eFiling Income Tax Return for Financial Year 2011-2012

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxeFiling

This post is dedicated to VSS.

News Flash:
Govt extends e-filing date
for income tax returns to Aug 31

Have been filing my tax returns online the last three years and it's a big relief not to run after some TaxCon to do what's pretty simple to do so yourself.

The Income Tax India web site is user-friendly enough.

You can visit it here to get the lay of the land.  If you don't have a user account, you can create it here.

For most individuals, the ITR-2 should be good enough.  Verify that this is the right one for you here.

Assuming that's the case, you can download the ZIP of it to your computer from here.  It has the following files:

• 2012_ITR2_PR21.xls, the XL that you should update
• Help, on how to enable macros in various version of Microsoft Excel.

Before starting the update of the XL, suggest that you prepare a bit:

• Get all the credits to your savings account over the financial year.  This includes your salary, interest income, any dividends, any sale of shares, etc.  Identify the amounts that are exempt from tax, such as dividends, long-term gains on shares, IT refunds.
• Collate Form 16As from Banks, which now send you statements, linked to your PAN.  These are good sources for info on interest income.  You should be able to get the PDFs as well from your Bank (it's better to copy+paste the TAN of the Deductor from the PDF, as there's always the lurking danger of confusing the I with the 1).
• Install the MindFusion XML Viewer from here.  This is very useful for doing a last-minute check on the XML that you'd be uploading to the Income Tax India site.

Now that all the data is together, you should be in a more comfy position to update the XL.  You should make up your mind to stay the course and finish the job that you've started, i.e., submit the returns online.

Once you have steeled that resolve, you can finish the update of the XL, which, though complicated, is well designed.  It doesn't allow entry in protected cells (preventing duplicate data entry), which is a big help as you can then look around in various sheets to find out where the data should be entered.

The critical buttons in the PARTB - TI - TTI sheet are:

• Validate
• Calculate Tax
• Generate (XML), which is a two-step process.  Once you click the Generate, a Pre_XML sheet gets appended to the end, in which you can click the Save XML button (at the top of column F).

Using MindFusion XML Viewer, you can check the XML for critical stuff such as your:

• Assessment Year (must be 2012)
• Bank account number for refund
• Email ID
• PAN
• TDS details, esp. the unique TDS Certificate Number and the TAN of the Deductor.

Once you ascertain that all the details are fine, upload it back here.  You will get the following message:

but you have already done that checking with the XML Viewer :-)

Click OK to get the SUCCESS message, along with a link to the ITR-V.

Download it immediately (it will be a ZIP file).  Extract the PDF of the ITR-V, which is password-protected with the following 18-char key:

aaaaannnnaddmmyyyy

where:

• aaaaannnna is your PAN in lower-case
• ddmmyyyy is your Date of Birth (on the PAN card) in the ddmmyyyy format.

Print the ITR-V and snail mail (post) it to the address indicated in the PDF within 120 days.

Await (email) confirmation of the postal receipt of your ITR-V.  If this gets delayed, you can:

• Call Aayakar Sampark Kendra (ASK) on:
  124.243.8000
  or
• email ask@incometaxindia.gov.in.

Archive posts:

• 2012 on G+
• 2011 on G+
• 2010 on Google Buzz.

Calling a Bluff

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxCallBluff

Had a bit of a weird but instructive XP this morning.

When i got back from the morning baddy, there was this SMS from a recent acquaintance (i had just met him on July 7th; let's call him SK): "pl call when free".

Since i had nothing pending with SK, i didn't know why i should call him. But i SMSed him for a while.

Slowly the story came out: he was thinking of buying a villa and he wanted me to call him for that.

Didn't make much sense. So invoking Steinbeck's cool philosophy for Life, i wapped him:

11:25, Jul 25 - shastrix: Boss, i am not too comfortable with your style. It's your requirement and you are hustling me to call you. Don't find that nice.
11:25, Jul 25 - SK: ok shastry my point was not to disturb you if you are busy. in something else . pl do not call
11:37, Jul 25 - shastrix: Cool. As a matter of policy, i don't call people. You have to twist my arm to make me call people. That's why i use WhatsApp. If you wish, you can call me at 1 pm.

I seriously believe that synchronous ops are good only for intercourse, social or otherwise.  Making a call is very low in the pecking order, esp. when there are much more productive (and free) asynchronous tools such as Gmail and WhatsApp.

