Today Times

Mashru Makeover

Times Of India
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It’s not as famous as patola, but is equally unique to Patan in Gujarat. Dating back to Sultanate period, mashru or misru (Sanskrit word for mixed) weaving spread across India with the spread of Islamic rule. It continues to be woven even today, but is now a languishing craft practised only in Patan and Mandvi, Patan being the main trade centre. Efforts are on to revive this ancient craft through contemporisation of design development and skill upgradation of artisans involved in the trade. The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Gandhinagar under a GSHHDC (Gujarat State Handloom & Handicrafts Development Corporation Ltd.) project initiated one such process with local artisans in Patan. Efforts are also on to get this craft a GI (geographical indication) tag.   

WHAT IS MASHRU
Shariat forbade Muslim men from wearing pure silk next to skin. Mashru being a mix of fabrics, with silk on outer surface and cotton on the reverse side worn close to skin, however, was permitted, says Jethakaka, one of the original mashru weavers in Patan. He rues that this ancient craft, which is believed to have come to India during 16th century, is dying as there are not many takers for it. How many outside of Patan know about this craft? he asks. Sadly, there are only 10 original mashru weavers left in Patan. But, he is happy that the government has taken initiative to revive it.

Initially, it was difficult convincing these people about the revival plan, as they had submitted themselves to weaving only cotton fabric costing Rs 20 per metre and used mainly for Mata ki chunri in the name of mashru catering to the market demand to meet their ends, says the faculty at NIFT, who is also incharge of the project.

A project was conceptualised keeping in mind the original colours (red, yellow, blue) and bold striped patterns of mashru, which has down the years remained unchanged in its form. A design process began followed by identification and analysis of the available skills and resources, she explains.

Mashru has so little exposure and there is such a small demand for it that while working on the design development it was decided to contemporise the existing design vocabulary, diversify the product range and try experimentation with this fabled craft to explore innovative possibilities, says textile designer Nancy Sikka.

If weavers were hesitant to adopt new approach in giving newer dimension to their craft, it was equally challenging job for the NIFT to give the craft a revitalised look in its original form.

A diversified product range is what we had in mind. So, we experimented with different widths, weights and material, incorporating varying applications to take it beyond simple yardage fabric, says the project incharge. As it is, silk is no longer much in use since it takes longer time to weave. Rayon being market-friendly is now preferred. Silk-based mashru costs Rs 250 per metre whereas rayon one comes for Rs 110 to Rs 150 per metre. A weaver husband-wife duo, who earned Rs 4,500-Rs 5,000 per month weaving 65 metres of cotton fabric a week, is now comfortable with the idea of weaving the same length of rayon-cotton mix fabric in 10 days and earning Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500 more per month.

MARKETING WAS IMPORTANT
Marketing of their products was the next important step. Trend forecast websites and magazines were consulted, and 2011 colour reference was chosen while creating designs that are marketable and are expected to have good response. To start with, the products made by these artisans will be put on display for sale at GSHHDC’s Gurjari showroom in Ahmedabad and will later be showcased at these stores across India. Gurjari is also planning buyers meet for artisans for better exposure of their products.

THE ARAB THREAD
The tradition of mashru in India is old and influenced by weaving traditions prevalent in Iraq and Arab countries. Mashru is Arabic word meaning permitted. It was woven all over India and might have been derived from the weaving traditions of the Tiraz factories of the Caliphates, in the countries having Islamic influences. These were introduced in India during the Sultunate period. A traditional export item, it was traded in considerable quantity to Persia, Egypt, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and African countries.

In pursuit of fame

Times Of India
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Famous French film maker Jean-Luc Godard has refused to step out of his Swiss home to go to Hollywood to accept the Oscar for his lifetime's work. It's not because Godard, 79, is still busy making films on miniscule budgets that he claims no one watches any more. It's because he finds, like many others, fame to be extremely boring in an age and time when every third person you meet is an overnight celebrity.

Fame is pointless when it no longer distinguishes you from the rest and, worse, is not a special marker of your achievements. Today everyone's chasing that fleeting moment of stardom which Warhol had once warned would become commonplace. It has. Like the S Class Benz or the duplex home with a sea view, fame has now become just another aspiration that any well heeled or well connected Indian can claim, buy or hire. Many do. So we have this huge menagerie of celebrities who are famous simply for being famous. We know they're famous because they hog prime time on TV or rub shoulders with each other in newspapers and celebrity magazines that have flooded the markets today, living off the premise that the accoutrements of stardom can be sold to the gullible. It's like a bored housewife going to a cosmetic surgeon, wanting to look like Katrina Kaif in the belief that such a transformation could change her life and make it what she presumes Katrina's life to be.

We have chosen to disbelieve today that talent, hard work and great passion is the only sure route to fame, the kind of fame that the Great Masters enjoyed. There are no short cuts. Yet we pursue our fantasies of instant fame. One reality show, one break in the movies, one photo shoot, one silly award we believe can give you that moment in eternity that fame ensures. As a result, the rich and the powerful go all out to buy it as they would buy all those stupid toys that litter their life. The rest run in hot pursuit of it. Acquiring celebrity status is like what keeping up with the Joneses once was. You did it because everyone else was doing it too.

