Sachin Tendulkar (Image Courtesy: THE HINDU)

As I grew and grew enough to become a middle-ager, I realized that people become more and more selfish as they get older – the primary motives behind the same being the greed for money and power. If you look around or read all those corruption topics that came up in the last five or ten years, you will realize that in most corruption cases or charges, there was a senior politician involved (or he/she was the driving force behind the same)

Well, every theory has exceptions and hence before proceeding further let me salute those exceptional elderly and senior fellow citizens who selflessly dedicated themselves to the nation, society and their family and the overall growth and reforms.

Our ‘respect elders’ syndrome can be observed in many real life situations in India. In most traditional families, the oldest person (doesn’t need to be an earning member) still have the final say on the family budget, spending or even what social stand to take on particular issues. He or she is more like the final authority on all family matters and the current Television Serials in Hindi seem to endorse this idea even stronger.

Jokes apart, what this culture has offered our elders is to help them hang around as long as they want to in their respective roles and careers instead of helping with a bit of succession management at the right time. Whatever may be the walk of life, Our seniors just don’t retire!

I have several examples from various fields and domains.

Our first World Cup winning captain and national hero Kapil Dev had to be literally kicked out of the Indian team after a disastrous and stretched final couple of years in his career.

Most of the Indian sportsmen that I know, retired only after they were told to quit or ignored for a couple of years for major tournaments or national selection. This is true not only for cricket but with athletics, hockey, football, tennis, badminton or you name it.

Even worse, we are now hearing an age row from the Army chief of India who potentially wants to hang around for another year. Where are we heading?

Not ready to age gracefully?

The real problem that we are facing hear is that most of us are NOT willing to accept the fact that the age has caught up and you need to take wise decisions about how to utilize your current age, knowledge and acquired skills efficiently?

At certain age people from any walk of life need to think of the following topics:

• Succession management: How to prepare the next set of people in the line so that they can take up the mantle at the right time without disruption
• Opportunity for all: Just like I did get a chance at my right age, isn’t it important that the NextGen get a chance as well at their right ages?
• Utilizing skills, learning differently: How can I retire now and still add value to the domain I am/was operating in? This could include grooming youngsters, joining advisory or planning committees, assuming honorary positions etc
• Beyond money, power, ranks and visibility: This probably is the only reason why people hang around despite being not in their best times

Sachin Tendulkar Retirement

Now, coming back to the topic of Sachin’s retirement.

In my opinion, Sachin Tendulkar has nothing more to prove (like the latest stupid number from Dhanush suggests) in his field. He has created many individual records, made hell lot of money and fans and more importantly played for the country for around a quarter of a century. He has to accept the fact that he’s 39 now and he got the rare chance to play for India at the age of 16. It’s time for him to do something else in life beyond piling up more personal records, degrade himself and go out. At the moment, it’s clear that he’s slowly degrading and even if he’s not, it’s high time he retired and passed the baton to youngsters. Moreover, with the likes of Ricky Ponting retiring from ODIs, there will not be anyone else who could potentially break his personal records unless the rules of the game and format change drastically. By the way, this is NOT just about Sachin Tendulkar but holds good for most other oldies too – be it Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman – and not so old underperformers like Sehwag.

I had actually mentioned about the need for succession plan in Indian cricket three years ago. If they had done it in steps, the current situation of youngsters not performing would not have happened.

And a final comment on retiring at the right time. Choosing to retire at the right time is all the more important if you are representing the country, a community, geographic region or a team. i.e. People like golfers or tennis players (sometimes actors and singers too) who represent themselves in individual performances may opt for late retirements. But that should not be the case with politicians, sportsmen, and bureaucrats who represent the country. And anybody’s legendary status does not automatically provide extra time for them to decide to go out on their terms! They have to think about the team and country ahead of their individual aspirations.

So Sachin, will you be a gentleman and retire on your own at the peak or would you want to stretch it beyond 40 years of age, belittle yourself and get sidelined forcibly? Decide yourself! Ideally, you should have quit after taking the victory lap in ICC Cricket World Cup finals last year!

Ingredients

Whole chicken (without skin, guts): 1 Kg
(Live chicken weighing 1.5Kg will get you 1Kg meat after cleaning)

Salt: 1.5 teaspoon

Crushed pepper: 1.5 teaspoon

Chili Powder: 1 tablespoon

Garam Masala: 1 teaspoon

Ginger-Garlic Paste: 1 teaspoon

Lime Juice: 2 tablespoon

Yoghurt (Curd): 2 tablespoon

Sunflower Oil: 1 tablespoon

Method of Preparation

Clean the chicken well and drain off any water. Using a sharp knife make a few parallel shallow cuts or grooves on the fleshy parts of the chicken (i.e. on thighs, leg, front rib etc).

