“Why should I buy your product, when I can buy the Chinese product cheaper?”
or
“If I need top Quality why should I buy from Ushtara and not this German company?”
or
“What advantage does buying from Ushtara offer me over buying from an importer of Chinese products?”
This is my attempt at giving you 5 reasons to buy from an Indian Company, especially one like Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
5 GOOD REASONS. Not some meaningless Gandhian-Ideological mumbo-jumbo like “be Indian buy Indian”
But first; a little competition analysis,
THE COMPETITION
We are competing in our mobility related endeavors with two types of manufacturers.
On the one hand, we compete with giant European and American firms like Ottobock and Ossur, some of them a century or more old.
On the other hand there are literally hundreds of Chinese manufacturers, like these guys and these guys, offering products of widely differing quality and price.
This is the Prosthetic Polycentric Knee that we manufacture;
It’s called the XR2501. The Maximum Retail Price is INR 28,500. A comparable Chinese product costs INR 4,000 Ex-Shanghai and retails for about INR 6,500 in India. A German or American product with similar functionality costs INR 70,000 in India.
SO WHY BUY FROM USHTARA?
Here as promised are 5 good reasons;
1. COST
Typically my customer, who buys the product from Ushtara, is not the end user. Rather my customer is the organization or technician who fits the prosthetic to the user.
Here are some of the costs you will incur if you buy a foreign product albeit one with a cheaper retail price;
i) Inventory costs:
The price quoted by many foreign companies especially Chinese companies, is for a certain Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ), which means that you probably have to buy more pieces of product than you have current orders for.
Because it takes 20 days to 6 weeks to ship to India from Europe / America / China. You are going to have to predict your demand at least that much in advance.
If you make a decision to buy from Ushtara, you have a lead time of only 3 working days on small orders.
ii) Quality Costs:
If you end up with a defective Chinese product, at best, they will replace it for you and you will have to bear the shipping and the cost of the additional time. At worst, you will have to absorb the entire acquisition cost.
As for the dent in your credibility…that’s a cost few could carry.
Ushtara will replace defective products in 3 working days.
2. Accountability
i) A common legal framework:
How do you take legal action against a foreign supplier who reneges on his promise? Is it even worth the trouble?
Because Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd., is a Company registered and located in India, we are subject to Indian Laws and Jurisdiction. Our contract with you says as much.
ii) A common ecosystem:
Ottobock supplies millions of components to the whole world. Chinese companies are powerhouses of cheap manufacturing. Compared to their total sales, your purchase is peanuts.
Because Ushtara works in a common ecosystem with you. We care about what you think. Your opinion has a direct impact on our future revenues.
iii) Common standards: With every purchase that you make from Ushtara, we will supply you material chemistry, mechanical properties and dimensional inspection reports. These reports are clearly traceable to relevant Indian standards.
Do you even know what Chinese standards look like? here’s a clue; they’re in Chinese.
3. Indian Solutions to Indian Problems
i) Environment:
The story goes, that the Indian army bought a whole bunch of BMP troop carriers from Russia in the late 1980s.
But when they were testing them in the deserts of Rajasthan the air conditioner came on and started blowing warm air into the troop compartment. Because that’s what the Russians needed on the Siberian Steppe!
Here’s how we solved a uniquely Indian problem with German Technology
German prosthetics don’t use these bushings, because most cities in Germany are not dusty. Indian cities are. Also Norwegian amputees don’t go around planting saplings in the paddy field. Indian amputees do.
As a side note; the Chinese products have hardened steel bushings instead. Guess how long they took to rust in the torpid humidity of Chennai … Wait for it…4 HOURS!
ii) Usage:
I am Indian, our engineers are Indian, our machines are Indian and most importantly our technology is Indian.
So what does this mean for you?
Here’s an Indian solution to an Indian problem,
No European or American Product has the range of motion of the Ushtara XR2501. That’s because Indians squat. The French don’t.
4. Accessibility:
If you have a problem with you Samsung TV, can you call Lee Byung-chul? No way! You get an irritating phone message that says ” For registering your product press 1…”
Simply put, I head Ushtara Engineering private limited. And you can talk to me about problems or suggestions regarding our products DIRECT!
