Thoughts

A Joke called Indian Budget

2009-07-06T21:18:00.002+05:30

I thought Indian politics has changed. I mean for the better. But looks like I was wrong. We created this big hoopla over how the greatest democracy in the world choose its leaders, defeated fundamentalists and selected a moderate party to lead the country. What a load of crap. I am not pissed off because the Finance Minister screwed the middle class over again. Its just that as if nobody even cares. The Finance Minister of India presented a budget which didn’t do or specify anything constructive yet all over the news channels and print media all I see is experts(god knows what kind of experts they are) and industry leaders(I don’t want to open my mouth here) saying how the budget isn't all that bad.

Not all that bad. Are you crazy?

The finance minister didn’t specify anything constructive in the budget about how he would improve the economy, what kind of stimulus package would be provided, how he would put more money in people’s pockets. Nothing. Zip. Yet it was not so bad a budget. In a time when developed countries are spending trillions of dollars to boost their economy we don’t really have a plan to revive our economy.

All he said was how he was giving out money for charity (read buying votes). Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind government spending money on social security schemes for upliftment of poor, providing good quality education for children etc. But we all know the government just takes the money puts a percentage in its ministers pockets and hands down the rest to the bureaucrats to fill in their pockets with money based on their designations. The higher up in the hierarchy you are, the more money you make. No wonder IIM and IIT graduates are lining up to clear IAS examinations. Who wants to earn loads of money by working hard when you can make it all for free.

India has one of the highest tax rates in the world but what does government do for the people. We have crappy roads, we don’t have proper water supply, no proper electricity, no social security, no infrastructure. Nothing. Yet we just want to compare ourselves with the developing countries and say we arent there just yet because of our “Sanskriti”. Ask the guy on the road who is hungry, does he care about sanskriti.

And then the Finance Minister makes a mokery of the whole thing by increasing the Income tax threshold by Rs. 10000 as if that was a blessing for all of us. A Rs. 1000 savings in Tax. Jee Mr Finance Minister I wonder how my life style would improve with this saved Rs. 1000. He kept saying that this is an Aam Aadmi’s budget well how many “Aam Aadmis” he knew pays the 10% surcharge which is charged to individuals with more than 10 lakhs of taxable income.

And you know what pushed it over the edge was the Finance Minister saying that they have increased the budget for building a system so that Mumbai doesn’t clog up because of excessive rains from 200 Crores to 500 Crores. Nice gesture but how come when they came up with the initial estimate nobody anticipated a 150% overrun of the budget.

I may be sounding petty here but it is still my hard earned money which I am paying to the government so that they could maintain my country properly and I think I can hold them accountable for it. But as far I can see I don’t see any way or means of holding them accountable. Any government project over running its budget, no problem just give them more money. A bridge built by government collapes, no problem give more money and build a new one.

This is just wrong. I want my country to be the best country in the world. And this isnt the way it is gonna get there.

What the hell is happening in my country

2009-01-25T15:14:00.003+05:30

Really, what the hell is happening in my country. I mean it wasn't 2 months ago that we faced the worst attack on our country and we are back to our old ways. I see in the newspaper today that Mr Raj Thackeray was back to his old ways bashing north indians. But this time he is specifically stating that it isn't all the north indians but people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Now how is this guy different from those terrorists who came and killed innocent people. He instigates people like this and then mobs go on rampage kill people. How different is this from any other act of terrorism.

There was also an another piece of news - "Girls assaulted at Mangalore pub". This is really really really sad. And to top this off there is some organisation which is actually claiming responsibility for it.

"Claiming responsibility for the attack, state deputy convenor of the Sene Prasad Attavar said that it was a spontaneous reaction against women, who flouted traditional Indian norms of decency. He said these girls were Hindus who dared to get close to Muslim men."

How is this different from what Taliban did in Afghanistan. Who gave them the moral responsibility to do that. How can this organisation or for that matter any organisation claim to have the moral responsibility to do something like this. And to top this what did the guys who claimed to have the moral responsibility and were claiming to be the upholders of Indian tradition do. They molested the girls. Is that the Indian tradition - molesting unarmed girls. If that is then to hell with it.

What is our country progressing towards. I was watching this movie Black Friday. There was clip where they showed an actual footage of the Mumbai police commissioner talking about the work done by Mumbai police. He said its because of the exceptional work done by Mumbai police that only 500 people were killed. Really only 500 people? Is that how much we value human life that the police commissioner can say just 500 people died?

When I look at what is happening in our country it does not look like we are progressing. Instead it looks like we are slipping into social unrest and it would not be long before we end up like one of those countries in Africa.

Maybe instead of trying to do things which don't have any effect why don't we pass a law where instigating violence like this would be a federal crime punishable by life imprisonment or something like that. before we can do anything about the external forces that are creating havoc in our country, we should tackle the internal forces that are trying to break our harmony.

Like Mahatma Gandhi said "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". In today's situation Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings are more relevant than it was before. We are slowly but steadily slipping into an anarchy and the only way we can stop this is by staying united and not let any one or anything break our resolve of staying united and living peacefully.

Mumbai Terror Attacks

2008-11-28T09:22:00.000+05:30

First and foremost let me say my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives during the terrorist attacks on 26, 27, 28 November 2008. This is one of the most outrageous attacks that have been carried out on the Indian soil. These men who have holed out in Taj, Oberoi Trident and Nariman house say they are doing this because of the way in which Muslims are treated in India. Well I am a Muslim and I think the treatment is not so bad so as to warrant any kind of violence. True there is religious bias in India, but not to such a degree that it would force people to take up arms.

Then there is the issue of whether this group is even from India. One of the terrorist who spoke to a TV channel said he was from Hyderabad and belonged to a group called Deccan Mujahideen. Well I am from Hyderabad and I can tell you for sure from the way the person spoke he sure didn't belong to Hyderabad. He sounded more like an Afghani or a Pakistani or from one of those Urdu speaking mountainous regions.

I was going through some of the reports on some of the news websites and I see a lot of people commenting saying Muslims should be killed or driven out of the country and many more outrageous and absurd stuff. One thing I should tell you, I am a Indian Muslim with total and complete loyalty towards India. And I am not alone. Except for a few almost all Muslims in India feel the same. Every one in India is the same. Toiling hard to make a living, trying to feed their children and provide a good life for their kids. My father is a perfect example. He has worked hard all his life, never even travelled out of the country and rooted for India in every way. Yet when people say that my loyalty or my family's loyalty isn't towards India it hurts.

But then the blame for this lies within the Muslim community too. Whenever there is such a incident the mullahs and the religious heads are not very forth coming in condemning and condoning these attacks. But when it comes to asking for reservations and for separate laws for Muslims they are very vocal. Maybe it is time for the Indian Muslim community to come out in support of the Indian Establishment to fight this cancerous disease called Terrorism. We should understand that by remaining mute it is just not helping any ones cause but the terrorists.

Gone are the days when you were regarded as Innocent Until proven Guilty. In today's world it is Guilty until proven Innocent. So maybe the time has come for the Indian Muslim community to just do that. Dispel the misnomers and misunderstanding that others have.

I just hope that the Indian Army is able to resolve this issue at the earliest and I sincerely hope that such a thing never happens again in my country.

Jai Hind.

Revival of the Blog

2008-05-22T15:17:00.000+05:30

Its been a long time(more than a year) since I have written anything in my blog. A lot of things have happened in my life since then. I have changed my job twice, visited another middle eastern country, bought a car and am now sitting in Singapore.

A lot of change. Anyways from now on will be regular in posting my blogs.

Adios Amigos

Human Extravagence

2007-01-10T12:27:00.000+05:30

Its been a very long time since I have written anything. From the last time I have written my blog lots of things have happened. I had decided upon my college for MBA then decided against it. I was supposed to be on a project in UK but instead now I am in Kuwait. What can I say life is unpredictable. Any ways I am really bored in this country. I mean it bloody cold outside right now. Can’t do a thing anyways now can’t even go out anywhere. So I thought why don’t I go back and do some writing.

Lot has been happening in the past few months in the world and not much in my life as usual. But this lot essentially is people killing each other over one issue or the other. Some because of land. No actually almost everyone because of land. Let’s look around us. The major conflicts in the world which are causing terror insurgencies and making humanity uncomfortable are land conflict. Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya and many more. There has been one let me say the downside of me staying in Kuwait. I absolutely have no idea of what is happening in India but I almost know everything that is happening in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and America.

I now know that Iran’s economy is about to go into shambles even though they have a major portion of the world oil reserves because the mullahs in charge are not ready to invest in the infrastructure of the oil refineries and drilling plants because they would have to wait for a few years to reap the returns. This is the problem with the politicians everywhere. Actually this is the problem with all the human beings baring a few. We all want instant returns like instant coffee. Nobody wants to toil put in an effort and work hard for the result. They want instant results as soon as they put in the effort. What people don’t realize is it takes time for the fruits of your effort to bear and instant success doesn’t last. True there have been cases where people enjoy instant success and it last too but then again believing that the same would happen to you would be a fooly. It is not a mistake to be optimistic and expect a windfall but it would be foolish to pin all yours hopes and ambitions on it.

Well I have this tendency of drifting. I start off with something and end up with an whole another thing. Anyways I had read this line somewhere “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” This sentence is true to its word. I don’t know if I can describe every man as heroic but then again there are the followers and admirers of every man. Anyways I truly believe that every man tries in one way or the other for his own happiness. Now some may say desire but let’s just call it happiness that way we are generalizing the whole concept. But the problem with this is some men think that something would bring happiness in their life’s and work hard doing the same thing their whole life only to realize in the end that it was something else. And the number of people to whom such a thing happens is enormous. But then again it is highly highly difficult to put a finger on what brings happiness to you.

So my advise who cares just do what you want to do and never regret your choices in life. Because if you ever try to look back dig into your past you might unearth some skeletons which you didn’t want to face in the first place.

So live life without any regrets.

Reservations - A curse on India

2006-05-29T23:24:00.000+05:30

“Ye desh hai veer jawano ka ,
Albelo ka mastano ka ,
Ye desh ka yaaro kya kehna,
Ye desh hai veero ka gehna”

This is what I thought about my country. I always used to think that even though India is a corrupt country there would come a time when all these activities of the people would become insignificant or irrelevant because people would be become mature enough. But looks like even though the economy is maturing our political system is not in the mood to change itself for the mere citizens of the country.

