The symbol of new politics

In both politics and pornography, size matters. We have just seen a pulsating example of this titillating fact when Delhi was saved from going to the polls again.

But if you think size in politics is simply getting the right numbers, you’re really entering the house of real fiction. Yes, numbers and the mathematics of numbers is important… this is what gives a party even with a lesser right to actually go ahead and form the government. This is what we have seen in Delhi in December 2013. This is how the AAP managed to silence BJP.

If you have been paying attention to the daily news you’d know that AAP has also made the right noises. The size of noise bytes is also what matters. The seventeen points that the AAP is talking about is the sort of noise that makes a better and more forceful impact than the noise of tearing other political parties down. I noticed that despite all the volleys of provocations that Dr HarshVardhan of BJP sent hurtling towards Arvind Kejriwal, the response did not include even a single retaliatory word. Arvind’s speech made the right noises about issues and what matters to Delhi. So all the high decibels and dramatic gesticulations of the leader of the opposition did not follow the winning formula called ‘size matters’.

Suddenly, the size of VIP culture, the size of government accommodation, the size of your security cover, the size of the expense statement that a neta would force upon the common man has begun to matter. So in this case is is the size of denial that matters. Saying no to anything that seems or sounds unreasonable is what is expected. I mean, this is what the public really loves. Even in denial, size matters!

The size of netagiri matters… yes, but this is one thing where the definition is on the verge of being changed. Netagiri is no longer following the fashionable route meandering through red beacons, beating up employees at toll booths, aggressive handling of TV anchors, walk-outs, rushing to the well of the house, tearing up the constitution, or simply saying ‘I legislate, therefore, I deserve to do nothing’. Netagiri is poised to become focused on talking about and implementing tasks that the hoi polloi wants to be done. Netagiri is going to all about the health of each constituency now. You do it well, your size of netagiri gets bigger. Yes, size matters!

Size of your intent to clean-up the system matters. This is because the people are now fed-up of the size of debris that they are literally forced to live on. The convoluted piles of corruption. The emotionally draining piles of bribery. The debris of listlessness of governance. So it is the size of intent, serious intent that matters. Obviously, intent needs to be followed by some real action. So the size of real action and real intent going hand-in-hand is what matters!

Creative speech impresses. So obviously, the size of creative speech matters… and this does not include the coining of words like ‘feku’, ‘shehzada’, ‘daku’ or any such inane use of language. The leader of the opposition in Delhi Assembly was following the already expired laws of creativity that the politicians have been resorting to for these past decades. Come on, dear netas, that phase is now over. Creative speech of your sort is not what sounds impressive in televised debates. Just get down to sedate debating with real arguments and not all sound and fury! We all know how terribly non-performing these words of histrionics have been. We need to see and experience the virility and the power of words spoken with conviction. Loud interjections are out. Abusive inclusions are passé. It is the size of your understanding of our problems and then the size of the solutions that you propose that tells us the size of your creative involvement with governance. Yes, size matters!

Arvind Passey
06 January 2014

‘The new CM in Delhi is making us all stand up and think upright,’ I said, when our discussion on the social fabric veered to the formation of the new government in Delhi. This always happens when Specky and I discuss things… we start with one topic and end up discussing something quite different.

Specky said, ‘Kejriwal is mixing up democratic governance, social activation, and spying socialism in what will surely be a heady concoction to control.’

What she said made sense and I told her that a fitting acronym for this new combo could be GAS. No, I’m not saying that Kejriwal has begun to GAS around with all these pompous ideas… GAS is simply Governance, Agitation or Activation and Spying put together.

‘Will this gas make society burp uncontrollably?’ asked Specky.

Well, it isn’t easy to know if society would burp on and on… and Kejriwal, despite all his conceptual knowledge surely isn’t a gastroenterologist. But it is easy to conclude that it just might end up increasing participation by the people in every decision.

‘Come on,’ said Specky with a mock panic in her tone, ‘now don’t go on and add a P to GAS. It just might make our Capital GASP.’

‘This is what our opposition believes,’ I said. Yes, the promoters of conventional politics are quite uneasy about all this talk about referendums and ‘ask the people’ slogans. They are the sort who’d be happy to let the people of their constituencies snorkel in mush and slush to find embedded crumbs of goodies that the politicians throw towards them once in a while. They aren’t the sort who’d want them raise their hands or shout ‘Aye’ or ‘Yeah’ to approve policies… isn’t that a job for the legislators? Yes, the conventional politician is unnerved. He also doesn’t think it is right for the hoi polloi to enter their hallowed portals with spy cams fitted… weren’t they happy to sting each other occasionally only to hug later? And what is all this about holding durbars? Now this upstart called Arvind wants to convert a stadium into a legislative assembly? Hey Ram! What is the political world coming to?

So the conventional politician now sneers and jokingly asks, ‘AAP ko GAS toh nahin?’

Well, GAS it is. And this GAS is what the nation needs. The nation needs people to move out of their fear and inhibition and participate to build a stronger city, state, and country. They need to sting the corrupt out of the system. Obviously, the people need to do it because the system has been unable to cleanse it on its own. The system needs people to do it all. The nation also needs people to say ‘Nay’ to any wrong policy and a ‘Yeah’ to what they jointly feel is correct. We have had enough of these politicians hogging these two wonderful words and using them to line their own pockets and fill their own coffers and send their own relatives to every kind of conceivable heaven.

Delhi has shown the country that GAS isn’t a mere political fart that happens only inside the parliament. What has happened in Delhi needs to happen all over the country… and governance, agitation, and spying need to hold each other’s hands and smile.

The GAS method… redefined by AAP

Arvind Passey
12January 2014

‘There is a spelling error there,’ some will point out hurriedly.

So yes, this is a different spelling, buddy… and you’re not accustomed to seeing or using it. But the wonderful thing is that this spelling has a ‘key’ attached to it and you, I know, are someone who is surrounded by locked doors.

‘Locked doors?’

Yes, locked doors. Look at the desperation in the eyes of those who want the government machinery to take action on some issue and you’ll know what I mean. You see, the old fashioned ‘lawlessness’ is certainly there as much in the corridors of power as in the common man who violates a traffic signal or a cab driver who doesn’t want to respect the meter in his vehicle or even the cops who don’t want to act because that is how they may be making money. But then all this is plain lawlessness and not anarchy. Yes, they are all behaving as if they don’t care for leadership and are not bothered about all those squiggly clauses that remain on paper and are known as laws. Anarchy, incidentally, also has its Greek roots saying that the word means ‘without a leader’.

The non-existence of government

So, does anarchy mean that governance goes amiss? No. It just means the non-existence of a government that is not interested in working for the people. So what sort of a government are we all accustomed to? Well, I have grown up being fed on news and views about the government being non-existent except for the times when the election jamboree takes place… or that it is somehow full of people who call themselves leaders of all those who spread lawlessness… or scams are tumbling out of its cupboards ceaselessly… or haughty words that hurt… or exclusivity that is surrounded by beacons, Z-security, and an endless chain of paan-spitting peons and clerks who won’t let anything good happen! Government, my dear friends, isn’t the same as governance. The sort of governance we have been seeing these past decades is nothing but plain lawlessness evolving into a fine art.

Anarchists, on the other hand, ‘generally advocate a non-hierarchical, horizontal organization, typically through directly democratic structures.’ There are some who describe anarchy as a wholesome dose of opposition to authoritarian organisation and hierarchy… which is what an aam aadmi experiences when he goes to any government office for any work. Rules, regulations, and clauses are flung at his helplessness and he is shooed out if he doesn’t agree to be their equal and hugs corruption by giving a bribe. So yes, we all yearn for a society in which individuals cooperate as equals, don’t we? But this form of equality enters when you have a government that encourages lawlessness.

Our choice is invariably between anarchy and lawlessness

Most of us must admit that they have all been lawless at one time or the other. Some have got their driving license done in less time by paying a tout and others have called themselves lucky to have found the right source to get their railway booking done. Being a lawless citizen has always come with some advantage or the other… but were we an anarchist when we committed these crimes? No. We were just adding to the noise of lawlessness and societal chaos because the government was never willing to exercise its power to stop us. In fact, they wanted us to do all this and remain happily numbed so they could fill their Swiss accounts or have another flat in Adarsh Society or send their children to colleges and universities abroad. No wonder then that politics today has become a profession that the son or daughter of a politician automatically gravitates towards. So this is how I look at lawlessness… and this is what weak and toothless laws end up giving us. Ammon Hennacy writes, ‘Oh, judge, your damn laws, the good people don’t need them and the bad people don’t follow them, so what good are they?’

Edward Abbey feels that ‘anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hard-headed realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.’ So where is the chaos in this definition? Where is lawlessness in this concept of anarchy?  Both chaos and lawlessness are on the other side, that is, the side of the rulers of a country who have fudged the thin line between power to govern and the power to dictate.

