Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Day Six

It was the last day of our trip ...
if the previous few days and the trip in the morning was good , then the travel back was total contrast , the trip back to Siliguri was bad but the next journey from Siliguri to Kolkata in private bus was Ugly !
for the first time in last few days we dint have to get up very early , we left @ 8 for Rumtek Monastry which was below Gangtok (southern side) we reached pretty quickly in about 30 min , the monastry is a pretty famous and has had its share of controversies/disputes and is the seat of religious head ( who is in exlie). The place had high security with a posse of policemen around the monastry and a couple of other places in the complex . The ones near the main entrance were extremely rude to ppl ( just 3-4 visitors were around). The monastry had no specific timings and was closed when we went in the morning , we enquired in a shop nearby and were told that it would open by 8 in the morning but due to some reson it was no opened that day. There was the famous Golden Pagoda in the monastry and also it has university for religious studies for Buddists.We went to another monastry which was also beautiful in its own way , the architecture was totally different.
We reached Gangtok by 12 and then went around the main market area to pick up shawls and sweaters for ppl back home and moved to Jeep stand by 1 , we had get back to Kolkata , we had to catch a jeep t Siliguri andf from there we had booked tickets in a private bus @ 7 to Kolkata
We expected the Journey from hills of Sikkim to plains on Bengal to be another fun trip , but thanks to mad man at wheel of the crowded jeep the entrie journey was a nightmare , we were glas to reach Siliguri alive !
We went staright to railway station outside which is the busstand .The The journey was supposed to be 12 hr one , and we had flight to B'lore @ 10 so we wanted to reach the place by 8-8:30 so had booked thr bus @ 7 . But bus we were supposed to travel in had some problems and we had a delay of more than 1.5 hours before we finally got started . to add to our miseries the driver and conductor (perhaps irritated by our constant questioning) told us that it might take 14 rs to reach Kolkata which meant we may not make it in time !everytime we saw a signpost indicating distance to Kolkata we were making mental calculations about when we might reach !The roads were extremely horrible and the bus after travelling on these roads was a total wreck creaking and shaling each time we passed over a pothole , which was like every other minute . most of the seats were rickety and window panes kept shaking and moving and cold air kept coming in ... All this meant a horrible night topped by fear of missing our flight !thankfully the Airport was on the way , before we reached Kolkata city so we saved a lot of time and made it to Airport by 9 ( flight was at 9:50) and reached ontime. It was a journey which we could never forget for the sheer tension , frustration and exhaustion , i remember sleeping for some 15 hrs straight after reaching home that evening !!!on the whole it was total fun and gr8 trip given the fact that we had very little planning !

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Day Five - Sikkim

We started early that day our vehicle was waiting outside the hotel for trip to a few sunrise view points in the city. Our Driver suggested that we miss Tashi viewpoint as it will be crowded with toursits , he said Hanuman Tok which also gives a similar view would be a better choice and we agreed and that quite set the tone for the rest of the day as our driver cum guide suggested a lot of things each one of which made the trip really wonderful , we managed to have quite a good time and avoid the crowds. We reached Hanuman Tok first and we were the only ones there. The place was temple of top of a hill and it presented a magnificent view of snow capped mountains with Kanchenjunga standing out . Next to the temple is the burial bround of the Royal family and it was resplendent with flags. The temple itself was neat much to our amusement the priest at the temple after handing us the prasad showed us a snap of the mountain he had clicked 5 min back ! Mountain is looking really beautiful today and its such a clear day u guys r really lucky he kept repeating. He also showed us the best place to take snaps of the mountain from the temple. Only when we were finished and the sun was totally up did other tourists turn up and we appreciated our driver's suggestion to go against the normal tourists route. We next went to place called Ganesh Tok , it had osbservatory built by toursim dept. the views of the mountains one one side and the scenic hills and city of Gangtok on the other side were unforgettable. We then saw the Sikkim legislative Assembly building and then went to another view point which was right on top of a hill with beautify view of the valley below. It was wonderful to watch the entire valley gettin lit by sun's rays gradually.We returned back by 8Am , finished our breakfast and set out for Tsamgo lake(40 Km) and Baba Mandir (54 Km) , the trip was supposed to take about 2 hours. There are lots check posts outside the city 5th mile , 8th mile ans so on .. to go to any place you need to get a permit stating ur detaisl and ur reason for visit , the drivers get these things done pretty quick , they help Govt track people movement int eh border state and also check any possiblity fThe journey was amazing and roads built by BRO wind through the hills , its a really marvellous feat by building such high quality roads on such a trecherous terrian.
We stopped for a warm cup of tea just before reaching Tsango lake , our driver had mentioned that there a few places which were not part of our original itenary , but could be 'arranged'. We then reached Tsango lake (called Changu ) , but did not stop there , we went past it and our destination was a place called Baba Mandir , enroute we saw snow on one side of the road and barren rocks on the other side. in half an hour we reached this place called Baba Mandir , which was built in memory of a soldier. The temple also had memorial for soldiers who lost their lives for the nation in that region. Since we had gone on sundays we were provided with prasad at the temple on sundays all visitors were provided with lunch by the army. When we were eating lunch suddenly we were hit by a cold winds and the temperature dropped very drastically. thanksfully we were well equipped with wollens and gloves. During lunch the visibility was very poor though it was one clock in the afternoon. Our driver was very sceptical about covering the next place we had planned a couple lakes a bit higher than the Mandir. He checked with a few cabbies who were back from that place and told us that though there was a chance that the trip would be ruined by poor visibility and storms there was also a chance of the fog clearing off and asked us to choose.



we decided to try our luck and were not dissapointed the next few hours turned out to be the highlight of our joureny to sikkim as we went higher and higher and soon saw snow on either side , we came across the world's highest ATM and cyber cafe ! After that it was pure heaven ! we went as much 1400 ft high and the view of Himalayas and kanchenjunga mountain was amazing . After apoint he stopped the vehicle and there small hills covered with snow , where we could play with snow , we had a snow fight and it was truly a gr8 experience.






after an hour we returned back to Tsango lake which was oval shaped and over a kilometre long , thanx to influx of tourists a lot of shops selling trinkets and offering joy rides on yaks are there.
While we were ambling about enjoying the beauty of the lake and snow covered mountains we were hit by sudden winds and mist which made it even more memorable !

We got back to Gangtok with a sense of statisfaction this particluar day made the trip and would stand out among all the wondeful memories of this trip. Missing out Nathula was the only regret.



We came back to Gangtok and did some shopping for shawls n sweaters at the local bazaars and also finalised the itenary for the next day , the plan was to visit a couple of monastries nearby.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Day Four - Darjeeling/Gangtok

We woke up early morning and we outside the temp was 3 deg and got into our car and took off at 5:15 for tiger hill , we reached there in about 20 min , the vehicle drops u almost at the top of the hill. this is the place which affords u a brillinat view of kanchenjunga and also on a clear day a glimpse of Mt Everest ! But we were not lucky , it was a partially clouded day and we went up the hill and got into the observatory which was fast filling up with ppl. there rows n rows of chairs and glass panes arnd us thru which we were to observe the sunrise .


As time started progressing ppl started gettin restless and were bedoming a huge nuisance , outside it was real cold so we decided to stay inside the observatory where we could sip tea/coffee which were provided inside. As the first straks of light appeared on horizon ppl started standing up n clicking pictures ( God knows what they got ! ) and we decided to move out of the the observatory into the open after gettin our first glance of the rising sun.






What a spectacular sight it was ! then I heard a old gentleman telling everyone that Sun is not hat we should be looking it , we should actually be looking at the other direction Where Kanchenjunga will recieve its first sunlight of the day. We cam out and started cliking pics of sunlight and patiently waited looking at the op direction and then saw the marvelous sight of a huge mountain slowly coming into view in between the clouds , the first rays of sun falling on the whitish mountain and the resultant effect was unbelievable and just cannot be described in words ... After enjoying the sunrise and watching the entire valley slowly emrging out of darkness to a brnad new day , we started from tiger hill to the next point which was Ghoom monastery, followed by something called Bastasia loop which was a memorial. But these two turned out to be a big dissapointment as there was nothinh worth wacthing there. We returned back to our hotel some time after 8 , then got ready and went to the Mall and strolled around looking for some good restaurant and had a really yummy breakfast and then packed our bags and proceeded to the Jeep stand. We had made a big mistake in not planning this part of the travel properly , we had just enquired where the jeep stand was and had assumed that we would get a vehicle at all times. It turned out that they had only hourly service after 10 , so had to wait for a long time and finally got a jeep for Gangtok at 11 AM.






The journey was supposed to take close to 4 hours.


And we had braced ourselves for a tortorous trip as it was in a jeep. But it turned out to be quite an experience. The views were simply awesome , we passed through a few tea gardens and a lot of places where 'Terrace farming' was practiced.






The total journey itself was gr8 as the road to Gangtok was through hills and after a point we came across Teesta river and after that the entire journey the road and the river ran alongside and there lot of scenic views



There is also white water rafting on Teesta river which was attracting quite a big crowd. There was a place on the way where there were numerous resorts which offered rafting experience.






