************************************************************************************************************
As it happens, like RKN, I watched Gregory Peck (Roman Holiday, 1953) before I watched Dev Anand (Guide, 1965). And of course the semblance was striking.
But I must admit that a couple of dozen readers of these blogs, from Dr Siddhartha Santra (2010) to Dr JK Sharma (2014), said that they find RKN's influence in these posts. Indeed many compare Muthukur with Malgudi.
The first to do it was my IAS B-i-L. It so happened that I sent the hard copy of my first Muthukur story to my didi at Madras in January 2008. I thought that, since she shared our Muthukur childhood and school life with me, she would recall the incidents described there with heartwarming nostalgia. But she was apparently too busy to open the envelope and her hubby, having fully retired by then and so at a loose end, took her permission and opened the cover and read the story. And at once he rang me up and talked to me for ten good minutes saying that he never suspected that a physics guy would be capable of writing readable prose (he was in 'arts' and thought it was their exclusive privilege). And compared my Muthukur to RKN's Malgudi and regretted that he was no Graham Greene, else he would have pushed me along.
To all these discerning kind friends I have only this to say by way of protest:
"But RKN was a thorough gentleman"
Anyway, the first time I heard the word 'imitation' was from my mom who never went to high school. But of course she is the smartest lady in the family. And learned all such English words and more from her hubby who was an English Teacher.
She was deriding a lady friend who was wearing what looked to me a lovely gold 'neckless', saying: "It is imitation jewelry". Indeed those days there were lots of ads in Andhra Patrika for what I read in Telugu as 'Rold Gold'. But the chain never looked to me any inferior to gold and I was at a loss why women should spend all that huge money buying real gold. A half century later Mrs D Basu was visiting us at KGP and was wearing a nice-looking chain and I asked her to bring one such for my wife from Calcutta, asking how much it had cost. And she replied with a smile: "Rs 16"
Whenever American Ladies (sixtyish) visit Hyderabad, they troop down to Charminar Bazaar and buy pearls costing $50 upwards and exhibit them to their Indian friends who unanimously pronounce:
"A great deal indeed!!!"
They don't want to spoil the fun by pointing out that the pearls they bought were, more often than not, genuine plastic ones.
For the record, whether you buy pearls in Hyderabad from either the roadside pushcarts in Charminar or brightly lit showrooms in 5-star hotels in Jubilee Hills, you are always left in doubt.
And then there are these fake Rs 1000 notes flooding Hyderabad, if not our entire India, courtesy our western neighbor whose virtual leader is now invited to the big do in the lawns of Rashtrapati Bhavan, come Monday.
There is the story doing the rounds here that one of the aspiring CMs of 'residual' AP wanted to cheat the Election Commission by sending, months before the Model Code kicked in, wads and trunks of Rs 1000 notes to be kept underground in dug-up pits till the election eve when the notes were to be dug out and distributed by his party workers. Which they faithfully did. But every poor voter to whom they passed on a Rs 1000 note was asked to return Rs 200 to the distributor as compensation for his legwork and incidentals. This looked a fair deal to the voters and they parted with two good Rs 100 notes each gleefully.
And then they took their brand new thousand rupee notes to nearby outlets selling IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor). And were told that the gleaming notes they tried to pass on were all fake notes (PMFN). So they cried foul and elected his rival who wisely didn't believe in cash but in kind.
And then there was this scary news item that a gent drew cash in large notes from his friendly neighborhood ATM and carefully preserved them in his wallet. And the first thing he did was to visit his friendly neighborhood Supermarket. Only to be told that the Rs 1000 note he produced was as fake as a crow from a cuckoo. And he tried another note and yet another and was told that the whole bunch was fake and he better destroy them since police would jail him if he was found in possession of fake notes trying to pass them on.