I was just watching “Rang de Basanti” again. It moved me so much. I mean true no one among us or even 0.00001% of the people who are educated don’t have becoming a politician to change the country as their ambition. From childhood we are told that accepting what we get and not raising a voice against it is good manners or the way of respectable human beings. But does that mean we have to bear the atrocities that are being heaved upon us by the same people who we have elected to take our country into the changing world.

Now coming to the issue on hand “Reservations”. This issue has been raking up a lot of dust lately. To start with I am totally against reservations. Any kind of reservations whether it be for the upliftment of a down trodden part of the society or a section of people cannot be implemented correctly for one reason that my country is curropt to the core. It is not that hard to get a OBC certificate. So what is the point of having reservations if they are not going to serve their purpose. Also if there is any kind of reservation it should be based on economic conditions rather than it being on caste or creed.

I don’t understand the mentality of the people asking for reservations. Most of the pro reservation activists belong to middle to upper middle class families who I think don’t have the brains to get into any of the prestigious institutions of the country so they want the government to provide them a shortcut to success. I will give you an example. In Andhra Pradesh we have an entrance examination to get into engineering colleges in the state. The best college in the state is JNTU, Hyderabad and to get into it in general quota you need to get a rank below 250. But I know a instance where a student who had a rank of around 12000 got into the college because of the SC/ST reservation. Now what do you say about that. Don’t you think it is a slap on the face of the people who studied hard putting in all their efforts but a guy with much less credentials got in just because his parents belong to a certain caste.

The saddest part of the whole thing is we have a pathetic government. Our HRD minister is one person who should be in a mental asylum. When you are a minister you have a certain responsibility. Please read his interview at http://gleez.com/articles/general/arjun-singhs-interview---india-of-our-dreams-deserves-a-better-hrd. Reading the interview the first thought that came to my mind was is this the joker we elected to be leading India into the new world. Appalling to say the least.
One point Karan Thapar makes yin the interview is that “If reservations for OBCs in higher education happen, then the children of beneficiaries should not be entitled to claim the same benefit” because as he puts it there is always a shrinking base. Now that is a better idea. Reservation is for the upliftment of that particular caste. So once they are uplifted why do their descendants have to be uplifted too?

But our politicians think otherwise. It doesn’t matter to them that a poor upper caste Brahmin is starving to death because the position which according to merit would have been his was given away to an another person just because he wasn’t born of a particular caste.

If this the kind of democracy that our constitution preaches then maybe its time for us to change it and also change the kind of leaders who are preaching this. If we want our country to seriously move ahead socially and economically then we should do away with reservation and have a society where everybody has an equal opportunity. And having reservations based on caste is definitely not the way to do it.

Mindset - Power of Thought

2006-04-24T01:10:00.000+05:30

This is an article written by Jim Donovan taken from the Sunday Times.

Thoughts are things. You have probably heard this idea at one time or another. You have probably nodded your head in agreement, understanding that thoughts are in fact, things.

You probably believe this and accept that your thoughts, being things, do in fact have power. Have you really thought about this? Do you apply this to your day-to-day life?

Hopefully you do, because your every thought and word is contributing to your life experience. For openers, your thoughts produce your emotions, which, in turn, result in how you feel about a particular event occurring in your life.

It has always amazed me how people can walk around feeling a particular way and not understand that it is their own thoughts, or more accurately what they are telling themselves that is producing the feeling in the first place.

This is why two people can look at the exact same event and have opposite feelings about it. You are creating your own reality, moment by moment, with the thoughts you choose to think and what you say, both to yourself and others.

Let's explore this a little further. Most people will agree, and science can demonstrate, that everything in our world is a field of energy and therefore has a particular frequency.

The chair you are sitting on, your car, your cat, dog, you and everything else including thoughts, have a field of energy or vibration. Recent scientific work has identified particular ranges of frequencies and scientists are able to measure them.

Interestingly enough, negative energies, like anger and rage, measure very low on the scale, while positive energies like those given off by prayer and meditation reach the highest measurements.

At this point you may be wondering what this has to do with your thoughts. Bear with me and I promise to connect the dots. The second part of this equation is the universal law that states "like attracts like".

This has been referred to as the law of attraction, law of similar and other names. What we choose to call it is not terribly important, what is important to understand is the part this plays in our lives.

Let's suppose for a moment that you are in a bad mood. You are feeling pretty negative. At that particular moment in time your personal vibration, the energy of your thoughts and words is in the lower frequencies.

Let us call this particular mood, "Frequency X." Now somewhere off in the distant universe, there is another negative experience. Maybe it is a flat tire, whose frequency happens to be "X" as well.

By virtue of the law of attraction, you will begin attracting that or some other undesirable experience to you. There are no accidents. The universe works on a specific set of principles that do not waiver.

Like attracts like, whether we believe it or not. The good news is that the opposite is also true. If, for example, you are feeling great, having invested time sitting and reading your goals and taking care to monitor your thoughts, intentions, and your internal and external dialogue, you are now entering a high energy vibration and are in a place to attract other high vibrations, generally things that you want to have, into your life.

I am not asking you to accept this blindly. Observe the world around you and see if this holds true for you. I am sure you have noticed situations when, in a room full of people, one person seems to be the centre of attention.
Why do you suppose this is? I will give you a hint, that it's probably not her perfume. Similarly, you probably know people who are always having undesirable experiences in their lives.

These are the people who have a lousy time in even the best restaurant. They seem to travel with dark clouds over them and always experience things going wrong in their everyday lives.

If you observe and listen to them closely, you will begin to see the connection between what they think and say and what shows up in their lives. Closely monitor your every thought and word.

When you catch yourself dwelling in the negative, interrupt your pattern and substitute it with a positive thought. It is said that any thought consistently held for about 15 to 20 seconds will begin to attract a similar energy.

This is one of the reasons you want to read your life's vision and goals daily. This will hold your attention on thoughts of that which you want and help you bring it towards you.

Redemption is a better virtue

2006-03-25T20:53:00.000+05:30

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

To have a right to do is not at all the same as being right in doing it.

Well these are the two quotes which come to my mind about the thoughts that have been going on in my head. As I have said before the root cause for most of my musings has been movies. But these days it has found a very powerful ally in books. Now you might be thinking what am I thinking about. It is about how we all ignore the dreadful things that keep happening around us for one simple reason that it doesn’t concern us.

Well I started thinking about this when I was reading the book “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. The book is set in the 1970’s and 80’s when Afghanistan was in turmoil because of the civil wars and the invasion by Russia. The story is about a boy Amir who tries desperately to gain the approval of his father and how when trying to do so his loyal friend Hassan is molested by a gang of guys and even though Amir is there he doesn’t stand up for his friend because of his fears and how he comes back twenty years later for redemption. This was the book that made me think about how a human being reacts to a situation. There is a incident in the book where Amir and his father are fleeing the country or should I say being smuggled out of the country. The vehicle in which they are traveling also has a few other people including a young bride and her husband. So as they are fleeing the country their vehicle is stopped at the check post by one of the Russian guards who says that he would let the vehicle past if the girl sleeps with him. Nobody stands up for the girl, not even her husband. But Amir’s father not only stands up for her, a total stranger but also is ready to give his life. For a total stranger. How many of us would actually even think of protesting for such a action let alone get ready to fight for it.

Now while I was in the middle of this I went to see a movie “Apharn” which is about the kidnapping racket that was (is) being run in Bihar. The story is a about a guy who is the son of a Gandhian who keeps getting obstacles in his path because of his fathers principles. He blames his father for his failures and joins the mafia to become of the leading members of the kidnapping racket. But as always in the movies he realizes his mistakes and wants to repent for his crimes. But his father says something when he comes back to repent. He says “Do not show remorse for your crimes but try for redemption”.

Now how many of us would actually not care for their own good or their dear ones good and work for the good of the world or the society. Just look at the controversy going on about out MP’s holding a office of profit. Now it’s a well known fact that 99.99% (I am just leaving that 0.01% thinking that there is at least some good left in the world) of the politicians are in the business of politics for making a profit for themselves and for nothing else. Look around and we see so many scandals so many controversies and so much amount of money being consumed that we don’t know whether it is just right for me to pay my taxes. If it is just to fill the pockets of these politicians then what is the point.

But then again by saying that my country is corrupt and nothing can be done about it does not resolve or solve the problem. It is for us to take up the issue because it is going to directly affect our life. We don’t see the bigger picture because once we start caring about the way things are done everything falls in place. Because as it is said “Tiny drops make a mighty ocean”.

Rang De Basanti

2006-03-02T13:12:00.000+05:30

“Ye desh hai veer jawano ka, albelo ka, mastano ka ye desh ka yaaroon kya kehna”

I totally agree with those words of a song. India has been a country full of diversity. It is a place where you can find people of various cultures, religions n ideals live together in harmony (more often than not). It has also been a country which has produced some very great people.

Recently I had watched a movie “Rang de Basanti”. The movie is about four guys who are enjoying their life to the core. Then a British maker wakes into their life wanting to make a movie about the Indian freedom struggle. These guys who have been vagabonds till then suddenly realize the things that some of the freedom fighters almost their age had done. Then something dramatic happens like always in our Hindi movies and one of their close friends who is a pilot die in a plane crash. And these people take up his cause and fight against the corrupt political system. And the method they choose to fight is a very radical one. They kill the defense minister. Now someone had told me that they could have had a better ending for the movie in which the guys might have intelligently destroyed the politician’s career. But according to me this was the best ending that this movie could have. A logical ending.

It takes a hell lot of guts to even think of doing that. It might be easy to say that anybody can do that i.e., killing a politician and that taking the law into one’s own hand is not correct. But when things get out of hand it requires something radical. Also the thing that hit me when I was watching the movie was that Bhagat Singh and some of the revolutionaries were not more that 23- 24 year olds. I mean these days what any 23- 24 year old (including me) can think of is how to make more money, how to advance in my career, how to woo a girl but not how do I serve my country or what should I do so that the system in the country changes.

What we all crib about is how the system has gone to dogs and how it is hopeless. But honestly how many of us have not paid a bribe to jump a line in some queue or to get a document signed or even just paid a traffic constable so that he doesn’t fine you? A country doesn’t become great all by itself. It becomes great because of the continuous toil of all the people or at least majority of the people living in it.

So the next time you think something is wrong with your country think what you can do to rectify that rather than just going on and on about how bad the system has become.

