Monday, March 26, 2007

Is money behind indian team's failure?

Everybody including me seems to be talking about money being the major factor behind Indian cricket team’s failure. Cricketers are not only playing cricket for their love of cricket they also earn their bread and butter through cricket. So if u get more money, will you not try and play better to earn more. Any businessman would do that. Right!!

Ok come on to the other side of it. Assume that money is the cause of all these evil happenings. We will go through the cause and effect relation of this whole thing. Cricketers don’t get money simply by playing cricket. So where does cricketer get a lot of money from, it is from these advertisers who sponsor the Indian team, hoping that their product will reach millions of people through these cricketers. How come the sponsors are so sure that they will get return on investment? It’s simple, we fools keep watching match after match even if India lose in the most disheartening way. So the whole thing ends up in people watching the match for the whole day. Srilanka boosted Indian economy by thrashing us out of world cup says a economic times article. It goes on to say how much the productivity will rise due to India’s loss. Some light hearted people get heart attack and even some commit suicide watching these matches, how foolish of them its after all a game. Better stop watching cricket and in a few years the cricket mania will come to an end. It’s not money that is the root cause but we people who should stop watching cricket (at least Indian cricket). Money is just an intermediate form to estimate the real value of invaluable things like human labor, it’s not worth watching Indian cricket. To sum it up all, you know what, world cup 2011 is being hosted by INDIA.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

chat with LK - 2

Lk: y did India come out of world cup so early?

Me: to start preparing early for the next world cup

Lk: which one is better politics or cricket?

Me: we hope against hope that both of them would do some good but both of them fail…cricketers fail every 4 years but politicians fail every 5 years, at least on papers, so politicians are better.

Lk: what would lalu say abt shakira stage show?

Me: if she had been in an Indian train she would have shaken hers hips more and they will never lie …

Thursday, March 22, 2007

chatting with LK

I logged into yahoo chat as usual in the morning and there was a friend request from someone. The name displayed was “lion king” I couldn’t recognize that name or match it with any of my friends nick name but added it. The lion king, forest, India was given in the profile. I was laughing to myself thinking about this, suddenly a message came from none other than the lion king. The conversation went on like this…

Lion king (LK) : who r u?
Me: m, 22, India
Lk: A, forest, India (A for Animal)
Me: enough of kidding c’mon now who r u?
Lk: lion, king of forest, India
Me: wat u want?
Lk: I want to talk with someone regularly and learn how you people go thru life (social, political, etc)
Me: ohhhhhhhhh kewl
Me ttly
Lk: hey.. hey…………….

I am going to chat with the lion king about everything regularly from now on. It would be mostly about things that interest me especially Indian and tamilnadu politics. Keep watching this space for more conversations.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

LIFT .....................

One thing that fascinated me when I was young was the lift. I still remember those five storied textile shops, only place where the elevators were common. We used to visit these shops very rarely, say once or twice in a year. The place will be usually crowded since it would be some festive season and half of Chennai’s population will be in that area frog hopping from shop to shop just to have a look at new designs and to buy nothing. That experience would make a new post by itself, so coming back to topic people would be standing blocking the whole entrance of the lift. No, don’t expect any queues to be formed. It would take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes for the doors of heaven to open. People would be literally banging on the door till then. My parents would like to continue their shopping and will try to persuade me into going up through the stairs but never I would oblige. They will even go to the extreme of offering me a extra shirt rather than waiting there for the lift but never…….. I would go through stairs.
At last the lift would door open and people already inside the lift will not be able to come out as the way is fully blocked outside but after all pulling and pushing, those luck few try to squeeze into the lift and that experience would be totally different. When I was in the lift for the first time it was like a dream come true for me. I had a slight fear and felt a small thingy rolling just above my stomach. But it was ok …….
In the next few seconds, at least I felt so, the lift conductor pushed you out of the lift and that’s the end. The conductor of the lift would not allow small boys alone since he knows that we will be playing by going again and again in the lift. I still remember me going and pulling my parents to come with me in the lift, just for fun, so that the conductor wouldn’t shout at me.
All these happening are still fresh in my mind even when I read about NASA planning a lift for the international space station. Yes you read it right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NASA is planning a lift like structure from earth to the international space station using Nano-carbon tubes. The idea was proposed as early as 2001 and research to make it possible is being carried out vigorously.
How happy/fun/joy/great it would for me to go on a lift outside the earth. May be there would be some cute/nice/little girl like sunitha (but not sunitha), who will be dreaming of special Indian(ohhh!!no!! not Indian) recipes. Keep watching this space I will surely say how earth, India and everything else looked like from space.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

wheels of life


right now i am in fourth stage but the wheels are the only thing thats missing!!!!!!(ha..ha........)