But is fame something to acquire? Or is it something others gift you out of admiration and love, in recognition of a talent you have that you may not even know yourself? History shows that some of the most famous people never even knew they were famous. They were proclaimed so long after their death when people recognised their amazing achievements. There were others who found fame a burden. It stood between them and their life's work. One of the real hallmarks of fame is that those who have it are impatient to shrug it off and get back to doing what they do best, which is what brought them their fame in the first place. I have known some of the most remarkable people who were famous but had no time for their fame. They craved anonymity and often got it because the world respected them. Ritwick Ghatak, one of the greatest film makers of the last century, was a classic case. Amir Khan, the legendary singer, was another. Vasudev Gaitonde, the painter who died unsung in a Delhi barsaati. Nikhil Banerjee, possibly the greatest musician of his generation. Jibanananda Das, the poet, who fell off a tramcar and died, his body dragged for a furlong before anyone noticed. Badal Sarkar, the playwright, now 85, still refuses to be famous. Gaddar, the balladeer, who sang the first songs of revolution that labelled him a Naxalite. Mahasweta Devi, the novelist. These are people history will remember as truly famous.

Those who we think are famous today, the ones that leap out of newspapers and TV to assault our senses and claim our admiration, are just momentary blips on the screen. They will not even last out their lifetime in the limelight, however famous they may look to you and me today. If you don't believe me, just pause for a moment and think of our first Superstar, Rajesh Khanna. He was called The Phenomenon. He walks down the road today, a forlorn, forgotten figure. No, I'm not being cruel to him. History is. It remembers only the really famous and hits delete on the rest. You can hog all the headlines you want. You can grab all the trophies and awards. You can buy your stardom for the present but you can't hang in there unless you have the gift of excellence. Many don't. So they strive for it. And excellence being a tough task master often consumes their entire life. So they have no time to live the life of the celebrity.
 
Though they never show it, these are people who fulfil their destiny. And no, none of them are celebrities. They are common people like you and me. Except that they went that extra mile to do extraordinary things with their lives. That's what made them famous.

A fat and portly air chief is an embarrassment

Times Of India
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Like many of you, I too was excited when the Indian Air Force conferred the rank of the Honorary Group Captain on the iconic cricketer Sachin Tendulkar Friday last. Although I have a poor opinion of the game and the way this nation wastes time on it, I have high regard for the man himself. To sustain oneself at that level for two decades, and still lead, is absolutely remarkable. While a lot of wannabes get a lot of recognition, in Sachin’s case, IAF’s recognition is well deserved.

(Tendulkar being honoured by Air Chief Marshal P V Naik. AP)

This short post, however, is not about Sachin and his fitness, but the state of our pride, the Indian Air Force. Look at these accompanying pictures and you would know what I mean.  My immediate reaction that day was to write something, but then, IAF is a venerated institution and a source of pride for a nation that has so little to crow about.  So I decided not to do anything to puncture that euphoria. But after waiting three days, and looking at the pictures again, I guess I couldn’t hold back any longer.
 
As I said, IAF is something of pride for us Indians. Its achievement in the wars, even while using inferior machines, has been stuff folklores are made of. But if this particular event was to add to that image, it failed, and miserably so.
 
Just a look at the air chief, Air Chief Marshal P V Naik, as he shakes Sachin’s hands or smiles or does anything. Do these pictures not embarrass you? Pot belly that would shame even a hardened police constable in deep Uttar Pradesh is certainly not something that I, as an

(Left: Sachin Tendulkar with IAF chief P V Naik. PTI)

Indian, would feel proud of in the man entrusted with the task of managing my nation’s air force.

Whatever might be the reason or explanation for this state of the air force chief, this is not on. It is not just a huge embarrassment but also gives a knock to our belief that while everything else in this nation would crumble, the standards maintained by the services would uphold all that we want. Alas!

('Group Captain' Sachin Tendulkar salutes Air Chief
Marshal PV Naik after being honoured by the IAF. PTI)

To me, this is nothing but symptomatic of the rot that has begun to engulf us so completely. Like elsewhere, there is a general tendency to compromise with things. I will do a post some other time about my experiences with the services in some areas, especially the rugged and inhospitable regions in high altitude, but this level of fitness in the chief is unexpected and unacceptable. Not too long ago, the same air force had A Y Tipnis as its head. His appearance was something to be proud of.

(Air Chief Marshal PV Naik honours Sachin Tendulkar. TOI )

Such a stickler was he of fitness, which should be a given in the services, that none dared come close to him if he felt his belt was hanging below his waist. Can the current chief even hold that threat to his subordinates? He can’t.

I am sure he is a great strategist and must have been great shape physically too in his hey days, but there can be no excuse for the state he is now. He is in the services, after all, where physical fitness is looked upon as an asset. In the current state, he wouldn't inspire much confidence, especially among youngsters who may look up to him as a role model.

