Why Red Fort

Why Red Fort?

By Kris Tee

Every year on Independence Day, the Prime Minister hoists the Tricolour and addresses the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. It is a well choreographed ritual known to every young school-going child. This is a tradition that has remained unchanged ever since the first time the tricolor was hoisted in independent India on 15^th August 1947.

Why Red Fort? Why is it not done at Rashtrapati Bhavan? After all that was where the representative of the British crown resided. But the founding fathers chose the Red Fort for a reason. Why is the flag hoisted there each year on Independence Day?

Herein lies a tale worth telling.

Let us take a peek at the history of this remarkable and iconic set of buildings. The Red Fort was constructed between 1638 and 1649 by Shah Jahan. (Although there is some debate on whether he actually built it, let us not go there for the moment) It was constructed as a palace cum defensive complex, where the emperor and his family and retainers resided. After Shah Jahan the last Mughal emperor of significance was Aurangzeb. Thereafter it was downhill for the once mighty Mughals.

The weakness of the Mughals did not go unnoticed. A series of invaders followed – Nadir Shah in 1739, after which the Jats led by Maharaja Suraj Mal in 1753 captured Delhi. The serial invader Ahmed Shah attacked seven times between 1747 and 1767, On one of his forays in 1756, he laid waste to Delhi. The following year, the Marathas under Raghunath Rao defeated the Afghans and hoisted their saffron pennant. In 1783, it was the turn of the Sikhs under Baghel Singh to enter the Red Fort and hoist their flag. The Sikhs did not actually rule over Delhi and eventually the control of Delhi and the Red Fort passed back to the Marathas. Meanwhile the Brits had been quietly expanding their sphere of influence and in 1803, defeated the Marathas led by Daulat Rao, at a battle fought near Patparganj.

Thereafter the city remained under British control, while the Mughal emperor was allowed to reside in the Red Fort. Things remained that way for the next few decades till the uprising of 1857. Rebel soldiers from Bareilly, Meerut, Kanpur and other centres of the revolt headed towards Delhi, overpowering the British garrison there. Possibly they were the first ones to use the slogan ‘Chalo Dilli’. An ageing and unwilling Bahadur Shah Zafar, the incumbent emperor was appointed as the leader of the revolt, although the real power lay elsewhere.

The British reprisal was swift and brutal. Bahadur Shah was captured by Capt Hodson, his sons killed and the emperor packed off to Rangoon, where he eventually died in 1862. The fort was ransacked by the Brits, many of the Mughal buildings were torn down and replaced with barracks. The East India Company’s flag was hoisted on the Red Fort, till it was replaced by the British flag. However, Delhi remained another city that the was taken over by the British, while the business of governance was carried out from Calcutta.

Things went on in this manner for over a half century, till the Brits decided to shift their capital from Calcutta to Delhi. In 1911, King George V and his queen visited India and the Royal Durbar was held in Delhi. They entered the Red Fort and possibly even waved out to their subjects from one of the jharokhas.

Once again, things moved along at a sedate pace in the fort while the world began to undergo cataclysmic changes. The First World War came and went, swallowing the cream of India’s youth in the process. A few years later, a second World War erupted and young men began to be shipped off in droves to fight in places they had neither heard of nor had anything to do with.

In the turbulent wartime years of the 1940s, two important events that would have their impact on the Red Fort took place far away. In August 1942, the Indian National Army was formed by Rash Behari Bose from Indian soldiers captured by the Japanese. The following year, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose set up the Azad Hind Government in Singapore.

Subhas Chandra Bose, reportedly visited the grave of Bahadur Shah Zafar and his reignited the concept of marching to Delhi with his famous call Chalo Dilli, thus invoking both, the rebels of 1857 and the emperor, and  the idea of the retaking the ancient citadel – He repotedly swore, ”Our task will not end until our surviving heroes hold the victory parade on the graveyard of the British empire, at the Lal Quila, the Red Fort of ancient Delhi”.

The Azad Hind Fauj was subsequently defeated by the Brits, and its leaders captured. Col Shah Nawaz Khan, Col Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon  and Col Prem Kumar Sehgal were arrested and brought to the Red Fort where they were incarcerated in one of the baolis converted into a prison. They were then tried within the fort. By then, the entire country’s focus was on the Lal Quila and there were mass upheavals in protest across the country.