.Finally reached Gangtok which was also a city on hills at 4 and managed to locate out hotel Shilton Lodge(once again had found out about it through internet). The rooms were pretty good and very affordable .We had reached the place late afternoon around 3:30 and after checking in , asked the guy at the hotel about the places we can visit. To our dismay we were told that we wont able to visit any of the places we had planned as it was too late and places inside the city were all sunrise view points which were not worth it during evenings. So we went out dissappointed and hungry and decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant nearby , which had a band performing during nights. We had gone in arnd 4 and the band was somewhere inside practising for their performance later that night and after a point it was really irritating and they took a huge amount of time to bring the food , after waiting for 30 min we were angry tired and totallyclueless as to what to do. Everything seemed hopeless the mood in the camp was totally down. We were about to walk out of the place , then the food arrived ! I have never such good chinese food ever before in 10 min we had finished our late lunch and trooped out into the main market place. Which it turned out was very small just a couple streets ! For a capital city Gangtok is very very small. But still it was a pleasant expericence , we walked around looking for some trinkets. The weather was also very pleasant must have been 15- 20 degrees , a huge departure from Darjeeling where it was below 10 in the afternoon itself.

We headed straight to the tourist info centre ru Sikkim govt. unfortunately for us , by the time we made it the place was closed , it was around 5PM. Here also people shut shop much earlier , most shops close by 7:30. Then we started walking around the central area called MG Marg which had shops on wither side and was a busy street. We spotted a lot of Travel agencies and decided to ask a few of them the rates for sightseeing and then decide what to do the next day. The first place we entered , the guy gave us the normal tour package where you with a group of 10-15 which wud be economical but crowded and also suggested that we could hire a cab on our own ( Maruti Van) since there were 3 of us , it would be comfortable and not so hard on pocket for us. The places covered would be Tsango lake which was 40 Km from Gangtok but close to 2 hrs on road and a place called Baba Mandir which he assured me was wonderful. We also wanted cover a couple of other view points ( in this part of the country view points r meant to view the sunrise) and the cost came about 1500 for the vehicle. But he said all permits for Nathula Pass were finished so we cant visit that place. Nathula is on Indo-China border on the famous 'silk route' . You need to get prior permit to visit the place and visit is possible only on Tuesday, Thursday, Sat and Sunday. We had landed there on Saturday evening , which he said was a bit too late for permit. When we asked if it is possible somehow to procure a permit , he said that the no: of visitors on any day is limited to a certain number and he had run out of his quota , but told us that we can try with any other operator and if we were lucky (since it was pretty late) we might get , so we tried our luck at another 3-4 places each one told us the same thing , No Nathula permit. Finally we came back to the first guy and booked for trip to Tsango lake and also for early morning sightseeing in Gangtok. Tot cost was 1500.
One good thing about this place is that they treat the tourists really well , Govt stipulates a standard rate for these sightseeing trips and do a constant checking to ensure that those rates are maintained.

We had dinner at a hotel in MG Marg which served North Indian food , there were a lot of good hotels there and returned back to hotel to sleep early , the whole city sleeps by 10 ! We had planned our Sikkim sightseeing from 5:30 next morning.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Day three- Darjeeling

Train from Kolkata to Siliguri took exactly 12 hrs and we reached @ 7:45 in the morning

We had 2 options from Siliguri to reach Darjeeling , one was the 'toy train' which winds its way up the hills to Darjeeling , the jourey takes 8 hrs but is said to be really amazing. but we had to choose option 2 , travel via Hill cart Road along railway linecoz it takes only 3 1/2 hrs. With a cramped schedule like ours we dint have any choice moreover after an overnight train journey we were not really comfortable with idea of spending another 9 hrs in train.

On arrival tourists like us were chased by a swarm of agents who promised to find us exciting travel packages/ hotel booking. Finally we went with one guy who arranged the trip to Darjeeling for us and got us our bus tickets for the return joureny to Kolkata. Actually all we had to do was to step out of Siliguri station and right outside there is bus stand where u can book tickets and there are lot of private jeeps waiting outside which will take u to Darjeeling/Gangtok

The ride to Darjeeling was Rs.70 per head. The roads were winding and the views were fantastic and by afternoon we reached Darjeeling. Throughout the journey along with the roads you can see the tracks of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway line along the winding roads , how they manage to travel along such curves has to be seen to be believed.

We had booked a room at hotel Sunflower (got it through net) and the room was really good and worth the 1500 price tag. The temperature was 12 deg when we arrived in the afternoon. The town is at 7000 ft We decided to visit the Himalayan zoo and Himalayan Mountaineering institute in the afternoon/evening.

Dusk falls pretty soon in this part of the country and most places get closed by 6. so we spent the evenings walking along the streets looking for some trinkets. Bought some Tea which Darjeeling is famous for and some shawls for parents , cap and gloves to beat the cold climate. The temperature fell to 4.5 deg in the evening and later to 3.5 deg later in the night. The place had a colonial hangover and was full of cafes and cake shops and eateries each one seemed to be better than the other, all in all it was a wonderful day.
We arranged for a land rover to pick us up early morning next day for visit to Tiger hill.
4 wheelers are the only mode of transport in the steep sloping streets in the town . There are local taxis and jeeps which connect the town with neighbouring towns. It was prety cold that night , but we had room heaters so it was really cozy n comfortable, for the next day we had planned for Tiger Hill and 2 other places early in the morning and then come back and start for Gangtok for the next leg of the trip ...

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Trip-Day two - time travel

As we ventured out into the streets of Calcutta we started doubting if we travelled from Bangalore on an Airplane or was it a time machine ? (!) ... The roads , the buildings and the buses , trams and cabs seemed to suggest that we seemed to travelled back some 15- 20 years ... The city of Calcutta seemed to be what i remember of cities of late 80s ... Though we had an idea that this city is totally diferent from other cities of India and that it does retain the old world feel , adjusting to the city took some time. The city is called the cultural capital of India and has the legacy of Raj ( being the former captial city fo the country) . So we decided to check out the Victoria memorial and the museum first. The Chandni chowk metro station was pretty near to our hotel , so we decided to travel by the metro . Though we dint really like the cabs , buses and the congested roads , the metro changed our impression about the transport facilities in Kolkata. It really is a cheap, fast and effective means of transportation and i guess is one of the best in the country. The underground metro stations had maps indicating stations covered and train timings and was really hassle free travel for us.


We visited the Victorai memorial which was built as memorial for Queen Victoria who the empress of India in early decades of last century. It is made of white marble and is pretty well maintained and though it was a British Building at first glimpse it reminded me of Taj Mahal. Like Taj , this was also surrounded by sprawling gardens on all sides . Inside this there is a musuem which has a huge display of potraits/photographs from British era till Indian independence. The building is surrounded by gardens and a couple of big pools. After a couple of hours we trooped out to have a look at modern Calcutta.


Then we had our first glimpse of a tram ! The tram is a really unique mode of transport and tram lines run along the major roads and how all these vehicles on road , pedestrains and trams manage to co exist on same road is something really amazing !


After we came out, we cut across the Maidan which is supposed to be largest urban park in Kolkata , the Eden Gardens , Victoria Memorial , the turf club and polo club are located on its fringes. We then strolled through busy streets of kolkata for an hour after lunch. Then decided to check out the Kalighat , it is believed that kolkata derieves its name from it. Kalighat is where the famous Kali temple is located. But our timing was very bad , by the time we reached the temple had closed. But what was shocking was how the whole place was maintained , the place is full of touts out to squeeze money. Less said about it the better, this is one place to AVOID for casual tourists ie who are'nt really religiously inclined. Place is full of beggars and other assorted pujaris and their helpers out to snatch money under some pretext or other . The worst part is that all of of them are together in this and they have a unique model by you are forced to pay all of them. When you enter you are asked to leave your footwear in a shop ( there was no footwear stand outside temple) and hence you ahve to buy something from the shopkeeper and need to tip the guy who suggested the shop to you and so on ... The experience of visiting a temple is totally spoiled when you come across such elements . The temple visit turned out to be a really bad experience and we decided not to visit any temples in this part of the country.

We returned back to our hotel and in the evening visited the Howrah bridge ( Rabindra setu) and took a boat ride across Hoogly river.
Later in the evening we checked out of the hotel and moved to Sialdah station to catch the train to Siliguri. The journey was supposed to take 12 hrs. Another major problem we faced was lack of Restaurants at Railway station and surprsingly no one was selling food stuff.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Trip- Day one


Day one

For the last 2 years i have been going on road-trips with my cousins once in an year.
This time , me and 2 cousins of mine , Aswin n Sridar had planned an outing somwhere in Dec . By sheer chance i saw an article about sikkim and we decided that this is the place we are heading this winter. None of us had any idea what to expect or any friends at these places we were planning to visit. Thanks to internet we managed to gather adequate info about the places to visit , some do's and don'ts etc to make a rough plan. So this was the initial plan Bangalore-> Kolkatta->Siliguri->Darjeeling->Gangtok->Siliguri->Kolkatta->Bangalore

So finally we are off today on 20th Dec afternoon , the flight was supposed to be in the evening 5:05 pm , but it turned out that the flight was actually at 5:50 PM , anyways we reached the airport at 3:30 itself. All the while I had flown only with Indian Airlines and occasionally on Jet , this was my first flight on low cost carrier , we were flying in SpiceJet.

