Spoilt for choice

Books

When you start reading a great book, its contours start realigning themselves with your imagination.
The spaces between the pause that jumps from one chapter to the next, they are filled with your essence.
And no two people ever would imagine a book in the same way: using exact pastels and brush strokes.
And that is why when you finish a book, you are left with a loss. You know you have lost something because when you read it again, it will never be the same. The experience might be better, but you will read it in a new light altogether. 
We love to cradle our books to sleep in the hope, that we’d maybe dream about it and that shall be the only manageably close encounter we could ever have with the characters, and the story.
And sometimes, we just hold a book close to our heart and cry. 
Writers, have a task at hand. They definitely need to write about what they picture but there should also be a peephole into the scene the key to which is with the reader. We become, the faceless people inside.
I am that woman, who silently resigns to Kent, Baker Street or Wuthering Heights like an unacknowledged presence: an intruder.
This must be the reason why we relish looking into the ordinary lives of men and women through a tiny peephole. These people, perhaps I’d come across them at a dance or a protest, these people are dull, drab and lead non existent lives.
But the excitement of eavesdropping on their most intimate conversations, that keeps us going.
And we might come off as a stock character, after reading a book, we grow, like the protagonist in it grows out of the mould he was cast in and becomes someone else. It is more like the writer, took me up as a character to influence by the force of the story she weaves.

Is Glonass set to be an alternative to GPS?

‘Want to keep a track of your dear ones whereabouts in this unsafe world?’
Sounds lucrative. Doesn’t it? And who’d even say no before the product is placed across and is tagged at about ₹3000? Perhaps this sense of insecurity is what the Russian telecom major JFSC Sistema wants to tap into in future.
It is soon to launch a mobile phone embedded with a special chip through which people who give the phone to others can recieve their location on their mobile phone, irrespective of whether it is on a GSM or a CDMA network. And that too, anytime of the day.
Glonass is the navigation and tracking system based on a network of 24 satellites around the globe that has been developed by the telecom provider.
Sistema has built this system as an alternative to US owned GPS (Global Positioning Systems) which is used by most mobile phone consumers in India to avail locationing services.
According to Russian estimates, about 10% of all smartphones in India already contain chips that combine both Glonass and GPS technologies.
How does Sistema intend to get a breakthrough in this market in India?
A deal was recently struck between Sistema and state owned BSNL to jointly develop Glonass services and applications here.
Now is Glonass set to compete with the already popular GPS? Although Russians explain that the two technologies are meant to complement each other, on fact that turns the tables in Sistema’s stride is that unlike the US that blocks out satellites in certain troubled regions, Glonass does not.
While the ‘safety’ angle rings a familiar objective in our minds, the real inclination of consumers towards this system can only be gauged once it comes into operation.