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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Bengalooru.....

As I got down from the K.R. Puram railway station, I could feel the change that Bangalore had undergone in the past one and half years. The railway platform was a newly laid one and thanks to the people of Bangalore and south western railway, it was still dirty and unclean. As I came out of the station and started heading towards the city, I could see new platforms on both sides of the road with rain water draining facility. I don’t know if they really work coz, it was real hot when I went there and it seemed there will be no rains for few days. In some areas, especially the Airport road, these new platforms had given rise to petty shops. When I peeped into one of this shop, I saw Mr. Bean smiling at me from one of the CD covers. They had a wide range of filmi CDs, ranging from the latest English blockbuster to the Indian language movies, mainly Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and of course Kannada. The auto trip was short and I decided to explore the city later.
The same evening I planned to walk around the city, as that will help me more in looking around. The first thing that caught my eye, when I reached the airport road was a red color bus, with some advertisement of a blue chip company. It was a low floored, air conditioned bus with the driver wearing dress similar to a chauffer. There was one more guy, dressed in the same way and standing near the door. The front, side and the back side of the bus had a digital display with the number 335 and some kannada text scrolling around next to it. The text then changed to English. It was the BMTC run new Volvo city buses. On enquiring, I found out that they charge something around 30 to 50 rupees based on which place you are going. I was not lucky enough to travel in the bus.
As I reached the Manipal Hospital Junction, a sign board said “Go only when it is Green”. It was a usual sign board you find it in many cities across India. That was not the one which had caught my attention. There was something else written under it. It read as follows “You are in a Wi-Fi zone”. I vaguely remembered coming across this term for the first time some four and half years ago. It was a sort of revolutionary technology at that time and it had not been implemented commercially. It was more on the research papers only. But now it had moved from developed country and it was trying to make in roads into developing once too.
Opposite to the Manipal Hospital stands a grand pink building, The Leela Palace, the five star hotel under the Leela Ventures group, with an architecture that more resembles a palace in Rajasthan. This hotel boasts of highest ARR (Average Room Rent) in India, with rents starting from Rs.7000/- and of course it is dollars for other country peoples. I had seen the hotel daily, when I stayed in Bangalore and something was different now. It took sometime for me to realize that, they have constructed a new section of the hotel, with their trademark large round pillars and domes at the top which decorated the old section of the hotel. When I left Bangalore, there was totally no sign of any work going on there. But now a whole new big section stood there. When I came down to Chennai, I went to their website just to find out that they had added 105 large sized premium rooms. They had mentioned that the hotel is ten minutes away from the airport. But the people of Bangalore know that’s only possible if there are no vehicles plying on the road. Some other articles about Leela Palace said that, the rooms are occupied throughout the year and booking had to made months in advance to really feel the Leela ambience.
Has India really changed? Can I answer this question positively by seeing these things? It has to be a yes, though I have to agree it is still the beginning and we have a really long way to go. I realized this on walking some more distance down the road. The beggar whom I used to see daily sitting in the platform stretch from britania industries to Nilgiris supermarket in the airport road was still there. The only difference was that he had a better platform to sit. Then another familiar face was the paani puri vendor just between the murugeshpalya stop and kempfort. Domino Pizza and the Hyderabadi Biriyani occupied the new building that had been constructed in the once vacant land behind him. I still remember seeing him once packing his little shop very hastily. That was to escape the police menace. The police used to come there to collect some money, as it was not legal to put shops in the platform.
India is really changing. But the effect should touch much more people than what it does now. Putting in the lines of Robert Frost, India has got a long way to go before it sleeps (incidentally, Nehru liked this line of Frost and has been seen quoting this often.).