In the choice between lawlessness and anarchy, I would normally be confused. This is because even anarchy is a form that is alien to me. A form that I am not aware of. A form where the end result isn’t clear to me. However much someone may project that anarchy is akin to anarKEY and that this is the form that has the key to all our problems today, I’d be distrustful.

No leader can also mean millions of tribes again

Arvind Kejriwal has often said that power belongs to the people and that it is they who will need to come forward to exercise that right. But the fair truth is that people who aren’t literate enough to sign their names cannot be expected to understand how to give a direction to anything. The belief that anarchy is all about people influencing decision-making is like asking them to behave sanely even when in massive numbers. We know what happens when people get together in large numbers… there are small groups created without their even realising it and if taken on a national level, it may mean the creation of small tribes banding together to exist according to their tribes’ regulations. Come on now, we don’t want India to regress into a nation of tribes, do we?

Some will argue that these tribes will find their own allies and form townships… and society will need to regenerate itself. Such a thought puts fear into me. We know what the birth of a new nation means… we know what that chaos means… we know the years of struggle and suffering that it will demand.

But wait, let me examine the premise of ‘power to the people’ in a different way now. Wasn’t Bhagidari too supposed to be a concept that gave people the right to take decisions and manage some of their issues by themselves? Isn’t a co-operative society just the same as the sort of concept that Kejriwal is talking about? We have had these concepts right in our midst and nobody ever told us that these were such wonderful tools? Well, even democracy is actually nothing but consensus decision-making. It is only when these tools stray from their ideals that consensus degenerates into consensual… and then a coterie of smug villains rake in all the benefits and magnanimously distribute benevolent smiles and vacuous promises to the rest of the crowd. This is what has been happening in our country. We did begin as people-centric and ended up being power-centric. By the way, this happened because our leaders made sure that real education doesn’t reach everyone. Education means aware information… and our anarchist struggle for freedom decades back would have succeeded had we created a society that was based on real education about how society functions. Instead, we got obsessed with fudging figures what happened is what you can easily figure out now.

So anarKEY has been with us before and is simply revisiting. I hope we remain anarchic enough this time.

Arvind Passey
21 January 2014

Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 27 January 2014

2014_01_27_The Education Post_anarKEY

Knowledge is all about how a student interacts with all that is happening around him. What we call ‘youth development’ is probably nothing but an effort to make active participation in social issues around very real. This way this effort is shaping up is something that can also be tested through a tactically designed quiz.

The SQL or School Quiz league is a unique ‘Knowledge cum Youth Development’ initiative at the School Level. Some have euphemistically even called it a ‘Pratibha Ki Khoj’ event that was open to all schools (ICSE, CBSE and UP Board) in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh until now… but will include 5 more States this year. This means an addition of at least 25 more cities and 2000 more schools. SQL is working towards building India’s 1st Knowledge Network for schools. The event is only open to School students studying in 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Standard.

The rules have been simple enough. Broadly speaking any two students of the same School can form a team and participate. There is no registration fee but individual contestants are NOT allowed to take part because SQL is a team event. Accessing other rules is easy… just login and know all about this quiz league that is slated to become one of the best soon. The URL to go to is http://www.schoolquizleague.com/

Arvind Passey
25 January 2014

Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 27 January 2014

The only cosmetic products I pamper myself with include shaving foams, soaps, shampoos, face-washes, and moisturisers. Perfumes and deodorants are also things I have bought for myself but not often. Do I experiment with the brands in these categories? Yes, I do. So when met this beauty blogger, I asked, ‘You review all these wonderful products all the time. Do you actually use all of them?’

She looked at me a bit hurt and answered, ‘If I ask you the same question about your book reviews, what will your answer be?’

‘I read a book and then review.’

Now this answered my question of course, but my next question foxed her. I asked, ‘How about less known brands from less known companies? Will you risk using them and ending up with an angry skin?’

‘I’d be careful of course. But as you will open even a book by a first-time author and risk getting bored and restless, I too will read all the information on the packaging and use my judgement, experience and intuition to first use it sparingly. It is almost like a doctor testing a penicillin sample shot before injecting the preferred dose.’

‘Hmmm… which makes you an empirical user.’

‘I believe I am more like a cross between a research scholar and a selectively permeable layer in my body,’ said the beauty blogger, ‘I do my research well and I let only those products through that pass my initial scrutiny.’

‘Great,’ I said, ‘and I see you’re using this intensive moisturising cream called SilkPlus from Nimson…’

‘Yes, this one is for dry, chapped skin and this one creates an effective seal that traps all the moisture. The Almond and Jojoba oil helps get rid of the dryness, the Allantion helps mend chapped skin, and Glycerine adds to the moisturising action,’ she said with finality in her voice.

Before I could say anything else, she showed me another seemingly new entry called Jojoba moisturiser from Aryanveda herbals. She was rather upbeat about it because of its natural ingredients. ‘Jojoba and olive oil in combination with oat kernel oil and wheat germ oil is what makes this one a great natural sunscreen!’ she said with excitement.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘these names are unfamiliar but the deo that you’re holding in your hands is a brand that I have seen popping up on the television screen in ads.’

‘Aha! This one is for men,’ she said, ‘take it as a gift from me. Denver isn’t an unknown brand and the fragrance of this body spray is long-lasting.’

Well, so now I have this ozone-friendly with no CFCs container of body spray waiting for me to be less hesitant in using cosmetics. Frankly, I’d still prefer a couple of sprays from my Bleu de Chanel or that very extrovert looking bottle of Hugo Boss perfume that I bought a month back.

Arvind Passey
30 January 2014

Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 27 January 2014

2014_01_27_The Education Post_review_conversation with a beauty blogger

Mahabharata fascinates. These stories of wars and warriors have been interpreted in ways to suit the modern manager and also exist as tales that little children love to read and re-read. There are comic-books that tell these stories in their own illustrative way. So is ‘Arjuna’ yet another book that tells us the stories from Mahabharata?

This book by Anuja Chandramouli has stories from the Mahabharata where Arjuna plays a role… ‘Yes, yes,’ you might say, ‘Arjuna is all over the Mahabharata. So does this mean I’ll be reading the massive epic all over again?’

‘No, nothing of the sort. The 5.5” x 8.5” size of the book is slightly bigger than the conventional size one sees in fiction books and the font size too is large enough for even the elderly to read without straining… so the around 360 pages simply do not have the possibility of including all the stories of Mahabharata that do not have a direct connect to Arjuna.’

Let me take you through one of the chapters which is all about Arjuna winning a bride for himself… and his brothers! This chapter doesn’t just tell us about that story of Arjuna being able to pierce the eye of the fish… a story that I have been reading and listening to since my nursery days… the book strives to inform you little known facts about Drupad, the father of Draupadi and how she was actually born. I didn’t know about Draupadi and Dhrishtadyumna being twins… I wasn’t very sure about the enmity between Drona and Draupad… I wasn’t completely sure about the ways in which they were all linked to Arjuna. The way the story is told in the book, makes the way destiny works, so easy to comprehend.

The language used is easy and not the sort that stiffens awkwardly and uses nuances and expressions that are now archaic. So one reads about ‘…an imprudent and blustering mode of attack’ when Duryodhana and his brother rush into a tactically shaky attack to defeat Draupad. And the Pandavas wait on the flanks and ‘held themselves in check while Draupad pummelled Duryodhana’s forces into shameful retreat.’

Another aspect of the book that I loved was the small additions that most stories tend to overlook or simply not tell. For instance, the time when Yudhishthira is forced to lie about the death of Ashwathama, most wouldn’t have read the bonus that the Gods had granted the truth-loving eldest brother and how it was snatched at that moment.

‘Ashwathama is dead!’ said Yudhishthira, his voice trembling with the deep self-loathing he felt. Softly he added, knowing he would not be heard, ‘The elephant.’ 

When these words were uttered, Yudhishthira’s chariot, which would levitate four fingers above the ground, became surface-bound, His strict adherence to the path of Dharma had earned him this exalted position above his fellows. But the one corrupting half-truth made Yudhishthira’s fall from the impeccable virtue, visible to the whole world.

And when it comes to noting and expressing little nuances, the book really overtakes most other attempts at telling the stories of Mahabharata. Look at the way Yudhishthira reaches his decision to let Draupadi be the wife of the five brothers…

Yudhishthira reflected briefly on the right thing to do. He noticed the covert glances his brothers threw Draupadi’s way and realised that if they were completely honest with themselves, they all wanted her and would go on wanting her.

The charming facet about this book is that it weaves in little stories within the main story without letting the entire thread of stories go haywire. So obviously if we are talking about how Arjuna wins Draupadi, we need to know not just how she was born or what the celestial connections were that made her birth possible, we’d also appreciate if the writer told us something that we just did not know. I’m sure most of the readers wouldn’t know how the Gods justified Draupadi getting married to five men. Listen, it isn’t easy to justify such an action even today… and the book gives us an explanation that is perfectly acceptable:

‘The practice of a woman taking more than one husband has become uncommon, though it is by no means without precedent. This, however, is a unique case because it has been pre-ordained. In a former life, the virtuous Draupadi could not get a husband because of her Karma. She prayed to Shiva for a boon and the three-eyed Lord appeared before her to grant her wish. In her eagerness she repeated her desire for a husband five times and Shiva acquiesced, promising her that she would have five husbands.’

