Question Ably - 29: Answer

Parle and Parle-G it is.

Question Ably - 29

Back to back questions on business.

This Indian company is family owned. It started operations in 1929. The chairman says they're interested neither in selling off, nor in buying any more businesses, nor in going public. Such 'conservatism' hasn't stopped the company from becoming a Rs.10,000 crore business. The product it makes measures 53 mm and is reputedly the world's largest selling single brand, selling 15 billion units a month.

Brand and product please.

Question Ably - 28: Answer

Skoda Auto and Volkswagen are the two brands. Skoda Auto was hived off from Skoda Works.  I found a nice picture of what look like gun turrets being made at Skoda Works.

Question Ably - 28

For many decades this brand was associated with the largest industrial works in Eastern Europe, mostly manufacturing a wide array of armaments. During the inter-war years when Churchill was impressing upon his government about the impending Hitlerite threat, he specifically mentioned this industrial plant as a key strategic element which the British would give up if they allowed Nazi Germany to acquire the country in which it was situated.

After the Second World War when the Communists took over the country, they nationalized this factory and dismembered into various specialist plants.

Today this brand is associated, at least in India, with something completely different from munitions. Somewhat ironically, another famous brand from what was once the aggressor-country now owns the brand we're talking about.

Which brand?

Theodore Boone: The Accused - Review in DH

My review of John Grisham's latest Theo Boone novel was carried today by the DH.

 

Theodore Boone: The Accused, John Grisham, Hachette India, Rs.250.

As they say, when it Grishams, it pours.

I reviewed John Grisham’s baseball novel ‘Calico Joe’ in these pages not too long ago and found it a trifle pedestrian. So it was that I picked up ‘Theodore Boone: The Accused’ with nothing approaching tremendous anticipation. But now that I am done with the book, I must admit to being happily entertained for a few hours.

Grisham told The Telegraph, probably only half in jest, that with the arrival of Harry Potter, he was displaced as the number one author in the world and missed occupying that slot. Then, in what was an ‘a-ha!’ moment, he hit upon the character of kid detective Theodore Boone.

Since then Theo has had three outings. ‘Theodore Boone’, ‘Theodore Boone: The Abduction’ and now, ‘Theodore Boone: The Accused’.

By now, readers familiar with Theo will know he’s the thirteen-year old son of lawyer parents and lives in the small town of Strattenburg. He’s an only child with a dog named Judge for company. Happily for his fans, he combines a nose for adventure with an eye for the law, attending the local courthouse often enough to be friends with Judge Gantry - this time, the one with a mild temper, not distemper.

Initially, the accused in ‘The Accused’ is a wealthy inhabitant of Strattenburg charged with the murder of his wife. When he jumps bail and absconds, everybody in town, Theo included, is intrigued. But Theo is robbed of the pleasure of following the course of the law from the side lines, when, in a cruel perversion, he becomes the accused himself thanks to an elaborate and devious plot. Laptops and other electronic items are stolen from a local store and all the leads point to Theo. Laced with a spine tingling dose of malice, this is no ordinary prank, as the plotters spare no effort to malign Theo’s fair name in the local media. Overnight, Theo’s world not only turns upside down as he finds himself at the centre of a controversy he has no clue about, there is also a hint of possible physical harm. The pressure on him is so intense that he thoughtlessly gets into a brawl in school, something from which he stays usually away.

Theo’s allies in such testing times are his maverick uncle Ike, a couple of schoolmates and thankfully, the principal of the school. They provide him with crucial information, analysis and moral sustenance which all help him come through the ordeal.

While he battles to find answers to this dangerous riddle, Theo gets a welcome break by appearing in Animal Court, a petty judicial forum so casual that even a student like Theo can represent litigants. This time, his client’s pet llama, Lucy, has landed her keeper in a spot of bother by spitting at unfriendly security personnel. Theo convinces the judge and the parties to come to a most agreeable compromise.