The British had inadvertently transformed Shah Jahan’s fort into a symbol of their own dominance. It was the place where a century ago, the leader of the uprising and the last Mughal Emperor had been imprisoned and tried, before he was exiled. It was now the place where once again leaders of another uprising were being tried.

In keeping with the mood of the people and with prevailing sentiment, it was only fitting that on 15^th August 1947, the end of the British empire be marked by a ceremony witnessed by the teeming masses, where the British flag was lowered and the Tricolour hoisted in its place. The citadel had been reclaimed.

The first Prime Minister of independent India then addressed the fledgling nation for the first time, wherein he regretted the absence of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. It has since become a standard practice for Prime Ministers to hoist the flag and address the nation from the Red Fort.

References:

https://thewire.in/history/red-fort-history-independence-india

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azad_Hind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Delhi

Musically Speaking

Musically Speaking

By Kris Tee

The very first radio I remember was that box like structure, the valve operated receiver that operated in the Medium Wave and Short Wave. It used to be a favourite of film makers and could usually be seen in those depressing movies, the family dramas of the 60s and 70s, giving out some news with a family crowded around it, concern writ large on their faces.

I don’t recall seeing the gramophone at home, however it must have been there, as we still had some 78 RPM disks, or records, as they were called then, and those could only have been played on the gramophone.

The radio set needed to warm up before it could be used and would require careful tuning by a person with a gentle touch and a sensitive ear. If tuned above or below the desired frequency, the radio would voice its protest by emitting an angry hiss or a loud squawk. Once the radio had settled, it would entertain the family with music from All India Radio till it was time for the news.

The lady of the house took personal care to dust it daily, covering it reverentially with a clean runner when not in use. Armchairs on either side for senior members of the family were placed where they sat sipping tea while listening to the news or read the paper while the radio played music.

The radio would be switched on at specific times for Vividh Bharati, Hindi Samachar etc and then switched off once those programs ended. Children were expected to sit on the rug in front of the radio and listen to the English news, as that was guaranteed to improve their general knowledge.

By the mid 60s, transistor radios began making their appearance in Indian homes. We had one such model at home, a Japanese made ‘National’ radio. It was a handy compact piece that came with its leather case, designed to protect the plastic body from the rigours of an Indian household that included everything from hooligan kids playing football indoors, to clumsy servants, and everything else along the way.

The action then shifted from the drawing room to the dining table where my father would invariably adjust his watch to All India Radio’s ‘time check’ at 9PM which was a series of short beeps ending with a long beep. Then would follow the English news read by legendary broadcasters like Melville De Mello, Lotika Ratnam and others. Their diction was widely regarded as the gold standard in that tongue, to be emulated by school going children.

Somewhere along the way, in 1967, we acquired a radiogram, probably under pressure from my more vocal, older siblings, the in their teens, for whom Beatles, Elvis, Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and other pop stars of that period, were staple diet.

The radiogram was a sleek piece of furniture. When you pushed the upper lid back, the front face also smoothly opened, to reveal a Phillips Radio and a Garrard changer that played records at 16, 33, 45 and 78 RPM. It had two speakers built into the lower part of the cabinet and a drawer below to store records.

Each 45 rpm disk had one song on each side. One could load up a stack of 45s and the changer would play them one by one. It was fascinating to watch the synchronized movements of the mechanical arm as it moved to the edge of a disk, started playing and when the song was over, it would lift automatically, move back to its original position while the next disk dropped from the stack.

We didn’t have too many records, so I mostly heard the same ones over and over again. The soundtrack of the movie My Fair Lady along with lyrics was one such. I heard it so many times that I knew all the songs by heart. Even the typically East End words and the cockney accents, had so firmly lodged themselves in my memory that when I recently attended a musical rendition of My Fair Lady at NCPA, all those words and tunes from 50 yars ago, came back so easily. I could instantly spot the flaws in the delivery of the actors.

By 1970 or 71 the radiogram was on its way out. Its place was taken by a stereo system.

An associate of my father, who was an electronics buff, offered to make a stereo amplifier at a price much lower than the market. He did a good job and one day the stereo system came home. The amplifier was housed in a teakwood cabinet with a separate Phillips turntable and two large teakwood speaker cabinets. The sound quality was far better than the old radiogram. More records were purchased. By now, I was old enough to handle the new equipment and I quickly took charge. 

