Sunday, August 30, 2009

Visiting the memory lane...!!

I am back to Bangalore after a gap of around two years on a very short trip. The moment I landed here, I could feel happiness inside me. I was really happy to be here. Met few old buddies, enjoyed the time spent with them and felt like I was away from my home for so long.

I am feeling nostalgic ever since I landed, although its just two years but still..what a feeling. Met one new member of our gang, she is too young to be more expressive n terms of spoken and written language but she was lovely. I played with that little angel for around an hour and couldn't realise that how time flew away. Tomorrow is a wedding of one more friend and I am looking forward to meet many more friends over there.

Wish I could visit this place and meet them all more frequently...!!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

What is Independence…??

The nation is celebrating its 61st Independence Day today. India’s struggle for it is a story of hundreds and thousands of men, women and even children who laid down their lives for attaining this. Many of them never got a chance to see this Independent country. Many of them went unsung and no one knows or remembers them. But as years passed, the sentiments attached with this day are gone. Its now just a holiday which combined with weekend gives a chance to visit home and take rest. Even in schools  children are not interested in being there for flag hoisting ceremony.

What is independence for this generation, is it freedom to work anywhere in country (which again is becoming a problem), freedom to express one’s view (that again is getting restricted to news anchors only), freedom to wear whatever one likes, eat whatever one wants, study whatever he or she wants or anything like that. We get emotional when India plays a match with Pakistan, a temporary emotional when a Kargil war happens and a little feeling of pride when Kalpana Chawla goes for a space mission(who rarely visited India).

Every one grabs the first chance they get to migrate to US, UK or Australia. I will not blame them also, not everyone is ready to give away the quality of life which is being offered by these countries. See what we who opted to stay here are getting. Poor infrastructure in terms of pathetic roads, poor electric supply , non existing or very poor public transport. After so may years of Independence a bill for free primary education is accepted in parliament whereas people who migrate abroad are enjoying all these for so many years. I wonder why these politicians need so big bunglows and so may free telephone calls when they are elected to server the nation. Why can’t the government have an apartment with all the ministers staying in separate flats in it. It will save lots of efforts and money in terms of providing infrastructure and security. A common vehicle can ferry them from their residence to parliament (if they want or opt to attend the parliament sessions). Providing security will be also less stressful for security personal. Any one who has visited Delhi must have crossed the area captured for these politicians.

APJ Abdul Kalam has mentioned in his book ’Wings of Fire’ that “never think of the scope, work hard to create that scope.” Kalam rejected several offers from abroad and stayed in this country and contributed to making India a super power. He stayed in just one room of Rastrapati Bhavan when he was serving the nation as President. Do we really think alike ??

I remember a statement given by one of our visiting lecturer “Indian is not a poor country, its just a poorly managed country” . So its we all who are responsible for making this a perfectly managed country. We as an individual should contribute to the betterment of our country by helping in keeping it clean, by paying taxes in time and in full, keep a watch on how is our money being spent by authorities and cross question them if required (we have RTI act, isn’t it), utilising resources responsibly, pooling cars while commuting to office everyday, treating everyone same irrespective of their caste and creed, through improved work ethics and environmental behaviour.

Let us love our country for what it is and let us work together to make it the best so that the coming generations will thank us for preserving our India as “Incredible India”

This will be a real tribute to the all the unsung heroes of freedom and for all of those we know who laid their lives so that we can live free in this free India.

Is PVR worth visiting and that too after spending this much money…..??

I went yesterday with my friends to watch a newly released movie at PVR, ambience mall, Gurgaon. This was supposed to be a fun time out for us. But turned out to be a stressful experience. The video quality was pathetic, sound also too bad to bear. One of our friend had a headache on watching this poor performance. I am not sure it was because of bad movie or bad projection of movie or both. But we couldn’t bear it. We complained to the service manager of PVR who came and after much requested tried to accept that there is some problem with the show.

But he said he can do nothing, instead offered all of us tickets for any other movie we wanted. We were already pissed off with the experience we had and were in no mood to watch any movie again. Even one of our friend walked out of the theatre.

Although the manager offered us the tickets, this is not what we expect from something like PVR. Everyone going there spends hell lot of money to watch movie in these multiplexes. And see what we get in return. The quality of movies which we get by road side illegal vendors  is lot better than what we saw yesterday at PVR.

These guys should really think that money which people are spending on purchasing the tickets is not earned so easily and should value the time and money of everyone. We went for a fun filled evening that was really screwed by those guys.

This experience forces me to think if these multiplexes are worth visiting…??

Monday, August 03, 2009

Why don’t people understand???

It was while I was travelling on Howrah-Delhi Rajdhaani yesterday, I again had an experience. I was sharing my cabin with five other people, two moms and two daughters and one of their friend. My god they never stopped their chit chatting for the whole journey, they were like talking machine. Both Aunti ji were really irritating. Their grown up daughters were also funny, playing Ludo along with Snakes and ladder, both makeup boxes. One of them created a scene while trying to reach to the upper berth, everyone were laughing watching the drama by her. I couldn’t stop laughing.She was happily sitting on my berth and never ever asked me if I wanted to sit at my place. When after dinner I wanted to sleep at around 9.00 PM they said they want to sit for some time after dinner and I have to wait. Finally I got my place at around 10.30 PM and I started my laptop for watching movie, to which also the Aunty ji had an objection, gave me good gyan and I have to shut it down. Somehow managed to sleep which was again interrupted by her at 6.45 AM saying that its too late and she won’t allow me to sleep just because she wanted to sit now. I was too sleepy to argue and I shifted to upper berth. She also told me that while travelling I should adjust to other’s requirements also. I wonder what else I should have done to please them. How shameless are these who never care for anyone while travelling and will give full time gyan to others about adjusting while travelling in public transport. If they need so much care why the hell she was travelling in AC 3 tier, she could have opted for AC 1st class and other’s would had travelled in peace.

I hate these types and believe that they should be thrown out of the train for all this dramatic behaviour.