What resolution is your life?

I have been fortunate enough to live through a period of world history in which technology has gone from a child's play to science fiction level. I have seen the time when mobile phones didn't use to exist and to now when there is one in everyone's pocket. Every year there there are many new models and they fight over features like dogs over a bone. One feature that is usually hotly contested is the camera. Let's forget about the point what is a camera doing in something called a phone and just talk about the state of the art. 

The most popular part of the camera and its improved features is resolution. A quick sidebar to explain - every digital photo is made up of tiny dots which are called pixels. Resolution is just the notation to show how many of these pixels are there in a photo taken by a particular digital camera (phone camera or DSLR). For example 1920x1080 which is lovingly called Full HD or 1080p means that the photo has 1920 dots widthwise and 1080 dots along the height. The more pixels there are the smoother and "higher definition" the photo will be. 

While this is the most publicised metric in a camera, people argue that that's not the best or only measure of quality. There is camera sensor size, image processing software, the glass (a fancy way of saying lens) and a few other things that contribute to the quality of a photo. But I want to ask what is the "quality" of a photo? 

Exhibit A: look at this photo below. 

This photo was taken in the 1990s before google was a verb and youtube was not even in its mother's womb. The "three moustacheers" in the photo are Harry, Fazil and yours truly. This was a time in our life when we had finished high school (we went to the same school) and were doing college. We were trying to find our place in the world and searching for our guiding star. From this search we used to take time, maybe once or twice a week, to go on an evening walk to this park about 2 miles from our homes. 

Obviously, you can see how "bad" the photo is. It was taken on a film camera, degraded over time and then scanned into the computer. [Kudos to my nephew Sagar for preserving and emailing it to me.] 

Exhibit B: This is a picture from a Matheran trip (a 'hill' station in Maharashtra, India) with Bhuwnesh and his family. Bhuwnesh and I became friends in US out of necessity because we were the new people there and all the other Indian colleagues were already settled in their lives. Plus, we got along well despite being very different in personality. That's the reason we stayed in touch no matter how many times he or I changed cities and countries. 

This photo was taken in 2006 from an Olympus camera which was 1.3mega pixels. Don't laugh, that's the best I had then.  

I also have a lot of photos which are taken with good cameras in high resolution but don't mean half as much to me. 

Let's take an exception, exhibit C, taken in 2020: 

This is a high resolution photo taken with a proper DSLR last year. Given the condition the world was in when my nephew Sagar married his girlfriend Harsha, I had no chance to go to attend their wedding in Canada. Had it not been for the technology I could not have watched their wedding ceremony on a  video call and I would not have been able to see their smiling faces in the lovely photos. 

My point is not that "Old is always good". My point is that it's not the resolution in the camera that matters, it's the resolution of your life that matters. Surround yourself with people who enrich your life, guide your mind to thoughts that add meaning to your life and make sure that your actions and words enrich other people's life. That's the resolution that matters the most. 

Musical Memories

Today I was watching this Indian movie award show #Filmfare2015 recording on my train journey home. It's old, from early 2015 and I have seen it before but I like it because one of the comperors was my favourite comedian Kapil Sharma. And then this song came on in the nominees for the Best Music...and the memories came flooding back! No, not the memories of shooting that song...lol..I wish..but the memories of my last trip to India when I took so many road trips with #mykids and I DJ'ed in most of those journeys using my tablet.

I remembered falling in love with this song during that visit. Not when I Dj'ed but on my own I did loop-played it almost all the time. I think my kids might have become sick of it that time.

Hearing it again today brought back the memories of that legendary trip and of course, I miss my kids!

So, yeah, I played it on loop on the walk back from the station, instead of my usual audiobook. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmWL-JxUGZc

Of course, the song was the winner of the Best Music category. Hehe.

The movie is called "2 States" and the music is by Shankar Ehsaan Loy. I can't do justice to the song but loosely translate the chorus of the song means "My crazy heart keeps repeating your name. Can't forget even it tried."

Casette and pencil

My nephew recently shared this picture with me which sent me back to the past in a flash. Indeed there was a wondeful world of cassettes and cassette players. Unlike most people I didn't use the cassettes just to listen to music, I loved to record. No, I didn't play any music myself back then (yeah, like I do now!) but I loved to record from the radio, or record conversations, chit-chat anything that took my fancy.

In the name of progress we have moved away from the progress and adopted the CDs into our lifestyles. But is it the same thing? I won't go all nostalgic on you and cry about the "good old days" but as a software professional and a man with experience of dealing cassettes, VHS, CDs, DVDs, DVD-R's, DVD-RW's, hard drives, flash memories and the like, I would argue that cassettes were better. Let's examine the evidence without emotion.

Cassette's were fragile, a spool of reel in a platic casing. But CDs are worse. Not only are they bigger and flimiser but they have to be protected even against stains and dirt. Do you know that the label side of the CD is much more fragile then the shiny side the data is read from? Yes, if you wrote on the label side with a normal pen you could damage the data. On the other hand, a little inkblot on the shiny side can ruin your CD. Compared to that cassettes were much sturdier.

Then, talk about recording. Now there was a question that both I and my brother Anil had to face frequently in our respective cities. Whenever we tried to buy a device to record audio, or tried to buy supplies for it, people would say, "Who does recording these days!" and we both had the same answer - "*I* do!" So before you say the same thing to my objection, keep that in mind, I still record a lot of audio, all kinds of stuff.

