26/11 – A recollection

Last year this time all of us were glued to the TV sets and were following how terror unfolded in Mumbai. We cried, we complained, we fought back and here we are after a year. The anger in us has subsided but the pain and the fear still lingers deep down in our hearts.  Looking back I am not sure if anything has changed. Yes, there haven’t been any attacks since then but does that mean we are safe and secure and have learnt from our lessons? I am afraid not.

Right after the attacks the whole nation was on a vigil. Everyone was alert and wanted to stop violence at every level. There were metal detectors at every public place, the security increased, the checks were made mandatory. Now, just a year later, the metal detectors remain as they are some switched off, some under repair and of the very few that are working no one bothers to check even if it beeped if we are passing through it. Half the security is still doing its duty but not how truthfully they did about a year ago. It has become a routine for them and yes for us too. By and large, we still live the same way.

I write this post not for anyone except for me in the hope that 10 or 20 years down the memory lane when I read this incident would just be a distant memory and the ‘system’ has changed for the better by then.

The political tamasha that I wrote about last year still remains the same. Though a year passed by, the attitude of our politicians did not change. They are sitting in the parliament and still playing the blame game. 26/11 didn’t happen because of the failure of a single person/single party. It happened because a number of people who were supposed to do their duty did not do their jobs properly.

I have read that the narrow minded idiots who think people of one state should stay in their state only and the rest should be thrown out, the same people who were sitting comfortably in their homes when their own city was subject to so much torture have put up banners having the photos of the heroes who shed their lives saving their fellow citizens and that these banners dint have neither the names nor the pictures of the officers from other state who sacrificed their life for the same cause. Didn’t the common sense that had the same heroes thought like these idiots there would have been more bloodshed and more lives lost occur to them? I fail to understand how anyone can vote for such people who wish to break the country for their own selfish motives.

At this point of time, I am not sure if I hate Kasab or not. Yes, I have loathed these 10 people for what they did and wanted the lone survivor to be hanged to death as soon as possible but then it’s not he who is the real culprit; It was someone else who is still sitting comfortably in some part of the world and planning for some other attack in some other place. Kasab and the rest were just following the instructions they were given. The real justice can only be done when the master-minds of such attacks are also punished along with those who implemented the attacks.  And I sincerely hope against hope that this will be done sooner.

Co-incidentally, the 1^st anniversary of the Mumbai attack is also the anniversary of the constitution being adopted. Hope the laws and procedures written in that book are implemented strictly and the guilty are punished soon.

Tastes which are different

I call myself a foodie, but then i am very choosy about what i eat. The food i eat must first look good and it is only then that i at least keep it in my mouth for tasting it. My mom still has a tough time with my picky choices :|Many have called my food habits weird but i find it completely normal and listed below are few such tastes of mine.

Chocolates — A complete No No

I know this sounds weird but I am the one rare species which doesn’t like chocolates. I dislike most of the varieties of chocolates and same is the case with chocolate drinks. The only ones i eat are 5star, Milky Bar and Bar-One at times( i might be sounding like a school kid listing the chocolate names but these are these 3 are the only ones i eat , i am bound to remember them) . So all the time people give away chocolates for birthdays, parties or any other reason,i simply take them to avoid questions as to why i don’t like those chocolates and to further avoid a loong discussion on how people cannot like chocolates, and give those chocolates to someone later. My Friends in College and My brother at my home were benefited a lot by this taste of mine as they got to eat all the chocolates on my name.

Ice- Cream — Only Vanilla

Ya ya i can guess the expression on your face. I like ice cream and would love eat loads and loads of it but it has to be Vanilla 🙂 Strawberry or mint would also do but Vanilla would always be the primary choice 🙂

Once when few of my cousins were gathered together for lunch, one of my aunts gave me butterscotch ice cream and i said i don’t want to eat it. She was thinking i was feeling shy and she was asking me to eat it again and again. It was only when i said that i only eat Vanilla, she stopped asking me and everyone around shared a hearty laugh at my expense 😐

Milk  — With only Sugar

The one and only healthy thing i do everyday is have a glass of milk and i would like my Milk to be plain i.e only a spoon of sugar and nothing and i mean nothing with it. The milk should be warm not hot and it should not have the cream which develops over it. I would filter the milk if i see a slight trace of cream over it 🙂 I have tried and tasted few of the health drinks but none of it tastes better than plain milk and hence i stick to Plain milk. Again many have been surprised by this taste of mine.