He got scared and ran next day to the nearest bank that was feeding that ATM and produced his notes and complained. He was asked to wait till the Manager of the bank finished his leisurely lunch (between 1 PM and 1.30 PM). And was ushered in. And the Manager was kind and courteous and said:
"It is possible that a mistake was made by the cash feeder who is a private dealer"
"So what should I do?"
"Give the entire bundle to me along with a paper on which you write down the numbers on your notes"
"Thanks very much indeed"
"Don't mention it"
....
"Can I now have original good notes of the same value"
"Oh, no...not now"
"When?"
"We will register a case against the ATM Vendor"
"What should I do now?"
"Try and collect proof that you got these notes from our ATM and not from a street vendor of fake notes in the Charminar Market"
"But I can't do that...it was late night and there were no witnesses nor a security man at your ATM"
"Shit happens!"
.....
Whenever I go to my neighborhood Supermarket and produce a gleaming new Rs 1000 note that I just withdrew from the ATM opposite, the friendly man in the counter holds it up against light before pushing it into his cash drawer...the two seconds he takes to do it raise my blood pressure by at least 30 mm of Hg. But I keep quiet since I don't have the guts to ask him the trick to tell fake notes from good ones.
The other day I visited the Reserve Bank of India official website and got all the info I needed, with a good-looking figure to boot. It gave me as many as a dozen different tips.
I threw them all in my mental dustbin. If I have to remember and check all those dozen security features on each note each time I draw cash from my ATM, I would go crazy and would be howled at and hounded out by the half dozen customers waiting outside.
Don't believe me? Here goes:
************************************************************************************************************
...Millions of young men copied his screen image, walking as he did, slinging a folded coat over the shoulder carelessly, buffing up a lock of hair over the right temple, and assuming that the total effect would make the girls sigh with hopeless longing...
...RKN
...Often compared to the famous actor Gregory Peck the world over,[27]
Dev Anand said that he didn't feel ecstatic bearing the tag line
bestowed on him in his hey days. "When you are at an impressionable age
you make idols. But when you grow out of the phase, you develop your own
persona. I don't want to be known as India's Gregory Peck, I am Dev
Anand".[28]
...wiki
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
As it happens, like RKN, I watched Gregory Peck (Roman Holiday, 1953) before I watched Dev Anand (Guide, 1965). And of course the semblance was striking.
But I must admit that a couple of dozen readers of these blogs, from Dr Siddhartha Santra (2010) to Dr JK Sharma (2014), said that they find RKN's influence in these posts. Indeed many compare Muthukur with Malgudi.
The first to do it was my IAS B-i-L. It so happened that I sent the hard copy of my first Muthukur story to my didi at Madras in January 2008. I thought that, since she shared our Muthukur childhood and school life with me, she would recall the incidents described there with heartwarming nostalgia. But she was apparently too busy to open the envelope and her hubby, having fully retired by then and so at a loose end, took her permission and opened the cover and read the story. And at once he rang me up and talked to me for ten good minutes saying that he never suspected that a physics guy would be capable of writing readable prose (he was in 'arts' and thought it was their exclusive privilege). And compared my Muthukur to RKN's Malgudi and regretted that he was no Graham Greene, else he would have pushed me along.
To all these discerning kind friends I have only this to say by way of protest:
"But RKN was a thorough gentleman"
Anyway, the first time I heard the word 'imitation' was from my mom who never went to high school. But of course she is the smartest lady in the family. And learned all such English words and more from her hubby who was an English Teacher.
She was deriding a lady friend who was wearing what looked to me a lovely gold 'neckless', saying: "It is imitation jewelry". Indeed those days there were lots of ads in Andhra Patrika for what I read in Telugu as 'Rold Gold'. But the chain never looked to me any inferior to gold and I was at a loss why women should spend all that huge money buying real gold. A half century later Mrs D Basu was visiting us at KGP and was wearing a nice-looking chain and I asked her to bring one such for my wife from Calcutta, asking how much it had cost. And she replied with a smile: "Rs 16"
Whenever American Ladies (sixtyish) visit Hyderabad, they troop down to Charminar Bazaar and buy pearls costing $50 upwards and exhibit them to their Indian friends who unanimously pronounce:
"A great deal indeed!!!"