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

short story

Nightingale and red rose

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtml

I read this short story by Oscar wilde recently. I was very much moved by the story and it was very touching.

Hope u like it

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

samjhauta terrorist attack

I was reading a experience written by a previous traveler in the same samjhauta express. He says about how the whole system works, here it goes….

“You just need a valid visa to get a ticket to Pakistan and most of the tickets are booked at the last minute of travel. The train starts at 9 in the evening and goes to attari, the last Indian check post before crossing the border. The passengers are guided through a metal frame for checking which is the only check done by the Indian police or army before boarding the train at the starting station.” The metal frames are now a day’s even used in entrance of malls to check the people, the trivia is the train travels to one our rival countries. I don’t have hatred against Pakistan but think about the problems we have with them, for more than 50 years we both are fighting for Kashmir, 3 wars for that, numerous incidents in which innocent people have been killed. So the train in reality goes to one of our rival countries and not a neighboring country.

I thought why only very few police personnel were allocated to such an important train?? The cause none else then our own politicians. The Delhi police unit has just around 60,000 personnel for catering to a city population in order of millions. In that too most of the police are for VIP’s and VVIP’S, u know what, only one tenth of the police are there for people ( statistics given by media). Can you imagine what meager a number is that for a capital of a country with world’s second largest population. The website of Delhi police quote’s “ with you -for you always” with whom you police are always??? VVVIP’S.

In terms of technology, we are no less than anyone else, around 18 cameras are installed in the railway station for safety purpose. But the lag is in logistics and scheduling of the trains, that particular track from which the train starts doesn’t have a single camera. I felt like LOL but couldn’t after losing 65 invaluable human life, let it be Indians or Pakistanis.

One of the RPF men quoted in a news article that the RPF cannot concentrate on any particular train like spending time for checking all the passengers as the number of personnel’s were way too less than that required to maintain the station.

The bombs used by the so called terrorists are not very complicated, they were simply IEDS it is called roadside bombs by the press. Roadside bombs and inflammable liquids like kerosene. I have read signs in train saying that you shouldn’t carry inflammable materials but never the police or any one for that cause checked in the railway station. It can at least be done randomly done for say 20 passengers in every train a s a first step.

The bombs used were very cheap, so the main cause of the accident is burning of the whole coach. This is not the first time that the whole coach is burning. I think nobody would ever forget the godhra incident. So I just searched whether there is anything called non flammable coaches. Not only there is non-flammable coaches but even India herself made a deal with France for non-flammable coaches in the year 2000. The deal ended after 5 years in 2005 without single coming to India ( I don’t know much details about this, just read it in some news article).

The villagers were the first to come to rescue of the passengers trapped in the burning coaches, people brought water in tractors and tried to extinguish the flame. The police and fire service came a hour later. One of the eye witness recounts the situation, he actually saved a woman but the woman was all along screaming about her children but the person couldn’t help her in bringing her children to safety. But afterwards in the hospital she recounted how her 5 children’s were happily playing the train even though it was late at night till that very moment.

Blame game has already started, everybody is pinpointing to some unknown terrorist, no towards unknown psychopaths, who else will like to burn people. Even if they are caught at last after years of court proceedings one of our own chief minister would plead for clemency for the accused like the parliament attack case or the some other leader would be too forgiving, that they would forgive the terrorists. This is democracy, we have to accept all this if more than 50% say so.

(I thank all those news reporters who helped me frame up this article with their articles.)

