By Roopinder Singh

Computing became more than mainstream, it became personal. Mobile internet access became an agent of change that connected people far beyond their geographic limitations

COMPUTERS are truly devices held in millions of hands worldwide. They connect the world like never before, and make it a global village. The world of technology lost its icon in 2011, but Steve Jobs left his mark for all to see. The computer came into our hands through smartphones and tablets this year. We had operating systems that competed with each other, hardware that out-specked its competition and even new applications that re-invented the old and gave it a twist. Such was the pace of new offerings that there was an embarrassment of riches that left consumers happy, though bemused.

WHEN AAKASH IS THE LIMIT: The small and inexpensive Indian tablet Aakash made news for being the only tablet that is available for Rs 2,500

With India finally being recognised as an important market, we saw product releases that were synchronised with international ones, and, at times, we got products that other markets, especially the US, did not have.

Everyone has a smart electronic gadget in their hands. Why, our honourable Members of Parliament, too, are getting assistance to get and use tablets so that Parliament can go significantly paperless. Not that much paper got used in the few sessions that the honourable MPs sat down for business, but that’s another story.

Jobs’ baby, iPhone 4S, came four months later than expected. It was not bigger than its predecessor, and was not the much-awaited iPhone 5, but it still became a bestseller, and had enough new features — the fast A5 processor, an improved camera and Siri, its voice-activated digital assistant — to make it stand out.

On the software front, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich from Google strutted its stuff, including the capability to unlock a phone through facial recognition. Hardware from Samsung, Motorola and others improved to an extent where smart phones became faster than computers, and came with dual core processors.

As for tablets, our very own Aakash became the game-changer by breaking a price barrier and delivering functional tablets for less. For those who have more, the iPad 2 is still the market leader by a large margin. Yet, like the iPhone version only gained incrementally as it is thinner, faster and has two cameras now.

Everyone aspires to beat iPad2, and with Android tablets nipping at its heels, Apple launched a barrage of suits against its rivals, even as Amazon came out with the Kindle Fire, an e-book reader that is much more, and Nook brought out its own attractive product.

As consumption devices, tablets are now displacing laptops. Not that laptops are going extinct. Since people still have to work by typing on their keyboards, laptops are fast evolving into ultra books — the very thin versions with flash memory and the ability to start instantly. Apple’s MacBook Air is one such device already available. Others in the Windows world are just on the horizon, with Intel backing them.

In a world dominated by slick and expensive gadgets, the small and inexpensive tablet Aakash made news simply by being there, the only tablet that is available on sale online for Rs 2,500. Datawind, the company that assembles it, created quite a stir, and got more than four lakh orders from individual and corporate customers.

Many months before Aakash made waves worldwide, people were already looking at the skies, looking for the ‘super moon’ which brought the moon closest to the earth in 19 years.

Mankind’s quest for more information about planet Mars continued. NASA’s probes worked at finding traces of life on the planet as a new $2.5 billion nuclear-powered rover was sent to the Red Planet in November. On the other hand, the Russian attempt to launch a probe failed, because of a mechanical problem with the rocket.

A quest of another kind continued as the search for evidence of Higgs Boson continued. It is also called ‘The God Particle’ and is critical in our effort to understand the structure of matter. Did you know that the sub-atomic particles, Bosons are named after the physicist Satyendra Nath Bose?

Indian scientists continued to search the skies as they sent satellites skywards on Indian rockets. ISRO scored far more hits than misses in 2011 by adding might to the defence forces with successful testing of Prithvi missile, and to India’s space mission by PSLV launches. Thus, we not only reached for akash, we also held our very own Aakash in our hands.

This article by Roopinder Singh was published in a special yearend issue of The Tribune titled 2011: The Year of Uprisings

The Valiant Ones: A journey into the mesmerizing world of the Sikhs

By Gurbir Singh and Gagandeep Kaur

Kesar Media and Lahore Books. Pages 158. Rs 3,000.

The Valiant Ones: A journey into the mesmerizing world of the Sikhs

The Nihangs always attract the eye. Their colourful attires, displays of traditional and not-so-traditional weapons and distinctive lifestyle set them apart. Rich in photographs, the book takes readers into the world of which they see only glimpses from time to time.

