When a letter was something that you penned on the paper, you selected the paper, the pen, and devoted much attention to the words that would be inscribed on the paper. Often, it was at least a page long, sometimes longer than that.

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook

Even as you were bothered with the physical aspects of your epistle, a part of your mind was already composing it, crafting the words and weighing over their message. What was written had a particular significance; it was much more than what was merely said.

The veritable Emily in her book Post Etiquette (1922) had an interesting take on the task. Says she: “The letter you write, whether you realise it or not, is always a mirror which reflects your appearance, taste and character. A ‘sloppy’ letter with the writing all pouring into one corner of the page, badly worded, badly spelled, and with unmatched paper and envelope-even possibly a blot-proclaims the sort of person who would have unkempt hair, unclean linen and broken shoe laces; just as a neat, precise, evenly written note portrays a person of like characteristics. Therefore, while it cannot be said with literal accuracy that one may read the future of a person by study of his handwriting, it is true that if a young man wishes to choose a wife in whose daily life he is sure always to find the unfinished task, the untidy mind and the syncopated housekeeping, he may do it quite simply by selecting her from her letters.”

Ah, those were the days. The take on how a young man would choose a wife is particularly interesting and so outdated, but her advice is not, as we will discuss later.

The art of handwritten notes, of making yourself write neatly and legibly, of debating what colour of ink to use, has slowly been overtaken by technology, which crept up slowly. When typewriters and computers were first used for producing letters, they were largely confined to offices and thus were means of official communication, not personal ones.

However, in time, the keyboard did not only replace the penmanship of yore, and all that went with it, the romance of the craft, the laborious, yet loving efforts of those who had chosen to impart the degree of permanence to their thoughts.

Electronic mail predates the inception of the Internet, and was, in fact, a crucial tool in creating it, but with the spread of the Internet, it became a tremendous method of communicating messages practically instantaneously, and thus became what is often called “killer application”.

The introduction of e-mail absolutely changed the way people communicated. On e-mail, communications were immediate. Instead of days, it took mere seconds for your message to get through to the other party. Naturally, you expected an immediate response and this was often the way in which the recipient would respond to your e-mail letter.

Unfortunately, speed came at a cost-lack of reflection. We have already noted how what is written has a particular importance in communication. What people realised over the years of using e-mail communications with each other is that this significance has transferred itself across various mediums, even those that seem to be casual, like e-mail. It would not be wrong to say that e-mail stuck a “killer” blow to letter writing.

To play on the tag line of a modern advertisement which says, “Nothing official about it”, as far as written communication is concerned; there is nothing casual about it. Inappropriately written e-mail messages have often got people into much trouble, legal and otherwise.

Now, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, says he is going to change the way people communicate. He believes that people are exchanging shorter and shorter messages to communicate with each other. He is targeting school students who say they find e-mail “slow and cumbersome”. He found that many are using Facebook to send messages and stay in touch.

My friend Gupi found this out the hard way. When he complained to his daughter Taran, a yoga instructor, that she had not kept him abreast with her latest trip, she retorted: “But, Dad, I Facebooked you!” Soon the telephonic conversations between Taran and her sister Daman ended with “Facebook me”. Now, Gupi makes sure that his Facebook page is open most of the time, since his school-going son Guru also appears on it from his boarding school whenever he gets a chance. The immediacy of getting in touch with his loved ones makes him keep his computer on all the time.

Now Facebook Messages blog says it wants to integrate Instant Messaging (IM), online chat, e-mail and texts. Many people have been using them over the years. They are there in popular mail packages like Gmail (Gtalk and Buzz), Yahoo! (Messenger) etc. What all of them share is an intense desire to encourage users to spend more and more time within their sites, and for this, they marshal whatever is needed-games, activities, chat, e-mail, photo-sharing, etc. Why do they do that? Because of lucrative advertising revenues, without which we would have to pay for the Internet services, rather than get them free, as we do now.

So, Facebook Messages will stay and will attract hundreds of thousands of users. Along with “revolutionising communication”, as Zuckerberg says, they will further make communication more and more informal. Well, I still take comfort from the fact that informal is not thoughtless. I implore readers to be thoughtful in their communication. The consequences of not being so can indeed be painful.