So now we know that Draupadi was destined to have five husbands… and we also know how the story is having elements of thought that are so modernistic in a setting that is thousands of years ago! The Pandavas were happy with their common wife, but the real question is: Was Draupadi happy with her five husbands?

…in the deepest recesses of her heart, she would always nourish a special attachment to the handsome hero clad in deerskin who won her hand after performing a seemingly impossible feat at the Swayamvara. She kept these findings hidden within her, as neither she nor her beloved belonged exclusively to the other. Yet. Till her dying breath, Draupadi secretly loved Arjuna more than his brothers.

The book, let me remind you, isn’t just about Arjuna’s marriage… there is much more to Arjuna than just being ping-ponged by destiny to remain a part of stories that rightly belong to others. Arjuna has his own tales too and the twenty-one chapters take us chronologically through all of them. There are times when the stories within the stories tend to come on again and again… but this is something that can be expected when every event has an inherent tie with every other. With more than a hundred major characters popping up, I’m sure telling the stories from Mahabharata isn’t an easy task at all… but the book tells them all in a simple straightforward language and does it without making them sound unreal.

Details of the book:

Name: ARJUNA: Saga of a Pandava Warrior Prince
Writer: Anuja Chandramouli
Publisher: Leadstart Publishing
ISBN: 978-9381576-39-7
Price: Rs 250/- (in 2014)

Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 27 January 2014

Secrets of making éclairs @Meridien_we clicked, we created, and we ate.

I was at my desk and trying to woo a couple of new ideas for a blog post and I realised that my hunger pangs weren’t letting me focus. As I was about to get up to go the kitchen to see what I could creatively serve myself, Anusuya called up on my mobile.

‘Hi there, Arvind. Can you join for an interesting éclair-making session with Chef Vikas Shrivastava, Executive Pastry Chef and Chef Shashank Khanna?’ Now obviously this was a great opportunity to not just meet Anusuya, the Director of Marketing Communications with Le Meridien, but also to gets a hands-on session with making something that I have always loved gorging! So there I went on a day which dawned as a rather pleasant one… and was lucky enough to meet a few other Food Bloggers like Sangeeta Khanna, Mukta Varma, Anita Tikoo, and Aditya Banerjee.

Secrets of making éclairs @Meridien_ The gang of bloggers

The Executive Pastry Chef began by telling us that they get enough creative licence at meridian to experiment with local flavours and there are some that are followed internationally in all the kitchen of the hotel. I loved this convergence of discipline with creativity and along with sips of refreshing watermelon juice we began out tryst with éclair-making.

‘Remember,’ said Vikas Shrivastave, ‘the secret of getting the right form of choux paste for éclairs is 1-4-6-18.’ And then he told us that this simply meant 01 liter of water, 400 grams of butter, 600 grams of refined flour, and 18 eggs to get the best consistency for baking the softest mouth-melting éclairs.

‘The Meridian method’, Shashank said, ‘was quite simple and worth sharing.’

How to get the right choux paste?

Boil 01 litter of water with 400 grams of butter in a sauce pan.Add 600 grams of refined flour and stir vigorously with the wooden spatula until the mixture starts leaving the sides of the sauce pan and is smooth.
Remove the mixture from the range and start steering in the eggs one by one with the help of a whisk.
When all the eggs have been absorbed the choux paste is ready to be shaped into éclairs.

Now, once you have your éclairs ready, all you need is pastry cream… which can then be filled in to give that delicious inner core… and the éclairs can then be dipped to give their surface a lovely flavoured glaze. The final touch is, of course, what the beauty blogger would call ‘the shimmer and the glamour’.

The pastry creams for our inexperienced hands included Rose Cardamom, Jaggery Ginger, Passion Fruit, Hazelnut Praline, Vanilla, and Chocolate. ‘You can have the same inner core and the outer glaze,’ said Vikas, ‘but you can always experiment with deeper and more sensitive combinations.’

Yes, even I was tempted to try my hand at eclair-making_and I began with a thoughtful expression!

Yes, even I was tempted to try my hand at eclair-making_and I did it! :)

So after the girls had done their bit, Sangeeta said, ‘Aren’t you boys going to create some awesome flavour combo for us? Or will you just click our pictures?’

‘Aha!’ I said, and went ahead to create one… and believe me, the act of creating a delicious creation is far more mesmerizing than just sitting and eating one. I’m sure my wife agrees with me. The truth is that I was tempted to gobble up more than one éclair that the Chef had made and served.

For the readers who are interested in knowing the Meridien recipe for a great tasting pastry cream, Vikas has shared one. The Jaggery Ginger Pastry Cream image explains all the finer details.

Jaggery Ginger Pastry Cream recipe

The process in pictures:

The process of éclair-making_01

The process of éclair-making_02

The process of éclair-making_03

The process of éclair-making_04

The process of éclair-making_05

The process of éclair-making_06

What we saw and I was tempted to eat them all_Vanilla & Chocolate_01

What we saw and I was tempted to eat them all_Hazelnut Praline_02

What we saw and I was tempted to eat them all_Passion Fruit_03

What we saw and I was tempted to eat them all_Jaggery Ginger_04

What we saw and I was tempted to eat them all_Rose Cardamom_05

Secrets of making éclairs @Meridien_Reflective foodies!

Arvind Passey
29 March 2014

This post was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 31 March 2014…

2014_03_31_The Page Review_The Education Post

2014_03_31_The Page Review_The Education Post_Eclair-making

Note: This review article is published in ‘The Education Post’ of 31 March 2014

Life is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. Specky, my wife says so. She even quotes Albert Einstein: “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.” And whenever she does that, I just smile and keep shut.

The other day when I saw the Samsung Galaxy S5 and saw all the wonderful things it was able to do and what it really was, I came back and told Specky, ‘I come with a new equation for your logical pleasure.’

‘Aha!’ said Specky, ‘Is it something similar to Poetry = Anger x Imagination, as Sherman had written years back?’

I said, ‘No. My equation is more down to earth and provable. It is C + 2(S+P+F) = S5.’

Believe me, Specky was absolutely foxed and when I told her it was an equation that any other smartphone today would find difficult to emulate, she was curious. So I told her that in my equation, C was camera functions, one S was scanning abilities and the other stood for an unmatched screen resolution, The two Ps were protection and the power of battery, and the two Fs were the inclusion of fitness app and how fast the phone did everything.

Specky said, ‘I’m impressed, but you need to tell me more.’

And I began by telling her that the Galaxy S5 offers the world’s fastest autofocus speed up to 0.3 seconds and the advanced High Dynamic Range (HDR) reproduces natural light and color with striking intensity at any occasion. Also, the new Selective Focus feature allows users to focus on a specific area of an object while simultaneously blurring out the background. With this capability, consumers no longer need a special lens kit to create a shallow depth of field (DOF) effect.

‘Sounds interesting!’ said Specky.

I said, ‘It also offers a Finger Scanner, providing a secure, biometric screen locking feature that lets you lock and unlock your phone. And to top it all, the battery lasts for 24 hours from 10% in Ultra Power Saving Mode on the S5!’

I told her that this phone is dust and water resistant too. One reviewer states that ‘users will need to shut a flap which covers the power port (the flap feels flimsy in hand) but then the S5 will survive for up to 20 minutes in a metre of water. This won’t mean you take the S5 swimming, but it does mean you don’t need to be shy using it in the rain or grabbing it to answer a call in the shower and you can take the occasional photo underwater.’

With the enhanced S Health 3.0, the new Galaxy S5 offers more tools to help people stay fit and well. It’s heart rate monitor just under the rear camera. When you hold your finger gently for 5-10 seconds you’ll get a pulse reading. A pedometer, diet and exercise records, and a new, built-in heart rate sensor are also included. These are features that will only evolve with time… but as things stand now, they enhance the performance matrix of the S5.

This phone comes in a new sleek, contoured shape comes in an array of vivid colors, including charcoal Black, shimmery White, electric Blue and copper Gold, to complement the style of the individual consumer. Supporting fast 3G speeds at 42Mbps with the backing of a powerful Octa-core processor means the S5 is capable of operating all 8 cores at the same time, to deliver a seamless experience.

Specky was, of course, suitably impressed by my description of the Galaxy S5 and her smile said it all. So I added that Samsung is a global phenomenon that employs 286,000 people across 80 countries with annual sales of US$216.7 billion.

‘Well?’ asked a perplexed Specky.

‘Well, it means Samsung believes in giving the world an evolutionary than a revolutionary handset,’ I said, ‘Now please go and pre-order this one for me at whatever the cost is.’

I know most of you are thinking that Specky, the mathematician would have said, ‘This is the only illogical part in your treatise on the poetry of equations.’ You’re right dammit, for this is precisely what she said. But then women need more than logic to make them open their purse strings! So I decided to take her along to the Samsung Brand Shop to let her see and feel the pulsating beauty that the S5 is.

