Being Social

Apparently, 'Kolam' is a tribal community of around 2,00,000 people distributed between Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, who speak the Dravidian language, also called 'Kolam'. Being a Tamilian myself, yes, this was a new found information for me. And, no, I am not here to doodle about the Kolam tribes. Reputedly, 'Kolams' are a cultural phenomena of interlaced, complex dot and line paintings drawn using rice flour or chalk powder. These are painted at the entrance of the house, on cleaned and graded ground surface sprinkled with water mixed with cow dung. Yep! Two completely different meanings, all part of India. That's the amusingly admirable land of immeasurable diversity - a mini world within the world. Moving on, these latter Kolams are predominantly a cultural inheritance of the South of India. Its cultural variations in form and practice can be seen as Rangoli in other parts of India like Maharashtra, Delhi, etc. In the South,...

When I was doing my masters in London, in 2012, talks on 'Kindle' was there all around me. Most liked it. Many similar devices were introduced in the market, and were always compared with kindle. But for me, though the technology attracted me, I kind of became averse to the device for no reason. And in defence, I would use the haptic and simple but sophisticated attributes of ipad, the only Apple product that I truly like. But now in 2014, talks on kindle have again barged into my life, through my new office. Being a research based firm, anything that is handy and portable, which lets you read your research papers and books, is grabbed. And by chance, I get asked to read a book from one of the office kindles, for the book I had to read was not available in hard copy at my office. But, the kindle, reciprocating with its own aversion for me, makes itself unavailable for me to read from it. So then, I was asked to buy the book in my Kindle 'app'. Excuse my ignorance...