This column by Roopinder Singh was published in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on November 23, 2010.

A very Happy Gurpurab to all. Guru Nanak’s founded Sikhism  and his message is eternal.

Guru Nanak with followers, done in the Kashmiri style, taken from the book, Guru Nanak: His Life and Teachings by Roopinder Singh, published by Rupa and Co, New Delh

As we celebrate his birth anniversary, my mind goes to his bani, in which he answers the question regarding where man comes from and where he goes:

By the Lord’s order he comes
By His order he departs
From ego he is born and from ego he stays
He who surrenders himself to God’s Will is released and remains not in bondage
He meditates on the Word and practises the Name, finding deliverance
***

Without God’s remembrance life is empty
The Guru’s word dispels ignorance.
Man meets a revered soul if he is so destined
Those dedicated to Hari rejoice in truth
To His will they submit their body and soul.
I, says Nanak, would touch the feet of such men.

Guru Granth Sahib, page 152

You may also like to visit the following links:

Guru Nanak Illustrations

US Congressmen read about Guru Nanak’s Life and Teachings

Photos of Guru Nanak (Hindi) launch

It was at Art Folio, an art gallery in Chandigarh that I was in “conversation” with Sachit Jain, author of “Ready for Takeoff” nice on Wednesday evening. We share the same publisher, Rupa and Co.

Roopinder Singh in conversation with Sachit Jain (left), author of “Ready for Takeoff”, at Art Folio, Chandigarh on November 17, 2010.

We discussed the book and also the process of how he wrote it. He managed to finish his draft on the deadline that he had promised himself, and his management philosoply has a lot to do with leading by example, something that I totally agree with.

Facing an audience that had some friends in it made the experience even more pleasurable.

Sachit writes sincerely, and therefore deserves to be read. Please click here to read my review of his book.

MRS GILLIAN K SINGH was the first one to make valiant attempts to sort out my problems with spelling. She was our English teacher in Yadavindra Public School, Patiala. I got the place of honour in her class, right in the front, so that she could keep a better eye on this “outsider” who had just joined.

Yadavindra Public School, Patiala, Class V photo taken on November 12, 1970. Please click on the picture to see a bigger, higher resolution image.

I managed to keep my head above water, since at this school, they did not insist that I write with my right hand, something I had found difficult to do when I studied in a convent school in Chandigarh, where the nuns forced us to “take the right path,” till my mother intervened. However, by that time I had developed the skill to be ambidextrous, right hand for the class and left for homework. The result was handwriting that was truly atrocious.

Later, Mr Christopher Duffy, a US Peace Corps volunteer who taught at YPS, took our class. He spotted something that had evaded everyone’s gaze, a sliver of talent in yours truly. He encouraged me to read more, and write. He did not react as much to my handwriting, which at that time I attributed to his goodness. Only much later did I see the handwriting of my American friends and colleagues-they surely made me feel much, much better about my scribble.

Particularly pleased with my work one time, Mr Duffy declared that I could be a writer one day. Of course, I didn’t believe him at all, but a seed was planted.

I told my parents about what he said, and soon I was being encouraged to write more.

My father offered to pay me a rupee a page for every short story that I wrote, in Punjabi, his language of choice. Mother matched the offer in English, and thus came the only period when I truly felt that I could get rich through writing.

Mr Duffy left school, having introduced us to baseball and kindled our minds. Other language teachers followed, notably Mr Sadhu Singh Deol and Mr R K Bhardawaj in English and Mrs Darshan Bakshish Singh in Punjabi. Writing became much a part of life, even as I took Philosophy Honours in college. Interestingly, Mr Deol called me “Philosopher” when I was his student in YPS!

In college too, my teachers were intensely involved in the way thoughts were communicated through the spoken and written words. Dr R K Gupta, then Head of Department of Philosophy at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, was rigorous in his examination of the tutorials submitted to him. Dr Ashok Vohra made me rewrite a tutorial many times till I got it right, and Dr Vijay Tankha exposed my mind to much more than the subject at hand.