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What Rahul Gandhi does not say

Times Of India
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It is difficult to speak of brand Rahul Gandhi in glib terms anymore. MJ Akbar, has with his trademark perceptiveness called to our attention his turn leftwards in an article in this newspaper last week. Over the last two years, no political leader in India has transformed as much as the young Gandhi heir. From being a somewhat bland hitchhiker on the family legacy gravy train, he is today seen as a powerful political force by his party men and his opponents alike. His swift endorsement of the decision to reject Vedanta's mining application in Orissa has been seen as a watershed moment by many, in that it marks out his intent and direction very sharply, but perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, this move should not have come as a surprise.

Far more revealing than what Rahul Gandhi has said and acted upon is what he has chosen to ignore and keep his silence on. We have rarely heard him offer a meaningful opinion in the issues that the that are of deep interest to the middle class Indian. He has shown no inclination to get even remotely involved in issues like Kashmir, the relationship with Pakistan, or the N-liability bill. There is little interest evinced in public at least in the subjects dear to the middle class- issues of controlling corruption, reducing criminality in our public life, getting more educated people to enter politics and such like. We never see him at business gatherings schmoozing with Indian business leaders, he is not a regular on the Davos circuit and makes no pronouncements about India's ability to become an economic superpower. And much to the disappointment of his supporters from the middle class, he  has steered clear of having anything to do with the mess we call Commonwealth Games.

For someone in whom a significant section of middle class India sees hope for the future (there is of course a significant section that is allergic in the extreme to anyone with his dynastic signature), Rahul Gandhi has astonishingly little interest in either this class or in the issues it holds dear. In the mirror to India, Rahul Gandhi holds aloft, the middle class cannot see itself, try as it might. And yet, in his youthfulness and his freshness, lies the dogged persistence of hope for this very class, sickened as it is by the venality of the current political discourse. He is, both to the media which covers him like royalty and to part of the middle class, a symbol of all that is youthful , promising and photogenic about politics. But Rahul Gandhi is increasingly much more than an engaging symbol, a blank personable slate on which we can write what we wish for. Brand Rahul Gandhi, is moving deeper into more nuanced and complex territory and is unlikely to provide an easy fix for the middle class yearning for a cleansed future free from the baggage of yesterday. He is wading into areas that are of marginal interest to this class and more significantly challenge the easy truths we have come to accept as part of conventional wisdom.

In the last few years, we have seen the emergence of a consensus of the vocal in mainstream media. Underneath the seemingly fractious nature of debate, there is a broad convergence of views. A lot of attention gets focused on symbolic issues that create emotional resonance with the consuming class and more fundamental questions are rarely asked. Politicians are reviled, business leaders are valorised, terrorism is decried, corruption is lamented, the moral police is lambasted, and any perceived slight to Indian pride is hunted down. Political parties stick to their scripts as does the media and life goes on. Radical challenges are rare, with the Left armed with an arthritic imagination and the Right mired in issues of insubstantial symbolism. When these challenges do emerge as in the case of the Naxal violence, the media closes ranks and a single homogenous picture begins to appear.

In this context, the Rahul Gandhi move is the most direct challenge to the institutionalised assumptions of the Indian mainstream. By challenging the founding assumptions of the modern Indian project (development is good, growth is better and double digit growth is the Holy Grail), a new strand of opinion is entering the political discourse. And this comes from, of all the places, the most powerful political family in India. It is clear that Sonia Gandhi's inclinations too have tended to lie in this area, as evidenced by the kind of people she surrounds herself with in the NAC. Hitherto the territory of jholawalas who spouted radicalese secure in their insignificance, we now see the question of what the Indian model of development should be, coming into mainstream focus from a very unlikely source indeed.

Of course, the UPA government seems trapped motionless between its many constituent parts and it does not help that its dynastic leaders seem to be pursuing an agenda that it can only dimly comprehend. The Congress seems to believe that it has figured out how to win elections and understood that it has little to do with running governments. The only decisive initiatives that we have seen from this two-time regime have to do with subjects of interest to the Gandhi family. For the rest, stasis prevails.

It is possible that the current strategy of speaking in different voices is a deliberate one, as some commentators have pointed out, mounted with a view to build multiple bases. Let one part of the government pursue the reform agenda, even if it is done half-heartedly and let the party focus on re-building bridges with the marginalised sections of society. But even if that is the case, the strategy employed by Rahul Gandhi is a curious one for someone who is seen as the prime-minister-in-waiting . This much is clear- if and when Rahul Gandhi comes to power, it would be difficult to predict what script he will play off. In all likelihood, the middle class will be surprised, perhaps disappointed. And depending on where you stand that is either bad or very good news.

Fewer nights @ the BPO

Times Of India
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Shyam Mehra, the protagonist of Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ the Call Centre, was seen as a loser by his girlfriend’s mom and even his own family because he worked in a call centre. His girlfriend too dumped him briefly for a rich Microsoft bloke, when it looked like he wasn’t going to get far in life with his call centre job.

