Starbucks vs Mathura Walla

What's with teenagers these days and their never-ending demands for money?!

My 17-year-old son is a big fan of the local Starbucks here in Greater Noida, where he and a bunch of his teenager friends often hang out. While they usually have limited amounts of cash to spend there, they know there’s always UPI payments. While my son is still two months away from having his own savings bank account and cannot yet make UPI payments on his own, some of his friends do have a PayTM wallet and can make payments. For bigger payments, which they can’t manage on their own, all they have to do is call up somebody or the other’s parents, share a QR code and the payment is made.

Most parents – certainly including my wife and I – have come to accept the fact that everyday there will be demands for UPI payments. Cabs. Coffee. Snacks. Movie tickets. Autorickshaw rides. Rapido bike rides. And, less frequently, clothes, shoes and gifts for friends’ happy birthdays. It’s a never-ending drain on our resources but one that we have, unfortunately, had to learn to live with.

Some parents don’t seem to be too bothered with this and seem to think it’s okay for teenagers to blow thousands of rupees every month on random frivolous expenses. Not on things that kids necessarily need, only stuff they want. Stuff they can easily do without. Yes, parents with higher disposable incomes might not feel the pinch while those on a tighter budget may find frivolous spending harder to deal with. But regardless of their parents’ financial means, I do find it bothersome that most teenagers these days refuse to understand that money in middle-class households is hard-earned and that it is a limited resource. Someone has had to work hard to earn the damn stuff and others need to be prudent while spending.

Not My God

I was born into a Hindu family and just about everyone in the family is at least reasonably, moderately religious. Some – including my wife – are deeply religious. As is common in many Hindu households, we have a small temple in one corner of our apartment, where a small selection of Gods and Goddesses are ensconced – comfortably, I hope – and my wife and parents pay their respects there every day, in the morning, for a few minutes. My wife, a devout Hindu, also goes to a neighbourhood temple every day, in the evening, for a second round of prayers. No harm in receiving a double dose of Godly blessings, I suppose, and she says the 20-minute walk does her some good anyway, which must be true.

Regardless of which religion they follow, I have no problem with the devout. Well, except for the indiscriminate use of loudspeakers, which I wrote about earlier. When it comes to religion, there can’t be one single path that everyone must follow. Godliness can’t be one-size-fits-all. For those who regularly go to temples, mosques, churches and other places of worship – if it makes them feel good, if it works for them, that’s just great. For those who regularly spend a few minutes – or even an hour or two, as the case may be – every day to pray or meditate, if it brings peace to their minds and happiness to their hearts, that’s just awesome.  

Still Here, Still Playing

 

I recently sold my Yamaha PSR E453 (the one on top) and I'm getting a new PSS F30 (the one below the E453). It's like downgrading from a superbike to a moped. But sometimes, maybe a moped is all you really need 

The first time I saw a musical keyboard was probably in 1990-91, when I’d just started going to college, in Lucknow. There was this one time when I’d gone to my friend Shobhit’s house and there, for the first time, saw a small, compact Casio keyboard and immediately liked it very much. With all its lights, buttons, switches and fancy sounds, the little Casio looked quite cool and I absolutely loved it right away. I think that keyboard belonged to one of Shobhit’s elder brothers and I assumed it might be fairly expensive. So, while I wished I could have one too, I didn’t really imagine I’d be getting one anytime soon.

However, I soon got lucky beyond my wildest dreams. A few days after seeing that Casio keyboard at Shobhit’s house, I mentioned the whole thing to one of my best friends, Manish, and told him about how fascinated I was with that Casio and how I wished I could have one, so I could learn to play. Immediately, he said he had one too – his father had got one for him from the US – and that since he wasn’t really very keen on playing music, I could have it for as long as I wanted! The next time Manish came to my place – I was living with my grandparents at that time, since my father had been transferred to Bareilly and my parents had moved there – he got his keyboard along with him and handed it to me. I have to admit, I was very, very happy! This was also a small, compact keyboard, white, and every bit as cool as the one I’d seen at Shobhit’s house. However, I don’t remember if it was a Casio or a Yamaha – this was 35 years ago after all – but I think it may have been a Yamaha keyboard. 