The flight was via Hyderabad and finally we reached Kolkatta at 9:40 PM , after retrieving our luggage and standing in a long Q for pre-paid taxi we finally got to our hotel (researched thru net) . It was at a place called Ganesh Chandra Avenue , we booked coz name seemed nice -> hotel Broadway. Also the location was near a Metro station(Chandini Chowk) and near the Sialdah Railway station also. It turned out to be pretty neat choice , the rent was moderate , the rooms were decent enuf . The city was full of cabs and buses , very less no: of Autos which we see here in Bangalore. Also when we looked around that night it seemed we had boarded a time machine and had landed back in 80's . That was our first impression of the city.
Most restaurants had closed by the time we reached our hotel and we had roam around for an hour around the city before we found one ! What a start !!!
Plan for tomorrow - Trip around "the city of Joy"

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Sikkim Trip !

Three of us ( me and 2 cousins of mine) went on a week long trip to Sikkim n Darjeeling this Winter !

Before we embarked on this trip , we had no idea of what to expect the idea seemed exotic so we thoght lets give it a shot.
All the info about the place , planning was done wholly based on info collected from net.
Internet has info about everything , all u need to bring to table is desire to explore places.
Nowadays wih the advent of low cost airlines , air travel has become pretty affordable and has made possible vacations to places in different corners of our country in limited time that we have.
These days you get a lot of books/sites about holiday destinations and most of the logistics are well covered.

I thought of blogging our trip , so that it provides some helpful info for ppl planning similar tripsand hopefully wud encourage ppl who have been planning to do something like this to finally do it.

We were what cud be classfied as budget travellers , luxury/best facilities was not the main criterion for us , but we were not always looking at the cheapest alternative either. All we had in mind was good comfortable holiday without being an expensive one.
We had decided on the hotels where we would stay in advance ,but we did not book them ie make any advance payment. We had telephoned and told them that we would be requiring rooms , since it was not the peak season that arrangement worked everywhere.

Flight and train tickets were the only ones we booked and all the rest were decided then and there ...

We left from Bangalore on 20th and came back on 26th Dec

the travel route was Bangalore -> Kolkatta -> Siliguri -> Darjeeling -> Gangtok-> Siliguri-> Kolkatta-> Bangalore.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Belling the Cat !

At last the day arrived and off i went with to crack the exam along with 2 Lac others , phew !
CAT is one exam which has kept everyone guess ing and in the last few years stumped everyone . Earlier pre2003 it was the no:of questions/no:of sections which kept varying , then in '04 we had differential marking , last year no:0f Q came down. So all of us were waiting for the surprise as expected !
Well this year it was no different , as expected there was something different 4 marks for a Q and -1 for wrong ans , 25 Q in a section , 75 Q in all :-(
Took the English section first as usual as that is where i always 'score' and build up tall percentile scores ! It was not a walk in the park as i had hoped , rather it seemed like a night at a casino , had to gamble and gamble a lot as most of the questions had atleast 2 answers which seemed ok. Soon i got into the thick of things and ended up answering all the Questions in the section...
Never taken so much risk before , 5 options for each Q made it real toughie , just keepin my fingers crossed andhopin my insticts pull me through again !
DI&Logical was the best section , questions seemed workoutable and the section was pure delight.
Quants were always my weakest area and today was no different the limitaion in no:of is something which seemed to go against me , as my strength is speed over accuracy ! But the Quant section was not toughie as expected , there were lots of crackable questions and some required a little bit of application to crack them but was an overall good package and ppl who were 'decent' in math would have done real well. As for me clearing 25% was the target this time as IIMs have announced 25% in each section as minimum , last year i had just managed to scrape through , need to get lucky again !

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Mind your Language !

Language seems to be the new 'hot' word here now , and has knocked off reservation , corruption et all from the headlines ! But unfortunately its in the news for wrong reasons .

Come to think of it language is actually a means for communication which basically enables people to 'talk' and 'understand' and interact better with each other leading to improvemnet in the way we live.

But instead of enhancing realtionships and bring people closer , language , now seems to be a barrier which drawing people apart.

For ages , there was this debate about English vs Regional languages , the debate was fuelled by politicans who insisted that English langauge would contaminate and destory local languages and what not. They were instumental in bringing in various legislations to ensure that kids in Govt school are taught in mother tongue rather than English. But it is entirely different matter that children of these leaders attended private English medium schools ! Over the time the movement slowly eroded as people started realising that English is the passport to good future and you had to learn it ,whether u like it or hate it.
Evenstates like Bengal have gone soft on anti-English movement.
But suddenly now in South , the same movement has reared its ugly head again ! First it was PMK in TN with its oppostion to english names in tamil movies ! recently after coming to power the govt announced waiver of tax for films with tamil names ! I dunno by simply naming the films in tamil will these gaurdians of culture save the culture esp with kind of films being made these days !

In Karnataka there was huge outcry against Govt's ill advised move to close down schools which were teaching English , this was at a place known as It capital of the country and the global outsourcing hub which has a huge BPO industry where knowledge of English has opened a whole new successful world to millions of young graduates , ironically the word Bangalored will soon apply Bangalore itself if such people had their way and access to English education is cut off.

When states were formed , it was done on basis on language , the idea was to bring people of same language 'together' and all such states together to form a country called India.
But language instead of uniting people have turned into a force for dividing people , in Maharashtra it started with cries of of mumbai for marathis and through out south , you can notice that people who dont speak the local language always get the rough end of the stick.

When world over countries are encouraging ppl to learn English and get more in the IT/BPO pie here we are still fighting over wether we need to learn English or not !
When these ppl learn that we need to stop fighting over the share in the pie and rather look at increasing the size of the pie

Well the reason for me raving and ranting about this particular issue is that today happens to be a Karnataka Bandh , being from Kerala , the word Bandh is quite commonplace thing , so I took adequate precaution to ensure that I dont starve and would be able to spend the 'holiday' peacefully , but what i didnt anticipate was cable tv operators joining the bandh and shutting down all other channels except Kannada Channels all over Bangalore.
Now what could be the logic behind this ? Im totally at loss ? When the same thing happened after death of Dr.Rajkumar , I could understand it was mourning period for state , so all entertainment channels were blocked. But why today , why block all entertainment channels in other languages ? Why let Kannada movies/music channel play ? If they wanted ppl to understand their cause ( it is some border dispute , again language related) then they should have blocked all entertainment channles, allowing only news channel ( which incidentally has become a major source of entertainment ! ) ...
this is something i never get , why partiality towards outsiders , only localites get to enjoy this day off , espeicially in a city which prides itself as a Cosmopolitan city . This is not the first time we saw other language channels/movies targetted , last time there was ban on non-kannada films and what was really sad was that a lot of people were supporting it .All in all the level of tolerance is sometimes scary !

PS: Heard that Shekar Kapur is planning to make a movie set in future India , which deals with wars happening over water which wud be scarce commodity then , the movie was supposed to be called 'Paani' . I guess he could actually make a movie on wars based on language which might happen if such incidents continue , guess the movie on language wars might be called 'Basha' ( but oops there is already a Rajnikant movie by that name ! )

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Reservation Ministry ?

Today's morning newspaper threw up shocker of a news , there was a news report about plans by Karnataka Education ministry to provide new kind of reservation for non-merit students!
I know this sounds crazy but these guys seem set on making Arjun Singh's Mandal-2 look like nothing in comparision. What these guys want is reservation all private schools for students scoring 35-50 % !!!
The reason given for this absurd proposal is that inorder to maintain ther 100% pass rate private school managements have very strict admission criterion and dont admit students who have low marks and infact you need to score close 90 to get into top schools which acc to these guys is bad , hence the need for quota to sneak in non-performers ! The report further stated that there was plan for certain % reserserved for students scoring 35-50 % , and some for the next set and so on ...
I simple cant understand , how do ppl come up with such ideas !

Please dont tell me the logic behind this is that even bad students deserve chances ...
On paper the idea sounds nice , but how do u find out possibly good students out of bad students , I wud say its highly impossible.
If poor performers are given backdoor entry , how do u expect students to be motivated enough to put all that extra effort and score really good marks ?
India were riding high because our education system (though kinda faulty)ensured that there was a a huge competetion and you had to struggle a lot and put in a lot of hard work to stay ahead in the race , which helped them do really well when competing with others across the globe. Now we seem set to spoil that also !

What next , reserving 50% of college seats for non-merit , 50% of jobs for non-merit guys ?

At this rate we should not be surprised if they come up with a new ministry called "Reservation Ministry" to do come up with more such possible reservations !

Friday, August 11, 2006

fizzy ya fishy ?