Thursday, February 15, 2007

NEWS


First thing I do in the morning is to read the news in newspaper websites and Google news. Today there was not much of interesting news. So I got bored started thinking about what news is all about. NEWS, I have always known as an acronym for North, East, West and South. Knowing information from all corners of earth is what news is all about. The explanation was too convincing and I have never doubted that it would be otherwise. But when I tried to search for something else about news and ended up reading about what is NEWS in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News). I got some bad news while reading about news, know what??

NEWS is not an acronym of north, east, west and south as I have always thought and confirmed off but it is a plural form of NEW. What plural form of NEW??????

Have you ever said news things for new things???

It doesn’t sound convincing right!!!!!

So I started reading with great interest about news, then the link to snopes (http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/news.htm) cleared it. It says some words even if they are adjective have plural form. One thing is I gained a new insight in English through this. So the purpose I started reading newspaper yielded some results today. On the other hand I also thought of why I have accepted this acronym without questioning all these days?

So don’t accept anything without questioning even if it is too obvious. Questioning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It rings a bell at back of my mind I remember something I don’t know whether its poem or quotation by someone but here it goes like this

“ my six stalwart soldiers

when, where, why, how, which, what”

the meaning is still clear in my mind before accepting any fact or solution try to answer the following six questions and try to analyze the solution before believing in it.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

RULES.....................

Rules are framed by people to rule over themselves, then why a lot of people don’t follow the rules???

So, on what basis the rules are formed. I am not writing about laws framed by the government but about the personal values which we frame ourselves to rule over ourselves. Everybody follows a certain set of rules, I call them policy (even my brother used to make fun of me, whenever I say “it’s my policy”, he used to say “aahh, yes LIC policy). So, how and when do these policies are formed, what influences one’s moral values, is there some common things that form the basics like family, friends, way of thinking, living conditions and locality they live in.

“Each person frames his own laws to govern himself”. I have changed my rules to suit my objectives, with time, with experience and by reading books and hearing others experience. For me it has always been like if you don’t face any dire consequences or if you are not going to spoil someone’s life directly then its fine to carry on your work. For example using these unlicensed software. Yes, I am cheating someone in their business, I cannot justify it anyway but I personally never feel as though I am cheating someone. As long as I feel that way, I have a perfect frame of rules to follow for myself.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

SATYAMEVA JAYATE

The country's national motto, emblazoned on its governmental crest, is "Satyameva Jayaté" -- "Truth Alone Triumphs." The question remains, however: whose truth?

I read the following statement in review of a book called “ IN SPITE OF THE GODS”.

What is truth??????

As usual I tried googling the word truth, to my astonishment I came to know there are big theories about truth. (ha.ha..ha…..) one more theory to know(2 know more abt tht follow the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth). But everyone of us know what is truth, at least we have our own definition of truth. Truth can be subjective, relative, absolute and objective. Everyone of us knowingly or unknowingly using one of these forms of truth to move on and make things happen in our favor. Everything has its own limit same way truth tooooo has its own limit. The limit to truth is set by individuals by themselves for themselves.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

god!!!!!!!!!!! help me................

I was watching a movie called “life is beautiful”. It is an Italian movie ( I saw a dubbed version in English), I have seen it quite a few times even though it is a dubbed film. One of the dialogues goes like this, the hero’s uncle advices him about serving. Uncle says that

“ we(servers) are serving but we are not servants, god serves us but he is never our servant”.

To confuse you with my clear confusion I will explain it in detail. First things first (mmmmmm, it would be better if it is first half first). First half of the sentence conveys that servers are there for serving others. They are doing a great job, they have their own self respect, dignity and they are fellow human beings. A good server is the only person who serves you with a smile other than your mother, relatives and friends. Yes, I know they are doing it for getting good tips. So everybody (people whom you don’t know) does expecting something in return from you. I think in the same way, I help others (work for others) expecting something in return (except to a very few people).

Now come to second half the core of confusion, god serves us but he is never our servant. This line was running at back of mind for quite a few days, what he was trying to mean or was trying to verbalize my thoughts. God serves us, I am a firm believer in god, so I think that statement is true. If god serves us then how are we going to pay him(if at all i find him). What should I do to pay him back or should I pay him back anything at all, does god expect something from us……..

This confusion which was all along there came to light after hearing this sentence quite a few times.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

why did i do it the whole day?

