The Simplifier

  This is a writeup on the digitalisation of Indian languages - a development which allows millions to use intelligent devices in their native language! (This one is close to my heart, because it involves pioneering work done at my alma mater @IITKanpur, and my first employer CMC Ltd). Warning: This is a long Post.  It starts with a bit of a deep dive into the common features of Indian scripts, identifies the issues for digitalisation and then describes pioneering solutions and pioneering workers. I have stressed more on people and work which I was privileged to see first hand. But there were many other significant contributors. Collective work has brought us where we are today. Let's roll! When you type Indian languages into your phone today, you probably do so on an onscreen "soft" keyboard. It could be a Roman keyboard (the system transliterates to the Indian script as you type), or an Indian language keyboard. Let us take a Devanagari keyboard example. ...

  The continents and oceans on earth are part of the earth’s upper layer, or Crust. The Crust is made of solid rock about 5 km – 80 km thick. But the Crust is not one single piece of rock. It is divided into separate “tectonic plates”. And each tectonic plate floats on the layer below the Crust – the Mantle. Tectonic plates can move apart from or into each other, or slip past one another, or break up. This is a constant process. And since the plates are constantly moving it also means that continents and oceans are also not static, but float with the tectonic plates on which they lie. The plate on which India lies, the Indian plate, is part of the larger Indo-Australian plate. This plate is moving North-North East, at about 6 cm per year. To the north and east of the Indian plate is the Eurasian plate. The Indian plate started colliding with the Eurasian plate about 55 million years ago, and the collision is still continuing. This collision is causing the denser Indian plate to “su...

26 December 2004.  We were in a place called Velankanni . Velankanni is a small town on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, about 15 km south of the port of Nagapattinam. It is famous for The Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health , a shrine dedicated to Virgin Mary. Legend has it that Apparitions of the Virgin Mary appeared here twice to local people near a local pond. During one of these appearances the Mother cured a cripple. In a third appearance, The Apparition saved Portuguese sailors trapped in a storm. The Portuguese sailors then built a chapel there. That chapel has now grown into a church with three chapels. It is believed that the water of a pond in the church has healing properties. In 1962 Pope John XXIII elevated the Church to a Basilica due to these miraculous healing properties. The Shrine is also known today as “Lourdes of the East”. Our family was on a Christmas holiday. We had reached Chennai on the 23 rd and had driven down to Velankanni the next day in a Tata Su...