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Much has been talked about the recent move by Mr. Kapil Sibal, the Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, to screen the content on the Social media sites. The ministry has asked Google and Facebook to screen their content and remove any objectionable content. This move has already irked bloggers and social media addicts (especially youngsters) and like any sensitive issue the news channels are celebrating the moment by instilling spite and going after Mr. Sibal’s blood.

Well, I am not a big fan of Social Media blanket censorship or blind scrutinizing. Nor am I a blind supporter of the current union Government of India or its leaders. As an unbiased onlooker (plus a social media enthusiast and blogger), I personally believe that social media giants and content aggregators could take a lot more stringent steps to curb objectionable content on the web.

The plight of the current government

I do not know what type of content Mr. Sibal has asked Google and Facebook to screen and perhaps it is even possible that his censorship list mostly contain those anti-government campaigns or pages. But one thing I can clearly affirm is that, this is the first government that had to go through so much of online bashing because it’s during their tenure (first and second term, that is) that the social media boom took place and Facebook, Twitter etc came to existence. That’s pretty much the case with other governments worldwide as well. So it’s not that we are having a worst government in the history of India but the online media and new age television channels make things very obvious and sensitive. Going forward, you can expect even worse reaction and criticism on anything – even if the subsequent governments are good – because of the very viral nature of the social media content, especially the sensitive and spiteful content. And over-celebrating undesirable content is another characteristic of the social media – Example: a minister getting slapped by an individual, a public profile thrown a shoe at him, a parliament member dancing in her own party’s meet etc gets more spicier and viral on the social media sites.

That’s where the role of censorship or screening (choose the right word) comes into picture and I firmly believe that Mr. Kapil Sibal’s move comes at the right time. However, one has to form rules and regulations on media screening for long term regardless of which government is in charge. Hopefully we can arrive at such a set of rules without harming the freedom of speech (a buzz word very cleverly used by many for airing any bullshit)

Freedom of Speech and objectionable content

A lot of Indians believe that United States is the epitome of freedom of speech and less of regulations. Many people blindly adopt whatever norms any US companies come up with while taking on its own government on their policies. I would like to ask such hypocrites a few questions.

• USA recently banned Wikileaks for its objectionable content mainly taking on the US’s double standards itself. What do you think about it?
• Your own country’s map is flawed (without Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) in all maps published by Google and other international establishments? Why didn’t you ditch Google for that?
• You share your personal data with Facebook. Don’t you think a US company with the intention of building the personal data collection of all the people on earth could misuse the same for other purposes?
• Forget the USA. Do you know that Scotland Yard had banned several hundred facebook pages of anti-government protestors in UK earlier this year?

The crux is that, as a sovereign government, we could ask any foreign operator to be careful with what kind of sensitive data that they spread within the cyber space and I do not doubt the government’s intention at that. If you want to know about the kind of censorship rules that USA has please read this article on Internet censorship in the United States. Unfortunately, our legislation is yet to form good enough rules (and enforce the same) when it comes to cyber stalking. Well, we have a few guidelines and articles from the constitution but nothing yet against the kind of things that are happening now. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to screen content, to begin with, if not total monitoring and censoring which is not 100% possible.

What type of content should be screened?

Regardless of Mr. Sibal’s list, in my view, the following are the kind of content that has to be screened for in India.

Character assassination and obscenity is something that people have been exercising without any limits on social media. This includes attack on public personalities, their personal life and even doctored pictures of their family members.

Content that hurt people’s religious or regional sentiments: I get to see a lot of these things on Facebook. I sometimes do not understand why people are so insensitive to people from other religions and their sentiments.

Plagiarism: Unfortunately, blogging has become more of a business than writing itself and we get to see a lot of plagiarism in the blogosphere and content generation space. It would be great if companies like Google can do a lot more about arresting plagiarism than just tapping into the opportunity of creating more indexed content and boast about those numbers.

