Month: May 2014

Categories
Enough said

Remembering Nehru after all this time

What was the mood of the nation when Jawaharlal Nehru passed away? Humra Quraishi remembers the man in today’s times.

Humra QuraishiI was about eight years old when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru passed away, but to this day, I remember the gloom and sorrow that spread in and around my home.

My maternal grandmother, Amna Rahman, sobbed and cried as the news was announced on radio. Nehru was not related to our clan in any way, but he was still seen as a ‘protector’ or ‘saviour’ of the minorities of the land. He was truly secular in his views and active about implementing them.

Naturally, his passing away was a blow to all segments of society, more so because he was above religious or regional politics and was determined to save this land from communal outfits.

Today, more than 50 years after Nehru’s demise, the very fabric of secularism he stood for is challenged with the rise of the new Government at the Centre. The outfit that Nehru had then banned – the RSS – will slowly and surely rule this land. The bigger irony is that riot accused have been sworn in as Ministers in the Union Cabinet. It took me a while to digest the news that Muzaffarnagar MP, Dr Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, one of the accused in the area’s riots of 2013, is a Minister today.

Then there is Uma Bharati, one of the accused in the Babri Masjid demolition, also with a Ministerial berth now. The list is long.

And just when you thought there would be some noise from the Opposition, the Congress and the Left have adopted an ‘All quiet’ stance. Why? To add to the situation, there are provocative statements being made – MoS in the PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh statement that this Government could repeal Article 370 can be termed not just mischievous but a means to deflect attention away from the ground realities in the Valley.

It remains to be seen if the new Government would impose any curbs on freedom of expression. The arrests of two young men from Goa and Karnataka for their anti-Modi comments on networking sites, however, do not fill me with optimism on this front.

There is an interesting ‘battle’ raging in the corridors of the New Delhi-situated India Islamic Cultural Centre, where Chairperson Sirajuddin Qureishi (in pic on right, one of the Sirajudding Qureshibiggest meat exporters in North India) is set to host a reception for PM Narendra Modi. Members of the Centre are furious with this move – many have been openly revolting against Qureishi and voicing the opinion that he is doing this just to promote his business interests, and using the Centre as his personal space for the same.

Who will host a reception for the six innocent men who were wrongly implicated in the terror attack on the Akshardham Temple in Gujarat? These men have accused the Gujarat Government and then CM Narendra Modi (who headed the Home Department) and demanded that they be adequately compensated for the long periods of incarceration that they have wrongly suffered. They are consulting lawyers to file cases in the Gujarat courts seeking compensation as well as punishment for all the cops who not only slapped false cases on them, but also tortured them in jail.

More on this as it pans out.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of Kashmir: The Untold Story and co-author of Simply Khushwant.

(Pictures courtesy www.livemint.com, aijamiatulquresh.org)

Categories
Guest writer

Why has nobody thought of a good roti machine?

Women grapple with the task of roti making every single day of their lives. A Mumbaikar offers a futuristic solution.
Pooja Birwatkarby Dr Pooja Birwatkar

It’s a fact that Mumbai is always on the run. Between the binaries of fast and slow, fast is the chosen one that defines the life of almost every citizen of their dream world.

In the whole hustle-bustle and mad race, one looks for ideas and ways that help one cope better with the demands of everyday life. To make matters worse, if one is a working woman and has a family to cater to also, the tying up of loose ends and running an endless list of chores exhausts you to no end. This may sound sexist, but the general scenario that still pervades most households is that a working woman works two shifts, one at home and other at work, while males have the joy of concentrating only on the office front.

To bring about a change in this system is a farfetched dream. Though one does see a radical shift in responsibilities and sharing of duties between both genders now, but such cases are sporadic in number and occur in isolated patches.

To help tide away such mundane tasks, our Mumbai housewives then look for ideas and innovations that make their lives easier. One has, to a large extent, adopted automation that makes life easier, like washing machines, food processors and all variety of appliances that help to clean the house and other things, and lend some degree of relief. But what about the sad state of affairs when it comes to rotis?