Mix all ingredients together and apply well on the chicken inside and outside. Keep it marinated in the fridge overnight.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Skew the chicken on to the rotisserie, tighten the clamps and grill it at 200 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. Keep applying butter on the chicken every five minutes. You can see the butter as well as any remaining fat on the chicken getting melt and dripping down there by making this preparation a highly healthy chicken grill variation. Unlike Tandoori chicken or other barbeque recipes, there’s no harmful carbon content in this preparation.

Once done well, enjoy your Indian style grilled chicken with your favorite drink, salads and carbs.

(Note: At the end of 25 minutes, if it is still not done, you may want to keep for another five minutes at 200-225 degrees. To check if it’s done well, create a deep cut in the fleshiest part and verify that it’s not pink near the bones)

In Pictures

Today’s review material is the Flipkart Online Store. Though they were established three or four years back, I didn’t quite use their services until earlier this year. It all started with some book shopping for my son back in March this year and once I was thoroughly impressed with their quality of service!

What does Flipkart Offer?

Like many online stores in India, even Flipkart started their business as an online bookstore (Check out Flipkart Books section). They then slowly spread their services into selling Music CDs, Movie DVDs, Video Games, Mobile phones, Electronics, Cameras and now even Home appliances.

Majority of my purchases from Flipkart have been around Children’s books, Music/game CDs and at times camera accessories as well – latest being a 50mm lens that I bought for my Nikon DSLR.

My Experience with Flipkart

Based on those six or seven purchases that I made with flipkart, I have the following feedback on their services.

• Their collection of books and other products are very good. Usually, they have all fast moving items in stock
• The web shopping interface is fast and easy to search, choose and checkout
• They offer very fast delivery, at least that’s what my experience in Bangalore. Almost all items that I ordered reached me in three days. Looks like they are using their own staff for delivery and hence chances of missing anything during transport is minimal. Talking about the delivery time, I had quite bad experience with some other online services such as Sify Shopping, India Plaza etc before I stopped using them completely quite some time ago
• Cash on Delivery option is very good to protect you from any online fraudulent activities
• Excellent communication – from ordering, processing, delivery to confirmation – they always keep you informed via SMS and mail

Other Positives

Once I had a situation where a particular book (Bunnicula series) had to be imported and shipped. They were able to manage it within a reasonable time frame as promised while placing the order.

Another time, I had ordered two books together off which one was guaranteed to be shipped in three days and another in a week. Instead of shipping both together a week after, they shipped one within three days and another within 5 days thereby filling the order partially based on immediate availability. The result was a happy customer – i.e. my 9 year old son.

The pricing of the books is good considering the fact that shipping is FREE. Some other sites show reduced prices but charge for shipping and handling.

Conclusion

Overall, I am pretty happy with the quality of service that Flipkart provides. They often reiterate that they always ship brand new items with warranty which so far is true for me. However, there are a couple of people who complained about receiving scratched CDs etc but that wasn’t the case with me.

Check out Flipkart for Yourself and share your experiences here. By the way, you can directly search on Flipkart using the search widget below.

Well, I am not a big fan of Social Media blanket censorship or blind scrutinizing. Nor am I a blind supporter of the current union Government of India or its leaders. As an unbiased onlooker (plus a social media enthusiast and blogger), I personally believe that social media giants and content aggregators could take a lot more stringent steps to curb objectionable content on the web.

The plight of the current government

I do not know what type of content Mr. Sibal has asked Google and Facebook to screen and perhaps it is even possible that his censorship list mostly contain those anti-government campaigns or pages. But one thing I can clearly affirm is that, this is the first government that had to go through so much of online bashing because it’s during their tenure (first and second term, that is) that the social media boom took place and Facebook, Twitter etc came to existence. That’s pretty much the case with other governments worldwide as well. So it’s not that we are having a worst government in the history of India but the online media and new age television channels make things very obvious and sensitive. Going forward, you can expect even worse reaction and criticism on anything – even if the subsequent governments are good – because of the very viral nature of the social media content, especially the sensitive and spiteful content. And over-celebrating undesirable content is another characteristic of the social media – Example: a minister getting slapped by an individual, a public profile thrown a shoe at him, a parliament member dancing in her own party’s meet etc gets more spicier and viral on the social media sites.