Software and media piracy: Pirated content spread faster on social media sites – thanks to its viral nature. Don’t we need to stop this?

Child access to bad content: How many of you parents have been successful in restricting kids’ access to adult and obscene content? Have you ever invested in a good parental lock software? Do you know if your under-13 child is accessing Facebook that he or she’s not supposed to?

Anti-government campaigns: Please don’t misunderstand me here. I am NOT a Indian National Congress member nor do I blindly vote for that flag. And in the democratic system we have the RIGHT to protest when things don’t go the right way. However, it is my belief that a democratically elected government must be allowed to operate instead of using the viral media to driving spiteful campaigns against them. By anti-government campaigns, I didn’t mean some valid scenarios like the Jan Lokpal campaign but I am talking about those campaign that take on the government for each and everything that they are trying to do. Unfortunately, the current opposition as well as the smaller allies within the government itself seems to be always on a blackmailing mode. It is a very bad precedence and need to be taken very seriously in the context of what’s spreading in a viral fashion across news channels and social media. Basically, we are defaming our own democracy at times. As I said, it’s absolutely fine to protest but not with the kind of foul language nor taking on the politicians family members or even their private parts (believe me, I have seen real nasty comments!)

Objectionable activities: On top of screening the content, there are number of activities that happen over the Internet which is banned by law in India. One example, I can think of is earning foreign currency via online activities and never paying taxes for the money earned. The other activities include online forex trading, gambling etc which is banned by law. There are quite a number of people who are doing such illegal activities that need to be curbed. There are even more dangerous online activities such as fake viral marketing and money chain schemes.

Well, that was my view on what the government should be doing in terms of screening the online social activities. Nobody is talking about a complete social media censorship like what China is doing but some amount of restrictions are good for all, I believe! By the way, it is not only the social media that needs to be controlled but some of our sensational news channels as well. All of you may recall how our sensitive live television coverage on the Mumbai terrorist attack actually helped the terrorist to kill more people and fight longer.

Have a good and safe social life! And trust me, if your thoughts are good, you don’t need to be monitored by anybody. Finally, don’t misinterpret the Freedom of Speech!

We have some amazing Live news channels in India – The likes of NDTV24×7, TIMES NOW, IBN-LIVE to name a few.

As an old timer having grown up seeing the Doordarshan News, I must say that I am glad to see some of those refreshing changes in these NewGen news channels such as the advancements in technology to get the news to you earlier, rendering it in a graphical way that people understand and some lively and visibly excited people reading the news.

However, all the above mentioned positive changes are good only if every NEWS item is assigned the right priority it deserves and delivered to viewers at the right time, quantity and optimum duration – i.e. in a way that doesn’t cause people eye fatigue, hearing loss or increased blood pressure. Also, the way the TV news reader tells the news matter a lot along with how many times the same thing is told. You don’t need to really sensationalize each and every incident like rapes or killings or theft on a national channel. And my dear news reader, you don’t become a national hero by calling politicians (however dirty he is) liars or by other bad words. You can still talk about it because it is a fashion to pick on bureaucrats and politicians and such news will always sell – but the same things said 1000 times don’t make sense. Another important point is that news items need to be delivered in a way that helps people understand it in a relaxed manner. That way, I still love DD News though their news readers could consume a little more of Revital or ‘Dabur Chyavanprash’ on a regular basis.

Coming back to our topic on how some of these 24×7 news channels go about their business…

Dear TV journalist, I know you are smart but your aim should not be to twist and stretch facts that don’t deserve even 30 seconds of your time (and millions people’s too) to 3 or 4 hours or even days until the next small thing happens.

I know your salary is depending on the TRP (Target Rating Point) of the crappy channel that you work for but at the end of the day there’s something called ethics in life (and journalism). Do you have that in you or even heard of it?

