Who says Indian eCommerce is yet to kickoff? I say it's already kicking asses, however on receiving end is the Indian consumer! To help Indian consumer come of reluctant mode and start spending freely, shopping sites of India are offering huge discounts, gifts, offers and cash-backs. Up to 50% cash-back across range of products. But... all the cash backs are virtual. The schemes are tailored in a way that either you get zero discount or you end up spending almost six times of the cash back value.
I am a regular at IndiaPlaza.in. I like the site for price research. The items sold on their sites are all grey-market ones but the prices are in sync with street prices of 100% genuine products with bill-warranty. While looking for a washing machine on the site, I came across a banner that shouted '20% cash-back on all items except air-tickets.' I have always been highly wary of IndiaPlaza's offers but this banner amused me and I clicked it to read terms and conditions. There were a hell lot of conditions but the most primary one is "The cash-back will be given in form of gift-certificates. The Cash back gift certicates will be in the following denominations: Rs.100/-, Rs.200/-, Rs.300/-, Rs. 500/-. Example: The 400/- GC may come to you as two Rs.200/- GCs or One Rs.200/- GC and 2 Rs.100/- GCs."
Sounds good so far? But here is the catch. I I buy a washing machine worth 20,000 rupees and get a cash-back worth 4,000 rupees, they will send me a whole bunch of gift certificates ranging in 100-500 rupees (I am sure Rs.100 gift certificates will dominate). Now, as a policy, you cannot use two gift certificates to buy one item on IndiaPlaza (it's not written in the terms and conditions but I know this). It means you are left with numerous gift certificates of 100-200 rupees which you either cannot use at all or if you use, you will end up paying much more. What a creative sales-strategy!
But wait, yesterday I happened to visit IndiaTimes and to my horror, it too have the similar offer going on. Two changes, though: 1. You get 50% cash back!!! and 2. In terms and conditions it's mentioned that gift certificates are nonmergable and must be redeemed before 31st March.
So, we have two nominations for 'Shameless Cheater of India 2009' award. And both are too close.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Hunt for a perfect cellphone goes on
My SE K750i started creating problems in terms of joystick malfunctioning around three months ago. Before it goes worse and the phone becomes unusable, let's buy a new phone, I thought. I never knew that the search of a perfect phone is going to be worse than earlier. I was looking for a business phone this time... er... in fact still am.
Preferences are (in descending order): Very good web-browser, full QWERTY keyboard, non-buggy OS, effective push email support, contacts sync, 2-day battery backup with a little overuse and GPS. Yes, GPS is the only fancy feature that I wish to have in my next mobile phone.
I had short-listed BlackBerry Curve 8310, iPhone 3G and HTC Dream (Google G1). Curve being the cheapest and iPhone the costliest. It seems very easy comparison at the moment and it looks like that coming up with a winner is not a difficult task. But it became difficult as time passed on and as more and more options started coming in.
Blackberry Curve 8310 has great battery life, excellent email service, good keyboard, OS and everything else that I was looking for in a phone, except my top priority i.e. good web browser. Then I came to know about Curve 8900 coming to India. It was a better phone than the 8310 but had similar web browsing experience. Blackberry Storm was better at this but turned out to be one of the worst Blackberry phones every existed. My bad luck! I ruled out Blackberry Curve 8310, 8900, Bold and Storm. Another reason not for going with BB at the moment is the fact that I don't want to shell out about 1200 rupees per month for BB services. I don't roam around (I do but I am in office or at home most of the time), going for BB seemed like a waste of money. Bye bye Blackberry. See you later!
Rajeev has an iPhone 3G and I love it for its web browsing experience. But it has bad battery life and it's expensive! Rs.31,000 for a phone is a little too much for me!
I hated Google G1. It looked like a phone from stone-age. But as I kept researching about the Android platform and its capabilities, I fell in love with it. It is coming for about 21,000 rupees, if someone you know in USA can bring it to India for you. I could have bought it if the phone looked like a full-fledged working device. Android is evolving and the phone is yet to go where it should be. No donut for me here either. But anyways, my next phone would be an Android, G1, G2 or whatever.