I speak English, Hindi, Tamil and Kannada fluently and Punjabi, Bengali and Telugu badly.
Don’t believe me;
Here’s my number : +91 99020 00483
Here’s my email: sunil@ushtara.com
Here’s our physical address:
Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
No.9, Kempaiah Garden
14th Cross, Peenya Industrial Area
Bangalore – 560058
Contact me and I WILL respond, promptly and courteously!
5. Flexibility:
i) Scale:
Need just one component or sub-assembly? We’ll give you just one.
Need to borrow the knee to run a few tests? We’ll gladly lend it to you for a month.
Need urgent supplies to cater to a recent natural calamity? We’ll scale up with you .
We’re flexible that way. We’re Indian you see. Swalpa Adjust Maadi!
Try getting Ossur to respond to your time varying needs like that. Different story.
ii) Design:
Christian Medical College, Vellore, a customer of ours needed an extra long Pylon to meet the needs of an exceptionally tall individual. Our response time: 1 working day.
Agreed, that was a fairly simple request, but the fact is we’re willing to make design and manufacturing changes to meet your every need.
There you have it. 5 good reasons and 10 sub-reasons to buy Indian!
Ajay’s primary job at Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd., is to see that the company always has enough cash to continue its activities. Cash, after all, is to a business, what blood is to the human body. Too much is as bad as too little. Too fast is as bad as too slow.
To perform his role well, Ajay has to be like a camel, storing up resources when times are good and releasing them when they are required.
It is perhaps our common obsession with frugality and being prepared for downturns that led Ajay and I to name our company Ushtara. Ushtara or ऊष्ट्र, is the Sanskrit word for a camel. and if you look carefully at our logo,
You can see the Camel nestling there, proud, observant, stoic.
Ajay can be reached at ajay@ushtara.com +91 98450 07177
Back to the engine story
In part 3 of the engine tale, I talked about the challenges we faced developing a good casting for the cylinder.
We had to modify the pattern, to a dump core box in order to avoid problems with flash and core shift.
The guys at Ashoka Bearing, closed the mold with adhesive at the mating surfaces;
packed green sand around it to resist the forces of the molten Alloy;
and poured the molten metal
our fingers were crossed so hard, they hurt a little
Success!!…well mostly
As we anticipated, the dump core box solved most of our problems. Here is the cylinder as it came out of the mold.
Here’s out it looked after it was shot blasted and cleaned up
Once the runners, gates and risers were cut off, it started looking a lot like a cylinder
Although not perfect, (it still had a little bit of gas entrapment and shrinkage porosity) it was good enough to make a running engine from and prove in reality what we had hitherto only done on paper.
Piece of Cake
Now, we were back on familiar territory. Machining is what we do day in and day out, so no challenges there.
We had already prepared complete drawings for the cylinder
We started by creating a datum surface on the cylinder top face. This would act as a reference for all the other machining surfaces. We clamped the raw casting on the CNC vertical machining center and machined the datum.
We also rough bored the cylinder.
Then we put the cylinder upside down on the VMC and machined the lower deck. This is the surface that would be in contact with the crankcase. We also machined the spigot and mounting holes in the same setup and machined the bore to finish size, with only 0.05mm stock for honing.
A small but important operation performed on all modern engine cylinder bores is Honing. Honing makes the bore very very round and cylindrical. This means that the piston will have an easier time going up and down.
As an additional benefit, honing leaves a cross hatch pattern on the bore, which retains lubrication oil, which reduces friction and increases the life of the cylinder and piston rings.
Because we don’t have a honing machine, we got the honing done at an engine rebuilding shop in Yeswantpur, called Akbar Lathe Works.
WARNING!!! Turn down your volume
We assembled the cylinder on to the crankcase.
A few hearty kicks and the engine burst into sputtering life!!
We’re going to take a slight break from the mechanicals and develop the magneto and electronics for the ignition system.
Like everybody else at Ushtara, even though his job profile sounds like a desk job, Abir is not above rolling up his sleeves and manning the machines, inspecting 2000 parts in one shot or removing burr from errant parts. He is good at data analysis, process design, CAD and CAM.
Abir’s efforts at streamlining production and HR have created the available time and resources which we are now re-allocating to R&D
Abir can be reached at production@ushtara.com, +91 8431473438
Back to Engine Story. The story began in Part 1 and continued in Part 2 and these are the events as they unfolded since.