They don't want to spoil the fun by pointing out that the pearls they bought were, more often than not, genuine plastic ones.
For the record, whether you buy pearls in Hyderabad from either the roadside pushcarts in Charminar or brightly lit showrooms in 5-star hotels in Jubilee Hills, you are always left in doubt.
And then there are these fake Rs 1000 notes flooding Hyderabad, if not our entire India, courtesy our western neighbor whose virtual leader is now invited to the big do in the lawns of Rashtrapati Bhavan, come Monday.
There is the story doing the rounds here that one of the aspiring CMs of 'residual' AP wanted to cheat the Election Commission by sending, months before the Model Code kicked in, wads and trunks of Rs 1000 notes to be kept underground in dug-up pits till the election eve when the notes were to be dug out and distributed by his party workers. Which they faithfully did. But every poor voter to whom they passed on a Rs 1000 note was asked to return Rs 200 to the distributor as compensation for his legwork and incidentals. This looked a fair deal to the voters and they parted with two good Rs 100 notes each gleefully.
And then they took their brand new thousand rupee notes to nearby outlets selling IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor). And were told that the gleaming notes they tried to pass on were all fake notes (PMFN). So they cried foul and elected his rival who wisely didn't believe in cash but in kind.
And then there was this scary news item that a gent drew cash in large notes from his friendly neighborhood ATM and carefully preserved them in his wallet. And the first thing he did was to visit his friendly neighborhood Supermarket. Only to be told that the Rs 1000 note he produced was as fake as a crow from a cuckoo. And he tried another note and yet another and was told that the whole bunch was fake and he better destroy them since police would jail him if he was found in possession of fake notes trying to pass them on.
He got scared and ran next day to the nearest bank that was feeding that ATM and produced his notes and complained. He was asked to wait till the Manager of the bank finished his leisurely lunch (between 1 PM and 1.30 PM). And was ushered in. And the Manager was kind and courteous and said:
"It is possible that a mistake was made by the cash feeder who is a private dealer"
"So what should I do?"
"Give the entire bundle to me along with a paper on which you write down the numbers on your notes"
"Thanks very much indeed"
"Don't mention it"
....
"Can I now have original good notes of the same value"
"Oh, no...not now"
"When?"
"We will register a case against the ATM Vendor"
"What should I do now?"
"Try and collect proof that you got these notes from our ATM and not from a street vendor of fake notes in the Charminar Market"
"But I can't do that...it was late night and there were no witnesses nor a security man at your ATM"
"Shit happens!"
.....
Whenever I go to my neighborhood Supermarket and produce a gleaming new Rs 1000 note that I just withdrew from the ATM opposite, the friendly man in the counter holds it up against light before pushing it into his cash drawer...the two seconds he takes to do it raise my blood pressure by at least 30 mm of Hg. But I keep quiet since I don't have the guts to ask him the trick to tell fake notes from good ones.
The other day I visited the Reserve Bank of India official website and got all the info I needed, with a good-looking figure to boot. It gave me as many as a dozen different tips.
I threw them all in my mental dustbin. If I have to remember and check all those dozen security features on each note each time I draw cash from my ATM, I would go crazy and would be howled at and hounded out by the half dozen customers waiting outside.
Don't believe me? Here goes:
Watermark
The Mahatma Gandhi Series of banknotes contain the Mahatma Gandhi watermark with a light and shade effect and multi-directional lines in the watermark window.
The Mahatma Gandhi Series of banknotes contain the Mahatma Gandhi watermark with a light and shade effect and multi-directional lines in the watermark window.