Curd Rice with Chicken Curry

Many have told me that it is a unhealthy combination but i simply  love it. We have this habit of eating curd rice at the end of lunch/dinner and i am no fan of it and try to avoid eating it whenever possible. But if it is served with chicken curry then i would like to eat it as the main dish itself 🙂 The cold curd rice mixed with hot chicken curry, i feel it is a wonderful combination and it tastes absolutely yummy.

Now tell me how many of you have such weird tastes? Anyone loves the above mentioned food combination or dislikes chocolates like me?

You might also like to read Food i love to eat

The Tale of Two books and a Ramble

I have completed reading the ‘2 states’ by Chethan Bhagat. This is the first time that I bought a book within a month of its release and even completed reading it. Going by the history of my book reading it is no less than an achievement. Coming back to the book, it was a nice read. I am sure everyone Who reads the cover page of the book would be tempted to give it a read. Also, the price (Rs. 95/-) is low.

Cover Page:

Love marriages around the world are simple:Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married.

In India, there are a few more steps:

Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s Family has to love Boy’s Family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.”

Speaking of books, the other book which I read in the recent times is the Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer. It was a nice read. It was about a person whose aim was to conquer the Everest and his journey to achieve that goal. Though the ending was quite obvious from the cover page of the book, I felt bad after reading the book. All your life you struggle for something, even achieve it and the world will not even know about it! The whole struggle seems to be meaningless.

After reading every book, I am always marveled at the way people write books or for that matter a blog post. Writing is not an easy job. To write about happenings around a person is one thing but to put all the things into one form and arrange them in an order which keeps the reader interested is no mean task. Fiction is all together a different world. To imagine things and weave them into a nice story without elaborating too much needs a huge effort and definitely needs brains 🙂 Cheers to all the writers in the world!

50 Years of Doordarshan

On September 15th 2009, Doordarshan has completed 50 years.

50 years! Very long time. Isn’t it? Today, with over a 100+ channels, most of them 24X7, I am not sure how many of them will be remembered after 10 years. But I am sure DD still lingers in the memories of many. For me Doordarshan has been a part and parcel of my Childhood. We dint have a cable connection until probably I was in my 7^th or 8^th standard and until then the only source of information-cum-entertainment was that black and white TV set with DD being aired.

Unlike 99%of the channels these days, most of the shows aired on DD were both informative and entertaining. I loved almost all the programs aired. Be it shows like Ramayana/Mahabharath or Surbhi. The little of history I know, I owe it to these shows. I remember having waiting for the Sundays to watch the special shows aired by DD. As far as I remember, Kroor singh of Chandrakanta was the first villain character I came across in TV.

I have no clue how it went on in other states but in AP, the single channel on TV would be shared between DD1 (the national channel) and DD8 (the Telugu channel). They use to change the frequency from dd1 to dd8 from 4pm to 9pm. Sunday 4pm feature film has been an integral part of my school days. We used to sit glued to television and munch whatever mom used to give us. My parents never missed the 7 pm news. Which were followed by Urdu news at 7:15. It used to sound Greek and Latin to us at that age but we used sit through all of it and try understanding it by relating it to the Telugu news we heard 15 minutes back.

The ads have also been memorable back then. The ‘Hamara Bajaj’ Ad, the songs relating to the diversity of our country like the Mile sur mera tumhara.., vandemataram all of them were so wonderfully made. Though I like few ads being aired now, I feel that these days there are no ads which can match their counterparts being aired on DD back then.

As time passed by and the channels increased, I have gradually stopped watching DD and now, I rarely tune into the channel except for the Indian cricket matches shown, which will be aired when the other channels don’t. Though DD is nowhere in the race for the TRP’s, I guess it will be one channel remembered by many for a really long time.

Survival is always good?

Well.. I am feeling otherwise.