3 years back (almost to the day) CSE had published its famous pestic-cola report , now its back again. the reaction have been predictable this time around too.
Last time there was a talk on ban and all , but campain seemed to have lost fizz !!! Now again pestic-cola controversy is back , and this time lot of state govt seem to have jumped inot the fray in the battle with so called bad MNCs.What really got me and made me write this blog is a report in yesterday's newspaper supplement where they had published the opinion of college students in the city (mostly girls) who all unianimously declare that they will never ever drink cola and urge the Govt to immediately ban them. I find this extremely ridiculous especially in the light of this article titled cola con, on www.indianeconomy.org
Now the report may or may not be correct , but this act of banning is simply illogical , now cola companies should ensure that they dont sell substandard products , but another question is how did the pesticides enter the drink , now nobody seems to be least bit bothered about this. All they want is to ban colas and be done with it , but the source of pesticides are believed to be ground water and sugar . Both of which nobody seems to be interested in correcting.
Now for me , I still will drink cola when i go out coz i somehow feel that even if colas maybe contaminated , they will be much safer compared to water in small hotels or fresh juice in small shops. So banning them will only expose public to more danger. If standards are there then it should be for everyone , Govt should ensure that the water for preparing juices/ served in hotels are safe.
But since that never gets the kind of praise n fame u get when u bash an MNC/America no one bothers.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Pennywise

"Pennywise and Pound foolish" ... goes the old English proverb ...
But thats what most of us are these days !
There is a store in Bangalore by the name Pennywise whose main USP is the "upto 50%" discount it offers. This is enough for crowds to throng the place.
Ofcourse the discount we realise is not 'flat' 50% , but a variable one with max of 50% for a few select items of clothing which no one wud buy even if it was given 100% discount. But then many ppl since they took the effort of stepping into the store , decide to buy something or other at a discounted price. Though in reality they may not actually need the stuff, just because it is available at a discount price ppl end up buying it !
Infact some stores have this tag line "Buy more,Save more!" what an amazing logic!!!
This seems to be a sureshot success strategy for all brands , though a good price for certain item of clothing wud be 'X'Rs , hype up the brand and put the price tag at '2X' or more and make it appear that the brand is out of reach for mere mortals.
The more highly its priced (though quality wise it may not be worth it) , the more awe it creates. But thats not all , the clever bit comes in when u sell it , you can't obviously make much money if u sell it at the marked price of '2X' Rs.
So u sell it with a special banners indicating some reason like "end of season Sale" (only the season lasts the whole year! ) and sell it at a discounted price of 20-40% over the hyped up marked price !
Which still means u make much more than the correct price "X" for the product !

Now Im firmly of opinion that the culprit here is not the clothes manufacturer but the end consumer who is more than happy to pay 1.2X for some brand which offers supposedly 'huge' discounts over its marked price rather than pay the correct price for another brand which makes same stuff and which has proper marked price 'X' and no discount but in reality 20% lesser (correctly priced infact)

In Tamil Nadu at this time of the year we see something called "Aadi Sale" with clothes vying with each other to offer tempting discounts and consumers enthused with the prospect of saving more with each purchase and loosening the purse strings ! The trend started with textiles and now have extended to Electronic goods shops also offer steep discounts during this time and volume of sales makes this the best season for them.Infact shopkeepers say that their sales see a 50 to 75% inc during "Aadi" month when compared to ordinary days.

Though I may be mistaken, but from what i remember 'Aadi' is an inauspicious month for Tamil ppl and hence in olden days ppl were not buying anything during that time and so the shop owners had to resort to the discounts and freebies , but today its the busiest season of the year !!!

Friday, July 07, 2006

Minority Report

Politicians are one class who never cease to amaze you , though they do the same stuff over the years. Its the way they keep refining it which takes you by surprise.
Even Robert Langdon can't crack their code.
How else can you explain the banning of Da Vinci code movie in a few states in India on grounds that it cud hurt religious sentiments.that too when it is released in all Christian majority countries (even vatican too , I believe ! )Now the film is based on a book which was a best seller in all (christian dominated) western countries...
Now the book was just plain fiction and nothing so great that ur faith cud be challenged...
something so trivial was enuf for some netas to bend backwards to ensure the minorities (read their votebank ) are not hurt .
Since the movie is not shown for free/shown on television , if you want to watch it you have to go to a cinama hall (or rent a vcd/dvd) on your own free will. So where does the hurting of minority sentiment come in ?
Obviously just a gimmick to 'please' minorities !
now what next will they confiscate our copies of the 'Da Vinci code' book also ?

On a related note , there was a big controversy over women entering Sabarimala temple. whether its real or not is debatable. But this had prompted a TV news channel to come out with a debate on whether the practice is rite or not. It was an age old practice and there were reasons for why that was followed. Whether it is correct or not is another issue
But what irks me is the fact that a couple of politicians alleging that the temple is violating constitution by nott allowing women to enter....
But no such allegetion will be levelled against minority communities whose treatment of women is well known.

So why the apparent double standards in handling majority and minority ?
Now who is majority and who is minority ?

Latest update(13-7-06): After Mumbai blasts , SIMI a muslim student organisation was one of the prime suspects. In comes the UP chief to their defence , saying u cant accuse them (minorities) without evidence . Now the question is why shud UP chief be involved in an incident in Mumbai ... well apparently in a few months there is gonna be elections in UP and muslims form 10% of poulation and hence a valuable votebank !
When will they learn to treat all ppl as equals ? Why do we still vote for those who still see ppl as hindus , muslims and all ?
(Will be updated pretty frequently...)

Afterthought :

In Kerala , we have a holiday for "Avani Avittam" what that means most ppl in TN wud probably know ( its an annual ritual for us Tam Brahmins , where we change our sacred thread) but believe it or not , though there is no holiday in TN or any other South Inidan state. There is a holiday in Kerala which I believe has the least no: of brahmins in whole South !!!
Now this is precisely my point in Kerala , Brahmins are a minority and hence are a consolidated votebank , so too woo them (their votes) the state govt had to declare a state holiday for festival which has meaning for 1% of state's population !
That is the power of minorities in this country !!!

Saturday, June 10, 2006

ITs Looting !

Bangalore city may not have sky scrapers , but if you plot a graph of
the increase in property prices over the last few years you will surely get
huge sky scrappers.
Same is the case with house rents , Bangalore house owners are ones who
have made most of the 'IT' boom , whether IT really boomed or not for us poor techies who came into the scene late , the rents have certainly boomed.
There is an increase of 50 % over the normal rates if a house
owner comes to know that his prospective tenant is an IT guy ! Also a min of 10 rent advance to it ... Thats literally the ground reality
in the IT capital.

Everyone blames IT guys for the increase in rent ! What will we poor
non-IT guys do they always ask/tell me . his was one complaint which we
keep hearing again and again. But I would say its not really fair to
blame IT ppl for the increase. this increase happnes because of the
perception that these guys earn a lot and hence wont mind paying.
A couple of years back a few friends of mine were hunting for a house
in B'lore and they saw a 2 bedroom house for which the previous tenants
had paid 5k per month. This guy met my friends and told them that rent
would be 7500 ! They were shocked as the guy was suggesting 50 %
increase , when asked why such a huge hike . The owner seemed surprised
that these guys were making noise for a small inc ; "you are making a
lot of money, right?" he asked. "I dont think the increase is huge for
ppl of your standards", he continued. Then my friend asked him "How
much do you think I earn in a month?" , the owner smiled and said he is
not very good at guessing these things and siad it was common knowledge
that software guys make a lot of money compared to men like him. Upon
further prompting , he said he will hazard a guess and added that he
was just making a conservative guess "Maybe 1 or maybe 2 Lacs?"
My friends were shocked and told him they make 10-15 % of the amount.
he guy wouldn't believe it , no way he kept repeating , I always read
about techies getting shares and being millionares ...
That seems to be the general perception , and the reason for this huge
increase in house rents in some areas of B'lore generally preffered by
software guys.
Another big reason for the increase in rents is the stupidity of ppl of
our ilk , there are some ppl who pay whatever is asked without checking
the general trend and the rates in that area , when one guy starts
paying others are expected to follow the suit and then automatically
the rent in that area increases. The reason why some pay is that they
usually take a house for rent as group of 4-6 , since the rent is
divided between them an increase of 1000 means just an inc of 200 to
each one so they dont mind.
Also the owners just jack up the rent so that even if ppl negotiate
they get a big increase over previous rates.
A friend of mine was looking for 3 bedroom house in Koramangla ,B'lore.
After seeing an ad in papers he called up the house owner.
This is what happened.
my Friend: "I heard you have a house in Koramangla , im interested , is
it available"
the Owner : "Actually a few people have come and seen it , but it is
avaiable as of now , are you interested"
F :"I want to know more details , like the rent and facilities .."
O : "Where did you come to know about this house?"
F : "from my office bulletin board , there was an ad , but no rent was
mentioned , can you please tell me the rent"
O : "oh you work there ... , the rent is ... 15000 "
F : "WHAT 15000 .....!!!"
O : "Hmm 12000 (?) ..."
F : "WHAT 12000 !!!"
O : :"Ok , 10000 then..."
F : (sensing that his incredulous reactions were working ) "10000

?!!!"
O : "ya , i cant reduce below that"
F : "Its too much sir"
O : "Not really , there was a guy who was ready to pay 9500 , im sure
i will get someone for 10k"
F : "Best of luck sir , bye"

Acc to my friend the correct rates in that area would be around 8-9 k
mark but pretty soon it would touch 10k , coz some fool would think
owner wanted 12k and would negotiate for 10k. Sure enough , today 1 yr
down that lane you wont find a house of that size in that area for less
than 10k !!!

