Tid Bit from My Diary

The advantage for people who have been around during the seventies and eighties in India is that they have witnessed Indian television bloom, closely followed by the IT and telephony sector. Then came a revolution of sorts riding piggyback on smart phones, tablets and pads and it combined all of the above into one device. Commercial break, I remember was not despised so much in those early days of Indian TV. Advertisers then were few and far in-between and the scheduled commercials brought in welcome break for the viewers to run out and complete some chores. This used to mimic the intervals we experienced while watching a movie in the theatre. However, what irritated the viewers were the unscheduled breaks the results of technical glitches. The most hated screen shot of the television that I can still vividly remember is “rukawat ke liye khed hai” or its English translation, “sorry for the interruption”. When I walked into the TV room of our hostel during college days, I dis...

Pablo Picasso once said " Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions ”. With a going to be 8 years doting daughter, it’s her emotions that changes and our family follows. Very few will disagree on the benefits of involving children in decision making process early in their life. This is particularly valid for such decisions that touch their lives constantly and colour of the living spaces is quite high on that list. Colour can communicate easily through symbolism and no wonder that white have been reserved by Priests, doctors and politicians. This probably is the scenario in most households though the adults have to bring some rationale or even overrule their suggestions at times. Adults in this context usually refer to the ladies of the house as when it comes to colour schemes, the man even if he is a pro, doesn't stand a chance. However, not everybody can visualize the final looks of any particular space based on a small swatch of colour available ...

We have grown up in the seventies and the eighties in which could easily be classified as a utopian society. Since child hood we have been hammered with only one mantra and that was Health is wealth. While there can be no argument that in today’s world health as the only wealth is not good enough. We often wish that somebody taught us these fundamental principles of life early in our lives. Alas! The days of agriculture based economy does not exist any more for most of the urban generation. One could be as fit as a race horse but will still need other form wealth to gallop through a decent university to be worthy of picking up a job and start a family. Today I give a sachchi advice to the young generation. It’s important to leave no stone unturned early in life to develop sound body and mind. But it is equally important to take all necessary steps early in the life to start the process of developing wealth with a firm footing. There are other aspects of health and wealt...

The other day I was whiling away my time while my daughter was taking her music lessons. The pictures I have posted here are not worthwhile but something one would categorize as pure time pass. Nevertheless I tried to capture the moon in a night sky with a Samsung phone camera. One thing has intrigued me was why pictures from all cameras gets stored in a folder called DCIM.  What is DCIM anyways?  I now discovered that many many moonlit nights back DCIM, which is an acronym for Digital Camera IMages, became the default directory structure for digital cameras. Once a memory card is inserted into any camera, the camera immediately looks for a folder by the name of ‘DCIM' folder. That is true for every camera – whether it is a DSLR, other dedicated digital camera, Android phone or an Iphone. If it doesn't find one, it creates one and similarly some desktop image-editing programs are designed to look specifically for ‘DCIM' folders on any media inserted into the...

Image Source Advices are available in abundance these days and given half a chance, we don’t hesitate to deliver one. An American comedian once stated that it is too bad that the only people who run the country are too busy driving a taxi cab or giving a haircut. This makes it a bit more difficult for us to decide whom to listen to or whom not to and more importantly which one is genuine. There is no denying that we need advice to sail through our life, after all we cannot afford to make all the mistakes ourselves in one lifetime. The best strategy probably is to let other people advice but not let them decide for us. We need to be like the mythological swan that can drink the milk and leave the water behind. But humans are strange animals. Most of them suffer from the congenital weakness that they know everything until off course when it’s too late. Only exception being the medical doctor but that too is now jiggling as people use Google first and then call for the phy...

Virtual Reality or VR is not a new phenomenon.  During 1950s, Morton Heilig described an “Experience Theatre” that effectively engages all the human senses drawing the viewer into a on-screen activity. This vision was subsequently transformed into reality and a prototype called “Sensorama” was built and patented in 1962. When a stereoscopic bike ride scene of a movie was viewed in this, one would also have the hair blowing and complete with sound, smell et al. Sensorama pre-dated digital computing and is a mechanical device but still considered the forerunner of today’s VR and Morton L. Heilig has been referred by many authors as the father of Virtual Reality. VR has come a long way since then, riding piggyback on the gaming industry. This is also being extensively used to train the armed forces by simulating war front like situation,training commercial air plane pilots, simulating parachute jumping and the likes. It has been making inroads into the life of common person t...

Story # 1 Ramdin was a poor man living in the village with his wife and children. He was not a god fearing person but loved his God. He prayed Lord Vishnu two times every day and remembered him every moment. But he was so poor that he could hardly make his ends meet. Narod muni, the highest disciple of Vishnu was perplexed by this situation and could not understand why someone who was so devoted to his lord has to suffer so much. Where is his mercy! Narod went up to lord Vishnu and begged, do something for this devotee of yours. He doesn’t deserve this suffering. The lord smiled and the land got the best weather in centuries. The crop yielded an unusually productive harvest while the trees were full of fruits. But poor Ramdin gained nothing out of it as he did not own any.  Next time when they were together on the daily tour, Narod muni raised his concern about Ramdin. Lord said, “I gave the best harvest ever. What else can I do? If it’s not in his luck, its ...

The people of India have solemnly resolved through the constitution, to secure to all its citizens equality of status and of opportunity. There had been all the good intentions when this was formulated but once this were put to practice, it faltered. The closest we achieved is “equality among equals” and that too is limited within specific sections of our society. Now to put things into Indian perspective, it’s not a secret that we are a vast country with thousands of years of heritage. It is also the confluence of matriarchal and patriarchal society with numerous cultures constantly adopting and lending values to one another. What we have today is diversity in unity and vice versa. In lay man’s term we can make a politically correct statement about Indians and surprisingly even the opposite of that statement will also be true. One good example is the statement “women are not safe in Indian roads” or “women do not have freedom in the Indian society”. As far as my humble und...