Incidentally, in his highly-readable Lucknow Boy (very enjoyable excerpt), Vinod Mehta writes of how Shobha De pulled a similar one on him:

Sometime in 1994, when I was editing The Pioneer, I got a call from a mutual friend saying, "Shobha is in Delhi, she has been trying to get through to you for the last hour but your phone is always busy. Please call her urgently." It was a typical Shobha stunt. My lines, both direct and through the board, had been remarkably unbusy. In fact, I had received no call for the past hour. But she wanted me to ring her rather than the other way round. When I did, she made a request.

JugS wrote a terrific reason for that. He connected it up to the caste system in India! In A Phone-y Pinging Problem, Redux, he explains:

Telephony in India has developed a caste system which divides the shudra, the caller, from the brahmin, the callee. The person making the call, the caller, must of necessity be a supplicant wanting something (or why spend money on calls?) from the person being called, the callee, who by virtue of being called becomes per se a potential dispenser of largesse.

I don't know whether SK had some similar reason subconsciously. If someone close had asked me to call him, i might do so, but i hardly know this dude from Adam.

Needless to say, he never called back at 1:00 PM. I had to wonder: If i called back, would the guy have IDed me?!

~~~*-*~@~

In fact, this is one constant debate that's going on mentally within me. Whether i should heed the advice of the Master on hissing, or stick to that of Shirdi Sai Baba San:

"He who carps and cavils at others, pierces Me in the heart and injures Me, but he that suffers and endures, pleases Me most."

More in Killing Hissing and Dissing.

Given the current situation and my nature, i feel it's better to err on the safe side and go with the Master.

Even Edgar Cayce had said as much:

Study to know thyself in relationship to that ye choose as thy ideal. And let that ideal be set in Him, who is the way, the truth and the light. This does not mean becoming good-goody, no—far from it! Be able to look everyman in the face and tell him to go to hell—but live as He did, the lowly Nazarene! (2869-1)

Curiously Yours

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxCuriously

A: Curiosity killed the cat.

B (getting even more curious): What happened to the cat?

—R Rajesh, at Mrs. AVN College, Vizag

Recently i had occasion to meet a person, by whose attitude i was quite zapped. She had all it figured out. Everything was neatly slotted into cubbyholes of her mind. Been there, done that; what's next?

I was quite unnerved by that.

Fortunately, i was reminded of the Master, who even after realizing the Formless, retained his child-like nature.

Here are some incidents that i recall from the Gospel:

A devotee's dream

The Master sat down there. He asked a devotee, "Do you ever have dreams?"

DEVOTEE: "Yes, sir. The other day I dreamt a strange dream. I saw the whole world enveloped in water. There was water on all sides. A few boats were visible, but suddenly huge waves appeared and sank them. I was about to board a ship with a few others, when we saw a brahmin walking over that expanse of water. I asked him, 'How can you walk over the deep?' The brahmin said with a smile: 'Oh, there is no difficulty about that. There is a bridge under the water.' I said to him, 'Where are you going?' 'To Bhawanipur, the city of the Divine Mother', he replied. 'Wait a little', I cried. 'I shall accompany you.' "

MASTER: "Oh. I am thrilled to hear the story!"

DEVOTEE: "The brahmin said: 'I am in a hurry. It will take you some time to get out of the boat. Good-bye. Remember this path and come after me.'

MASTER: "Oh, my hair is standing on end! Please be initiated by a guru as soon as possible."

High Tide

Rakhal was thus seated by the Master when a man entered the room and said that a high tide was coming in the Ganges. The Master and the devotees ran to the Panchavati to see it. At the sight of a boat being tossed by the tide, Sri Ramakrishna exclaimed: "Look! Look! I hope nothing happens to it."

~~~*-*~@~

Albert Einstein observed: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is."

Image source: TWO WAYS TO LIVE YOUR LIFE

I prefer the latter, with this observation by Picasso as a guiding light: (snipped from Finders Reapers Searchers Weepers)

| Padamsee is a raconteur.…He talks about Picasso giving a lesson to one of his friends who was going through a dry spell. (The artist took him for a walk and suddenly started picking up things from the ground. He then said, 'Have you understood?' Padamsee's friend said he did not. Picasso said, 'I am a finder. I find things. You are a searcher. You search for things. That’s why you have a crisis and I never have one.')

