Mumbai Terror Mubai Terror Mumbai Terror Mumbai Terror Mumbai Terror

That’s what is happening all around us everyday, right? In today’s TOI, caption of marathon foto on front page is ‘mumbai runs against terror’
My question is for how long? The so called 26/11 took place on Nov 26 last year. Of course I do not want people to just forget and take no lessons from the tragedy. But at the same time, I do not want this tragedy to be felt sad about FOREVER. And more importantly, it’s gross to see media – print or otherwise – deriving fodder out of this tragic incident. Their work is to inform citizens, and not influence their opinion or keep things alive in people’s memory.

But what irks me even more is the hypocrisy. After this article , I might be accused of indifference to the sorrow of terror victims but what should the media guys be accused of when they did not give even half as much coverage to guwahati blasts (which took place more recently ) as they are doing even to this day to Mumbai attacks. Guwahati and other north eastern cities suffered from blasts last year too. And they too suffer huge casualty. But these are reported for a day. And then forgotten. Why will not people form north-east complain of feeling detached from India? No wonder entire region is inflicted with insurgency. Why entire nation cried, Mumbai we are with you? Has one ever read, “itanagar, we are with you” ?

No wonder people coming from guwahati to delhi sometimes say they are coming to India!

Crusade against print media.. continued

Few weeks rather months back, I wrote to The Hindustan Times for giving some coverage to non-south-Delhi areas too. The report gave information on plantation drive during monsoons in Delhi.

Here’s what he wrote.
“First of all, the story had many points. The major point was the booming business of nurseries due to early monsoons as the first sentence corroborates.
The second important was voluntariness of youngsters who could be called to give a helping hand as their vacations were on when monsoon had hit.

Plantation drives do happen. there’s nothing new in it.
It was only early monsoon which made Hindustan Times publish this story. Focussing on plantation drives was not our focus.

You should read the story again!

As far as other areas are concerned. Check this sentence..
…..Gautam Pandey, who is spearheading a campaign named Hands For Trees (HFT) around
Chirag Delhi, Vasant Vihar, Dhaula Kuan and some areas in east and north Delhi……

Anyways thanks for your feedback..
We always welcome our readers to give their valuable responses.
“

Then I shot back with:
“
Well I read the story quite nicely first time itself. I am not trying to deny your first major focus and second major focus. I am concerned about the examples you took for your focus, which were mainly from south Delhi. I don’t understand why you wrote about early monsoon and plantation drive stuff, I nowhere , in my mail, doubted the reason you published the article. Hence I will rather encourage you to read the mail again!

And as you yourself pointed out in your reply here, “some areas in east and north Delhi…… ”, why ‘some areas’, when you can write chirag delhi – vasant vihar , you could also give some examples of those ‘some areas’ as well. I am sure the picture that was attached in that article was also not from those ‘some areas’ but from south Delhi only.

Anyways, thanks for your reply. I have wrote a couple of times to columnists of HT Brunch, only to find no response. It was heartening to see that your cared to reply.
“

That was the end, no more communications. My further correspondences to even other columnists or reporters are met with no reply. Looks like they have directed my mails to spam!!

Letter to West Delhi Plus of TOI

I am regular reader of the TOI, and WDP. I have noted that you always give news about conditions of areas like Punjabi Bagh, Dwarka, Rajouri Garden, Janka Puri etc.. You describe achievements of people in these localities. But I would like to bring to your knowledge (in case you are not aware already), that in west Delhi, there are other areas too like Sagar Pur, Uttam Nagar, Raghu Nagar. The TOI main paper anyway does not give any news from these areas, unless some serious mishap takes place and they are kind of forced to come here. But West Delhi Plus is supplement particularly about western part of the city, so at least once in a while, you can direct your cameras to our areas too, which our mostly pointed towards organized colonies. I am a resident of Sagar Pur, I have been here for the past decade or more. I hardly read anything about our area. You report about water, sanitation, road problems of Dwarka or Janak Puri. But what about Sagar Pur, where there is no public park, where in such huge colony, there’s just one post box for the past 10 years or so, where there’s no charcoal road, where no public servant comes to clean sewage, which often leads to mixing of normal water with sewage water. If no one respects our colony, why do even form a constituency and we are urged to vote. You report achievements of kids and youngsters and about malls of Rajouri Garden. I want you to know that there are genius kids in our areas too. Who makes one area posh and other down market – you guys only, the media. I am myself 2007 pass out IIT Guwahati (Computer Science), and I have been to all those *hip-hop* areas, I clearly understand all the pages – page3 and page10. This is to request you to respect all localities, that’s what true journalism is. And I hope you wouldn’t reply by telling about your reporting of some slums in west Delhi, I really request you to stay sometime in middle too, not always on the extremes.