The beats of innocent ecstasy

While the pictures make it a visual delight, there is also information on Sikh history and principles, the contribution of women, the daily routine of Nihangs, their weapons and turban, important festivals and how the Nihangs are facing challenges of the modern society. The section on the words that enrich their interaction with each other will certainly enhance the vocabulary of Punjabis who have heard the terms but do not know their significance.

- Roopinder Singh

A Nihang Singh demonstrating his equestrian skills

The article was published on June 19, 2011 in the Spectrum section of The Tribune.

A Very Happy New Year to all my friends!

Hope we remain health, have fun

…and do our bit for the world around us.

There is much to do in the coming year,

…but all depends on God’s will.

Indian writers went places and published books galore. They experimented with themes and forms and took various routes—spirituality, scholarship, scintillating stories, sex— to get to our bookshelves in 2010.

Makers of Modern India

Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

The clear star is Siddhartha Mukherjee, a doctor who wrote The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, last month and has won critical acclaim while also storming onto the bestseller lists in the US.

William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India took readers along on a journey into spirituality, even as fiction lovers explored the world of the Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk, through his The Museum of Innocence.
We must have no Price and Everyone must Know that we have no Price declared Arun Shourie, magisterially. Many empathised with To the Last Bullet in which Vinita Kamte and Vinita Deshmukh wrote about Ashok Kamte, the brave police officer who was gunned down by terrorists during 26/11 attacks.

Shrabani Basu penned down Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queens’ Closest Confidant about trust that transcended race, whereas Krishan Partap Singh’s Delhi Durbar kept readers on the edge of their seats in a contemporary drama. Talking of cutting edge, it took Sarnath Bannerjee’s Corridor, to make most of us realise the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel, its post-modern avatar.

2 States: The Story of My Marriage

The Sunset Club

Chetan Bhagat broke all (his) previous sales records with 2 States: The Story of My Marriage, which was a hit with everyone (a reported 10 lakh copies sold), but his nit-picking critics. On the other hand 100 Poems showed that the beauty of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry transcends the limitations of language.
Taslima Nasreen’s No Country for Women flew off the bookshelves. Many who wanted to find out more about their favourite novelist picked up A Warrior’s Life: A Biography of Paulo Coelho. Talking about writers, Humra Quraishi teamed up with India’s best-known author for Absolute Khushwant.
So what if the Akalis ousted Capt. Amarinder Singh from the Punjab Legislative Assembly, he found time to come out with The Last Sunset: The Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar, which was well received.

The rising growth rate could not mask economic worries as people picked up

Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy as well as Jim Rogers’ A Gift to my Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing.
The Australian couple Allan and Barbara Pease brought out another bestseller, Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love. Robin Sharma continued his success story with The Leader Who Had No Title.

The Last Sunset: The Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar

The Masque of Africa

Those fond of nostalgia made a beeline for the re-printed Lepel H. Griffin and Charles Francis Massy’s Chiefs and Families of Note in Punjab which has now been made available to Indian readers. Many others read Shobhaa at Sixty: Secrets of Getting it Right at any Age, yet another book from De who defies strait-jacketed classification.
One of the nation’s top luminaries, Fali S. Nariman, gave us Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography, even as V.S. Naipaul drew flak for failing to deliver in The Masque of Africa. On the other hand, Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life was widely appreciated. Ramachandra Guha brought alive the Makers of Modern India, earning himself an advance that made writing biographies alluring.

As the sun sets on 2010, it is only fitting that Khushwant Singh’s The Sunset Club sounds the Last Post. The man who has written more books than he can remember, reflects on various moods of life, as do we.

Sixty: Secrets of Getting it Right at any Age

This is an expanded version of an article published in The Tribune.

IT was a nice party and we were all enjoying ourselves to celebrate the success of a friend. My friend introduced me to some young foreigners as “Osama’s brother”.

The two couples were from South Africa, globe-trotters and well exposed to international travel and traditions. London figured in our conversation, too. For me it’s the place I visited first when I ventured away from the Indian shores. These couples had found work there, in the recession, mind you, which had a lot to say about their abilities.

“We see these greetings and I wish someone would explain them to us,” said a young lady.

“Which greetings,” I asked.

Maharaja Bhupendra Singh

“You know, the way Muslim men embrace each other, or place their hand on their heart when they meet. What does it really mean?”