While I enjoyed this piece of YA fiction from Grisham much more than his regular fare for the not-so-YA, my bright young friends may find a few loopholes in the plot. For one, what detective work did Theo actually do in this story? To me, it appeared he managed well only because of some convenient coincidences and some inspired work by friends. ‘Kid Detective’ didn’t seem too apt a sobriquet for our young friend, at least not in this adventure. For another, the yarn about the missing murderer didn’t seem really relevant to the rest of the story.

Grisham weaves into the plotline situations where Theo’s sense of ethics is put to the test. But in welcome contrast to the monochromatic fulminations in ‘Calico Joe’, Theo’s dilemmas are presented in a more nuanced fashion.

All said and done, I would pick the Theodore Boone series over the fare Grisham churns out these days for us adults. After all, it’s not often that I get to meet spitting llamas in Animal Court.

 

Leh Lehters - 3

All roads may lead to Rome but only two roads lead into Leh from the rest of India.

National Highway (NH) 21 connects Leh with Manali in Himachal Pradesh. This route takes the traveller through the passes of Rohtang, Baralacha-la and Tanglang-la ('la' = pass). The distance of 480 kms takes anywhere between 12 to 18 hours to cover, depending on the weather and the road condition. The route is supposedly very scenic and worth the drive. We briefly skimmed this route on the way out of Leh to Lake Tso-Moriri, deviating from it well before the scenery began.

The other highway into Leh leads from Srinagar after crossing the passes of Fotu-la and Zoji-la. This is NH 1D, something like a branch line of NH 1 that links New Delhi to the border town of Attari in Punjab. If you want to show off, you must call it a 'spur' of NH-1.

We saw more of NH-1D than NH-21. First, we got to travel quite some distance on this highway to reach the important village of Temisgam (or Tingmosgang). After joining our friends in Tingmosgang, we drove back on the same road, this time all the way to Leh.

Many parts of NH-1D were still work in progress. Only one short stretch was a bitumen carpet. As a bonus, this excellent stretch passed right beside the Indus as that great river took a turn round the mountainside. Those few minutes were so exhilarating that our Innova hummed a few Ladakhi folk tunes.

Even on the not-so-great stretches of the road, the landscape was stunning. The photos I've added to this post don't do justice to the panorama that was before us. Maybe a better lens and better technique would help.

For those who're curious, the lens is a Tamron 18mm-270mm walkabout. So no changing lenses on the move, but no great optics either.

If we had started back from further up the road beyond Tingmosgang, we would have passed through Gata Loops or the 'jalebi bends', a serpentine stretch of about 20 hairpin bends on NH-1D from Fotu-la to the monastery town of Khalste. Next time maybe.

Click to enlarge the images. I've resized them to 60% of their original.

(A bend in the river - Indus on NH1D)

(The Zanskar River)

(Somewhere on NH1D between Saspol and Basgo)

(On the outskirts of Leh)

John Grisham's 'Calico Joe': my review in DH

Today, the Deccan Herald carried my review of John Grisham's 'Calico Joe'.

Beanball as sin

John Grisham, “Calico Joe”, Hachette India, Rs.350

It is the 70s. Baseball fans, like those in Calico Rock, Arkansas, tune in to the radio to follow the game. Televised games are few.

The people of Calico Rock usually root for the St. Louis Cardinals. Naturally, they hate the Chicago Cubs, the long-standing rivals of the Cardinals. But when the Cubs beat their favourite team, the locals celebrate the loss, for their local boy Joe Castle is on the winning side.

‘Calico’ Joe is the boy next door who becomes a sensation without losing his taste for home cooked food. In a game against the Giants, Joe celebrates with dignity after rewriting the record books. The lone tear he sheds only endears him all the more. By the time the Cubs take on the New York Mets at Shea Stadium in New York City many records have taken a beating from his bat; the fans are hungry for more.