The book was written five years ago. Even today, for many people, the term BPO evokes images of rows of people in front of monitors, working in the middle of the night when the rest of the country is sleeping, taking on American names, speaking in accented English, and trying to convince some foreigner to buy a credit card or insurance policy. When I ask our illustrators to find a picture for a BPO story, they inevitably come with one of a girl wearing a headphone-cum-mic, or a row of similar such people.

The fact is, the BPO sector has changed dramatically. Nasscom’s most recent estimates show that the voice business of BPO is now down to just 43 per cent. In other words, those folks with headphones are no longer the norm. Most have regular day jobs, and often they are doing some very complex stuff.

The other day, a person working in Oracle Financial Services BPO in Bangalore told us her job is to analyse the investment portfolio of clients of a US-based investment bank. She has a degree in management, and hers is always a day job. When the Americans are sleeping, the team here goes about figuring out how a portfolio has done, and what changes may be required.

ANALYTICS AND RESEARCH

Such analytics is now a significant part of India’s BPO industry. Capgemini India BPO does securities market research. They have people capable of running through content such as Reuters, to help build people’s investment portfolios. They do portfolio tracking, based on the latest prices of securities. "We have over 100 chartered accountants, and a large number of MBAs and statisticians," says the company’s head, B L Narayan.

Genpact advises credit card companies on collection strategies. They look at the performance data of customers, stuff like how regular they have been in their payments, and then suggest which customers need not be called for reminders. After all, every call costs money. "If there is a 30 days’ delinquency, we predict what the chances are that he will never pay. The credit card company can then take appropriate action, may be send stronger, sharper letters," says Pankaj Kulshreshtha, business leader for analytics & research in Genpact, who has over 3,500 people in his division. More than 75% of these have a Master’s degree; some have even MBA and PhD degrees.

Kulshreshtha says he’s done loss forecasting and financial stress tests for auto companies in the US, some of that to enable them to submit reports to the US Federal Reserve during the crisis that auto companies went through during the recession.. Genpact advises on treasury management, things like raising debt, lending to different companies; they estimate yields, calculate the risks involved. They do supply chain inventory optimization, advising on consolidating vendors, putting controls.

They do budgetary planning for companies, including recommendations on which products should get more money and marketing support. They tell pharma sales reps which doctors are most likely to prescribe the drug they are trying to market; they tell hospitals how best to lay things out so that the workflow is the fastest.

And guess what, the CFO of a private equity firm with a corpus of half a billion dollars is a Genpact employee, sitting in the Genpact office in Bangalore. "He does all the work that the CFO of a PE firm does, including interview the CEOs of companies they plan to fund or acquire, do monthly assessments. And he does it with a 15 member team, all of whom are our employees," Kulshreshtha says.

Aditya Birla Minacs designs entire marketing campaigns and executes them, together with customers. They do underwriting of loans (the detailed credit analysis preceding the granting of a loan) and of medical policies. "Now there are customers that want us to even take decisions based on such analyses, because they find that they are not changing any of our recommendations," says Deepak Patel, CEO of the company.

DOCTORS, LAWYERS, ENGINEERS

There are BPOs that have lawyers to provide legal support including document reviews, legal research and patent research to foreign clients. There are BPOs such as Omega Healthcare that review US patients’ charts, reviews the diagnosis of doctors, reviews procedures; all of that to enable insurance companies to determine how much to reimburse the patients. Omega has over 900 science graduates, 75% of them with Masters’ degrees. There are BPOs that employ doctors to do more complex diagnosis or analysis.

Some provide engineering services. Capgemini has over 300 aeronautical engineers in Bangalore, many of who have worked in airlines and who now publish data for international aircraft manuals. Aircrafts and helicopters involve a lot of maintenance work, and given that there is frequent modification of aircraft, internal changes and new launches, manuals need to be constantly updated.

And from whatever we hear, the quality of India’s BPO work is outstanding. "Our customer satisfaction is stellar," says Genpact’s Kulshreshtha. Earlier this year, Hubert Giraud, CEO of Capgemini’s global BPO business, had this to tell us: "Over 95% of our customers are overwhelmed by the quality of the work done here. And India is now managing some of our operations globally, for clients that have operations in different geographies. It’s possible that some of our people in say, Brazil, Guatemala, Poland, etc are reporting to the India lead. So, for us, India is not just a back office, it’s driving things, it’s also the front office."

In other words, like IT, once derided as body shopping but now transforming into a technologically sophisticated business, BPO too is changing into something vastly sophisticated and different from Chetan Bhagat’s call centre world.

Mamma T

Times Of India
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It was 1970 and I had gone to meet Mother Teresa for the first time, in Nirmal Hriday, the Missionaries of Charity’s Home for Dying Destitutes in Kalighat, south Calcutta.

I’d taken a deep breathe before entering, fearful of inhaling the odour of death. What would it smell like? Sour and bitter, the ashes of flowers?

What had struck me first was the peace of the place. The inmates lay on pallets on the clean-swept floor of a large, airy hall. Golden motes danced in the light from tall windows. A Sister in the white habit of the order had taken me over to Mother.