Before we begin the narration…
A HISTORY LESSON
The first two-stroke engine was invented and patented by Scottish Engineer Sir Dugald Clerk in 1881, but the engine he invented had a separate charging pump to bring in the fresh air-fuel mixture. It was Englishman Joseph Day who realized that the crankcase of the engine could itself be used as a charging pump.
The kind of engine these guys used is called a cross flow scavenged engine.
The problem with this kind of engine is that it leads to a really weird piston shape and therefore a not very efficient combustion chamber geometry. The large mass on top of the piston also causes other problems like heat dissipation problems and difficult-to-balance engine.
This German dude Dr. Ing. Adolf Schnuerle realized that by having at least 2 transfer ports and by angling them just right, the shape of the piston could be optimized for better combustion chamber geometry. This type of engine is therefore called a Schnuerle ported or loop scavenged 2 stroke engine.
There’s a pretty cool animation on this page, about how a loop scavenged engine functions.
Almost every small 2-stroke engine being manufactured today, uses some form of loop scavenging. The two stroke engine has no valves and the flow of gases into and out of the combustion chamber is controlled by ports and their interaction with the piston. This makes the cylinder, arguably, the most complex and the most vital component of the whole engine.
WHAT SHALL WE MAKE THE CYLINDER OUT OF? The earliest cylinders were made of cast iron. Many, especially in developing countries, still are. Cast iron is a high carbon alloy with good machining and wear properties. It is however heavy and more difficult to cast. It is also not as good as aluminum alloys at heat dissipation.
In the last three to four decades, engine designers have been gravitating towards the use of various aluminum alloys for cylinder manufacturing. Although aluminum is light weight, easier to cast and has better heat dissipation properties, it is not without flaws. The biggest drawback of aluminum is that being a soft material, it has really poor wear resistance.
Engineers have come up with lots of ways to overcome or circumvent the poor wear resistance properties of aluminum, including, having a cast iron sleeve, coating the bore with various materials like Nikasil and using high silicon content alloys which are are then etched.
We decided that we would make four types of cylinders and offer them all to customers. The market would then decide which we should keep and which we should discard.
Cast iron cylinders
Aluminum cylinders with inserted cast iron sleeves
Aluminum cylinders with hard chrome plated bores
Aluminum cylinders with Nikasil or similar plating on the bores
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PATTERN MAKING Once we had designed the cylinder, and verified its geometry, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and strength,
We added machining stock and tapers and got some patterns and core boxes made by Bhaskar Patterns, Jalahalli. Pradeep the proprietor is a highly competent pattern maker and an imaginative artist in one.
For the uninitiated, patterns are objects in the shape of the part. You mold the sand to the shape of the pattern before pouring liquid metal into it.
Cores are sand forms in the shape of the Empty Spaces in the casting. When you pour liquid metal into the sand mold, the cores occupy the places that the metal shouldn’t flow into.
So a core box is a form whose cavities, when filled with sand, impart to the sand the shape of the hollows in the casting. Boy that was convoluted!
Anyway, that’s why a pattern maker has to be a bit of an artist because he has to imagine the shape of the negative spaces.
A HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE
The following Saturday, we took the patterns to New Sun Foundry, Yeshwantpur to get some cast iron castings poured. The manager assured us that the castings would be ready by the following Monday.
When we arrived at the foundry on Monday, we found that not only were the castings not ready, the patterns had been allowed to lie in the sun and rain outdoors over the weekend!!!
Because we were committed to getting the castings from them, and pursuant to their assurances, we accepted their word, that they would finish the castings the following day.
When we arrived on Tuesday after noon at the foundry, we found that they had been unable to make satisfactory sand molds. The fins in mold were only partially formed and the center core was misshapen.
They had also damaged our patterns due to careless handling and misplaced one of the core boxes!
It took them about 20 minutes to find the missing core box from the big messy heap of finished parts, patterns, raw materials and scrap that is their foundry.
We hastily took back our patterns and core boxes from New Sun Foundry, vowing never to return and took them to Pradeep for repairs.