Reclaim your HDD with JPEGmini

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxJPEGmini

Saw this in a recent Tech-à-Tête in the ToI.  JPEGmini seems to be a neat  way to cut the bloat in your HDD, due to photos.

Uploaded 48 photos taken this month occupying 175MB and got a ZIP back of size 53MB (70% saving!). Looks like it's using compression 8 (the sweet spot of quality and size) of Picnik.

As a more rigorous test, i uploaded the photos of Vidya Chetana Day 2012, a recent event at Swananda, to JPEGmini.  Since there's a limit of 200MB per album, had to do that in batches. Like so:

• 007-050
• 051-100
• 101-150
• 151-200
• 202-300
• 301-362.

Over the six sets, nine files (DSC_0049, DSC_0099, DSC_0135, DSC_0149, DSC_0197, DSC_0296, DSC_0298, DSC_0359, DSC_0361) got missed out. So had to reload these as a missed set and create another album.

Note: This is purely an observation. It makes no sense to "lick" a gift horse in the face! The JPEGmini guys have done a terrific job, and as we say out here, solpa adjust maadi.  It ain't gonna kill you.

The initial size of the 210 files was 516MB and at the end of this scrunching (scrounging?) op it came down to 131 MB, a solid saving of 74%!

If you're up to it, you can send the photos onward from JPEGmini to Flickr or Picasa. However, the EXIF data for photos (such as Created At) seems to be getting clobbered.

To wrap up the work, i moved the ZIPs (downloaded from JPEGmini) to Google Drive as a backup.

As an aside, Google and JPEGmini both add up to 28, so it will be nice if Google acquires this ;-)

Glocky

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxGlocky

Old time reminder, like a drink? (6)

Sometime back, Ram and i discovered an interesting funda. He had an early-morning call at 4:30, but the alarm was set for 4:30 PM. So i was wondering whether the time could be set unambiguously with a 24-hour format. We could and, after that, i switched to the 24-hour format, using the 0 as a prefix for the hours till 10 AM.

Subtracting 12 is no big deal. Though i can't understand the fascination of the British for the 12 and its multiples:

• 12 inches in a foot
• 12 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds
• 6 balls in an over in cricket, etc.

It's totally chewed up, but what to do, we are like this only. The French seem to be saner in that respect, with their Metric system.

But we were soon to discover other bugs with setting alarms in smartphones.

Last Sunday, Niki was setting off for Pune, we set the alarm for 0530. But it never rang. Later we noted that it was operational only the next Saturday!

Thankfully, the curtains were drawn and the light was streaming in. When i checked my strapless (!) pocket watch, i saw that it was already 0550, followed by a mad scramble.

It reminded me of this wonderful observation by the Master in the Gospel: (Chapter 39, pp. 748-749)

A DEVOTEE: "Sir, a new sect, named, 'Nava Hullol', has been started. Lalit Chatterji is one of the members."

MASTER: "There are different views. All these views are but so many paths to reach the same goal. But everyone believes that his view alone is right, that his watch alone keeps correct time."

GIRISH(to M.): "Do you remember what Pope says about it?

'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none/Go just alike, yet each believes his own."

MASTER(to M.): "What does it mean?"

M: "Every one thinks that his own watch keeps the correct time. But different watches do not give the same time."

MASTER: "But however wrong the watches may be, the Sun never makes a mistake. One should check one's watch with the sun."

The Bhagavad Gita alludes to this nicely: (verse 13.33, from the translation by Barbara Stoler Miller)

Just as one sun
illumines this entire world,
so the master of the field
illumines the entire field.