Now, she knelt by the dying man on the floor. She covered his sores with bandages, her blunt-fingered peasant hands gentle on bleeding flesh. She took one of the man’s hands in both of hers. She spoke to him in a voice without words. There was no outrage in that voice, no accusation, no weariness.  As she held his hand and spoke to him in the voice without words, the dying man’s eyes opened and seemed to shine with understanding. Incredibly, a smile appeared on the ravaged face. It was then that I had my first intuition as to what Mother Teresa – whom I would always refer to myself as Mamma T as an antidote to icon-worship – was all about.

It was impossible to judge her work from a secular standpoint. No ordinary social worker, no matter how dedicated, could face the daily horrors she did without succumbing to despair. I was, and am, an atheist. And as an atheist I acknowledged that the source of her strength was her religious belief. Yet there was no odour of sanctity about her. No misty-eyed vision of the world to come to gloss over the ugly wounds of this world. She seemed to use the transcendent as a fulcrum to tackle the mundane, the way a workman makes use of a lever to lift a load otherwise too heavy to bear.

True, she talked about God a lot. “Let’s do something beautiful for God,” was one of her favourite phrases, as I soon learnt. But the way she said it made it sound like an idiosyncrasy, like the way an executive might talk about his golf handicap. If anything, the latter would have sounded more earnest about his game. She seemed so cheerful. Her infectious smile erased the wrinkles on the lined face. Her eyes were lively with awareness. She seemed so everyday.

Could this really be the woman all the fuss was about, who was already in the international limelight for having devoted her life to helping the most hopeless of human derelicts, dying beggars and shunned lepers? Who even then was in some danger of eventual canonisation?

Already the jetsam of humanity that she dredged from the streets of Calcutta, and a score of other cities around the world, viewed her as a living saint. In a streetside altar on Lower Circular Road, her picture had been installed as a deity. Foreign visitors were exhorted to go see her as if she were a human shrine, expiating Calcutta’s myriad sins. When she was talked about at cocktail parties, as she often was, the final diagnosis was that she was some sort of avatar of goodness, a being mysteriously inspired, unlike mere mortals such as us. In short, a saint.

Then, as now, we needed our saints. We could then walk by a beggar dying in the gutter, or a new-born child left on a refuse heap to be eaten alive by street dogs, and have the satisfaction of knowing that though there was nothing we ourselves could do, as looking after human derelicts was obviously not our job, we had nominated a special person for this chore, who could take care of everything. Mamma T was the moral garbage collector of our conscience.

The previous year before I first met her, I’d come across a beggar who had collapsed on the pavement on Chowringhee. The rush-hour crowd milled and eddied past. I too hurried by, telling myself that there was nothing that I could do anyway. When I got to the JS office, I told the story to Desmond’s secretary, Dhun Batlivala (Miss Forbes and Miss Singh had long since gone). Dhun suggested I call the Missionaries of Charity. I rang and gave the details to a matter-of-fact voice at the other end.

An hour later I went out and found that the man had been taken away. I felt a comfortable sense of relief. As when a speck of grit is removed from the eye, or a boil drained of pus. I felt I’d done my duty.

I was talking to a woman once, the wife of a company director, who told me with pride, “I always contact Mother Teresa in such cases. She’s so absolutely marvellous and knows exactly what to do.”

I nodded and said, “She is. But just suppose she wasn’t there?”

She looked at me as though I’d made an absurd remark. Like ‘But suppose the earth is flat’. Or ‘Suppose the sun doesn’t rise one day’.

Then she said, “But she is there, isn’t she?” And that was that.

Today, when we weigh her in the balance, what we are really weighing are our own values. When she received the Nobel Prize, Dan Sheppard, the then Time correspondent in Delhi, called me in Calcutta. He wanted to know how much Mamma T weighed.

“You know the Time style,” he said. “In the piece I write, when I say ‘tiny’, I have to give her weight to back up the adjective. Will you find out for me, please?”

I rang the Missionaries of Charity. Mother was unavailable, out on fieldwork, as she was more often than not. I spoke to one of the Sisters.

“I’m sorry, I know it sounds stupid. But could you tell me how much Mother weighs. It’s for Time magazine.”

There was silence. Then, very gently, “Do you really think that Mother herself would know, or care?”

In the end I made up 48 kg and passed it on to Dan. He seemed happy enough. Presumably so were Time readers.

When Mother died in 1997, I ended the edit I wrote for the Times of India, where by then I was working: “Lack of fuss was central to Mother Teresa’s style of functioning. That, and a rarely displayed but robust sense of humour, saved her from the sin of self-conscious piety. As she recounted once to Prince Michael of Greece, she dreamt she had died and gone to heaven where Saint Peter told her: ‘Go back to earth; there are no slums up here.’ There might not be any slums in heaven. But perhaps Mother Teresa would pardon us a touch of sentimentality – which she never permitted herself – for suggesting that there may be a little less heaven on this despairing earth after her departure.”

I never did find out how much she really weighed.

