Saipan’s recent history is brutal.  Occupied by the European powers, then Japanese and then the Americans.  Monuments abound for Japanese and American soldiers.   I visited several islands including Tinian, the island from which the bombers carrying the nuclear bombs took off to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was quite an experience to stand alone on that runway, now a monument, with calm blue pacific ocean on the east, the deep blue pacific on the west over the marianna trench and imagine those two planes taking off.  I visited Rota, another volcanic tiny island, full of coconut trees with a few hundred people living on it.

(More to come)

The story of Rama and Sita is everywhere and the erstwhile kings of Bali called their capital Ayudhya.  Their greetings look like a namaste with a wonderful flourish including a bowed head.  After seeing that the namaste with folded palms looks like an urban slang as compared to what must be the original form in Bali.

I spent a couple of days visiting all the temples and tourist spots.  The toll booths had Ganesha statues to symbolize good luck on the road. ( I guess no obstacles).  The people were geninunely warm and seemed to be hardworking.  As I went around the island with its immense hospitality, warmth, smiles and of course ever present statues depicting hindu mythology, I wondered  whether India would have looked like  this more than 1200 years ago.

Every summer, he came to Bombay and took his sister’s children back to their little town near Thanjavur and he treated them royally as all uncles are expected to. They played with his four children, three sons and a cute little daughter. This year, he had insisted that the boy stay back a few more weeks, while his siblings left earlier with their mother. Hopefully they will tell their father – his brother-in-law how well they were treated by their Uncle. His brother-in-law’s younger brother had now become the personal assistant to Devika Rani and he was hoping that maybe he could get a glimpse of this famous actress and visit a movie studio this time. He was looking forward to getting to Bombay and enjoying his sister’s cooking at their Matunga flat.

As they neared the bridge over the river Sina, the train slowed down and came to a halt. He looked out saw the halt signal on the semaphore system. This junction still did not have the new color based systems yet. He looked around the compartment – there were not too many people. He could hear a baby chuckling a few seats away behind him. His nephew had dozed off to the train movements – probably reminding him of the cradle. He thought about going out and having a chat with Railway staff and get to know the reasons for the halt signal. He was going to ask the couple across the aisle to keep an eye on his nephew when he heard what sounded like a door slamming. He heard a crowd and then a loud scream from not too far away and then it started. A mob had entered the train, armed with knives, sticks and swords. No reason was given other than a war cry in a language not of the sub-continent – praising God. There was no way out- as the mob had split up and entered from both sides of the first class compartment. His nephew’s life at stake, he quickly took the sleeping boy and pushed him under the seat. He would rather die and than face his sister, if her son were harmed. As the mob came in, he fell and draped himself over the little boy. It was over in a few minutes. He was bleeding from knife wounds, his body and head hurting from blows. His nephew was safe. That was all that mattered – not his wounds, not the bleeding from his stomach and back. There was carnage everywhere – the little baby and her parents no more. All in the name of a faith. This spontaneous burst of savagery was a result of some perceived provocation in the nearby town – for which innocents gave their life.

He made his way back to Bombay, proud that his nephew was not hurt and returned him to his sister and brother-in-law – the family honor intact. His brother-in-law arranged for him to be treated at his company’s hospital (the perks of marrying his sister well) and he returned back to Mayavaram, a proud but wounded man. He was looking forward to returning to his routine. He loved trains and loved all things mechanical. He had taught himself to fix watches and served as the local watch and clock repairman as well. He had scrounged around and made a toolbox himself along with assorted imported tools that he could afford during his visits to Bombay.

He never recovered fully, his wounds inside had not healed and a few months later he felt that he had to go to the patnam (big city) and he told his young wife that he was leaving for treatment. She was his second wife and he loved her dearly. The first one had died early and without children. She was very pretty and her brother was one of the most highly regarded Vedic scholars. Even the Kanchi Acharya consulted him on matters of import – he thought with pride. His daughter was getting cuter by the day and it will not be long before he needed to get her married off.. It was getting close to Deepavali and he wanted to get these wounds taken care of and come back before Deepavali. He waved to his little ones – the two youngest ones, the daughter was 7 and the youngest boy 4 years old. He told his eldest to take care of the family and second one to help his brother out. His wife insisted he take the eldest with him. With his eldest, he left on the train from Mayiladuthurai.

He reached Chennai in the morning. He made his way to a distant relative’s house, changed and left for the Royapettah General Hospital – one of the best Government hospitals in Chennai.

A few weeks later, outside a small house in Mayiladuthurai the post man called out “thanthi thanthi” (”Telegram”). The little girl and the little boy rushed out – curious. They were wearing new clothes. Their mother asked the second son to go out and get the “thanthi”. In the last one her husband had sent, he had promised to come back soon. The post man wanted to get home – he was not supposed to be working that day and the little brats in the streets were setting up crackers and snickering when it exploded as he bicycled over them. The second son opened the thanthi and as he read his legs gave away – his father had passed away on the first day of Deepavali . His father’s life taken prematurely in the name of another faith. That evening, he walked to the Mayiladuthurai railway station and stood there, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he recollected the last memories of his father boarding the train from Mayiladuthurai.