Almost every Indian household eats rotis every day. The making of rotis is a tedious task. As a working woman and homemaker myself, I always wished for a genie to appear and Making rotisrelieve me from the endless task of making rotis day after day. Certainly, there are solutions to offer in the market, but I find that these only add to your woes. On looking at the available roti makers, one finds that still you have to do basic jobs like mixing, kneading, making balls of dough or manually putting each ball of dough on the making surface, etc. These roti makers’ only help is in the area of making round rotis.

The other day, as I was getting some photocopy work done and watching how copies emerged from the machine one after the other, I was stuck by an idea. What if there was a machine that handled the whole process of making rotis, right from kneading the dough to rolling out hot rotis? It would eliminate all the possible labour, including cleaning up afterwards.

Taking the idea further, there could be a panel of operations for making rotis. One can select the number of rotis, size, thickness, crispiness, oil/oil free. There would also be a provision for a timer to be set and a clock timer, plus automated cleaning and a way to keep it near the dining table so that fresh hot rotis can be had during meal times.

Just imagine it – after a long tiring day, to have fresh rotis with the press of a few buttons! What a wonderful dream! But I wonder – in this age of technology, why has nothing like this come up to reduce the efforts of Indian women? As insignificant as it may sound, it is one of the most important issues of our daily life.  So all you innovators and technologists, this is food for thought. Let us in a small way help provide some solutions to such time-consuming tasks that would help working women get liberated from a few of their daily life burdens. Not just Mumbai women, it would be revolutionise the lives of many more across the nation, including the men.

(Pictures courtesy www.nandyala.org, ribbonstopastas.blogspot.com)

Categories
Campaign

‘Come out and Play’ is eagerly anticipated

The Metrognome’s flagship event in Mumbai is seeing some good media coverage and increasing public interest. Do join the fun!
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The Metrognome’s first major event in Mumbai, ‘Come out and Play‘ is seeing a lot of interest among Mumbaikars. Registrations are on in full swing – in the first week since registrations opened, over 100 people signed up!

‘Come out and Play’ is set to be Mumbai’s first family games event that is aimed at both recreation and awareness – Mumbai is fast losing its open spaces to either encroachment or to private entities via the BMC’s contentious Caretaker Policy. In the light of this, Mumbaikars need to keep the remaining open spaces reasonably occupied at all times, and the best way to do this is by playing on the city’s open grounds.

To this end, and to kickstart a sustained campaign for the city’s open spaces in fun ways, The Metrognome and I-deators Events are jointly hosting a fun day of games where entire families will step out of their homes to play the games of our childhood – lagori, langdi and sack race, among others.

Says Samina Akhtar, who has signed up with her family (in pic above, practicing for ‘Lemon and spoon race’) of 22 for the event on June 1, 2014, “I am thrilled at the idea of getting the chance to play all the galli games of my childhood – it has been years since I played langdi or lemon-and-spoon race. More than the children in my family, all of us adults are extremely excited and are waiting eagerly for June 1.”

Interestingly, the concept of ‘family’ has been redefined for us during the registration process – several singletons have signed up with their friends. However, people continue to respond warmly to the idea that they can have a fun family outing at Mahalaxmi Racecourse, for free, while reliving their own childhood.

You and your family are warmly invited to be a part of ‘Come out and Play 2014’, Mumbai’s first family games event at Mahalaxmi Racecourse, June 1, 2014, 9 am onward. Register for free at comeoutandplay2014@gmail.com. Hurry! 

(Picture courtesy Urvashi Seth Ranga)

Categories
Tech

Review: Moto E (XT1022)

We check out the latest Motorola device and come away more than impressed with a phone that is budget friendly.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

Motorola has been making quite a stir in the Indian market of late, and rightly so. Making its comeback solely via the e-commerce route, the company seems well determined to capture its lost glory, and to do this, has been on a spree of launching budget, yet good, smartphones.

First it was the Moto G – terrific performer for a phone under 14k – and now it’s the Moto E, going into the sun 8k category. Motorola has essentially taken on all the low-end Android smartphones, which haven’t been very good so far, and the likes of the popular Lumia 520. With its pricing and offering in place, let’s check out of Motorola delivers this time.

Hardware and design

Motorola’s Moto E (XT1022) follows similar design and material like the Moto G. It has a curved, soft rubberised back, fitting pretty well into your hands. You get the Moto logo right under the 5 MP camera on the back. Once you notice the front – 4.3-inch screen (Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top), thick bezel, and chrome rays on both the sides of the screen – forming the speaker and mouthpiece,  the similarity with the Moto G ends.