The Fickle me

2005-12-13T14:49:00.000+05:30

What do I want to do? This has been the question that’s been haunting me for the past few days. These days I am getting very restless. I want to accomplish something but I cannot find anything that I would for sure want to and I think the time is running out for me. Just yesterday somebody was telling me that I am too young to be thinking of all this and that I should be just enjoying life and that I have lots of time to think about all this. That is true I will be 24 this March and still have enough time to choose what I want to accomplish and try to accomplish it too.

But the main problem with me lies it that choosing part. I have had so many goals and they have changed so many times that once I have choosen something I am not even sure I would want to continue with it after some time. I am no Howard Roark to know what I would want to do with my life from the age of 10. Like when I was in seventh grade I wanted to an air force pilot. But when I finished my 12th I wanted to be a computer programmer, by the time I finished my graduation I wanted to be a research scientist working on robots and now I want to jump into the world of finance and banking. Each and every goal totally opposite to what I had earlier and none of them come distinctively close to each other.

It is not like I am not happy with what I am doing right now. The money is good and I get to travel places. But then it is just that it is not very intellectually stimulating. Wow that’s a very big word. What I mean is it gets kinda boring after a while. It is not that I am dogging bullets or running for my life. I am just coding which can get pretty monotonous.

How I would love to take up a job which would just let me travel and visit places. But then again I am afraid I would loose interest in traveling too as has been the case with computer programming.

So what should I do? Well that’s the million dollar question that I have been trying to figure out. And you all must be wondering why on earth have I started rambling about all this nonsense. Well that’s what happens when you start reading Fountain head once again for inspiration. I don’t know about the inspiration part but it has put my head in a tails spin.

Do we care?

2005-11-19T15:34:00.000+05:30

How many of us care? Not about ourselves but about the person sitting next to us or the person living next door or as a matter of fact about a fellow human being. My dad used to say that times have changed and these days nobody cares about others. I never thought that was true at least the nobody part. But look around you will find thousand of such instances which prove my dad’s point. Let me give you a small example.

What will you say if I try to overhear your conversation? You would say that’s I am eavesdropping, that I am invading your privacy. But what if a person sitting beside me goes on jabbing on his/her mobile phone and makes me hear his conversation though I have no intensions of hearing what he is talking about. This, my friends I say is, invasion of my privacy.

Mobile phones when they first arrived were a boon because you could now talk to a person whether or not he is at home or office. But of late it has started turning in a bane. People start talking without even caring where they are or whether they are causing inconvenience to others and at least 60 – 80 % of these calls are conversations which can wait.

Well this is just one instance. There are loads of such cases. Now you would say why should I care if somebody is inconvenienced it only matters to me if my work is done? True but think of the day when such a thing happens to you too. Your inconvenience might not be somebody else’s inconvenience.

I used to think only my happiness, my convenience matters to me. But well I have to admit I was wrong. If everybody starts thinking like that our world will be in a state of chaos. But then again there is a limit to this caring for others. This caring shouldn’t turn into policing like it happened in the case of film actresses Khusboo and Sania Mirza. It is neither my problem nor concern if somebody has pre marital sex. I think people are intelligent enough to decide when and what they want to do. Also people have the right to say what they want. That is one of the constitutional rights that Indian constitution provides a citizen of India.

Why does a mullah or a pujari or a priest have to tell us how to live our lives? Why don’t people understand that religion is like a guideline that tells you how to live life not a rule book whose rules should not be broken. These days everybody wants to have a say in somebody elses life. Just read in the news paper today one of the leaders who was protesting against Sania Mirza for coming to the aid of Khusboo that they wanted Sania Mirza to concentrate on playing tennis rather that modeling. Who the heck is he to tell her what she should be doing. Its her life she can do anything. How would he feel if somebody comes to him and says that you have been living all your life wrongly and the way you think is wrong and I shall tell you how you should live or think. How would you feel? Angry, disgusted ,outraged………………..

So before trying to interfere in somebody else’s life by caring too much or by not caring at all just think how would you feel if the same thing happens to you because at the end of the day we all have to live on this place called earth depending on somebody else for most of the things and you wouldn’t want to piss that somebody off would you?

Human Stupidity- The mother of all destruction

2005-10-03T15:40:00.000+05:30

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Well this is what the most intelligent man (allegedly though I have no doubt that it can be anybody else) to ever live, Albert Einstein said. So simple yet so true. No why do I saw that. We all would have heard this quote “Necessity is the mother of all invention”. Well we should all be taught one more with that quote. “Human stupidity is the mother of all destruction” Why do I say that? Well Albert Einstein found one of the equations that changed the way we look at energy today and some of the brilliant physicists found out how to split an atom up. Then there were scientists who put this whole thing together to build a bomb which could destroy anything in a 2 mile radius. Such a beautiful thing. But can we all stop after doing just that. Then the stupidity takes over. America had to drop that on Japan not once but twice after winning the war. What do you call that? Demonstration of power? How was that different from what Nazis did to Jews? He killed them to prove that Nazis were the most powerful race in the world. America dropped a bomb to show how powerful the country was. Anyways let me stop the America bashing and go back to my original topic “The Human Stupidity”.

So we have seen this all along history. We all do things sometimes not even right things so that we can benefit from it. But 9 out of 10 times it comes back to bite you in the ass. Like Osama Bin Laden. Like Saddam Hussain. All CIA trained but backfired at America and now America has to spend billions of dollars to set it right.

What is it with us and power? The more we get the more we want it. We want to control how others around us live, how they make their decisions and how they are going to affect us. Why don’t we have some compassion left in us? Why don’t we just make a decision so that it helps others for a change rather than us? What’s the difference between a man and an animal then?

Now you all must be thinking why one earth am I blabbering about all this. Well once again source for all this – a movie. Well in the movie a big computer wiz, owner of one of the largest companies in the world tries to take over the world not because he wants money but just because he wants power. Now he wants to do this by controlling the internet. Internet is one of the best things in the world today. It can be used by students to increase their knowledge about any thing the want. It can help engineers and doctors to find out new and effective ways of doing things. But it can also help terrorists to find out ways and means of causing harm to people. Why terrorists look at spammers. Spam is a now a multi billion dollar business and what is it? It’s the junk that comes into your mailbox.

We have all seen movies where bad guys hack into the government computers to implicate the good guy into a crime which he had no idea about. Aren’t we depending on the technology a bit to much these days. All the major life support systems in a hospital are now hooked up to a computer in some of the state of the art hospitals so that the doctor can monitor them from anywhere. That’s a very good thing. You have your doctor checking on you anytime any place. But that also gives chance to a lunatic to cause serious damage. Now maybe I am being a bit too pessimistic but people today don’t understand the significance of the internet. Even simple things like giving away your passwords and pin number can cause you enough harm. Now that is what I call human stupidity. It’s not a flaw in the system. Technology is there to help us provided we use it wisely.

In today’s world where terrorists or should I say lunatics are even ready to blow themselves up to meet their ends it wont be long before they find a way to use technology to hold the whole world hostage without even firing a bullet. And there is no point blaming the government or anybody about it because 99% of the times it would happen just because of the stupidity or greed (of which stupidity is a derivative of) of a person.

As some one once said “The known is finite, the unknown infinite, intellectually we stand on an islet in the middle of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability”.

Love - To be or not to be

2005-09-15T16:22:00.000+05:30

Love is the eternal. Well that’s what I have been hearing in all the movies in any of the languages I have seen.(I have even tried watching French and Spanish movies and I am sure they also meant the same thing though I couldn’t actually understand them). But I have always had this doubt. How do I know that I am in love or how does anybody know that they are in love? It doesn’t hit a person suddenly one day that they are in love does it? And how can u differentiate between love, lust, infatuation and just liking. What are the boundaries? Each of these are interlinked i.e., that is they overlap at some point. But how do we know that we are in love or is it just a matter of lust. Well these are some questions that have been there for centuries now for which people have been trying to find answers for but without much success. Because the way a person interprets a feeling or a situation is quite different from somebody else would interpret it. As they say “One mans blood is another man’s poison”.

Now you must be wondering why am I breaking my head over these issues. Well the root cause for this is a movie I saw yesterday. In the movie the hero a sculptor likes this woman but tells her they cannot be together because he cannot concentrate on his work because he keeps thinking about her all the time. Distressed our heroine decides that if she cannot give herself up to the man she loves, then she would give herself to everybody else she doesn’t love (though I don’t understand the logic here lets go along). So she decides to become a courtesan. Even though our sculptor friend realises he is in love with her and comes back he is told that he has to wait since he made her wait (again is this a revenge story or a love story). So she becomes a courtesan in the king’s court but later realises that she is in love with the sculptor. When the king realises this he puts the sculptor to death. Now this whole thing would have been averted if the heroine would have accepted the sculptor’s love they would have lived happily ever after.

But tragedy in love stories is an integral part of our culture (when I say ours does not necessarily mean Indian, all over the world love and tragedy go hand in hand). There are loads of examples : One of the best plays – Romeo and Juliet – a tragedy set in the western world, Laila and Majnu – set in the middle east, Heer and Ranjha set in our own sub continent and the greatest blockbuster movie of all times with record collections and the most number of awards – Titanic was also a tragedy love story. Oh I also have a doubt about how the love happens. They say love happens sometimes at first sight like how it happens in titanic. But what actually happened in Titanic was it actually love or just an act of companionship and lust. A young woman who didn’t like the her way of life and was going to be married to a person with whom she would spend her life the same way she was doing it then meets this person who is very different from the guys in her circle. Now they have a good time together and when the ship breaks and sinks he dies trying to save her life while she goes on live for another 80 years. Not that I am trying to sound sarcastic or anything but hey that’s the fact and that how it ends in most of the movies. Now there might be people who might argue that trying to save the life of a person you love is better than living a life without any love. But what I want to know is why is it that it is always the guy who takes the fall? Maybe its just the male stereo type and how society was/is where it was/is the right/duty to protect the woman. But now that women want equal representation maybe its time for them to take a fall in some cases too. Just kidding. But think about it then you would have seen Leanardo Di Caprio being saved by Kate Winslet and then Leanardo telling the story of Titanic. Sounds absurd doesn’t it.

Anyways I am deviating from the topic. I started this blog with the intention of deriving a method to find out when somebody is in love. I don’t think I am anywhere close to finding it. Maybe that’s what it is. It is just the interpretation of a feeling or an act. There is no set definition for falling in love nor can it be mathematically deduced that if these steps happen then that means you are in love neither is there any logic behind it.

It just happens or that’s what I think.

London-Part 1

2005-08-10T14:02:00.000+05:30

It’s been almost two weeks since I have been in London and I have seen a lot of it in just two weekends. Now I understand what they mean when they say that London is one of the expensive cities in the world. Well anyways let me begin from the beginning.

