Holi hai.... aur bahut kuch hai...

HINDU. MUSLIM. CHRISTIAN. We rate these 3 religions on the basis of number of followers and you would get these 3 religions on top 3 positions* (in a reverse order though). And may be that is why we see lot of heat and friction between the people of these 3 religions. We have had many great personalities asking us to live in harmony but there efforts have been in vain against the politicians effort :) . Well, it seems now even nature has stepped in against the politicians (read 'power greedy'). We had three festivals of these three religions on one day. 21st march 2008 was the day when Holi, Id and Good Friday fell. I think all who read this would know what I meant to say by mentioning this point. The same old 'please unite' ka naara. Bhai log (and behen log too), even nature is urging us to stay united. What else do we need?!

One more thing which was sort of ironic coincidence - Dhuleti (one day after Holi) and World water day fell on the same day. Holi has transformed from festival of colours to festival of colours and WATER (and I think it won't be too long before we add Noise to it, with DJ business flourishing). I got a forward email which gave a shocking fact (not sure if its a fact) that the quantity of water that will be wasted in Mumbai on the day of Dhuleti will be equal to what is used for irrigation in Rajasthan in ONE YEAR! I did not believe that fact and dismissed that as exaggeration. But when I went down for holi celebrations in my society, I saw arrangement of rain dance! What a profligacy?! I was forced to restore that forwarded email fact from the recycle bin folder of my brain and give it a second thought. What made me even more sad specifically was that the World water day had to fall(22nd march) on the same day as Dhuleti.

* For people who are interested in stats christians form ~33% , Muslims ~20% and Hindus ~14% of the world population

Life Stages of India - an analogy with Human life

A wise man once said that status of a man in his different phases is dependent on different factors. The status of a man when he is 20 reflects the position of his parents in society; at the age of 40, person’s status is majorly a reflection of his own achievements and at the age of 60, it’s the achievement of his children that defines his status in society. I wondered if same applies to our country, India. And I found a very interesting analogy (though not sure whether someone else would find it interesting :) ). Analogy that I can think of goes like :
India(as a person) <-> Government of India.
Parents of India <-> Freedom Fighters.
Children of India <-> We, the people.

India is 60 years old now (considering she was born on 15th August 1947). When we see the prestige of India in world around 1967(20 years old), I think people across the world admired our culture and it was seen as a country with bright future. This was what our freedom fighters had sacrificed their lives for.
Then, comes the mid stage of India's life i.e. in 1987 (40 years old now), Indian economy was in dire straits. License raj, bureaucratic corruptions, ever declining Forex reserves, labour strikes etc. had taken indian economy to ransom. India was still called ‘Developing’ nation. The use of word ‘Developing’ was euphemism I suppose, because Indian economy was nothing more that ‘Stagnant’, rather ‘Un-Developing’ would have been the perfect choice of word. Well, we cannot blame only the Government for this as we are the ones who elect them, but I feel Indian public was still too nascent to know the powers of democracy.
The last stage(by last, I mean the latest :) ) of India’s life : 1987-2007(60 years old,..actually 60 years YOUNG). This is the period when Children of India made their mark. In almost whatever fields people have ventured into, we have done beyond expectations. Government did take a step of liberalising Indian economy in 1991, but that was more of a forced step than a well thought one as government treasuries were nearing bankruptcy. (Again, taking nothing away from PV Narasimha Rao, who really hurried up the whole process). And about the present status of India, I think I need not say much about it. sone ki chidiya aa rahi hai *!

(i would love to have your comment on this.... if you have some additions to this analogy or even if you can find an audit in my way of thinking.. i am sure there are many cases which i have missed out here... I would love to get those from you)

*took the liberty of taking that from a TV commercial of Future Group

Is history for textbooks only?