Kishore Kumar and the Incredible Power of AI

Legendary singer Kishore Kumar passed away in 1987. With the magic of AI, his voice has been brought back to life for this new song, which is from the movie Saiyaara

 

I know it's not him. It's not Kishore Kumar's voice. It can't be. The legend passed away in 1987, when he was just 58 years old. My childhood and teenage years were filled with his music - so many songs, so many memories of sitting by a record player and, later, a cassette player and listening to Kishore Kumar's songs. Such a powerful voice, such resonance. 

Today, when I heard this new AI-generated version of the movie Saiyaara's title song, which has been co-created by musicians Kisna and Anshuman Sharma, it first came as an incredible shock. How can it be?! It's THAT voice, the one I knew and loved so well. The singer whose songs I still listen to all the time even today, almost 40 years after he passed away. And yet, here he is, again. Singing, like he used to. It's the 1980s all over again. I know, of course, that it isn't Kishore Kumar who's singing that song. It's just an AI-generated representation of what he might have sounded like, had he sung this song. But it still brought tears to my eyes. Tears of happiness. I couldn't stop crying. Tears flow, every time I listen to this song. I try to sing along and I can't, my voice gets choked with emotion.  

There will never, ever, be another Kishore Kumar. He'll remain unmatched. But I'm grateful that AI tech was able to bring him back, even if only for four minutes, for just one song, just this once. 

Time Traveller: My HMT Jawahar

The Jawahar, with its hand-winding mechanical movement, dates back to the early-1970s

I just bought a new watch. Only, this ‘new’ watch is around 55 years old, which makes it just a bit older than I am. It’s an HMT Jawahar, which is powered by a 17-jewel mechanical hand-winding movement. I bought it from a seller in Calcutta, whom I came across on a Facebook group for HMT watch enthusiasts. The deal was surprisingly hassle-free. I got in touch with the seller and asked him to send some photos of the watch, which he did. The watch looked clean and I liked it. Made the payment. He sent the watch via India Post which, as one may expect, did get the watch all the way from Calcutta to Greater Noida but did not deliver it to my house, making up some excuse about the door being locked at the time of attempted delivery. Yeah, right. In any case, the post office is not too far from my house and I went there, spoke to some guy who was sitting in a corner sorting mail and assorted packages, and he in turn spoke to another guy who found my package sitting in a random cupboard and handed it over to me after making me sign a piece of paper. And with that, I became the proud owner of a really, really old mechanical watch, one that I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for the last many months.

The Jawahar was one of the first watches to be manufactured by HMT Watches, which was set up in Bangalore in 1961. This was in collaboration with one of the biggest watch companies in Japan, Citizen. The Jawahar is powered by the HMT 0231 hand-winding movement, which I’m told is essentially an adaptation of Citizen's 0201 movement that incorporates the latter’s ‘Parashock’ shock protection system. And indeed, ‘Parashock 17 Jewels’ is imprinted on the Jawahar’s dial – a nice little touch for people like me, who love to wallow in horological nostalgia.

In Search of the End of the Road

I suppose I’m a shifty character. Wait, let me explain. I’m not saying I’m deceitful, devious or particularly insincere. What I meant is, I’m always ‘shifting.’ Moving, that is. Moving from one house to another, changing neighbourhoods, moving from one city to the next… again and again, all over the country. It wasn’t always like this. I did stay in my hometown, Lucknow, for the first twenty years of my life though even there I did move houses four times over those two decades. But after I moved out of Lucknow, to Bareilly, moving from one place to the next became the norm in my life. From Bareilly to Baroda to Bareilly to Lucknow to Bombay to Pune to Bombay to Dehradun to Greater Noida to Dehradun to Greater Noida to Bombay to Pune to Greater Noida. That’s more than a dozen moves between six different cities spread across four different States across the country. And that doesn’t even include the number of times I moved houses within the same city!

