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The Hindu : Mahindra on a tech blitzMahindra will take a huge technological leap with the launch of the hybrid Bolero in a few months. The mild hybrid model will use a start-stop system with a heavy duty belt for the high-life starter. It will switch the Bolero off when it comes to a halt and start it as you want to get moving again. This will help the off-roader to improve efficiency. Mahindra’s other big seller, the Scorpio, will be coming with an automatic gearbox soon. Thebig news is that this box is a thoroughly modern unit with six speeds. The gearbox features full electronic control for all gears, the possibility of using the torque converter with a lock up clutch as well as tiptronic controls for a manual gearbox feel. The gearbox will feature a ‘filled for life’ casing that will never need more oil and the ability to handle 34.7kgm of torque. This box is likely to further increase the appeal of the Scorpio….More

The Hindu : Get into the habit of sleeping late this month as HBO is presenting a star-studded blockbuster every night in ‘Summer of 60 Nights’, showcasing sixty of the biggest and favourite Hollywood blockbusters across genres every night after the9 p.m. movie. On May 11, there is the kidnap drama “Proof of Life” starring hell raiser Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan and on May 13 there is comedy “Click” starring Adam Sandler who has a magic remote control with which he can do much magic things. On May 15 the eminently silly “Snakes On A Plane” starring Samuel Jackson and Rachel Blanchard and countless fake snakes will be aired while May 21 in the day you can go back to martial arts beginnings with “Enter the Dragon” where the one and the only Bruce Lee will do some mean kung fu with John Saxon and Jim Kelly and “The Dukes of Hazzard” will be aired on May 23.“The Da Vinci Code” based on Dan Brown’s breathless prose starring Tom Hanks with an impossible hair cut will be screened on 24 May while the Rock, otherwise known as Dwayne Johnson is starring in “The Gridiron Gang” which will be aired on May 26. For more information on HBO log on towww.hbosouthasia.com….More

The Hindu : No place is boring,” said Robert Adams, a well known photographer. These words sound true when one sees Mahesh Nair’s breathtaking photographs, especially of places that one may have seen many times. But when they have been shot from Nair’s Canon 5D and developed from US-3 transparencies, they assume a different character altogether.What makes this marketing professional-turned-photographer’s works unique is the interplay of light and shade in them. Most of them have a three-dimensional effect and they seem to transport one to the location itself.A coffee-table book of 185 pages called “…let there be light” on his magnificent pictures of Leh, Ladakh, Kashmir, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Assam, Rajasthan, Malaysia, Ireland, Borneo and Scotland was launched by Roli Books.Nair says: “I underexpose most of my pictures. I play with only light. I don’t add colour to them. I never choose a particular time to shoot. But the fact is places like Zanskar and Padum have ethereal beauty. One doesn’t need to be a photographer to shoot them.”Nair’s actual passion is wildlife photography but he has made a name in landscapes. “It is because wildlife photography has no market except when WWF or magazines buy them.” Even general photography, he admits, has less takers. “Photographers don’t make grades because they need to go beyond shooting just a pretty picture. My pictures are appreciated because the buyers have understood that there is a difference between creative photography and documenting photography. Photographs for many are a substitute for painting that they can’t afford. I have an edge over many because of my marketing background.”And today Nair sells his single edition picture for Rs. 60,000 and those with three to eight prints for Rs. 15,000. And his picture sizes are generally huge (36×20 inches to 54×36 inches).His other upcoming projects include documenting high altitude places such as Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim etc., for WWF, and shooting tough terrains where the Army jawans…More

The Hindu : The magic lamp?Retail, banking or even tutoring, companies are creating applications that enable mobile users to carry out varied tasks with their handset. SUDHIR SYALreportsWhen Alexander Graham Bell uttered the famous words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” even he would not have imagined the number of roles his creation would take over the next century. Today, the mobile phone can act as a television, a bank, a retail store, a travel agent and perhaps even as a tutor. Founder of Samachar.com, renowned Indian technocrat and CEO of Netcore Solutions Rajesh Jain probably describes it best when he says, “The mobile phone is like a ‘Magic Lamp’ with new ‘genies’ coming together every day.”The genies here are in most cases founders of mobile centric start-up companies. These companies create applications which work primarily using sms and GPRS (General Pack Radio Service) and enable a user to use his mobile for a variety of day-to-day tasks. With India now set to overtake the U.S. to become the world’s second largest user of mobile phones (250 million users), mobile start-ups are finding out that this is perhaps the best time to launch their services in the Indian market.So what are the applications on the phones, and how many of them can actually be used to make life easier. We find out…InnovationsThe most striking new innovation has been the launch of mobile banking; pioneers in this field are a Delhi based start-up company, M-Chek. Sanjay Swamy, founder of M-Chek, says: “We provide a platform for a user to link his mobile phone to his bank account or credit card, once a link has been established, a mobile user uses sms or a simple application to enter a security code and authorise transactions.” Thus the application converts the mobile phone into a debit or credit card.Realising the potential of the mobile phone in effecting banking transactions,…More

