Need for parental love & care even for adults

The immortal Jane Austen magisterially proclaimed that "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." An opposing viewpoint, typically Asian, has been triumphantly proclaimed by Sri. Ishwarachandra, the celebrated & award winning Kannada author, in one of his stories, later turned into an award winning film. 

The protagonist is a successful architect, who has lost both his parents at an early age. His mentor at work, a father-figure, also dies suddenly. The architect sinks into depression & is advised to adopt elderly parents from an old people's home as a therapy. He does so & recovers. Later he marries his friend's sister, after making sure that she is also happy to live with his adopted parents. When he is away on a business trip, she faints in the bathroom due to the onset of pregnancy & is rescued from mortal peril by the resident (adopted) parents-in-law. Later the baby arrives. Meanwhile the real son of the elderly man, who had abandoned him, accidentally meets him & invites him to come back to him. The father refuses, saying that the bonds of love are stronger than those of DNA.

This story & film successfully challenge the two stereotypes accepted as normal now. One the obsession with dating girlfriends being the top priority for young men, ignoring their duty to care for their parents & secondly the consequent proliferation of old age homes, which, the kind-hearted manager of one himself says are a shame on our society.

Minimalist Audio System Design in the 21st Century

When Vinyl LP records appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, hifi audio separates also followed soon after. The minimum requirements were a turntable with a magnetic cartridge (& diamond stylus), a pre-amplifier to boost the signal voltage of about 5mV of the magnetic cartridge to about 100 mV required by the audio amplifier & a pair of good loudspeakers.

But by the time the Vinyl revival took place in the twenty first century, technology had progressed. Now many turntables have a built-in pre-amplifier, so that their output can be plugged straight to a power amplifier, bypassing the earlier separate pre-amplifier.

Also Active Speakers have appeared, which have a built-in power amplifier to drive them. So even the power amplifier can be by-passed & in an application of minimalist design, a turntable with a built-in pre-amplifier can be hooked up straight to a pair of active speakers to enjoy hifi music.

Also earlier, speakers had to be large to deliver good sound quality. Just as micro-chips have miniaturised circuitry, labyrinths, bass ports & wave-guide technologies have made tiny loudspeakers deliver room-filling sound, covering most of the audio spectrum.

So all these have provided listeners in the twenty-first century, even those with limited spaces (& budgets), access to hifi music.