Until a couple of days I was of the opinion that, come what may the good thing to happen in any accident or disaster is Survival. In some cases it may lead to impairment/disability but I felt the person would be happy to survive through that incident and able to enjoy the rest of his life with his dear ones. But today, when I look at the visuals from flood affected places in AP/Karnataka, I am forced to think otherwise.

One day you are leading your life normally and the very next day water rushes into your homes, disrupts your life and the next day, you are left with nothing at all. All through the last week, I was happy that not many have lost their lives due to floods and they have managed to survive, but now I am not sure whether I should be happy or sad for the plight of those who survived.

Day before yesterday, 600 people were hospitalized due to food poisoning at a flood relief camp. I have seen visuals of people complaining that they have been in the camp from 2-3 days and had nothing to eat. People complaining that their kids were starving and they dint even have milk to feed them. With temperatures low, they dint even have a blanket to protect themselves. Be it rich or poor, they have lost everything they earned and now many are literally on the streets. Would they be happy that they managed to survive the floods and now they have to wait for someone to provide food and shelter for them? How much would it hurt when they see their rest of the family starving and are struggling to survive?

For once, I don’t want to blame it on government for not providing proper facilities for these people. They dint expect such a large scale destruction and they are trying their level best to save the victims and yet the situation is pathetic. As time passes by, may be these days will remain as nothing more than memories and they all would be living happily-ever-after. But I don’t understand why suffer such a pain? It’s said that to know the essence of what we have we have to go through tough situations but does that help?

Just for Laughs

Posting some funny things I got as forwards so that all the readers can share a few laughs.

Software Engineers:

There was a good old barber in a particular city. One day a florist goes to him for a haircut. After the cut, he goes to pay the barber and the barber replies:”I am sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I am doing a Community Service”. Florist is happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the Barber goes to open his shop, there is a “Thank You” Card and a dozen roses waiting at his door.

The next day, a Confectioner goes for a haircut and he also goes to pay the barber he again refuses to take the money. The Confectioner is happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the Barber goes to open his shop, there is another “Thank you” Card and a dozen Cakes waiting at his door.

A Software Engineer goes for a haircut and he also goes to pay, the barber again refuses the money saying that it was a community service. The next morning when the Barber goes to open his shop, guess what he finds there?

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A Dozen Software engineers waiting for a free haircut… with Printouts of forwarded mail mentioning about the free haircut!

Leave Applications

– An employee applied for leave as follows: “Since I have to go to my village to sell my land along with my wife, please sanction me one-week leave.”

– This is From an employee who was performing the “mundan” ceremony of his 10 year old son: “as I want to shave my son’s head, please leave me for two days..”

– Leave-letter from an employee who was performing his daughter’s wedding: “as I am marrying my daughter, please grant a week’s leave.”

– “As my mother-in-law has expired and I am only one responsible for it , please grant me 10 days leave.”

– Another employee applied for half day leave as follows: “Since I’ve to go to the cremation ground at 10 o-clock and I may not return, please grant me half day casual leave”

– An incident of a leave letter: “I am suffering from fever, please declare one-day holiday.”

– A leave letter to the headmaster:”As I am studying in this school I am suffering from headache. I request you to leave me today”

– Another leave letter written to the headmaster: “As my headache is paining, please grant me leave for the day.”

– Covering note:”I am enclosed herewith…”

– Actual letter written for application of leave: “My wife is suffering from sickness and as I am her only husband at home I may be granted leave”.

– Letter writing “I am well here and hope you are also in the same well.”

– The Most Hilarious one: A candidate’s job application:

“This has reference to your advertisement calling for a ‘ Typist and an Accountant – Male or Female’… As I am both(!! )for the past several years and I can handle both with good experience, I am applying for the post.”

3 Stages in Life:

Teen Age:

Have Time + Energy..but No Money

Working Age:

Have money +Energy..but No Time

Old Age:

Have Money and Time..but No Energy

P.S:  As shown in the last but one picture, have been drowned in work for the past couple of weeks; which has kind-of reduced now and i am back-to-normal now.

Title Tales

Did you understand anything by the title of the post? Anything at all?