Arvind Passey
01 April 2014

This article was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 31 march 2014

2014_03_31_Tech_Galaxy S5 review

Social media is no longer a term that only the privileged boys and girls utter with a lusty smile. It is fast reaching out across all socio-economic barriers to bridge the rural-urban chasms that pretended to be invincible. We are in times when even your friendly auto-driver would have his loyal customers in a special Facebook group and be sending out early morning messages to all!

So yes, Facebook is real. But Aircel is out to prove that free Facebook is real! Their ‘Facebook for all’ service is now launched and Aircel enables its customers – ‘both new and existing, to network and be socially active on Facebook in nine different languages’!

‘But how can you possibly have access to Facebook free,’ asked Specky, my wife giving me her special quizzical expression.

I told her that access would be free so long as Aircel users went on Facebook through the Facebook App, Facebook messenger, and their mobile versions. This free Facebook wasn’t the one you access through the browser.

Specky said, ‘Ah! Now it makes sense. But don’t tell me no other service provider has thought of this?’

‘Well, Airtel did think of it but their Facebook packs are three times the cost that Aircel proposes,’ I said, and then told her that besides the pack advantage, new customers get 50 MB data on Facebook for 60 days after activation. Even existing customers get the same advantage for 30 days. Aircel customers then can opt to either pay 2p/10KB for internet access and access their Facebook or simply go for any of the the special tariff packs for Facebook which is as low as Rs 14 for 100 MB valid for 28 days. Aircel also has a 5 day pack for Rs 5… after all we live in times when even shampoo sells in sachets!

To start with, this ‘Facebook for all’ pack is going to be available in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Maharashtra and will be there in other circles soon enough.

The reaching out of the social media is more like the power of mass creativity being unleashed… and we get as much as we share is the philosophy of the modern man. No wonder then that we have tons of updates trolling the online highways and millions of people grasp little nuggets that help them in some little way. Information is something that has always been sought… but this has become more obvious since the revolution of wireless telecommunication.

The first generation of wireless telecommunications operated on analog radio signals and supported only voice transmission. We called them 1G. The 2G world of enhanced communication networks offer us improved voice services, basic data transmission of SMS/MMS/email, the benefits of digital encryption so that privacy is improved, and less battery consumption. The 3G wireless technology brings in high speed internet, allows streaming videos, video conferencing is possible, video IVR is there, high-definition gaming is enabled, large files can be uploaded and downloaded, and TV streaming as well as Mobile TV support is activated.

Specky was reading all that I had been writing and suddenly asked, ‘So do you think Aircel will make even their 3G access packs available at a cost that wouldn’t pinch my pocket?’

I thought for a while and said, ‘Yes, why just Facebook? Why not twitter and other social media platforms as well?’

Well, one advantage is there with us. Let us wait for better online moments to roll in soon.

Arvind Passey
01 April 2014

This article was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 31 March 2014…

2014_03_31_The Page Review_The Education Post_Free Facebook is Real

All around today I see moments floating between credibility and chaos… and somewhere between credibility and chaos are the dangerous mutant strands of corruption. So whichever way one moves, the possibility of getting afflicted with corruption is rather high. From politicians to the bureaucrats, from the common man to connected man, and from one end of the country to the other, everyone has an equal probability of emerging corrupt. Even the media isn’t spared from this disease.

The vital issue here is the linking of the media with corruption. The job of the media is to lead the nation towards a credible state and this is generally done by disseminating news that is accurate. It is the correctness of news that has the power to make people think… however, our news propagators (the print, the TV, the radio, and the internet) know that the common man is always open to misperceptions and wrongly placed interpretations. This is why news analysis and edits, debates and discussions, and posts on blogs assume a vital role.

‘I know all this,’ you may say, ‘how is corruption linked to news or views?’

Corruption can be injected into news and views. When the media chooses to selectively report happenings, a certain tilt is given to perception and the common man is liable to believe what is not the complete truth. The media can also publish edits or discussions that articulates a point of view that either places an idea, ideology or individual as larger than the truth… or simply distort an opposing concept so much that it is perceived as ridiculous or unbelievable. If I say that the media is capable of expressing such distortions, I wouldn’t be incorrect… however, it is the job of the media to keep away from fiscal compulsions, force, coercion, duress, and PR needs. What is right is always greater than what is politically and fiscally correct!

So, is Arvind Kejriwal correct when he is reported to have said: “Since last one year, we have been told that Modi is there, Modi is there. Since one year, Modi has also been saying that. Even some TV channels have been saying that Ramrajya has come and corruption has vanished. This has happened, that has happened; a lot has happened. Why did they do it? Because money has been paid to TV channels, heavy amount has been paid to promote Modi.”

Only Kejriwal would have documentary evidence of what he claims is correct, but yes, money and lots of it can flow from the direction of political parties in the guise of PR budget… because, and we all know it, an ad is somewhat less credible than when a newspaper analysis says so! An ad just adds to chaos but a news editorial certainly lends credibility to the perception of a reader.

A newspaper, the television debates, and online expressions on the social media can all have serious perceptive influences on the masses. It is the responsibility of each of us writing a viewpoint to be very careful or be willing to be labelled corrupt. And the corrupt certainly deserve to be jailed!

Arvind Passey
01 April 2014

Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 31 March 2014…

2014_03_31_Expert Column_The Education Post_Between credibility and chaos

I am just wondering what the purists will have to say about this book where the title is in English, the author’s name is written in Hindi… and the 14 short stories inside use English phrases and words almost where any of the urban and rural reader would while communicating in his daily life.

This is why this review reserves a pat for Divya Prakash Dubey or DP and for the sort of innovative thought process that has gone into the conceptualising of this book. DP takes pride in admitting that he is an able marketing manager who is also able to write… and not the other way round. I’d agree with that because the short stories, once you emerge from the euphoria of seeing Hindi and English converge with so much ease, are rather mundane and most of them leave you with a sense of a feeling of inadequacy. We’ll come to this later. But let me just say here that DP has a way with marketing an innovative idea in the world of publishing… and hopefully, will make his stories dive deeper into the subconscious world of human interactions and not just remain content to report incidents.

So the stories do make you feel as if you’re reading a news block in a Hindi daily that has been stuffed with dialogues and made to appear infused with masala. Yes, there will be a lot of readers who will love the titillation that this kind of incursion into creative retelling of incidents give… but then the serious reader will be left groping and with a feeling of something sorely missing. So what is it that is missing? The blurb of the book describes them as ‘13 short stories and a true incident. Whether it is highs and lows of a relationship, chaos and bedlam of school life, petty or harmless office gossips, or the buzz of a salon; all stories are strongly steeped in reality and yet they take a superb flight of fancy in the hands of a master craftsman.’ But then this is what the blurb writer says… and is not entirely wrong. The stories do resemble ‘harmless office gossip’, take you into the heart of the shallowness of school life as we all have felt at one time or the other, ambles into situations of common occurrences… but nearly always stop short of making that crucial incision to lay bare the vital truth that the common man in each of us is in search of. Yes, the author does make us jog with him into the reality that we see around us, rejoice the capture of perfectly sane and valid incidents, but then loses insight.

Yes, what the stories lack is that incisive insight that I searched for even in that story where Savita, the maid, finally gets married to one of the tenants… this and the other stories capture the ripples well but you need to go deeper in search of that elusive vision that transcends a mere incident and transforms it into a masterpiece. Even the story with the title ‘Terms and conditions apply’ is one which glides through incidents but yet makes the characters look unreal. ‘This cannot happen this way…’ is what you think… or ‘The story has a lot of blanks that remain unfilled…’ Well, the feeling that persists is that the author has missed converting a mundane incident into a perceptive truth that would’ve made the story immortal.

This feeling does remain with almost all the stories. There are spots where brilliance shimmers only to get lost in the dense traffic of unedited incident reporting. So the author does need to get over the urge to simply report an incident and tell himself that his job is done. The truth is that once the report of an incident is ready, the job of a perceptive author begins. This is why we say that journalists are nothing but third rate story tellers. The author needs to ask the over-zealous journalist within him to lie low once the reporting is over… and then allow the author to stir some life into it all!

The book is all about ‘this is how we speak’ but the stories need to rise to become ‘this is how I want to think’…

Details of the book:

Title: Terms and conditions apply
Author: Divya Prakash Dubey
Publisher: Hind Yugam
ISBN: 9789381394366
Language: A mix of Hindi and English
Price: Rs 95/- (in 2013/2014)

The book was received as part of Reviewers Programme on The Tales Pensieve.

Arvind Passey
07 April 2014

This review was also published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 07 April 2014…

2014_04_07_The Education Post_Review of T&C apply

No, floccinaucinihilipilification isn’t the longest word in the dictionary… there are words with up to 35 letters that win the contest, though the medical fraternity, Manish Gupta will have us believe, insists on a word from their jargon as the one that wins the race hands down. But the point that I want to make is not about any contest between words but the fascination of a young boy’s attention for such words. When I was Class X, I remember having come face to face with floccinaucinihilipilification and stared at it long enough for my principal Father Tony to come to me and say, ‘Let me see what you are reading, my son.’