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Indian Railways

posted in alayam on 11/14/06
As I typed the southern railways URL, I was feeling proud. I was an ardent fan of the Indian railways, and tried to defend it when somebody criticized it. With 100 of trains passing daily behind my house, the sound of a train was dissolved in my mind and I never found it odd when a train passed by.
Today I was going to the Southern Railway website to check the spot the train section, a section which was introduced more than a year ago. It showed live positions of the train in the Chennai division covering a radius of about 200kms in the west and around 120km in the north and south.
I was looking for Bangalore Chennai Shatabdi Express. My dad was coming form Bangalore and the train had left Bangalore an hour late than the scheduled time. It was not found anywhere and so I concluded that it has not come within the Chennai division (Jolarpettai to be precise). It was around 6.30 pm when I checked that. With no work in office pending, I decided to start for home. After a tiring journey through the so called roads and the heavy traffic, I reached home at around 9 pm.
I directly went and switched on the computer and went to the same site. The site didn take much time to load and I was surprised not to find the train in the map. Has the train reached? No way. It would have been a before time, very unlikely in this case.
To my surprise I found all the trains very safe in the same place which I saw about one and half hours before. What happened to all the trains? It was raining but not that heavily to stop all the trains in the place for such a long time. The page kept on refreshing every minute, but strangely all the trains were at the same place. Then I saw a label at the top right hand corner of the map which said Last Updated Time: 13/11/2006 18:45.
I had seen the site only once before and all my impression about it crashed. It was raining heavily and I thought I will go to the station to receive my dad. I started cursing the railways and started towards the local station. I had to take a EMU train from that station to Chennai Central. I got the tickets and I walked towards the platform still cursing the railways.
I had a local train at 21.55 pm. As the time came there was no sign of the EMU coming. At the same time, I heard the sound of another train going at a very high speed. I turned around to get a glimpse of the train. The coaches were different Cream and blue in colour and air conditioned fully. Nobody could miss that even if it just flew by. Yes it was the Shatabdi Express.
I looked at my watch. 9.55pm. The train should reach central in another 10 minutes, delaying the journey time totally by half an hour and actually gaining half an hour in such a small time span. I smiled for the first time in an hour. Though many trains would have been sacrificed for making up this half an hour, I didn feel bad. I used to hate when Passenger trains were stopped to let express trains pass by. But not now. Dunno why. I called up my father to say that I will be waiting in the local station.
As I left the station after half an hour with dad, I was not cursing the railways.

Google....

posted in alayam on 8/12/06
As i typed "http://www.google.co.in/" in my internet explorer toolbar, I knew a light glowed in the globe at the Google's headquarters. Yes, they got a globe which glows according to number of people using google from that place. It seems Africa remains a dark continent there also.
I happened to read about this in the book titled "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. An extensively researched book about the latest trends in technologies by the American Journalist. The book also mentioned about a survey done by google on the searches that are carried out in google.The top 4 are as follows
1. Sex (no doubt in that)
2. God (hmm... good)
3. Jobs
4. Professional Wrestling.
Check out this link http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat.
The last one do sounds different just as the author mentioned it in his book(I say this to avoid blogiarism.... does blogiarism exist???). It may be that anyone who is reading this searched for "professional wrestling" just to handle his Manager at office. Anybody out there????
Even the results mentioned form only 1 to 2 percent of the total searches(courtesy the same book). They keep changing with time, like Osama bin laden toping the charts for most searches after 9/11 attacks.