I thought why I did the process whole day and what are the ways to avoid the process of doing it every day or continuing it. So here I go……….

Even before i finish that process, I thought of the work I have for the whole day and planned everything in mind, postponed as much as I can to the next day and continued my process. Even after that gap for few minutes I continued the process without any problems and felt more comfortable doing the process in the morning(thinking didn’t help me). Then the alarm went on, it started beeping for some time but my hand unconsciously switched it off, so that I can continue my process (alarm didn’t work). Then after sometime one of my friends was moving around busily, doing his daily routine before his class but that doesn’t stop me or interrupt me from continuing my process in which I was deeply concentrated. After some hours probably one or two, the friend comes back and starts listening to songs obviously with speakers ON but no way I am going to stop that process which I like the most(even loud speakers doesn’t help). Then he even starts disturbing me, in fact torturing me by kicking but I am so concentrated in the process and attaining my own goal that I follow ghandhigiri principles and leave him unharmed( torture doesn’t help). At last, I finish that process not because of any external factors but to start that process on right time from the succeeding day (in which I will obviously fail). I came to the conclusion that the only thing that can make be or break me do that process is fear, fear in mind, so to create fear in mind for the upcoming days I postpone the work in the preceding days which will make me or compel me to break free from the process at right time. hope my plan works for the upcoming days but anyway I am having a good time today.

Yes, you were right in guessing from first but if you are still not confirmed about the process I am talking about then probably you are doing the same process and reading this stuff.

Monday, January 29, 2007

MY DAY WITH TSUNAMI


Tsunami, I came to know of this word only after the 2004 disaster which killed around 3,00,000 people. I am going to write about what I did the whole day, so if you are here thinking of getting any useful information forget about that and start reading to know more about how I specifically spent that disastrous day.

December 26th, 2004 Sunday

I had a computer class at 8’0 clock and I got up at around 7:10, then the usual saga of brushing and bathing went on in lightening speed. Then I had some breakfast, we were not supposed to switch on the T.V that early in the morning, so had my breakfast quietly. We live in the first floor, so I came down to the street, I was astonished to see a few people talking about something in groups. I was about to start to the class, one of my neighbors said that it is dangerous now to go away from home as water from the sea is entering the city. I thought what rubbish this guy is talking, but believed after everybody said the same thing. I ran back to my home within second by making three steps at a time and said that to everybody. We finally switched on the T.V. to our astonishment every channel was covering about the tsunami, what caused it and how many people died. I saw this show for an hour, it said that the tsunami may come again the same day and asked everybody to leave the place immediately. My house is just 2 km away from the sea and we were all a bit frightened but we were never making a effort to move from our place as we lived in the first floor and the sea has to face a lot of buildings before it even nears our house.

We were all glued to the T.V for about an hour and called all the relatives and friends to know about their safety and/or inform them about tsunami. Many people called us and enquired about tsunami as we were near the sea. The phone was ringing continuously throughout the day. Then hours passed by but the information from the sea front was the same “BE SAFE AND READY TO MOVE AT SHORT NOTICE, EXPECTING MORE HIGH WAVES THROUGHOUT THE DAY”. Even the lunch hour passed and we were all discussing about the tsunami and especially about the hardships of the fisher folk people.

At around 3 ‘0 clock, me and my cousin brother same age as mine became very curious and planned to go to the sea front to get an first hand information ourselves and to really watch the high tides. We went to their in his scooty but we parked the vehicle a long way away and had to walk through the distance. We went walking in the street that directly leads to the beach sand, the street has the government quarters, the quarters will always be in worst conditions ( you know about the government quarters). The place looked haunting because it was deserted except the a lot people searching for their dear ones and few people searching for their belongings. Around 100 media persons were there just trying to get a glimpse of the sea and broadcast information to their respective channels. We were going around looking at different people who have been plundered of their wealth by the same sea which had provided their living all through their age, people who cried having lost their relatives, and even some looters trying to get everything possible. Police had completely taken control our the area to avoid any enthusiasts and fools like us from venturing or going near the sea. Half an hour went on like this and suddenly everybody started shouting and started running away from the sea. We also started running back with fear, but I was astonished to see the reporters moving slowly even in that tense situation one of the reporters was very intelligent. One guy is driving a bike and the other guy is sitting backwards i.e., both had their faces in opposite direction, he was holding a handy cam and was capturing video live. I thought what a fool this guy is, he is not even caring about his life simply trying to get the videos. We came out of the street and when we neared our parking area, we saw that nobody was running, we spoke with a policeman over there and came to know it was a media gimmick done to capture video for the channels, so that they could show how people were running as though they have been there at real time of tsunami. I thought the media persons to be fool but they made a fool out of me including everyone there. I came back home and tsunami was the hot topic of discussion for the next one month.