Anonymity – Ambiguous.. why is everyone so coward!!

TOI reported today:
NEW YORK: Former Pakistani army officials trained the terrorists who went on rampage last week in Mumbai , The New York Times said on Wednesday quoting unnamed Pentagon officials.

I don’t understand why new papers even report the statements of people (officials) who don’t have the balls to stand by what they speak. After Mumbai Attacks, I have been reading and hearing from all corners, about pak-link of terrorists. There has been no *solid* evidence. Those who claim to have it, say that wouldn’t share it now. Many of those who allege pak-terrorists are anonymous officials, be it those babus in external affairs ministry, be it some diplomat, or the so called reports of CIA, no body comes out in open and speaks without fear. Strangest part is that most pak-link newspaper reports are reported by The Observer, The Guardian, and NYT. Where are the TOI’s and HT’s of India? In Indian print media, like the photos of events in India, which are almost always clicked by Agency, or Reuters or AFP, now even intelligence reports of terror attacks are also out sourced from foreign press!

Reservation : Retake!

Let me start with saying that we do not need reservation at any point, not even at primary or secondary level.

Is there any school in the country which denies admission to kid because of caste (lower or upper)? Then what makes these kids from SC/ST require the need of extra support?

Fine, if you feel that people from SC/ST are generally poor too, so grant them this support at primary level or at most secondary level. Period.

At least in cities, I have seen equal opportunities for all. Any kid can get admission in to DPS, or into a government school. Similarly, all institutes if higher education, vocation – IIT, Amity, Delhi University, then WHY Manage Caste Diversity.
Why do we even think of caste at any academic place, leave alone IIT. Why can’t caste ( since it will always stay in India), be a personal matter like religion. For example, students are favored or despised pretty less in the matters of admission because of their religion, barring the very few minority institutions (like AMU etc., ), similarly, we can treat the caste as immaterial.

Cleanliness is Godliness

Imagine yourself walking down a road, and you see a white piece of cloth on the way. What will be your first reaction? You will get cautious and try not to stomp on sheet. Why because that sheet is so clean and you wouldn’t want to spoil it.

Now imagine the same walk, the same road, but in place of clean white sheet, there’s a dirty rug. Your first reaction? There wouldn’t be any, you will perhaps not even notice.

That’s what I will try to advocate here : If an area is clean, people would like to keep it clean, if something is dirty, it will get dirtier. So keep the surroundings clean.

Let me try to support the cause with my personal examples too.
Consider Noida vegetable Market. One fine Tuesday, I was jogging back from noida stadium to office gym, listening to that title track of movie swades. And here goes the clash of my 2 senses. My ears were listening something and eyes were seeing something else or perhaps my nose too. Song goes – ‘the fragrance of your motherland soil, how will you forget this’ there was no fragrance in the first place! It was awfully pathetic smell of the spoiled vegetable and fruit remains of the previous night, which brought me almost close to puke. So I wouldn’t really want to remember the odor of the soil. And after that foul smell, I tend to at least spit out, if not puke, which makes the road even dirtier, there goes the point I started with. Hence we should keep the surroundings clean.

That also reminds me of a small kid I saw at the IGI airport when I was landed from Vienna . That kid was telling his mom, “mom I can smell the scent of India” of course in a positive tone.

Dogs keep their place clean before sitting. If we keep only our homes clean, there wouldn’t difference b/w us and dogs. So we should do more than that, keep the street clean, then neighborhood, then surrounding areas, cities, states and the entire country. First thing that someone notices when he comes to a city for the first time is the cleanliness. All other things – public transport, warmth of people are seen later. Anyways eyes start their action earlier than any other sense. So tourists from abroad and from other cities will be happy to visit Delhi again if they find it clean. I remember a young woman on ND railway station walking around 500m to a dustbin to throw her cigarette butt. Of course those were ramodass;s days when smoking in public was banned. But the point is, if she can care for cleanliness of a place, which is not even hers. Why can’t we care even more for our place?

I am talking of sanitation; because that’s the easiest way of contributing to society and country without spend the costly resource of time or money. We should simply stop throwing litter- which includes ice cream cups, groundnuts shell, wrappers of toffees, chocolates and other edibles., keep them in pocket or in hand, and throw them in dustbin on road if there’s any or in the trash bag at home. Simple.

Priests say god resides in hearts of pious people. Well I say, Ram resides in cleaner homes and societies. No wonder we clean our houses to please goddess Lakshmi on Diwali. I will suggest please please her 24*7*365, not just on Diwali. And goddess will come by road to your home. So please keep that road clean too. To sum up, Gandhiji’s mantra – “Cleanliness is godliness.”

Kids!!!

