I am not sure what is tougher: being a banker, being a branch head (with depleted human resources), being a middle level manager of a public sector enterprise in India, being a housewife in an Indian middle class home –as…
Author: umashankar
I am just a watcher then. Sometimes I watch life, sometimes I watch death; many times I watch in between...
My Journey to an Android Phone
My first mobile phone was a Motorola C350 purchased in 2003 after furious bouts of research aided by the redoubtable Google, not to mention the brain-storming sessions with wife. It was a cute, imminently pocketable handset with a colour screen…
Empty Stomachs and 'Symbols of Change'
‘Superpower dreams cannot be sustained on empty stomachs.’ - Rahul Bajaj, when asked whether India is about to become a superpower. If you don’t become a superpower on stomachs empty as dry wells, you don’t become a Pharaoh or…
Of Nikon D7000, Films and Still Photography
Veils are off D7000, Nikon’s new baby which has supposedly put D90, the first ever DSLR to record HD video, behind the blinkers. Nikon appears to have run out of two digit D-X0 figures forcing them to fall back on…
Who Switched to Nikon Now?
Creative chemicals are on high tides and they may just about break all embankments. For I can rarely envision my next post so close to the previous one and here I am hammering out the keyboard as if there’ll be…
Death of Deterrence
'Think of how many you don't even know about'. Bill Bradford, to the jury that sent him to the death row, holding him guilty of double rape and murder. The chilling message was not lost on the investigators of Los…
State Bank of Indore: Caught in the Act
The nation today was exposed to the information from nothing less than the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, or, as they say, straight from the horse's mouth: "SBI is facing a situation where most of its branches and those of…
Fra Lippo Lippi
Yesternight, I was caught red-handed drooling at the Nikon photographic lens section of B&H Photo Video online store by the Moral Police, a.k.a., the wife. A chill befell freezing everything alive wherein the unasked questions hung in the mid air…
Admin's Hubris
“Flaming (also known as bashing) is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users” -Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia Recently, one of the myriads of non-descript crevices I keep drifting in on the net, 'officially' charged me with 'flaming' for a rather…
Divorcing Canon
Not many moons ago, Ole Jørgen Liodden was an ace Canon photographer. Armed with his 'tank', a.k.a the EOS-1Ds Mark III, he scoured the Arctic permafrost for sparring polar bears. Quest for frolicking king penguins had him lying on his…
While I be the Banker
Towards the end of March, of what is known as ‘the annual financial closing’, the accidental banker in me braces for the approaching storm with clinched fists and gritted teeth. It’s payback time for the mounds of litter left around…
Nikon, Sex, Hollywood & Marco Polo
Actually, I owe the title to Scott Kelby rather than the ongoing Nikon Marketing teaser where something 'Nikon' is claiming to be Sexy, Hollywood and Marco Polo, all rolled into one, with Innovation thrown somewhere in between. I could have…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 