‘I’m reading a dictionary, father,’ I said.

He smiled and replied, ‘Aha! So you too are bitten by this word bug. Good. Words are lovely things to fall in love with.’

That love is going strong till now… and this is one reason why I loved this book by Manish Gupta. Even during those days when I was fond of walking with my miniature dictionary open in my hands, the one thing that I searched for was the history behind words. No, I didn’t have any book in my personal library that helped me… and books were not easily available in Jhansi, the small town where I come from. There was no internet and no online forums there to help me with my dilemma. So some of the first books that I bought when I started earning included ones on etymology, word origins, slang, and those that went on to explain the right usage. But they are all either like dictionaries and quite intimidating… or present their findings in a very clinical manner. If I call them siblings of text-books, I wouldn’t be very off the mark.

But here is a book in my hands that is neither a text-book nor a frivolous spoof on words. There is a serious intent to explore the origins, meanings, usages, and any other modern or new-age connotations that interesting words might have… all woven into stories, incidents, and anecdotes. There are those words that appear simple and self-explanatory and yet turn up in an unexpected avatar to surprise you… and Manish hasn’t missed any. No, this book is NOT a dictionary and is NOT a dull and dry collection of facts… the protagonist goes around talking about his battles, bouts and experiences with words that are connected. So the book has chapters where words from a similar experience hop in together… or gently lead you on to discover a different world without letting you feel that you are stepping out from a coffee house and through the kitchen where gourmet dishes are being prepared right in the midst of a gang of people where ventriloquists are smiling to baffle you with eloquent soliloquy that isn’t gibberish at all! Yes, all this happens even as we are busy sorting out the differences between an espresso, cappuccino, caffè latte, caffè breve, and mocha!

Hope you are getting a drift of what I am trying to say… no? Wait, let me add that in between meanings, origins, and usage, the author kindly offers us a peep into detailed stories connected to words… and so we travel from the Malabar coast to a Parisian café or a cafetière à piston only to be shuffled across to read all about the famous Kopi Luwak…

‘I was quite perplexed by Kopi Luwak. I had to unravel the mystery behind this unusual and rather nauseating method of collecting the coffee beans. This is how it goes: At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or are overripe while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the ripest berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and excrete undigested seeds.’

The author then goes on to reveal that ‘farmers gathered the civet droppings and tried to reclaim their seeds. This resulted in the discovery that the droppings actually produced an exceptional coffee with unusual taste. No wonder Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling at 100-600 dollars per pound!’ This book, the blurb insists on saying, is going to help the ‘vernacular speaker, a GRE/ GMAT/ CAT/ XAT/ aspirant or just a language nut’ and has the ability to add over a thousand words to your vocabulary, improves your GK with amusing trivia and goes about this task by communicating through jokes and anecdotes. Now all this is correct, but Manish, the book is way beyond all this. I prefer saying that the book magically makes a reader fall in love with the truth of a word and mesmerizes him into diving deeper into all the history, geography, sociology, politics, and mythological interactions that words are populated with.

I have loved the book so much that I am already re-reading chapters and obviously this is one reason why I decided to delay my review of this by a few months… yes, I know Manish is going to be sore but well, love certainly makes you want to keep all the good things to yourself for as long as it is possible. I’m sure a lot of readers of this review are going to agree with what I have written. 

Details of the book reviewed:

Title: English Bites!
Author: Manish Gupta
ISBN: 9780143419006
Publisher: Penguin Books

Arvind Passey
07 April 2014

This review was also published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 07 April 2014…

The book has surges, urges, and purges splurging through the pages… and if you just sauté these elements with a pinch of the political history of India, a few drops of fantasy, and a liberal garnish of radical thoughts, you’ve actually almost written the recipe of the book. This book by Tabrik C can be pronounced as a political thriller, a futuristic inquest, a compendium of villainy, or just another piece of fiction that started well but committed hara-kiri for no apparent reason… all depending on the sort of mood you’re in while reading it. And in a single night I did experience all these moods as I read on and on and on…

Yes, you can denounce it if you wish to but you’ll still read on. You can be foxed by the suddenness of developments or the appearance of unexpected happenings, but you’d still want to turn the page and go on. You can detest a few of the characters in the book and yet murmur, ‘They exist and so they must be real.’ The book that fantasises on the political future of India is itself seemingly caught in opaque whirlpools of political thoughts that splash around only in the minds of students in elite colleges and universities… almost like what happens in the mind of Siddhartha Tagore, the main protagonist in the novel. No wonder then that when the reader peeps into his mind, he reads: ‘I’ve arrived at a disturbing moment in time. We have lived with galloping inflation, the falling rupee and at the edge of communal anarchy with the rise of the extreme right and ‘cultural organisations’ that ban women from their folds. The saffron army controls a big slice of Indian polity on the ground and in cyberspace – and what they want eventually is to replace the constitution with a Dharma State  where religion would be all-encompassing, with little room for secular values.’ Now because this is a thought that occurs in the mind of a political upstart in 2016, it is easy to take a retrospective walk-through and start making conclusions for 2014… which would, who knows, turn out to be disastrous and utterly wrong. The book anyway isn’t one that aims to predict what is going to happen to India’s political future. It is a simple enough story of a man who has had all the good things in life and has managed to evolve with all his blessings.

But then the book is certainly not what Nineteen Eighty-four was for almost three decades. Orwell published it in 1949 and so there have been quite a few interpretations that analysts said were nearly true in the year that the book was supposed to describe… but not so for this one by Tabrik as the time-gap is barely two years and, therefore, it cannot be read as a predictive text but is surely one that any perceptive mind today could concoct. So the connection between the truth, the untruth, and the unexpected truth makes it a fairly plausible work that can go on a futuristic inquest.

The book begins with grim thoughts on the regular drama that is forever being enacted between India and Pakistan and so we have a liberal sprinkling of Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, fissile material, international black market, political disintegration, emergency protocol, unthinkable devastation… but wait, the book doesn’t go on to introduce a super spy or a RAW agent with super powers with orders to go and destroy all anti-national forces. This order, though is there in the book… but the book swerves onto a stage where political drama, the past of the new Prime Minister Siddhartha, his room-mate at Harvard, economists, and the intent to bring in subversion by thoughts enter and start doing the role that is assigned to them. So we have characters like Rukmini Devi, Professor Gordon Thorburn, Greg, Rubaya and others hop in and out of their real and projected selves to make the plot denser and sometimes incomprehensible at times.

This is one book where all titillations are provided by the suave language of the author and so the little paragraph with some real world sex can always go by unnoticed. But the only sex in the novel is between Thor and Rukmini when ‘without a word, she is swept off her feet. Their lips mingle wetly in breathless fervour. He holds her in a strong bear hug above the floor while she unbuttons the brass ring-buttons of his denim shirt. As she’s lowered, inch by inch, she nuzzles his slightly salty skin. They sink to the floor, her tiny figure riding a perfectly moulded god of power.’ Well, I quoted these lines simply to tell the readers of this review that the author has a rather interesting prose style and seems to have researched well. If this is how Tabrik has described sex, you can imagine how he has gone about talking of life at Harvard, the political circus in India, the policy matters of a nation, the way decisions at the highest echelons are taken… and so on.

Yes, the book has some very grim scenarios too… look at this one where Thor explains to Rukmini how easy it is to manipulate the Indian mob: ‘Doesn’t take much, you know, to change celebration into protest, Still, it went without a hitch. Exactly as I’d predicted. Thousands at Rajpath were attracted like moths to the torches held by the kids. They followed like zombies and went home when the fires went off. Just like that.’ Isn’t this the way things have been happening here these past few years? The book has some really disturbing analysis and I like and dislike it for this… it makes us and our intellectual conclusions stand naked and vulnerable. It is very disconcerting indeed.

The book really is all about change… or as Rukmini wants, a ‘fast-track polymorphic vehicle of change. Something like “fast Vedic Mathematics Versus Slow ordinary Mathematics.” You can call it an active movement to propel our political system into a modern Vedic Age.’ The book actually plunges the reader into the eye of a revolution and we explore its hues as the main protagonist is made to go back in time to link incidents, attitudes, and personalities to make the story reasonably fine.

This one is a book that makes you feel restless and a bit uncomfortable… because you see a lot of what is there in it and feel uneasy because there is always someone else to say that the projected facts are figments of imagination. We are all in the twilight zone of real fiction and the book only strengthens it. The intrigue in the book is pale and anaemic but the political perspectives are live and kicking… and I firmly believe that the book fails miserably as a political thriller but yet remains engaging as a fictional account of all the debates and discussions we Indians have at home, in office, and with friends!