Here was I, resplendent in a black overcoat, wearing a nice tie and all, as well as a colour-coordinated turban, and they had decided that I was someone they could query about “Muslim” greetings.  I wore a turban, as did their host, also a Sikh, yet somehow; they had made an intuitive (and wrong) leap about my religious denomination.

My mind went back to the time when we found it impossible to tell foreigners apart, unless the differences were very obvious, like skin colours, basic body structures, etc. “A gora is a gora, they all look alike,” is a refrain all too common.

I took the confusion sportingly and proceeded to explain with more confidence than authority the differences in greetings, and also gently pointed out that they had more to do with culture than religion.

The idea that my turban had made me, in some sense, a target somehow niggled in my mind. Well, I had been there before and it wasn’t all that bad! Joel Baird was friendly towards me from the first time we met in New York.

“You are a Sikh. When I was a child, I was told that if I was in a bind, I should find a Sikh and run to him. He would help me,” said this Columbia University student. Now Joel had studied in the American School, New Delhi, and had spent time in India. He and his charming wife were great hosts, and the New York memory brings a smile on my face, whenever it surfaces.

As does another one, of meeting an elderly person at a gas station while travelling on an American highway in the wee hours of the morning. “Sikhs are good people,” he pronounced after seeing my turban. He had based his observation on his interaction with Sikhs while serving in the US Army.

However, 9/11 changed all that and turbans started being associated in many minds with Osama bin Laden. The finer distinctions of kinds and colours of turbans were lost and even someone like Hardeep Puri, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, recently faced undue attention from US airport security personnel because of his turban. So embarrassing, unfortunate and sad. Generalisations can be treacherously misleading, especially sweeping, negative ones. They can even cast a pall over an apparel of honour.

This “Middle” by Roopinder Singh was published on the Editorial Page of The Tribune on December 29, 2010.

You may also like to visit the following links to the articles I have written about wearing turbans. Please don’t miss the brilliant water-colour paintings illustrating representative styles of turbans made by the artist R M Singh in 2004.

Turban, a matter of pride and honour

The French turban ban

Bans and Turbans: A matter of honour

Water colours of turbans by R M Singh

Accomplished surgeon and scholar

Soft spoken and gentle in his manner, Dr Man Singh Nirankari, however, was firm in his convictions and opinions. He was equally at ease with the prefix and suffix to his name and the different spheres of life they both signified his eminent professional life and his heritage. He passed away in Chandigarh the early hours of May 11.

From Website

Dr Man Singh Nirankari, MBBS, FRCS (Edin) DO (London), was born on December 8, 1911, in a small village called Meki Dhok, Campbellpur, district of joint Punjab, now in Pakistan, renamed Attock. His father, Hara Singh (1877-1971) was the leader of the Nirankari movement, active in northwest Punjab then. It was in Rawalpindi that the young Man Singh studied at Khalsa High School and Garden Mission College, (for FSc), King Edward Medical College, Lahore (for MBBS). He became FRCS in 1937.

In 1942, he married Phool, the daughter of Sant Singh Lyallpuri, who served as Indian Ambassador to Ethiopia from 1950-1953. She had studied English Honours at Government College for Women, Lahore. It was an Anand Karaj marriage; something the Nirankaris had played a significant role in popularising.

From Website

After Partition, the couple settled down in Amritsar. They had three children, a son Dr Verinder Singh Nirankari, an ophthalmologist who lives in Maryland, USA, and daughters, Aruna Singh who lives in Delhi and the prominent theatre personality, Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry.

Recognised as one of the most prominent ophthalmologists in the region, Dr Man Singh became the Principal and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, Government Medical College, Amritsar, a position from which he retired in 1971. Among his students are many famous surgeons.

A prominent citizen of Amritsar, he was active in the educational, cultural and religious fields, and friend to many prominent political and religious leaders. He served as a Syndic and Senator of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; he was an adviser to the SGPC’s Dharmam Prachar Committee, and member of the committee to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Amritsar.

After he and Phool moved from Amritsar to Chandigarh in 1998 to be with their daughter Neelam and son-in-law, Pushi Chowdhry, he often attended various literary and cultural events, and spoke on a variety of issues at various functions. A prolific writer, he published articles and wrote books in Punjabi in a variety of genres, including poetry, history, divinity and Sikh issues. He also wrote Katha Kahani, his autobiography. Phool Man Singh passed away on May 7, 2006.

