Curry and Methi leaves arrive

Yesterday was a bright and sunny day. I was busy in the snow-covered garden examining, courtesy Anil Anathakrishnan, an NRI from Bangalore, who has become a dear friend of late, to see what had to be done to make it roadworthy and get its registration certificate. There was a phone call. It was Gopa calling from a small town, Pudasjarvi, about an hour away from Oulu. She and Timo were visiting Timo's mother and they were on their way back to Helsinki. They intended to drop in to see us.

Both Annikki and I were happy to see Gopa back in Finland. Sadhana, despite my dire threats, had sent some chilli pickle and some really nice Nilgiri tea. Gopa had picked up the curry and methi leaves from Mumbai.

What was interesting was the packing used for the pickle. When I designed this package in Bangalore way back in 1980, I was the laughing stock of the packaging community. I had designed it for a cooking olil company somewhere in Tamilnadu.

"It will never be accepted" was the general refrain.

And now, 20 years on, here was arriving a package containing stuffed chilli pickle in the very same packaging I designed over 30 years ago!!

Well, I guess that is how life goes. When one is ahead of one's time, you are the laughing stock of people, but then when the happening takes place, very few will remember where it originated.

Way way back, in 1968, I used to work with a brilliant architect at the Rubber and Plastics Research Association of Great Britain, RAPRA. Ked Taylor was doing research into jointing systems for Buildings and as I was working on the use of plastics in the building industry. I was a sort of sounding board for this young architect to be. He became a family friend and used to spend evenings with us as he was stiill single, and Annikki and I had just got married. We used to brain-storm and we came up with a lot of great ideas, but never got around to patenting any of them, as it would not have benefited either of us as all patent rights would have gone to RAPRA.

One day, while we were chatting, he got interested in the subject of piping of light which was possible using acrylic plastics. I explained the principle to him and our minds started to wander into the realms of science fiction. He asked me what really good application I thought would develop out of this.

My mind, as was the case in my younger days, whirled around and then fixed steady on one application which I thought would see the light of day in my lifetime. I told him that just as one had earphones and piped music in an aircraft, one would have special focus spectacles and piped movies in aircraft which would only be possible with developments in fibre optics.

About 10 years later, the first version, very close to this idea appeared when a news item spoke about a dentist having a similar sort of device for the benefit of his patients. Today, although this idea is not yet commonplace, it is almost a reality in aircraft, not with distance focusing spectacles as I had envisaged, but with on-board screens behind each seat.

There will be similar story about idea generation in one of my future blog entries. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, thanks to Sadhana for the pickle and the tea, and thanks to Gopa for the curry and methi leaves.