That’s where the role of censorship or screening (choose the right word) comes into picture and I firmly believe that Mr. Kapil Sibal’s move comes at the right time. However, one has to form rules and regulations on media screening for long term regardless of which government is in charge. Hopefully we can arrive at such a set of rules without harming the freedom of speech (a buzz word very cleverly used by many for airing any bullshit)

Freedom of Speech and objectionable content

A lot of Indians believe that United States is the epitome of freedom of speech and less of regulations. Many people blindly adopt whatever norms any US companies come up with while taking on its own government on their policies. I would like to ask such hypocrites a few questions.

The crux is that, as a sovereign government, we could ask any foreign operator to be careful with what kind of sensitive data that they spread within the cyber space and I do not doubt the government’s intention at that. If you want to know about the kind of censorship rules that USA has please read this article on Internet censorship in the United States. Unfortunately, our legislation is yet to form good enough rules (and enforce the same) when it comes to cyber stalking. Well, we have a few guidelines and articles from the constitution but nothing yet against the kind of things that are happening now. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to screen content, to begin with, if not total monitoring and censoring which is not 100% possible.

What type of content should be screened?

Regardless of Mr. Sibal’s list, in my view, the following are the kind of content that has to be screened for in India.

Character assassination and obscenity is something that people have been exercising without any limits on social media. This includes attack on public personalities, their personal life and even doctored pictures of their family members.

Content that hurt people’s religious or regional sentiments: I get to see a lot of these things on Facebook. I sometimes do not understand why people are so insensitive to people from other religions and their sentiments.

Plagiarism: Unfortunately, blogging has become more of a business than writing itself and we get to see a lot of plagiarism in the blogosphere and content generation space. It would be great if companies like Google can do a lot more about arresting plagiarism than just tapping into the opportunity of creating more indexed content and boast about those numbers.

Software and media piracy: Pirated content spread faster on social media sites – thanks to its viral nature. Don’t we need to stop this?

Child access to bad content: How many of you parents have been successful in restricting kids’ access to adult and obscene content? Have you ever invested in a good parental lock software? Do you know if your under-13 child is accessing Facebook that he or she’s not supposed to?

Anti-government campaigns: Please don’t misunderstand me here. I am NOT a Indian National Congress member nor do I blindly vote for that flag. And in the democratic system we have the RIGHT to protest when things don’t go the right way. However, it is my belief that a democratically elected government must be allowed to operate instead of using the viral media to driving spiteful campaigns against them. By anti-government campaigns, I didn’t mean some valid scenarios like the Jan Lokpal campaign but I am talking about those campaign that take on the government for each and everything that they are trying to do. Unfortunately, the current opposition as well as the smaller allies within the government itself seems to be always on a blackmailing mode. It is a very bad precedence and need to be taken very seriously in the context of what’s spreading in a viral fashion across news channels and social media. Basically, we are defaming our own democracy at times. As I said, it’s absolutely fine to protest but not with the kind of foul language nor taking on the politicians family members or even their private parts (believe me, I have seen real nasty comments!)

Objectionable activities: On top of screening the content, there are number of activities that happen over the Internet which is banned by law in India. One example, I can think of is earning foreign currency via online activities and never paying taxes for the money earned. The other activities include online forex trading, gambling etc which is banned by law. There are quite a number of people who are doing such illegal activities that need to be curbed. There are even more dangerous online activities such as fake viral marketing and money chain schemes.

Well, that was my view on what the government should be doing in terms of screening the online social activities. Nobody is talking about a complete social media censorship like what China is doing but some amount of restrictions are good for all, I believe! By the way, it is not only the social media that needs to be controlled but some of our sensational news channels as well. All of you may recall how our sensitive live television coverage on the Mumbai terrorist attack actually helped the terrorist to kill more people and fight longer.

Have a good and safe social life! And trust me, if your thoughts are good, you don’t need to be monitored by anybody. Finally, don’t misinterpret the Freedom of Speech!

As an old timer having grown up seeing the Doordarshan News, I must say that I am glad to see some of those refreshing changes in these NewGen news channels such as the advancements in technology to get the news to you earlier, rendering it in a graphical way that people understand and some lively and visibly excited people reading the news.

However, all the above mentioned positive changes are good only if every NEWS item is assigned the right priority it deserves and delivered to viewers at the right time, quantity and optimum duration – i.e. in a way that doesn’t cause people eye fatigue, hearing loss or increased blood pressure. Also, the way the TV news reader tells the news matter a lot along with how many times the same thing is told. You don’t need to really sensationalize each and every incident like rapes or killings or theft on a national channel. And my dear news reader, you don’t become a national hero by calling politicians (however dirty he is) liars or by other bad words. You can still talk about it because it is a fashion to pick on bureaucrats and politicians and such news will always sell – but the same things said 1000 times don’t make sense. Another important point is that news items need to be delivered in a way that helps people understand it in a relaxed manner. That way, I still love DD News though their news readers could consume a little more of Revital or ‘Dabur Chyavanprash’ on a regular basis.