I am amazed at the way you have covered the arrest of our great public servant Amar Singh. While the fact that your scrolling texts haven’t changed significantly for the last two days annoys me, I still feel like ROFLing the way you dig out BIG things out of small time incidents. Well, Amar Singh’s arrest is not exactly too small a news but it doesn’t deserve 2 billion man days attention i.e. (2 days x 1 billion people in India)

The Great NDTV News TAMASHA

This is one of the big news items that I got to see on your channel for the past two days in the order of appearance. I am sorry, some text may not be literally exact same but I am sure I saw similar text on your channel.

Scroll news text and zoom effect on NDTV

…

Amar Singh not arrested yet >>… (for 6 hours) >>

Amar may be soon arrested >> … (Are you working with CBI to grab him?) >>

BREAKING NEWS (in a while loop for 20000 times) >> Amar Singh arrested >> (Thank god, CBI folks got clues from you…)

BREAKING NEWS Amar Singh arrested, sent to Tihar jail >> (Thought you said that crap five hours back, is he breaking down there? )

Amar Singh may be put into jail 1, 2 or 5 >> (Yeah, we know the Tihar jail geography very well like you do. Amazing information by the way) >>

Amar Singh lodged in 15×10ft cell (Thanks for the 15×10 land. Did your father pay for that? Or was it part of the land that Yeddyurappa denotified just before he was kick-butted-out. You never know, but I am sure you can cook up a story out of that…)

…

It’s not over yet…

Now, the whole crap has to be somehow linked to the Anna effect and what Shakkeela tweeted about this incident. In addition, two or three Page 3 celebrities need to be interviewed on this topic and they can surely compare it with the recent very bad and torturing personal experience that they went through which was related to corruption (For example, they asked for an SPF15 sunscreen in their favorite lady shop but the corrupt shop owner stocked up and provided only SPF14 substandard Indian product. Now they are forced to shop for that in Milan or New York when they travel abroad next week). The celebrity in a closure remark comes back to Amar Singh and swears that nothing will change in India.

The online portal – the domain name of which, by the way, should have been po*ndtv.com or something like that – supports the TV news well with titles like ‘Who is Amar Singh?’, ‘The Amar Singh Saga‘, ‘Amar Singh arrested, but questions remain‘ with ‘Poonam Pandey showing everything video‘ link in between.

Get a life people! Is this what people like Prannoy Roy founded and promoted? The Prannoy Roy whom I knew was a different type of journalist and psephologist.

…and they wait for the next news item…

Evening Debate Edition

The day is almost over but the steam behind the breaking news isn’t yet. So the same scroll news, breaking news and views now need to appear on the evening edition or the infamous Debate circus on these national TV channels.

In the live debate, the inclusion of smart spokespersons from BJP and Congress is a MUST along with a couple of individuals like Santosh Hegde or Kiran Bedi. To get the views from across the national boundary, you can think of including a Colonel from Pakistani Army as well to get his views on democracy in Pakistan regardless of the topic of discussion (Though he will keep swearing ‘Kashmir.. Kashmir…’ through the length with his voice intentionally cut off in between with fake technical problems)

The topic could be anything from cash for votes, Sonia going abroad for surgery to Venkiah Naidu’s recent gas trouble issues or How loud Devegowda farts while sleeping in the Parliament. These spokesmen have to make their statements for NDTV or TIMESNOW and keep fighting in between and throwing mud at each other for an hour. At the end of it Bark-a-Dutt or Carnage-Dog-swamy has the last laugh because they ruthlessly cut them off and say ‘THAT IS IT, THANKS GENTLEMEN’ and the conclusion is ‘SO AND SO and I KNOW THAT’ (Though the her/his version of the conclusion is nowhere related to what the guests said or our neighbor guest shouted)

Oh, I almost forgot, they have to take opinion from the good-for-none Left party leaders as well. And one paid statement of Digvijay Singh is mandatory to add to the comedy and spice part of it (and to differentiate between the IQ levels of humans and donkeys) – just like ESPN hires Navjyot Sidhu, that is. Since the show is TRP driven, it’s mandatory that the channel people talk for 90 percent of the time and cut others’ views. If the host has nothing to say they keep saying ‘fair enough, fair enough’ or get a ‘Kalmadi angle’ to the whole issue. At that time some dramatic titles should appear on the screen in bold – something like ‘GET A LIFE, MR. KALMADI’ or ‘LIAR KALMADI’ – especially on TIMESNOW)

…and the next morning…

Fortunately or unfortunately there is another bomb blast somewhere that blew away Amar Singh and now there’s a high TRP opportunity for the next one week.