Security
Thread
Rs.1000 notes introduced in October 2000 contain a readable, windowed security thread alternately visible on the obverse with the inscriptions ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), ‘1000’ and ‘RBI’, but totally embedded on the reverse. The Rs.500 and Rs.100 notes have a security thread with similar visible features and inscription ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), and ‘RBI’. When held against the light, the security thread on Rs.1000, Rs.500 and Rs.100 can be seen as one continuous line. The Rs.5, Rs.10, Rs.20 and Rs.50 notes contain a readable, fully embedded windowed security thread with the inscription ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), and ‘RBI’. The security thread appears to the left of the Mahatma's portrait. Notes issued prior to the introduction of the Mahatma Gandhi Series have a plain, non-readable fully embedded security thread.
Rs.1000 notes introduced in October 2000 contain a readable, windowed security thread alternately visible on the obverse with the inscriptions ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), ‘1000’ and ‘RBI’, but totally embedded on the reverse. The Rs.500 and Rs.100 notes have a security thread with similar visible features and inscription ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), and ‘RBI’. When held against the light, the security thread on Rs.1000, Rs.500 and Rs.100 can be seen as one continuous line. The Rs.5, Rs.10, Rs.20 and Rs.50 notes contain a readable, fully embedded windowed security thread with the inscription ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), and ‘RBI’. The security thread appears to the left of the Mahatma's portrait. Notes issued prior to the introduction of the Mahatma Gandhi Series have a plain, non-readable fully embedded security thread.
Latent
Image
On the obverse side of Rs.1000, Rs.500, Rs.100, Rs.50 and Rs.20 notes, a vertical band on the right side of the Mahatma Gandhi’s portrait contains a latent image showing the respective denominational value in numeral. The latent image is visible only when the note is held horizontally at eye level.
On the obverse side of Rs.1000, Rs.500, Rs.100, Rs.50 and Rs.20 notes, a vertical band on the right side of the Mahatma Gandhi’s portrait contains a latent image showing the respective denominational value in numeral. The latent image is visible only when the note is held horizontally at eye level.
Microlettering
This feature appears between the vertical band and Mahatma Gandhi portrait. It contains the word ‘RBI’ in Rs.5 and Rs.10. The notes of Rs.20 and above also contain the denominational value of the notes in microletters. This feature can be seen better under a magnifying glass.
This feature appears between the vertical band and Mahatma Gandhi portrait. It contains the word ‘RBI’ in Rs.5 and Rs.10. The notes of Rs.20 and above also contain the denominational value of the notes in microletters. This feature can be seen better under a magnifying glass.
The portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, the Reserve
Bank seal, guarantee and promise clause, Ashoka Pillar Emblem
on the left, RBI Governor's signature are printed in intaglio
i.e. in raised prints, which can be felt by touch, in Rs.20, Rs.50,
Rs.100, Rs.500 and Rs.1000 notes.
A special feature in intaglio has been introduced
on the left of the watermark window on all notes except Rs.10/-
note. This feature is in different shapes for various denominations
(Rs. 20-Vertical Rectangle, Rs.50-Square, Rs.100-Triangle, Rs.500-Circle,
Rs.1000-Diamond) and helps the visually impaired to identify the
denomination.
Number panels of the notes are printed in
fluorescent ink. The notes also have optical fibres. Both can
be seen when the notes are exposed to ultra-violet lamp.
This is a new security feature incorporated
in the Rs.1000 and Rs.500 notes with revised colour scheme introduced
in November 2000. The numeral 1000 and 500 on the obverse of Rs.1000
and Rs.500 notes respectively is printed in optically variable
ink viz., a colour-shifting ink. The colour of the numeral 1000/500
appears green when the note is held flat but would change to blue
when the note is held at an angle.
The small floral design printed both on the
front (hollow) and back (filled up) of the note in the middle
of the vertical band next to the Watermark has an accurate back
to back registration. The design will appear as one floral design
when seen against the light.
Printing and circulation of forged notes
are offences under Sections 489A to 489E of the Indian Penal Code
and are punishable in the courts of law by fine or imprisonment
or both.
..Posted by Ishani
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