Watch out, not all Droids are equal

Times Of India
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Out in the market for a smartphone, Manu Vikraman, a 23-year-old graphic designer, was looking to get an Android-powered phone a few months ago. He had heard all the good things about this open-source mobile operating system (OS) and was willing to shell out whatever it takes to get a phone that is classy, feature-rich and powerful. His search led him to Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10. "It was a beautiful phone. Superb hardware in the form of 1Ghz processor, bright four inches screen, 8 mega-pixel camera and a well-designed body. You can say it was love at first sight. I shelled out Rs 30,799 for it," says Vikraman.

But the love affair lasted barely a few months. "As I started using the phone, I realized that it was running an older version of Android, one which was released in September last year. Hardware-wise it's a great phone but even after spending over Rs 30,000 I wasn't getting the experience that my friends were getting from a Rs 25,000 phone that had a newer version of Android loaded into it," he says ruefully.

Vikraman is not alone. Smitten by the buzz around it, a lot of consumers have taken a plunge into the world of Android, only to find themselves stuck with phones running older versions of the OS, which lack the features that have made Android all the rage nowadays. The problem with Android is that unlike Apple or Microsoft, Google just controls the development of its OS and not its implementation. This has resulted in a market where each Android phone is different from the other, not only in terms of hardware but also in features as different cellphone companies take their own sweet time in updating handsets with the latest operating software, with some particularly notorious for being promising something and then leaving consumers hang out to dry.

According to Google's data, over 20% Android phones were running on version 1.6 (Donut) while another 15% were using version 1.5 (Cupcake) as of August 2. Nearly 60% were running on version 2.1 (Eclair) while the most feature-rich and fastest version, Android 2.2 (Froyo), which was released in May this year, was available only on 4.5% phones. This disparity means that in a market where price is determined by a cellphone manufacturer, many Android phones costing above Rs 25,000 and running version 1.6 are likely to be inferior to some of the phones that cost far less but come with more recent versions like 2.1 or 2.2.

The gap between Froyo and other versions is particularly huge with features like tethering and support for SD card installation available only in version 2.2. In performance too, the differences are so big that a phone with 600 Mhz processor running on Froyo is likely to be a lot faster than a smartphone that pairs a 1Ghz processor with Android 1.6.

Though Vinay Goel, head of products at Google India, acknowledges that different versions of Android may confuse buyers, he says it's unavoidable because of the pace of innovation. "Admittedly, there are some trade-offs to be made… The considerable upside of speedy innovation is that consumers get new features in their hands much faster. The downside is that this pace can cause (some) devices to seem old," says Goel. "The concept of upgradeable phone software is still a really new one in the mobile industry. As the industry gets more accustomed to this idea, more and more devices will be upgraded."

Goel adds, "It's ultimately consumers, manufacturers, and app developers who will together determine what the right pace of innovation is." Unfortunately, this right pace, as far as consumers are concerned, is yet to be found. For now, they are out in the wild wild world of Android on their own. And even though the latest Android version trades blow with polished operating mobile software like Apple’s iOS 4, if you are buying a smartphone, read the specification sheet carefully because all Droids are not created equal.


Help at hand

If you are stuck with an old Android, most likely because the cellphone manufacturer is too lazy, you may find some help within Android community. Because Android is an open platform, a vibrant community of hackers and modders has grown around it. Most of these guys are based at XDA Developers. The community has dedicated forums for almost all popular Android handsets where its members discuss features they can add or remove to make cellphones better. For example, the work this community has done for handsets like Galaxy S, which suffers from several software glitches, is exemplary. And these people, just like good ol' PC community, do it all for free.

Getting a new android version for your old phone:

1-    The first step is to Root your phone. This is similar to Jailbreaking on iPhone. Rooting allows a user to take full control of the device. In almost all cases, Rooting will void warranty.

2-    After rooting, custom ROMs cooked — yes, this is the term — by Android community can be loaded on the phone. These ROMs can be found at XDA and several other websites.

3-    Note that there is nothing official about custom ROMs. But they are likely to contain bug fixes, new features, and in some cases new versions of Android. If you are not satisfied with your handset and the company which made it is no longer supporting it, custom ROMs are the only solution.

4-    Be sure to backup your phone data before mounting custom ROMs.

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Teacher, teacher ...

Times Of India
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The first thing that comes to my mind when  I think back upon that big room with high windows is 'her', and a pencil horizontally perched between the crook of her upper lip and her nose, eyes crossed in concentration as she focussed on her balancing act as a room full of giggling pony-tailed, plaited or otherwise eight-year olds looked on in amazement. She was Mrs. Chowdhury, our 'Miss' in second grade. Is that balancing act the only reason why I remember her? No, I remember her for her smile, her long, plaited hair, her starched sarees, the way she taught us to 'pronounce English the way English should be pronounced' and the collection of rubber stamps she had. Each of us would wait for the end of day, to be stamped. There were days when I had a monkey or a tortoise stamped on the back of my hand, on other days a rabbit and on rare occasion, a lion. By the end of second grade each of us had learned to stop 'monkeying' around, stop being a 'lazy tortoise', try and be as 'quick as the rabbit' and aim to be the ruler, like the king of the jungle, 'the lion'.