There is such a big variety of kids one can see in a kindergarten that the enormity of diversity of human race is quite understandable. When in the tender age of 3-4, these kids are so much different from each other; we can very well imagine the difference in every aspect of these kids when they grow up into adults. Today lazily I was observing the kids in my mom’s kindergarten. There is one boy who is lost in his own world. Perhaps that explains why some people are introvert and prefer solitude or are not bothered by what’s happenings around. Of course, as kids grow, lots of transitions takes place in their physical and mental behavior. This small kid might as well become a rock star at 18!
I also saw many kids who had formed a group. In the group, one would behave like a leader, will initiate talks, will explain things to group mates like some seasoned manager. Group members would sometime hit the leader, and sometimes some other kid will take up the leadership role. We can also see some kids sitting in pair and fighting with each other non-stop. There are some kids who sit observing others. They look like spellbound by what other kids are doing. Such fascination is clearly visible in their eyes which are wide open in fascination of what other kids are doing.

And yet, all these kids are so much different from one another. Each kid is unique in one way or the other.

The regular embarassment

There are few situations of awkwardness which I face every now and then. Problem is one can’t get rid of them, you run into them almost everyday.

Firstly, if someone sings just casually and makes facial expression and looks or comes towards you or looks at you as if singing to you, although he might be in the mind emphasizing the meaning/feeling of song and least aware of me or the embarrassment within storming my mind. What the hell he/she is doing? Why can’t he sing alone? I never do that torture to anyone. I sing only in elevator when there is no one else. I wonder if in those times, I should sing with them, or sing along them – both these actions will make me feel even more embarrassed. Or should I ignore them, like they don’t exist. That might make them feel I am not attending them, or more busy in my work! What to do man.

Secondly, people cracking awfully pathetic jokes. How can someone do this to me? It’s tough to laugh. I just smile to give them some respect lest they should feel ignored and consider me rude. But it becomes a torture, when I am the butt of joke. I don’t mind laughing at myself, but the joke has to be funny by my humor. So now when I smile, people feel I am shying. Wht mother crap is that. I guess in future, I should smile or laugh only when I feel like doing the same, without giving shit to any social obligations. Like Sachin does. Yet everyone loves him.

Thirdly (and certainly not the last), grown ups asking me how much money I make. Do they not have least social manners? It’s so embarrassing.

Delhi Governance

Delhi Government is perhaps the best government of all the state govermetns in India. Of course it too suffers freomn problems associated with govt. departments, but what Ms. Shiela Dikshit has done in Delhi duting her ternure so far is unparalleled by any of her predecessors.

I particularly like the simple advertisemsnts that they publish in newspapers and on bill boards. The advertisements are really simple to read with no fancy words and jazzy art. Somehow they take you to old word charm. And those ads are really informative, through them we learn what govt is doing, how can we access different services offered by govt free of cost, which most of the people are unaware of. Govt has so many grievances cells, and they would not know of problem unless we report them. We must make use of these services. The bhagidari scheme is another wonderful programme of Delhi Govt which is again no-nonsene kind of project. Citizens should participate in this to make things happen. I have used the grievance cell phone numbers to report a couple of problems, lets see if that works.

Talking of Delhi, I was recently impressed by visit of E Sreedharan’s visit to Delhi Metro. This guy asked for more soap boys in the premises of Metro Station for cleaning stone surfaces. When even in North and South Bloc, one can easily find gutkhas and paan spits, and bird nests, DMRC’s emphasis on cleanliness and maintenance is simply exemplary. They are also trying to make the look and feel of all stations uniform. That is what is perfection. I am so happy there some places in our country in govt sector, where this perfection is seeked.

Why am I pissed off?

Quite often I stay in unpleasant mood. Cranky. I decided to list down my problems.
Here they are:
One. I have huge tummy that refuses to disappear even after workin my ass up for getting rid of it. Winters are arriving , what I am gonna do? I woudn’t be able to dress up properly, so many of clothes will lie useless as they would look ugly with tummy. I can’t even think of updating my wardrobe for the new season.

Two. My hair are growing at a miserably slow rate after I got the ghagini hair cut. I doubt if they are really growing. And I look awfully pathetic in this. And holy crap! Those few white hairs look even more prominent when their length is less, I can’t even hide them in other hair. This gives more tension which in turn turns more hair white.

Three. I am growing darker by the day. Thanks to Delhi weather.

Because of the above reasons I have stopped even glancing at mirror now. I realize that I haven’t bought a single piece of cloth or any footwear for me in ages now. What shall I do with them with this ever growing belly. It really depresses me to acknowledge that I am ageing. I wonder if I have so much negative thoughts, then perhaps people who are in 40’s should just kill themselves