Refractive Thoughts

A person’s fascination for 2-wheelers can remain dormant but can never fade away.   In my case, I can be ensconced in a technology-laden luxury 4-wheeler, but my eyes instinctively tracks a new 2-wheeler that whizzes past to drool at its looks and marvel at its design!   The day had arrived in my life to buy a new scooter for my daughter.   At the dealership as I researched a surfeit of choices, I drifted into a stupor… TVS-50 moped with its stunning looks was first introduced onto the Indian roads around 1980.   A narrow menu of scooter and moped choices had made teenagers yearn for more, but our succour resorted to posters and images in auto-magazines.   Mopeds Suvega and Luna ruled the roads though limited in number; the launch of TVS-50 created waves.   Novel technical design aspects in this moped – start clutch, choke, an off button, a new seat-design and a few more - made it attractive for the young generation. We friends had stepped into ou...

A katte in the front porch was the first to take shape before even our home was designed!  Katte is a word in Kannada language.  In its slang avatar, it’s reference is to an elevated platform like a bench from olden days built in front of the houses so that family and friends sat down together to chat; while in a more formal avatar, it refers to a platform or a stage to launch activities, also built as barrier walls to rivers and ponds.  In villages the panchayat - a village council, sat down to discuss politics and triage local disputes towards final settlement with its reference as katte.  In the 1970s our grandparents lived with us.  My grandfather had fought for our freedom struggle, was in his 80s and sat down with friends at a large katte in the evening hours for extended discussion on all topics under the sun – from the esoteric like Vedanta philosophy to the mundane ones like politics.  Others too had participated actively or indirectly in fre...