So set your time by Satchidananda the Sun and you can't go wrong. The smartphones (aka gurus) might be right most of the time, but rely on them too much and you just might be dealt a sucker punch!

~~~*-*~@~

You might have heard of that Clocky, which won the Ig Nobel. It's a clock on the run once the first alarm goes off and you got to chase it to turn it off.

Clocky—Why you pesky little *#%!

We tried a similar thing earlier this week. Keep the SGTab far away, and once the alarm goes off with its insistent tone, you MUST get up to turn it off.

It worked Monday morning, but not on Tuesday. I was too far out to bother to get up, and let the litany go on. But Marty, in the next room, was so riled that he came and switched it off. Amused me quite a bit.

Atticus

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxAtticus

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

…

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

On Children, Kahlil Gibran

Niki wrote her last exam on Ugadi (23.MAR).  After that it was a whirlwind of get-togethers and travel as she waited for her undergrad semester at FLAME to start.

Finally, the R-day arrived today and she was off to Pune.

Will miss her; like my younger bro, she's the gregarious one in the family.  The house will fall that much more silent with her departure.

But she has left behind a most amazing memory to cherish.  For her 12th-grade English, she had To Kill a Mockingbird.  During the readings at class, she would tell her teacher that Atticus Finch reminded her of yours truly!  IMHO, don't think that can ever be bettered.  I believe the teacher said much the same thing.

Looking Back Friday - To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

Thank you for that, Niki; may you live smart & spread your sunshine over many more people!

Encussulation

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxCuss

I could've written a shorter letter,
but I didn't have the time.
—Winston Churchill

Last week, i was startled by this in The Loneliest Superstar Ever in OPEN, the magazine:

Ali was in college when Khanna was shooting for his third film, Baharon Ke Sapne. It was 1967. A crowd had gathered at the shooting spot, but nobody was interested in the newcomer. There were a bunch of autograph-hunters around, of course, as often happens at filming sites, but they spotted the lead actress Asha Parekh and went rushing over to her. As Ali recounts, she was an infinitely bigger draw at the time. In fact, the journalist recalls that some unruly boys had taken to mocking the hero, calling him “gurkha”. This, Ali postulates, could have been because of his somewhat Nepalese features.

Man, what a way to pack in so much info into a word and then dismiss the dud(e). I was, like, dazed.

Later i was recalling other great condensations from Sea Sands days:

• స్తెప్నీ గాడు (stepnI gADu): A needless hanger-on. DN used to refer to a guy in our 1990 Madras group as "background music".
• కుర్రకుంక (kurrakunka): Johnny-come-lately.
• అడిగి కొట్టించుకోవడం (aDigi koTTiMchukOvaDaM): Needlessly do something; effectively asking to get screwed.

One that i have heard in Delhi:

• दॊ रुपयावाला (dO rupayAwAlA): A foreign (generally White) visitor to India, without much money.

Power Updates

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxPwrUpd

This post is dedicated to Anuj San

Couple of weeks back, one of the PM residents sent a query to our adda:

Has anyone measured the km/milage when running inside Palm Meadows. Looking to be able to run 5K to 10K and have weaved in and out of every street in Phase 1 and down to the entrance.

Recalled that Anuj San had done a walk with a GPS sometime back.  Wanted to time myself on how long a response took. It had the following activities:

• Pull out the email message from Gmail.
• Upload the attached image to Flickr.
• Upload the attached KMZ file to gDrive.

Palm Meadows Phase One Walk by Anuj

As usual, Gmail was awesome for finding the message. The entire process took about 15 minutes, though i seriously felt that i could have whittled it down by five minutes. Here are the times:

• Request Message on adda: 6:43 PM
• Reply sent to adda: 6:58 PM
• Delivered by adda: 7:01 PM.

Btw, the length of the roads is 8 km.

~~~*-*~@~

You might be aware that i maintain a couple of web sites:

• Swananda
• Sri Brahmachaitanya Maharaj.

Once the second half of the year kicks in, there's a lot of action at Swananda: the events for Kalamahotsava:

• Dance on Sunday, July 8, and
• Painting and Music on Sunday, July 15,

handled by a dedicated band of devotees.

Late Wednesday (04.JUL) evening (@ 11:01 PM), there was a request from Srinivas Murthy that i should add the theme for the painting competition for students of 8-10 grades.

So got into the power mode again, with the clock ticking away. The activities were simpler this time:

• Save the DOCX to gDrive. Create the customized bit.ly shortlink (more in Itsy Bitsy bit.ly).
• Update the home page with FrontPage. Use FileZilla to upload the same to the web site.

By the time, i replied to Srinivas Murthy it was 11:12 PM; 11 minutes this time.

The Holy Grail is under five. Let's see.

Reminds me of one of the disciples of the Master saying:

What you want to do tomorrow, do it today. What you want to do today, do it now!

Incidentally, it's a good thing i wrapped it up that night itself as the BSNL broadband was once again down the whole of yesterday (blame it on the D5C8) and the first half of today!