Wonder if these blasts are sponsored by terrorists or TRP driven channel terrorists…

/me ROFLMAOing hysterically and throws a hammer at the newly purchased plasma TV…

RangDe.org is a non-profit organization that focuses on providing Microloans (aka Microcredits) to the needy Indians living in village places to setup their small business thereby improving their lives. It is an amazing concept that works instantly the moment you decide to be part of the same. Just imagine the feeling of helping a poor family from a remote village of Jharkhand or Orissa or Kerala or Manipur or other states. What a satisfying experience!. That’s what RangDe facilitates while protecting your investment – Yes, it’s not like giving away money to Charity but you know the recipient of your little loan and be part of their success story.

What is MicroCredit?

Microcredit refers to the lending of smaller amounts of money at very low interest rates to new small business ventures, typically in the developing countries like India. In our context, the loan amount is usually in the range of Rs.5,000 to 10,000. The microcredit concept was actually popularized by the Grameen Bank – the bank of the poor – that was founded by the Nobel prize laureate and economist Mr. Mohammad Yunus from Bangladesh.

Refer to this Grameen Bank page for more details.

The microcredit concept has been spreading across the developing world since mid seventies and this is exactly the context under which RangDe operates.

How RangDe works?

RangDe.org collects the loan amount via smaller social investments (Rs.100 onwards) from Indian citizens (and those who are staying abroad) are provided to your selected borrower from poor village families with the help of NGOs in their respective states. You can search for a borrower from the list and make a small social investment of your choice to that particular borrower via online banking, credit card or cheque. So if a particular borrower needs 7500 rupees to renovate his kinaara shop or buy a goat, there may be several individuals contributing to that cause.

Once the required amount is collected, the NGO passes it over to the borrower. The borrower then has to pay back the loan, typically in one year, to the NGO who deposits the same back in the RangDe account. Basically you get back your social investment typically over one year and also receive a small interest of 2%. You can opt to forgo that for further social causes – that is up to you. Since, RangDe scheme has a repayment rate of almost 100%, you are guaranteed to get back your investment that you can withdraw anytime to your bank account. Sounds amazing right?

The typical interest rate charged to the borrower is 8.5% off which 5% goes to the state level NGO, 2% to you as an investor, 1% to RangeDe.org for their operational costs and 0.5% for contingencies.

The concept is working very well so far since RangDe.org became operations in 2008. For further details you can visit RangDe.org

Who is in need of your Social Investment?

If you want to know the typical borrowers that are listed online on the RangDe microcredit site, check out the following pictures (click to enlarge).

 

…and now what prevents you from making a small investment to help a fellow citizen in need?

Visit RangDe.org Now and Pledge your Support!

 

 

Well, you must have seen numerous Only in India photos and videos on the Internet. This little post is around the same topic but more specific to funny naming conventions and strange names of people and establishments in India. Since I haven’t traveled too much around India, I may not know a lot about the North and Eastern parts and hence the content may be more relevant to South India alone.

Names of establishments

In India, funny restaurant names are the easiest to spot regardless of where you travel. The following are a few that I have encountered.

Brothers Hotel

Sometimes branded as Hotel Brothers or even Hotel Brothers International, this is not exactly a ‘Hotel’ but more of a small time restaurant or tea shop. ‘Hotel’ in the Indian village or town context means ‘Restaurant’. You can see this ‘Brothers’ brand many parts in India. It’s not a chain of restaurants but just preferred name. And the funniest thing is that ‘many of them are not even run by brothers or siblings’.