Still recovering from our negative experience at New Sun Foundry, we decided to make an aluminum casting so we took the patterns and core boxes to Varsha Castings, Peenya and got them poured.
GOSHDARN AND DAGNABBIT!
Core shift!!!
One of the transfer cores had floated away with the molten aluminum
See how there’s a thin rib on one side of the bore, that’s not supposed to be there, see the rendering above.
We decided to learn even from this failure and section the casting; Varsha Castings made another casting for us. This time without any core shifts.
But it was not with defects. There were small blow holes in the bore and other critical areas.
CAST IRON WOES AND LEARNINGS Ashoka Bearing Housings Pvt. Ltd., is primarily a manufacturer of Cast Iron bearing housings, also known as plummer blocks or pillow blocks. Because the mass produce these Bearing Housings, they have an in-house foundry where they pour high grade cast iron.
My first impression of this foundry was one of cleanliness, competence and good old fashioned work ethic. What a difference from New Sun Foundry!!
Unfortunately, they were unable to make the sand mold, to the admittedly complex pattern. After two attempts, they gave up.
We asked the owner if he would pour the cast iron into a mold made at Varsha Castings and he said he would.
Bhaskara, the molding expert at Varsha casting made the mold in two halves. They were assembled with the cores that the guys at Ashoka Bearing Housing made
The cast iron was then poured into the assembly and…
MOLD LEAK!!!
The the upper mold half, which would have worked perfectly with aluminum, had literally floated on the denser molten iron alloy.
We tried again. This time we brought Bhaskara from Varsha Casting over to Ashoka Bearing Housing, to make a bigger, heavier mold using their own flasks; and…
!@##$ COLD SHUTS AND &^%$#@ JOINT FLASH!!! Cold shuts occur when some of the metal solidifies before the mold is completely filled, not allowing further molten metal to enter. This could happen because the runners and gates were not well designed or because the pouring rate was sub-optimal. Cold shuts cause the casting to lose integrity and break.
Joint flash occurs when mating faces of the two halves of the mold are not well matched, allowing some metal to leak between them.
Back to the drawing board.
We had to find a process which was not as dependent on the skill of the person making the mold or the one pouring. A process which would be repeatable.
So we made Dump Core Boxes
These dump core boxes already have well designed runners, riser, well and pouring basin built in.
We used the dump core boxes to make the molds and assembled them with the cores.
So what happened next?
Did we fail again?
Did we succeed in making a good casting?
In PART 1 of this story, I talked about our plans to build improved engines for Agricultural applications for India, South Asia and Africa.
But why engines? and why agricultural applications?
People often ask me this question and the short answer is;
BECAUSE WE CAN DO BETTER Simply put, we have the ability, in terms of knowledge, people, infrastructure and resources to develop a better engine than the ones currently on the market.
There are are three players who dominate the Agricultural engines market. They are ;
i. Honda
Honda is a world wide leader in the small engines market. Their subsidiary, Honda-Siel Pvt. Ltd., makes small engines for Agro applications in India. Their best selling product, in India, is a 100cc 4 stroke, which produces 1.3kW @ 4200 rpm and 3.9Nm @ 3000 rpm. This is a side valve engine called GK100. As with many small agro engines, it is air cooled.
Because it’s a side valve engine, the same type of engine that Henry Ford used on his Model T, it has a compression ratio of 4.5:1.
The engine costs about INR 15,000 in retail.
ii. Southern Agro
Southern Agro engines Pvt. Ltd. is Chennai based company, that manufactures the Vijay Villiers brand of small engines. The Company website claims that they “clinched a technical collaboration with Villiers Limited, UK, to manufacture portable, multi-fuel internal combustion engines” in 1996, though how they made a collaboration when Villiers Engineering went into liquidation in 1978, I don’t know.
At any rate, they make versions of the Villiers Mk12 engine, which produces 1.45 kW @ 3000 rpm for the petrol start and petrol run version. Torque ratings are not available. Being a side valve engine again, the compression ratio is about 4.
The Engine costs about INR 8,500 in retail.
iii. Greaves Cotton Greaves Cotton Ltd., a company of the Thapar Group, bought two plants from from the Enfield company. The plants were making, guess what? the exact same Villiers engine as the one that Southern Agro makes. Greaves Cotton still makes this engine and also uses it in its range of agro equipment. It’s even called the Mk12!
