India. UGC comes up with the guidelines for eligibility and other rules for the college lecturers keeps changing the rules the way they wish and it causes more problems, than solving the existing ones. My friends hinted me that UGC has come up with a draft proposal to make rules whereby the…
Posted inEducation Law

Choosing an optional subject between Human Rights and Law of Insurance

KSLU gives an option to choose between Human Rights Law and Law of Insurance during the 3rd Semester of 3 years LLB course and 8th Semester of 5 years LLB courses. In The Past: Law of Insurance earlier was never an optional subject, but a compulsory paper. Some universities had one paper that had Law of Insurance and Banking Law as a single subject. Human Rights Law on the other hand used to be taught as a part of the…
Posted inEducation Law

Doing LLM in India or abroad

Many students, especially the ones good in studies approach me and ask - (a) if it is a good idea to do LLM after LLB and (b) what are the best places to do LLM. In this article, I will cover two aspects: (1) Purpose of doing an LLM (2) Where to do LLM. Purpose of Doing an LLMLL.M. stands for Legum Magister. It is the post-graduate degree or masters in law. In India, LL.M. is done mostly for the…