Happy Holi!

It has been a very very hectic week, both from the professional and personal life front. Loads of activities in office, a full house at home with couple of youngsters keeping the energy flowing all the time, playing card sessions - gossiping sessions ...

The kind of energy youths exhibit, is amazing. No qualms in accepting that all those billion dollar markets that exist for entertaintment, profession, accessories - you name it - is worth, as the world definitely seem to revolve around them.

During the BE hostel days, we used to have long long chats deep into the night on almost nothing topics. But somehow, I find it pretty tiring now to speak a lot, even on useful topics. May be the sign of old age ? :)

Gearing up for a COLOURFUL holi, all preparations are done, menu is planned and who will do what is already laid out.

Happy Holi and loads of best wishes to all, enjoy the festival to fullest!

Hopefully will get back in a couple of days. In the mean time, if you have not listened to it already, consider listening to his songs at least once. Raja Hasan from the last session of SareGaMaPa challenge is a gifted singer and when he sings, you can't ignore him for sure. Try this one - Piya Hazi Ali from the movie Fiza.

Railways Budget, Lalu, News channels and attitude of good citizens

To say that I fully understood the budgets will be a big, fat and white lie. I have not managed to make and stick to a budget at my own home as yet, all I can do is imagine about the magnitude of planning and strategy decisions that goes into a country's budget!

The day when Indian Railways Minister was supposed to present the budget, since morning 7 AM, most news channels were showing things like how Lalu was brushing his teeth, serving himself brakfast, walking up to his car and so on. How disgusting !

News channels urgently need to re-invent themselves.

Coming to the budget, the one thing I liked the most was the newly introduced on-board cleaning system. Indian railways sucks in that aspect and it was long due. But can the railways maintain cleanliness single-handedly ? NO! Cleanliness is an attitude and needs nurturing by every individual. In a country where people live in filthy conditions in acute poverty, does that come naturally for everybody? NO! So in my opinion, at least the people who can make it an attitude easily, let them maintain cleanliness of railways as much as possible, and rest of the work can be done by the authorities. What I have seen is that, people normally feel that anyway it is so filthy, what more damage I will do if I throw my dirt then and there itself ! Basically, itna kachda hai, thoda aur dalo, kya farak padta hai ! The same guys when they go to USA or some other country that values cleanliness, suddenly they are the most well-behaved citizens! Come on yaar, if you are not a hipocrite, behave the same way in your motherland ? I mean what stops you from maintaining the same attitude? Same thing they do with driving, but that will require another topic and another day ...

Now coming back to cleanliness, Lalu's railways staff can clean up the mess created by people who are unknowingly creating the filth, others should behave themselves.

And I sincerely think that the railways budget had good planning for the future, in terms of re-designing coachs, reducing ticket price, taking baby-steps towards more electronic-based access and so on. Now it will boil down to the execution, but whatever the minister could do, he seems to have done it well... good show, and with the amount of profit the railways has started showing after Lalu becoming the minister (assuming that they are audited, blah blah and are real and there is no major scam involved in it), I only have praises for the minister.

Back with backlogs

For sometime I completely disappeared from earth, so to say, from my connected world. What an irony you would think, just in the previous post I emphasized the wonderful mediums of communication human kind has developed, and in this one I am talking about the lack of it! Folks, have patience and let me clarify my stand...

While changing a handset, I lost all my mobile entries - so so stupid of me, can't forgive myself for committing such a silly mistake, how could I ? I mean, who loses phone book entries, definitely not a computer engineer, right ? ... sigh, hopefully some day I will be able to get over my guilty feeling. For the time being, help me my friends, please send your contact numbers to your oh-so-stupid friend!

The second thing is, I was deeply into handling home and family for sometime, which kept me out of touch from a computer for 5 whole days! With laptops and broadband at home, that is quite an achievement I would take pride for, though a bit dramatic of me to do that !

Now that I am back with a lot of backlogs, let me get going ... so many things in mind ... cricket matches and wins, two populist-please-all budgets, a brief MNS(Maharastra NavaNirmana Sena) turn around, a film fare award ceremony with loads of pretence and last but not the least, the talk of the town - Sachin Tendulkar back as the No 1 ODI batsman in ICC cricket ratings!

Hoping to get back soon with all my typical thoughts, will sign off now for sometime ...