I’ve been meaning to get to an anecdote about the puzzle that was the Uber business model in Bangalore, India. So here goes.

I first started swimming when I was 4 years old. It was the summer of 1987. Hundreds of petrified kids would line up in a row on the wall, and ferocious instructors would bark orders at us.

Recipes I wrote down a decade ago, when I was fresh off the boat:

Key to Dals

When in doubt, use toor dal.

• Moong dal: Khichdi, Pongal only
• Channa dal: Payasa, Kosambri

This is a strong human interest story that would certainly make it to pg. 107 of the July 2007 edition of Reader’s Digest India, provided somebody rewrites it, of course.

I meet this auto driver in Jayanagar and chat him up. A quick background: he is an 18…