Pitching for the Mets is Warren Tracy. In contrast with Joe, whose star is on the ascent, Warren’s career is flickering towards an unremarkable end. His sole entry in the record books – as the pitcher who has hit the most batters – is, obviously, not a happy one. His bland career on the plate is made only worse by his foul temper. He has an ego disproportionate to his meagre accomplishments. He acts pricey when requested for autographs. At home he often drinks and abuses his wife and kids; womanises too. In short, Warren is a foul tempered loser and a bad man.

Little Paul Tracy is like any American kid who is mad about the game. He memorizes every statistic worth noting, he collects every picture and story of every baseball star worthy of adulation. He even plays the game in the Little League, that is, until one day when his father takes it out on him for being sissy enough not to hit a batter. Not surprisingly, while he is proud that his father plays for the Mets, Joe Castle is Paul Tracy’s true idol.

The boy is in the stands in Shea Stadium, waiting for that moment when his hero faces his father. That moment arrives, only to result in tragedy and trauma. Joe’s career ends abruptly. Warren Tracy becomes a toxic name, though he stoutly denies he did any wrong. Only Paul knows for sure that all along his daddy meant to do what he did.

Seguing between the early 70s when the ‘incident’ took place and sometime thirty years on in the present, John Grisham’s ‘Calico Joe’ is the story of how Paul Tracy seeks redemption for his father’s deed most foul. Taken at face value, it is a light, pleasant read. The baseball primer at the beginning of the book is both educative and enjoyable, and in the context of the novel, a must-read even before starting the story.

However (there had to be one). It may not be too far-fetched to read ‘Calico Joe’ as the quintessential Christian parable. After all, John Grisham was raised a devout Christian and continues to abide by the faith, teaching Sunday School at Oxford, Mississippi. He has acknowledged that his Christian upbringing may influence his plotlines sometimes. ‘Calico Joe’ is certainly one such time and this is the problem with the novel. As with all plain vanilla morality tales, there is no greyness to the characters. Joe Castle is virtue personified. Warren Tracy lives in darkest sin until, thanks to terminal pancreatic cancer, he sees the light. Paul is the good shepherd who saves his father’s soul by taking him on a road trip to redemption. Like the truly noble, Joe gets boring after a while and is promptly consigned to the margins of the plot. Like most of the fallen, Warren Tracy has much more to say and do in the story. And like most insistent moralisers, Paul Tracy is nauseously self-righteous and heartless.

It all depends on how we read.

Leh Lehters - 2

Leh town has two distinct parts. The old town, seen in the photo in my first post of this series, is squalid. Changspa, which is regarded as an agricultural suburb of Leh, is quite green. This is the area which boasts of one of the popular tourist attractions, Shanti Stupa.

Here's Changspa and the Shanti Stupa as seen from the Red Temple.

Leh Lehters - 1

(A view of old Leh town from Leh Palace)

Been a while since I posted here. I spent the last ten days in Leh and that part of Ladakh. Over the next few weeks I'll write a bit about my trip.

When I mentioned to friends and family about the trip, some common questions were: "Going to Leh? What about Ladakh?", "Leh? Then you can see Ladakh also." If I said I was going to Ladakh, then the response would vary on predictable lines: "Ladakh? What about Leh?" You get the drift.

So, let's try and clear the air about Leh's relation to Ladakh. Till a few days ago, I thought Ladakh was the district and Leh was its headquarters. Turned out my understanding was correct, but not after 1979.

This gap in knowledge is easily explained. I read voraciously about Leh and Ladakh till the age of five and then moved on to other states and UTs of India that is Bharat.

If you're bored with this post, go ahead, take a break and work out my age as of 2012.

Ladakh was indeed a district till 1979. In that year, it was redrawn as two districts: Leh and Kargil, and Ladakh ceased to have an independent administrative identity (like a district or taluka). Wiki told me in hushed whispers that Leh is in fact the second largest district in the whole of India after Kutch, Gujarat.

