Facts n Fiction

To summarize the title and simply put it, just come to Pune, and deal with some shopkeepers in “the peth area” and rickshaw drivers in “out-of-the-city-limit areas” . With over 1 year already spent here in Pune, I have encountered such people every single day and I am yet to find an exception. Public transport in the city is still at its worst. While on one side it gives pride to see the IT growth and consumerism flourishing in the city, basic infrastructure necessities still stand in debatable position. The day I am not lucky enough to find a friend to go to office, I start feeling very low, depressed thinking about what vehicle will I get to go and how will I deal with the rickshaw drivers – the most shameless fellows that I have ever experienced in my life (I am talking of the ones plying between Hinjewadi and Wakad upto Pimple Saudagar etc). 100, 150, 70, 80, they quote anything for a distance of 3kms to 7 kms and you should look at the pride on their face. The rickshaw stands sho...

It has been over a year that I am taking the same route from home to office and back. Nothing has changed ever since except the face of the road that I travel on, from muddy to stony to rocky to messy to bumpy to dusty and so on, needless to mention the bottlenecks and eventual traffic jams. The road was being mended from time to time – widening, concretization, but it stopped one day only to begin again just before the onset of monsoon. There were troughs, craters, humps everything possible on that road and then there were rains too to mess it up further. I was surprised (I was beyond everything to get worried, frustrated or angry) with the planning, vision, and estimation of the body governing the road renovation – right in times of rains they took up the execution task. It doesn’t take much of logic to anticipate that it would be better to complete the work before the rains so that commuters have a hassle free ride/drive. This is just a micro example of the kind of leadership we are...

A few days back I was watching some program on television, where youngsters of our country (college going, just out of college, and similar others) were asked some questions about ISRO. The questions were quite simple like “What is the full form of ISRO?”, “What is done at ISRO?”, “Why was ISRO in news few days ago?”, and so on. Surprisingly there was only one who knew what ISRO is all about, the rest, shamelessly, gave any weird answers that could have made ISRO founders and scientist die of shame. Much similarly, the “mobile-mall-multiplex” generation is also confused between 15th August and 26th January (aaahhh, even some of our politicians are confused about this), and does not know who is the father of our nation, and does not know our national game, and many such things required for national general knowledge. Awful! When these same youngsters are asked about Rakhi Sawant, they jump up in joy saying, “O yes, I saw that how she slapped her boyfriend and what drama she did during ...

Shikha called me up today, at 12.30 post midnight. She was sounding tensed. I knew that she was not happy with her marriage getting fixed with some guy. She pretended to sound normal but I could sense her worries. I asked her about the marriage preparations. She answered most of my questions with ‘hmmm’, ‘ya’, ‘ok’, ‘lets see’, and ‘don’t know’. Shikha was to get married to Arun on 20th of this month. She was obviously sad, not for the reason that she was to leave her parents but because she was going to someone with whom she was not at all comfortable, her would-be husband. He can hardly talk, she cribbed always, she meant to be able to communicate, which was among the biggest turn offs for her. She had completely surrendered to her parents will, and couldnt dare to fight back. She made fun of her would-be whenever she spoke to me, may be that was just one of the ways to rejoice and relax. I dint mind it either, I laughed with her. Every single day she had something or the other to co...

“The maximum salary a government employee would get is Rs. 80000 per month” says the new 6th pay commission. It is a party time for all our government employees with salary increments announced being around 50% and more. The new 6th pay commission drafted out new salary figures for government servants and all this is going to cost our government a whopping Rs. 12500 crore – a small amount if we were to total the number of scams, frauds, and ill practices that the politicians proudly execute. However, certainly a huge amount if we were to consider the extent of development we can do to our country. Add to this the new packages will be applicable from June 2006 thus paying these fat politicians fat arrears. Well I am not against anyone deserving, getting rewarded proportionately. For e.g. considering the corporate structure, the IIM and IIT grads can very well command such salaries as their outputs are commendable and certainly contributing for some betterment. For government employees ...

Why not? Certainly shower colors that you want to, sprinkle water, and enjoy the festive season of Holi, the spring festival that we recently celebrated a day ago. However, something that I have never been able to comprehend is what pleasure do people derive out of hitting some stranger with a balloon or coloring him/her. I still remember the days when walking in my colony on a Holi day (also includes 2 previous days) was no less than walking through a battlefield where you don’t know from where a bomb (balloon) might strike you. It wasn’t scary but irritating and the tradition continues. Though I must confess that as a child, even I had practiced such things when throwing balloons at anyone was seen as mere fun without applying any logic to it. However, that was when I was very young and as I grew up those things started rather appearing foolish to me. And that is when I stop celebrating the festival of colors and water (being unnecessarily wasted). My disgust kept increasing with pas...

“10 lakh girls missing from Indian population” , I came across this curiosity-filled headline on a news channel’s website. The news piece spoke about the female foeticide, sex determination, selective abortion etc and that’s how there was a deficit of 10 lakh girls. You may wish to go through the complete article - http://www.ibnlive.com/news/10-lakh-girls-missing-from-indian-population/60570-3.html . It is really surprising that such acts are still being practiced despite many of us boasting about women’s liberlisation and their equality. Though many things around have changed, somehow the overall mentality of our society of looking at the opposite sex is still the same. The male ego gets hurt easily when he sees woman power rising, however, he loves woman on top in some cases. The gender bias that the rural illiterate stick to is somewhat understood considering that their mindsets are still ruled by the long inherited opinions of their seniors. However, the article stated above menti...