Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
November 2017
Who Can We Identify As An “Indian”?
Someone on the Internet responded to a rather contemplative question on who amongst Sonia Gandhi, Sundar Pichai, or Satya Nadella could be considered as ‘Indians’. But this individual’s answer extolled endlessly why Sonia Gandhi was an Indian but not the others who are business leaders on their own merits because today they’re Americans, also including some Nobel prize winners. I smiled because, in reality, I believe that they are all Indians! There’s always a broader perspective to such questions, but personally speaking, my understanding of this argument hangs on two parameters which pertain to ‘technical’ or ‘cultural’ viewpoints. Inasmuch as to call oneself belonging to a certain country relies strongly upon not just one’s nationality but also the genetic and cultural attributes, besides breeding a sense of pride in identifying ourselves with a certain country and culture regardless.
So technically, although she was born and raised in Italy Sonia Gandhi is truly an Indian national. In contrast, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella are culturally Indians by birth and by race but not by their nationalities. Therefore, countless persons like Pichai and Nadella, whether they have settled in the US or relinquished their Indian citizenship, their genetic & cultural identification remains ‘Indian’ so long as they exist, and subsequently, their future generations would continue to display the Indian lifestyle depending on how they have instilled the values. Coming back to the issue of ‘technicality’ on nationalism, there was some certainty that scores of ‘Non-Resident Indians’ would have willfully also continued as ‘Indian’ nationals if India had recognized dual citizenship status, which is not the case today for political or historical reasons. And instead, these NRIs are recognized as having an ‘Overseas Citizenship of India’ and given an OCI card which is beside the point.
Would you die down as an ‘Indian’ just for relinquishing your nationality? Or would you continue to identify yourself culturally & genetically as an ‘Indian’ too? I would dare to characterize an ‘Indian’ as someone who belongs to India by birth, but also identifies with, adopts, and nurtures the ethos of India with its rich tradition, moral fiber, and the respective regional cultural values, anywhere that he or she chooses to call a home. Eventually, I feel, it is not just the Pichais or the Nadellas who are subjected to circle through such an unwarranted controversy, and to put it plainly, so long as their heart yearns for their roots anyone should be okay with recognizing themselves as an “Indian”.
‘One Heart’ Is A Melodic Pilgrimage with AR Rahman
I have been an ardent fan of the Oscar-winning music composer AR Rahman since the ‘Roja’ days and I feel particularly sorry for admitting that I haven’t been to any of his live concerts! But all is not lost and I still have my hopes high. Meanwhile, I was privileged to watch a movie on his life and times through a concert called ‘One Heart – The AR Rahman Concert Film’. It’s a film for anyone who has missed the chance to experience a live performance.
The 90-minute documentary consists of footage from AR Rahman’s ‘The Intimate Concert Tour’ in which his cherry-picked 10-member band performed in 14 cities across the US. Though I could not ignore the fact that this movie appears to be produced as an afterthought by including additional footage, in the end, it was the music and the live performances that mattered. It revealed the maestro’s melodious journey through a rare interview of the legendary composer himself, how he engineers those tunes, his inspirations, and associations, etc., also a never-before-seen Rahman opening up on his personal life. The live band consists of AR Rahman himself, with Ranjit Barot (percussion), Annette Philip (jazz/vocals), Marie Calhoun (violin), Jonita Gandhi (from Toronto! Yaay!!) and Haricharan (vocals), Mohini De (bass guitar/prodigy), Keba Jeremiah (guitar), Devi Rani Najev (dancer), along with Shiraz Uppal, Sanket Athale, Ashwin Srinivasan, and more, most of whom you might have caught jamming on the MTV Unplugged (India) season. I imagine I may have missed a few names, but then again, the concert was very engrossing.
This November 7th Twitter announced it’s doubling the character limit from 140 to 280. It wasn’t that long when 140 characters seemed like a barrier as I typed my first notes in 2007. And as time flew, I accepted the challenge of emitting my views with limited use of words albeit using more tweets. In the process, I also became deft at using English terms. It was fun but that wasn’t the only thing I liked about the restraint of Twitter’s ABCs. Comprehending the emotions of my counterparts was also painless, whether a friend’s happy event, an unfortunate tragedy, or an outrage on some political news. I cannot ignore the diverse forms of outraging on Twitter with humour or insulting language and mindless obscenity. At times for good reasons, sometimes frivolous but mostly done for a harmless banter presumably. Regardless of the personal motives let’s applaud Twitter for doubling the characters. It’s a welcome change even if it increases the length of our tweets at least our views & interests would be communicated instantaneously and not in multiple pieces. Here’s to more tweeting with 280 then!
My take on moving from 140 to 280 chars on Twitter:
– It’ll take some time to read a tweet now.
– Although, it’ll take less tweets to state your views.
– And it’ll make it compelling for users to use all 280 chars.— Bhooshan Pandya (@Bhooshan) November 8, 2017
Goodbye, Dear Mint!
Last week, with a heavy heart, I removed the Mint Bird Feeder plugin from my site which effectively disconnected my site from providing ‘Mint’ the analytics for one final time. I was left with no choice and here’s why I did what I did.
I remember clearly, I was mesmerized by Mint when it was launched in the last decade. I’m talking about a pre-social media era where blogging was the absolute norm in reaching out to the world. But what seemed important to me was the analytics part. This was the time when Google had not yet launched their Analytics product which gave me raw numbers on page views, geographical visits, etc. I had other analytics software at my disposal which helped me feel the pulse of my audience and to gauge the popularity of my writing. So when Mint was developed and launched by Shaun Inman I bought the product without thinking over it twice.
Last week things started going downhill. I wasn’t able to log into my website Dashboard and I began to worry, that’s when I got in touch with Bluehost and asked them to take a look. It was found that the ‘Mint Bird Feeder’ plug-in was the root cause of the issue and they deactivated it pronto. I was aware that the product development of Mint has ceased with Shaun moving on to other ventures and I did not want to compromise the security of my site and so I removed it completely. Furthermore, the developer of the said plugin hadn’t updated it in over 2 years.
Quite frankly, I had a wonderful time with Mint and some third-party plugins (branded as ‘Peppermint’) as long as they lasted. Given the obvious vagaries of the programming world, I took up the challenge of installing Mint and succeeded, until Google Analytics came along and disrupted the fragmented web analytics product industry forever, in the process, creating an entirely new segment of ‘digital marketing’ and ‘SEO’! But I’ll always be thankful to Shaun for giving me an amazing product experience with Mint and Peppermill. Goodbye, and good luck!