Prisoner Jailor Prime Minister by Tabrik C

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!
Book: Prisoner Jailor Prime Minister

Arvind Passey
07 April 2014

The review was also published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 14 April 2014…

‘Does a name on a form over-shadow an appearance in the heart?’ he asked and then went on, ‘Both are shadows but one pulsates forever and the other smudges and fades away in a few years.’ The feminists argued that the name on a piece of paper pulsates with life and demands more than just being there. The rationalists and the law-makers pointed out myriad reasons for the delayed appearance of that name. But Naren was not one to be dismayed by all this hullaballoo and calmly said that he had just two options: To write, or not to right.

And when faced with Hamlet’s dilemma ‘to be, or not to be’, he quietly punched a few lines that resembled that famous speech being quoted and said, ‘Read this and then accuse me of any misdemeanour.’

To write, or not to right, that is the question –
Whether ‘tis saner for me to remain a bluffer
And keep shooting arrows of outrageous allegations
Or to take in my arms my past sea of troubles,
And end this mental dilemma? To herd, to dictate –
No more; and by this, to say I finally end
Someone’s headache, and the thousand barbs
That another is heir to? ‘Tis a foolish wish
That the foolish stick to. To stride, to strike,
To perchance become a Chieftain; Aye, here’s the rub,
For in that stroke of genius, what dreams may come,
When parties have left behind the election days,
Must make me pause. Here’s my respect
To the subterfuge of my long life:
For I have borne the bachelorhood of time,
The title of an Oppressor, a dictator, a fanatic,
The pangs of condoms unused, the sex that I was denied,
The insolence of my seniors, and the spurns
So like an unholy hurry to write me off,
When I did quietly let this party make
A formidable presence by myself! These sinners I hear,
Now grunt and whine about their weary life,
And talk of the dread of their political death,
The undiscovered applause, from whose gates
Ambitious men rarely return, Confounds them now
And they make my fans think of the ills I’ve done,
Than make the detractors come into our fold.
They think my Conscience makes a coward of me
And thus you hear them with their voices raised
Talk sickly talks, without a thought
Of things trivial and meaningless,
With their attention away from nation’s needs,
And lost in a name that I wrote. But you,
My fair partner, my nymph, a name in a one-page form
You will be remembered by history!

As the people read the lines he had written, he told them that the physical distance that separates a dedicated professional in him from instincts that want to divert and tear him away from it all was a deliberate step and that is one reason why he is where he is now.

The mob, by now, was becoming hysterical, and in one voice, asked, ‘What then made you change and transform this distance into a relationship?’ The mob was confused and wanted to know why Naren had kept himself away from the girl he had been married to for fifty long years and keep that fact hidden from public scrutiny. The question was troubling the mob, and not the people… and there is quite a stark difference here.

One from the mob shouted, ‘All this opacity for the sake of some political advantage?’

‘No,’ said Naren, ‘I did not wish to let any personal ambition come in the way of my urge to serve the people. I hid because it wasn’t necessary for me to declare.’

‘So why did you now?’

‘Ah! I like to make rules and when I see a straightforward regulation, I think of the respect it deserves.’

Someone made an impromptu rhyming couplet with a popular Bollywood number and the crowd cheered as he sang:

‘Tum ko dekha, to ye khayal aaya
Mere rules ne public ko nachaya
Aur ab bata dun aaj
Unke neta ne bhi rules ko apnaya!’

Mobs, they say, are meant to disperse… and they did. They restructured themselves back into people and went back home humming the song that one of them had sung.

Note: For those interested in reading the soliloquy in the ‘Nunnery Scene’ of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the lines are:

To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in all thy Orisons
Be thou all my sins remembered.

To write, or not to right

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Arvind Passey
12 April 2014

This post is declared a ‘WOW!’ POST on Blogadda…

This article was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 21 April 2014…

2014_04_21_The Education Post_To write or not to right

Ulluvathellam uyarvullal matratu
Tallinum tellamai nirttut

Abdul Kalam quotes this kural from Tamil literature in his book and goes on to give us its translation in English: ‘Think of rising higher. Let it be your only thought. Even if your object be not attained, the thought itself will have raised you.’ The book is a veritable treasure of quotes that are spread throughout… but then it isn’t just quotes that My Journey is all about.

The author gives us exclusive insights from his own life… and these aren’t wild and whirling words of philosophy without the backing of people and real incidents. Abdul Kalam writes about various factors that have influenced him in some way… and one of these factors is reading a newspaper. He tells us of the great influence his cousin Samsuddin and his newspaper distribution business had on his thought process. ‘These men,’ he writes, ‘understood my deepest thoughts and feelings before I could articulate them. To me they were adults who could reach out beyond the narrow confines of their daily lives and businesses and see the world.’ His interactions with Samsuddin and the newspaper distribution in Rameshwaram is heart-warming particularly when the author reveals that he was just eight when he began helping his cousin to make sure that the family business prospered.

The book takes us on a journey of discovery of how greatness evolves through losses, struggles, and disruptions. The book is all about resilience or the ability to bounce back with enhanced vigour because ‘there is a latent larger energy and force that can crush our ambitions and plans in the blink of an eye, and the only way to survive is to face your troubles and rebuild your life.’

Reading was always a passion with Abdul Kalam and in this ‘nostalgic, honest and deeply personal’ book, he not only talks about people and incidents but also reveals the three books that are his all-time favourite though he has ‘read innumerable books’. The books mentioned include ‘Light from many lamps’ edited by Lillian Eichler Watson which he came across in 1953 and there ‘has hardly been an occasion when the words mentioned in the book have not brought me solace in my hours of sadness, or uplifted me when I needed advice’. The next book that he says has been influential to his thinking is ‘Thirukural’ written by Thiruvalluvar more than 2000 years ago. This book is ‘a collection of 1330 rhyming couplets or aphorisms (kural)’ and has provided the author a code of conduct and is also ‘a work that truly elevates the mind’. The next book listed is ‘Man the unknown’ by the Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel and talks about ‘how humans can be healed when both the body and mind are treated together’… and books and good writing has certainly influenced him a lot.

Abdul Kalam is a person who is ‘fascinated by the flight of birds in the sky’, looks at everything with ‘wide-open eyes, thirsting to know more’, and it is his innate curiosity that finally transforms him into ‘a much more assertive and confident individual’.

The book takes us through his childhood, his years in college and at various institutes, gives us glimpses into anecdotes from his professional life… but clearly steers away from politics. There is no mention about his years as the President of India… no mention about what he thinks of politics and politicians and this is one thing that irked me… but then the book is all about his journey that helped him transform dreams into actions and obviously, politics has little that positive transformation is all about. In fact, the absence of politics in this book is indicative of the fact that everything but politics ‘has lingered in my mouth even years later, made sweeter still knowing that it contained’  his love for everything that has the power to take us ahead as an evolved person.

Book Details:

Title: My Journey: Transforming dreams into actions
Author: A P J Abdul Kalam
Publisher: Rupa
ISBN: 978-81-291-2491-3
Price: Rs 195 (in 2014)

Arvind Passey
Review written on 13 April 2014
Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 14 April 2014…

She wailed, ‘Technology is getting more and more insane. I feel I am being left behind.’ She repeated this sentence again and again but not one busy lunch-time office goer even paused to ask, ‘Is anything the matter? How can I help you?’ But just when this insanity of human apathy was climbing yet another inglorious notch, Supriya made her way through the crowd, smiled at the wailing lady and said, ‘I’m here now. Tell me what is bothering you.’

The wailing lady stared at her and then said, ‘I see everyone around me getting better and better with new technology. And here I am, still thinking, still deciding about what would suit my needs.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes, but this isn’t such a small thing. Technology keeps moving faster than my speed of understanding it… and now I am lost,’ said the wailing lady, and then added with a smile, ‘I’m Manjiri., and I too want to be incredible!’

‘You already are incredible,’ replied Supriya, ‘but let us talk and discover what it is that will make you more incredible. So what sort of technology are you talking about?’

The two ambled to a nearby coffee house and once their coffees were ordered, Manjiri leaned back and began, ‘Even my grandson goes around with a tablet, but when I tried to handle it I found it too big for me. And then why must I burden myself with a tablet as well as a phone? I think less is always more charming.’

‘You’re right,’ said Supriya, ‘but a tablet has a lot of advantages and…’

Manjiri spoke even before Supriya could complete her sentence, ‘I know that. I love to watch movies on it and listen to songs. But now I want a tablet of my own as I too want to send messages on Whatsapp. I too want to use ChatON. I too want to click pictures wherever I go and then share them. I too want to be on Facebook and twitter. But I simply find the small screen of my phone too difficult to handle.’

It was at this point that Supriya took out her ASUS Fonepad 7 and showed it to her, saying, ‘This is my tablet and my phone. With this around I never feel alone.’

Manjiri handled the Fonepad and soon it was obvious that she could learn fast. Manjiri then told her that the Fonepad 7 was a 7” tab with a 3G phone. A dual sim made it so attractive for those who need two sims… Manjiri nodded her head excitedly and said, ‘I often go and stay with another son in a different State… and so a dual sim is exactly what I was looking for.’