Many of those who came to the Electric Crematorium in Chandigarh on Tuesday afternoon remembered that this was the man who had constructed a similar facility in Amritsar, the first in Punjab. Many also remember the strong voice and emotional Ardas of Dr Man Singh when he prayed, at this very spot, four years ago, for the peace of his wife’s soul. Now, he was joining her.

This obituary was published in The Tribune on May 12, 2010

THE LAST WORD:

This Singh is not king, as yet

Roopinder Singh and Ajay Banerjee

He loves the good life, yet is equally at home in the rough and tumble of politics. The Akali Dal engineers his expulsion from the House, he makes headlines outside it. The Congress has not made him chief of the state party, people take him to be one anyway. Reams are written about his extra-curricular activities, yet he shrugs them off and they don’t seem to affect his political fortunes.

In his crisp white kurta pajama, equally in his blue blazers, he fills the room with his presence, and floors the audience – there is always one – with his span of information and the felicity with which he cites facts and figures, switching between English and Punjabi as the occasion demands.

Whether he is on the political throne of the state or not, he is called “Maharaj”, even by his detractors – a reflection of both his lineage, as well as his personal style. Yet, right now, there is no throne (read official position) for this king, who is seen as the tallest leader that the Congress can field in the political arena of Punjab.

Leadership, and the lack of it, has been preoccupying his mind. He finds it in Maharaja Ranjit Singh, on whom he has just written a book, and the lack of it among the present rulers of Punjab, especially his arch rival Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, who he says, “can’t govern” and is only good at “campaigning and distributing largesse”. “Punjab can’t be in a worse state than it is today,” he adds, citing the lack of a dynamic industrial policy, budget deficit, lack of progress and other issues.

When Akalis hit back, they attack his personal lifestyle, not his administration. His “culture of leisure and pleasure,” provides much fuel for the rumour mill, and figured prominently in the election meetings during the last polls, when the Akali refrain was: “He is not a man of the people, he has a raja-like style. By the time he gets up Badal Sahib has already visited half a dozen villages!” Amarinder Singh is also facing various corruption cases in courts, filed after the Akali Dal government came into power.

The 68-year-old scion of the erstwhile royal House of Patiala is a man of many parts. He is proud of the rank Captain that replaces ‘Maharaja’ in politically correct environments, earned as an officer commissioned in 1963. His stint as Chief Minister from 2002-2007, punctuated Badal’s reign, and he is a powerful speaker of the state’s interest at national-level meets.

There is an element of noblesse oblige in Amarinder Singh, the politician. His unflinching stand on riparian rights of Punjab surprised many, especially his seniors in the party who took him to task, but he stuck to his guns. A bureaucrat cites the clarity of his orders and how meetings then were result-oriented. Another who worked with him closely describes him as “decisive” and “forward looking”. And yet he opposed the proposed Patran nuclear plant in an energy-deficient state. “I am not against nuclear power, but I am concerned about the fallout in a densely populated zone,” he asserts.

When Amarinder Singh entered public life 30 years ago and was elected Congress MP from Patiala in 1980, he owed it to his friend Rajiv Gandhi, a fellow Dosco. He, however, parted ways with the Congress in 1984 in protest against Operation Bluestar.

Consistent about the issue, even though he joined the Akali Dal, and was a Minister in the Surjit Singh Barnala government, he quit when, in May 1986, there was an armed action and NSG commandoes stormed the Golden Temple.

Yet, later, along with Badal and Barnala, he signed the 1994 “Amritsar Declaration” that endorsed the controversial 1978 Anandpur Sahib Resolution which demanded greater autonomy for Punjab.

Amarinder Singh wore the Akali Dal blue for 12 years before returning to the Congress white in 1996. His direct access to Sonia Gandhi has helped him weather many a storm, even as his detractors protested his inaccessibility to them.

The Akalis, with whom he had a cosy relationship till he filed corruption cases against the Badals, view him as a major threat even though his party has not yet asked him to spearhead its campaign in Punjab. But many see it as inevitable, given the TINA factor- there is no alternative.

When not otherwise engaged, he is still politically active. He has challenged his September 2008 expulsion from the state Assembly. “We are waiting for the Supreme Court’s judgement on the issue,” he says, sounding positive about its outcome.