It was on a thursday morning that I started for London. It was a pretty decent journey from Hyderabad to Dubai with me getting the aisle seat and having no delays. Dubai was as usual with its grand airport. It was from here that a little excitement in the flight started. Now excitement means not the nerve wrecking one just a little more things happening. The guy at the London flight terminal started asking me questions as if he owned half of London. Then as the flight was a Boeing 747 it was 3 seats at the window and fortunately or unfortunately I got the window seat with a big black Nigerian sitting beside me. Not that he was irritating me or anything but he was so huge that every time I had to move out of my seat I was like asking a whole battalion to move out of their post. Now for the good part of sitting at the window seat, we were flying at about 10000 meters above the ground without a cloud cover underneath. There was a place in Turkey if I am not wrong where there is plain land for as far as I could see then suddenly a mountain range starts ending on the beach touching a sea. That was I think one of the best scenic beauties I had ever seen in my life. At that exact moment if anybody had asked me to quit whatever I was doing and become an explorer I would have gladly agreed though I wouldn’t mind doing that even now.

Flying over all such wonderful places we finally reached London at around 6:30 pm GMT. Now it took me around an hour and half to cross almost 4-5 countries in Europe but it took two hours to cross the immigration. Not that I was being grilled about anything but just because even though there were around 42 booths only 12 were operating. Finally after two hours my turn came and I thought the immigration officer would surely ask me why on earth did I go in and out of Kuwait and Bahrain so many times. But to my surprise that only thing she asked was for how many days do I intended to stay in London???? A big anti climax.

Anyways a little disappointed and hugely relieved I came out of the airport to find my ride. You must be thinking that I would be having a quiet night. But no the driver was an expert on London who told me what I should be doing and what I shouldn’t be doing, where and what (I mean literally what) I should be looking for in London. It was a non stop commentary for around an hour. So finally after a very very very long time( I seemed so long) he dropped me of in front of Ibis hotel in central London. Here the female in the reception told me coolly that I didn’t have a reservation. For one moment I didn’t know what to do. But luckily she then realised that she had typed in the name wrongly.

So finally the day ended. I was in London, one of the most powerful cities in the world. Tomorrow will be an another day, an another beginning.

To be continued……………………….

Its been a long time...............

2005-05-28T00:11:00.000+05:30

It’s been a while since I have written anything here actually to be more precise 2 months and 6 days. Lot of things have changed – we have a new Pope, Tony Blair won his election again (well I never expected him to win I thought may be the british public will come back to their senses but looks like they are in the world of their own),India lost to Pakistan in India(How shameful),Manchester United lost to Arsenal in FA cup final, the Champions Cup has returned to England after 5 years thanks to Livelpool and I will get my appraisal letter this Monday. But I am not going to write about any of this stuff. The reason I have not written anything for so many days is I have a writer’s block. So I thought why don’t I just break out of this block and write something. So here I am giving you all an update of whats happeneing around us.

Anyways thats it for now. Shall write something soon. Actually have lots of topics on my mind but just cant choose which one should I be writing about.

Anyways as the Terminator says "I shall be back".

My trip Part 1 - Delhi

2005-03-22T21:05:00.000+05:30

Before I begin I should say I was surprised to see the count on my blog. It was 944. I am inching close to that magic figure of 1000. When I had started writing I was pretty sure that nobody would actually read what I wrote let alone my page being visited almost 1000 times(though I am pretty sure the bulk of this traffic came from 3-4 of my friends or should I say my fans ;-))). Ok guys maybe I am going a bit over-board but then again I am allowed some amount of leniency. Let’s get back to the topic on hand “My trip”. In this blog I thought I should tell you people about my superb sense of direction and also about the surprise discovery I had made about Delhi, the capital city of my country.

Well the whole plan of me going to Pilani (that’s where my college is) started when I and a friend of mine decided that we should go back to our college one last time and if possible for a fest. But as fate would have it, it so turned out that he had an interview during the time our trip was scheduled and he wanted to postpone the trip by a week. But the stubborn ass that I am I decided to go ahead with the trip. That’s when the whole saga started.

I had been advised by people about Air Deccan. But the great intellect that I am I thought it would be wrong to judge anything or anybody without actually seeing and experiencing it. So I bought myself a ticket to Delhi agianst all odds. These days I have developed a very good habit of being on dot anywhere. So the flight was scheduled to take off at 7:50 am and I reached the airport at 7:40 am almost certain that I would not be allowed to board the plane. But then I forgot that this was Hyderabad, the bindas city where “Kuch bhi kar sakte hai”. So I got my boarding pass and ran into the waiting room thinking that the flight would leave without me (how dumb). But there I saw a Swaraj Madza van (a van to carry passengers???) waiting for me and since I was the last guy who had to board the plane I had the whole van to myself. The airlines was making me feel like a king and all those people who were talking bad about the airlines started looking like villans to me. Little did I know that I in a short period of time I would be more than willing to join the club.

So I got down from the van and with a air hostess escorting me I climbed the stairs to start the series of shocks that were coming my way. The air hostess informed me at the door that it was a “free seating” plane and I could sit where I choose to. I entered into the plane and the inside looked as if 10-15 buses were welded together to form a plane. It was like one of those red buses in Andhra Pradesh where you have to go put a handkerchief to reserve a seat. Any ways I took my seat and the flight took off at around 8:25 am (maybe I had come in a bit too early). Anyways after we had climbed a decent height the air hostesses started walking down the ramp with their trolleys selling food. It reminded me of the trolleys I saw in the railway stations. The only difference here was that they were not shouting “chips dus rupya, juice koi bi flavor bees rupya”. The flight was ok without any mishaps or incidents like I had heard( flying so low that the plane almost touched the roof of a building or crash landing into a field). The airlines is good if the soul purpose of your flight is to reach from point B from point A. But if you want a flying experience then this airlines is a strict no-no.

The pilot landed the plane at around 9:50 am and I got out of the airport by 10am. This was actually the fastest I have been out of the airport because my luggage like me also has the habit of arriving last. But fortunately this time I did not check in anything. So here began my tour of Delhi. I have always liked Delhi over all the other metros though it’s the only one I have been to. But what I had seen of Delhi was also practically nothing. The most I had seen was South Ex, Connought Place and Darya Gunj. So I got out of the airport and got a auto which was driven by a sardarji and he as usual was too intelligent. He kept taking the roads that started getting packed as we reached the half way point on that road. So with great difficulty and struggle I was able to reach Vasundhara Enclave which as my friend had said was just after Mayur Vihar but just before Noida. I could practically see the check post of Noida from the entrance of his apartment. But according to him he was still staying in Delhi. He was not home when I reached his apartment but he had told me where the keys would be.

So let me actually start with the adventure. We had decided that we would go and visit a friend who was studying in MDI Gurgaon, that’s approximately 40 kms from the place where I was staying. Now this was the trip where I learnt about my superb sense of direction and also made some surprise discoveries about Delhi. I have been to three other countries till now and the one thing I liked about all these countries were the roads. All the three countries Kuwait, Bahrain and Lebanon (never ever think of visiting these countries) had superb roads and I never thought such roads ever existed in India. Also I am a big fan of speed and for people like me such roads are almost like heaven. In Hyderabad there is not even a single stretch of road where you can zoom around at 90-100 kmph on your bike. But there was this connecting road or the expressway connecting Noida to Delhi. Now that my friend, is a road which all the bikers would absolutely love. Its was I think a 8 lane road and I, for the first time in my life I was riding a bike at around 90-95 kmph consistently for almost 10 minutes. Well that’s not all, we had a superb road and a series of flyovers from Noida to Gurgaon though we got struck in the middle. Now this was where I made the second discovery about Delhi. Delhi has so many cars I mean so maaaany cars no matter how wide you make the roads it will still be not enough. We covered almost 20 kms in less than 15 minutes and then it took us almost an hour to cross the next 5 kilometers. I think you understand what I am saying.

So somehow we got out of this traffic and finally reached Gurgaon. Some of my friends from college had once gone on a trip to Gurgaon. I had never understood what they did in a place where there were mostly companies. Now I understood. The malls in this place are too good. Absolutely world class. So we saw one of the malls had our dinner and started back for our place at around 10:30 pm.

One thing I don’t understand about the guys who design the roads of a city is why do they try confusing people.The road you take to reach a place and the road you take to go back to different routes altogether. The same thing happened here. There was one road which led to Gurgaon and almost a total different one to come back. I had covered almost 1/4th of the distance correctly when I realized why do I need my friend to show me the way and I had the best bike (read pulsar) and since I was already on a high driving at around 80 I decided to go back on my own. Now these are some of the crazy things I do. So I thought I was taking all the right turns and ended up almost reaching Azadpur, which is on the other end of the city. Some how I found my way asking police men (though they were very hard to find. They should have a police post at least 2kms apart on such roads for people like me) and finally met my friend who was fortunately waiting for me. By now you would have thought that I might have learnt my lesson. But hey we are talking about me. So as we were again cruising along crossing one flyover after the other (it was almost 12:30 in the night) we came to a point where the flyovers branched out. It almost looked like a maze to me and my friend was still behind. So I thought I would test my luck again and took one of the flyovers which I thought was for sure not the right one. But fortunately for my friend it was the right one the lady luck was on my side this time around and we reached home in another half hour.

Well I think this is the biggest blog I have written till now. I thought I would continue but then it would be very difficult for people to digest. So maybe I will continue this in the next blog.

The monk who should'nt have sold his ferrari.

2005-03-04T21:51:00.000+05:30

Well before I begin there is something I have got to tell you. I am not good at reading philosophy neither am I good at teaching it. It’s with great difficulty that I can read a book on any kind of philosophy. I generally don’t keep a book waiting once I have started it but with philosophy it’s a different case all together. Maybe that’s because I know what my philosophy is (I think). All said and done there was this one book I started reading a few days ago. I had picked up that book not because my friend told me that it was good, nor because it was one of the best sellers but because of the title of the book “The monk who sold his Ferrari”. Now who on earth in his right mind would sell his Ferrari. True I have heard loads of stories of people who had given up kingdoms (Buddha), families to find a true meaning of life/god but still I couldn’t digest the fact that somebody actually gave up everything including his Ferrari. So I thought why don’t I give it a try.