Bhaskaran & Sons Jewellery

What’s funny or wrong about it? Nothing, unless you learn that it’s started by a person by name Bhaskaran who is still a bachelor who doesn’t have any son. Adding ‘& Sons‘ to the display board is more for style than for the literal meaning itself. The board would additionally display ‘Proprietor: T.P Bhaskaran‘ and if it’s in Tamil Nadu, probably, ‘ Prop: T.P Bhaskaran, BA‘.

(Fortunately they don’t add more qualifiers to it such as ‘BA First class’ or something like that)

Common names for restaurants around South India include ‘Bharat Hotel’, ‘Sreekrishna Cafe’ and after a coat of painting during Diwali sometimes one of them suddenly becomes ‘New Bharat Hotel‘. Well, there are plenty such popular names for restaurants. Would you like to add more?

Chicken and Poultry shops

One of my villagers (in Kerala) that I know, Mr. Lonappan – a fisherman by profession – decided to setup a poultry shop as he thought broiler chicken business is more profitable than selling fishes. After consulting his ‘educated’ and jobless friends he arrived at a very cool name for his chicken stall and that was ‘Asiatic Chickorium‘. Obviously his fishing background helped inventing that amazing word that rhymed ‘Aquarium‘.

While Lonappan was lucky to have ‘educated’ friends to help him, his counterpart in Mahadevapura, Bangalore wasn’t that lucky. This person had to depend on the knowledge of the sign board artiste to arrive at a small board for his chicken stall that read ‘Chikan Stale‘!

I think the same artist is the creative mind behind ‘Kentaki Fryed Chikan‘ pull cart shop in Majestic, Bangalore. Sounds really majestic, huh?

More examples of impressive shop names include the ‘pancher shop‘ that I mentioned in a recent article, ‘Toylat – Gents‘, Chines fast food – all in and around Bangalore and a ‘Panjapi Dhaba‘ near Selam in Tamil Nadu.

Names of people

When it comes to the names of people, I know that most Punjabis prefer English names and most Andhrites, who move to their dream land (USA), change their long names to beautiful 3 and 4 letter American short names as soon as they land. However, I think nobody can beat Keralites when it comes to the most innovative names that you can’t even think of.

The funniest names are usually girls’ names most of which sounds like ‘- i – i‘ or ‘- o – i‘ or ‘- i – y‘ and you can mix and match those empty spaces with any consonant or an array of consonants. Some of the names that I have heard of include the following:

Kikki, Titti, Litti, Sisi, Mimi, Lighty, Booby – obviously they didn’t think about (or didn’t know) their meanings when the naming ceremony took place.

And innovative name for Malayali boys will typically end with ‘ju’ or ‘jo’ – Liju, Siju, Lijo, Sijo, Lyjo, Ijo,…

Mostly this naming convention is prevailing among Christians in Kerala but other communities are catching up well with these kinds of names and aren’t far behind.

Not sure that there’re such naming conventions in other parts of India, if so please do share your opinions.

Note: Please note that my intention here is not to hurt any individual or community. As a matter of fact, I have many good friends with one or the other of the above mentioned names or their variations

That much for now!

As I age, I get a feeling that I am becoming more and more nostalgic about the simple life, limited number of options and opportunities that were present, good food, clean environment, closer interactions with people and less of noise and emissions that electronic-mechanical machines cause. The recent trip to my hometown has already made me even more wistful, in fact. However, ‘change’ is must for the humanity to progress and …sigh… I have to live with the present.

As for my childhood to college life, I have so many things to share some of which was mentioned in a recent post on this blog. Today’s post is about some of those great brands and products that have been part of our lives during the 70s and 80s. Of course, some of them are still being produced and sold but have transformed for good while many of them have been discontinued. Here are the things that I am talking about:

1. Parry’s Green hard candy

Unfortunately I do not have a picture of this but I am sure anybody in their 30s and 40s must have eaten whole lot of them during their childhood. These candies – known as ‘Green Parry’ (‘Paccha pyaari’ in Malayalam) – was among the four or five wrapped candy options that we had at that time apart from those local made ‘uncovered’ ones. I remember, Parry’s competitor Nutrine introducing an imitation of the same several years later.