He vociferously opposed the withdrawal of the so-called vendetta cases. He presented himself in a court for a hearing on the Ludhiana City Centre case on Saturday. At a press conference later, it was evident that state Congress leaders have begun rallying around him. Yet the polls are due in Punjab in February 2012 and the Captain and his team are waiting for a direction from the Congress chief regarding his role in the party. “… Madam (Sonia Gandhi) will decide,” Amarinder says, playing safe.

Congress rival Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, however, does not miss an opportunity to brief the media on how “Amarinder is promoting an un-Congress like culture and is inaccessible”. The former Chief Minister, however, is quick to defend himself. “How can I be inaccessible, I visit every block in Punjab…. These are stories planted by my detractors.”

Has the time out of power changed the Maharaja who is known as an epicure and an aesthete? In some regards, perhaps. For one, he has stopped taking his evening drink on medical advice. (His grandfather, Maharaja Bhupindra Singh, made Patiala a name saluted by whoever pours a large peg.) “I am an experienced man … things are different today,” he maintains.

How different, only time will tell. Controversies have cropped up around him from time to time, and many are about those with whom he associates himself – his friend of long-standing, IAS officer S. K. Sinha; media adviser B.I.S. Chahal, Patiala’s pilot Manpreet Kaur Sekhon, and Lahore’s journalist Aroosa Alam … all earned him miles of newsprint, yet the Teflon coating stayed intact, since he is “expected to be different from the common man”.

‘Maharani’ Preneet Kaur, his wife, is Minister of State for External Affairs in the UPA government. For decades, she was the person who interacted extensively with common people and nurtured his constituency assiduously. Well, she is said to be “peeved” at her husband, though she has maintained a stoic silence, which has earned her brownie points in the general public for “showing grace”. His son, Raninder Singh, lost the Bathinda seat to the Badal bahu, Harsimrat Kaur.

Proud to have served as ADC to the celebrated Lt-General Harbaksh Singh during the 1965 War, Amarinder Singh has been studying military history and has written well-received books like “Lest We Forget” that speaks about the battles fought in the 1965 War, and “A Ridge Too Far” on the Kargil conflict.

What has he learnt from his study of history? “People respond to leadership. A leader must have the courage to stand against the current if he is convinced that he is right.”

His vision for Punjab includes agricultural diversification and it becoming a commercial hub. Leadership. He wants to provide it, and has studied it in his latest book, “The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar”, which is already a best-seller and has received positive reviews.

The launch of “Rise and Fall…” was much talked about because of those who attended it, especially a glamorous Pakistani journalist and her entourage. The launch at Chandigarh, a week or so later, was talked about because of who did not attend it – Praneet Kaur, the ‘Maharani’ of Patiala. Sometimes substantial achievements are eclipsed by the flashes of controversy, but that’s an old story for Captain Amarinder Singh.

The article was published in The Tribune on March 30, 2010

Ramu Gandhi was a brilliant philosopher, a mentor and a guide. He was also the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. I met Ramu when I was a student at St Stephens College, Delhi and he influenced my life in many ways.
In college, we studied Ramu’s book on A N Whitehead, a slim volume whose importance was inversely proportional to its size. It was Ramu’s venture into fiction, Munniya’s Light that made me write about him, and for this interview I met him in Delhi. Please click here to read it.

Last year, I was to write an obituary when I found that Ramu had passed away. Please click here to read it.
Mahatma Gandhi was a great man who did not devote much time to his family. His children were not chips of the same block, but the grandson that I met had many qualities of a great man, and a formidable intellect. As the world remembers Gandhiji, my thoughts go to the only tangible link I had with him, Ramu Gandhi.

Guru Granth Sahib—The Guru Eternal by Dr Mohinder Singh is a magnificently produced volume and with impeccable it has been released by the Vice President of India at a time when the Sikhs worldwide are celebrating the ‘Gurta Gaddi Divas’.

Please click here to read my review of the book.

I had written, in 2004, an exhaustive article on Guru Granth Sahib, which you may be interested in reading. You can access it at this URL.

Let’s rededicate ourselves to following the teaching of the great Gurus on this occasion and follow the path they have shown us.

“Excellence among Sikhs”, was the theme of a function held some time ago at the Taj hotel in Chandigarh, and it seems that I forgot to post anything about it. It was organised by Rajwant Singh of Washington DC, an old friend and I was happy to be a part of the event that celebrated the success of achievers. Please click here to read more.