So how do we understand Ladakh today? Perhaps as a region comprising of the districts of Leh and Kargil. However, that is a narrow way of looking at it. A wider view would be to see Ladakh as the sum total of the geography, ethnicity, culture, and religion of Leh, Kargil, Zanskar and the Nubra Valley (all of them in J&K) and Lahaul and Spiti ('Lahool-iSpiti as it is pronounced locally) (in Himachal Pradesh).

To make the picture really complete, Ladakh would have to include Gilgit - Baltistan in Pakistan and the Aksai Chin area under Chinese control.

More Leh-ter.

Question Ably - 27 : Answer

Pinkerton old logo








Pinkerton current logo

Pinkerton, or the 'Pinks' as the first person who got the correct answer to this question referred fondly to them.

Now called Pinkerton Consulting & Investigation, it was founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It is a Securitas group company.

I liked the old logo. The new logo looks like the eyeball is about to be poked.

Question Ably - 27

Abraham Lincoln had engaged their services. Dashiel Hammett was employed with them. They were used to break labour union strikes. They even featured in the iconic movie 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. At the height of their power, their employees were said to number more than the standing army of the US. Their influence was so pervasive and pernicious that a law was passed prohibiting the federal government from employing them and their ilk. Which organisation?

Trek to Narayanagiri

A few weeks ago we trekked up Narayanagiri, a rocky hillock near Ramanagaram, 40 kms from Bangalore. Here is my report as published in the Deccan Herald.

Question Ably - 26: Answer

(Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Sir Charles van Dyck or van Dyke (1599 - 1641) is the painter. Though a Dutchman, he became the court painter in England. He is known for his paintings of King Charles I, which is why the beard style is also known as 'Charlie'.

van Dyke has other things named after him.

Van Dyke Brown is an early photographic printing process named as such because the brown colour obtained by using the process resembled the brown oil paint used by the painter.

A Van Dyke suit is a velvet suit worn by young men in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (don't ask for further details, Wiki hasn't any). 

Question Ably - 26

A goatee is a tuft of facial hair on the chin, with the cheeks shaven clean. The style is named after the similar growth of chin hair on goats. Of course, the difference is that goats have no choice in the matter.

Sometimes, a related style of facial hair is mistakenly called a goatee. This style differs from the goatee in that it combines a mustache with the typical goatee. The style is named after a celebrated painter of the 17th century. He wore one himself. He also painted a king of England with it and therefore, the style is sometimes nicknamed after the king.

Identify the painter and you have identified the style.

Question Ably - 25: Answer

Who? Antoine Lavoisier. That's who.

Widely regarded as the father of modern chemistry, he is credited with identifying oxygen. Actually, he called it 'oxygen gas' and thought of it as consisting of two elements: oxygen, which is the principle of acidity and caloric, which is the principle of heat. It was left to his great rival Joseph Priestley to set right some problems with this way of understanding oxygen.

Lavoisier's contribution to modern science can be summarized this way:
a) He helped bid goodbye to many un-/semi-/pseudo-scientific notions of modern chemistry's predecessor, alchemy.
b) He established clearly the distinction between elements and compounds.
c) Finally, he attached numbers to chemistry, so that things could be measured and therefore predicted.

(Courtesy: 'On Giants' Shoulders' - Melvyn Bragg)

Question Ably - 25

He was born into the French aristocracy and became a tax collector, a profession much hated by the people. He invited greater scorn by collecting money to build a wall around Paris, a wall which would help in collecting more taxes. Parisians felt their movements at night were restricted and hated the man for it.

When the Revolution came, tax collectors were seen as enemies of the people. He was imprisoned and eventually guillotined, conducting himself with remarkable dignity and poise till the very end.

Posterity knows him not for tax collection but for his contributions to science. It is said that when he heard the sentence, he asked for a few weeks time to complete some experiments. The judge replied, 'The revolution does not need scientists'.

A contemporary said in anguish, 'It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.'

Who?
       

Governance then and now: same difference?

I am just finishing Maharani Gayatri Devi's memoirs, 'A Princess Remembers'.