Another area where these owners make profit is the painting clause in
the agreement. An amount is specified in one corner of the agreement as
painting charges , it gets charged wherther you vacate after one year
as expected or much before (which happens most often than not , for IT
guys coz of job switches , onsites etc..) . Even if you vacate house
after just 2 months , though ther is someone ready to occupy the house
the same day you move out (thats the kind of demand ! ) still the owner
will charge you for painting , though he never does the painting is
another fact which never gets noticed.
Last month i vacated the house i was staying for last 1.5 yrs and moved
to a new place. We had never caused any roblem to the owner so we didnt
expect any hassles when we went to collect the advance . But it was not
to be , the guy who was always around to collect the rent , turned out
to be very busy when we wanted to get our advance (10 months rent )
back ! Atlast one month after i moved out we managed to get an
'appointment' with him . He cribbed a lot about not beinf able to find
a tenant since we had not given enough time and all then told us we
will have to pay for the painting or get the painting done ourselves.
The agreement had Rs 4000 approx as painting charges . He said that the
word aprrox was there and that by agreement we were supposed to take
care of painting. then he dropped the bomb by showing us some estimates
ranging from 10k to 8k. The cheapest option was 8k , so pay that.
Me n my roomie looked at each other with disbelief , "that sis 100 % inc
sir" , we protested, But the man would not budge after a long round of
negotiations and lot of talk about you big 'IT' guys , we small house
owners and all such things we settled for 1000 more than the orignial
4000 as we intended. Atlast he calculated the balance amount he had to give us and wrote it down and asked us to verify , i checked it and handed it to my roomie , whose eyes seemed to be glowing as he went thru the figures , after that he took charge and quickly counted the balance money (all in cash!) and asked to get moving ,we told bye to him and as soon as we stepped outsid my roomie burst into laughter and said the guy made a totalling mistake lets get out of sight before he realises and then we ran !!! That occasion GOD was on our side as the owner made
a calculation mistake and gave 1000 extra to us , so in effect we ended
up paying the same amount as we intended !!!

But not everytime u get that lucky , i shudder to think what will happen if
i have to vacate my current house . Its not the extra money that hurts
, its the tendency or that feeling there is nothing wrong in getting a few extra bucks from guys who earn a lot , which hurts ...
Dont know what name ppl keep fot this tendency , I call it looting !

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Mind Matters

Dont know what to call it : sixth sense , ESP or just a set of coincidences , but it always happens to me during my Bus journeys to B'lore from my hometown.
Let me be more clear though im still confused , or in other words let me clearly expalin a confusing thing . Ok , Ok ... Well this is 'it' ... Almost twice a month I go home during weekend and when i travel back to B'lore by Bus , I always wake up when i reach near a particular place 8-10 Km from Outer edge of B'lore city on the (in)famous Hosur Road.
Now the most puzzling thing is that this particluar point on the highway is just near where my office is located. To put it more clear terms , I seem to wake up from sound sleep , when i reach a familiar strech on the road. My mind seems to sense the fact the surroundings are familiar and gives a signal for me to wake up.
Its really unbelievable , the power of human mind or is it Brain ?
Sample this , I saw this happen on 5 different trips to B'lore from my hometown , on all the occassions the time at which we reached this particular point was different , once it was @ 4:50 AM , then once at 5:25 and another occassion at 5:50 AM , still i woke up just when i reached this place on the Hosur Road , which is roughly near my office !!!
Discussed this with a lot of my frens , we had diff theories , one I liked the most was that I travel to office daily on a particular 10 Km strech and reach my office , so the pattern of the Road is imprinted in my mind and when it reaches that strech of the Road , it recognises it subconsciously and wakes me up coz I have to get down before the regular busstop . So unless i wake up i cant get down at a place near my flat , mind recognises this dire need and remains active and alerts me !
Somthing similar happens to me when i have to get early for some emergency , for eg if i keep Alarm clcok for 5:00 , i gen wake up at 4:55 or something in time to switch off the alarm !
How and Why ? Just dont know and Dont Mind ! Thats mind ...

Monday, May 15, 2006

Whose line is it anyway ?

There was a popular TV show by this name , but the line im talking about is'nt the spoken one but the ones in which you stand in or atleast supposed to stand in also known as Queue. But tis a sad fact that ppl these days hardly recognize a Q even when they see it. Guess govt needs to promulgate some spl law to save this dying practice !
One explaination i got for this phenomenon is that Its a fast world where no one has time and everyone wants their way , hence the lack of respect for Queues. But if some ppl start following Queues then others will automatically follow was the gen opinion at my office.

One day we had a big discussion on my office bulletin board about such behaviour , some suggested a course in courtesy towards fellow employees as part of training to freshers (majoriy of offenders were new joinees) , but then majority opinion was that such things need not be taught in training , but infact should have been part of the life when ppl join the organisation , consensus was that the best way to get it enforced is to drive home the point to the offender in public that what he/she is doin is wrong so that the message is heard loud and clear and such incidents dont get repeated.

I always used to get upset when ppl broke Qs but cud never muster courage to shout at the guy/gal who did it and always used to end up cursing them under my breath or cribbing to my frens. One day i decided enuf was enuf i had to act. Then it happened ...

We were standing on a looooong Lunch Q in a horribly mismanaged office canteen which had been newly opened and hence (as ppl hadnt really tasted that food much! ) was having a huge turnout resembling a first day first show of any blockbuster movie. Three of us (each one of us big cribbers) were standing in that Q and cribbing about everything under sun esp the size of the Q , the huge delays and all ... and finally we thought the ordeal had come to an end as my friend who was standing before me in the line was about to buy the food coupon ...

Suddenly one guy, who seemed to be man in hurry, appeared out of nowhere and handed a Rs.50 note to my friend who was about to buy the coupon , and cooly said " Buddy , please get me a Roti Curry". My friend , controlled the urge to put the Q breaker to proper place and decide to give him a cold shoulder and procceded to gaze vacantly somewhere else while counter guy was issuing him the coupon .But this man was not one to give up , he repeated his order/request again. This time my friend cudn't stand it and with gr8 restraint told him strenly to go and stand in the Q like everone else.
The guy still wont give up , " C'mon it wont affect you , just get my coupon after you get yours " , he suggested.
At this point i lost my cool and I shouted at the guy " But i will be affected" , the decibel levels had gone up considerably and ppl around had turned to look at us . Sensing a good chance with my adrenalin levels at an all time high , I continued in full volume "You think all of us standing in Q are idiots? If you want to get a coupon you can join at the back of the Q".

The guy stared at us as if we were some aliens from a distant planet in the outer rim of the galaxy and with shake of his head he moved away. Meanwhile we were thrilled at having achieved a sort of moral victory and resolved to continue our crusade for bringing orderliness in our surroundings. After this I have always been a crusader for maintaining Qs and these days find a lot of ppl like us on that day doin the policing !

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Meter Down ...

"Meter down ... down down down ..." goes a latest chartbuster song rendered by Adnan Sami ,But the song doesnt mean much in Tamil Nadu. No , its not because they dont follow Hindi songs , but coz such a thing as meter doesnt exist in the autos over here ! You wud have heard of the word motor mouth (for a talkative guy) , but in these parts of India be prepared for 'meter mouth' ie mouth is the meter , Whatever the auto driver says is the rate for ur trip. Ofcourse u can haggle , yes u r expected to haggle, so he always says 100 when he expects 60 bucks , u offer him 50 , then after a few rounds of negotiations when the hot sun gets to everyone , we settle for 60. The going rate is roughly 10 Rs for a km , double of meter charge , but still that seems to be the norm. Since i use the auto on rarest of rare occasions this impression of mine cud be wrong , it mite be worser than this !. After living in 3 southern states and not owning a vehicle at places other than my hometown of Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) , i have fairly decent idea of this unique 3 wheeler vehicle and the unique folk who sit in the drivers seat and rule the roads with their own brand of rules.
Having spent most of my life there , i thought i will begin with Gods own country.
In Kerala my to and fro auto trip is well etched in my memory of early school days.
I think they are by far the best Auto drivers down south ... no hassles with them !
But my 3 years in B'lore and some time in Mysore have all been full of complex negotiations n fights with Autowallas. They have meter , but once they know u r an outsider most ppl try to get something extra out of u , which sucks ...
There are good guys , but some rotten ones are enuf to give a bad name to the enite lot ,once they find that u dont speak kannada , the attitude changes.
I learnt bits n pieces of Kannada , just for dealing with Autowallas , I always found that once I give direction in kannada , the guy wud be willing to settle for the exact meter fare. Though acc to rules from 10 PM to 5 AM they can charge 1.5 times normal , anytime after 9 at night or before 7 in the morning becomes 'one and half ' time for the auto guy , similarly any place whhich has bad roads are 'one and half' journeys ! unless u r ready to shell out more money u wont find anyone willing to take u there. Similarly any place which is not on main road means 5-10 Rs extra !
Most of my trips to railway station ( after 9 @ nite ofcourse) means most often than not they guy will expect more than meter fare and an arguement will ensue. Almost everytime I get into arguement over the extra fare demanded and unfortunately end up cursing that guy and resolving to take the bus next time . Only to resolve to forget all that while waiting on the platform for the train which never arrives on time. While waiting on the platform i suddenly realise that the poor guy also has a family to feed and all and feel bad for gettin angry.
So last weekend as i was leaving for my trip home I waskinda prepared for this cycle of fighting and later regretting.I got into the Auto and noticed that the details of the driver including his name address and all were displayed in one corner , good going by authortites , I feel. As the auto approached Railway station , i shot a quick look at the Meter and at my watch , Rs42 and 9:55PM , the latter meant a possible verbal showdown as the time was close to 10 and so auto driver wud announce "sar , one and half fare ". Was ready with mental math and was prepared to settle for Rs50 and I was gettin ready to shout my response incase he asks for more than 50. I extended the Rs.50 note to him , he shot a quick look at the meter , here we go , i thought as i waited for him to go into the now familiar its late nite i need more / the gas rate has increased etc .. dialogue
But was pleasantly shocked when the guy gave me 8Rs back , with great struggle i managed a smile and uttered a relieved Thanks ! as i realised that good autowallas do exist in real life also not just in films !