This family now had something in common with the people of Melkote. (See ” The Meaning of the Diya“)

This is a true story pieced together from the recollections of the “nephew”, the young wife, the little daughter and the sons. See “the train from Mayiladuthurai Part II. It covers the struggles of the young woman, Saraswathi Ammal, as she deals with the loss of her husband to savagery, as she navigates through life in a in a small south Indian town, dealing with widowhood, ostracized by her community and raising four children.

The fear of the Tyrant was such that Lakhi Shah set fire to his hut with Guru Tegh Bahadur’s mortal remains in it to cremate him. It is this Guru’s noble deed for another’s right to freedom of conviction and conscience that we honor as we bow when we light the diya on Diwali – for without these deeds there may never have been another Diwali. We bow humbled by the sacrifice of Guru Tegh Bahadur and the Sikhs who gave up their lives.

A thousand miles south in dusty plains along the Cauvery river, the Rig Veda chants echoed through the Patashala. Different mandalams chanted the vedas using their vikratis – (techniques that rival modern forward error correction algorithms in communication theory) ensuring the purity of the oral renditions. In the nearby Agraharam they led a monastic life and lived on alms. They had given up materialism long ago and had devoted their lives to the chanting of the Vedas and passing it on from generation to generation. For over two thousand years they had lived under the protection of mighty Dravidian kingdoms and later on the powerful Marathas. For a brief few decades when this protection waned, entire Agraharams were massacred. At the Melkote Agraharam one Diwali night, men were lined up to face the women and decapitated as the women wept – their oral tradition extinguished – by savagery on behalf of a faith founded by a man from a distant land. When we light the diya with a bowed head – we bow to the sacrifice and perseverance of these scholars, we bow in remembrance of the lives lost by the Marathas and the Rajputs in protecting our ancient culture, we bow to the strength of our ancestors in holding on to this ancient Dharmic way of life amidst adversity and faced with tyranny.

Our ancient kingdoms were not lost to foreign invaders because they were weak in military. They were lost to invaders who used our Dharmasastra as a weakness. It is said that in ancient Indian battles between Hindu kingdoms, women and children were never hurt and commoners never attacked. Nor were homes and temples touched. Battles were conducted on battlefields and at the end of each day of battle it was not uncommon for opponents to meet. Chivalry was expected and was the rule. Dharmasastra reigned for thousands of years – even in the lands ruled by the Vangas and the Cholas away from the shores of Bharat. Savage invaders took advantage of these practices. Yet they did not last long.

In the recent past, Mahatma Gandhi upheld Dharma when under duress from friends and enemies; he treated the British with respect – lent a helping hand to them in World War II – even though he could have taken advantage of their plight. Gandhi upheld Dharma when he fought to allow people of all faith to remain in India at inception. When we bow to light the diya – we bow to all that upheld Dharma and we renew our compact to uphold it as we light the flame.

Our history refers to Ramayana and in that Lord Rama’s return to Ayodhya with Sita from his exile. As he returned home after rescuing Sita to claim his throne, people placed lit lamps outside, to acknowledge his unwavering faith in Dharma amidst adversity, to honor him with a lit pathway to his home. That was the beginning of this practice.

As we bow to light the diya, in this year 5109 of Kaliyuga, we bow in remembrance of all those sacrificed to preserve this ancient way of life and we light the lamp to symbolize the dispelling of the darkness by the rays of light, to give us the strength to uphold our commitment to Dharma.

My ideal “personal communicator” would have a large screen but in a small form factor, extremely light (would like a clamshell design), long battery life, powerful enough to view, edit my desktop files, browse the internet, check and respond to email and a full keyboard. Enable me to synchronize my calendar with my desktop or network calendar. Biometric security would be nice to have and if I could also use my phone as a payment device at restaurants, vending machines that would be a big plus.

Are we there yet? Large screen in a small factor is a bit difficult to implement physically but the phone can project a screen and a keyboard (virtual keyboard – VKB). VKBs have reached the European market and companies such as Canesta have made “typing in thin air” a reality. Based on the few demos I have seen, projection screens are still a few years away – but you get the picture. Future cellphones will be lighter but still project a full keyboard (when you need one) and of course, project a full desktop screen. That would be very handy probably replace my laptop.

As we add more power to the cellphone and more features, battery life becomes critical. Rechargeable lithium-ion cells are the standard on phones today, but rarely last more than a few hours of talk-time. Nearly five years ago, Motorola announced a milestone in miniaturizing fuel cell technology to power cell phones. More recently Toshiba announced a miniaturized fuel cell and pictures of this fuel cell can be found on the web. Expectation is that these fuel-cells will have a life that is at least be double that of the current lithium battery life. There’s a catch – you still cannot take a fuel-cell powered device on a plane. But it does look like the power problem will get resolved in the future.