Although it’s the exact same low compression and low power density engine, it costs slightly more at about INR 10,500 in retail.
So there you have it one over priced engine and under powered engine with the nothing to say for it except that it’s made by Honda. And two manufacturers making the exact same Villiers engine designed in…Wait for it…1936! That’s our competition.
DESIGNING THE ENGINE Our efforts at taking apart and reverse engineering the Japanese two stroke engine, and our theoretical studies had given us the confidence to begin designing our own engine.
We decided at the outset that;
We would make the engine modular, so that changes in one part would not drastically affect others. This has the added benefit of being profitable, even at medium volumes, which is what we expect our first 3 years sales to be.
We would make the engine configurable. We design in such a way that the same engine could be mounted, on a sprayer, or a seed drill, or a water pump or a small marine craft.
We would make our tooling so that, it could produce various versions of the same part, for example, the same pattern would be used to make aluminum castings (lighter, cheaper to machine, better heat dissipation, more expensive overall) and Cast Iron Castings (Heavier, sturdier, Cheaper overall)
We would stick with well established materials and configurations, including thermodynamic configurations. However, we would not be tied down by mass production requirements and doing something just because everyone else is.
4 WEEKS LATER…
We modeled the engine on CAD and applied all of the knowledge we had acquired over the last few months.
We were confident that the engine would produce a maximum power of 5kW @ 6000rpm and atleast 3kW @ 3000 ~ 4000 rpm, which seems to be the standard rpm for Agro engines the world over. It would also be capable of 7 ~8 Nm of torque in the usable range of rpm. A huge increase in power density and efficiency over the engines available in the market!
THE CRANKCASE The first assembly we decided to make, was the Crankcase.
We made detailed engineering Drawings for both halves of the crankcase
But before we could go about machining it, we had to first cast it.
We took a big chunk of aluminum and put it on our CNC machine and made a pattern. We designed it so that the same pattern could be used for both halves of the crankcase
Because our machines were fully occupied at the time, we got the prototype machining done by Maestro Tech, Peenya. And I must add, Girish Shetty, the proprietor, did a wonderful job.
The parts assembled flawlessly.
We put some of the parts of the original study engine on the crankcase assembly, cobbled up a makeshift starting arrangement and …
So now that we know the crankcase is OK (big sigh of relief!) we decided to attack, what is arguably the most important part of a 2 stroke engine, the Cylinder.
GENESIS In mid-2014, the board at Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd., decided that over the next ten years we are slowly going to transition from being mainly sub-contract manufacturing company to a company which;
a) Offers services across the product life cycle (design, prototyping, testing, manufacturing, assembly, sales, service through to recycling)
b) Is rich in Intellectual property including creating and owning proprietary designs and processes
We resolved that the best way to initiate this, would be to enter areas where our current strengths including our manpower, specialized knowledge and resources could best be utilized.
After intensive study of markets and introspection, we decided that we should focus on the following areas;
1. Improved Prostheses and Orthoses for the Indian, South Asian and African markets
2. Improved Small Engines for agricultural applications for the Indian, South Asian and African markets
Given the fact that we were already designing and manufacturing components and sub assemblies for the Orthotics and Prosthetics industry, including;
Drop lock Knee Joints for Knee Ankle Foot Orthoses
As part of this initiative, we developed India’s first world class Polycentric Prosthetic Knee, in 2015 which I have written about in another post.
This article series describes our on-going efforts to develop a small two-stroke gasoline engine and the failures and learnings therefrom.
CONCEPTION the Japanese word for “to learn” (manabu) is derived from the word for “to imitate” (maneru). I think that’s for a good reason. After all, we were all born knowing nothing, and then we copied the people around us before we evolved our own styles of doing things. Right?
In this spirit, we decided that our first engine should be a 2 stroke gasoline engine (one of the simplest types of engines, with the fewest parts) and that it should be inspired by, if not copied from a Japanese 100cc two stroke.
So we acquired a Japanese 100cc two stroke engine and took it completely apart.
Then we measured everything down to the micron (1000th of a millimeter) and made solid models on CAD Software.
here for example, is the cylinder head.