Lady Gaga - Vanish Into You

Vanish Into You, by Lady Gaga, is rocking!

Lady Gaga is rocking with some of her recent releases and of those, my number 1 favourite is this song, Vanish Into You. The other is Abracadabra, reimagined in 1980s style. See below. I think it's better than the original. Both songs remind of the music I used to listen to, back in the 1980s. You go, Gaga!

Battle of the Laptops: The Pursuit of Coolness

The Lenovo Ideapad Slim 5 Gen 10 (model no. 13ARP10), with its 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS display and Ryzen 7 processor, is perhaps the Windows laptop to buy for those who want an M4-powered Apple MacBook Air but don't want to spend Rs 1.20 lakh

Last month, I’d written about my son’s laptop. Or rather, the fact that the old one was broken and we were looking to buy a new one. Having told my son that I’d been using computers for close to 40 years, had set up and run an animation, video editing and computer graphics training institute in the mid-1990s and had once headed the writers’ team at CHIP (a leading computers/technology magazine back in the late-1990s), I assumed he would be sufficiently impressed. And that he would not question my wisdom in selecting a laptop that would be best suited to his requirements. Clearly, I was clueless about just how hard - perhaps even impossible - it is to impress the young these days.

My son has finished school about a month ago and will soon be starting college. Which would mean some homework, maybe a few college assignments. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel sheets, web browsing, emails, video chats and watching videos. That should be about it, right? So, I suggested we get something with an i3, i5 or Ryzen 5 (hexa-core) U-series processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 15.6-inch screen and a good display, ideally a full-HD IPS LCD. A fair number of such laptops are currently offered by manufacturers like Acer, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Dell and MSI, at prices ranging between Rs 35,000 to 45,000. Laptops with an IPS display are a bit more expensive than those with non-IPS displays but still cheaper than OLED displays.

What’s With the F***ing Loudspeakers?!?

One of the things I miss most from the past, from my growing up days in Lucknow, is… peace. Peace and quiet. I was born in Lucknow and spent a good 20 years in that city before moving out to Bareilly. And in those 20 years, we lived in four different houses, in different residentials areas across the city. And in all those years, wherever we lived, I don’t remember ever being subjected to loudspeakers. Not once. Sure, people still celebrated all festivals, happy new years, birthdays, anniversaries and… whatever else there may have been to celebrate. People celebrated with joy and enthusiasm and with a genuine sense of neighbourhood camaraderie. But without the noise. Without massive loudspeakers blaring out jarring music at earsplitting levels of volume. Without the incessant noise, which today makes me want to get the hell out of Delhi-NCR and move to some small, remote village somewhere up in the mountains of Himachal.

Flights of Fancy: My Imaginary 10 Watch Collection

I like interesting watches, mostly mid- to high-end Swiss watches. But when it comes to actual buying, all I can afford is watches from regular, mass-market brands. Companies like Casio, Seiko, Citizen and Timex. I have my reservations about Chinese watch brands, though some of them seem to be doing good work these days, producing great-looking watches with high levels of fit-and-finish, at very reasonable prices. Some names that come to mind are San Martin, Addiesdive, Boderry and Baltani. There’s also Pagani Design, though most of their watches are homages to some very well-known Swiss watches. And for those who are willing to pay more – much, much more – there’s CIGA Design and Behrens, whose watches cost about the same as some Omega or Rolex watches! In any case, some Chinese watch manufacturers are, today, producing watches that are quite spectacular. Watches that, say, a Titan probably can’t even dream of making today. But I’m not too sure if I’d actually want to wear any of those. I mean, I’d happily choose a bowl of Schezwan chicken fried rice (with some chicken chilli on the side) over raclette and Älplermagronen, but when it comes to watches, Swiss is the way to go.

