My first photo over blogger

My hotel room at Delhi

Actually, notwithstanding the fact that I am a so called software engineer, I felt intimidated by people asking me to use HTML to display your snaps, by pointing to a place where you have your snap online. So, I installed this Picasa and Hello clients. So far so good.

You may ask this question - of all the damn pictures, why this one? That is simply because with this I wanted to discuss my hobby - photography. Don't have much time. Will modify this soon. Keep checking this place out.

Delhi Memoirs

Don’t panic. I am not going to put in what you might want to call – an detailed account of my journey. All I want to record here are my little experiences, which eventually prove that Delhi is not entirely unlike the good old India.

It was around 3 years back that I had the privilege of visiting Delhi along with my class mates – a better word would be friends). We had a letter from some minister then, to get cheap cum deluxe accommodation at the Western Court, a huge whitish building with a pre-independence type architecture. The good things – nice food (I have no idea why my friends hated it) and a geyser that spewed out steaming-hot water 24-hrs a day. All 18 of us crammed into 2 rooms and it was fun.

This time over, the situation was glaringly different. This time, I put up at the Hans Plaza, a 15-minute walk from the Western Court. The deluxe room thankfully had a centralized air-conditioning. I will try to add a webcam-snapshot of a photo of the room I had taken there.
Lunch was unsavory and loathsome. Another difference I see is the climate. The first visit was in early February and it was very cold and dry then. Now, in late July, it was surprisingly hot and humid. I guess now you know why I used the word “thankfully” when I mentioned about the air-conditioning. The good thing is that the steaming-hot water is still there.

My relatives later joined me and the things started to run fine since then. But there is one important episode I wanted to talk about here. I arranged for a tourist bus to collect us from our hotel for a trip to Taj Mahal and its adjoining places of Interest, and this proved to be a real “experience” in every sense.

The attitude of the people is not as impeccable as the roads of Delhi:
First thing I noticed as soon as I stepped out of the Domestic Terminal of Delhi airport was that the roads were good and wide and people had good traffic sense. People were driving about in an orderly fashion and the front-seaters had their seat-belts on. I got myself into believing that the people of Delhi had “grown up”. This misconception did not last long. The guy who was pleased to book tickets for my for the Agra tour promised to pick us up at 7 AM sharp and to deposit us back at our hotel by 10 PM sharp. He picked us up at 7:30 AM sharp and dropped us back at 2:15 AM sharp the next day!

The buzzword of Hyderabadis is “Chalta Hai” and that of Delhi is “To Kya Hua?”
Certain south-Indian individuals were visibly unhappy about certain co-passengers not showing any time-sense. These so-called co-passengers saw something of interest during their walk and they came back to their bus 10 minutes after scheduled departure time. The enraged south-indiam, interestingly, a tamilian who was didn’t get to learn much Hindi started shaking with rage as soon as he saw these nonchalant Dilliwala get into the bus.
“Are bhai… kya problem hai… kitna time leta hai”
“Sirji.. Shant ho jao… bhait jao”
“What bhait jao… kya…. See how many passengers are waiting..”
“To?”
“To kya… time pe aana maalum nai kya”
“Thodi si deri ho gayi. Bas… ab teek hai na”
“What ab teek hai na… night ko late ho jayega… small children hai… you people don’t understand.. late kyoo hua?”
“Kuch zaroori kaam tha bhayya… thodi si late ho gayi… to kya hua?”
“To kya hua… some time sense hona hai…”
“Sirji… mera dimag mat khao… bhait jayiye.. please”
“…”
“Bas sirju…. “

Visiting time is directly proportional to commission
There are three places to see in Agra… the fort, the Taj Mahal and a handicrafts shop displaying so-called genuine marble work Visiting time for Agra fort – 40 min. Visiting time for Taj Mahal – One-and-a-half hours. Visiting time to this shop – 15 minutes, extended to two hours!