KNOW HOW AND KNOW WHY My Dad, likes to say, that the problem with buying technology, as many successful Indian companies including, Maruti, HAL and Kinetic-Honda have done, is that the drawings will show you how to manufacture and assemble the parts but not why they were designed that way.
When we took apart and studied the Japanese engine, we were as concerned if not more, about why every part had to have the dimensions they did
We made detailed dimensioned drawings of every single part, like this partial drawing for a Crankcase Half.
And analyzed them with a handy reasoning tool, called DFMEA. We tried to predict, what would be the effect of a small change in the dimension.
As you might have guessed, we found that many of the parts had been designed with ease of manufacture and therefore cost-effectiveness, rather than power, efficiency or durability as the primary criterion.
Also we found that some parts were the way the were simply because of legacy reasons. In other words, a previous version of the engine had a design feature and it was carried over to this iteration even though it wasn’t the best solution. We hypothesized that this might be because of consequent changes in mating parts, large tooling costs or merely intellectual laziness.
By and large though, the engine that we had chosen correlated well with the theoretical knowledge we had, by then, acquired. Oh yeah, we managed to acquire quite a bit of theoretical knowledge! Anything we could lay our hands on;
We read them, then re-read them, then read them again and crunched the numbers then went back and read them again.
Once we finished measuring and documenting the physical dimensions of all the parts, we went deeper.
We got a lab to use spectrometer to find what materials had been used for each part.
Here for example is report which shows the chemistry of the Piston.
Up until now, we could, if we wanted, have put the engine back together, but the effects of the next step were irreversible.
We used a UTM to load the part until it failed, and in the process, provide us even knowledge about how it was made and why it was made so. We generated reports like this one for each part;
We uncoiled the solenoids in the magneto and counted how many coils there were and of what thickness wire
We took the permanent magnets out of the flywheel and measured their physical size and their magnetic fields using a magnetometer.
Then we put all this data into an open source software called FEMM and analyzed how they interact;
TERRA INCOGNITA
Well, what we did up until this point was the easy part, we do this stuff day in and day out for our customers. But now we were unknown territory. We hadn’t as yet designed or manufactured anything as complex as a whole engine. And don’t forget, we were out to make BETTER engine than the one we were studying.
By late July of 2015, we felt that we had enough knowledge to begin making our engine.
We resolved that although we would adopt many of the features from the study engine, we were not bound by logic such as mass-production requirements and legacy factors.
We decided to develop our engine in 3 phases,
Phase 1: Parts machined from Castings and Parts machined from Billet
Phase 2: Parts machined from Forgings
Phase 3: Stamped parts and Plastic parts
We also decided for now, at least, that we would purchase the Electrical and fuel systems.
We began the work of Designing our engine in earnest.
The solution struck me quite suddenly, rather like an older brother who whacks you on the head when you’re engrossed in your favorite show on Cartoon Network. Of course it didn’t laugh and slap it’s thigh, but then ideas rarely do. Also you couldn’t get up and whack him back because, for one thing, he’s much bigger than you and for another, you’ve been needing to pee really badly for about an hour now, so if you got up, you’d need to run to the bathroom and so miss the part where Dexter foils Mandark’s evil plans with a little help from Monkey and the Infraggable Krunk. Damn older brothers, they should be put up for adoption at birth. I remember one time…
But I digress, what was I talking about? Oh yes. The solution. It struck me quite suddenly. If a solution can be said to strike. Rather like lightning, but not made of electrons and not quite so jagged. Silent,
not-all-that-fast lightning, which didn’t really light up the night sky.
I reached for my notebook. On the book’s cover was written in large, rather ambitious letters “Shriram Raghavan’s Plans to Become Tremendously Rich”. Until now the notebook had been empty. Now turning to the first page I wrote;
The Problem
How to get tremendously rich
The Solution
Steal someone’s identity and use it to get a credit card. Then use the credit card to draw lots of money from the ATM.