The Parry’s Confectionery ltd company was taken over by ‘Lotte ’several years back and this particular product has been discontinued since then, I believe.

2. Hero Pens

As far as I am concerned, this is the ONLY Made in China product that I have ever liked in my whole life and it was my first Chinese experience as well. Unlike today’s children, we never got to use the ball point pens until the age of 12 (or sixth grade) on account of ‘bad hand writing’ resulting from ball point pens. Most of us started our writing with cheaper ‘Bismi’ or ‘Jubilee’ fountain pens and then progressed to using the Hero Pens (fondly called ‘Heero pena’ In Malayalam. Many of us in fact get to use it only for exams – for some not until the SSLC examination – and it was indeed a super smooth experience to use them. Mostly people used to get these pens as gifts from those who worked in the Gulf countries but later on they were available in shops for Rs.25 or so in stationery shops.

The hero pens were cool due to their smooth quality of writing and the ability to fill ink via a cool press-suction operation. Old time pens had to be filled via direct pouring of the ink and we used to end up having the ink spilled on the floor as well as on our shirts.

As I moved to college, the Hero pen gave way to Pilots, Parkers and Sheaffers but the Hero fountain pen was always my hero!

3. Happy T-shirts

Now, this one is tricky and probably only Malayalis will understand what I am talking about. During those days mostly there would be at least one Keralite from every other household working in the Gulf countries (Generalized as ‘Persia’) and they make a visit once in every four or five years. At that time, everyone in the family – to the n’th relationship level – neighborhood and the village need to be gifted something or other. Cigarettes, cheap perfume sprays and synthetic clothe material or saris that will last beyond five generations were some of the cheaper options to keep everyone happy. Among these gifts, the kids usually gets the so-called “Happy T-shirt” which is nothing but a round neck T-shirt made of cheap synthetic fabric and a big H A P P Y written on it in a semi circle. We kids were, indeed, very happy to get them as gifts and would proudly wear them till they wore out. Those who wear Happy Tees were identified as the Gulf fellow’s son or relative.

(Several years later somebody revealed to me that a dozen of them would cost only something like 5 Dirhams or so and that’s how the poor Gulf Malayali could afford to buy them for everyone of our age group in that village. By the way, I do not know the actual the brand name of this T-shirt but it was always known as Happy shirt)

4. Chelpark Ink

Of course, the usage of fountain pen would mean daily refill of ink in the same. When we were in fourth or fifth grade, we used cheaper “Brill” or “Camel” brand of ink. At that time my father was using a Sheaffer’s pen and he used to buy this blue-black ink by Chelpark. It was super quality ink for the Indian standards and I believe it’s still being produced in India. However, the original wide-bottom glass bottle is missing now.

I used the Chelpark ink for several years, I would say till I got my first job but had totally forgotten about it until my co-brother Manoj reminded me of that brand last week. In fact, that was the inspiration behind this post.

5. Camel instrument box

The camel brand of math instrument box is no brainer. Camel is still a leading brand in India for stationery and art-craft supplies. However, during our school days it was something big and getting a Camel box was an ultimate achievement in one’s otherwise limited wish list. Some of us get them during fifth or sixth grade and had to use the same till you pass out of 10th standard. Many times, the original paper sleeve wrapper around the box would be preserved intact for many years in order to protect the precious box from losing any of its print work on the surface.

For those who couldn’t afford to spend two rupees more, there were brands like ‘Nataraj’ and the twin-brother of Camel was the ‘Camlin’ brand of instrument boxes.