Preferences are (in descending order): Very good web-browser, full QWERTY keyboard, non-buggy OS, effective push email support, contacts sync, 2-day battery backup with a little overuse and GPS. Yes, GPS is the only fancy feature that I wish to have in my next mobile phone.
I had short-listed BlackBerry Curve 8310, iPhone 3G and HTC Dream (Google G1). Curve being the cheapest and iPhone the costliest. It seems very easy comparison at the moment and it looks like that coming up with a winner is not a difficult task. But it became difficult as time passed on and as more and more options started coming in.
Blackberry Curve 8310 has great battery life, excellent email service, good keyboard, OS and everything else that I was looking for in a phone, except my top priority i.e. good web browser. Then I came to know about Curve 8900 coming to India. It was a better phone than the 8310 but had similar web browsing experience. Blackberry Storm was better at this but turned out to be one of the worst Blackberry phones every existed. My bad luck! I ruled out Blackberry Curve 8310, 8900, Bold and Storm. Another reason not for going with BB at the moment is the fact that I don't want to shell out about 1200 rupees per month for BB services. I don't roam around (I do but I am in office or at home most of the time), going for BB seemed like a waste of money. Bye bye Blackberry. See you later!
Rajeev has an iPhone 3G and I love it for its web browsing experience. But it has bad battery life and it's expensive! Rs.31,000 for a phone is a little too much for me!
I hated Google G1. It looked like a phone from stone-age. But as I kept researching about the Android platform and its capabilities, I fell in love with it. It is coming for about 21,000 rupees, if someone you know in USA can bring it to India for you. I could have bought it if the phone looked like a full-fledged working device. Android is evolving and the phone is yet to go where it should be. No donut for me here either. But anyways, my next phone would be an Android, G1, G2 or whatever.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Back to square one!
Had started blogging with Blogger a couple of years ago. Moved on to use WordPress, hosted my blog on my own site and now I am back to Blogger all over again!
I like WordPress but I am sort of forced to use Blogger all over again. My previous web setup was a complete mess. I had hosted my website www.banwarilalsharma.com with a Chennai-based web-hosting company called Silicon House. It was a budget-hosting, I understand. I accepted the fact that it was a bit slow and the servers were down more frequently than they should. Everything was going good until one fine day when I tried to open my site and came back an empty page saying 'Cannot Find Server'. I thought the server is done. Tried the next day, next week, next month (yes, I am this lazy!). The same result everytime. I got curious and tried logging in to the control panel. I was shocked to know that I have no hosting. It looked like that the bunch of fools had erased the server hard-drive or something. My MySQL database was gone, all the static pages were gone. It took me a couple of months of email discussions with them to know that nothing can be done. My blog is gone!
Thanks to Blogger, I had around 35 posts saved in the control panel (before switching to WordPress). I could recover rest of the posts through archive.org (thanks to you as well). I am back to Blogger once again, until I find a better solution provider and some time to experiment again. :-)
I like WordPress but I am sort of forced to use Blogger all over again. My previous web setup was a complete mess. I had hosted my website www.banwarilalsharma.com with a Chennai-based web-hosting company called Silicon House. It was a budget-hosting, I understand. I accepted the fact that it was a bit slow and the servers were down more frequently than they should. Everything was going good until one fine day when I tried to open my site and came back an empty page saying 'Cannot Find Server'. I thought the server is done. Tried the next day, next week, next month (yes, I am this lazy!). The same result everytime. I got curious and tried logging in to the control panel. I was shocked to know that I have no hosting. It looked like that the bunch of fools had erased the server hard-drive or something. My MySQL database was gone, all the static pages were gone. It took me a couple of months of email discussions with them to know that nothing can be done. My blog is gone!
Thanks to Blogger, I had around 35 posts saved in the control panel (before switching to WordPress). I could recover rest of the posts through archive.org (thanks to you as well). I am back to Blogger once again, until I find a better solution provider and some time to experiment again. :-)
Monday, May 19, 2008
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
This time I broke all my previous records. I took over six months to finish Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I would blame my busyness (this isn’t a word) for this. The only time I could give to reading was when I was traveling. It took me two journeys to my native place to finish the novel. I may blame bad air/rail/road connectivity for so many things but for reading, it was a boon. The over twenty-hour (one way) journey gave me a chance to read this masterpiece.