After college, I went to New York and when I wrote to Dr Gupta to inform him that I was working as a journalist, he wrote back: “But Roopinder, what will you do about your handwriting and spelling?” Pat went the reply: “Sir, I have found a solution to both: a computer.”

This middle by Roopinder Singh was published in The Tribune on November 15, 2010.

Ready for Takeoff: A Leadership Story
By Sachit Jain.
Rupa. Pages 253. Rs 195.

PEOPLE who do not earn their living through writing often pen down something because they feel that what they truly believe in needs to be shared with the world. For Sachit Jain, this is a simple mantra: “To be a successful boss, be nice, listen to your workers, keep channels of communication open, and take advantage of your wife’s intelligence and experience.”

Ready for Takeoff: A Leadership Story

A boss is traditionally a tough, no nonsense, go-getter who drives his team mercilessly, even as he goes out for important things like a round of golf. Here too, the protagonist, Anurag Amar Sachdeva, Ass to his friends and, often himself, is a golfer till he becomes a boss, and finds no time for the game, but more and more time for the family.

The introduction gives the reader various facts about the book and the author’s experience in setting up a steel unit for his father-in-law in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. Making it a work of fiction gives him a degree of flexibility and Anurag is the author’s doppelganger. Anurag’s experiment of running a steel mill on behalf of an investor, instead of just breaking it up and selling it, as he had done in the past, makes a credible setting for the author to explore the “you don’t have to be abrasive to be successful” mantra.

Through Aunrag you explore the working of a big manufacturing unit and the complex interpersonal equations of various people working in it. However, with good intentions, drive and dedication, he works at understanding the processes and personnel that he now had to deal with. Anurag soon makes effective headway in improving efficiency and along with it workers’ satisfaction.

The book reads well as a work of fiction, and even as a reader goes along with Anurag on this journey, there are times when the management mantras and meeting summations get a bit too long, and then at these places, the author uses numbered paragraphs that remind us of PowerPoint presentations! Yet, it still makes sense, and here the importance of the message overshadows the shortcomings in the writer’s craft.

What comes through with remarkable clarity is the ring of authenticity in the prose. These are not contrived situations, they are ones which the author has been a part of, and thus, the reader is quickly drawn into them. Apprehensions with a new management coming in, resistance to change, empire-building within an organisation, insecurities of senior people, grouses of junior employees-all these are so easy to relate to.

Anurag makes good use of his wife’s inputs, though a bit late in the day. But then, he is not to be blamed. How difficult it is for a working male to acknowledge that there are many parallels to their “heavy” management problems, with the kind of issues that their spouses sort out in their homes. After he teams up with his wife, and takes her help, Anurag explores the meaning of leadership in a memorable encounter.

Don’t expect too much human drama as this rosy and feel-good story interspersed as it is with a substratum of management theories, which at times dominate the discourse. But here we have someone who has tested them on the anvil of experience in the real life. When he says an organisation can and should create an environment where employees are happy, readers tends to sit up and nod their heads in agreement. Even if they might just harbour a sliver of apprehension at the idea of involving their spouse in their work life, they want to be part of the change that can happen. The author’s message gets through, and that should make him happy.

This review by Roopinder Singh was published in The Tribune on November 14, 2010

It was after three schools that I found myself in Yadavindra Public School, Patiala, where I studied in two stints, eventually passing out of the institution that I consider my school. What wonderful days, walking down across the road to attend school we lived in the Bhupindra Kothi by virtue of my mother, Mrs Inderjit Kaur, being Principal, Government College for Women, Patiala. We had to shift to Amritsar after a few years, but a couple of years later, we were back in Patiala, she was Vice-Chancellor, Punjabi University, Patiala, and this house was rather far from the school premises.

Class-fellows became life-long friends, and we share a bond that only a boarding school can give, even to those students like me who are day boarders. During the Golden Jubilee celebrations of YPS in 1998, I wrote and article in The Tribune. As you read it, you will realise that many of the people quoted in the article are no longer with us, but their memories don’t fade from our lives, just as our memories of our days in school are still fresh.

Please click here to read the article.