Meanwhile our old transistor radio continued to do duty for my father’s daily news.

I listened to the Bournvita Quiz Contest on sundays (to test the aforementioned GK) followed by a “crime thriller” radio program, Inspector Eagle. I listened to hockey commentaries where the level of excitement in the commentator’s voice went up or down depending on whether the ball was close to, or, far from the goal line. In those days since cricket matches were rather dull five day affairs, my mother decreed that the radio not be used for that purpose. That transistor radio continued to provide my father with his news fix well into the late 70s till it was honourably retired, its role having been taken over by the TV.

Cassette players entered the scene around 1972. There may have been those lucky ones

who brought back a cassette player from abroad but for the vast majority of Indians, foreign electronic goods were like water in the desert. If you couldn’t convince a rich relative to bring a piece from abroad, the few options available were – to befriend a foreigner going back home and buy it off him (hence the popularity of the flea markets in Goa), to find a ‘reliable’ smuggler in Bombay, or, to look out for the auction of customs seized goods.

The very first cassette player I saw was a mono affair. Music quality was pedestrian. Cassette tape quality was also poor and tapes tended to get tangled up inside the player. However it was fascinating that a single cassette could hold many more songs than several LP records and one could rewrite previously recorded discs.

The sizes of radios had also begun to shrink and we bought a miniature two band radio the “transi” in addition to our old faithful National, which had begun to show signs of ageing.

Then came the age of the TV and radios and record players began to lose some of their appeal. Chhaya Geet or Chitrahar became immensely popular and now one could ‘watch’ rather than ’hear’ the news. EC TV became the most sought after TV. It boasted around 5 pre-tuned channels. Tuning the TV was a family affair with the young son dispatched to the terrace to turn the rooftop antenna left or right according to the instructions given by Mom or Dad on the controls, and relayed to the roof by another person.

I think it was around 1976 when I saw the first two-in-one combining a radio and a cassette player. My elder brother, home on leave from the army, showed us his pride and joy. It was the size of our weary, 10 year old transistor radio but the quality of radio reception was better and one could record music from the radio directly on to cassettes. Besides, it could easily pick up Radio Ceylon which, I had discovered, played the latest English numbers.

It must have been ’81 or ‘82 when the Walkman hit the market. It was easily the fanciest gadget I had seen with lightweight headphones producing clear music. One could now listen to music on the move.

Besides, the headphones were a great personal statement.

In due course, I picked up my own music box. It was more powerful and had an excellent radio receiver on which all of us anxiously heard the news of PM Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the subsequent riots.

Towards the mid 80s, records began to disappear from the scene and were only held on to, only by some serious music aficionados.

By the early 90s, the two-in-one was considered passe, the world having progressed to three-in-ones, incorporating a CD player as well, began to appear in the market. Music CDs were however expensive and cost around Rs 600 each. So the cassette player continued to hold the fort.

We hadn’t yet learnt to burn CDs. Home computers were a long way off and in any case didn’t have CD drives either. (That was the era of floppies, remember them?)

Radio, however was making a comeback with the advent of FM stations in the metros. However Vividh Bharati and the English news had long fallen off the popularity charts and AIR introduced an English music channel. I had by then acquired a music system, which in Jamnagar, the place where I was posted, was good only for our music cassettes. On arrival in Mumbai, I tried the local FM station and it was ..... WOW! I had never heard such clear music with the latest English and Hindi numbers. I was hooked.

Things more or less remained constant for the next few years. Then the economy opened up and changes began at a rapid pace. The iPod came, nudging out the Walkman. We began downloading music from the net and issues of music piracy cropped up. The price of CDs dropped. Cassettes were fast disappearing and even car stereos began dropping the in built cassette player in favor of the CD player. Home computers began coming with CD drives and we learnt the joys of writing CDs.

Then a strange thing happened. People began dropping strange jargon – MP2 initially and then MP3. You could now store and play your songs on your home computer, or better still, on the office computer. It became immensely flash to work with your favourite songs playing in the background.

When office admins began cracking down on the storage of songs on office computers, people calmly responded by playing music from their thumb drives. When the office IT expert spoke about virus entering office computers from the thumb drives, people switched to playing songs from their CDs.