As far as busyness is concerned, it’s obvious. Career is moving fast and it’s taking its toll in terms of my time. I leave office building every evening but I am unable to leave ‘office’. It has come to my bedroom now and has left me with no choice to do anything else. Maybe this is what happens with everyone, right? So, no complaints here. Anyways, this is supposed to be A Fine Balance’s review, right? Let’s start. :)
The novel is all about lives of four characters i.e. Dina Dalal, a widow in mid-fifties, Maneck Kohlah, a young, under-graduate student, Ishwar Darji, a cobbler-turned-tailor, never-married, mid-fifties man and Omprakash Darji (or Om), a tailor and Ishwar’s nephew. Dina Dalal has been living in Bombay since her birth. Maneck comes to Bombay for higher studies. Ishwar and Om made Bombay a home in hope of good jobs and better livings. If I say anything more than this about the characters, I would end up revealing something that you would regret to know before reading the novel. Despite being entirely different from one another, they come close in very bizarre circumstances.
I find A Fine Balance as very close to Premchand’s Godan in terms of brutality of one’s fate, the society and the system. Just like Godan, in this novel, there seems to be no end to the problems of the common man. To me, A Fine Balance looks like a revisit to the world depicted in Godan by the great Premchand. Godan is a pre-independence novel and mainly shows the problems associated with the lives of villagers. Rohinton’s A Fine Balance too moves around the same problems but it extends further and shows the condition of common man in the more brutal Bombay. The novel proves that nothing has changed in the last 100 years. The country, the people and the problems, all are the same.
The novel covers a vast set of problems that persisted in India in 1970’s. The novel makes us go to the roots of well-known (and still persisting) problems like caste system, unemployment, poverty and corruption to specific problems of 70s like problems emerged because of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi. There are several examples in the novel that tell us how systems are made for betterment of things but end up ruining them. One such example set in novel is, the Gandhi government encouraged family planning for controlling the emerging population. But this didn’t do any good to the most, rather it ruined lives of many. Mostly young, unmarried or elderly people were forced to go for the nasbandi program.
Despite of the lengthy descriptions of the characters and events, Rohinton Mistry was able to keep me involved. Curiosity was always on extreme. Due to less but prominent characters, I was able to recall them without any confusion, even after an interval of three months. The only thing I regretted reading this novel was the kind of stress it gave me. Every event mentioned in the novel made me go deep into the situation, maybe because I have seen quite similar events in my own life or in lives of people around. Another positive point about this novel was its connection with Parsi culture (apart from Maneck Kohlah and Dina Dalal, there are several Parsi characters in the novel). Being a Parsi, Rohinton Mistry was able to beautifully describe the Parsi culture.
I give full marks to this highly tragic novel. A must read if you can bear all the stress it will give to you.
As far as busyness is concerned, it’s obvious. Career is moving fast and it’s taking its toll in terms of my time. I leave office building every evening but I am unable to leave ‘office’. It has come to my bedroom now and has left me with no choice to do anything else. Maybe this is what happens with everyone, right? So, no complaints here. Anyways, this is supposed to be A Fine Balance’s review, right? Let’s start. :)
The novel is all about lives of four characters i.e. Dina Dalal, a widow in mid-fifties, Maneck Kohlah, a young, under-graduate student, Ishwar Darji, a cobbler-turned-tailor, never-married, mid-fifties man and Omprakash Darji (or Om), a tailor and Ishwar’s nephew. Dina Dalal has been living in Bombay since her birth. Maneck comes to Bombay for higher studies. Ishwar and Om made Bombay a home in hope of good jobs and better livings. If I say anything more than this about the characters, I would end up revealing something that you would regret to know before reading the novel. Despite being entirely different from one another, they come close in very bizarre circumstances.
I find A Fine Balance as very close to Premchand’s Godan in terms of brutality of one’s fate, the society and the system. Just like Godan, in this novel, there seems to be no end to the problems of the common man. To me, A Fine Balance looks like a revisit to the world depicted in Godan by the great Premchand. Godan is a pre-independence novel and mainly shows the problems associated with the lives of villagers. Rohinton’s A Fine Balance too moves around the same problems but it extends further and shows the condition of common man in the more brutal Bombay. The novel proves that nothing has changed in the last 100 years. The country, the people and the problems, all are the same.