The whole point of writing this post is to know how people decide on a title for a post or for that matter for any movie/a play/a Serial. I am neither a writer nor a journalist to write beautifully or in an organized manner. More often than not, I write only about the things happenings around me by which I am affected or concerned or else it would be my ramble on some random things; but never did I feel that this write-up should have a particular title which will describe what I wrote in a single line.

I don’t want my titles to be a question neither do I want them to be a statement. I feel, I will have to keep a title which is apt to the post; but somehow I can’t figure out ‘the apt’ title and end up putting something which comes to my mind. If you are a regular reader of mine, you would have figured out by now that most of the posts I have written are named as generically as this and that and also tagged under rambles/random rambling.

With the fear of not sounding like the guy in the Asian Paints ad who asks ‘Aap rang kaise soch the hain?’ I would like to ask my readers, Aap title kaise sochte hain??

P.S:  Posting something in order to let people know that I am still reading blogs and writing(?) at mine.

This and That

• I heard in news recently that Salman khan was planning to buy one franchise in IPL 2011 and all the news channels have started their analysis of how this decision would impact the already existing feud between the two Khans and how fans will react to this decision.I guess 99% of the audience wouldn’t mind who owned which team.  Movies and cricket are two completely different things and I don’t know why people want to mix both and start a fight. I might like Preity as an actor but it’s not necessary hat I would have to support her IPL team(though the fact is that I do like the Punjab team 🙂 but not just because of Preity) At the end of the day people will support a team which is of their region or else the team which will have their favorite players and not because his/her favorite star is owning it.

• It’s raining cats and dogs here in Hyderabad and I am loving it. I am happy on one side that the drought like situation will improve but on the other hand I am sad that I have to sit in the office and work all day when it’s a pleasant atmosphere outside. The other complaint is why does it has to rain in the early part of the night which will create a traffic jams all over!

• Ever since the BJP expelled Jaswanth Singh, the party has been in news almost every day with some or the other news. Though I have no particular feelings/likings for the party as such except for the fact that I hate the party bringing up the ‘Hindutva’ issue every time before the elections, I am not happy with the recent happenings. I personally think so much of unrest and unpredictability in the main opposition party is not good for us. Be it good/bad any country should have a strong opposition to question the government. But one point I don’t understand is why there is such a vacuum for the top leadership all of a sudden. Did they expect that few people who are 70+ or 80+ would be enough to lead such a big party. Hope all this gets resolved soon and for a change they have a string and young leadership who concentrate on bigger things the country has to deal with rather than just concentrating on religion/culture of Indians.

• Did you observe the new header? Did you like it? All credits to Smitha. She has developed this wonderful header for me. Though, I have not given her any information on what I want or what I would want to see, she has come up with this new header. Thanks a lot Smitha 🙂

It Happens only in India!

“On August 15^th, 1947, India became free. Free to celebrate its diversity and differences, its many languages, faiths and cultures. Free to be different and respected for it. Sixty-two years later, we need to preserve and protect this grand heritage from being torn apart.’ — 11^th August, Young world, The Hindu.

That day when I read these two lines, I was stuck there and read it again and again. These two or three lines could wonderfully articulate the feelings of majority of Indians. I guess it’s time we stop resting on the laurels of our freedom struggle and act upon a number of issues which are threatening to break up our diversity or culture or rather the ‘Indian’ness in us.

For me India is a place where we find different kinds of people, all are different form one another in terms of language, religion, region and many more factors. The only thing and the most important thing that connects all of us is the fact that we are INDIANS.

For those of you who are new to the country, my friend, this is India for you:

We are secular and yet we ask people to write down their religion in every single form they have to fill.

We are tolerant and yet we fight over petty issues.

We respect women and worship them, and the same we at times, attack women.

We hate hypocrites and yet we ourselves are hypocrites at times.

Even though we have eye witnesses to a crime, we give a chance of fair trial to the guilty.

We crib and complain about the government and the same we stand up and speak up for the country when needed.

We sometimes forget our real-life heroes and at other times we worship them like gods.

We have the ability to laugh at ourselves, and also complain again the wrong things happening here.

We are not this and that we have a part of everything and that’s the reason we all live happily together.

We have innumerable traditions and religions to follow that we start fighting over which one is the best among them.