When you really think about it, what is an identity anyway? A nose, a mouth and eyes. Maybe a strategically placed mole, a wrinkle or two or the absence of them. Perhaps you stand out if you have really big ears or really awful teeth, but on the whole people do tend to look rather a lot like each other. Especially if you haven’t done anything which has put you in the papers. Consider for example, how you would have described Dr. Manmohan Singh, if he wasn’t the Prime Minister. Small, mousy looking eyes, peering through square outsized glasses, the whole enframed in a rather scraggly beard and a large blue turban. Surely there are loads of people who look like that? Also, bend your brain around this, if he shaved his beard, took off his turban and removed his spectacles, would you recognize him?
Having thus reduced to black on white, my solution and having ruminated once more upon its utter simplicity and infallibility, I did what any great general would do on the cusp of his greatest campaign. I proceeded to expound upon it to my able and trusty Lieutenant.
“No, I certainly will not steal somebody’s ID card!” Babita said in an outraged voice.
Of all the responses I had anticipated, this was not one. What I would have expected is for her to ask for clear, precise instructions and then go about carrying them out. But you know what they say about men and mice. Or is it weasels? Some rodent, that much I’m sure of.
Babita Mascarenhas wears large square glasses (rather like Dr. Manmohan Singh’s, come to think of it). These lead people to assume that she is extremely smart. This however is not entirely the case. But she does have two important characteristics. She is my oldest friend and she works at Infosys.
What does one do when one’s trusty lieutenants fail to carry out one’s orders without murmur? What for example would Napolean have done? Pan to Hohenlinden. The year is 1801. Napolean has just ordered General Moreau to attack and to his, Napolean’s, surprise and consternation, he, Moreau, has refused. Would not he, Napolean, then stick his right hand into his, Napolean’s, waistcoat and have him, Moreau, shot? Of course he would.
But I can’t have Babita shot. For many perfectly valid reasons. The most obvious one, of course, is that Bangalore in April is no place for a waistcoat.
The conversation started out conventionally enough;
“Look at me” I said.
“Why?” Babita said.
“Tell me what you see” I said.
“You have a booger” she said.
“No seriously, describe me” I said.
“Skinny, dorky looking, untidy hair, humungous nose” she said.
“Shut up, I do not have a humungous nose”
“Yes you do, Pinocchio”
“Shut up”
“You shut up, booger face”
“You shut up, four eyes”…
So anyway, by and by I asked her if there was anyone at Infosys that looked like me and she said that she couldn’t think of anyone off the top of her head. (What she actually said was “You are so ugly that if there were two people who looked like you, the world would explode.”)
By the time I had explained to her the modalities of stealing identities for the purpose of obtaining credit cards, she was looking quite incredulous and when I elucidated the seminal role that her humble persona was to play in the proceedings, her outburst; “No, I certainly will not steal somebody’s ID card!”, would have daunted any but the hardiest souls, among who’s number, I am glad to say, the raconteur of these events counts himself.
Have you ever argued the relative merits of autocratic rule when compared to unbridled democracy with a black Labrador? I have. I can tell you that Babita clearly had much to learn from Garfunkel, not just about the finer points of apologetics but also by way of the proper deferential attitude that one exhibits in the presence of those endowed with a superior intellect.
If you ever pass by the Infosys Complex near Electronic City in Bangalore, your senses are immediately and aggressively assaulted by miles and miles of blue glass held up at various gravity defying angles, by the miracle of modern engineering and the gooey sauce of Indian entrepreneurship. And what do you think you find swarming up these craggy, shiny edifices? What do you find creeping out every hole and cranny and nook? Spilling out of every crack and fissure?
People. Hordes of them. Enough of them to re-enact the battle of The Somme twice over. Simultaneously. Herds of people who used to block up the only road to Electronic City until eventually, they had to build a whole road on top of the original road, just for them. Simply stacks and stacks of computer programmers, all of them doing… well, whatever it is that they do.
It is easy then, to imagine my smirk of derisive disbelief at hearing the infidel Babita babble on about how difficult it would be to steal somebody’s ID card. It’s not like I was asking for the moon. All she had to do was find somebody that looked like me. Then surreptitiously purloin his it. Her mulish refusal to carry out this simple task at my behest understandably caused some friction in our otherwise easy going relationship. To wit, I have not spoken to her for almost two days.
But it matters not. Was not Galileo sentenced to drink hemlock for saying that the earth goes around the sun? Or was that Socrates? Or Copernicus? Anyway, the point is, one must soldier on in the face of persecution by lesser mortals.