All Bengalis are the same
My co-passinjaar in this bus baaz a Bengali. He barks as a secret agent for the Home ministry. He was awarded as one of north-India’s greatest Astrologers. A little catalyst provided in the form of a question triggered an exo-sonic reaction which produced a tedious series of words extending for hours regarding things that interest me and things that don’t. He opened this Kashmiri carpet of his life in front of me, carefully avoiding details of his work. After thinking for a while as to how to stop this exo-sonic reaction, I hit upon this very good idea. I pretended to fall asleep. The reaction stopped and he went to sleep instead (he might have pretended too for some reason… I don’t care). Seeing him apparently asleep, I wondered what were the reactants in this chemical reaction.

Size does matter – the size of the wallet
The last place we visited was Vrindavan. Legend says that it is here that Krishna spent his childhood enchanting and protecting the villagers around. After a painfully long blabber about how lucky we were in being able to set foot on the same land as Krishna once graced, our guide, in his own style of Hindi, ushered us into the main temple. The little idle of Krishna was indeed enchanting. But all the happiness you might ever get by taking a Darshan of this marvelous idol was marred by the priests, whose only business seemed to get money out of our pockets to run some old-age home or old-cow home. The chief target were foreigners. That's the reason why size does matter.

Looks like I am ending abruptly, but I can only conclude that I have seen a good amount of real India. I’d like to write more of it, but its getting late and I need to hit bed for a long day at work. So, signing off….

"Ha...Bhai...Ha..." - the Coldarin saga

I opened my eyes today morning and felt just the way Arthur Dent once felt in the dreaded Heart-of-Gold when in its improbability drive. My head was shaking like a space-craft being hit by a blast-o-presto. The pain resembled a hangover of having 10 awful bottles of the blasted gargle-blaster.

I recovered very quickly, as the Woosters generally do and prepared myself to relish one of Jeeve’s trademark pick-me-ups. My mom very generously made some ginger tea for me, making sure of adding extra-pint of ginger to make sure the explosions inside my head resulting out of drinking the liquid has the desired effect.

I had got out of bed before tea to complete my brushing ritual, but the noise inside my head prevented me from adding other things to my list of worries, and these other things started to tap me all over to grab my attention. Each part of my body registered pain in my brain, which was pre-occupied with other worries.

Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of reading a newspaper pumped some eager blood into my limp feet and I looked around with half-open eyes for the paper. As soon as I opened page 1 and saw the face of the stinking Lalloo, my mouth opened and took in a gallon of air. Within a second, my body compressed all the air, turned my nose and mouth into a triple-barrel air gun and then blasted away. The outburst of energy didn’t stop with that. It played havoc. My eyeballs protruded out as if suffering from the second type of Goiter. Both my hands started to feel as if the blood vessels running inside were pulled out to make a violin or to be used as the string for a medieval Indian’s bow.

My dad heard the blast from the triple-barrel air-gun and came for my rescue. Looking at my half-popped eyes and seeing me clutching both my hands together to ensure that the blood vessels inside them don’t snap, asked me if I had cold, if I had head-ache and if I had body-pains. That’s when I said “Ha…bhai…ha”.

It was then that he wished me good morning.

CB Naidu and RS Reddy

This was the latest circular pasted on the notice board of my apartment - "We are unable to provide 24 hr running water since we don't have enough water underground. This is because we did not have enough rains on time and also because we do not have any water-harvesting infrastructure in the complex. We request residents of Srila Towers experienced in water-harvesting techniques to help us design a good water-harvesting system. This project would be started immediately so that we ensure better underground water at least by next summer'.

When Chandrababu Naidu, CB Naidu as he's better known in international circles, was talking about the so called water-harvesting and pushed HUDA to set up regulations to make this compulsory in every structure raising on Hyderabad soil, there was a hue and cry. Now, after CB Naidu was bundled out of the CM's office, people realize the importance of his words.