Mrs. Mandel, my Vth grade teacher of English, who loved wearing red nailpaint and loved calling us 'li'l Samosas' always said that "the search for perfection begins with detecting imperfection". And true to her word, in the first couple of months in Vth grade, she made us realise what perfect English was and how far we were from that notional level of 'perfection'. Days on end we took back exercise books that had more red marks than actual letters and words. But by the end of fifth grade, we had much less red marks in our exercise books and by the end of seventh grade, most of us had virtually little or none: we were told that we could now read and write 'grammatically correct' English. I'm sure that I have not been able to attain the exemplary standards she had set for us yet, but the bug named 'perfection' had been well and truly embedded in our DNA.

In senior school, Mrs. Sarkar, our Vice Principal, was feared for her acerbic tongue and her desire to waste no time in calling a spade a spade. Nothing would go unnoticed under her hawk like gaze.  I remember stiffening every time I would pass her in the corridor, wondering whether the ribbon in my hair was just the way it should be, whether my shoes were polished to a shine or my pinafore looked needlessly crumpled for the monring's childlike pranks. I, much like many others before or after, would summon just about enough courage to 'croak' an apology of a 'Good morning/afternoon, Miss!' and off we walked as fast as our legs would carry us.With all the misguided opinions of the teenage years, I remember graimacing and feeling the bottom of my stomach fall out the day when she had walked into our XIth grade class, as our Political Science teacher. But over the next two years, as she helped lead us through the meandering portals of socialism, democracy, governance, capitalism, communism and the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Chanakya, Hobbes, Locke and Marx, I slowly got to appreciate that the person behind the iron mask was indeed someone who was warm, endearing intelligent and unimaginably witty.

As I look back upon my girlhood, upon my days that I spent in the missionary school tucked away in the heart of Kolkata, hundreds of fond memories and loving faces flash before my eyes. These are faces of Miss Gomes, our Bengali teacher, who taught us the intricacies of the Bengali vyakaran, sandhi, samas, Rabindranath, Bonophool, Sharatchandra, Bankimchandra; our Biology teacher Mrs. Raha who had a habit of curiously asking us 'What it is?'; Mrs. Majumdar who imprinted the basics of Physical and Political Geography into our impressionable minds through her flawless sketches and detailed maps; and other teachers of Maths, History, Economics, Physics.

Teachers of all shapes and sizes, most who loved us and some who 'apparently' in those salad days loved to upbraid us. Each of them, in their quirkiness, their loving ways, their love for discipline, their engaging stories, their poise, grace and demeanour had left their indelible marks on the mind of this young maid many years ago, so much so that even after so many years, a mention of these names lets loose a cascade of memories. What I may not have realised then, I realised later; that  they all had played a crucial role in shaping each little bit that has made me the way I am today. In time, what I have also come to realise is that one never really leaves school - learning is a lifelong process and I continue to learn with every passing day from people all around me, even from my sprightly 10. From the first day that I came into this world many moons ago till today, each of my teachers has added something new to my life that I now cherish and shall treasure for the rest of my days.

Dilli Meri Jaan

Times Of India
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When fact is missing, fiction takes over. When real life goes a-begging, poetry finds a place. When reason is in shortage, rhyme fills the gap. It is a great thought that a house should become a home, that a neighbourhood should become a relationship, that a town should become a beloved friend. Words have never failed us. Actions always have.
 
There is a well meaning thought process that has been ticked into publicity regarding the city of Delhi, in consonance with the historic sport event. Obviously, the intentions are to make the citizen realize the improved infrastructure and civic facilities that the event has brought about, even if the event in making, finally requires the Prime Minister to supervise the project. If there is not much to write about the wedding, count on the orchestra for the pleasant evening, the variety of food served, or happily speculate on the massive amount of the dowry. Keep yourself at ease. This is someone else's wedding.
 
Unfortunately, sustaining sublime thought in the absence of action ever attempted, or even the state of preparedness of action ever contemplated, is trying to hold a low viscosity fluid on a metal sieve. You shall miss the juice. The peel and roughage are for others to see. It is indeed a pitiable condition that takes one to that state. Or an unexplainable circumstance thrust upon oneself.
 
Delhi even today, to the town planner as well as the common taxi driver, is a city that is mentally mapped in its historical as well geographical dichotomy. Chirag Dilli, vs Luytyen's Delhi, and the various satellite townships and 'serais' amalgamated during the last four centuries. Luytyen's was a bright and a clever man. Sitting atop Raisina Hill, he could carve out a Delhi which by very intention and ambition was to make the 'Moghul' Delhi look insignificant by comparison. He was clever, because, the most massive residence that he built, the Viceroy's Bungalow (Rashtrapati Bhawan), was to be his bride's home. Few people get that glory, luxury and a place in history by a single act. 'Moghul' Delhi historically better perfused with the nation's blood, was to complement as a 'heritage site' for visitor interest.
 