Before I continue let me tell you a bit about the story in the book. It’s about this hot shot lawyer who has everything anybody in this world wants. He has money, fame and every other earthly possession a man can desire of. He is also froma well-off family so he is not a rags to riches guy too. But suddenly one day he collapses in the courtroom during a trail and then vanishes of to return a few years later looking considerably younger, healthier and happier. Well it is till that point that I have read the book so I cant go on further about the book. (And people who have already read the book should forgive me for the crude way I which the jist of the story was presented).

Even though I always thought that people who give up life in search of god or true meaning of life are actually running away from it, this actually made me think. So why do people give up their life their comfortable life’s to wander off into the woods. I mean isn’t it like making your life more miserable. You won’t have the comfort of your bed or the servents or as a matter of fact any luxuries. But still why do people do it? To know the answer for this you have to look at the problem or the circumstances which lead people into doing this.

Take for example the lawyer in the story he had everything money, fame, family name, respect everything but he did not have a peace of mind. Or for that matter take any person today. I bet 99.9% of the people in this world are obsessed with this. Some want more money, some want more fame, more power and the list goes on and on and on. Look at people around us.Brothers are going at each others throats for money, people kill for fame and power but I don’t see anybody striving at least 1/10th of it for happiness. I don’t find anything wrong with people working so hard for money or fame or power. But do it for the right reason. I mean do it because you want it not because you want somebody else to notice it. If you ain’t doing it for yourself then you are doing it all wrong. I mean if you want to earn money earn it because you want to be a millionaire or a billionaire not because your best friend or your neighbor is one. Same this goes fame too. Try to get famous because you want to not because somebody you know is or your jealous of somebody’s fame. Jealousy is one of those virtues which if present in large proportions is bad for the health, yours and the people around you. Now you must be wondering how can jealousy be good even in small proportions. Well I don’t say it’s good. It’s just that sometimes it helps you to be a bit jealous.

Let’s get back to what I was saying in the first place about why the monk shouldn’t be selling his Ferrari. True I agree that the reason any monk gives up all the earthly possessions is that he should not be tempted to go back to his old ways of life where it is corrupted by the human desire. Now human desire is such a vicious thing. It has been the whole and sole reason for the downfall of many a great people. But then it is just the matter of discipline. So aren’t we disciplined enough to actually keep all our worldly possessions and still be not corrupted by it. Well IF YOU ASK ME THE ANSWER IS NO. How many times have we not broken a rule to do something we shouldn’t have done?

So even though I think the monk shouldn’t have actually given up his Ferrari (I mean wouldn’t it be cool for a monk to move around in a Ferrari) I think the title of that book by Robin S. Sharma was the most apt title for a book he has written.

PS: this is not the end. I shall be back.

Valentine's Day

2005-02-16T23:23:00.000+05:30

Well I never thought I would actually write about this. I always thought celebrating a festival, a day or even somebody’s death is a personal choice of a person and that nobody had the right to tell anybody what they should be doing. But then a incident on this valentine’s day changed my mind. I had heard of Shiv Sena , VHP and some Islamic organizations showing a resistance to people celebrating valentine’s day but I had actually never seen it. But the other day I was in Lifestyle and I saw a group of people wearing a white t-shirt and moving around in groups of 2-3. At first I thought they might be one of those marketing stunts which companies are pulling off to attract attention. But then when I saw what was written on their t-shirts I realized that they were part of a group opposing Valentine’s Day and their T-shirts said “Say no to Valentine’s Day” in red. No the first thing that came to my mind was it was hilarious. I mean a bunch of people stopping people from doing something which was not even distinctly related to them. But then I thought what on earth made this people do things like this. Who had appointed them as the moral police of India?

Isn’t it my constitutional right “Right to live” being violated by these people who are barging in on people’s lives uninvited? What right do they have to tell me what I can do and what I can’t do? But still nobody says anything against it. Shouldn’t the police, the government be punishing people who are violating the rights of the citizens as it is the duty of the government to do that? But wait what am I talking about. Some of the parties who have been in power actually support this. What an irony.

Well let’s first see whether we actually need a Valentine’s Day. Do we actually need to specify a day for something so special? Well we celebrate children’s day, mother’s day, father’s day, woman’s day and what not. So why can’t we have a day set aside to celebrate love. Does it actually matter if we celebrate love? Do we have to celebrate love? Well ask anybody in love and then they would say yes (Though a few cash strapped guys might not agree). Why anybody in love, ask any person then wouldn’t mind just setting aside everything on their mind and just spend a whole day with a loved one. Is that a crime? People who oppose Valentine’s day and other such things say that this is too western or that this is the doing of MNC trying to sell their merchandise. Well so that does that mean that Indians never knew how to love is it? Well tell that to Laila- Majnu, Herr – Ranja or Devdas and Paro. Why go to that extent my father took my mother for a date(well I don’t know whether that was a date I asked my mom if it was a date and she refused to comment). So I fail to understand what’s the logic behind all this hue and cry that these people raise over petty things like this whether they can channelize this energy to do something good for the people who elected them. But then why would they be politicians if they are doing good things.

So people fall in love celebrate Valentine’s day and live happily ever after. Well for me it was the same old valentine’s day- me, myself and myself again. Maybe next time…..

Nothing

2005-02-12T23:04:00.000+05:30

Well I have been thinking about a topic for my blog and I don’t seem to be getting any ideas. It seems as if I have nothing to write about. So I thought well since I have nothing to write about why don’t I write about nothing. At this point you must be thinking I am crazy. Well to be honest I am. Well what’s the point living a life by the book, doing what you are expected to do, getting what you are expected to get and dying when you are supposed to die. That would become very routine. At least that’s what I think. So instead of doing every thing by the book why don’t we just toss the book aside and just take the life as it comes enjoying it to the fullest. So coming back to me being crazy I think everybody would be a bit crazy. I actually think everybody is. Its just that some people don’t want others to know. Ok now I am deviating from my topic. It was supposed to be about nothing. So let me begin but before I do that I you have to read this disclaimer.

Disclaimer: Anything and everything in the blog below will not make sense. If it does to you then it was not supposed to. You are then to make no sense out of it. Also any reference to anybody is purely accidental not coincidental because at that precise moment you were the first person who can to my mind by accident so purely accidental. And last but not the least any comments – good or bad will be appreciated but not given any due consideration because when you are talking about nothing how can I give a thought to/about/for something ha. And also you are reading this blog at your own due diligence. I am not responsible if your are utterly and totally lost at the end of this blog. Well if you have this far then god save you.

So Nothing…. Shuunya…..what is it about nothing that actually draws us. Why are we drawn to nothing when there is always something for us to think ponder wonder fight about. Why is it that we are fascinated by the black hole which has by far proven to have nothing in inside it. It is still the world’s biggest mystery. Anyways so what draws us to this nothing? Maybe it’s that thing in us which cannot accept that there is nothing in something. I mean how can anything have nothing in it. There should always be something because without something everything is nothing and if we have nothing then what are we doing in this world. So lets try proving that there is something in this world so we know what we are doing in this world what our purpose of life is? On that thought I have one more doubt should we always have some purpose in our life? I mean our parents always tells us that we should be doing something in life, that we should make something out of it. Why cant we just do nothing and live life as it is? But can we do that? Do we have the liberty to do that? Will we ever be allowed to do nothing and still remain a respectable citizens of this world. Ok I am deviating from my point again. So lets get back to it. So we were trying to prove that there is something in this world.

Lets take a person, a normal person like you and me who goes to school, college and works his ass off to make a living. Does this guy actually have anything? I mean look at him when he is small he doesn’t know how to speak. He has practically nothing. He cant do a thing. When he starts growing up he doesn’t have the freedom to do anything. He has to listen to everybody older than him. He still doesn’t have anything. He starts working and spends all his life trying to earn something. It can be fame, name, money anything. So whenever a man begins he practically has nothing with him. And when he leaves (I mean he dies) he takes nothing with him. Such a simple word as nothing has such a great meaning ha. Well I just found that out myself during the course of this blog. So anyways what I mean to say is nothing is good. Not having anything is not bad. Now what is bad? Bad is something which I have no actual idea about. Now why don’t I have any idea about what is bad?? Well to quote two very good friends of mine “I don’t know”. Well that’s the simplest answer I could come up with and actually the easiest one too. Why? Because you cant even ask me why don’t I know. It’s just that I don’t know and there ends the story. But does the story really end or is it just the beginning.

Well I think I should stop the insanity here otherwise it just might effect people and I don’t want the blame for making perfectly normal people insane. Chao.

The million dollar question -2 -Guys vs Girls

2005-02-04T23:14:00.000+05:30

Ok this has been a debate that has been going on for eternity so I thought why dont we disuss it here, but just with a twist. The topic of the blog is not just "Who do you think is better -Guys or Girls". That would be pretty lame of me to ask. So lets add some more to it.

"Who do you think is better -Guys or Girls. If you think one of them is better what do you think is the reason that makes them better".To add more to it "Women today are still not at par(i mean 50:50) with men(I think). Why and what do you think are the reasons for it?"

The Blog:

Ok now it was very cheeky of me to actually ask who is better a guy or girl. But then I couldn’t resist. I just wanted to see how people react to the topic. Kiran did what I expected her to do, pull the dagger out and start for my throat and Rajesh supporting her from the sidelines but with a neutral stance. Megha I was expecting a comment from you but I am sure I would get a comment after completing this I am sure. So that makes up all my readers so let me start with the topic. The reason I gave the title as “Guys vs. Girls” was I wanted to see if actually somebody had the guts to say one of them was better not in general but in a specific case. But I don’t think anybody today would actually even think of going down that path. Everybody wants to be politically correct.

So what do I think... Are Guys better than Girls or are Girls better than Guys. Really does it matter? I mean we are living in world where today everybody is considered equal. So why do we really keep discussing this? maybe because the whole world is actually made up of two kind of humans - Male and Female and in our religions or even if you talk about say cosmic forces Man and Woman are regarded as some kind of energies – two equal and opposite energies. So you see the like fire and water, good and evil there is man and woman. So there will be always this Man vs. Woman. But that does not necessarily mean it is a competition.