Will we learn from our history or it will be limited to textbooks only?
Any one who knows a bit of post independence Indian history and has given it a thought to it will agree to a point that Sardar Vallabh-bhai Patel should have been preferred to Jawaharlal Nehru for the first prime minister of India (Don't mean to say that Chacha Nehru was incapable, but only the best should be doing the job). If Sardar had been PM, one significant change that would have been for sure, is that we would have never known any region like PoK. Rather, there was every possibility of having IoP*. This was one faux pas which is still haunting us, 60 years after, and will probably do so for ages. The point is that we have been longing for such an aggressive PM since then. We got Indira Gandhi, but she inherited her father's socialist ideology and helped sabotaging Indian economy even more by undoing the process of liberalisation, which Lal Bahadur Shastri had initiated one month before he died in Tashkent.
The point i made about learning from history is because we do have one man in India now, popularly known as NaMo in his native... Narendra Modi. Well, he has been marred with the controversies (Post-Godhra incident riots) . But who has not been!?, even senior leaders of present Government were involved in 1984 sikh riots (the only reason why they are let-off is because of lack of media reach in 1984). But, the development in Gujarat is Astonishing, to say least. Whether it be infrastructure or education, whether it be reduction in corruption or improvement in over-all administration.. Gujarat has been awesome! and all this in span of mere 5 years!
so will we acknowledge Narendra Modi and much needed aggression that he cultivates, and work towards making him a country's head or will we allow another iron man to melt down and fade away!?

*IoP - Indian Occupied Pakistan ;-)

2001 v/s 1984

As the Gujarat elections come nearer and nearer, we see more and more coverage in media criticizing Modi government and congress rallies targeting Modi for his way of handling Post-Godhra riots. But the only thing which pinches me is why only Modi is being targeted? Why not congress leaders who were the main culprits in 1984 sikh riots? How can media allow congress to get away with criticizing Modi’s acts, and doing nothing about carnage of Sikhs. On the other hand, Congress has never been able to do the kind of development in decades of being in power which Modi govt has done in just a matter of 5 years, and it is quite evident!
I have a feeling that TV media is being too pro-congress in this issue and I have started losing respect for it.

2020 SUPERPOWER?!!

Today I read in headlines in Economic Times 'INDIA superpower in 2020' … well, who expected India to win the 2020 world cup?!, but they WON !…
and who expects INDIA, as a economy, to really become superpower by 2020,.. People say it's a bit far fetched dream of Abdul Kalam (our Ex-President had quoted that INDIA will be superpower in 2020, during his 5 year stay at rashtrapati bhavan)
one thing I am sure about is that its not only 11 men's job as it was done yesterday in a cricket 2020….
it's a job of more than 50 crore young Indians!!! … so can we prove it !? .or we will simply be a spectator of others' achievements,… bask on hardwork done by someone else and keep waiting for INDIA to become superpower…
well, INDIA will become superpower, but now it's a matter of how soon.. whether in 2020 or 2050!?.. that answer has to be given by us!! .. not just by talking, but by DOing!! .. as SRK says in LEAD INDIA advt.… DOMINATION starts with DO…

well, coming back to lighter mood.. the T20 WC was indeed a fairy tale journey for team india , and for that matter, Pakistan too.. both teams miserably knocked out of the WC of bigger version of the same game… both teams in the hands of a young captain… both teams devoid of experienced minds (rather slow legs) … so much in common.. but there was one more thing in common about this whole event .. INDIA has never lost a WC match against PAK.. and thankfully, law of averages didn't catch up yesterday!!, YES, INDIA won .. team who had bid farewell to the top 3 contenders of WC, that's England, SA and Australia…
and also corroborated one thing yesterday… 'The probability of winning is inversely proportional to the expectation of people ' .. well, I did end on a sarcastic note about INDIA.. but sarcasm is my middle name (again, taking nothing away from my DAD, who officially forms my middle name .. hehehehe) … ;-)
thanks for reading guys… had just written this for fun, by the time I wait for my INFY service desk to install some stupid software tool on my PC …