Technology is not something that caters only to the high-strata of society. The cause of Science and Technology is to make life easier and more enjoyable. Naidu tried to use Information Technology in trying to make varied information accessible to general public, but people were not ready for it. His was a long term plan, which, when allowed to progress the way it has been, would have made life easier for everyone in the State and would also help Naidu increase his personal bank balance ten-fold.

Well, for all those who say, "Naidu was a corrupt politician", please also go on to say if Rajasekhara Reddy is any better. If Naidu is good at making PowerPoint presentations, Reddy is good at shedding tears without glycerin. Maybe he took special training from old NTR, we never know. One of Reddy's statements when in power was that "Naidu is a puppet in the hands of the World Bank". World Bank has been so generous to have funded several projects in AP and has the right to make suggestions and to take actions whenever deemed necessary - whenever it feels that the fund is not being invested the way they would want it to be. And when a suggestion made is cogent and convincing, a wise man always values the suggestion and implements it. Newspapers today reported a statement from Manmohan Singh about Naidu "Naidu has done a good job in some areas and he will always be remembered for that". Please let me know if I am missing something here.

Politicians in India have always been corrupt and upliftment of self will always be prioritized over upliftment of the poor. As a general statement, I support the idea of prioritizing your own development before thinking about developing others. But politicians exploit their position to expedite their development at the expense of other unfortunate sections of society and I don’t think there is any one living, who can provide a solution to resolve this.

I feel that if Reddy is given a chance to enjoy a full term at office, which looks inevitable, he will rollback everything done by Naidu and leave AP the way it was 10 years ago - struggling with extreme financial debt and lack of development. And please do not give me President Abdul Kalam's fascinating speeches. He is doing his job - giving a speech and I am doing mine - writing a blog.

The Cyberabad Police

The Times of India is an interesting newspaper. Highlights the humorous side of human species much better than any other newspapers... the reason, its a hyderabadi paper! True to the word. hyderabadi characters are more caricaturish than anyone else in the world.

Best example... the police. Annoyed that people are giving a damn to them on the road (yes I did last sunday where I jumped red signal and zoomed through on my Activa ;-) even when the cop was helplessly whistling his lungs out), they take revenge, do a two-day exercise shutting down all shops and hotels, the same way viruses crash Windows machines!

Two days down the line, they extend the damn dead-line and take rest. The commissioner gets into the limelight, and cops are happy coz they're getting noticed.

Hyderabadi police might have successfully arrested dancers from pubs and might have managed to have them dance in their offices. But they will surely not be able to control the traffic here. Hyderabad is so unique that people have the traffic sense of Kolkatans and have roads like in California. There's a new entrant in the 'endangered species' list - the hyderabadi doggy. Maneuvering through the rotting corpses of these unfortunate beings during the day time gives you a good idea.

Driving in the night will give you a bad idea instead. Then the rule of majority makes you the unfortunate victim. Dogs will enjoy chasing your a** till you bite the dust. You will not just bite the dust, but will also have to swallow the fact that a few critical bones on your body are beyond broken.

If something of this sort happens, you will get a lot of gawkers and a much needed helping hand is hard to be seen.

Post-script:
The pusillanimous perpetration of the police on the poor public by purging the pubs of pretty phemales is a perfect paradigm for a pitifully petite perspective. Perplexed?

Cribber's Corner

Ahem! I might be kinda cranky in my first blog. Even engines need a few seconds to get their lub system going. Especially if it is the first time the engine chose to start.

For now, I'd want to touch upon my heading.. yeah. The issue about cribbing in the blog. Yes, I understand that it is hard to find a person who'll sit with you and support you while you sit and crib. So, you open a blog account and type out everything and post it on the internet. Is this the way out? All I want to ask is... do you get your piece of peace when you criblog?

No answers yet. Silence. I remember a saying "maunam ardhangikaram". So, I take it that the answer is half-yes. So, without cribbing further, I take it that blogging can be used for cribbing.

And cribbing can be fun when you make it humorous. But since I am feeling sleepy, yeah, dontya see... I am yawning. let me sign off.

Wish me all the best.