Author: The Metrognome

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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)

Categories
Overdose

Ab ki baar…kaam kar lo yaar!

A disturbing victory speech notwithstanding, there’s just one small request for PM Narendra Modi – don’t forget us non-Vadodara guys.
Jatin Sharmaby Jatin Sharma | @jatiin_sharma on Twitter

Finally, the elections are over. The world’s biggest democracy has given its verdict and it has not come as a big surprise as we all knew that ‘Ab ki baar Modi sarkar‘ would hold true. The Congress has been beaten out of power, and how! Clearly India was fed up of talking to the hand.

However, there are some pretty interesting observations to make about this general election. According to me, people didn’t vote for the BJP, neither did they vote for Modi. This time, they voted for a leader, for a single name that they could rely on. The Congress was digging its grave all this time with the number of scams, controversies and irresponsible interviews and speeches showered by their PM-hopeful. There was no alternative for people till Modi came and sold his Gujarat success story. Modi, no doubt, is a mastermind when it campaign strategy, and has showed unusual panache when turning foes into friends.

This election has been historical as the country has shooed away all the big and corrupt players. Modi was a clear-cut winner in the backdrop of the chaos that the country was witnessing. I felt that Modi’s campaign was well-planned, and having stayed in Gujarat, I know that he has a great success story to share.

And then I heard his first address to the media post his win, and realised how self-obsessed the man is.

Narendra Modi delivered his victory speech in Vadodara, and he thanked Vadodara for his win. But then he also said that he couldn’t give a lot of time to Varanasi, “Aur unhone Narendra Modi flashes the victory signtoh Modi ke maun par hi mohar laga di.” I declared in my head that my new PM was pompous, that the support of the nation had gone to his head. He is accused of dividing the country and has always been looked upon as a monster. But with his success in Gujarat, people have chosen to forget his past ills and have trusted him with the country, because everyone wants success.

The biggest challenge for Narendra Modi is to realise that although he is the biggest face in India when it comes to leadership, he is there to serve people. He may have turned things around in Gujarat, but he cannot forget that the Gujaratis’ entrepreneurial skills are also at work. While the credit can be given to the CM, let’s not forget that the people have made his vision come true. Now Modi has to widen his vision and think of all of India. He needs to move on to the bigger game now, and for that, he has to stop being a leader obsessed with his own name and talents.

Modi came on stage and delivered a speech that very much looked like a film set, with him playing the hero. He delivered dialogues with punchlines, but very few of his words said anything about India. For the first 10 minutes he couldnt get over Vadodara, while the whole nation was expecting their New PM (who could speak very well, or at least could speak) to address them all. Instead, they got a speech that thanked just one region for his stupendous success. The thousands of speeches he made while campaigning all over the country were set aside, and all one heard from the man were epithets about his own glory.

The new PM will have to grow up fast and recreate his Gujarat success on a much bigger platform. There is no place for complacency at all – people have voted out the Congress in the past too, but have gone back to them because they have realised that all other parties are even bigger jokes than the nation’s oldest party. Narendra Modi now needs to focus more on everyone’s development, not just his own. The time for dialoguebaazi has come to an end.

Instead of harping on the developed roads in Gujarat, the terrible roads of Mumbai need to find a place in his speeches. Instead of talking endlessly about Gujarat’s development, he must come out with a plan to develop all of India. We are seriously tired of windbags, and for now, we have placed our collective faith in Modi. If he does anything to dent that faith, he should be prepared for what will come his way. After all, the country just wants a strong leadership that doesn’t cheat.

Ab ki baar, kaam kar lo yaar!

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 people’s quirks and quibbles.

(Pictures courtesy indiatoday.intoday.in)

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