Well if you ask me I think girls are most of the times in most of the areas are actually better than guys. I really never understood the reason why people always crave for a son rather than a daughter. I personally feel than a daughter is better than a son if you look from the parent’s headaches point of point. I can vouch for that. I know I have been a pain in the ass for my parents when compared to my sister (who by all means is not an angel from heaven). But then again I just might be an exception because I can be major pain anyways. But then the thing which haunts me the most is that we all talk about this whole gender equality thing but when it comes to rather following it we fall flat on our faces. Take the example of a 17 year old kid who has just given his examination to et into a engineering/medical or for that matter any government college and suddenly he realizes that even though he has got a rank of around 2000 a girl with a rank of around 7000-8000 is gonna study with him. You know why? Because of the 33%reservation we have for girls. Think from a 17 year old’s point of view what would he think? That the world would is biased. Ok maybe I am just over-reacting here but isn’t this being biased. You might try to give me explanations that this is for the good of the society where girls have to come up on par with the guys( remember I said that girls are still not on par say 50:50 with guys and somebody called me a male chauvanist) then if the guys and girls are on par right now what is the need for such a reservation that too not 10% or 15% but 33% and you don’t need to be from a economically backward family nor from any other category you just have to be a girl.

Also look at the way girls get away with most of the things where as guys doing the same thing get punished. Why just because shes a girl. Look at Indra Gandhi. I totally agree that she was the best prime minister that India ever had and will ever have. But look at the time when she imposed emergency. If it was a guy who had done such a thing he would have been banished for life. But she came back and became the prime minister again.

So from this we can get to two conclusions that either girls are not yet on par with guys or they are and it is the guys against whom the whole gender inequality thing is. Well the second conclusion would be preposterous by all means and I think everybody agrees with me. So that means what I said was true that Girls are not yet on par with Guys for a whole bunch of factors and reasons none of them being that girls are not as talented as guys. So who is responsible for such a thing. Men or Woman? I would say woman. Look around you. How many woman today atleast in India are giving up their jobs not because they want to but because their parents or hunbands or in-laws want them to. I am not against woman giving up work to become house wifes. I wouldn’t have been what I am if wasn’t for my mother who is a house wife. But if she gives it up on her own, if its her own decisions then there is no problem. But if she does that because somebody else wants her to do that then we have a problem. Its ok if your husband is the King of India and he has so much money that he just wants you spend it. I know I wouldn’t mind sitting at home if my wife earns the money for me to spend. But that’s not the case today is it.

Also the discrimination agianst a girl child starts from when she is young. I have seen it where the son was sent to an english medium school to study and the daughter had to go to a government school where they don’t even care if you come to school let alone study. But then as far as I remember she had both her parents who made that decision and one of them was a woman. Don’t you all think that it’s actually time for woman to stand up for themselves rather than screwing up their own lives. Look at the serials that come from Balaji telefilms. 99% of these have a woman in a villianous role. Before that I always thought woman actually don’t do such things. But then who knows there is no smoke without fire. Also look at all the woman organisations making such a hue and cry over the Miss World and Miss Universe pagents. Don’t you think people have better work to do rather than look at some 100 woman in their swim suits. Please turn on any of the TV channels today and you can see them. You dont have to condemn these pagents for god’s sake.

So according to me guys are better than girls in some areas as of today and girls are better than guys in some others. Its actually no point trying to prove that one is better than the other because one of these two groups will be vioded anyways if the other ceases to exist(unless we evolve a new way to reproduce asexually ;-))))).

The million dollar question

2005-01-28T22:50:00.000+05:30

Well i thought instead of me writing a blog first and then people commenting on it why not do it the other way round... So herez the topic of my blog:

Do you think we should go to war with Pakistan

So should India go to war with Pakistan? My first instinct would be yes. Please for how long will we bear the cheap tricks being played by Pakistan? But then is war an answer to this problem. Lets look at the root cause of this problem between India and Pakistan. Kashmir, the place that was once known as the heaven on earth. So would any country be ready to forgo Kashmir. Or are both countries ready to come o a common understanding where both of them divide Kashmir into two parts.

If you ask me I would never give an inch of the land in Kashmir to Pakistan. Kashmir is an integral part of India. And do you think Pakistan would be happy if Kashmir is divided and made part of Pakistan. I don’t think so. Lets look at the partition itself. Who are the people who have lost the most due to partition? The Muslims. Muslims would have been in a better position if the partition had not taken place.(And India would have had a great Cricket and hockey teams too). Muslims who left to Pakistan in 1947 are still regarded as mujahirs in Pakistan that is they are people without a nationality. Also the people who left India were those who were a bit educated thinking that they would have a better life in a country for Muslims. People who were left here were most illiterates who could not leave what they had here and go. And look at the state of Muslims in India today. More than half of the Muslim population is below the poverty line; there is not even a 2% representation of Muslims in the public services, not even 15% of the Muslim children study beyond matriculation. So did Muslims actually benefit from create a separate state for themselves. I don’t think so.

Now look at Pakistan. It has five major rivers of the subcontinent flowing through the country. But still it is not self-sufficient. It has not yet had a stable democratic government till now. The most stable governments they have had was by military dictators. Lahore was one of the most important trade cities in the undivided India something like Bombay. But look at the state of affairs there too. So what purpose has this served?

So what’s the guarantee that Pakistan will not do the same thing to Kashmir? And Pakistan already has a part of Kashmir (POK) but still it wants more of it. So what guarantee do we have that Pakistan will not continue doing what it is doing now. Actually India should have taken back the POK when it had the chance in 1947 and again in 1971 wars. But India being a peaceful country marched till Islamabad and returned back without making Pakistan pay for what they have been doing. And they repaid our kindness by starting this terror war in Kashmir. When Kashmir was annexed to India the then king of Kashmir had signed a deal with the Indian government that plebiscite will be held in Kashmir and Kashmir people will decide which country they would like to be part of. Now tell me why should my country protect a piece of land from attacks and then let the people decide to go join the attacking country. Forgive me but I am not Mahatma Gandhi who would show his other cheek if u slap me on one. What I would do is kick in your balls so you would not get up for a while by which I would have taken enough measures to not let such a thing happen again.

We all take a pride in saying that we are a country which had never attacked an another country. True but what Pakistan is doing today is not a direct war. They do not have enough courage to do that. Just a few days back there was heavy shelling from the Pakistan side even when a ceasefire was in progress and they did not have the guts to at least accept it. So why shouldn’t we go to war with Pakistan. United States went to war with Afghanistan because it thought the people responsible for a attack on their country was provided shelter in Afghanistan. Look at the case of Iraq too. America attacked these countries when it had a doubt that there was something fishy happening in those countries. But in our case it is openly known to everybody that it is Pakistan that is aiding the militants in Kashmir. And these acts of violence are not just happening in Kashmir. These militants are spreading this violence all over India.

So its time for the government to take some steps for protecting the people of India. If it means going to war with Pakistan so be it.

It is just a kiss

2005-01-24T23:30:00.000+05:30

Now I am getting into controversial issues but I love discussing controversial issues. I don’t know why, it’s just that I like listening to people arguing about an issue passionately and that can happen only with controversial issues. Well I was tempted to write about this after seeing so much written about it in media. The debate has been going on in the print media for long whether “A kiss” is obscene or not. So I thought why don’t I say what I think of it. Heck everybody is saying what they want to say about it.

So is a simple thing such as a kiss obscene in India today. Ok let me see some examples before we go any further. If you do recall a scene “Hum dil de Chuke Sanam” where our heroine ask very very innocently if she would get pregnant if she kissed. Ok its not normal for most Indians to know about sex (I am puzzled why) but that was heights. Then in the most recent past there were our won Shahid and Kareena found lip locking in public. Then there was a case where a guy was fined 200 bucks for kissing his girlfriend in public and the police made a ticket out saying that he was fined for kissing. And there was a Shiv Sena guy who said that kissing is something Western. So didn’t he ever kiss his wife? (Ok he said kissing in public is obscene). But what he said was far more atrocious. It seems what people in west do while kissing we do it by looking. I mean wow. What does that mean?

So what is all this? Are we making a big deal out of something which shouldn’t even be a point of discussion? Look at the Shahid - Kareena issue, both the actors out rightly denying that it was them in the video. What’s wrong with agreeing? Maybe it’s the society. Now that’s the best controversial word I have ever heard in my life. If I have to do something which I think is wrong and I ask my father for an explanation and if he can’t find one he says that it’s being done that way in our society. Who was the guy who decided that the society is something like this and these are the rules that have to be followed. Ok the society says you have to pay a dowry because it’s part of the society but does the same society come to the rescue of the bride when she’s being burnt by her in-laws for the dowry.

I saw a movie the other day where a father in Ireland will be fighting for the custody of his children. Seems there is or should I say was a law in Ireland where the children will be in the custody of the parents only if both the parents are together or alive. Otherwise the state will decide upon the fate of the children case-by-case. Now which brain less idiot devised that rule? That’s an example of how our society is. Now I am not saying we have to shun the whole concept of the society. But should the rules be somewhat more adopting to the changing times. There should not be a crusade very time a new change has to be made. Look at the gays and lesbians issue. I took lots of trouble (almost a crusade) for people to just stand up and take notice. Should it be like that every time something new comes up?

Well I have deviated from the topic. So let’s get back. So is a kiss such a big offence that people publicly deny it even after being caught on video and the police fine a guy. What’s next? You will hang a guy because he kissed his fiancé in public. Come on grow up. Would you feel a mother kissing her child in public is obscene? It is also just an act of affection. So why make a big deal out of it. Well also a part of the blame goes to the media too. I would not be such a big issue if they don’t dedicate a whole page do decide if kissing is obscene or not?

Just look around us. There have been so many incidents happening around us which should be questioning our basic beliefs about our society. Look at the DPS issue. Now I don’t say that what those teenagers (yes they are teenagers not kids) did was right. But that’s not wrong either. They wouldn’t have done such a thing if they were told about sex. Ask yourself. How any parents can talk freely about sex with their children? Not even 1%.

Seems India is the second in ranking in the cases of AIDS and still people are very conservative about it. We cant even watch an ad on TV on these issues as we find them very offensive. At the rate we are going by 2010 we would be raked number 1 in the number of AIDS cases. That should be quite an achievement given the great heritage and culture and the most stringent society rules which we all boost of so proudly. Kudos to all of us. We should be proud of this achievement or should we??? Think about it.

The Blame Game

2005-01-21T14:30:00.000+05:30

I was just watching a movie where a Gold medalist kills people so that he can take revenge on the society for his failure. He thinks the society could not even provide him with a job. Sounds preposterous, I mean a gold medalist not making a job. Our film makers have to get out the old rustic world they are living in. But on a serious note there are many of us (me included) who blame something or someone else for their failure. Why didn’t you do well in an exam? There was no power… the neighbors were disturbing…….. and the most outrageous thing of all the examiner was not lenient enough. Not just the case of exams take anything. People blame others for their failures in life.