Dreaming of Arunachala

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxDreamAc

Dreamt of Arunachala last Saturday (30.JUN) morning.

Was traveling with family and other relatives.  During a break, went outside and saw the Great Arunachala. It was much more humongous. The eyes were playing tricks. See with the left, It would appear to the right; see with the right, It would appear to the left, displaced significantly. Can never explain dreams, though we never question that in the dreams themselves. Probably the rational mind shuts down in dream sleep. As William C. Dement (what a name!) said:

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

Anyway, the "snout" of Arunachala, aka Parvati Hill, was that much more pronounced. It was in fact the highest point in my view.

Probably, It was saying that i should concentrate on the Old Mother, who's anyway my favorite.

On G+

Flipping Overboard

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxFlipboard

Life: You flip, then you flop.

Flipboard: You keep right on flipping.

A few days back, noticed that Flipboard, "Your Social News Magazine", was being featured in the Android Market (somehow can't get myself to say Google Play).

After reading about it for the iPad, this has been the app that i have been waiting for, and it lived up to my expectations and then some.

Installed it on my SGTab in a jiffy and set up all the socnets on which i participate.

Here are the app links for:

• Android
• iPad and iPhone.

Other useful links:

• Inside Flipboard (All the News That’s Fit to Flip)

The process of flipping through stories seems pretty natural.  Also, since the images on social networks are (more or less) shown automatically on Flipboard, you can easily decide whether you should drill down or flip to the next.  There's also a neat facility to add articles to the "Read Later" app of choice such as Pocket.

Later that evening, got a nice pleasant shock.

Vaz on a Harley at HYD was the pic for the Cover Stories secton:

This was coincidence, of course, but that's an element of life incorporated into Flipboard.  Prepare to be surprised!  Found Ganesh Guruji:

as well as Swami:

See all Flipboard screenshots as a slideshow.

Which brings me to the question:

@flickr, @flipkart, @flipboard, so what's the next best FLI…CKing thing?!

2SV

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxG2SV

Not the same as a 2CV, but as good

Source: Carole Bouquet - Bond Girls

Have been seeing a lot of spam originating from the email IDs of friends; evidently their email IDs have been compromised.

Since more and more stuff is being moved to the Google Account (Docs, etc.) apart from email, i am always a bit chary about my password being stolen.

For that reason, i love the 2-step verification (2SV) that Google folks launched mid-2011. Now, there's an orthogonal aspect to entering the email password; one has to enter a 6-digit verification code (VC) that's continually generated on one's mobile.  With this double security, it's much more difficult for someone to (hi)jack one's account.

2SV is available for Google/Gmail accounts. More on it here:

2-step verification drastically reduces the chances of having the personal information in your Google account stolen by someone else. Why? Because hackers would have to not only get your password and your username, they'd have to get hold of your phone.

You can get the 6-digit VC (verification code) in one of many ways:

• Use the Google Authenticator app to generate it on your Android device.  To set it up, you need to have the Barcode Scanner app (to scan the QR code from your desktop monitor while setting up 2SV).
• Receive it as an SMS or as a voice message to your backup phone (other than the one on which Google Authenticator is installed).
• An unused VC from a set of 10 backup codes that can be generated and kept with you in a convenient place.  You can regenerate these 10 anytime here.

For your convenience, the Settings page for 2SV is here.

The process might appear slightly long and involved, but it's well worth the extra layer of security that it provides.  Once you have set up 2SV, you can't access products / services under your Google/Gmail Account without specifying the VC as well.

As a relief, while signing in on a trusted computer, you can check the Remember me on this computer for 30 days option during which you don't have to specify the VC again.

Accessing your Google Account apps from other devices

There's a further piece of security when you're accessing apps such as Gmail from your smartphone or tablet.  Instead of the regular password and VC, you have to specify the application-specific password.

This can be generated for your many devices here (scroll to the end).

The best thing about the app-specific password  is that it can be used only once.  Also, if you lose / upgrade the device, you can revoke the app-specific password in a jiffy.

If you don't have a Google/Gmail account

You can sign up for one here.

Once in Gmail, you can use the MailFetcher to suck in messages from your current account (if POP3 is allowed) and respond to them from your Gmail account.  That way, your contacts will automatically get your new email ID.  More on the MailFetcher here.


Note: This post has been updated significantly after How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking.