I've noticed a spate of carpooling sites mushroom around here. It's fashionable to say that it's a great idea. I think it's crap.

There are too many things that must match for a carpool to become successful. Timings, workload, office location, home location, etc. It's difficult to match all that for a country like India, where the work culture is not like that in other developed countries - come in at 9, bugger off at 6. Being the back office of the universe, we tend to work our butts off all the time.

Getting all that to match for two people is a challenge, getting it to match for three is a difficult challenge, and instead of trying to get it to match for four, one would be better off trying to teach a zebra what a zebra-crossing means.

Carpooling has to be tackled on an organization level. Chaps working in the same company/same IT park/same SEZ would be better advised to share their ride to work and back. Which they do anyway. So where really is the need to have a fancy website?

What carpooling in India demands, is flexibility and spontaneity. Flexibility - you're not stuck with the same group of chaps everyday. Spontaneity - car pools get formed and dissolved on a per-journey basis. There's a bulletin board that poolers and poolees use. At 1400 hrs, pooler types in to the board, "I am leaving for home at 1730 hrs - from Mindspace, Malad to S.V.Road, Khar. Anyone want to share a ride, call 98XXXXXXXX by 1530 hrs." Poolees, on the lookout for a ride home, are checking the board, and get in touch with pooler if the ride is of any use to them.

I hate Barista, and I hate Cafe Coffee Day even more.

There, that's out of the bloody way.

I think they're expensive, noisy and filthy.

The coffee is terrible. The hot coffees are insipid, the cold ones are full of snow and the iced ones are a magnificent explosion of ice cubes.

The food is stale. All fancy names, and no go.

And the service is appalling. I have always detested being served coffee in a plastic takeaway glass by a 15-year old doofus who wouldn't be able to tell the difference between coffee and bird pee even if he drank a gallon-odd of each.

We've dumped Baristas and CCDs.

Enter Vrindavan, Krishna Vihar, Ratna, Vishwa Bharti, Sairaj and Sadanand. In no particular order.

Udupis are the new meeting joints. Power lunches, quick bites, and everything in between.

Cheap, fast, reliable. Great food, fast service, Oracle-sque waiters. And that filter coffee.

Bahrista, I'll tell you what, take an effin' walk.