The Hindu : If I hear one more trio of guitar, bass and drums, I’ll scream blue murder! No, seriously, something should be done about the fact that all we seem to hear in Bangalore are guitarists accompanied by bassists and drummers. What’s happenedto all the trumpets, saxophones and what-not that have been the staple of jazz in every age from its infancy to the current melange of avant-garde and mainstream tendencies?Nearly a month ago, we did hear a violinist added to the guitar trio led by Amit Heri, but after that it was the guitar-led pure trio of Gerard Machado.And now, last week, in a concert at the Grand Ashok, we heard the Dutch group Agog comprising Frank Wingold on guitar, Mark Haanstra on electric bass guitar and Joost Lijbart on drums. Not that I had anything against their music. Although one could have been a bit leery of them because they carry something of an avant-garde reputation, their music was eminently accessible to the lay jazz fan.Avoiding the beaten trackThe reputation in fact was largely a creation of the PR handout that preceded them. That plus the fact that all the music they played was composed by one or other among them, usually a signal that the musicians are avoiding the beaten jazz path in their performing work.The only thing remotely resembling experimental sounds from their repertoire was when Wingold used an electronic gizmo operated by his foot to create reverberation effects a la rock musicians.In fact, some of their music, as they said themselves, was influenced by pop/rock and some by the Western classical tradition. But everything was grounded in the hoary jazz tradition of improvisation, and they made a point of saying that this was an “equal” trio, meaning a balanced one, in which every member got into the spotlight as often as the others.It was particularly a treat to see the number of…More

The Hindu : The more choices we have, the less likely we are to make the right choice.Don’t take my word for it. Scientific studies have proved it. The subjects in a lab experiment were asked to play the sweepstakes on the computer. They were rewarded every time they clicked on a particular door, and as they continued to play, more and more doors would appear on the screen. These doors carried only the possibility, not certainty, of winning sums of varying denominations. Tell me, if you had to earn the maximum with a given number of clicks, what would you do? The wisest move would be to keep clicking on the same door that unfailingly gave you money, right? It would be like hitting the jackpot every time. However, most subjects kept trying out the other doors although they knew fully well they were not guaranteed success. The notion of options had befuddled them.In life, however, you cannot hit the jackpot every time. And in life, one chooses an option not necessarily to make money. But the conclusion of the experiment holds good for most of us. We get confused when faced with too many choices: cars, careers, software, underwear, you name it. This leads me to my second statement:The more choices we are offered, the fewer choices we really have.You’ll have to trust me on this one. I have no lab experiment to back me but I could give you an example for which I wouldn’t have to look very far, just swivel my vertebrae to the right towards the TV. It is lifeless for the larger part of the day because daytime TV is mostly unwatchable. I have an ancient set which was originally capable of receiving only a dozen or so channels and which was souped up to receive 30 (by sticking a metal thingy under the front flap). Now, if I went in…More

The Hindu : Read this passage from Jasleen Dhamija’s introduction to the biography on one of the most influential figures in the socio-economic-political-cultural realm of pre and post-Independence Indias, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: “Kamaladevi’s is a story of courage to live in the world, to participate in it fully – to take up every challenge and meet it boldly. Yet she paid a price for it; loneliness, frustration when she saw many of the institutions she built crumbling. …Till the very end Kamaladevi was writing petitions, listening to the woes of those who had no one to turn to. …She helped a number of battered women, abandoned wives and widows without questioning, without sermonizing.”The introduction sets the tone of the entire book: a resolute tenor that marked the life and journey of Kamaladevi itself – steadfast and committed. Biographer Jasleen Dhamija, in this at once engaging and moving work, is equally committed to her cause of documenting the life of an iconic personality, with whom she was closely associated for several decades. Jasleen never fumbles, doesn’t employ masks, but presents the leader and the individual with all her complexities.Ask Jasleen, who is an internationally renowned expert in the field of living cultural traditions and history of textiles and costumes, about her objectivity despite her closeness and she says: “For sometime in the Seventies I decided to take a break from her. Those years gave me the time and space to examine her closely. That’s probably what has helped me be objective.”It was in 1954 that Jasleen met Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. With a strong influence of the Left ideology during her college days, Jasleen was determined to do something for the people. When she met Kamaladevi it seemed like her mission was accomplished. Jasleen began to work with her. “I was a young, strapping Punjabi girl with tremendous energy who could keep pace with this woman of amazing will. We went from…More