More powerful chips from AMD and Intel will make these “personal communicators” more powerful. With powerful operating systems such as Symbian, Palm or that of Microsoft – we should expect a near desktop experience on these phones in the future. There are several phones (Authentec, PanTech, Willcom) already on the market that support fingerprint based biometric authentication on the phone. More than 20m Koreans make payments using their cellphone – it’s only a matter of time before cell-phone based payments make their way to North America.

In short, the phone of the future may meet our expectations. For now, I am going to get a second phone for voice only and relegate the Treo to calendar, email and browsing – this may also decrease my likelihood of swerving off I-70 while trying to find a phone number sans a scroll wheel on the Treo at exactly 70mph (no more- no less)

My 3yr old son walked into my study hearing the radio. He looked at the computer monitor with a puzzled expression and said “that’s not the picture, that’s your email”. He kept scanning the room – I realized that he was looking for a TV picture to match Garrison Keilor’s voice. He was born in the 21st century and will never know a time without TV, internet or on-demand content. I explained to him that radio was TV without a picture – he reluctantly accepted that. From a simple radio more than sixty years ago we are in the information age where “place shifting” is the latest buzzword.

Place shifting evolved from another buzzword “time shifting”. Time shifting refers to being able to record content and watch/listen to it later. Place shifting refers to being able to watch/listen to it later from a different location or place. The VCR was the earliest form for time-shifting for video content, however programming the VCR was best left to folks with multiple doctoral degrees. The TV Guide in the early nineties was a multi-billion dollar business and consisted of a half-an-inch thick book with program listings. If you could navigate the TV Guide and program the VCR to record the programs you wanted – you may have achieved time shifting. Then came along VideoGuide (yours truly had a small role there) that put the entire TV Guide on you TV screen in an interactive manner and you could navigate that with your remote and select a program to record. This was a big leap forward. More than ten years later, it is still the preferred user interface on a TV. The VideoGuide was primitive in that it interfaced your clunky VCR to the TV and you had to have blank tapes in the VCR to record. The arrival of hard disk based TIVO heralded true time-shifting. Of course, TIVO turned selling TV programming into a recurring revenue business, but with free services such as MeeVee.com it may have to find other revenue sources. There are several Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) standalone (sony, toshiba, JVC) and PC based solutions (Hauppauge) that provide TiVo like timeshifting today.

With the launch of Tivo-to-go, arrival of products like Slingbox and ORB networks, place shifting technology is commercially available at fairly reasonable price. As the cost per terabyte and cost per Mbit of bandwidth fall steadily, place-shifting becomes economically viable and possible. This means that if you have an internet ready mobile device you can watch your recorded Baseball game from anywhere by streaming it to your device. Of course, you can also do it from another browser enabled computer from your vacation home. This one approach – another is that of a portable media center (PMC) offered by companies such as iRiver, Archos and Lyra. These solutions can store as much as 400 hours of video (at the high end) and of course much more music and are portable. These solutions essentially claim that you can carry all your videos (I can’t think of more than twenty movies I would to like watch) – currently about 100+movies on a small device and watch them anytime, anywhere. Some of these devices support wireless connectivity as well as well as video capture – a Digital video recorder (DVR) – function.

These technologies are at their infancy today but soon will become ubiquitous and I believe that the next generation will not know a time when they could not access any content from any where. There are several technology pieces that need to get better and some gaps need to be filled before this happens. There are still opportunities for entrepreneurs to innovate.

To access content from a mobile device, you need a device that can support the memory requirements for video and a network that provides a decent bandwidth. All the major mobile service providers are rolling out their high speed networks and we are a couple or more years away from high quality streaming video. In the near term there are opportunities to develop mobile optimized Codecs – most of the current codecs are based on DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) compression techniques that are standardized through formats such as MPEG.- 1 & 2.Research, both private and university, is now underway to leverage Fractal and Wavelet compression techniques to improve video compression and of course that’s another billion dollar opportunity awaiting an entrepreneur.

Video indexing will help us find and watch relevant content – the TV guide can be considered to be an early form of video indexing. Google Video, Yahoo Video have started indexing video. Indexing is primitive and innovation is required to help locate that specific “home run” or scene from a movie to be located and streamed on-demand.Future video transmission standards such as MPEG-7 are expected to support granular indexing. This of course means conversion of 40 plus years of video into a new standard – with indexing (probably manually done). Could this be an outsourcing opportunity down the road?

All the buzzwords aside, as consumers we want to record and store any content that we like, find & retrieve specific content from any device we own and from any place. We also want to manage the content, share it and edit it. I would safely estimate that we are about 2 years away at the minimum but not more than five years when these devices are as ubiquitous as an Ipod. Until such time place shifting in my home refers to the sofa cushions miraculously arranged into a space ship twenty feet from their previously known location and piloted by a power ranger.