I couldn't help anybody there, that was the bad part.......

Friday, January 26, 2007

Near to Death


I have had a quite a few near to death experience and I am going to write about one of those. It happened in parry’s when I was 12 years old. Parry’s has always been an enjoyable place to me during my childhood. On this particular day I was in parry’s with mother and grandfather. We were going around few shops to buy something. I still remember we were standing in a general merchant store. We were there for more than half an hour and I was behaving restless. The shop extended till the road, occupying the whole platform as it is the trend in most shops in parry’s. we were literally standing in the road and the road was very narrow. The place was full of garbage and it was smelling bad. To my astonishment a garbage lorry came and was cleaning up the road. The lorry stood near each garbage pile and the driver as well as cleaner were clearing everything off. The lorry stood just a few feet away from our shop i.e., just in front of us. My grandfather was busy negotiating with the owner of the store. The lorry driver usually puts the gear to neutral and comes down to clear up and divert traffic. So he came down and was diverting the traffic just in front of us. The lorry was very old and it was like trembling( shaking to the core). The parts were like about to fall that was the view I had when I first saw the lorry. Then after sometime, due to the trembling of the lorry the gear dropped on its own and the vehicle started moving on its own.

We were standing just in front of lorry and the lorry was moving without a driver. I haven’t imagined a situation like that, even the most crazy idea would not lead anyone to think of a lorry moving without a driver but we were there standing in front of driverless lorry.(ha..ha…ha……..). everyone in the road started screaming and everybody was pushing and pulling each other . The store owner pulled in my grandfather, my mother pulled me with her into the shop. We all were above some bag and we were unable to move.

The lorry didn’t move very fast, so even if we had met with an accident, we would have come out with injuries but the minutes that passed by when the lorry moved across took us near death. I could still hear my mother screaming and pushing me along with her inside the shop. She was literally fighting for place against a wall of things. She held me in one hand and my grandfather in other hand and was literally pushing us inside the shop.

The lorry came to a halt after colliding with a bike parked outside the next shop. Then the driver stepped in and killed the engine. The lorry was like a demon till that second and everyone was scared to go near it. I was scared to hell on that day but I will never forget that incident.

Monday, January 22, 2007

1984 - George Orwell Novel

Ya, I read this novel recently and would like to brief you about it. The novel is set in a dystopian world (opposite of utopia). The story is set in peak of imagination in which the whole world is ruled by socialists or totalitarians (like Hitler). People are all treated like slaves with spies all around and a standard schedule of fourteen hour work for all of them. The history is rewritten every second and people are frightened to communicate with each other. It describes in core about how such a world would be set in.

One idea that attracted me in the novel was the INGSOC dictionary. For example words like NEWSPEAK (new English they speak), DOUBLETHINK (thinking of two contradictory things), JOYCAMP(concentration camp). The dictionary is also rewritten with new words, the difference here is the number of words is constantly reduced in each new version. The book has a INGSOC dictionary as appendix.

At first , I thought the author is simply expanding his book to give a more outlook of the imaginary world but as I went through the book, the author revealed that the process of reducing the words in dictionary was done to minimize the knowledge and creativity of people. The language actually improves human thinking and creativity. This simple point was seeded into me through imaginary story of the novel.

You would be thinking now, why this guy wants to say something about an imaginary world or dystopian novel in his first post rather than saying about his first blog post or how it all started. If I am right in judging you (grins) then continue……

The simple thought that was seeded into me made me think in the opposite way, to improve your creativity you should start using the language extensively . so here you see my first step towards it.