Already, from the cavernous depths of that unfathomable, 1 trillion gazillion gigaflop device between my ears a new solution is emerging. Not even the simple Babita can deny it’s sheer incredible awesomity.
I reach for my Notebook;
The Problem
How to get tremendously rich
The Solution
Steal someone’s identity and use it to get a credit card. Then use the credit card to draw lots of money from the ATM.
Seduce a rich man on a train. Murder him and throw his body overboard. Then make off with his cash and valuables.
Explanatory Note:
In 993 CE the Thamizh King Raja Raja Chola invaded and conquered the northern part of Srilanka and established a capital at the Srilankan city of Polonnaruwa. His army was composed of 14 battalions of Sengunthars from the the Terinda Kaikolar Padai.This poem is a freeze frame of the events.
I. Spy.
Soft rustle of leaves in the shadowy dark.
Crickets chirping again and then a short bark
of a lonely old dog left out in the dawn
as the village sleeps on the shores of Ceylon
Through the night, on the seas, the glorious screech
of sail dragging keel on the wind off the beach
in the south of the land where the Chola was born.
The king who has sworn reign over Ceylon
The clink of a spear. The tread of bare feet.
Shimmering black bodies marching to a beat
Unheard, unseen now here and now gone
as the Sengunthar army sets foot on Ceylon
In response to a whisper of muted command
a horde of young fighters are called now to hand.
A long wailing call from the large copper horn
and the Kaikola warriors run into Ceylon
As the torches blaze on and the women run screaming
Polonnaruwa, that city once gleaming
burns first to ash then the ash too is torn
As day turns to night in the rout of Ceylon
It is I who has crafted this battle they fought.
What have I done? What have I wrought?
For ever and a day and from this day on
I shall always be called the spy of Ceylon
Experiment No.1
Blank Verse in the Assonant Anapestic Tetrameter
Explanatory Note: Rupert is Rupert of Hentzau, a character in The Prisoner of Zenda
Rupert’s Ditty
Will I win do you ask? Well I do wear a mask.
At thirteen I realized, pretty much got it sized
that the way just to stay, keep your ball in the play
is to wait out the fight, zombie smile till its right time
to bring out the fist, well you do get the gist. Right?
When the battle is raging your fat in the flame
Hold the fort, fill the moat, take a boat, if you have
to get out of the bout, it’s no rout if you chose it.
Then with your brain rested heart once again tested true
to the purpose at hand . A surfeit of strength
in your shoulder and gut, and a bolder treading man,
now you roll out the guns and let all the fun and the games begin anew
But when they were testing them in the deserts of Rajasthan the air conditioner came on and started blowing warm air into the troop compartment. Because that’s what the Russians needed on the Siberian Steppe!
packed green sand around it to resist the forces of the molten Alloy;
and poured the molten metal
our fingers were crossed so hard, they hurt a little
Here’s out it looked after it was shot blasted and cleaned up
Once the runners, gates and risers were cut off, it started looking a lot like a cylinder
Although not perfect, (it still had a little bit of gas entrapment and shrinkage porosity) it was good enough to make a running engine from and prove in reality what we had hitherto only done on paper.
We started by creating a datum surface on the cylinder top face. This would act as a reference for all the other machining surfaces. We clamped the raw casting on the CNC vertical machining center and machined the datum.
Because we don’t have a honing machine, we got the honing done at an engine rebuilding shop in Yeswantpur, called Akbar Lathe Works.
See how there’s a thin rib on one side of the bore, that’s not supposed to be there, see the rendering above.
Varsha Castings made another casting for us. This time without any core shifts.
But it was not with defects. There were small blow holes in the bore and other critical areas.
They were assembled with the cores that the guys at Ashoka Bearing Housing made
The cast iron was then poured into the assembly and…
MOLD LEAK!!!
and…
!@##$ COLD SHUTS AND &^%$#@ JOINT FLASH!!!
These dump core boxes already have well designed runners, riser, well and pouring basin built in.
So what happened next?
But before we could go about machining it, we had to first cast it.
We took the patterns to our f
Because our machines were fully occupied at the time, we got the prototype machining done by 
The parts assembled flawlessly.
TERRA INCOGNITA
phoolosopher 
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