The Hindu : Actor Surya has never shied away from experimenting with his looks or roles. In his forthcoming film “Vaaranam Aayiram”, the actor will show off his six-pack abs.Directed by Gautham Menon, the film portrays Surya playing an interesting role in which his screen age spans from 17 to 65. One of the phases in his life demands a well-toned physique. That got Surya involved in an eight-month strict workout regimen supervised by a skilled trainer. The result – a lean, muscular body with the much-desired six packs.Says Surya, “It was the character and the script which inspired me to work towards achieving the look and a six-pack. I felt it would lend more credibility to the character I am playing. It required a careful monitoring of diet and exercise by a skilled, professional trainer.”Six packs, anyone?…More

The Hindu : When you think of a guy who holds a Guinness record as the fastest henna artist, and that too an Indian born and brought up in London, you think he’s rather quirky.And you’re even more taken aback when you discover he’s a graduate in forensic sciences! Ash Kumar however insists it was all karma, chance and accident that made him give up the scalpel for the cone of mehendi. At university he sketched and doodled patterns on his books, and friends offered their hands and arms as canvas. And so began the journey.The 28-year-old is also the owner of a henna products company, and a hair and beauty academy. His record comes from painting 96 henna arm bands in one hour in 2001, a record he himself beat in 2003 by doing 167 arm bands.Busy as a bee Ash Kumar was recently in Mumbai doing a show for Swarovski, adorning women’s bodies with a glittering smattering of crystals and henna.With surgeons for parents, wasn’t it difficult for him to break away and do something like putting mehendi? Wasn’t he seen as odd, wanting to do mehendi, in a woman’s world? “I still finished my degree,” he retorts. “I have a very supportive family. It’s a risk I took, but I had the best of things pointing in the right direction,” he says, without really revealing much. The fact that he’s busy doing the Swarovski show and he must get back in ten minutes seems to be bothering him.So is mehendi big in the UK because India is big or is it vice versa? “What’s made India fashionable is the culture and creativity in everything,” he offers. In the east, the approach to mehendi is traditional and so also the spots on the body on which they are applied. People tend to stick to the palms, arms, and legs. But abroad, it’s an individual statement of…More

The Hindu : I learnt to speak Tamil first, then Urdu. I could have been born in Madras for I was just about a few months old when my parents moved there from Mumbai.”Ameen Merchant’s prologue to the conversation is as much about him as about Madras. This debutant author, now living in Canada, had Madras (Chennai) as his home address for about 25 years.A home whose familiar smells, sights, mores, he states, now breathe in his memory. So much so that he has derived the plot of his first novel, “The Silent Raga”, published recently by Harper Collins, from the city itself. “The roads, the cricket matches, the fights…” all are still fresh.“Though I took four-and-a-half years to finish the book, my agent was on my case for long,” laughs the freelance journalist. But the seedwas planted in his head in the ’70s. Ameen elaborates, “I read about a character called Janakiamma in a novel serialised in a Tamil magazine. She ran away from home and the author never gave any explanation for it. I left Madras and couldn’t chase the story but often wondered why Janaki did so.” Calling himself “always curious, a rather writer-ly thing to do,” he thought of finding an answer to the quandary, years after. Asking around among friends about Janaki drew a blank.“So I found the author’s number and went out for dinner with her. The anti-climactic part of it was when she told me that she never pursued Janaki beyond those two paragraphs that I had read, simply because the story was about her (Janaki’s) sister. And here I was, building it into an obsession for all these years.”His Janaki obsession led him to extract Janaki out of that novel and build a story around her.Ameen got a Canadian scholarship “and spent five weeks in isolation” writing about Janaki. “My professor told me, ‘you have introduced a lot of things…More