While larger versions of iPods were introduced that could hold a few thousand songs, people began buying boom boxes without the CD players. These were simply an amplifier and speaker stuffed into a box. All that they had were a few slots into which you could plug your portable device. The smarter ones simply plugged their home computers directly into the boom boxes.

A new technology that went by the unlikely name of Bluetooth was introduced, which meant that your music, music player and its speaker no longer needed to be wired up.

Smartphones entered the milieu. Suddenly you didn’t need the iPod even while going for a walk. The smartphone itself stored the music and you listened to it over the Bluetooth  earpiece, unencumbered by wires.

By the time you managed to fill your smartphone with music, the world had moved on again. Apps were available to download your playlist from the net, without the need to store music files.

Throughout these fast technological changes, I managed to hold on to my FM Radio player listening loyally to my favorite RJs – Malishka, Hrishi K and others.

Then Alexa entered our home. With her soft mellifluous voice, she began playing any number, old or new, that we could think of. No storage needed, just great music from a cylinder a fraction of the size of our radiogram. I believe she’ll switch on the lights, and dim them too, in the not too distant future. I’m seriously considering taking her to work as well!

A Sailor’s Tribute To Another Sailor

On the 25^th of August 2018, four days shy of his 82^nd birthday, John McCain died at his home in Sedona, Arizona. For just over a year, he had fought with a particularly aggressive strain of malignant brain tumour. What was remarkable was, that not only had he continued to work at the Senate between bouts of chemotherapy but had performed his duties as the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from home. This was typical of his feisty nature and a reflection of his inner resilience.

Born to a Navy family on the 29^th of August 1936 at the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in Panama, to Roberta and John S McCain (Jr), who later became a four star admiral, theirs was a typical navy family that moved along like flotsam, living out of suitcases and making new friends while they followed their father in his tours of duty around the world. His grandfather had also been a four star admiral in the US Navy. Although they were Southerners on both sides of the family, he regarded his heritage as military rather than Southern and chose to live by military values as emerged later.

His mother was a great influence in his early life teaching him to find joys in everyday life. She also instilled a love for history and culture in young Johnny.

With so much of salt in his blood, it was not unexpected that John chose the Navy as a career. His performance at the academy was however below par on account of an indifference to rules and poor performance in academic subjects other than English Literature, History and Government Studies. Concerned at his wild ways and poor performance, his father was forced to visit the academy twice to reprimand young John.

He excelled in boxing, where he made up for technique with fearlessness and stubborn determination, traits for which he came to be well known. Although he finished near the bottom of his class, McCain acknowledged that the Academy had taught him “to serve for something greater than his self interest.”

McCain eventually became a Navy pilot. Volunteering for combat duty he found himself on board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, where the first few missions were uneventful. One day, a missile accidentally self-ignited, took off and hit another parked aircraft rupturing its fuel tanks, resulting in a sea of burning fuel on deck. McCain crawled out of his aircraft, running through burning fuel with his flying suit on fire. After the flames on his clothes had been put out, he ran back to help another pilot, when an explosion threw him backwards. Disregarding his injuries, he joined sailors in disengaging bombs and helping throw them overboard.

This first hand brush with the effects of ordnance, made him seriously question the morality of raining bombs on civilians.

Transferred to another carrier, McCain began flying combat missions in A4 Skyhawks, earning both a Navy Commendation Medal and the Air Medal within one month. On his 23^rd mission over Hanoi, his aircraft was hit by a missile and he ejected over Truc Bach Lake, in the process fracturing his right arm in three places, his left arm, and his right knee. He was pulled out and set upon by locals who beat him, stripped him of his clothes and injured him further, breaking his left shoulder as well.

It was in this state that he reached the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ Prison. He was beaten repeatedly and denied medical attention unless he divulged military information. His refusal to give them anything more than his name, rank, number and age did not amuse the Vietnamese

Soon enough the Vietcong discovered that his father was a serving Admiral and assumed that they had snagged someone from ‘American aristocracy’. He was then given the barest of medical attention most of which was unsuccessful, all the while continuing his interrogation and beatings. Eventually the relentless pressure and merciless torture began to tell and he revealed his ship’s name, his squadron and their intended target, which was by then irrelevant as it was several days old. Further coerced to give future targets, he named cities that had already been bombed, and for names of his squadron's members, he supplied instead, the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.