So, if cost was not a limiting factor, which watches would I get? Well, the mind tends to wander all over the place when I think about that. I quite enjoy going to watch manufacturers’ websites, browsing through their collections and daydreaming. Almost all the watches that I like are far, far beyond my reach. But one can still dream, right? I mean, even if you can only buy a Maruti Alto, there’s nothing stopping you from logging on to the Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Bentley or Rolls-Royce website, going to the car configurator section and spending an hour or two there, speccing out your dream car exactly the way you want. It can be quite satisfying even if the whole thing ends right after you’ve finished configuring ‘your’ car, and you don’t actually ever buy it.

What if I did have enough money to buy whatever watch I wanted? What watches would I buy then? What watches would go into my imaginary 10-watch collection? In no particular order of preference, these are the 10 that I’d probably get.   

Looking to buy a Laptop: Hey RAM!

Getting a laptop that ticks all the boxes, at a price that fits your budget, isn't the easiest thing in the world. But as long as you know what exactly to look for, you should be okay

I was looking to buy a new smartphone in October last year and, at that time, wrote about how unexpectedly complex the selection process has become. This time around, I’m looking to buy a new laptop for my son, who’ll be going to college later this year. He happened to drop his laptop 2-3 months ago and one of its hinges is now broken, along with cracks in the bodywork and a cracked bezel. Repairable, yes, but repairs will be fairly expensive. Plus, other issues include a non-IPS LCD display that has very poor viewing angles, and poor battery backup. So, it’s time for this laptop to go and for us to buy a new one.

My son uses his laptop for many hours every day. Most of his school assignments are done on the laptop. And since he also runs a small NGO and is heavily involved with multiple other events and activities, there are online meetings, video chats, image and video editing work, making presentations, working on documents, and… you get the drift. The last time we bought a laptop for him – an Acer Extensa, powered by an Intel Core i3 N305 processor, along with just 8GB of RAM – it turned out to be a mistake. The Acer’s performance levels were quite okay – no complaints there – but its non-IPS LCD display turned out to be very bad. I had ordered the laptop online, on Amazon, and had no way of knowing in advance that the display on a 35,000-Rupee laptop could be so bad! I did try to return the laptop right away but Acer wouldn’t accept the return, saying that they won’t take it back since there was no actual ‘defect’ in it and that there was no ‘malfunction’ as such. Amazon India couldn’t help with this either and we were stuck with the damn thing.

Recommended Read: Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham

Close to four decades ago, NASA and the American space program faced one of their biggest setbacks ever. In January 1986, one of the two rocket boosters attached to the space shuttle Challenger sprung a leak and exploded. The explosion happened just 73 seconds after the shuttle had taken off and Challenger crashed into the Atlantic Ocean less than three minutes later, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was a disaster of epic proportions and one that was watched live, on television, by millions of Americans. The story of how – and why – this happened, has been told in bits and pieces in thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, and on many TV shows. But now we have Adam Higginbotham’s book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, which was published in 2024 and which is the full, deeply researched, comprehensive account of what really happened on that day in ’86 and how a multi-million-dollar piece of machinery fell apart due to sheer carelessness, apathy and incompetence of those involved. The book is an incisive piece of work, sharp and very well-written.

Sipani Badal Rides Again

The late-1970s Sipani Badal, at the INDEA booth, at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025

 

Okay, not really. I mean, the Sipani Badal isn’t really coming back in any shape or form. But for one glorious week, this three-wheeled plastic-fantastic from the ’70s had showgoers – at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025 – in its thrall. This was, mind, India’s premier automotive show, where car and motorcycle manufacturers were busy taking the covers off their latest, greatest electric vehicles that are all the rage these days. Swoopy, swanky styling, powerful electric motors, batteries that charge quickly and allow vehicles to be driver farther than ever before, and plush, luxurious cabins filled with high-tech electronics, ADAS and big touchscreens – that was the vision of mobility shown at this year’s Expo. And yet, amongst all this glitter and EV-glamour, the stone-simple Badal held its own, bringing happy smiles to the hundreds of people who visited the INDEA booth from 17^th to 22^nd January.