Some "In-House" Monsoon Photography

Bleak, grey skies. No sun in sight. What a perfect time for "in-house" photography. How does one use the monotonous greys both within the apartment and outside to one's advantage? Well, here's what I came up with.

The "Rentiyo-Generator" would have saved the Congress Truckloads of Cash

A close family friend and former NASA researcher, Gautam Patel, combined an old tape deck motor with a charkha or spinning wheel to create electricity. As you spin the wheel, electricity is generated and the circuit board glows with light (I couldn't capture it in my photo unfortunately). If the Congress party leaders had seen Gautam's contraption, christened, "The Rentiyo-Generator,"and believed in the applications of Gandhiji's apparently outdated self-sufficiency ideology a little earlier, they could have avoided today's "Trust Vote" and saved truck loads of cash used to buy-out wavering politicians. There are alternatives to Nuclear Energy, my dear. Imagine loads of people spinning charkhas and generating electricity - surreal or what. The charkha in the photo was used by Gautam's aunt Maniben to make cloth. And she had load of it; enough to make new clothes for her entire family.

A Punjabi-Australian Roadside dish

Toni Daa Dhaba is a roadside restaurant on the old highway between Lonavala and Pune that serves emu meat. It's hard to believe but true. These birds, native to Australia, are not endangered. But that doesn't help. One still feels pretty sad for these caged nomads that love to roam the outback freely for miles. The guy trying to fix his


car in the third photo looks oddly like the emu's African relative, the ostrich.

The Mystery of Maganlal Chikki

If you are an economist-cowboy riding through the Lonvala one-horse-town market, your brain cells will go into overdrive as you notice that on both sides of the street are shops of various sizes but with the same name, Maganlal Chikki and that too, in the same font and design. Professor Landsberg, my economics teacher in college, would have a field day here. I won't be surprised if The Economics of Maganlal Chikki, would outsell his current bestseller, The Economics of Sex (at least amongst his economist buddies, if not among Lonavalites).

For those connoisseurs of chikki and fudge who were introduced to these sweetmeats in their childhood, would agree that they don't make 'em like they used to. But such discerning sweet lovers are in short supply.

What's behind this Maganlal Chikki Phenomenon? The other twist to this mystery is that fact that most of Maganlal Chikki stores have the words, "Best And Original" above their name. If the name is not copyrighted, many shop owners can use it without any legal complications. But why Maganlal Chikki? Why not A-1 or the other names that are now minorites? What made Maganlal Chikki the brand of choice?

One theory propounded by a learned architect friend is that Maganlal Chikki is a franchise. Great idea. But we come to same question, what makes Maganlal Chikki the brand of choice? Anyone know where to start?