The phone feels sturdy and hefty to hold. Motorola could have done a better job keeping the phone’s bezel thinner for making it even more compact to fit in your hand, but this doesn’t mean you won’t be able to operate this phone with just one hand. Coming to the right side panel, the volume button, raised just enough from the body surface, again sports a chrome finish. The Power/Lock button sits on the same side just above the volume rocker. On the top is the 3.5mm headset jack; while the microUSB port sits right at the bottom.

Screen

Talking about the screen, the 4.3-inch (960 x 540) is pretty much what you would expect. It’s quite bright, just decent for day-to-day use and nothing outstanding to talk about. The colours do look quite good, but you will quickly realise the difference if you have been using a higher resolution phone screen for some time. Also, the phone doesn’t play full HD videos natively, but you could install a third-player app to play one. All in all, this is just a decent screen, and not a bad one for the price.

Audio

On the audio side, the phone performs well. The loudspeaker is loud, but tends to distort sound when played at the highest volume level. There was no problem in hearing or speaking during calls, and I didn’t notice any network reception issues with this phone, either.

Camera

Now for the bad – Moto E’s camera. The 5 MP snapper on the back is…well, just not the one you would really like to use. The fixed focus sensor gives average and out-of-focus shots more often than not, and this seems to be one part where Motorola has saved on cost, and the user would be disappointed if he/she would like to use the phone’s camera a lot. Only once in a while, in good light conditions, you may get a nice shot with this camera.

Battery

Coming to the phone’s battery life, it is much better than what I expected it to be. The 1,980 mAh battery unit lasted more than a day mostly, and with light usage could even touch two days. Good to see a budget handset scoring high on the battery side. The usage included lots of emails, Twitter, watching a few YouTube videos, 5 to 10 minutes of calling (single SIM). When using both the SIMs in place, the battery life is bound to take a dive, though.

Software and performance

The Moto E has got Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 200 SoC – 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, Adreno 302 GPU, along with 1 GB of RAM. The phone runs smoothly for most parts. I didn’t find any stuttering when moving from one app to another. However, with a few heavy webpages opened and a couple of apps running in the background, you will see some lags here and there compared to, say, Moto G. Having said that, this is probably the best performance we have seen from an Android phone at this price point, and Motorola deserves some credit for providing a smooth operating phone for what the phone costs.

Running on Android 4.4.2, the phone is untouched for most part, just like the Moto G. Adding a few own apps and services, like Motorola Migrate, as with the Moto G, Motorola has also built in something called Assist. This is basically an app for your assistance regarding putting your phone in silent mode when you’re in a meeting or during your sleep hours, etc. There’s also something new called Alert, which allows the user to quickly send an SOS-like message to a pre-defined number in case of an emergency. Sounds useful, doesn’t it? Retaining almost all of what we have been seeing on stock Android – lock screen, app launcher, fonts, notification center, Motorola hasn’t touched most of these aspects, and also guarantees users at least one update to this phone.

Concluding the review, the Moto E is a great phone for the consumer, not just from buying an Android phone for this price, but also for making other manufacturers pull up their socks and offer better phones and not just the ones that appear fancy in advertisements. Motorola’s Moto E scores well with respect to battery, build quality, audio experience, even though it is not outstanding when it comes to the camera or even the screen, this is certainly a phone to watch out of you’re looking for a budget smartphone, or maybe buying your first smartphone. This, along with Windows Phone devices under 10k, makes for the low-end smartphone segment to become more interesting, better choices for the buyer, which will hopefully bring more phones that do not compromise on the experience side.  That is why this phone is important for this segment. The likes of Micromax and even HTC will probably gear up to bring phones that provide a richer experience under Rs 10,000 in the Indian market.

Categories
Overdose

Our extortionist public transportation

We can do without the monsoon in Mumbai – it’s only going to give an opportunity for taxi and auto strikes.
Jatin Sharmaby Jatin Sharma | @jatiin_sharma on Twitter

The autorickshaws and taxis of Mumbai are a columnist’s delight and a commuter’s nightmare. Their rude and uncouth manner apart, there’s a new fear this species of drivers has instilled in Mumbaikars: that of dropping their hapless passenger wherever they want to, for a range of reasons; ‘Gaadi mein gas bharna hai‘ and ‘Main wahan nahin jaunga‘ are chief among them.