Saturday, April 29, 2006

A journey to remember

No , its not a trip to some fantastic place or a farway island or anything remotely resembling such stuff. The journey was essentially a simple one deviod of any gr8 incidents and was a simple auto trip from my house in B'lore to the Private Bus terminus. But it showed/highlighted the biggest flaw in me : I postpone things till last minute and dont do any planning. I was supposed to catch a bus @ 9 (as per ticket) and go home for looong weekend. But here i was watchin some interesting stuff on TV , discussing some nonsense which i dont even recall now with my roommate till 8:15 , then i went and packed my bags for the journey home and at 8:30 i step out of my house. Then slowly i open the ticket and lookep up the time and instead of the normal 10:00 , Departure time : 9:00 PM was staring at me ! and here i was just stepping out of my home at 8:30 , the place was 8km away and with Bangalore traffic it could take a real long time !
Luck seemed to be on my side as i spied on an auto as soon as i stepped into the street (normal days it cud take anythin b/w 10-15 to get an auto) and the guy agreed to come to the busstand. He was a middle aged guy and immediately started conversation with me in Kannada , my Kannda vocab being very very limited and the guy speaking nonstop , i stopped pretending to listen after a while and just supplied the "Yeah , Yeah" , occasionally to give him an impressiont that he had a compassionate audience willing to listen to his crubs against govt , fellow motorists and a few others whom i cudnt make out!
After a while I felt it wud be prudent to request him to go quicker as time was running out for me. "No way" repsonded the guy , "its impossible to make it by 9" he told me (in Kannda ofcourse) , he gave some explaintaion for it , which unfortunately i cudnt understand but got the bit about 4 signals standing in between me and my bus @ 9 .
My hopes slowly began to drain out of my as i started cursing myself for being so careless and irresponsible (i stop here as i the person all this being directed to is me) and swore that i will keep this a lesson and will defintely blog it as lesson to remember for myself . by now i was sure that i wud miss the bus ...
Then i started reminiscing about all the close shaves with buses and trains i have had , invariably something will happen which will delay me while i was in college and i wud be running and just ctaching the bus /train when it was moving most of the times ! Though always i wud promise myself that this kind of thing wil never happen. then one day i missed a train and after that i always used to be on the platform 30 min before ! i had been kinda following that for last 3-4 yrs but of late my old self had been resurfacing , and here i was sweatin , worried and tensed waiting for green light to flash at the first signal , with 3 more ahead...
Then suddenly it happened , things started swinging my way the autowala started driving fast (somewhat fast) and suddenly lady luck seemed to be firmly on my side as we somehow cleared all the signals without spending anytime waiting at 9:00 sharp i was at the bus terminus and cud see the my Bus still parked.
With an immense sign of relief and after thanking all the Gods i cud remember at that instant and the auto guy also for his part, i collected my luggage and glanced at the meter which stood at Rs 45.50
Feelin kinda happy at having made it inspite of not so fast auto ride , i gave the auto walla 50 bucks. "70 Rs" he announced , i was clearly shocked , "for what?" i asked , "Bhaiyya , meter is only 45 ".
The explaination he gave was a real gem
point 1:
"If not for me , you wud have missed the bus and wud have lost a lot of money, so i saved you money rite , cant u give extra"
Point 2:
"i drove fast for u" , i refuted that (cudnt control my laughter !) then he bettered that explaination with this one :
"But I helped you, I took the shortest route ,so that u cud reach faster and on time"

Now this really was startling ,the guy had admitted that he had planned to swindle me by taking a longer route and hence earn more money but now has not done it and was demanding money for being good !

Amazing logic... havent heard such a shocker for while , imagine a robber goin to a bank and negotiating for a few lakhs which he had planned to steal , but saved effort for everyone concerned by not doin it really ! ok im streching it too far , but this seemed a bit similar to that. Along with things like be responsible ,punctual , plan in advace , added 'avoid autos' also in things to remember for future !
ofcourse i dint pay him anything extra , but this trend of auto drivers demanding more than meter was not unusual , i guess i have enuf of such incidents for a seperate blog.

Now coming back to my original story , I rushed to the ticket counter and flashed my ticket , guy had a look at it and calmly announced "the bus is 10, there is a sofa here ,you can sit and wait here" !!!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Reserve or Deserve ?

Since its the hottest topic now with online petitions , sms polls and ppl on newschannels , sundry experts n just about everyone having their own expert view about it , So as a probable affected party ( thanks to my seemingly infinte attempts bell the CAT) i thought i'll also chip in with my 2 cents on reservation tangle .

For me the move to reserve close to 50% of seats in central univs n IITs n IIMs looks like an election eve 'bramastra' which annihilates all oppostion , but unlike normal promises, the ones we are pretty much used to and are conveniently forgotten and confined to bin after the elections are over, this seems to be more real n different and a dangerous and potent ace from HRD minister and by all means looks like 'Mandal Returns' a dreaded sequel to the original which created such a huge turmoil and though was hailed as a tool of social re-engineering which was designed to uplift a lot of careers but ultimately helped only some politicians uplift their political careers ! This along with the 'reservation in private sector' talk which has been going on for quite some time seems a lot more real suddenly and once they get converted to reality will surely alter the entire education and job scene.

We have been seeing a lot of online petitions , opinion polls , sms polls and interviews of common ppl from all over country and expert views and all seem to be agast and the general opinion would seem to suggest that there is a huge groundswell against such a move.
But how wrong we are ! the fact is that vast majority of the ppl who are voicing their concern onand lamenting the fact that merit is losing out to othe considerations are the ones who are affected by these. so there reaction is but natural.

Also the truth is that though India seems to be shining with Sensex zooming every other day and sectors like IT , manuacturing etc. gettin better n better by day the effect has made a lot of us pretty well to do. But the no:of ppl reping the rewards of this growth is far lesser

the downtrodden masses continue to remain so , education has not reached everyone
so the obivious step should be to ensure proper school education for the backward communties.
But thats real hard to implement and doesnt create headlines like throwing open half of the seats of India's most prestigious institutes like IITs n IIMs to backward communties.
But will they really benefit from these freebies is a really debatable. With someone pointing out what will happen if the companies which come for recruitment insist on knowing if you are a merit candidate or reservation guy , So the Question "Reserve or Deserve" in effect nullifies whatever the quota law was supposed to achieve for the ppl from backward communities!

Some ppl have hit back at such arguements saying give em a chance and see. Yes its true n sad that due to caste system lots of ppl had to suffer and remain outside the realm of development simply because of their birth. Its imperative that such discrimination has to be stopped and such ppl given chances and their fair share under the sun , but this certainly is not the way. Education from Primary onwards , spl coaching for less privileged and limited time bound resevations seem to be better soln to me esp in the light of statisctics like 50% of SC?ST students dont study beyond age of 10. So it is not rocket science to figure out where the system is going wrong , provding good infrascture and good teachers to Govt schools looks like the obvious soln.Im sure if we do a proper impartial analysis of this we can come up with many such initiatives which will benefit everyone instead of just accelerating brain drain by driving so called 'elite' students to foreign universites.

By this move only thing they will achieve is more divisionof society based on caste instead of eliminating caste system coz caste instead of losing its relevance as it rightly should these days have become passports to a secure future. There is always the danger of backlash from forward community students denied a fair chance in their own country and the rich might go abroad or use money power to get ahead but what about the poor they will simply fall behind jus like the backward communities did in previous centuries. Soon we may face a scenario where there will be need to provide reservations for forward community ! In short we are just repeating the mistakes of past and will be entering a vicious cycle.During a deabate on TV a few weeks back when ppl where fighting on merits of reservation , one of the panelists an IIM-A alumnus pointed out that we are still fighting over inc our share in the cake , when we should actually be looking at increasing the size of the cake !!!

I have seen many ppl in my student life who have got their seat in college because of reservations , but still did study hard (much harder than me i believe ! ) and put there best effort to make sure they succeded in life making using of the oppurtunity , but there were lots of others who never made that effort secure with the knowledge that their community ppl need only the barest min marks and govt jobs are always within reach as the competetion from their own communties is lot lesser. There were others who were from well off familes (the so called creamy layer), but still used reservation , when there were poor students from upper/not so backward castes who inspite of scoring marks were not able to secure admissions.

That looks like reverse discrimination to me . To stop an inequality you create another !
After 50 years of it not achieveing the desired result , ppl (politicians) are still clamouring for reservations and another surprising and heartening fact is the increasing no: of ppl who though coming under reservation , prefering not to take it and get their seats by merit. I was glad to have a few friends like that who refused crutches called 'reservation' and preferred to stand on their legs and fight with the rest. Gradually as more and more ppl get empowered , soon in not so distant past we will be hopefully be rid of quota system.
Oops ! wrong place ... Im dreaming about Utopia !!!

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

QLFC

No , it is not an insurance scheme or pension plan or Mutual fund offering or anything of that sort. QLFC expands to Quarter Life Crisis (added an F in between for Financial crisis / the crisis involving the more obvious 'F' word ;-) , wherever it is applicable along with the rest of the problems) , a term which is generating a lot of attention of late. Its something most of us can identify with and are actually going through.
a quick search on wikipedia gave me as the characteristics of QLFC :
* confusion of identity
* insecurity regarding the near future
* insecurity regarding present accomplishments
* re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
* disappointment with one's job
* nostalgia for college life
* tendency to hold stronger opinions
* boredom with social interactions
* financially-rooted stress
* loneliness

odds are that most of us have most of these !!!
Welcome to the quarter-life crisis.

What do I really want to do with my life?
is the question which we just dont have clue about and is the one we are supposed to ask ourselves n come up with a convincing answer during this stage of life

why are we so clueless , confused n frustrated ...
Is it becoz we have so many opportunities or so much freedom and so many choices ?
To an outsider , it looks like our gen has everything n we shuldnt be having any reason to crib
but then we know things are not all that rosy
It does not matter how well you are doing, when someone is doing a lot better than you.
seems to be the biggest problem !
whenver i get a feeling (mind u only a feeling , that too momentarily) that im doing well in life n earning decently , i get to hear about how much a friend or a friend's friend or his friend .... is earning n 'pop' that feelin disappears !
Come to think of it salary/money is just one of the worries , there are countless other factors which all add up to quite a potent combination and has a real unsettling effect on some.

Lots of ppl handle this in diff ways...
a few do' talk' about handling this by optin out of rat race and sorting out priorities in life , gettin their focus back on , rediscovering that urge n joy n what not , only to land up in office with same frown on the face monday after monday.

in short nobody seems happy , maybe its cool not to be happy
or maybe "grass is greener on the other side"

To be contd...

Thursday, March 09, 2006

WMD

Bush has been around here a few days back ,but this one is not about him or Iraq or anything remotely connected to it .
I have this fascination for unusual titles for very usual stuff , so this is just one more to the list !
WMD - stands for 'WoMens Day'

if (you are a woman)
{
By spelling it as WoMen , i mean even in name you have somethig more than Men !
}
else
{
i dont have to explain , we all know !
}
ok i was just kidding , the same insensitive way we ususally do when dealin with gender diff ...
its just my way of saying though WoMen are spl and i acknowledge their rightful place in the scheme of things, But in noway im able to leave out the fact that Men are equally important

most of us externally agree that in short both r equals and need each other and what not ...
But honestly deep inside i feel we never let ourselves beleive even for a sec that women can be better...

Ok coming back to serious stuff

Life I believe is a series of amazing and absurdly unusual yet perfectly logical coincidences.
By a sheer coincidence i happened to chance upon a blogevent on WoMens Day which made me realise how things actually are for Women and how badly men are treating them !

I knew things were bad , but never realised how really it is , when we (men) see PYTs (pretty young things) we never realise the kind of struggle and fight they have to put up in their day to day life to deal with inequalities.
A visit here : BlankNoiseProject
will get u an idea of what im talking about

Finally before i forget a very Happy Womens day to all u ladies !

Saturday, March 04, 2006

India One

Like Majority of folks living in a state in India other than the ones where their near and dear live , the announcement of Re.1 per min Std call rate dubbed 'India One' made by the Telecom minister brought great hopes n joy to me.
But till now the one India or India one plans announced by Airtel n Reliance will make us end up spending more than a Rupee for a min if you factor hidden costs. So still its a long way from real 'India One'.

But thats not the point i want to make , Im talking about the same term 'India One' but from another angle. It all began while preparing for numerous interviews where you get asked such scary questions about yourself like "Who are you" ( now what do u say when a guy asks u such a Q ), Tell me about yourself in 1 min ( C'mon , what do i say ?) I was always in a fix as to what do i say , Im Tamilian from kerala or Im a Malayalee from TN !...
One thing led to another and the combination of boredom and ingeniousness led to this idea as my solution to the problems facing the country !

Lanuguage and parochialism are the major problems , i concluded, which if overcome will make our country a better place to live.
This is easier said than done , after jogging my grey matter with this thought found out a ridiculously easy solution , India One !

This is one plan which will go a long way in achieving the national intergration which ppl keep harping about.
the plan (which have named as India One') as i said before is ridiculously simple , but only hitch is that its time consuming ,ie ,will take a lot of generations once it gets rolling and mite cause a lot fo social turmoil initially but as ppl slowly realise the brilliant ending it will achieve the opposition will surely come down.
I expect a lot of political parties to support it in the long run as its a 'secular' plan ! But the bigger problem is participants to take the plan forward. Taking about the plan , the plan is to unify India through generations and finally acheive at a aperson who will be a true Indian.

Im both Malayalee n Tamilian plus currently settled in Karnataka , so as the first step i have flung the net in search of Telugu and/or Kannadiga girl so that out of our alliance will emerge a true blue South Indian !
the kid can proudly answer any interviewer,auto rickshaw guy or any nosy parker's Questions like Who are you ? with Ans: South Indian ;
where are you from ? S.India ! ok the effect is not like "Indian" as old man Kamal Hassan says in the Tamil movie of the same name (Movie called Hindustani in Hindi)when posed with a similar Q ! But soon this effect will spread and my successor 2-3 generations later for all you know could be the one who will be the first to give the Answer : "Indian".
But so far the idea has not clicked coz , given a choice between a normal kid and a multilingual yet possibly demented one (like me !) , the girls seem to prefer the former !


On a serious note , last few years we have seen things like linguistic barriers , caste , religion and all have stopped being any sort of barrier to ppl uniting in love . Love has been able to surpass all these barriers and new races are created , soon (maybe 20-30) years later my presently ridiculous looking idea of India one mite actually be a common place occurance
Go India go !

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Close encounters of 'K' kind

(Warning : its really long ,not by accident but by design so that u r not tempted to read on just like that ...)

Writing CAT had been like a hobby for me , as i had been following the same routine for last 3 years ! But this time it was a pleasant surprise to find out that though my effort put in had been low compared to past , i had actually cleared it ! Just though...
So was rewarded with a single interview call (IIM-Kozhikode), something is better than nothing , i thought ! Since then lot of frens had wished my loads of luck and had shot me loads of questions ranging from what this whole stuff is to how to improve their scores and all. After that encounter (my interview) got over , i had to recount again and again to each n every friend of mine what happned on that day , so after a point i decided that i will properly capture the entire details , made it as detailed as possible with the obvious aim that because of its sheer size ppl will stop proceeding unless they are very interested &/or were askin me the details of the interview for courtesy sake. Incase someone was really interested , here goes my exp ...
...the D-day was on Feb 8th , the month of Jan was filled with practice interviews and Mock-Gds at my coaching centre , which was fun initially , met a lot of brilliant guys n gals.

Then before i knew it the D-day arrived pulled myself out of my dreary n boring world to step into a world full of oppurtunity challenges et all and i landed up @ 1 in the afternoon at IIM-Bangalore campus and was almost lost in the whole new world, then spied a few guys wearing tie , with confused expression on their faces and my hunch that they had also come to attend the interview turned out to be rite ! We all somehow found our way out of the maze of buildings and reached the correct building.

10 of us in panel , 3 guys from my company !!! 8/10 ppl with IT experience , whoa is this the 'mixture' that CAT throws up , I wondered.

Chatted in Hindi with a guy from Delhi , met a Mallu guy and struck up a quick conversation and then met a tamil guy and again chatted in Tamil with him , used English otherwise , had everyone confused about my origins !

Stepped into the room for GD , was called in last and had a very bad position on the table , the fag end !
Topic was given in the sheet of paper kept before us , we were asked to read it and when they ( 2 profs ) say start , we were to begin and discuss for 10 min on it.
It was rite out of the world , archiac English , it was Charles Dickens or rather an extract from one of his books , a small para , gist of it was that American society was going to dogs and young ones are the only hope to bring it out of decay.

All seemed confused and were making frantic notes , i too had scribbled lots of thoughts , but then realised that even i couldnt actually make out what i had written !

Then came the sound "Start" ... I tried to jump inot the fray , knew that whatever little stuff i had , lots of others too would have , so better dump it first , But found that 3 others had the same idea and all started and we all found it jarring and halted dead in our tracks . Then one guy suddenly quoted George Bernard Shaw and all fell silent , someone agreed wit the quote and the discussion started , i jumped into the fray with some points of my own and made a few entries here and there about America , Hollywood ,materialism and what not , but i was sitting in such a way that panel wud never see my face when i spoke and was always afraid that my points wud be credited to guy next to me , who also spoke on similar lines , except for 3 ppl all others spoke but lack of ideas showed.
Overall ok , not good by any means ,personally and also for group.

we were dismissed after 10 min before we kinda warmed up and were told to wait outside , till they call us one by one.
We all waited , me being last in the list had the longest wait , the guys who had their interviews first , were grilled by us waiting outside and at every 15 min , one interview got over and the next one was called and all others left one by one wishing me luck.
So armed with all those wishes , i bravely stepped in to face them ...