Somebody was just telling me the other day that we are mature enough to discipline ourselves. Maybe I am quoting the person out of context but are we mature enough? We can’t even take responsibility for our own failures. True it is very easy to tell that we have to take responsibility for our own failures which is quite a difficult job because you would have to fight the demons of failure, defeat. Why would anybody want to do that when he has the easy way out, blame it on somebody else. Also we try to gauge our success with respect to somebody else. I mean its okay if we fail but if a person you know also fails you don’t feel as bad as you would have if he had succeeded. True I am talking like an ideal person and trust me most of the things I have said above I have done them too (the feeling bad part I mean).

But when I think about it I sounds pretty sick to me that I am trying to set my goals with respect to someone else rather than for me and for what I want to do? And I part of me thinking this way can be attributed to Howard Roark (The Fountain Head). I mean look at us. We can’t even stand in a queue when we have to get into a bus or at a grocery store. If I ask why my mother says if I start standing in a queue then I would be the only one left in the queue. Maybe that’s what everybody thinks. You have to understand the mentality of a mob. They don’t mind doing a thing if everybody is doing it. It’s just that they need somebody to start doing it. That means you have to be doing something nobody else is doing. So what? Do it if you think it is right. Why do you care what anybody thinks?

Maybe now you are thinking I have gone crazy or something. But think. Start taking responsibility for your actions if you fail. Take that as a learning experience. You see you can only move upwards from the bottom. So do a thing in the way you want to do it because as they say ”Great People don’t do different things, they do things differently”.

Army

2005-01-16T23:25:00.000+05:30

Army – the first thing that comes to be mind when I hear this word is honor and discipline. I always wanted to be a part of army, an Air force pilot to be precise but fate had its way and so I am sitting here writing about it from outside rather than explaining how it feels to be an army officer. Anyways why I am writing about army is the other day I had seen a program on TV whether they were having a discussion or rather a debate that “ In India today is Army the only institution that could be trusted implicitly”.

My answer to that is yes we can. Army is the only institution which has not yet been corrupted by our great bureaucracy and politics. It is the only institution or profession today that is looked upon with respect. When we got our independence all the forces that upheld our constitution and sovereignty were looked upon with respect. But after 55 years look at the state of affairs. Politicians are treated as scum, The police has already established itself as the most corrupt, bureaucrats will do anything to please a minister and the less I speak about judiciary the better. But even today an Army officer commands the same respect he had 55 years back if not more.

The debate had three army officers, a human right activist and a television reporter. The most irritating thing about the whole debate was the human right activist who was pointing out that there have been a grave number human right violation which had been committed by the army. He gave an example of the recent court martial of the soldiers who were involved in the Abu Gharib prison fiesta (Yes fiesta, that’s what Americans still consider it). So if the government of America wants to make a spectacle out of one soldier so be it why do we have to follow suit and do what they have done. This human right activist had just one agenda on his mind and that was to make army more transparent. True I agree that human right violations occur. And it is also a fact that people responsible for it in the army if proved guilty will be punished more swiftly than any other person (like our politicians) who commits them. But I don’t understand the logic behind him persisting the government to release the names of the people who were court marshaled.

What he forgets to understand is that India is not like USA where nobody cares about the person living next door. Maybe why the government doesn’t release the names because if in India an army officer is court marshaled then his family will be treated as untouchables for the rest of their lives. Maybe the government doesn’t want to punish the whole family.

Hearing the human right activist just bluntly arguing about the whole issue I remembered a dialogue from the movie “ A Few Good Men” where Jack Nicholson says “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.” That line suited this situation pretty well. It has become a joke for the human right activists to make an issue about everything. Just the other day they were sympathizing with the Dhananjay, the child rapist. It has become a fashion these days just to make an issue about anything that gets publicity. Though personally I am against capital punishment, the crime which he committed was far beyond any kind of forgiveness.

Look at the situation in which the army personnel work in places like Manipur, Nagaland and Kashmir. Its like having a land mine under one leg and a gun to your head but still displaying hospitality to all the terrorists. Maybe these human right activists will be happy when the army invites all the terrorists to a tea party and provides them with all the weapons and ask them to kill the whole army without a fight. Well under such circumstances there are bound to be a few slips. Though I am not supporting this, I would be not right on our part to just blame the army. Its not even that the people who must these crimes are let loose. They are punished alright. And when we compare our army to USA we forget to realize that US has an army which is more than a century old. Our army is also evolving. It takes time to anything to be built. And if anything like the Iraq war was taken up by the Indian Government then I am sure that these human right activists would be sympathizing with the militants and their families rather than the army men. What a shame.

In spite of what anybody says and whether anybody agrees or not, Army is one institution which can always be trusted and I salute the Army officers who have been sacrificing their lives for my country.

God

2005-01-13T16:54:00.000+05:30

Three simple letters and yet it has such a profound effect on person who says this word when he is in a need for a shoulder to cry on. I am not a firm believer in religion. I don’t believe that religion is something you should adhere to by laying down your life for it nor do I believe that religion was something manufactured by a man so he have control over his fellow beings. Religion according to me was something the early man created to bring discipline into his life. It’s a different issue that men have used it for purposes that it was never intended for. I am not an atheist either. I do believe that God does exist. Whether it be Jesus, Allah or Lord Krishna, whatever name you call him by but there exists a supreme force not necessarily controlling your fate or counting your sins to decide which way u go – heaven or hell.

I believe in the scientists theories about the creation of earth and evolution of man. Now this is in total contradiction to what our holy books say. Pick any of these books and it says without contradiction that it was God who created the earth. But does that mean what our holy books say is wrong? Not necessarily. Our holy books (most of them) have been written in a language which is difficult to understand. Spell it in one way and it gives one meaning and spell it a little differently it gives a totally different meaning all together. So it just might be that all our holy books have all along been saying what the scientists are trying to prove today. Till the 14th century (forgive me if I get the century wrong) it was believed that the earth was flat and sun and all the other planets circled around the earth. Everyone believed that because the church said so. But someone came along and proved this theory wrong. That didn’t mean that church was wrong nor did the whole religion fall apart. It was just a misinterpretation.

You must be thinking I must be a rebel. No not at all. If a person just questions a few beliefs without just following them doesn’t mean he is a rebel. I have so many questions and I would be lucky if am able to find an answer to even 1/10th of these questions in my lifetime. There are methods and practices which we do follow blindly without even thinking for a minute why we are doing it. We do it because our fathers and our fore-fathers have been doing it. It is we who say that the difference between a man and an animal is his ability to think (though I doubt this too), how are we different from an animal if we just follow a belief without even thinking. There are a few practices which have been embedded in our religions though it would be foolish to think that a religion could preach such a thing. Just think and you will find a lot of instances like this. Maybe these practices were necessary in the cultures which propagated that religion. It just might have been a common practice at that time and it just might have moved with them. But people even today follow such practices without even thinking.

Coming to the issue of atheists, religions have always said that people who don’t believe in god will go to hell and crap like that. But according me atheist are actually the people who really believe in God. I will tell you why. God made this world and left the human beings on this world to live here. Now human beings have to use all the resources available to him to live to continue his struggle to stay alive. He doest want people to run back to him for help. Nor does he want people to sing carols or bhajans in praise of him. I have heard people say that God is angry with us so we have a famine or drought in the village. God is neither a bully nor an egoistic king who wants people to pray to him so he can grant them their wishes.

So according to me religion is something which should bring in discipline, peace and harmony in our lives, not create riots or kill people.

And God for me is like a psychiatrist who I talk to when I have nobody to talk to and comfort me.

Sounds preposterous but hey that’s what God and religion is to me.

I am goooooood

2005-01-10T22:48:00.000+05:30

I never knew I could write and even if I ever could there was no chance that somebody would actually say something nice about it. At least that was what I thought. But then miracles happen and I did notice a comment on my blog,that too a nice one.I thought I was dreaming but then I realised that I might actually be good. Ok I am getting a bit too excited about it but you can’t blame me for it. So thanks to Megha here’s my next Blog. Actually I have never written so much since those good old school days where we had to take down all those notes. God those were days.

Anyways thought would write a few lines about the book I like. Well in my case you can actually say three books. Harry Potter, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountain Head. Ok I know what you may be thinking. What’s Harry Potter doing alongside two most thought provoking (they did at least to me) books of all time. Well let me explain. Let’s talk about each of these books.

I have read loads of books of authors like Eric Segal (I couldn’t make head or tail of The Love Story though), Dan Brown(I love The Da Vinci Code but it didn’t make the list), Jeffrey Archer, Frederick Forsyth, Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Mario Puzo and many others. I had even read books of authors whom I had never even heard of. I had read classics, Sci-fi fiction, mystery and even romance (well there were no other books available). But no other book has captured my imagination as Harry Potter has. Now people may say that this book is childish, written for children. I don’t agree with them. Come on see the creativity that has been put into the book. J.K. Rowling has created a new world. You might say this fairy land full of wizards and witches did already exist. But she added so many new things. Take for instance Quidditch, the game that she has invented. And it takes more than just luck to hold the attention of your readers for five books at a stretch. This is the book I can read any number of times, but when I read it again I still fell that rush and excitement that I felt when I read it for the first time. So anybody agree with me or not Harry Potter is one of the best books of all times.

Atlas Shrugged. This I think is the most apt title that a book could deserve. I was just in awe when I read this book. I always thought how people could worship an author. I mean all he/she does is write a book for you to think and ponder about. But this book changed it all. I mean the way she explained even the minutest detail in such detail, the way in which she told the story it was as if it was happening in front of my eyes. And the title it perfectly goes with the book. I mean what would happen if the intellectuals just stopped working. Well I agree with what Ayn Rand says why should a steel producer be told how much he can produce or why a farmer should sell his crop for a loss because the government decided so. Well the argument can go on for ever and it does when ever I discuss this book with any friend of mine. But what ever it is one thing that is true is that it is difficult ….no impossible for any author to impress readers for 2-3 decades and Ayn Rand has done it for more than half a century now.