Coming back to our topic on how some of these 24×7 news channels go about their business…

Dear TV journalist, I know you are smart but your aim should not be to twist and stretch facts that don’t deserve even 30 seconds of your time (and millions people’s too) to 3 or 4 hours or even days until the next small thing happens.

I know your salary is depending on the TRP (Target Rating Point) of the crappy channel that you work for but at the end of the day there’s something called ethics in life (and journalism). Do you have that in you or even heard of it?

I am amazed at the way you have covered the arrest of our great public servant Amar Singh. While the fact that your scrolling texts haven’t changed significantly for the last two days annoys me, I still feel like ROFLing the way you dig out BIG things out of small time incidents. Well, Amar Singh’s arrest is not exactly too small a news but it doesn’t deserve 2 billion man days attention i.e. (2 days x 1 billion people in India)

The Great NDTV News TAMASHA

This is one of the big news items that I got to see on your channel for the past two days in the order of appearance. I am sorry, some text may not be literally exact same but I am sure I saw similar text on your channel.

Scroll news text and zoom effect on NDTV

…

Amar Singh not arrested yet >>… (for 6 hours) >>

Amar may be soon arrested >> … (Are you working with CBI to grab him?) >>

BREAKING NEWS (in a while loop for 20000 times) >> Amar Singh arrested >> (Thank god, CBI folks got clues from you…)

BREAKING NEWS Amar Singh arrested, sent to Tihar jail >> (Thought you said that crap five hours back, is he breaking down there? )

Amar Singh may be put into jail 1, 2 or 5 >> (Yeah, we know the Tihar jail geography very well like you do. Amazing information by the way) >>

Amar Singh lodged in 15×10ft cell (Thanks for the 15×10 land. Did your father pay for that? Or was it part of the land that Yeddyurappa denotified just before he was kick-butted-out. You never know, but I am sure you can cook up a story out of that…)

…

It’s not over yet…

Now, the whole crap has to be somehow linked to the Anna effect and what Shakkeela tweeted about this incident. In addition, two or three Page 3 celebrities need to be interviewed on this topic and they can surely compare it with the recent very bad and torturing personal experience that they went through which was related to corruption (For example, they asked for an SPF15 sunscreen in their favorite lady shop but the corrupt shop owner stocked up and provided only SPF14 substandard Indian product. Now they are forced to shop for that in Milan or New York when they travel abroad next week). The celebrity in a closure remarks comes back to Amar Singh and swears that nothing will change in India.

The online portal – the domain name of which, by the way, should have been po*ndtv.com or something like that – supports the TV news well with titles like ‘Who is Amar Singh?’, ‘The Amar Singh Saga‘, ‘Amar Singh arrested, but questions remain‘ with ‘Poonam Pandey showing everything video‘ link in between.

Get a life people! Is this what people like Prannoy Roy founded and promoted? The Prannoy Roy whom I knew was a different type of journalist and psephologist.

…and they wait for the next news item…

Evening Debate Edition

The day is almost over but the steam behind the breaking news isn’t yet. So the same scroll news, breaking news and views now need to appear on the evening edition or the infamous Debate circus on these national TV channels.

In the live debate, the inclusion of smart spokespersons from BJP and Congress is a MUST along with a couple of individuals like Santosh Hegde or Kiran Bedi. To get the views from across the national boundary, you can think of including a Colonel from Pakistani Army as well to get his views on democracy in Pakistan regardless of the topic of discussion (Though he will keep swearing ‘Kashmir.. Kashmir…’ through the length with his voice intentionally cut off in between with fake technical problems)

The topic could be anything from cash for votes, Sonia going abroad for surgery to Venkiah Naidu’s recent gas trouble issues or How loud Devegowda farts while sleeping in the Parliament. These spokesmen have to make their statements for NDTV or TIMESNOW and keep fighting in between and throwing mud at each other for an hour. At the end of it Bark-a-Dutt or Carnage-Dog-swamy has the last laugh because they ruthlessly cut them off and say ‘THAT IS IT, THANKS GENTLEMEN’ and the conclusion is ‘SO AND SO and I KNOW THAT’ (Though the her/his version of the conclusion is nowhere related to what the guests said or our neighbor guest shouted)

Oh, I almost forgot, they have to take opinion from the good-for-none Left party leaders as well. And one paid statement of Digvijay Singh is mandatory to add to the comedy and spice part of it (and to differentiate between the IQ levels of humans and donkeys) – just like ESPN hires Navjyot Sidhu, that is. Since the show is TRP driven, it’s mandatory that the channel people talk for 90 percent of the time and cut others’ views. If the host has nothing to say they keep saying ‘fair enough, fair enough’ or get a ‘Kalmadi angle’ to the whole issue. At that time some dramatic titles should appear on the screen in bold – something like ‘GET A LIFE, MR. KALMADI’ or ‘LIAR KALMADI’ – especially on TIMESNOW)

…and the next morning…

Fortunately or unfortunately there is another bomb blast somewhere that blew away Amar Singh and now there’s a high TRP opportunity for the next one week.