Two Profs (P1, P2) were there on the Panel and they warml wlcomed me and asked the Q i was expecting and had a ready Answer .
P1 :"Last person to be called in for interview ,Long wait rite ?".
I shot of my pre-prpared answer with humility and humour. That was the only part where i was in control !
P2 (with a smile):"which IIM will u choose and Why ?"
me:gave Beggers can't be choosers kinda response n told them that this is my only call and hope n pray that things go well and i make it.
P1 and P2 (earnestly): All the best
me , though a bit surprised , said thanks sir
then the grind started
P1:What is the probability of clearning interview and gettin a seat at IIM
me: rattled of the fact that there were 800 odd seats ( dont know know from where that no: stuck in my mind) and 3000 ppl approx , so 1:4

he didnt agree at all and had long debate about it and asked me to repeat my reasoning again and then asked for IIMK hat is tha chance , i said , i read somewhere that 1800 ppl were called for 180 seats , he looked surprised and siad that seems to be too high a figure ( i was relieved ! ) and asked me my source of info , i said newspapers. P1 and P2 exchanged surprised glances

P1: So what are your interests ( going through the personal data sheet I had filled and submitted) , oh reading , is it ? Why do everone read ? Ok What do u read
me: rattled off a the last book i had read ( was a book about China , hence had done my full homework on all possible Qs about China n all ) , explained about the book for a while , he didnt seem too interested !
P1: Other books ?
me: continued mentioning names of other books i had read in recent past , finally said "The Alchemist" and interviewer seemed interested and i added that the book was really inspiring
P1: oh is it , tell me the story
me: explained the gist of it
P1: No tell me the proper story , from start to end
me: ( i had read it 2yrs back) started hesitantly and tried to tell the story , found going too tough and started explaining the gist of it
P1: No , tell me the story if u have read the book
me: i had read it 2 yrs back and explained that t was what u derieved out of the book that was imp and explained what i got out of it
P1: other books
Me: mentioned some more and stopped
P1: So u write ? What do u write
me: used to blog , just personal stuff .. I have written a few short stories
P1: tell me
me: explaining the plot and judging from the guys looks , gave up midway and told him that the stor was interesting because of the humour and fun with words that i had employed and i cant narrate that so well.
P1: So u studied Electrical engg , what is it
me: explained what and all i had in the course
P1: (cutting me off) how long has the branch existed
me: (clueless)offer my guess
P1: no its older than that , so whats the most imp electrical invention used in industry
me: motor
P1: ya , so let me ask u something which noone has answered properly before ( hint of smile on his face)
me: sure sir
P1: So How will Motor evolve in next 20 or say 50 years later
me: thinkin n blurting a few nonsesnsical replies , suddenly utter something meaningful about my idea for a smart motor !
P1: (smiles), ok
P1: so what r ur other achievements , anything diff than others ? , oh u have written acting in skits , what did u do
me: explains
P1: act n show !
me: really sir ? it was not a one man stuff ( suddenly was getting reminded of ragging during college days ! )
P1:fine do it urself

I got up and performed one of those skits ...
P1:hey i had seen this during my college days also , what is this ! Ok i will tell u some situations in life , u act n show it
(this seemed straight out of my days as fresher in college ! )
I did whatever he asked me to do , halfway thru he asked e do u find this funny , u have a trouble hiding a smile of embarrassment ! and sked me to take my seat
P2 (was observing me all this while , now full of smiles): ok Electrical Engg
P2: What is Corona ?
me: Sir, it comes in High Voltage , causes some loss or something , but can't remember
P2:asked a couple of other gen Q me:tried explaining but gave up halfway through saying I was familiar with these during college days , but it has been 2.5 yrs since i graduated , Now im working in another domain altogether
P1 & P2 nodding
Still no Q about my Company , Work-ex , my domain at work which i was fully prepared
my attempts to draw them to it was just not working !
P2:Who is the collector of B'lore
Me: No idea .Sir
P2:Who is the CM of Karnataka ? and a couple of sundry Q n some Q about cricket
me:answer almost all of em coz they were very simple

P2:what brand is this mineralwater , ame other popular brands?
me:answers that Q
P2 shot a glance at P1 who nodded his head and they wished me all the best and P1 escorted me out

Leaving me even more confused as i tried to find my way out of the maze again to step back into the dreary n weary world outside !

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Ennui !

My wallpaper says it all !

"Someone's boring me
and i think it is me"


hope it says more than enuf , dont know what to , im at cross roads in every aspect of life really ! one of these days surely need to decide something or other , gettin bored of just drifting along
Currently everything seems uninteresting or routine or i should say trite (i guess thats the best word)...
Don't know how n when i will get out of this .
xpect something to jolt me out of this sooon ...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

to V or not to V

Morning news was filled with either ppl in Red celebrating V-day or ppl in Black also 'celebrating' V-day in their own styles !

Simple point is if u have a girl u will be in Red ( literally and figuratively ;-))
otherwise u turn out in black in protest; to protest what, im not so sure !

Monday, February 13, 2006

Read and Tailor !

The otherday there was a discussion among my friends about how Hindi movies are copycats and so on. Some guys had very strong opinions about bollywood films coz they were mostly poor copies of hollywood fare. A few of us were opposing this view , our point was that there are very few original works , there are lots of clones and inspirations which cannot be classfied as copy and looked down upon. Agreed, there are lots of Bollywood movies which are pure lifts ie frame by frame re-make , which some enlightened reviewer points out to us and we look down upon it as a copied and hence 2nd rate product. But the fact is that vast majority wouldn't have seen the hollywood movie in the first place , so the story and movie would be something novel for them and they would actually thoroughly enjoy it. I can remember scores of films which were hollywood inspired , but had localised the stories and had adapted them to Indian situations so were good, some were even better than the originals(I liked Kaante better than Reservoir Dogs!). There have been lot of hollywood inspired stories , where the central idea would be from a western movie , but most of the situations will Indianesque (Tamil blockbuster Ghajini from Memento).
I dont' see harm in such movies as long as you are entertained you should not be complaining. Ofcourse plagiarising is bad , but in some cases it becomes a homage to the original. If due credits are given then we can see this 'copy'/'inspirated' cinema as a means to convey good cinema/stories to parts of the world which it wouldn't have reached because of language or culture limitations. Same is the case with regional cinema , down south there have been numerous movies which are made in Malayalam and get remade in Tamil , Tamil movies-> Telugu,Kannada and vice versa.
The fact is that all these states have their own industry , with their own stars and way of story telling. So dubbing a movie doesn't work always ,hence they go for remakes tailored aptly for each state. 'Manichitrathazhu' a classic in Malaylam went to karnataka as 'ApthaMithra' and landed up as Rajni film tailor made for Tamil audiences in from of 'Chandramukhi'
Coming back to the main issue , even Hollywood movies are mostly adapted from good novels , these days all best sellers are instantly lapped up for movies. But Indian fiction is still in a nascent stage , so we have to rely on Hollywood or other cinema for stories.
Recently saw this ,
which is really encouraging ,hopefully we will also soon be doing 'Read and Tailor' method for movie scripts !

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Road to Nowhere : Part-2

'horny' / 'horn-happy' or not traffic rules are almost non existant. Im not complaining , why should all countries be the same , we are unique in our own way !Last week at office , we played host to a Canandian from our client company , who had come to impart some training for us. While we were talking , the guy ( an India lover actually ) said earlier he used to be surprised when some Indians he met at the client office told him they didn't know to drive. Well with auto gear cars around all you needed to know was how step on gas and how to brake thats all , whats to learn in this he used to think and hence was amused to see 'Drving Schools' when he first visited.But now after coming here he has been exposed to a whole new world of driving , he said. He too concurred with me that it adds to the charm of the country , but then added that if you have to put up with this sort of thing daily then it surely becomes one hell of problem.So thats the system here , no system at all; still things move on or chug along. Earlier the bus journey from my place to office used to last 40 min . Well that was a good 2 years back, but gradually over the years the time has increased and now has almost doubled. But the best part is our tolerance , we crib , we rant but in the end accept these delays as part and parcel of the game. It all happened in phases , the travel time would suddenly increase by 20 min , people started getting angry , irritated , then it it would improve a bit but would be worser than before , bit ppl will be happy, slightly better than before they say.Every now and then there used to be talks of Govt. not doing anything , then suddenly someone points it out that 'IT' guys or Bangalore is not everything for the Govt. , they have millions of mouths to feed and look after in rural hinterland , where ppl are much worser off and we city slickers ought not to be complaining as long as we have something which can pass off as a road. Think about your rural bretheren , they said and we , part ashamed of being too demanding and also for getting the best facilities and life , kept quiet.Anti-IT = Pro-Farmer ! As long as you are not spening too much on him , Im happy , even if Im also not getting anything. Wow what a logic, wonder who thought of such a simple formula , in essence you need not do anything anywhere. As yet another day dawns and fades away as i sit in the comforts of my office bus , my sympathies for ppl out there on roads on your vehicles , my heart really goes out for you. Meanwhile at office , im pressing for TV and Dvd player in our buses . We can catch an entire Hindi movie , Im sure. Anyone listening ?