Data portability is certainly not on most users’ priority list. It should be. We all routinely use devices and services from many different vendors.

Different devices tend to use distinctive, and competing, operating systems. In computers it could be Windows, Mac or Linux. As for cell phones, besides the basic ones like Apple OS, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android, there are hundreds of variations, since each vendor tries to put his or her own flavour atop the OS.

Laptop

One way to escape the narrow confines of devices is to go to the Net. For example, if you use Hotmail, no matter which computer you access it from, it will function just as well. It is an application, but then, with its own set of problems. Even something as ubiquitous as e-mail is vendor-specific. Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail are all different platforms, and have distinctive ways of storing your data. Then, there are various social networking sites, like Facebook and Orkut, which also store users’ data, as do photo-sharing sites like Flikcr and Picasa. All this adds up to a lot of data from one user, stored at different places.

When we talk of data portability, we are not referring to any hardware, say portable disk drives or pen drives that can physically move date from one device to another, or store it. Today, we are focusing on the ability of the people to control and freely use their personal information across various devices and the Internet.

In the context of cloud computing, open standards and privacy issues, data portability has become a standard term in the Internet industry. People should be able to control their identity, media and other forms of personal data. While the goal is easy to define, implementing it is not.

When we need to shift our data from one application to another, that’s when we find out whether the two applications can talk to each other or not. For a long time, it was not possible, unless a person was really a computer nerd, and that too one with extraordinary patience and persistence. However, things have been changing over time and nowadays, many sites take measures to ensure data portability.

Initially, it seemed that for many applications, data portability comprised the ability to transport data from any application to the one you were using presently. It became a one-way street. However, mounting customer protests, a changing environment, and the European Commission’s heavy hand are making true data portability happen, i.e., make it a two-way highway.

The absence of formal norms regarding data portability has been an issue of concern for both users, and even governments. The European Commission (EC) recently made public its concern about data protection and portability, especially in the context of the social networking sites and cloud computing, “as it may involve the loss of individuals’ control over their potentially sensitive information when they store their data with programs hosted on someone else’s hardware.”

Noting that risks to privacy and the protection of personal data associated with online activity are increasing, the EC said: “At the same time, ways of collecting personal data have become increasingly elaborated and less easily detectable. For example, the use of sophisticated tools allows economic operators to better target individuals, thanks to the monitoring of their behaviour.”

The EC would like to give individuals greater rights to control and even delete the personal data held on them by organisations. It is thus looking closely at the so-called “right to be forgotten”, i.e. the right of individuals to have their data no longer processed and deleted when they are no longer needed for legitimate purposes, as well as “data portability”, meaning the right of a person to take their information elsewhere, such as to a competing service.

Other government bodies have not been as proactive, but big companies are savvy about the need to ensure data portability, both to and from their applications. However, the road is not smooth. Google and Facebook have recently been involved in a controversy about “reciprocity” in data portability.

Google maintains that Facebook is a data dead end, and you can’t export it out. Now, Google has changed its rules, and will not allow any website to automatically import contact data unless the other site is reciprocal in allowing a similar export. Techies would be able to do so, manually, but then, this is just a ploy of Google to put some pressure on Facebook.

As more and more data travels to the clouds, harmonising it becomes even more important. No company likes to give its hold on the data it has collected and every company likes to have the so-called “garden hedges” that keep users within its confines. Customers, however, must make sure that one of the determining factors in their choice of applications is data portability. They will need this feature more and more as they evolve on the Net and, therefore, need to make the right choice about which platform to use.

Offline, it makes much sense to devote much thought to the platform that you will use and the operating system that you will be straddled with. I love Apple products, have been using them since the mid-1980s, and still own two Apple desktops, but when I had to buy a laptop, I bought a Windows machine. Its ubiquitous convenience outweighed the undoubted elegance of Apple.

I should have the right to make a choice, and the ability to transfer my data from one platform or application to another. Is it too much to ask? I really don’t think so!

This column by Roopinder Singh was published in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on November 9, 2010.

Please click here to read previous “Bits about Bytes” columns.