Wonder if these blasts are sponsored by terrorists or TRP driven channel terrorists…

/me ROFLMAOing hysterically and throws a hammer at the newly purchased plasma TV…

What is MicroCredit?

Microcredit refers to the lending of smaller amounts of money at very low interest rates to new small business ventures, typically in the developing countries like India. In our context, the loan amount is usually in the range of Rs.5,000 to 10,000. The microcredit concept was actually popularized by the Grameen Bank – the bank of the poor – that was founded by the Nobel prize laureate and economist Mr. Mohammad Yunus from Bangladesh.

Refer to this Grameen Bank page for more details.

The microcredit concept has been spreading across the developing world since mid seventies and this is exactly the context under which RangDe operates.

How RangDe works?

RangDe.org collects the loan amount via smaller social investments (Rs.100 onwards) from Indian citizens (and those who are staying abroad) are provided to your selected borrower from poor village families with the help of NGOs in their respective states. You can search for a borrower from the list and make a small social investment of your choice to that particular borrower via online banking, credit card or cheque. So if a particular borrower needs 7500 rupees to renovate his kinaara shop or buy a goat, there may be several individuals contributing to that cause.

Once the required amount is collected, the NGO passes it over to the borrower. The borrower then has to pay back the loan, typically in one year, to the NGO who deposits the same back in the RangDe account. Basically you get back your social investment typically over one year and also receive a small interest of 2%. You can opt to forgo that for further social causes – that is up to you. Since, RangDe scheme has a repayment rate of almost 100%, you are guaranteed to get back your investment that you can withdraw anytime to your bank account. Sounds amazing right?

The typical interest rate charged to the borrower is 8.5% off which 5% goes to the state level NGO, 2% to you as an investor, 1% to RangeDe.org for their operational costs and 0.5% for contingencies.

The concept is working very well so far since RangDe.org became operations in 2008. For further details you can visit RangDe.org

Who is in need of your Social Investment?

If you want to know the typical borrowers that are listed online on the RangDe microcredit site, check out the following pictures (click to enlarge).

 

…and now what prevents you from making a small investment to help a fellow citizen in need?

Visit RangDe.org Now and Pledge your Support!

Names of establishments

In India, funny restaurant names are the easiest to spot regardless of where you travel. The following are a few that I have encountered.

Brothers Hotel

Sometimes branded as Hotel Brothers or even Hotel Brothers International, this is not exactly a ‘Hotel’ but more of a small time restaurant or tea shop. ‘Hotel’ in the Indian village or town context means ‘Restaurant’. You can see this ‘Brothers’ brand many parts in India. It’s not a chain of restaurants but just preferred name. And the funniest thing is that ‘many of them are not even run by brothers or siblings’.

Bhaskaran & Sons Jewellery

What’s funny or wrong about it? Nothing, unless you learn that it’s started by a person by name Bhaskaran who is still a bachelor who doesn’t have any son. Adding ‘& Sons‘ to the display board is more for style than for the literal meaning itself. The board would additionally display ‘Proprietor: T.P Bhaskaran‘ and if it’s in Tamil Nadu, probably, ‘ Prop: T.P Bhaskaran, BA‘.

(Fortunately they don’t add more qualifiers to it such as ‘BA First class’ or something like that)

Common names for restaurants around South India include ‘Bharat Hotel’, ‘Sreekrishna Cafe’ and after a coat of painting during Diwali sometimes one of them suddenly becomes ‘New Bharat Hotel‘. Well, there are plenty such popular names for restaurants. Would you like to add more?

Chicken and Poultry shops

One of my villagers (in Kerala) that I know, Mr. Lonappan – a fisherman by profession – decided to setup a poultry shop as he thought broiler chicken business is more profitable than selling fishes. After consulting his ‘educated’ and jobless friends he arrived at a very cool name for his chicken stall and that was ‘Asiatic Chickorium‘. Obviously his fishing background helped inventing that amazing word that rhymed ‘Aquarium‘.

While Lonappan was lucky to have ‘educated’ friends to help him, his counterpart in Mahadevapura, Bangalore wasn’t that lucky. This person had to depend on the knowledge of the sign board artiste to arrive at a small board for his chicken stall that read ‘Chikan Stale‘!