While still on a stretcher, McCain was transferred to a prison camp where he shared his cell with two other American flyers. It was the care and attention by these two men, who were themselves barely able to get by, that really helped him to survive. A few months later his cellmates moved out. Thus began his solitary confinement. His cell was semi-darkened while a dim bulb remained on, night and day for the next two years. In the absence of any form of communication, it was a struggle to stay sane. He forced his mind to work, memorizing the smallest of details and even writing books in his head. With time he managed to open a communication channel comprising of taps, with the occupant of the next cell.

All the while, the Vietnamese used psychological methods to break him. On the day his father’s appointment as C-in-C Pacific Forces was announced, they offered him a chance to go home early for treatment, in return for a statement denouncing his own crimes. They were hoping for a publicity coup by sending him home early. Knowing that his assent, however attractive the prospect, would provide them this victory, while undermining the morale of other prisoners, McCain stood his ground and refused early release.

One day he was taken out of his cell and asked by the Camp Commander to confess for his crimes. When he refused, it was taken as a sign of defiance and he was beaten brutally, breaking his left arm again and his ribs. On the fourth day he reached the lowest point of his imprisonment. With his shattered left arm, he couldn’t get up off the floor and just lay there in his own dysentery. Reduced to a beaten and battered wreck, he finally gave in.

He learned that every man has his breaking point and he had reached his.

He prayed for strength to get through each day and slowly began to improve, though his treatment showed no signs of letting up. Beatings were commonly dished out for the tiniest of infarctions and he was no exception, though he affirmed that some got much worse torture. McCain was eventually released in March 1972, after 5¹/₂  years as a POW.

On return, he received extensive corrective surgery for his injuries and, recovered sufficiently to fly again. He was appointed to head a combat squadron where he worked hard to improve its flight safety record so that the squadron earned a unit commendation under his watch. In 1977 he was appointed to the Senate Armed Services Committee as a liaison officer, a job that most regarded as a glorified valet. But McCain turned it around into an apprenticeship for his later role.

His home life meanwhile took a downturn. The long separation had put his marriage under tremendous strain and he broke up with his wife Carol. Later he remarried, this time to Cindy Hensley. He retired from the Navy in 1981 with a chestfull of medals, and moved to Arizona. After working for his father-in-law’s firm for a while, he went into politics, winning the North Arizona seat to the House of Representatives as a Republican candidate.

In 1986, McCain got elected to the Senate and continued to be reelected till the very end. He became a member of the Armed Services Committee, Commerce Committee and other high profile organisations. Along with the highs of visibility on the national stage, he had his share of lows, as he got embroiled in scandals and smear campaigns. His role in the Keating scandal earned him a mild rebuke but he continued to serve public office. McCain developed a reputation for independence and common sense politics. He took pride in challenging party leadership and establishment forces, becoming difficult to categorize politically, coming to be known as the Maverick Republican.

He advocated for restoration of normal relations with Vietnam reasoning that instead of seeking to vainly isolate Vietnam from the rest of the world, America should use its influence and power to render that country more susceptible to their own values. He praised the Democrat president, Clinton for his efforts to reopen dialogue with Vietnam.

McCain was particularly aware of the problems of military veterans and in 1991 he worked successfully to introduce the Veterans Hospice Benefit Act, that provided care to terminally ill veterans, and, the Agent Orange Act, legislation that affirmed certain diseases suffered by veterans could be the result of harmful chemical exposure related to their service, making them eligible for compensation.

As a member of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, along with fellow Vietnam vet John Kerry, Democrat, he investigated into the possibility of American POWs remaining in Vietnam. The committee could find no evidence and concluded that there were no more POWs, a finding that was opposed by some veterans’ families.

In 1997, Time magazine counted McCain among the 25 most influential people in the US. Two years later he announced his candidacy as the Republican nominee for President. In his opening speech he downplayed his POW role stating, “I begin this campaign with no sense of entitlement, America doesn’t owe me anything.” He would eventually endorse President George Bush, though the two didn’t see eye to eye on many issues.

McCain made it his mission to go after issues where he saw the corrupting influence of large political contributions likely to twist issues in favour of large corporations, labour unions, wealthy individuals and other influencers. Along with Democrat Sen Feingold, he attempted to introduce a bill to limit the power of financial contributors. Despite widespread media support, the proposed reforms didn’t make it to vote. Similarly he took on the tobacco industry, seeking to raise taxes on cigarettes, aimed at discouraging teenage smokers, and providing more money for health care. Once again, despite support from the Clinton administration, it failed to become a law, primarily due to strong opposition from the moneyed tobacco lobby.

