Is Inflation featureless?

The Cosmic Microwave Background data confirm several aspects of inflationary universe scenario very well. In particular scale invariant perturbations are successfully generated. A few data points remain off the fitted curve and we seek a physical origin for them. It is shown that several desirable quantitative elements of inflationary model are constrained much better if the features are of physical origin. The features are obtained in a model independent way first. We then consider possible sources for such features at the earliest phase of inflation which lies well within the grand unification era. An SO(10) model can in principle have the desirable features in the form of topological pseudo-defects.