I think the same artist is the creative mind behind ‘Kentaki Fryed Chikan‘ pull cart shop in Majestic, Bangalore. Sounds really majestic, huh?

More examples of impressive shop names include the ‘pancher shop‘ that I mentioned in a recent article, ‘Toylat – Gents‘, Chines fast food – all in and around Bangalore and a ‘Panjapi Dhaba‘ near Selam in Tamil Nadu.

Names of people

When it comes to the names of people, I know that most Punjabis prefer English names and most Andhrites, who move to their dream land (USA), change their long names to beautiful 3 and 4 letter American short names as soon as they land. However, I think nobody can beat Keralites when it comes to the most innovative names that you can’t even think of.

The funniest names are usually girls’ names most of which sounds like ‘- i – i‘ or ‘- o – i‘ or ‘- i – y‘ and you can mix and match those empty spaces with any consonant or an array of consonants. Some of the names that I have heard of include the following:

Kikki, Titti, Litti, Sisi, Mimi, Lighty, Booby – obviously they didn’t think about (or didn’t know) their meanings when the naming ceremony took place.

And innovative name for Malayali boys will typically end with ‘ju’ or ‘jo’ – Liju, Siju, Lijo, Sijo, Lyjo, Ijo,…

Mostly this naming convention is prevailing among Christians in Kerala but other communities are catching up well with these kinds of names and aren’t far behind.

Not sure that there’re such naming conventions in other parts of India, if so please do share your opinions.

Note: Please note that my intention here is not to hurt any individual or community. As a matter of fact, I have many good friends with one or the other of the above mentioned names or their variations

That much for now!

As for my childhood to college life, I have so many things to share some of which was mentioned in a recent post on this blog. Today’s post is about some of those great brands and products that have been part of our lives during the 70s and 80s. Of course, some of them are still being produced and sold but have transformed for good while many of them have been discontinued. Here are the things that I am talking about:

1. Parry’s Green hard candy

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of this but I am sure anybody in their 30s and 40s must have eaten whole lot of them during their childhood. These candies – known as ‘Green Parry’ (‘Paccha pyaari’ in Malayalam) – was among the four or five wrapped candy options that we had at that time apart from those local made ‘uncovered’ ones. I remember, Parry’s competitor Nutrine introducing an imitation of the same several years later.

The Parry’s Confectionery ltd company was taken over by ‘Lotte ’several years back and this particular product has been discontinued since then, I believe.

2. Hero Pens

As far as I am concerned, this is the ONLY Made in China product that I have ever liked in my whole life and it was my first Chinese experience as well. Unlike today’s children, we never got to use the ball point pens until the age of 12 (or sixth grade) on account of ‘bad hand writing’ resulting from ball point pens. Most of us started our writing with cheaper ‘Bismi’ or ‘Jubilee’ fountain pens and then progressed to using the Hero Pens (fondly called ‘Heero pena’ In Malayalam. Many of us in fact get to use it only for exams – for some not until the SSLC examination – and it was indeed a super smooth experience to use them. Mostly people used to get these pens as gifts from those who worked in the Gulf countries but later on they were available in shops for Rs.25 or so in stationery shops.

The hero pens were cool due to their smooth quality of writing and the ability to fill ink via a cool press-suction operation. Old time pens had to be filled via direct pouring of the ink and we used to end up having the ink spilled on the floor as well as on our shirts.

As I moved to college, the Hero pen gave way to Pilots, Parkers and Sheaffers but the Hero fountain pen was always my hero!

3. Happy T-shirts

Now, this one is tricky and probably only Malayalis will understand what I am talking about. During those days mostly there would be at least one Keralite from every other household working in the Gulf countries (Generalized as ‘Persia’) and they make a visit once in every four or five years. At that time, everyone in the family – to the n’th relationship level – neighborhood and the village need to be gifted something or other. Cigarettes, cheap perfume sprays and synthetic clothe material or saris that will last beyond five generations were some of the cheaper options to keep everyone happy. Among these gifts, the kids usually gets the so-called “Happy T-shirt” which is nothing but a round neck T-shirt made of cheap synthetic fabric and a big H A P P Y written on it in a semi circle. We kids were, indeed, very happy to get them as gifts and would proudly wear them till they wore out. Those who wear Happy Tees were identified as the Gulf fellow’s son or relative.

(Several years later somebody revealed to me that a dozen of them would cost only something like 5 Dirhams or so and that’s how the poor Gulf Malayali could afford to buy them for everyone of our age group in that village. By the way, I do not know the actual the brand name of this T-shirt but it was always known as Happy shirt)

4. Chelpark Ink

Chelpark Ink - New style bottle

I used the Chelpark ink for several years, I would say till I got my first job but had totally forgotten about it until my co-brother Manoj reminded me of that brand last week. In fact, that was the inspiration behind this post.

5. Camel instrument box

The camel brand of math instrument box is no brainer. Camel is still a leading brand in India for stationery and art-craft supplies. However, during our school days it was something big and getting a Camel box was an ultimate achievement in one’s otherwise limited wish list. Some of us get them during fifth or sixth grade and had to use the same till you pass out of 10th standard. Many times, the original paper sleeve wrapper around the box would be preserved intact for many years in order to protect the precious box from losing any of its print work on the surface.

For those who couldn’t afford to spend two rupees more, there were brands like ‘Nataraj’ and the twin-brother of Camel was the ‘Camlin’ brand of instrument boxes.

6. Premier rubber slippers

Paragon Hawai Chappal - Premier looked something like this

Talking about these Hawai chappals, most Malayalis wore them to school, colleges or even to work. And like their ultra white dhotis (Mundu), these slippers used to be maintained ultra clean was well. The jobless and educated mallu’s main hobby – apart from discussing international politics and Hartal or Bandh opportunities – those days was cleaning own slippers not just from the top but from sides and bottom as well.

I have used this brand of slippers for many years and I still have a pair of Paragon at home.

7. Murphy radios

Murphy Valve Radio (Image courtesy: vintage-radio.com)

These radios also had external antenna fittings and sometimes sporting a long mesh antenna – stretching from one end of the house to the other – was considered something royal. Due to issues in tuning or reception, most of the radio stations then used to sound like the distant Ceylon station. The cold starts used to be almost impossible and needed some heating via incandescent bulbs and occasional taps (out of frustration as well) on its wooden cabinet. Usually to listen to the 12:50 noon news (called Delhi news), one had to start preparing at around 12:30 itself.

Despite all the above issues, it was fun to see and listen to such a Murphy radio. And I almost forgot to mention the Murphy logo which had a sweet baby’s face.

Does anyone still have a vintage radio at your home?

8. Dyanora TV sets

Dyanora TV - Image courtesy: WithinAndWithout.com

Though I never ever liked Dyanora as a brand, I think it was one of the household names during those days and I remember it as the first TV I ever watched.

9. Vijay Super Scooter

Well, in a comment within my post about the Bajaj Chetak Scooter, I had mentioned about the Vijay super scooter. I learned riding on a Vijay super which is a discontinued model for years now. It was in fact something that looked like a Lamby and would run on a half-petrol half-kerosene mix. Though, this combination meant starting trouble and occasional ‘fut-phut’ sounds, I always remember it as the first geared two-wheeler I have ridden in my life not to forget the Luna moped which I had tried prior to that.

10. Tinopal

Now, how many of you can guess what it was? Tinopal (later it became Ranipal) was one of the clothe whitening agents (like Ujala) that I have seen my mother using during my childhood. It always amazed me because a drop of it was good enough for a bucketful of white clothes to make it surprisingly sparkling and smelling good. Its fragrance was similar to that of the modern fabric conditioners but I believe it was far superior. Sometimes, I just don’t understand why such brands were discontinued.

Tinopal to Ranipal ad, Image from 8ate.blogspot.com

Over to you

I am sure all of you have plenty to talk about those retro brands. I still have many in my list but some of them that I haven’t directly consumed or experienced.

Let me know if you have any pleasant memories to share about those products/brands that you have seen, used or experienced 20 or 30 years (or even before) back!

I have mentioned it before that corruption is one of the blockers on our way towards becoming a developed nation. Due to our colonial past and the divide-and-conquer strategies that the British adopted on hundreds or thousands of our regional kings, religious factions and highly sensitive people who spoke multiple languages, ‘corruption’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘bureaucracy’ etc became part and parcel of our lives. Now, having achieved our independence more than 60 years back, there’s absolutely no point in blaming the past (and the British) because any other country with a positive mindset and strong governance would have got rid off menaces like corruption by now. Since, India could not do it yet, there’s every reason for Anna Hazare and like-minded people to drive a campaign such as the one we are witnessing right now.

The topic of the day is not Lokpal Bill or how corrupt our politicians are today. Lokpal Bill is more of a reactive mechanism to counter the corrupt public servants. But to prevent corruption, the best foot forward is to de-corrupt every individual of this country by way of living with the right kind of upbringing from childhood itself.

Nobody’s born corrupt!