Several commuters are now scared of certain areas in the city, fearing this desertion. Like I pointed out in a recent column, it seems that striking work is what these unruly cabbies and autowallahs are best at.

Once again I hear them demanding a Rs 2 raise in tariff for autorickshaws and Rs 5 raise for taxis. And after whatever they’ve put the average Mumbaikar through, after all the hikes in tariffs in the recent past, it is strange that they want this demand not just to be heard, but also to be empathised with. Their union leaders try to halfheartedly fool the public by saying that services will improve once the hikes are in place, but that is just an eyewash. When was the last time services improved? And I see some heavy hinting happening here: taxi and auto unions have a ‘Brahma astra’ up their sleeve, with the monsoon almost knocking on Mumbai’s doors.

The monsoons are the best time to go on strike in Mumbai. These unions have already said that the monsoon is almost here and that they don’t want to ‘harass’ the public. Of course these words do not reflect concern, but are a threat.

It’s a proven fact that the powers that be in Mumbai have taken this city downhill over the years. And what can shame our city more if our administration cannot control the people who are a part of our public transport? The term ‘public transport’ is just a facade, as the ‘public’ is just not taken into consideration while plying on the roads.

The time to simply vent your anger against these extortionists is gone, and the time is ripe for positive suggestions. Since these unions are demanding a raise before the monsoon, there should be a special monsoon offer put in place for them. Autorickshaw unions say that the autos have to through a lot of maintenance during the monsoon, so a raise is justified. Fine! So how about we give you a raise, but only during the monsoon? Let’s have a dual rate for Mumbai autos, one during the monsoon and another during the rest of the months.

And once you’ve got your raise, dear unions – and you will, because that’s how we roll – be prepared to have stones pelted at your vehicles if you refuse a ride. Tempers run really high during the monsoons, and when you politely ask an auto that has condescended to slow down and you say the words ‘Andheri East’, and he rushes off as if he’s encountered a ghost asking for a lift, be prepared not just for abuses but also for stones and some good old-fashioned beating.

Dear Mumbaikar, admit it, you’ve felt like committing a crime whenever an auto or taxi has refused to take you on board. Or maybe your anger is not directed merely at the errant cabbie or auto driver, but also at the Government, which does nothing to regulate these thugs. You are right in demanding that you, the public, will be given due consideration as a passenger. So the next time a raise in tariffs is granted, let’s pledge to demand change. If the Government doesn’t pull these unions up, promise that you and many others will.

Till then, let’s keep trying to get an auto to Andheri East.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else. ‘Overdose’ is his weekly take on Mumbai’s quirks and quibbles.

(Picture courtesy www.stockpicturesforeveryone.com)

 

Categories
Deal with it

Sion residents and a cop reunite lost boy with mother

A heartwarming story of a lost boy reunited with his mother, with joint efforts by the cops and local residents.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

“Rushab found at Sion junction yeh ladka mere paas hai” pinged the Whatsapp message on 17 of Sion’s residents mobile phones. It was from Sujata Patil, a cop with the Sion Matunga Traffic Police, who had found a four-year-old boy lost and crying at Sion junction. The recipients of the message immediately swung into action.

“We are in the Sion Traffic Police committee,” explained Ajay Pandya (in green shirt in the pic), chief coordinator of the Sion Welfare Forum.”We regularly coordinate with the local police in times of need, and yesterday, we immediately rushed out to help when we learnt that the little boy, Rushab, was lost and crying for his mother. Sujata madam had found him on the footpath when she was on bandobast duty in the area.”

The child was first pacified, and when he had calmed down, the search party – comprising area residents and the police – fanned out in the area to try and locate his mother. “Sujata madam stayed with the boy throughout. It was three hours before the frantic mother was located.”

It turned out that the boy had simply strayed away from his mother when she was in Dharavi to buy something. “Then he couldn’t find his way back to her and panicked. Fortunately for him, he was spotted by a cop,” Ajay said.

(Pictures courtesy Ajay Pandya)

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