6. Premier rubber slippers

Lungis and Dhotis were the perfect clothing (and it still is for many) for Malayalis due to the sultry climate conditions and rains aplenty. The perfect footwear that goes with them was a pair of ‘Premier’ rubber slippers. I believe, I am recalling the name right because before brands like ‘Paragon’, ‘Fisher’ etc surfaced, it was all about Premier Hawai chappals. I am attaching a picture of the currently available Paragon slippers to give you an idea of how Premier looked like. But I guess, Premier brand is not available any more.

Talking about these Hawai chappals, most Malayalis wore them to school, colleges or even to work. And like their ultra white dhotis (Mundu), these slippers used to be maintained ultra clean was well. The jobless and educated mallu’s main hobby – apart from discussing international politics and Hartal or Bandh opportunities – those days was cleaning own slippers not just from the top but from sides and bottom as well.

I have used this brand of slippers for many years and I still have a pair of Paragon at home.

7. Murphy radios

Now, this should ring the bell for all because many Indian families must have had one such Murphy or Philips vintage radio until recently. These were known as ‘valve sets’ which requires quite some skill to tune it to the right frequency and several precautions for proper maintenance. Many of the featured a green dancing light valve that can be seen outside and moves according to the tuning procedure. The frequency needle – mostly sitting at a centimeter or two away from the actual frequency numbers and usually dangling – had to be carefully positioned to get the right radio station and its position usually is not the same when you tune from left as compared to the right. Basically only the owner of the radio and most likely only the elder male member of the family could tune it to perfection.

These radios also had external antenna fittings and sometimes sporting a long mesh antenna – stretching from one end of the house to the other – was considered something royal. Due to issues in tuning or reception, most of the radio stations then used to sound like the distant Ceylon station. The cold starts used to be almost impossible and needed some heating via incandescent bulbs and occasional taps (out of frustration as well) on its wooden cabinet. Usually to listen to the 12:50 noon news (called Delhi news), one had to start preparing at around 12:30 itself.

Despite all the above issues, it was fun to see and listen to such a Murphy radio. And I almost forgot to mention the Murphy logo which had a sweet baby’s face.

Does anyone still have a vintage radio at your home?

8. Dyanora TV sets

Now, these are not really very old entities but it was the first Indian television brand that I got to watch (at my neighbour’s place). I believe it was in 1980 or so? These Dyanora TVs (black and white) used to be thrice as big as its picture tube itself with two speakers on either side and sliding shutters that would close from both sides. It had pathetic design aesthetics but who cares when the transmission itself is available for only one or two hours per day – that too in black and white and with full of interruptions (Rukaavat ke liye khed hai!)

Though I never ever liked Dyanora as a brand, I think it was one of the household names during those days and I remember it as the first TV I ever watched.

9. Vijay Super Scooter

Well, in a comment within my post about the Bajaj Chetak Scooter, I had mentioned about the Vijay super scooter. I learned riding on a Vijay super which is a discontinued model for years now. It was in fact something that looked like a Lamby and would run on a half-petrol half-kerosene mix. Though, this combination meant starting trouble and occasional ‘fut-phut’ sounds, I always remember it as the first geared two-wheeler I have ridden in my life not to forget the Luna moped which I had tried prior to that.

10. Tinopal

Now, how many of you can guess what it was? Tinopal (later it became Ranipal) was one of the clothe whitening agents (like Ujala) that I have seen my mother using during my childhood. It always amazed me because a drop of it was good enough for a bucketful of white clothes to make it surprisingly sparkling and smelling good. Its fragrance was similar to that of the modern fabric conditioners but I believe it was far superior. Sometimes, I just don’t understand why such brands were discontinued.

By the way, I managed to Google out this newspaper ad announcing the brand name change – Tinopal to Ranipal

Over to you

I am sure all of you have plenty to talk about those retro brands. I still have many in my list but some of them that I haven’t directly consumed or experienced.

Let me know if you have any pleasant memories to share about those products/brands that you have seen, used or experienced 20 or 30 years (or even before) back!