In the 1962 general elections Gayatri Devi contested on a Swatantra Party (Rajaji's party) ticket and won the Jaipur Parliamentary seat by a margin big enough to earn her a place in the Guinness Book.

Recalling the state of governance in the country at that time, she writes:

"The Congress Party in many parts of the country was beginning to acquire a reputation for corruption and nepotism. In Rajasthan, as in other places, the ministers put their proteges or people who had helped them in the elections in responsible government jobs which they had neither the education nor the experience to fill capably. It was rumoured that when government contracts were assigned to private companies, they were apt to go to whoever gave the minister concerned the most money under the table. We saw the effect of this practice in ordinary things that any tax-payer comes across. The state of the roads, for instance, was deplorable. There were potholes everywhere and in places the rains had washed out the roads entirely. Money had been allotted for repairs but where it went we didn't know."

This was in the late '50s. The only difference since then seems to be that now there are more parties doing the same things. 

Question Ably - 24: Answer

(Image courtesy: http://www.duncans-tea.com/brands/index.htm)

Runglee Rungliot - or Rangli Rangliot and so on, you get the idea - is the answer.

In this connection, one of the avid readers of this blog wrote, along with his correct answer within minutes of the question going online:

"When my sister and I were growing up, I remember we used to wonder at these tin boxes with a picture of a Tibetan lama blowing one of those Tibetan horns and 'Runglee Rungliot' written on top. There was never any tea in there, as the boxes were used to store some other things. We figured out what those two words meant only after the Google age. Your question this morning brought back fond memories and tears of happiness."

Of course, the last sentence is mine entirely. The mind's tendency to rung liot. I mean run riot.

Question Ably - 24

A Buddhist monk stepped into a tea garden and was so enchanted by the aroma, he said, 'Thus far and no further.' Not in English, Tibetan presumably. The two words he said in his native tongue is now a premium tea brand owned by the Duncan Goenka Group. The name also refers to the tea-garden itself where this tea is grown; the garden is part of the tea garden tourism in the area.

The two words please. 

Sundown at Lalbagh

Question Ably - 23: Answer

(Courtesy: Wikipedia)


The answer is 'Terminus'; terminus and terminal are the noun forms.
  

Question Ably - 23

He lives on in two noun forms, especially in modern transport and computers. But he was once a god, the god of boundaries. Who?

Clarke's 329 and other stories

I had a gut feel that a lot of batsmen have logged scores in excess of 250 against India in Test matches. I visited the stats page on Cricinfo to check things out and this is what I found.

300s against India:
340 - Sanath Jayasuriya (1997, RPS, Colombo)
333 - Graham Gooch (1990, Lord's)
329* - Michael Clarke (2012, SCG)

250 - 299 against India:
294 - Alastair Cook (Eng) (2011, Birmingham)
280* - Javed Miandad  (Pak) (1983, Hyd, Sind)
275 - Mahela Jayawardene (SL) (2009, Ahmedabad)
267 - Younis Khan (Pak) (2005, Bangalore)
257 - Ricky Ponting (Aus) (2003, MCG)
256 - Rohan Kanhai (WI) (1964, Kolkata)
253 - Hashim Amla (SA) (2010, Nagpur)
250 - SFAF Bacchus (WI) (1979, Kanpur)

The list of Indians in the same league is remarkable for its sheer dominance by one man:

300s by Indians
319 - Virender Sehwag (v. SA, Chennai, 2008)
309 - Virender Sehwag (v. Pak, Multan, 2004)

299-250 by Indians
293 - Virender Sehwag (v. SL, Mumbai, 2003)
281 - VVS Lakshman (v. Aus, Kolkata, 2001)
270 - Rahul Dravid (v. Pak, Rawalpindi, 2004)
254 - Virender Sehwag (v. Pak, Lahore, 2006)

Must remember not to judge him too harshly on current form in Oz.

Random Photo

                            Role Reversal: A red ant carries a dead spider up a guava tree.