BITS ABOUT BYTES

Bobby Singh Bansal chose to explore a path less explored when he started working on the manuscript that became The Lion’s Firanghis: The Europeans at the Court of Lahore. The following are excerpts from an exclusive interview with Roopinder Singh:

You were born in Britain and studied there. Where did your parents migrate from?

Bobby Singh Bansal

My father originates from Punjab and my mother is from Assam.Tell us a bit about your academic background.

I studied in England, first business management, later marketing and business development. I am not a historian.

Were you interested in the academic study of history? You are a businessman, what made you take up this topic?

Of course, but I was always travelling all over the world with my business and never got the chance to professionally study Indian history at university. It’s just a chance visit to Lahore in 1989 that triggered off this passion of mine for exploring and researching further on Maharajah Ranjit Singh and his reign. The more I visited Pakistan, the more I got addicted to this topic.

Where all did your research take you, and how long did it take?

General Paolo Crescenzo Avitabile, Governor of Wazirabad and Peshawar, was one of the Maharaja's most ferocious administrators

The research was quite intensive, if not exhausting. It started in London, then took me to Paris, Marseille, St Tropez, Monaco, Madrid, Barcelona, Segovia, Vienna, Rome, Bratislava, Napoli, Bologna, Berlin, Zurich, Edinburgh, Bucharest, Brasov, Lahore, Delhi, Multan, Peshawar, Algiers, Wazirabad, Texas (US) and the Khyber Pass. It took me nearly four years of research to compile material for the book. Would I do it all again? Absolutely!

I understand that you had a tough time doing your research in Pakistan.

What was your best experience, and the most hairy one?

I didn’t have a tough time in Pakistan but, on the contrary, had a lifetime experience on being told that I was probably the first Sikh since 1947 to visit the Jamrud and Shab Qadar Forts of the NWFP region that were built by General Hari Singh Nalwa. Both commanders of the forts have become close friends. I’m now whisked around in helicopters whenever I’m in Pakistan. The most hairy experience was probably encountering a Taliban at the Khyber Pass.

Who among the firangis is your favourite, and why?

There are many, I guess, but for me it’s either General Avitabile or General Allard. The first was so ferocious in implementing the laws and policies of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, especially in Peshawar and that too during the anarchy which was unleashed in Lahore in 1843, he never took sides with any factions and simply did his duty to the Lahore Durbar.

General Jean Francois Allard

General Allard in my views probably was the Maharaja’s most loyal, if not No. 1 Firangi. I could give you endless examples, but one is that he never kept a harem and returned to Lahore after two years of leave to France, as he said he would, much to the relief of the Maharaja. The letters he wrote back home praising the Maharaja’s rule over his subjects, plus the fact that Ranjit Singh would usually consult General Allard on many important and delicate matters of the state, much to the dismay of his native courtiers. This was indeed a unique relationship, and if you read the letter you will understand why for me General Allard is a favourite.

You met various families. Which was most connected to its ancestors and thus, its heritage?

Probably, the descendant of General Allard, when I entered the lounge of his mansion in St. Tropez, it was like going back in time to Lahore. There displayed were huge oil paintings, medals and Sikh artefacts from that period displayed on the walls. He takes much pride that his ancestor served Ranjit Singh, when he poured me a cognac; he raised his glass towards to the portrait of Ranjit Singh and proudly said, “Cheers, Ranjit Singh. You are my hero”, and drank it in one go! That says it all, I guess. He still possesses countless artefacts, although in a private collection and a private archives relating to that period, I’ve never seen anything like it with any other families.

At what stage did you decide that you wanted to share it with others in the form of a book?

When a colleague of mine asked me in 2006, what I was going to do with all this research, I had no answer for him and he told me simply to write a book and share it with everybody

What’s the audience you had in mind when you were writing the book?

Students to historians, but mainly everyone, not just to the Punjabi community.

Did you have any difficulties in finding a publisher?

Not at all.

Are you planning any other book?

I could have easily written a book on each European that served Ranjit Singh. Yes, I am planning several projects, some based in Pakistan and one on Bollywood.

Please click here to read an excerpt from the book The Lion’s Firanghis: The Europeans at the Court of Lahore.