Vijay Divas

posted in alayam on 7/26/06
TODAY IS VIJAY DIVAS. ON 26TH JULY , 1999 WE RECAPTURED OUR LAST HILL FROM PAKISTANBUT WE LOST OUR MOST VALUABLE , GREAT WARRIORS,BRAVE BROTHERS .TODAY IT’S TIME TO REMEMBER THEM
AYE MERE WATAN KE LOGON ,JARA AANKH ME BHARLO PAANI ……….JO SHAHID HUYE HAIN UNKI ,ZARA YAAD KARO KURBAANI ………
A SALUTE TO KARGIL’S FIRST HERO
Lt. Saurabh Kalia
Capt.Vikram BatraParam Vir Chakra(Posthumous)
Grenedier. Yogendra SinghParam Vir Chakra
RFN .Sanjay Kumar(Param Vir Chakra)
Major Padmapani Acharya,Maha Vir Chakra (Posthumous)Of the 2nd Battalion of The RAJPUTANA RIFLES
Lieutenant Balwan Singh,Maha Vir ChakraOf the 18th Battalion of GRENADIERS Regiment
Major M Saravanan,VirChakra,1 Bihar
Lieutenant Kanad Bhattacharya,Sena Medal (Posthumous)(22 YEARS)
Captain Saju Cherian,Sena Medal307 Medium Regiment
Lieutenant Keishing Clifford Nangrum,Maha Vir Chakra (Posthumous)Of the 12th Battalion of JAMMU AND KASHMIR Light Infantry
Captain R Jerry Prem Raj, Vir Chakra (Posthumous),158 Medium Regiment
Major Sonam Wangchuk, Maha Vir ChakraOf the LADAKH Scouts
Major Padmapani Acharya, 2nd Rajputana Rifles, leads his men into battle after the successful capture of Tololing Top. The 2 Raj. Rifles' next assignment was to capture the Knoll mountain feature in the Black Rock area, which is in the Drass sub-sector. It was here, that Major Acharya laid down his life in the highest traditions of the Indian Army on 29 June 1999. He was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra, posthumously.
The Leh-Batalik road is as notorious as the Srinagar-Kargil road. At its beginning lie staging areas, at its end fierce fighting and often, death. Jawans patrol the rugged slopes near Batalik. For them, there is little time for rest and little time to think, always poised on the edge of action.Capt.Vijayant Thapar (Robin)He Laid down for OUR BETTER TOMORROWAt the age of only 22
JAY HIND !!!

Good Traffic Cop

posted in alayam on 7/8/06
I was crossing the road near the anna nagar round tana junction. A Traffic police had caught a car taking a U turn at the junction where U turn's are not allowed.
The car's window pane rolled down and the driver started telling something. It was not audible for me. The cop also started yelling at him and asked him to go ahead to take the U turn.
By the time i reached the middle of the road near the median, the car started moving. The cop wanted to vent his anger out and i was the one in the middle of the road that time.
Before he could reach me, i just saw the nameplate of that car. It had a 'G' in it. The cop came towards me and started talking about the way people drive vehicles. But i was thinking how did he stop a 'G' car and asked him to take the next turn.
I really could not stop my curiosity and asked him this. He only said one line.... "All vehicles are one and the same"... I was really surprised to hear this.... and really felt happy. I was just able to say "Good" and i started walking towards the other end.
India does needs cops like this....

No Horn Please....

posted in alayam on 6/12/06
Last week i had the opportunity to go to Cuddalore (visit cuddalore.nic.in) , a small town in east coast some 180 kms down south of Chennai. It came to limelight after the Tsunami devasted this town. It became after the visits of Bill Clinton and Vivek Oberoi. Vivek Oberai stayed there for weeks and helped the people in re construction.When i talk about Cuddalore, I need to mention about its collector Shri Gagan Singh Bedi. A dynamic person, who speaks a broken Tamil, has done a lot for the district both during pre and post Tsunami period. When i hear about him i think that India does require such Civil Service peoples.I got gone there to attend a function and i was supposed to return back the same evening. I generally prefer train tavel to bus. But since bus service were better to Cuddalore than trains, i had to travel by the bus. Moreover the NH-45 had been renovated under the golden quadrilateral scheme and it does really look good (Dunno how long it will look the same). My morning trip was very peaceful without any events.But the evening trip was a horriblr one. The reason for my journey being horrible was the bus' horn. Yes its horn only. A blaring one and it crossed many a decibels above the limit of allowed sound (I really do not know if one exists, but i know for sure, even if it existed, nobody bothered to follow such a thing). And on the top of it the driver was pressing the horn every 5 minutes. I really do not know how he could hear it daily. He should be driving that bus atleast once a day to a maximum of 3 trips. But he seemed to enjoy pressing the horn again and again. The vehicles had to give way for him, else he would keep on pressing the horn. But still he took the same time as the other buses do.
But when i came to know the reason, why he was using the horn, I was more horrified. The driver very calmly n coolly said "eppapo thookam varutho, appapo horn adipen" (Whenever i feel sleepy, I press the horn). I just could not say anything.

