Posts filed under 'General'
A friday is a day when you actually are free from all the worries of the past week and are looking forward to spending time on the weekends. At the office though, we have been undergoing some horrific moments over the Banking website. Nevertheless, today was really a wonderful day for me. For a start, it was after a long time that I wore my favorite Provogue shirt :-)
Today was also the special occassion of Raksha Bandhan but sadly none of my sisters were around to tie me rakhi :’-( Although I did speak to ‘ben’ on MSN. Spend the first half doing some stuff for the CRM practice and then went to McDonalds with Suku and Sindhu. It goes without saying that I had my favourite Paneer Salsa Wrap. The most familiar figure Mr. Ronald McDonald was comfortably seated as usual on his bench. I had the privelege of sharing a picture with him.
I picked up India Today while on my way home and was reading the poll undertaken on various issues that plague our nation. It’s aptly titled “Mood of the Nation Poll”. Frankly, I see no result coming out of it. I mean, whats the point in telling the junta at large about the problems that they are facing? And the usual Indo-Pak spat now moving at ’supersonic’ speeds. You must have heard the Pakis “test firing” the Babur sub-sonic missile which is an answer to our very own “BrahMos” cruise missile. The grapevine has it that it was bought from the chinese and was just renamed. The original version is called “Hong Niao” which means Red Bird and they didn’t even bother to change the colour of the missile from Red! How sweet and convenient!
Yawn..I think there’s enough to be said and done. But for now…good night ;-)
August 19th, 2005
I would not have written this piece but for this cute little bushy tailed sweetie who comes everyday to visit us. Mom has been feeding her for sometime and I have got used to her presence now. I am talking about a squirrel who has become like a family member now. Her favourite area is the pot where we have a flowering plant standing tall amongst the other lot.
She’s (I presume its a female) very shy and timid and shoots off at my slightest move. I have captured some pictures of her with my NIKON 5200. The excitement, while doing so was the same as shooting pictures of wild animals in the jungle. Where would one find the joy of watching animals in this concrete jungles?
I went over to Wikipedia to read more about the squirrels & I discovered, to my surprise, that it belongs to the rodent family. It can also be a potential carrier of the plague virus too. For the time being, my mom seems to be content in giving the squirrel her share of peanut shells, which she gladly chews.
On other fronts, I read Dipanita Sharma (model & actress who is herself an Assamese) saying that Indians have no respect for the north easterners & we should consider whether Mumbai infact is really safe for women or not. She adds that Indians (read rest of India) discriminates them on the basis of their mongoloid features. She was referring to the dastardly act of a guy who attacked 2 Manipuri women with a chopper at Gateway of India recently. One of them succumbed to her injuries while the other was critically wounded. A point to be noted here was that none of the bystanders came to her rescue for 15 minutes, which is a typical Mumbaikar attitude towards looking at human calamities. Hit and run cases and bodies lying astray on the roads are very common.
Whereas I have no mercy for the guy who did this and also for the bystanders who just stood there, I firmly consider Mumbai to be the safest metro city in India for several reasons. To pass such a judgement on a stray incident of a madman attacking a woman, is cruel and unjust.
August 18th, 2005
It can’t get any auspicious than this. After 4 days of no internet, I got it back, right on our Independence Day. The problem apparently lay in some cables which might have got snapped due to the ‘Big Splash’. The cable guys at
Hathway worked today to repair the cables and set my internet working again :-) Thanks a ton to them.
I had the opportunity to watch Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades on STAR Gold. Coming soon after the tremendous success of ‘Lagaan’, it must have been difficult process in making a film which would live upto the expectations of the people and Ashutosh has not disappointed. Swades is about Mohan Bhargava (Shahrukh Khan) a Project Manager on Global Precipitation Measurement at NASA. He comes to India to see his nanny in a small village in Uttar Pradesh called Charanpur where he meets his love life Gita (Gayatri Joshi making her debut on the silver screen). The story unfolds when on a trip to a neighbouring village, he sees how people are living under abject poverty and decides to do something about it. He helps in breaking the shackles of age old traditions of caste and creed which are so prevalent in rural India even today. By contructing a small hydel electric project in the village, the protaganist gives the villagers a reason to cheer. Finally his motherland beckons him to come back and the rest is history.
The highlights of the movie are just too many. The narrative itself is very simple and well tackled. The cinematography is excellent and gives one the feeling of being in a rural setting. AR Rahman & Javed Akhtar do it again after Lagaan. The Ramlila song is the highlight for me since it’s written by a non-Hindu and I am too proud about this fact.
Lastly I hope we have a Mohan Bhargava hidden somewhere inside us who can create a revolution and bring happiness to everyone’s hearts. I know that we have become too cynical about the way things have been happening about us but cynicism will only pull us back into that quicksand called hopelessness.
August 15th, 2005
India will turn 58 this coming Independence day and my nationalism gets the better of me and I suddenly get very critical about the country where I have stayed all my life. In particular, are the events which happen in Mumbai. For most of us our city surroundings have a great bearing on our thoughts. Avinash and I have regular arguments on how India is bad and China is good. I always defend India to an extent where I convert it into subtle humour when the bad points start taking centrestage. Now he will be happy because China is going to be the new entrant in the world of cricket very soon and India will lose it’s only reign of superiority in sports.
Continue Reading August 11th, 2005
I don’t think Mumbai will ever be the same again. I mean no one will ever dare to underestimate the power of her monsoons (I somehow like to think that cities & countries are females. They sound so cool). They say this is the heaviest rainfall in 100 years in Mumbai and I have sort of shrugged that claim altogether. Flooding in Mumbai is not uncommon and we all know that the amount of sewage waste this city produces in a day. I have said earlier that the lax administration has to be blamed for this present fate of Mumbai. For a start, mumbai needs to be ‘moisturized’ even further to make it look beautiful. Clearing the unauthorised slums is not the only solution but planting more greens all across the city is what is required. The administration needs to be given a lesson or two in lateral thinking (read De Bono’s 6 hats theory) to come out with innovative ideas about how to stop the flow of migrants into the city. Politicians and political parties need to look beyond their populist agendas and work together for a better Mumbai. Phew! I know this is easier said than done :(
I decided to stay indoors today and skipped office. I was not going to take any chances after my 2 day sojourn there. Not that the stay was boring but who wants to do the same thing twice :-) Instead I had a novel idea and somehow I had predicted this heavy downpour on Saturday itself. I managed to find an older version of Unreal Tournament lying somewhere in the house and installed it alongwith the updates and some Mod Packs. An older version meant that my PC will support it fully without any ego hassles. I play UT in 1280×1024 resolution!! Thanks to my ATI RADEON card :-) I have realised that games, no matter what the age, are timeless classics in their own way. :-|
Oh what would I have done without UT and the internet?…sigh!! ;-)
August 1st, 2005