But CDs cannot record without special hardware. When was the last time you saw a CD-recorder outside of a computer context? Me? Never. But it was so easy to find a cassette recorder in the same size as as a cassette player. I had one that was very easy to pocket. And I have done all kind of recordings using in-line cable and even speakers-to-mic. Yes, bad quality but oh, what fun.

We weren't rich enough afford VCR and tapes but I had my portable little tape recorder so I used to record movies and TV shows from the TV. I particularly remember recording Raj Kapoor's "Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai". I, my brother Anil and his wife, we were watching it together late at night. My recorder was propped up next to the speaker against our  big, black-and-white TV. (yes, we had only one TV for the whole family, imagine that!)

I listened to that recording many times in the following years. It recorded not only the movie's sounds but also our own comments and laughter in context. That was such an imperfect recording, but it made the recording something special.

I also recorded the Doordarshan serial "Phir Wohi Talaash". I had an almost complete collection of it. I hope it's still there in my room in Delhi where the rest of my cassettes are lying collecting dust as I can't find the video of that show anywhere no matter how hard I look.

The point is nowadays you can't record because you can't record on the CDs that easily and recording on mobile phones is not the same, the quality is not that good.

Then, the question of repairs. When a cassette had problems, you could fix it with the help of a small Philips screwdriver, a pair of scissors and a bit of cellotape. And of course, the pencil. I have taken complete cassettes apart and put them back together when one of my precious recordings was endangered by a bit of problem. I have spliced over a lot of audio jumps like that.

That's where the pencil comes in by the way. When a cassette developed a problem and the reel started to get sucked into the player head, or if it was wrapped the wrong way around by some mechanical issue you took the cassette out and found a pencil. Then, carefully pulling out as much of the tape as you had to, you straighted it out and then used the pencil to wind it back into the cassette by hand.

With CDs, it either works or you throw it away. But, I guess that's the kind of disposable culture we live in these days. Anything that doesn't work is on a direct trajectory to the trash bin.

Anyway, that's the story of the cassette and pencil. As usual, I took way too much space to tell it. :)

Aao Fight Karein

Once upon a time there used to be an old radio show on Vividh Bharti called Hawa Mahal. It used to feature a 15 minutes comedy drama every night. It was our prime source of entertainment. One night there was a comedy drama consisting of an argument between a woman and a man over the ownership of a chicken. After the program was over, my sister who was a few years older than me (come to think of it she still is!) suggested to me, "Come on, let's fight just like those people!" It sounded like fun to enact a drama so I said okay. I was about 3-4 years old I think.

She started, "Ye meri murghi hai, meri murghi, samjhe? Meri murghi!" ("It's my chicken, my chicken, ok? My chicken!" )
And I said, "Teri hai to tu le le, behan, lad kyon rahi hai?" ("If it's yours you take it, why are you fighting with me?")

She laughed at my quick surrender and that was the end of my career as a radio actor.

But I never was one to launch into a conflict easily. I was reminded of that old incident today when a friend whom I like very much suddenly said, "Okay, let's fight!"

You see, we are good friends, but we have our moments when I say something and she takes it otherwise or she says something and I don't take it in the spirit in which it was meant. So we have an occasional misunderstanding which leads to one or both of us saying sorry later. We had had a couple of those occasions last week and suddenly today on chat she says, "Let's fight!"

Silly me. I agreed with her. And we launched into this not-so-real-not-so-fake fight. All the time she was typing her grievances against me, I was replying in kind, but I could not help laughing all this time. It was good that this was on chat and she couldn't see me grinning. Needless to say that I lost the fight.

But then suddenly she made a mistake. She smiled! And just like that the fight was over! :) I have to admit it was a good exercise to air the grievances without jeopardizing our friendship.

I think it's important to remember that in fighting with a friend, a smile is your best weapon!

Moral of the story: When you don't mind losing the fight you know you have found a real friend!

O des se aane waale bata, kis haal mein hai yaa-raa-ne watan

It's kinda stupid really. All the time that I am in India, I am always
looking for opportunities to travel abroad, and I do enjoy that. And I
have said about a 1000 times that a 2-month trip is no fun, I need to
live there, create my own life and enjoy it there. But once I am out of
the country, once I am living in a foreign country I sometimes, not
always but sometimes, I do miss the life home.

There is this wistful feeling, every time I think about the life at my
parental home, there is not one but many things I miss. The easy rhythm
of life, that care by mom to the point of being spoilt, being fawned
upon by my many nephews and nieces, being the VIP visitor, re-uniting
with the closest friends, walking in those familiar streets, it feels nice!
The longer I have been away the better it feels!

There is a beautiful nazm, I don't remember the poet and as nazm's are
harder to memorize than ghazals, I don't know it all. But it's a
wonderful nazm that touches the deepest point in my heart and the couple
of lines that I do remember I cherish dearly. For my non-Hindi speaking
readers, if any, I will translate.

O des se aane waale bata, kis haal mein hain yaa-raa-ne watan

This is the beginning, which means O, visitor from my land, tell me how
are my friends in that country.
My favorite lines in this are:

Wo shehar jo hamse chhoota hai, wo shehar hamara kaisa hai,
Sab log hain hamko pyaare magar, wo jaan se pyaara kaisa hai.

Translation:
The city that I have missed, how is that city of mine?
Everyone is dear to me, but how is the one that's dearer than my own
life?


Of course, it doesn't rhyme in English, (I am not that talented), but
you get the idea, of the soft, wistful, nostalgic image it conjures up.

On the whole, I think it is a part of healthy life - something to do,
something to love and enjoy and yet something to miss, to look forward
to.