Inspiration de basanti


posted in alayam on 6/6/06

Pramod Mahajan's family is having a bad time. They have not yet come out of the sorrow of the late BJP leader and the latter's son is still in hospital. It is said that he has consumed drugs. This news did not create that much flutter as that of the appearance of Sahil in a leading News channel before surrendering to the Delhi police.As i was browsing through the TV channels, I happened to see Sahil's appearance in the TV. Rang De Basanti immedietely came to my mind. Though this was not the same like in the movie, the thread connecting them is their wish to talk to the people what they thought, whether it be right or wrong.This incident raises the memories of the movie just like the protest of the young doctors in Delhi. I surely feel this movie has inspired people just at the right time. Though you have got lot of movies with good inspiring stories, the release of this movie had a good timing, and the people are able to relate the events to this movie.
I liked the movie for all the fun they had in the beginning.... Apni tho paatshaala.... masti ka paatshaala..... The song will rekindle all the old memories of the fun n masti one had in their college life. I was no exception. But now i look at the movie also in a different angle. As an inspiring movie....

World Environment day

posted in alayam on 6/5/06

Harish.... Harish.... I could here my mom shout. I was still half asleep. Since it was monday i was feeling more lazy to get up. The clock (my cellphone is my clock at night..) showed 6.45. I pulled myself out of the bed and forced myself to go through the morning routines. It was around 7.20 when i sat for my breakfast, I was browsing through the news channels. I really had only 10 minutes to finish my breakfast and also to take in all the news i could. By seeing TV i felt, i could get more information in a short span of 10 min than going through the newspaper, though both of them had its own pros and cons.
Though i was late, still i could get into my company shuttle in time.I went and took a window seat, and as usual the radio was playing. Thanks to the radio, i came to know that today was World Environment Day(WED).
It was then i vaguely remembered how i used to memorise all those days when i was in my college quiz team.I had a small diary with all the important dates copied from the library's latest yearbook of Malayala Manorama. I just used to memorize... 17th May... World Telecom Day.... 5th June... World Environment Day.... and the list used to go on.
So i thought i will better search in the web atleast for some information regarding this. In 1972, the United Nations designated 5 June to be the World Environment Day (WED) as a reminder to all nations to protect the environment and fight against pollution. As usual we got lot of White papers and manifestos prepared in making the world a better place to live. I really cannot comment on those coz i really do not know whats happening to make it work.But what i feel is all the plans formulated by the United Nations have to be modified to be applicable in each country.We have Bharat Standard II emission norms applicable for all vehicles in our country from April 2005. This Standard is equivalent to the European II norms. As far as the Major cities are concerned, its Euro III norms now and the Government is planning to start implementing Euro IV norms from April 2010. But sadly when i move out in Chennai, I see the famous city buses, still called PTC by old timers here, spilling the most amount of poisonous gas. Ironically the buses are painted green. If this continues maybe those buses only will form what is called as greener Chennai. If the government vehicles do not follow these norms, how can the Government expect others to follow.
There are lot of issues to be discussed when it comes to environment, some concrete steps to be taken to really make this world a better place to live.

Anti Tobacco day

Posted in alayam on 5/29/06
May 31st Anti Tobacco Day............
I do not know the statistics about the smokers in the world, neither do i know about the chemical substances present in it that causes harm to the human beings. The only thing i know is that whenever i pass a smoking guy, i frown and sometimes tend to close my nose. I always wonder how do smokers bear that smell. I have a few friends, who are chain smokers and the surprising thing is that everbody says he wants to quit but unable to do so. Few people had reduced the number by a considerable margin. The ban on smoking created a lot of flutter in the last year. The law regarding the ban on smoking in Television and Movies did not get that much response from the media that it should have exactly got. It would have been better if the Government would have planned for a total ban on the manufacturing and sale of Tobaccos. Though this cannot be acheived completely, this will reduce the cigarette consumption to a large extent. Banning this can be done slowly and not in a single day. Bhutan is a country that has totally banned smoking. Though its a small country and implementing laws are much easier than the doing it in large country like out India, there have been no visible steps taken by the government before the last year's act. The most surprising part in the last year's act is that, the tobacco manufacturer's never raised any opposition against this act. Did they know that though this law will come into force, they still can go on with their selling???Lets all smokers pledge to quit smoking......

