Tid Bit from My Diary

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 ...

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!