Home Sweet Home

The moment I stepped out of an airplane in Mumbai this time … I felt the tickling of cool breeze flowing across the airport fields (mumbai and cold breeze sounds a bit of a paradox, but i was back from chennai, so talking on relative terms )… the aroma of the Mumbai air, which had made me a big time complainant till 1 and half a year back, gave a mesmerising feeling to my nasal senses…
Embarking out of airport on mumbai streets, took an auto and started towards home sweet home… enroute to home, I saw the common sight on andheri-kurla road.. thats the the sign boards, warning you to ‘Go slow. work in progress’ ... I have always and seriously felt that they have misplaced a punctuation mark, the more apt message is ‘Go. Slow work in progress’… anyways, each instance of that sight used to resurge the frowning half of me, when I frequented that road in my college days...but this time it brought a bright smile on my face, as many times as it made me curse then! …
The beggars, the stink of mithi river (which was known only as one big gutter before 26th july rain made it famous), the rash driving of auto drivers... all gave a feeling of homeliness and made me Blissful :)....
back home.. however tired you are, somehow miraculously, all weariness disappears ...

And the moment I entered my home, I saw the most beautiful face…mom standing in front of me with a beaming smile and loads of satisfaction clearly evident on her face…HEAVEN! ...

Janma Din Mubarak Ho, Bharat Mata !!

Happy independence day guys! so it's been 60 long years since we have had our freedom.. even if we have not seen a fight for the freedom, we surely know the pain that our great grandfathers have undergone, just for the sake of a place where we can live the way we want, .. the freedom of speech, freedom to move around, or for that matter, freedom to do whatever we want, irrespective of our religion and color!... isn't that great... but have we ever given a thought what have we given them back?!!! ...Don't worry, I am not blaming anyone here.. just requesting you to ask this question to yourselves... question yourself 'What have I done and what will I do to give back those freedom fighters, so that wherever they are, they will feel proud of having great grandsons like me?' ... No need to measure sacrifices or the charity one does for country, ONLY by the amount of money or time you spend... Most of the things that you can do to help our motherland are often in our day to day life .. like not wasting the resources... for instance, how many of you switch off the lights/ fans/monitors while leaving office... its not that difficult to do that.. we just have to be a bit more conscious and it could be of great help as we are facing acute shortage of electricity (we wont notice that, living in big cities and high tech offices, but it's a huge problem that we are facing rite now in India)..the same thing goes for water also... the amount of water people waste is just outrageous.. I am not asking you to stop taking bath, (that will cause problems to people around you .. ;-) )... but use it judiciously!! These things are easy if you consciously try!!
The other thing which I really find disturbing amongst us is people's attitude towards participating in our democracy.. it is surely the biggest democracy in the whole world, but I think we can do it better and easily break our own record... again I am not asking you to go out and fight for elections... that is not as easy... but at least 'VOTE', my friends.... people refrain from voting saying 'NO CANDIDATE in my constituency was good enough to get my vote.. '.. you say that very boastfully, putting yourself in a portrait of a smart person, but in my view, you are the most irresponsible person ... as most of you never tried to know the candidates just because you want to sleep on a holiday (i.e a voting day) .. if you ever took pains to know, u can at least go and vote for the better amongst the candidates, rather than none.. at least u will make it a point that whoever comes into lok sabha/vidhan sabha will do less harm than others will, if not good...
I remember this saying by George Bernard Shaw .. ' Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve' ... so its us who can make things happen!!.. thats the beauty of Democracy!!
we are awarded with a citizenship of a FREE COUNTRY, we never had to fight for our freedom, ... Well, we will surely have a happy independence day by feeling proud of what our ancestors have achieved by sacrificing their lives, but ever thought of making our grandsons and great grandsons also proud of what we do today...we dont even have to sacrifice our lives.. only be more responsible...a few things which u can easily adopt in your life... nothing extravagant, is it?!
Thanks for reading it... don't just appreciate and forget it ... give It a thought...Let us all contribute towards an AMAZING INDIA :-) ..
And happy birthday to our mother-land who is 60 years YOUNG now.....