Facts n Fiction

It is a little over a month that I am here in London and surprisingly I haven’t missed much of my many past years in India (read Mumbai and Pune), and I still am not – I am not going through any of those home sick kind of feelings, not yet at least. Nonetheless, during nothing-to-do times, certain things keep calling me back home, all of which may really sound absurd and evidently they are: The Hindi Galis – I really really miss the hard hitting, punching, and one-tight-slap-like our vernacular galis. It seems like it has been ages that I have heard the real Maa-Bhen stuff, or even used my favourites “chu…” and “IZ” tags. There are no street fights here, no any careless crossing of roads and hence no furious drivers, no frustrated rickshaw drivers or bus conductors, and thus the tedium. Chinese ka gadi – I have loved the food here, especially the bakery items, the yoghurts (the Greek style one is just yummy), and most of the non-veg stuff. However, at times I pine for the tangy

So our King Khan, Mr. Shahrukh is detained at an airport in the US and the Master-Marketer has blown the issue out of proportion. It seems that the name “Khan” was the root of the problem and the Bollywood superstar was questioned for couple of hours. Then; SRK shocked, politicians telephoned, embassy people run for rescue, new channels blabber away with breaking news of racial profiling, and Bollywood crazy-emotional people give all sorts of galis to the US officials. Shahrukhji, you could be the world for some and God for many, but that’s in India. On a foreign land, you are just one among many who land at the port of entry and for the officers you are just another traveller. It is quite acceptable of the officers who were diligently performing their duty, the law & security regulations there, probably see one and all with equality, unlike what happens in our country. You may a great personality here in India but certainly not a VIP in some other country. It is not always neces

From the time when I started my journey to London and amidst making lists of “what-to-do” and “what-not-to-do”, one thing that constantly sprawled my mind was to see the “London Stock Exchange” (LSE), I am kind of obsessed with stock markets. Also, a close friend cum stock market analyst partner of mine had battered enough LSE into minutest of my brain cells. I had to see the London Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world! My busy and tiring schedules kept pushing my LSE plans away, and they had now drifted so much that the expiry day, last Thursday of the month, was fast approaching :-]. I had to close my call, not that I would have been indebted to huge sum, but rollover is something which I had never practiced. Tuesday morning (yesterday), I decided that I will go and see the London Stock Exchange. Out of terrible excitement and curiosity to see the London Stock Exchange, I had finally located it on the road map. In the evening, after completing my day’s work

Finally! After all the nail-biting delays and amidst the nervousness, confusion and excitement, I reached London - my first international trip. Frankly speaking, I could not believe for initial 2-3 days that I am in London. Every time I travelled the areas around my office and place where I am currently staying I felt that I was in Mumbai, South Mumbai to be precise, everything resembled so well, almost, tall buildings, double-decker buses, trains, platforms, people rushing in and out of the platforms (like what I have seen at Churchgate station in Mumbai). Gradually, however, I started getting the feel of London with so many white people around walking around in business suits, chilling temperature, and shops that displayed price tags in pounds. I am here finally; for all who know what it took me to be here will understand this better. A week old in London, I have adjusted pretty well and doing quite fine, I have been hogging on non-veg everyday – meat of all sorts with curry, rice, a

Finally the back-to-back cricketing extravaganza is over, I mean the 20-20 championships. No, I did not take any interest in the IPL, neither did I savour ICC T-20 world cup. However, I did watch some cricket last night – only the last few deliveries when Afridi hit a boom-boom six and a four to bring the match tally to run-a-ball. I was quite sure that Pakistan would win the finals and hence channelled away to some other entertainment stuff. A while later when surfing through the channels, I noticed on a news channel that Pakistan had won the ICC T-20 world cup. The triumph was celebrated with much delight, and most importantly the satisfaction was something to watch for. The Pakistan team, the spectators, were in a euphoric mood, especially the fans on street of Pakistan, who had forgotten all evil that had happened and was happening in their country, they had to kiss many frogs before they met the prince – it was such a moment yesterday. I was feeling somewhat happy too at their win

Lately I have been reading about the racial abuse that has been going on in Australia with our Indians. I know you must have been following that news item too. As much as it must have angered you, it enraged me equally; I was completely out of my limits. How can they do this to us? Who do they think they are? A fair skin has no right to claim supremacy over a dark skin, certainly not. Going through news on various channels only annoyed me further. I switched of the television and couched back to clear off those slides from the ridges of my brain. However, the shadows would rarely vanish. I sulked and sank more into those thoughts of racism, hatred, and intolerance. Soon I developed a feeling that it is not only about Australia, but events of hatred happen all over the world, sometimes even we (Indians) do it. Hold on! It is not a blind accusation, I have seen it happen. Before that let us look at some dictionary meanings of the word ‘ racism ’, it means ‘ racial discrimination ’ or 

(Sahir Redij & His First Painting) Look at that! My nephew, Sahir’s first painting (his mother has proudly framed it). Isn’t that great for a two-and-half year old kid? Yes, he might have just filled in the colours in the already sketched octopus, but look at the colour sense, look at the accuracy – very rarely has the colour gone out of the lines, and that’s what makes me flaunt his art here on my blog.