Corruption, bribery etc are nothing but the result of unethical upbringing. Due to socio-economic imbalances that is prevalent in our country for years together along with the colonial aspects that I mentioned above, a big percentage of our citizens (including politicians) may have been corrupt. However, the current generation of youngsters has a huge role to play in bringing up their children the right way so that their kids would not become corrupt. For that to happen, you have to correct yourself the right away even before correcting and educating your kids. By the way, there is a huge difference between ‘getting educated’ and ‘getting a degree’. Many of us have qualifications but not really educated to behave ethically in a society.

In fact, corruption starts at a smaller level at your home or work place, a much bigger level within your social role, and at a mammoth level at those who handle higher positions within the government. It’s stupid to think that only those politicians who cause 100s of crore scams are corrupt.

Are you corrupt?

If you are one of those who stood by Anna Hazare in the past one week, you should ask these questions to yourself to make sure that you are not corrupt.

1. Do you pay your income taxes on every taxable rupee that you earn? i.e. Do you really pay taxes on income sources such as bank interests, gifts received, freelance-consulting income etc? If not, YOU ARE CORRUPT!
2. At work, do you misuse your office phone/mobile for personal purposes and not pay for that? Do you claim benefits using false medical bills or rental receipts? Do you claim reimbursements for non-official bills as well? If so, YOU ARE CORRUPT
3. Do you break traffic rules? If so, you are UNETHICAL and to save your time or severe punishment, do you bribe the policeman? If so, you as well as policeman ARE CORRUPT. And if you do this when you are with your family, YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE CORRUPT, in the future as well
4. Do you bribe a government officer to get a benefit that you don’t deserve? For example, passing an illegal housing construction plan or registering a property at a lower value? If so, YOU ARE CORRUPT even before the government officer is
5. In your housing society or apartment community, do you pay your maintenance charges on time? On top of that are you setting right examples to your children by teaching them the rules and regulations prevailing in the society? If not, you are highly UNETHICAL and TAINTED
6. When you happen to borrow money from someone, don’t you feel like returning it on time. I have known a few people who don’t do that and when such people go to a higher level, obviously they become CORRUPT because they like others’ money

There are huge number of such examples in life ranging from buying movie or match tickets in the black market to skipping a purchase bill to cheat government by not paying sales tax and so on. For all the above tainted and corrupt behaviour of yours, you cannot keep blaming the politicians or system because it’s you at the centre of such incidents.

Now you know where the corruption starts, don’t you? So first change yourself and set the right example to your kids and the society. Rest of the good will automatically happen in a few years without any Lokpal Bill. By the way, as of today the bill is still required as an impeachment mechanism to tackle the current corrupt set of people but hopefully, it’s not much required in another 25 years.

Be the change!

Cricket sells in the sub-continent, especially in India, no matter how frequently it’s being played. The spectators turns out in huge volumes to watch matches in the stadium and millions others get hooked on to their TV sets, even when a match between two unknown or unpopular teams is going on. This mentality of the Indian crowd is exactly what sells IPL.

When it comes to an international event that occurs only once in four years, people expect some minimum standard in the way in which the tournament is conducted. Unfortunately, the last couple of world cups have been disappointing due to multiple reasons, the main one being the inclusion of the so called ‘minnows’ or associate members. The duration of the event got drastically increased due to the inclusion of these teams that haven’t really brought any value to the game of cricket or for that matter even improving the game in those countries.

We need a shorter World cup event

Considering the number of nations that has been playing the game of cricket, I strongly believe that there needs to be only 8 teams that can participate in the World cup. This will make sure that the event is really eventful and exciting with 8 quality teams playing each other in say two pools – something like what was happening in the initial editions of the World cup.

Well, of course there are some associate member teams which has performed reasonably well in patches but their game quality hasn’t quite improved over the years. For example, for years there has been teams like Kenya, UAE, Canada etc playing the game but are they really improving over the years? Even Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have started deteriorating their quality of cricket. In my opinion, only Sri Lanka has been the real improved team over the last twenty five years that grew from minnow status to a decent test team – especially after producing some great leadership and amazing players in the last twenty years.

I am not saying that the minnows should be totally stopped. But there has to be a case whereby the incompetent ones are eliminated pretty fast in the first 5-6 days of the tournament and may be one out of them picked to play the round robin format with the other teams. At the moment, there are 42 matches being played in two pools and half of that matches have very predictable result.

The other option is to have a World cup qualifier or pre-event for all teams and top 8 teams selected. Yet another approach could be choosing only the top ranked 8 teams or so by default.

I hope ICC looks into this matter without getting pressurized by the power-hungry, money-hungry BCCI and those who want to mint money out of such long tournaments – of course at the expense of general public’s sentiments and rich sponsors. At the end, if they don’t change the format, it’s not going to benefit the game anyway.