Travel



Posted in alayam on 5/23/06


I was walking towards the office canteen with my friend. A small smile was in my face. I was leaving my office. One may wonder whats so special with that. Yes it was coz it was not even 5pm when I started. Not a time for a software engineer to start. He should have be in the office with some Burgers and coke around.

I was starting for Lucknow to attend Pooja’s marriage. Pooja my College friend...... all the things about college came fresh to my mind…. Most of the people in my gang were planning to come there………. A get together after some 3 years…..I made sure I drank the juice in a single gulp so that I could hurry. I got to reach home pack, have dinner and start…. Generally I used to do all these things early…… but nowadays…. Was very lazy actually.There was a company shuttle service to the city at that time. I had double checked it in our company's internal website.

But as fate would have it, i reached a bit late and the shuttle had already left and i had very less time to afford reaching the station. So i came out of the office to take the private cab services, which used to ply in that road. They generally are those famous green Mahindra vans more popular in south India. As i walked in the side of the road, a van approached. I had to get into the front seat as all the seats at the back were occupied. To be frank, there was no seat in the front side. People had to sit in a sort of wooden seat and also share the big gear box. This made the people running this service to accomodate a lot more than the number of people who are suppposed to travel. Actually this is nothing compared to traveling in North India. When i was in Maharashtra, I have seen Sumo's carrying around 50 people.

As i got into the vehicle, a lot of shocks were awaiting me. First one was that the guy who was driving the vehicle, was not more than 16 years old. His legs were hardly reaching the brake, clutch and the accelerator. I became selfish by thinking about my safety rather than being pity for his state. I never thought if his hands which was in the steering wheel would have ever touched a slate or note book. The vehicle was in a very bad shape. There was no base in the front portion where i was sitting. So the road moving beneath my feet was clearly visible. The front portion too was open with lots of wires hanging all around and a bulb dangling down the holder. That was the headlight clearly visible from inside the vehicle. All the capacitors and resistors, about which i never remembered during my examination, were all hanging down. The Dashboard had all the meters, but everything was as if fixed in the Dashboard. The most funny part was that one of the meters was placed upside down. I raised my head to find out if the front glass pane existed. Yes it was there. "Thank God" was all i could say.Then i noticed a small Pillayar (Lord Gansha) photo sticked to the glass pane. The Journey was only for about 20 minutes, but being in such a vehicle, it seemed very long (This is a very common line and is applicable in many places and cannot be said as plagiarism). The road i was traveling was the Old Mahaliburam Road popularly referred to as OMR and according to its name was really old. The whole journey was like a Joy ride in an amusement park. Somehow i managed to reach my destination.

As i was getting down, I looked up at the Pillayar. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask me "How was the trip?". I just smiled, thanked him for bringing me safely (driver please excuse) and got down carefully.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Blog

My last post was something related to writing skills and my inability to write frequently in my blog, the cause being lack of my writing skill and not my work pressure. On reading this, people may come up with the question, if you lack writing skills, why do you blog?

My answer is I blog because I lack writing skills. If I was a good writer, there would have been a novel published or there would have been a column in the local newspaper under my name. Atleast I would have figured in the college magazine, if I wrote a little better. Thanks to one of my friend in the college magazine editorial team, I had one of my article published in my final year. Else even that would have become a dream.

Blogs are totally different. It never says you should be a writer. It gives everybody equal space to put down their thoughts. It’s a platform for amateur writers. If one has got the skill, he can become a professional also.

The best thing about blogs is the freedom of expression it gives. This gave rise to banning of many blogs that arose anti national sentiments. It was that time, that the entire blogging community joined together to fight for its rights. It’s the same old story, where many people are targeted for mistakes of few people.

Any new technology that comes up is certainly going to have shortcomings. I would rather like to put it in another way. It can be said that people (mis)use the technology for all the wrong reasons. Most of the cutting edge technologies are results of the research undertaken for military purposes by governments and most of those technologies are effectively used by terrorists.

The best way to avoid this is to educate the students on how to use “anything”. He/She (to avoid gender bias) should be taught the technology and also how to use it in a better way and for betterment of all people. Educating the children in a proper way will pave way for a real better society. This is the reason our honorable President Kalam has always been stressing on this. As far as India is concerned, there will be still another problem that is getting the children to schools.