Supriya then added that the Fonepad 7 came with an Intel Atom  Z2520 1.2GHz Dual Core Processor for lightning-fast web and application loading. ‘And you can choose the stylish gray that I have or a charming white!’ gushed Supriya, ‘and look here, you can see the screen clearly even from where you sit.’ She told her new friend that this tab had a 1280×800 HD IPS display with an incredible 178-degree viewing angle.

‘What about the camera?’

‘Aha! this 7 inch wonder has a camera that also has a 100-shot burst mode, and you can edit and organize all of the photos with the fluid Studio application that comes with it,’ said Supriya.

They were soon going through the specifications very closely and found that they loved the battery life of this tab which would give them 30 hours of 3G talk and 10 hours of continuous video playback. The 64 GB micro SD card add-on was a charm as they didn’t want to keep pushing their pictures in some laptop at home. They also loved when they read: ‘Floating App lets you instantly switch between apps without having to close the previous one. Intel Atom CPUs with HyperThreading Technology for quad-threaded performance, giving you more processing power to run multiple apps simultaneously.’

‘This must be expensive,’ asked Manjiri. Supriya wasn’t aware of the price so they decided to walk to the nearest multi-brand retail store and discovered that the cost was a reasonable Rs 12,999/-.

Our two brilliant ladies in this story had browsed the net on a Fonepad 7 to find out the details of the Fonepad 7… and this is something even you can do: http://www.asus.com/in/

Manjiri chirped happily, ‘Meeting you was incredibly lucky for me. And now you have introduced me to this incredible tab here. I searched for the incredible and I found it through you. Thank you, my friend.’

Supriya just said, ‘Your interaction with the incredible has only just begun!’

Article published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 21 April 2014…

2014_04_21_The Education Post_review of asus fonepad 7

Arvind Passey
21 April 2014

More pictures…

You’ve missed it all. You’ve missed the drama. You’ve missed all that the gorgeous Nargis Fakhri revealed on the 16^th of April 2014. You’ve missed the fascinated look in her eyes. You’ve missed her swirls and the twirls onstage. You’ve missed the husky tone in which she said: ‘I love ChatON.’

A part of me has actually begun calling this dextrous multi-device and multi-platform instant messenger ‘Nargis’… so smitten I am after watching her interact with technology during the ChatON launch. I said to myself, ‘There must be something really fascinating about the new version 3.5 of ChatON, that even a busy celebrity like Nargis is attracted to it.’

And the first thing I did was to install it on my iPhone5. Aha! You must be chuckling and saying, ‘This messenger is for the Samsung smartphones only… why is he troubling his iPhone now?’ Well, I’ve mentioned this earlier and you probably overlooked it… the new version makes ChatON a multi-device and multi-platform messenger that is available across Android, iOS, Windows and Blackberry and can be used across a wide range of devices and thus, the current ChatON subscriber base of 200 million globally is bound to rise exponentially.

India’s 1230 billion population has a 7% smartphone penetration and 130 million mobile internet users… which means instant communication is getting to be more and more vital. So messaging-users need to simply hop on to a service that delivers more than what any other service is delivering. Thus if a user is able to share files up to 1GB, is able to instantly translate between English and Hindi or in a few other languages, can have up to 1001 members’ group chat, has the facility of easy location sharing, is able to send message recall, has SMS/MMS integration, and has access to charming Indianized Anicons, he will have no option but to do what Nargis Fakhri did on stage… she excitedly said, ‘I am liking this app more and more and more now.’

But coming back to the animated conversation featuring Nargis, it was heart-warming to see her emerge from backstage, saying, ‘I have been trying ChatON on my smartphone for some time now and I find the Live Partners feature simply fascinating. I can make some really groovy online shopping decisions with this.’

Well, yes, the big differentiator for ChatON is the Live Partners feature, which includes key partners like CriqHQ, Ebay, Mint, Aajtak, and Think Digit, amongst others to give the user exclusive content, discounts and deals! No wonder then that Mr. Latif Nathani, Managing Director, eBay India, is reported to have said: ‘Nearly 24% of eBay India traffic is via a mobile device. We are always looking at innovative ways to reach our core target groups and messaging apps like Samsung ChatON bring us another avenue to reach new consumers, especially in Tier II/III towns. We have great offers on eBay India exclusively for the ChatON channel.’ Now if the sort of offers that are there on ChatON can tickle a busy celebrity like Nargis Fakhri, we are but ordinary mortals who can only moan and purr happily!

In case some of you are wondering about the intense focus on making messengers so much better than what we were accustomed to, let me say here that I had a chat with Tarun Malik, Director of Media Solutions Center-South West Asia, Samsung Electronics, and he explained to me that the newer and improved versions are because all research is directed towards ‘consumer focus, product innovation, technical leadership, retail presence, and rich content,’ and as a result, a consumer is gifted the ‘ability to use this platform to consume content from various genres like news, entertainment, games, and health…’

Now, despite all the delightful features that new version 3.5 of ChatON has, it needs to be mentioned that they are for Android users… and that the latest release for iOS (Ver 2.7.7) and for Blackberry (Ver 1.11) was in December 2013, and for WP8 users it happened in January 2014. As a result I was not able to really see if the translator with this messenger has matured or is as hilarious as translating ‘I love your eyes’ to something as incongruous as ‘Aapki drishti pyari hai’… though, I must say that a small helping of hilarity transforms an interaction to an enjoyable one!

So there you are, I am waiting for my contacts to migrate to ChatON… and as I punch this post with my right hand, my left hand is busy opening Whatsapp and my left eye is focused on what my friends on that app are ranting about! Now if you intend to ask me, ‘Don’t you have BBM, WeChat, Line, and Viber on your iPhone?’ all that I can say is, ‘I’ve been there and came out as they were either having a cluttered interface or had features that made me look like a performing clown in a circus! And now I hope my friends find ChatON as good as I do… but remember, I fell in love with ChatON because of the dramatic revelations made by Nargis Fakhri one pleasant Delhi afternoon!

Review published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 21 April 2014…

2014_04_21_The Education Post_review of chatON

Arvind Passey
21 April 2014

More pictures:

.

The mug on my table has enough lessons for our political bigwigs, shabby wigs, no wig, starry wigs, goon wigs, scam wigs, and chic wigs. It has a beautiful curvy nose covering a major part of its face and it is as proud of its nose as we humans are of ours.

You know the funny thing about a mug is that a mug is just a mug and has its face and generally a nose that we hold to lift it… and this is probably why we call this contraption a mug. But look at us. We have a mug and follow it up with a whole range of organs and limbs which must have been entirely our choice when we were choosing our form. But the important thing is the mug. The mug has a mug. We have a mug. The mug has a nose on its mug. We have a nose on our mug.

Now let me tell you where the difference between these mugs is. Does the mug that is a mug ever say: I’m fragile. I need to be handled carefully. I need VIP treatment.’ Does the traffic police ever bring the entire traffic to a halt when a mug that is a mug, is passing by? No. But look at the mugs we have in our parliament. They feel they cannot be driven with the other traffic zipping and zooming on all sides. They feel threatened. Ah! So what they do is ask for Z-security. And all that a mug that is a mug gets is a call from the owner when the bartan-wali mai is doing the dishes: ‘Todna nahin. Mehanga hai.’

The truth is that all of us are mugs… but the mugs in our parliament are different mugs. They get the traffic blocked when they drive out, they have flights delayed regularly, they fill their spaces with wealth and pretend they are as light-weight as all the other mugs, and they are ready to wear a different tagline if a heavier sponsorship is offered. Our parliamentarian mugs also think they are way above the other mugs and don’t generally interact with the other mango mugs.

These UHD or Ultra Hi-def mugs are heard saying things like: ‘We are here to legislate and it is our birth right.’ Or ‘Why must the RTI cover us? Doesn’t the law trust their legislators?’ Or ‘Criminal record is a part of our being. This shouldn’t be used against us. It is, in fact, a feature that makes us powerful inside the parliament.’ Or ‘You masses must learn to mind your own business. We know what is to be given to you and when.’ These mugs zip around in their expensive SUVs and love waving at the ordinary mugs. The mugs that I am talking about generally wear white but they can wear saffron or green or other colours too. They think it is fashionable to break regulations because then the TV channels will invite them in their studios for a debate where they have a shouting match with the hack mugs of the nation. These hack mugs love to shout hoarse all day but then this post isn’t dedicated to them… so let me focus on the parliamentarian mugs.

The only time the parliamentarian mugs reach out to mango mugs is during the election time… and even during this time they try to create a scene. They call each other names and keep declaring that only their father is entitled to be called a martyr mug. Well, the mango mugs love being mugged by these mugs which is quite a sad thing really. The latest news report tells me that one rather unintelligent and morose looking mug said again and again to people who were lined up to vote: ‘Dekh lena bhaiya!’

I don’t know what that bhaiya mug thought of this or finally did… all I know is that mugs will be mugs!