We are not this or that we are a bit of everything and we love to be like that. We love ourselves, we hate ourselves, we help ourselves, we fight among ourselves, and yet we are Indian. And we are surely proud of ourselves.  Yes, we are proud of it. And why shouldn’t we be? When there are differences between 3 or 4 people of a family, how can we expect 1billion of us to be the same? When nothing is perfect, how can a country with such a huge population be perfect?

There are all type of people here. Some narrow-minded, some broad minded. Some sane, some insane. Some stupid, some clever and yes some of them are normal also :). If there are devils outs there so are gods and I bet the gods are more in number.

Happy Independence Day to all of you reading this!

P.S:  Swaram’s post will show you a glimpse of India in pictures 🙂

P.P.S: This post has paragraphs that are illogically structured, but then this is also part of my Indianness 🙂

Err.. Excuse me what’s your name?

I have a very good memory and when it comes to names I am even better. For those who haven’t noted the tone of sarcasm in the above statement, here I confess: I am very bad at remembering names.

I see a person talk to him/her for a while and move on. But if the same person comes before me the next day, I remember talking to that person, I recognize the face, the discussion we had the previous day, but when it comes to the person’s name I somehow cannot recollect it 😐 And for obvious reason of sounding rude, I do not/cannot directly ask the person his/her name and hence I am left with no other option but to start the iska-naam-kya-tha contest, wherein I will try and devise plans to find out the name of the other person.

In most cases, I would continue talking to the person (whose name I have to recollect) and listen attentively to all the words he/she speaks. If it’s a friend’s friend or someone similar, by listening to their words we can deduce their nicknames/short names and thereby my clever brain would recollect the name based on that little hint. If this doesn’t work out then I would have to follow any other similar tactics and thereby deduce the name of the person without they realizing that I forgot their name.

Here are two such incidents which I can remember as of now where in I forgot the name of the person and how I found out their names later on.

I was sitting in my cab (a mini bus) on the way to office.  I was sitting beside a girl whom I have known for a while. Those of us who come by the office transport have to sign some attendance-like sheet. As it’s a boring thing to do, generally the person sitting in the first row writes all the names. She and I were sitting in the first row that day. I wrote my name and then was about to write her details but I couldn’t recollect her name. I knew her from a while but somehow her name slipped out of my memory. I tried hard to remember but no luck. After knowing her for that long I couldn’t ask her name. So I asked her if she would write the names of everyone in the list and she readily agreed. While she was entering the sheet, I sneaked a look into the sheet and saw her name. I still don’t know how the named slipped from my mind.

Another such incident occurred when I was new in my job. Our team was a small one and didn’t have a manager until then. We would directly report to the department head. One day, he called me into his office and introduced one person to me and said that he’s a new joinee (a manager) and would be helping me do my work in the coming days and I should report to him from then. I thought that after my new manger comes out of this cabin, I would go and introduce myself properly and brief him on what I was doing. After that I came back to my cubicle and resumed my work. When I was going to this new manager’s seat, I realized I forgot his name. I talked to him and discussed everything but I couldn’t still recollect his name. With no other option left, I apologized for not remembering his name and asked for his name. Luckily, he dint get offended and told his name.

One thing that puzzles me is to why people get offended if anyone forgets their name. Name is something which is related to our identity but then expecting others to remember your name in the first or second meeting itself. Isn’t it a little too much? And more so is it practical to remember every name you hear on the 1^st instance itself? For me, it’s not. Also, I don’t mess up their name or say that aren’t you X or Y or whatever name that comes to mind and give a stupid excuse why I thought it was their name. I try to remember the name or else ultimately ask the name rather than cooking up some stories.

The silver lining here is, Even though I am hopeless in remembering the names of people, I have a very good record to spell out people’s names correctly: Be it names like Saravanan, Swaminathan..Etc. (trust me I have seen people murdering such names in front of the person. For example there’s a person in office by the name Saravanan. He is called as sharavanan, shravan, sarva, sravan, sarvan, and the like. We also heard about how Smitha suffered from name mutilation) I always spell them correctly. I not only spell it correctly but also write down the spelling correctly 🙂

Dint anyone face situations where in you forget the names of the person you are talking to? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments section.