In 2008, he once again ran for President, choosing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, surprising many, as she was considered a political lightweight. Though it was a strategic error that eventually cost him the Presidency, as he later realized, he continued to defend Ms Palin’s performance, never once criticising her. He later admitted that he should have chosen Sen Joseph Lieberman, as he had been advised. He had not forgotten the lessons learned at the Naval Academy years ago, it was important to stand up for your team while acknowledging your own mistakes.

He avoided getting personal and showed respect to his opponents, just as he had refused to vilify the Vietnamese. During his 2008 election rallies when a woman passed disparaging remarks against President Elect Obama, he immediately cautioned her saying, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, a citizen with whom I just happen to have disagreements on fundamental issues.”

It was a measure of his greatness that President Obama often consulted him in private, since neither doubted the other’s sincerity and patriotism.

He avoided responding to provocative remarks. When President Trump, during one of his campaign speeches, tried to ridicule McCain’s time as a prisoner and the torture he had endured, McCain remained silent, choosing instead to let the wave of public indignation that followed, do the speaking on his behalf.

McCain’s insistence on doing what he believed to be the right thing was legendary. He had worked to introduce a bill to improve the lot of immigrants, while putting pressure on Mexico to strengthen their own measures to curb illegal migration. He had earlier even opposed US involvement in Lebanon and later Somalia, calling it a war without clear aims.

In 2017, he was diagnosed with brain cancer but came back to vote in the Senate on the Obama Health Care bill, which had been opposed by President Trump. He voted against his own party on the move to dismantle the Bill, saying “I believe that we (Republicans and Dems) should learn to work together and we haven’t really tried. Nor can I support (the motion) without know how much it would cost and how it would affect people.”

McCain had no time for tyrants and he perceived Vladimir Putin of Russia as one such person. When in July 18, President Trump met with Putin in private, later speaking favourably of him, overriding his own intelligence reports, on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, McCain scathingly declared, “No prior president has abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”

A month later, he was gone. McCain chose his own pallbearers from both sides of the political divide. Leading his funeral procession were two ex-presidents – George Bush and Barak Obama. Among others was Vladimir Kara-Murza, a vocal critic of Putin.

 Most of all, he was seen as a man of principle, someone happy to sit down with his political opponents if there was a compromise to be reached.
"I will work with anyone to get this country moving again," he once said. "I will listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems."

-       Cmde Sanjay Kris Tewari

What They Won’t Tell You About TVs At The Store

It’s Sunday and you’ve just settled with the morning newspaper and your cup of tea. A full page advertisement for TVs and other consumer electronics catches your eye. The prices are attractive, and you’ve been eyeing that fancy large TV on your friend’s living room wall for quite a while. You turn pages, more ads for TVs while prices seem to be getting better and better. The new models have a lot of features. You realise that your own old faithful TV is now past its prime. But you can’t seem to make sense of the terminology.

After breakfast, you visit the local store where the salesperson leaves you further befuddled, merely parroting the terms Full HD, UHD, 1080p and so on. Since the prices are vastly different, you are unable to make up your mind and since the salesman can’t and won’t explain the meaning of these terms, you leave in confusion.

Below are two typical ads for TVs that routinely appear in every Sunday newspaper, in this case picked out of the Mumbai Mirror. I have attempted to explain the terminology in simple terms, so that next time you walk into a Croma or a Vijay Sales showroom, to see TVs, you can make an informed choice.

In The Beginning

Going back a bit, towards the end of the 2000s or the noughties, digital TV became popular and TV format changed from SDTV (Standard Definition TV) which used 576 interlaced lines of resolution, to the substantially better HDTV (High Definition TV). HDTV came with 1080 horizontal lines scanned progressively from top to bottom every 1/60^th second. This was a step forward from interlaced scanning where every alternate line was scanned or displayed every 1/30^th of a second and the entire picture had to be scanned twice, in order to see the full picture.

Full HD, HDTV and 1080p

HDTV brought vastly improved picture quality. Manufacturers also started writing 1080p (1080 lines progressively scanned), which are really one and the same thing. Interlaced scanning is no longer used for TVs, so if you see 1080i, you should know that it is out of date. Further, HDTV and Full HD are also the same thing.