Arvind Passey
08 May 2014

Also sent for publication in ‘The Education Post’. The jpeg of the published article will be put here in a couple of days…

It is the swerves of curves that have been winning all the glances and eye-balls throughout history. I even suspect that it was never the face, but the curves…

‘that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium…’

…and so why must technology remain behind? Even Sonam Kapoor, the actress, says: ‘We don’t like when films don’t look good on screen. We want colours to look nicer, depth to be clearer and viewing to be life-like. This is also what all film actors want. This is what Samsung brings to us now. I’m going to get one for my house.’ Another journalist sitting next to me remarked, ‘She knows all about curves and how to make them perform!’ I just said, ‘Sonam is standing right next to the most sensual curve in the technological history of mankind.’

Sonam was indeed standing next to Samsung’s HU9000 Curved UHD TV. The combined impact was unbelievable… however, even as a stand-alone, the curved TV product-line from Samsung includes exclusive technology that delivers incredible life-like UHD 4K picture quality on a cutting-edge curved screen. This combination envelops viewers in spectacular color, clarity and detail. The immersive sensation is augmented by Samsung’s proprietary Auto Depth Enhancer, an algorithm that analyzes regions of images and automatically adjusts contrast for a greater sense of depth — it’s like 3D without the glasses. Color is further enhanced on these sets with Samsung’s PurColor™ technology, expressing more detailed shades and Peak Illuminator & Precision Black maximizes brightness range which reproduces the picture as film-makers envisioned. As Mr. S.K. Kim, Managing Director, Sales at Samsung India remarked, ‘In 2014, Samsung is opening a new era of Curved TV with the ultimate immersive viewing experience. With the launch of world’s first Curved UHD TV, Samsung is blending its innovative Curved form factor with its UHD TV technology. With this launch, we are further augmenting our robust product portfolio in the home entertainment segment.’

The truth is that smartness is no longer limited to mobile phones… even televisions are getting there and getting trimmer as well. And now with the added curve, they are ready to storm the world! The new, faster Samsung Smart Hub means less searching and more watching. A consumer can easily access live TV, VOD apps and social media in one easy-to-browse place with the Smart Hub. With Samsung’s Multi-Link (Dual) feature, consumers can transform their TV into two screens that can access live TV and streaming video / the web, making multi-tasking a breeze. Now if this isn’t future having arrived, then what is?

No wonder then that these smart curved UHD TVs are called future-ready! They give a consumer a 3D effect without forcing them to wear those pain-in-the-face called 3D glasses. This smart TV experience is also lightning fast because of the upgraded Quad Core processor. The Quad Core Plus is up to two times faster and delivers quicker loading and navigation with an overall improved Smart TV performance. Turning on the TV has never been faster with Instant On. The TV will turn on soon after pressing the power button so that users can get to their entertainment faster. But it isn’t just the features that make the new product line from Samsung so attractive… it is the overall user experience that is delicately mesmerizing and this is what stays in the mind and memory.

And, by the way, did I mention that someone during the launch did ask Sonam why she chose to associate with Samsung. She replied, ‘Samsung is the best in technology today. I associate with something that is the best in quality.’ Well, the Bollywood producers and directors must really get cued in onto this.

Arvind Passey
20 May 2014

This article was published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 19 May 2014

First meeting with Volvo XC60 was on a wet slushy day in Bhopal…

Where and how we met is what is vital… we met in Bhopal during the NDTV-Volvo XC60 Adventure Challenge 2014 and that is where I fell in love with a 40 L car! So the first good thing about the XC60 is that it makes you fall in love with it.

The rest of the good things follow in a line, never falling out or being raucous or boisterous, such is the effect of the car. So whether it is the smooth automatic transmission of the car, or it’s impeccable safety features, or the spacious boot opening and closing hydraulically, or the intelli-bending lights, or a central console that initially intimidates you with the number of touch controls and button controls there, or the sun roof, or the range of colour choices… you really have no option but to admit that you’re finally in love with a machine.

But hey! the XC60 isn’t a mere machine. It purrs like a woman (though at times it does purr more aggressively and louder), gallops like a horse in a race, turns like a dolphin in a performance, adopts the right gear like there was an Einstein sitting inside… and manages to gift you, the owner, a 56 inch chest that Modi recently talked about!

Let me add here that my partner and I drove the XC60 in the city, then on the highway, did off-roading, went up and down the hillls near Pachmarhi, drove throughout the day stopping only for very short breaks, and even slept inside the car. The 212 HP engine did not register a single complaint… in fact, it was going hoarse warning me whenever I went too close to a jutting rock or careless humans trespassing on Indian roads. The air conditioning was simply superb and it was a pleasure to test its efficacy by stepping out in the scorching heat of Bhopal and then dive back to see how fast the sweat dried… and it always did in a matter of nanoseconds!

Driving on the road within city limits is where I loved this car most… the advanced reversing controls made parking easier than it always was, and the proximity warnings that it gave must have saved us a number of times.

It is good that the rough and tough driving fortnight for me was intrinsically connected to the XC60… it wouldn’t have been easy had it been any other car, I’m sure.

It is tempting to write that Volvo needs to improve it’s pricing by scaling it downwards by a few lacs… but then seriously, I wouldn’t like to enter the slushy and mushy fiscal arena. This, however, reminds me of the awry swishes, lost traction, and a confused steering while negotiating slush and slippery ground during the off-roading experience. It was scary at times but it probably needed more expertise than I had, so I wouldn’t really go overboard complaining about it at all. In fact, one of my friends says that ‘the car lacks a limited slip differential or diff locks, so it seems it isn’t practical as a full-time, serious off-roader…’ I agree with him.

The digital controls and all the memory functions are not easy to remember but once you get a hang of them, they do make life inside the car much more lovable. There is very little that is sloppy or deserving the cane, so to say… though there will still be improvements and the newer models in the future will have things we cannot even imagine. One thing that bugged me was my not being able to get enough height to stand confidently and out of the open sun roof. This leads me on to the ticklish bump that makes life for the third passenger sitting in the rear seat in the centre far from comfortable. In fact, we took turns to sit in that position whenever three of us were inside one car and sitting in the rear seat. So if this vulgar bump can go, it’ll be very fine.

Look at the range…Silver Metallic, Seashell, Caspian Blue Metallic, Black Stone, Ice White, Flamenco Red Metallic, Rebel Blue, Cosmic White Metallic, Savile Grey Metallic, Black Sapphire Metallic, Terra Bronze Metallic, and Electric Silver Metallic… the one that I drove was black and our team was called ‘Midnight Thrillers’… and believe me, all colours suit this car.

The length, height, width & wheelbase of the XC 60 are 4644 mm, 1713mm, 1632mm and 2774 mm and they do give a feel of perfect ratio and a well-balanced car when you look at it from a distance.

I think we must have clicked a whole range of pictures of its newly styled LED daylight running head lamps and of the grille that has the company’s logo spreading across it… these two make the car picture-perfect! Anyway, the Scandinavian design simply means that the vehicle is a convergence of simplicity, elegance, and appeal! The dual exhaust tail pipes lend it that very essential new-age sporty look. The tail lamps have vertical cluster that looks amazing and the rear side has LED brake light at spoiler which is located at the tip of the rear-side roof.

The exteriors, in short, are simply mind-blowing!

What does a tall man look for? Headroom, of course. Well, the XC60 has ample front and rear headroom that is 1025 mm and 1003 mm respectively… but then when we talk of interiors all we mean is: ‘Am I comfortably seated?’ The answer is: ‘Yes.’ End of debate. However, for the nit-pickers, there is a comfort pillow, rear seat cover, sunshade rear window, electric heater, remoter start for heaters, electric compartment heater, and an active TFT crystal display with 3 graphic themes. So does this make you happier? The upholstery is fine, the seats are plush and the rest of the interior probably looks at you and says: ‘Relax! You’re sitting in a fine car.’

Well, let me share a few secrets here. The first thing my partner and I did was to connect our smartphone through bluetooth and switch on the audio player. The process was hassle-free and the sound regaled us throughout the fortnight that we spent driving this luxury car!

Now the sort of driving we were doing wasn’t the passive one that company chauffeurs do or the fearful and careful stance that owners adopt… we were quite bindaas about taking it to places where even sanity would cringe and cower… but the XC60 went on bravely with us, tolerating our braking, accelerations, and swerves… and it did everything very commendably. In fact, every time we came out of the car, my perceptive mind could hear: ‘Thank you, your driving has made me stronger and sturdier!’ I mean, this voice wasn’t there but I could sense the car whispering these words.

Barring a few times when we felt that the occupants were made to feel the bumps and the breakers, we were a happy lot.

My final observation is about the irrepressible human wish to own the best and so I can say with conviction that I will love to own an XC60… though I wish some unknown benefactor gifts it to me.

Every relationship with the Volvo XC60 emerges ecstatic!

Arvind Passey
20 May 2014

Article published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 19 May 2014…

Volvo XC60 — Lovingly powerful!