I heard the song. I ran over the lyrics. Great. The artists have nothing  but to spill out the best. The circumstances don't match. So much of love with a place with 700 plus dengue cases, and rising. Every pull on the guitar string coinciding with a sting of the mosquito. Every drum-beat timing with your tyres hitting a pot hole. Music inside-out. Yet a new discovery! A R Rahman was better, but weren't the words Bob Marley's famous opening lines, reggae included. Now consider every hoarding of achievement (as you drive along) countered by a travel advisory not to visit the place. Visitation shall only come with a monumental ambition to be able to beat the mosquitoes, potholes and traffic jams.
 
Finally, we have heard more popular music stuff about Mumbai, Kolkatta, even Chennai, in case I have been missing out on some Sivaji Ganesan or MGR stuff. None of these once popular songs by the campfire evoke emotion now. Urban India is urban ghetto, only  getting worse. Rural India is still pretty much rural. If there is little in terms of planning, there is much less in execution, and nothing at all in maintenance and quality. The chaos of the capital is the representative chaos of  an upcoming industrial power and a global economy.
 
In neurology, one notices a phenomenon termed as 'apraxia'. As a contrast to 'paralysis', it is defined as the inability to perform an action in the absence of any deficit in power, sensation or co-ordination. It is attributed to a failure of central processing in the brain. That seems to be a notable hitch in most of our projects.
 
'Dilli Meri Jaan' is rhetoric and symptomatic. If we recognize it well, the only salvation is in the promise that it shall not be repeated!
 
I must share this one. One of my first encounters was with an elderly Mr Dhingra,- overweight, smoker, diabetic, with a minor stroke. His much younger son 'Happy' introduced himself first, saying proudly, 'brought up in Delhi'! His wiser folk, with much less vocabulary at command, chipped in, 'Dhingra, brought up and brought down in Delhi!'

But, your Lordships, how?

Times Of India
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We are conditioned to think of our politicians as corrupt and our government as insensitive. We are also programmed to believe that courts often bring a recalcitrant government on to the correct path. That is why when the Supreme Court tersely reminded Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar that it was an order to distribute the excess foodgrains to the poor, the entire nation thought Pawar had met his come-uppance. Most newspapers reported the order with a scarcely hidden glee. Common people welcomed the whiplash as a necessary one to goad the bureaucracy and the politicians to do what is obviously right.

True, who could have argued with an order to distribute grains rotting outside government godowns to the poor? In fact, that was the first thought most people had when it was first reported that grains were rotting in the rains as government did not have enough warehouses to keep them. Why let them rot? Why not give them to the hungry of whom there are plenty? If only life were so simple.

Actually, Pawar was right in being a bit perplexed when the Supreme Court first spoke of giving away the foodgrains. He tried to sidestep it by saying it was a suggestion and government already had schemes to give subsidized foodgrains to the poor. This was apparently taken as an affront by the judges. The angry "That's an order" retort from the bench appeared more a reaction to this perceived insult than a judicially considered verdict.

Now, giving away to the poor would have been a lark if it were a private trader hoarding up the grains. Faced with such an order, he could have simply gone to the nearest temple and distributed the grains as alms. He could have thrown a feast for the town to mark his grandmother's birthday. He could even have gone and given a sackful to each household in the nearest slums.

But government, by its nature, cannot work thus. With government come the questions of entitlement, equity, fairness, and justice. It would have helped if, along with the order, the judges had also come up with a detailed plan of how the government should go about distributing the grains. That exercise would have involved crunching some numbers about exact quantity of excess foodgrains available and total number of people who could be given those. It would also have involved giving a thought to how the grains could be taken from warehouses to the beneficiaries, the logistics and the cost to be incurred. Pawar, probably, had such concerns in mind when he appeared taciturn about the earlier SC order.

How is the government expected to implement it? Could it just appeal to all the poor to come and take away the excess grain? In that case, how would anyone know that only poor were taking the grains? Could it announce a certain extra quantity to all BPL ration card holders? Is there enough excess available to give a certain minimum quantity to all beneficiaries all over the country? If not, how are people to be selected without being discriminatory? Could government give it to the poor located near the warehouses? In that case, would not people in other areas cry foul?

In the end, the government seems to have quietly shifted the onus on the states by announcing excess allocation through public distribution system. But PDS has shown itself incapable of properly distributing even the normal quantity allocated to it. It could just be that the grains, instead of rotting in FCI godowns, will now rot in respective state government ones. Or, more likely, they would find their way into the black market like most commodities distributed through PDS do.

While the judges may get an enormous sense of satisfaction at having shone the moral beacon to a misguided government, hardly anything would change on the ground. One cannot help get a feeling that the court too played to the gallery in this matter. Instead, the occasion could have been used to right the numerous wrongs that plague the entire system of procuring foodgrains and distributing it. That would have required a lot more thought to the nitty-gritty.

Indeed, the court could have questioned how did such an elaborate and intensive intervention of government in agriculture and food distribution create such a situation. It is a shame that foodgrains rot in a country where people are going hungry. But, populist orders are not going to change the situation. They would only complicate a tragedy.