The novel covers a vast set of problems that persisted in India in 1970’s. The novel makes us go to the roots of well-known (and still persisting) problems like caste system, unemployment, poverty and corruption to specific problems of 70s like problems emerged because of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi. There are several examples in the novel that tell us how systems are made for betterment of things but end up ruining them. One such example set in novel is, the Gandhi government encouraged family planning for controlling the emerging population. But this didn’t do any good to the most, rather it ruined lives of many. Mostly young, unmarried or elderly people were forced to go for the nasbandi program.
Despite of the lengthy descriptions of the characters and events, Rohinton Mistry was able to keep me involved. Curiosity was always on extreme. Due to less but prominent characters, I was able to recall them without any confusion, even after an interval of three months. The only thing I regretted reading this novel was the kind of stress it gave me. Every event mentioned in the novel made me go deep into the situation, maybe because I have seen quite similar events in my own life or in lives of people around. Another positive point about this novel was its connection with Parsi culture (apart from Maneck Kohlah and Dina Dalal, there are several Parsi characters in the novel). Being a Parsi, Rohinton Mistry was able to beautifully describe the Parsi culture.
I give full marks to this highly tragic novel. A must read if you can bear all the stress it will give to you.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda by Dharamvir Bharati
I had read Dharamvir Bharati's Gunahon Ka Devta around three years ago. The novel is one of my favourite Hindi novels. Since Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda is much more acclaimed novel than Gunahon Ka Devta, my expectations were much higher. And I must say this short-novel over-delivered on my very high expectations.
The way Dr. Bharati has told the story in Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda is very much different from the conventional story-telling style. Today, in twentieth century we may have read novels with similar way of story-telling but for a Hindi novel that first published in 1952, it must have been quite revolutionary. Bharati have split the story of the novel in seven short stories.
Bharati, himself, is the story-teller. The place of the events is Allahabad (I suppose) and the time is immediately after India’s independence from the Britain (~1950). The novel starts with an introduction of Manik Mulla, the protagonist of the novel. Manik is a famous personality of the colony Bharati lives in. It’s summer, typical North India style. A group of friends (including Bharati) gathers at Manik Mulla’s house. A regular activity. Some of the friends are playing cards, some are laying on the floor, doing nothing. Bharati is reading a novel. Manik Mulla pulls the book from Bharati’s hands, saying, “You can’t read others’ stories in a story-teller’s house!” And this is how Manik Mulla starts telling the stories. He tells seven stories on seven consecutive noons. All the seven stories prove to be a part of a single story in the end. Manik Mulla tells the conclusion on seventh noon and novel ends.
Unlike Gunahon Ka Devta, Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda has nothing to do with sacred love and commitment. This novel is all about Indian lower-middle-class people. According to Bharati, economy is more important to Indian lower-middle-class people than love or any other emotion. And this phenomenon has led the entire class to darkness, immorality, inhumanity and apathy. All the people in the novel tend to do injustice to humanity. Their characters seem to be weak and they end up betraying the people around. All because of money or their low values.
If you are wondering what Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda means then Bharati ji has described it in a very beautiful manner. As per him, despite of all the darkness and sadness, there is something that inspires to light up the dark, lead to the good. The truth, faith and bravery lead the soul to the light in the same way the seven horses lead the chariot of the Sun. The chariot of the Sun has to move forward, always. But it’s destroyed during its journey via the streets of our dark, corrupt, low-value and immoral lives. Except for the seventh horse, all the six horses have been severely injured. The seventh horse is still brave, determined, focused and is moving ahead continuously. The seventh horse is the future. Bharati ji has co-related this seventh horse with the children of his novel’s characters. He says these children, the new generation will lead us to the light and we must have faith in this seventh horse.
A very small but good read. Highly Recommended.
Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda by Dharamvir Bharati. pp 101, rs 25 paperback. Bhartiya Jnanpith.
The way Dr. Bharati has told the story in Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda is very much different from the conventional story-telling style. Today, in twentieth century we may have read novels with similar way of story-telling but for a Hindi novel that first published in 1952, it must have been quite revolutionary. Bharati have split the story of the novel in seven short stories.