Each of the 1080 horizontal lines was divided into 1980 pieces, each piece being known as a pixel. Thus, the picture was divided into 1080x1980 or around 2 million pixels. In addition, HDTV brought in a wider aspect ratio of 16:9, meaning that viewers could enjoy a wider screen.

4K, UHD and Super UHD

Just when you thought you’d got your mind around it, along came newer jargon: 4K and UHD or Ultra High Definition. This is a step up from HDTV.

What UHD gives you is better clarity and a sharper picture on account of a much larger number of pixels having been crammed into the same space, four times more to be precise, as compared to HDTV. How it does this is, by increasing the number of horizontal lines from 1080 to 2160 and the vertical lines from 1920 to 3840. This gives you 3840x2160 = 8.3 million pixels working to make a sharp picture for you.

This is most noticeable on a large screen, where it makes sense to have UHD, in order to get a sharper picture, else the picture may get ‘pixellated’, that is you would see pixels, were the original resolution retained.

Besides the fact that you can see a better picture, you can in fact see the TV from a closer range. Hence, even in a relatively small room, you can have a large TV.

Super UHD is no different from UHD and the term only came in because some manufacturers started advertising their UHD products as “Super”.

HDR (High Dynamic Range)

While the 4K UHD TV gives you more pixels, an HDR TV can do a lot more with those pixels.

Contrast is measured as the difference between the brightest whites and the darkest blacks that the TV can display, also known as its Dynamic Range. It is measured in candelas/m², also known as ‘nits’. At the deep dark end is 0 nits, which is completely black, currently possible on OLED (more about that later) TVs.

On the brighter side, it’s a different story. Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) TVs generally produce 300 to 500 nits. This is where the HDR TV scores big. Top end HDR TVs, can display northwards of 2000 nits of peak brightness.

As a matter of fact, at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018, Sony showed off a prototype capable of a whopping 10000 nits of peak brightness.

Dolby Vision®

While there are multiple HDR formats, there are currently two major players: Dolby Vision from Dolby Labs and the HDR 10 open standards. Dolby was the first to introduce Dolby Vision and for some time, HDR meant Dolby Vision only.

Any manufacturer wishing to produce HDR TV had to approach Dolby and pay them a royalty and comply with their terms and conditions. Since this was restrictive, various manufacturers began working on alternatives.

By 2016, the UHD Alliance, an industry group comprising LG, Sony, Panasonic, Dolby and others introduced an HD Premium certification for UHD Blu Ray players. This set the baseline industry standards for HDR (currently minimum 1000 nits).

OLED (Organic LED) Displays

The earlier LCD screens required a set of LEDs behind the liquid crystals on the display, in order to light up the screen as the LCD by itself did not emit light. Flat Light Emitting Technology was made possible by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. OLEDs are emissive displays, hence they don’t require back lighting. The result is that OLED displays are substantially thinner than LCD displays.

OLEDs produce the best image quality and can also be transparent, flexible, foldable and even rollable. OLEDs give you a number of things that LCDs cannot viz. greater contrast, higher brightness, fuller viewing angle, a wider colour range and lower power consumption.

And no, OLEDs have nothing to do with organic food. They are organic because they are made from carbon and hydrogen. They contain no bad metals. Examples of mobile phones using OLEDs are Galaxy S8, S8+, iphone X and Note 8.

QLED (Quantum Dot LED)

Quantum Dots are tiny particles between 2 and 10 Nanometres in dia. They have the ability to give off different colours according to their size. The advantage is that they are capable of emitting brighter, more vibrant and more diverse colours – the kind of colours that can really make HDR shine.

Unlike OLED TVs, which require a separate backlight for illumination, QLED TV controls the light emitted by various pixels, so that better contrast ratios are possible.

ThinQ® - LG’s Artificial Intelligence technology

ThinQ is a brand from LG that groups together premium appliances and consumer electronics under one banner. Products that carry the ThinQ brand will be intelligent and able to communicate with one another and employ LG’s own deep learning tech, in order to understand your habits and needs.

Products with ThinQ will employ other companies’ Assistant Technology eg. LG is releasing an updated version of its Instaview refrigerator with Amazon Alexa Support, which has the ability to talk to connected ovens and even dishwashers.

That’s it for TVs, more about mobile phones later.