A Mumphaliwala (person selling roasted peanuts) used to go around the neighbourhood in my childhood selling roasted peanuts in cones made of old newspapers along with a minuscule pack of salt. He had to shell out a few extra packs of salt as freebies to keep his consumer content coming back. Someone enlightened me quite early that “Maximum Retail Price” was the highest price at which that product could be sold and the aim should be bring it down from there. But the customer was not the king when I was a kid and the shopkeeper charged the MRP. I am talking of the seventies when availability was limited choices did not exist and Bajaj Cheetak scooter used to have 15 years waiting. But haggling and bargaining was the order of the day for everything that did not have MRP printed on it. The common man had a sense of victory being able to knock down the asking price. The victory lap would however be short-lived with the neighbours announcement that his second cou...

There was repeated outage of the internet signal and I kept watching those irritating circles on my screen every time the system tried to retrieve information for me. I became philosophical as I was forced to ask myself the what if question.  Does everything that we believe to be our own, belong to us or its all Maya, an illusion? All documents, important project information, communication and testimonies received through emails are not ours but captives in the servers belonging to Microsoft, Yahoo, Google or some other service provider. Without a proper connection I don’t even stand a chance of viewing them. We work tirelessly and what remains of our hard earned money are nothing but numerals in our bank accounts, other financial institutions, stock exchange or maybe a builder who has agreed to deliver a pricey bit of real estate. Probably you would never dwell there as it’s your second, third or nth such property. The valuables acquired over a lifetime ar...

My Faking News NEW DELHI: Information and broadcasting (I&B) minister is likely to take a view on the contentious issue of whether to proceed with monetizing the crime investigations in the country though selling of broadcasting rights of all information related to the case. The high cost involved in the case of Sheena Bora murder including air travel of her un-extended family has been an eye opener. The ruling party has agreed to bring a bill in the parliament to allow provision for self-financing of such investigations.  A well-informed source in the ministry said that many options has been considered and zeroed down on auctioning of the broadcasting rights. Sources say the Government is ready with a draft on One Crime One Sponsorship (OCOS) scheme in addition to annual broadcasting rights. These could be rolled out as early as January 2016 to take advantage of the usual high crime rates during the New Year revelations. A general consensus exists on this among the ...

Anita, the younger of the two step sisters was passing by and a part of the discussion perhaps caught her attention. She hesitated, probably thinking if it would be rude to interfere while a couple was in a conversation. As Ron moved towards his car, she said, “ some paranormal experience, eh! ”  “ You have started eavesdropping, these days. Eh! ”Ana mimicked her sister’s tone. “ Nah! I was passing by and could not help listening. Actually, I am more eager to tell you what Robin had experienced last week. ” ” So Robindra is back. I quite do not understand why a person would change his name from Robindra to Robin! ” Anita said it was all about personal choices, stopping short of questioning why she had halved her name to Ana from Ananya. “ This is about shadows and spirits of dead people, I am guessing. ” Ana said, displaying a great deal of interest and curiosity. “ Somewhat similar but not exactly ”, she continued to narrate how excited Robin was to visit his ...

I was coming back home yesterday. I looked up at the sky and thought I spotted an animal up there. Felt an irresistible urge to stop for a photo shoot. .. and so did I. Not sure what it was, I consulted my daughter and she said, "It is a wolf. It has pointy ears, two hands and fur like a wolf." How can someone question such conviction!

We were final year students at one of oldest Engineering Colleges of India, near Calcutta and two of us joined our first job as undergraduate trainee in a company in New Delhi by the name of DCS (name changed). This was formed by borrowing the first alphabets from surnames of three partners (Dhawan, Chopra and Sharma) and the firm specialized in Master planning and landscape architecture. We as Bongs, an identity we discovered for the first time after reaching Delhi, grew up with the notion that corruption was rampant in Delhi and any other Indian cities outside the boundary of Bengal. Consequently we too were suspicious about all activities going around us both inside and outside our offices. One evening my friend came back home bewildered.   After a bit of persuasion he confided in us and disclosed what found out by chance. “Our firm is running a racket and have multiple operations under the same name” he said softly. We were all ears to him as he continued, “I heard...

I looked at the Sun while returning home this afternoon and found it setting. It looked lovely. I pulled up the car to the side and took a couple of pictures. I thought I was Sun-struck! Despair : Silly me! I thought I invented the term Sun-struck. I imagined myself at the threshold of gaining fame and prosperity for being able to use my fertile mind in successfully remixing the word Moonstruck. Reasons : I looked up in the dictionary and lo, it enlightened me that this exists in full glory. It refers to someone who is affected or touched by the sun. Incidently it has been in use since 1794. Conclusion : Inventing something is becoming increasingly difficult, 'am say!!!... but we can discover something new in our world every moment.  

Many many years back, there was a beautiful, quiet and prosperous country at the foothills of the mighty mountains. The world then was a very different place, full of green forests, blue waters and ice capped mountains that shone like diamond in the morning sunlight. There was a big village in that country called Adorable. Everyone liked this place and that is why it was named Adorable. A large river went through the middle giving water to everyone and plenty of small streams danced along, playfully. The water was as clear as crystal. One could see all animals swimming happily and smiling whenever someone stood by the river banks. The air was always fresh and full of intoxicating scent of exotic flowers and fruits. A dense forest surrounded the village from two sides while the snowcapped mountains guarded the other two sides.  The king was famous for his benevolence and people were so happy that they always thanked their gods for the blessings bestowed upon th...