Bharati, himself, is the story-teller. The place of the events is Allahabad (I suppose) and the time is immediately after India’s independence from the Britain (~1950). The novel starts with an introduction of Manik Mulla, the protagonist of the novel. Manik is a famous personality of the colony Bharati lives in. It’s summer, typical North India style. A group of friends (including Bharati) gathers at Manik Mulla’s house. A regular activity. Some of the friends are playing cards, some are laying on the floor, doing nothing. Bharati is reading a novel. Manik Mulla pulls the book from Bharati’s hands, saying, “You can’t read others’ stories in a story-teller’s house!” And this is how Manik Mulla starts telling the stories. He tells seven stories on seven consecutive noons. All the seven stories prove to be a part of a single story in the end. Manik Mulla tells the conclusion on seventh noon and novel ends.
Unlike Gunahon Ka Devta, Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda has nothing to do with sacred love and commitment. This novel is all about Indian lower-middle-class people. According to Bharati, economy is more important to Indian lower-middle-class people than love or any other emotion. And this phenomenon has led the entire class to darkness, immorality, inhumanity and apathy. All the people in the novel tend to do injustice to humanity. Their characters seem to be weak and they end up betraying the people around. All because of money or their low values.
If you are wondering what Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda means then Bharati ji has described it in a very beautiful manner. As per him, despite of all the darkness and sadness, there is something that inspires to light up the dark, lead to the good. The truth, faith and bravery lead the soul to the light in the same way the seven horses lead the chariot of the Sun. The chariot of the Sun has to move forward, always. But it’s destroyed during its journey via the streets of our dark, corrupt, low-value and immoral lives. Except for the seventh horse, all the six horses have been severely injured. The seventh horse is still brave, determined, focused and is moving ahead continuously. The seventh horse is the future. Bharati ji has co-related this seventh horse with the children of his novel’s characters. He says these children, the new generation will lead us to the light and we must have faith in this seventh horse.
A very small but good read. Highly Recommended.
Suraj Ka Satwan Ghoda by Dharamvir Bharati. pp 101, rs 25 paperback. Bhartiya Jnanpith.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Mumbai Under Construction!
I came to Bombay around 2 years ago. The day I landed in Vashi, I saw road construction in progress. Today, after two years, nothing has changed. Road construction is still in progress. I am not talking entire Vashi, I am talking about a small stretch of 5 kms that I need to commute on weekends. NMMC (Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation) or whoever is responsible for the construction is taking its own sweet time to finish the work.
What a non-sense system we have. One constructs and the other destructs. Cycle of constructions and destructions seems to be never-ending.
There are a lots of chaos because of this. Long, unnecessary traffic-jams, honking vehicles, frustrated people. Sometimes you feel like dying. Air-conditioned, music-filled environment inside of the car just doesn’t sooth you.
You cannot guarantee a time for reaching somewhere, no matter howsoever short distance you are considering. Past night, when I left for office, everything was usual but while coming back from office, I took 15 minutes. I would have traveled this distance in less than five minutes if I was on foot.
It is not the case with Vashi only. You name a place in Bombay where there is no road construction work going on. Forget place, you can’t even suggest a 2 kms stretch. It seems entire Bombay is under construction! When will I see a developed Bombay? As of now, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the problem.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Web presence of engineering colleges of Bhopal
CarWale.com have started a campaign/contest for finding talent in automotive journalism world. It’s about writing an article on anything related to car. Winners will be offered job from CarWale.com and the best writer will get a prize worth 50,000 rupees. Here is the link to the contest.
I remember in my engineering days, I used to go to net-cafes and find technical conferences, paper-presentations. If I found a good conference, I made sure that I write a paper as per theme and always wished that my paper makes it. The enthusiasm was just irresistible.
Thought of passing this contest’s information to a few engineering colleges in Bhopal. Finding email addresses of my college i.e. OIST and LNCT was a few seconds’ job. But that’s all, I couldn’t find email address of any college. Found MANIT’s site but there was no email address mentioned. To my horror, RGPV UIT doesn’t seem to have any website!
The world is making Internet its home and the most technically advanced places in M.P. don’t have web presence at all. They don’t even have email addresses.
Anyways, came across a nice blog on MANIT.
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