Now for the best of the pack “The Fountain Head”. Well I had started reading this book once when I was in college. I had read the first 20 pages of the book and thought that the author was mindlessly explaining something which had nothing to do with the theme or the book whatsoever and I had tossed the book aside. But after reading Atlas Shrugged I just had this curiosity (and it was helped a great deal by a few friends of mine who kept telling me how great the book was) about what this book was about. I have completed the book just a few days earlier and I should tell you if I had adored Ayn Rand earlier I have started worshipping her. I mean a author can write one exceptional book in his/her lifetime but this is simply superb. Novels today are written like magazines, written read and forgotten rapidly. But then there are some books which have…..what should I say……… “A Soul” which lives on. Fountain Head is one such book. When you read the book you find two people whose character you never doubt one Howard Roark, the hero and Gail Wynand, The millionaire who marries the hero’s sweetheart. I am not going to discuss the story of this book but this book shows the struggle of a single person who takes on the whole world because of what he believes in. I mean how many of us can stand up to the world and say I wouldn’t do a certain task because I don’t this is the way I want to do it. How many of us are being true to one’s own self? We do it because the world wants to do it that way. Many of us say we live in a society and we have to adhere to the rules of the society. What are societies for? What are rules of these societies for? The society doest make what we are but we make what the society is.

Well this is what happens when you give me a space to write and then give good comments about it. Anyways I will stop now enough of this philosophical (ya I am not in a habit of thinking too much you have to conserve some of those brain fluids to last your lifetime ;-)).

Good Old Days

2005-01-09T22:03:00.000+05:30

Well the monster(that is me writing) has been unleashed all thanks to a friend of mine, don’t blame me for reading all this nonsense( I wanted to use the word crap but then I was talking about myself so thought would spare myself this one time). And then I thought (I have been thinking a lot these days) why not begin with a blog about the first day on the college campus, the best place I have been to (till now). Also I was inspired a bit reading the novel “Five point someone".
So let be begin from the beginning. I still remember the day I along with my parents got down in Pilani after a hell ride from Ajmer. My parents had this thing that I had to go to Ajmer before I even set foot in Pilani. It was not like I was setting on a mission to conquer the world but at that time I seemed almost (note the word almost) like that. One thing I realized after that bus ride was that it doesn’t depend on the bus or the road how your ride on the roads of Rajasthan will be, but it solely depends on the shoulders of a single man, the one they call the driver. Man that was a ride. Well lets leave the story of the bus ride for an another blog. So we got down in Pilani and saw the rickshaw’s (Now when I saw them I didn’t realize that i would be seeing them a lot nor did I imagine that I would be trying to wheel one of them in the near future). So I innocently asked him if he could take us to Shankar Bhavan well that was where we were supposed to report to and as we got into the rickshaw and started moving towards the final destination of my initial journey I started seeing buildings which at that point of time never seemed like a place to live. I even saw the green lush football field(though I realised later that it was green and lush because the guy who was responsible for cutting the grass on the field had forgotten about it) which then was the first best sight I saw in the campus. Seeing that I started dreaming about all the beautiful things that I would see on campus (well that’s what I had been thinking after seeing the College bulletin) forgetting for a moment the dreadful buildings I had just seen. But this was brought to an abrupt end as the rickshaw guy brought the vehicle (well it is a kind of vehicle) to stop. I got down and saw before me a building which should have been on the list of the Archeological survey of India for protected buildings. Well since we were early (we had arrived at 6 am) we were asked to wait till my counselor arrived (the person I would know very very well but not in a….ahmmm…. good way). He arrived at around 7:30 by that time I had seen the whole of the bhavan and was now sure that this would be the type of building I would be housed in.

So this counselor of mine told me that I would be staying for the next one year in 141, Ram Bhavan. So I went out to find where this bhavan of mine is. It had actually rained in Pilani that day. You have to understand when anybody says that they are living in Rajasthan you would expect no rains, long stretches of land but to my delight (or was it horror) this place was full of trees and peacocks(yes are actually like stray dogs…..humm stray peacocks) and to top it all it was raining. Anyways withstanding all these I finally managed to find this bhavan and my room 141. Now for the best part of the whole day as the door to my room was opened, I was bewildered, I mean the room had ended before it started (Sorry I took this line from a movie but this suited this situation perfectly). I mean I didn’t know whether I was amused, surprised or shocked. My cousin had told me to expect such a thing but this was far beyond any kind of expectations. But then I thought of the people who were put up in a double room (trust me there was nothing double about it) and felt happy that I at least got a single room.

Next thing that hit me was the splendid lunch we had. You have to know something about me. I am allergic to anything which sounds like vegetables or looks distinctly like one. And the lunch we had made me think about this allergy of mine. I mean vegetables are not that bad compared to what was served for lunch (It is an another thing that I realized later that allergy of mine was actually a good thing). With all such good experiences behind me I felt I could take anything. Well atleast that was what I thought on the first day.

The only bright spot of the day was that a good friend of mine was also put up in the same building. Oh and I forgot to tell you the worst thing about this bhavan was that it was the cloooooooosest to the Institute building.

Well with the day coming to an end we thought we would have something better to eat. That was when I discovered Connought (Though the name resembles the name of a major shopping area in Delhi I isn’t anywhere close to it) which then was the best place in the world but would turn out to be the major rip-offs.

So with so many lessons (yes lessons) on the first day I thought I would call it a day and leave something for the next four years to come.

Hyderabad - The best city in the world

2005-01-08T23:17:00.000+05:30

Now please start arguing that there are cities in the world that are better than Hyderabad. Might be but I havent seen one of them and the more people talk about such cities and I visit them and find them...... well should I say far far away from my expectations the more I come to believe that Hyderabad is indeed the most beautiful city and by far the best city in the world. Agreed that there are not many pubs, which according to me is a major negetive( even the ones which are there are ok) and the people here are still a bit conservative but still it is a great city. Now I wont boast about the great culture and heritage this city has(though I should tell you that Hyderabad is 400 years old and has enough culture and heritage to equal if not put any other city to shame), but compared to other Indian or foreign cities and believe me I have seen enough number of them(well if 10+ indan and 3 foreign cities can be called enough) Hyderabad is much cleaner and by far a much cleaner city.

Now why did I get this crazy idea of writing about Hyderabad. Well a few of my friends used to tell me what a great city bangalore is or pune is. No offence meant to all banglorians but the city sucks. I always thought Hyderabad had the worst roads and it had the maximum number of gullies(small lanes) but Banglore is worst. Except for that 3 Kms stretch of road which I think happens to pass through a forest connecting the two parts of the city, all the other roads are aweful. And the traffic policemen dont even let me start about that. I was struck in the traffic and almost moved some 1km(my friend said I ws lucky to even move that far) somewhere around the visinity of Forum. Now i dont say Hyderabad is a better city but compared to bangalore, Hyderabad had atleast bigger(i dont say better) roads.

I can go on and on about other cities. But lets not make enemies already. Hyderabd is a great city and as the saying goes(I dont know who said it but its true) "Once a Hyderabadi always a Hyderabadi".

Islamic Terrorism - Does such a thing exist

2005-01-08T22:38:00.000+05:30

My first thought when I heard this word was that it was preposterous. How could any thing linked with terror or war be linked to Islam or as a matter of fact with any religion. I have been thinking and trying to write this for sometime now but never thought my voice or my opinion would ever be heard or count. And maybe this is how a lot of people like me would feel. So I thought I should try put across the feelings of an innocent person stuck in the war between a lunatic (yes a single lunatic who started it all) and the whole world.

Well lets start with the word Islamic terrorism. How can terror or destruction of any kind be linked with any religion. No religion says go kill your neighbour because he did something to you. Bible says “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. So how can any religion preach terror? What would you say if a bunch of people blow up a building in a Muslim country and said that they did it in the name of Bible or Geeta would you call it Christian Terrorism or Hindu Terrorism. I guess not. Then why do you call the work instigated by a lunatic called Osama Bin Laden as Islamic Terrorism. You cannot call the fighting going on in Palestine as Islamic Jihad because it’s a fight for the control of a land. What if the people fighting it say it’s a Jihad. I think we people have enough intelligence to distinguish between what’s right and what’s wrong. How can the fight for a piece of land be a religious fight? Same goes for any other so called Jihads which have been happening around us today. Why would you name a personal vendetta (Yes I call it personal vendetta because before Osama Bin Laden even though there were some incidents of violence it was never termed as Islamic Terrorism) as Jihad, the holy war in Islam. Because nobody would support a gruesome act of crime like flying a plane full of innocent people into a building unless you give them a satisfying explanation. And that’s what he, Osama gave them, a perfect explanation for any act of crime.

Now before I go on any further about all this let me give you what exactly Jihad means. Not that I want to bore you all with details about Islam, trust me I am not writing this to tell you that Islam is the best religion in the world. I don’t care if it’s the best or the worst and I don’t care what anybody thinks about it, I believe what I believe and I am not here to thrust my thoughts on you. So let me tell you what I have found out what Jihad is and trust me it was a very difficult job. You would be surprised what I found on the net. There is loads of information on the internet which is appalling to say the least. One author who has more than one book to his credit has published a book “Prophet of Doom”. Its true that everybody has the freedom of speech but this is sick. Taking a few lines from a book and quoting them out of context to make it look like barbaric statements, what do you call that? I say this too is one form of terrorism. And one other author who writes for a famous newspaper on the issue of Abu Gharib said that the Arab world was shocked to see the pictures of those naked tortured prisoners because sex education is not predominant in the Arab world. I just might have misinterpreted what the author was trying to say so heres what he saidin his article:

“The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq touched such a nerve in the Muslim world that one analyst said that the rape pictures "would equal a nuclear explosion" if seen in Muslim countries. Such extreme reactions raise the delicate topic of sex in Muslim-Western relations.”

The whole issue of the torture of those prisoners was not exactly an issue I guess. What people like these don’t understand is that they are acting as recruiting officers for Osama Bin Laden and his kind. Let a confused muslim youth read this and you would have totally convinced him that Jihad by all means is Holy war and that he should lay down his life in Gods way by killing people, innocent if they are. And if a non-muslim reads this he will be convinced that Islam for sure teaches violence as 8 out of very 10 articles says that it does.

Well so here’s what I found Jihad means a struggle, striving of spiritual good. Examples of this Jihad would be to exceed in the sincere act of good deeds (to frequent the mosques that worship God alone more often; to study the scripture in detail, to help the poor and the orphans, to stand for people's right for freedom, be equitable, never bear witness false testimony, frequent and stay in good terms with friends and neighbors, etc.) and the restraining of the doing of sins (to commit adultery, to steel, to lie, to cheat, to insult people, to gossip, etc.). I could go on and quote lines from the Quran. But as I Told you I am not trying to preach nor am I trying to tell you that what I am saying is the truth. What I am asking you to do is to think, use your own intelligence.

What makes you think that barbaric acts like the World trade centre blow up can be advocated in any religion? So please think before you make up your mind. Without thinking and just accepting what anybody is telling you, you are supporting these terrorists.