A Friend indeed...

In the battle camp,a soldier prepares to go to bring his wounded friend back from the field.His captain says,"No use,your friend will be dead by the time you bring him". But the soldier still goes and brings back his friend.
Seeing dead body, captain says"I told you its not worth it.He's dead".
Soldier replies "NoSir it was really worth it.When I got to him,my friend saw me,smiled and said his last words,"Man I knew you'll come..."

India this week

So lets see what was hot this week in newspapers. The most important recent news is that MJ Akbar is no more Editor in Chief of Asian Age newspaper.I loved to read his bylines and articles in newspaper and frequently used to visit his blog.This is black day for journalism.

"..ON THE morning of March 1, MJ Akbar — founder editor of The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle and a legend in his time — was driving to work when he was overtaken by a flurry of messages on his Blackberry asking him to check his paper’s masthead: his name had gone missing overnight, replaced with that of T. Venkatt Ram Reddy, the publisher.
57-year-old Akbar was not surprised, simply distraught. The dignity and grace with which he had wanted to exit had died its chance. But, in a sense, 30 years in the business should’ve been subconscious preparation. In standoffs between management and editors, the latter have always taken the ignominous cuts. Arun Shourie. BG Verghese. Dileep Padgaonkar. VK Narasimhan. The list of illustrious scalps before Akbar is long, yet the complete absence of ceremony with which he has been ousted is one more body blow to the waning institution of the editor. Unfortunately publications, too often now, are known more for their numbers than their personalities and Akbar is one of the last of a breed who valued voice and teeth and bite and other such fading journalistic grails..."

This week was also week of flip flops. Bal Thackeray in his editorial in his mouth piece Saamna had told Amitabh Bachchan to learn lesson from Rajnikant,who took part in hunger strike in Chennai for support of Tamil Nadu on Hogennkanal issue.In his mouthpiece Bal Thackeray advised Amitabh Bachchan to give priority to the region where he lives and not from where he hails.

Seeing that Manse will take this as another opportunity to target Shiv Sena alleging that they Shiv Sena is saying what Manse has already told, Bal Thackeray told that he never told anything wrong about Amitabh and it was media that twisted things.Huh...he thinks people are fool.

Another episode that deserves place in hall of fame for flip flops is that of Sanjay Dutt and Manyata.Sanjay Dutt and Manyata got married and presented themselves in front of media after marriage.Later court told that marriage is illegal as Manyata has not yet given divorce to her ex Husband Miraj. When asked about this Sanjay Dutt told that he has not married Manyata they just had live-in relation between them.

In recent times India has not been safe for females. Increased number of violence against women is something that Indians should not only worry about but also feel shame of. On news channel I just saw a mob beating a girl in public in presence of Police in Delhi.There has also been increase in number of cases of foreign tourists being targeted by goons.
Men were not enough that monkeys in India also jumped in fray to harass women.This monkey desperately needs a woman. Why? Read yourself.

Last week long forgotten girl Gudiya died.Gudiya had hit news last year when her husband,who was in Indian Army during Kargil war,in true bollywood style came back after been disappeared for five years.After her husband didnt come back for years she got married to another man.A movie is being made on her.Click on the news article to read her entire story.


Now something from other countries. This news was a bit sad.This girl should have definitely build a career in some other field.




Now I have a dreaded fear of Cockroaches and Pigeons.But definitely I wont run naked on street after seeing one.May be after seeing this man naked Rat would have developed dreaded fear of men....specially the ones who are naked.

yeah yeah yeah. One more survey. This time survey shows that men are dumb enough to not to understand efforts of women to seduce him.This I find hard to digest.In another such research once I read that on an average Men undress their female colleague within fifteen minutes after they are introduced for first time.Not in reality but in their thoughts.

Bye Bye Orkut

So I left Orkut.
From past couple of weeks there has been sudden deluge of bad events in my life.It seems god has gone full to angry on me. I just can’t understand how come all things have started to go awry. Its not that I am not used to bad events.What makes this period notorious in my jeewan ki ram kahani is the fact that I had received couple of good news and that very goods turned out to be bad news. Not only these devil-in-disguise-angel events underwent total 180(or 360?) degree transmutation, they also brought their contemporaries along with them.
It is said that when it seems the whole world is going in wrong direction, then it’s not the world but you yourself who is in wrong direction.May be similar is the case with me. In whichever things I put my hands it gets ruined. Therefore I decided to stay out of the road. I stopped replying my mails, switched off my cell and snipped off whatever remaining contact I had with the outer world. For a week I had shut myself at my home.
One of the casualties of my run-away-from-world affair was Orkut.
Orkut happens to be a really cool place where I enjoyed a lot and visited regularly notwithstanding the fact that it is sort of a time sucking vortex. Whenever I used to get free time I used to login into orkut and thereafter jump into verbal duel. When I had joined Orkut it was only to participate in debates and discussions on Branding and Economics. Later I ventured in communities discussing International Relations and politics in India….and yes I made many good friends. When I deleted my friends I had 290+ members in my friend list, which is not at all huge considering normal Orkut standards. Also I met few of my friends. Apart from MT; Pravin Kamat( whom people popularly call Pravin Da), Dr Avinash, Ram and Keyur were one of the first among them. We were members of Bombay community. Dr. Avinash happens to be Human Anatomy Professor in Australia. When he visited India he requested us to meet. We all then met in Shivaji Park with others. Dr Avinash and PravinDa told their amusing stories of yesteryears, talked about radio jockeys of Vividhbharti, doordarshan and full to pushed us into nostalgic mood. For hours we talked about Movies, our freaky friends, pesky women etc etc.

PravinDa, Ram,Keyur,Me and Dr Avinash

Then I happened to meet Richie. I had planned to visit naxal affected areas of Darbangha in Bihar with friend who was doing research on Naxal terror. Now Richie happens to be an ex journalist and she herself being an upper caste Bhumihar from Bihar has great insight in history and spread of Naxalism. So we met in McDonalds at Goregoan. I wanted to have dinner in some good restaurant but she insisted on going to McDonalds. Over there she confessed that she is crazy after Mc burgers. So we sat for around 3 to 4 hours munching French fries and burgers giggling and laughing. The quality time that we spent out of that 95% was on general day to day chat and hardly 5% of the time we discussed about Naxalism, the real reason for which we met :.

Ahh and then there was much awaited meet. I call it Gappi meet. Ruchir, Tushar and myself were regulars in Gappistan Radio community. What happened is Ruchir and Tushar were in India for few days. After few days Ruchir had to go on tour to Hong Kong and Tushar had to go back to US. So we met at Raghuleela Mall in Kandivali. We all sat and chatted over Bhel puri and Dahi Samosas. In other meets of online people it is common to hear that “He was so different as we had assumed”,” He is not at all like he is on net” etc etc. But that was not in our case. When we met we felt as if we are meeting some one we have been meeting often. There were no big surprises. Ruchir was as jovial as he is on net, Tushar being as cool as he is often. As we sat we started blabbering about all nautankibaaz of Gappi and IM.
While conversation fervently progressed with fast pace, Ruchir’s wife and daughter initially felt left out and later were disillusioned with our boring talks. Anouska refused to stay more on her seat and desperately seeked way to escape from the torture chat. This gave an alibi to Ruchir’s wife to move away from our disoriented discussion. After she went back of Anouska we got privacy to have Guyz talk. During that Ruchir bhai gave some gyan on females as myself and tushar giggled on it. Then Tushar talked about his flirtations and girls and I talked…how shariff and good kid I am :P
Tushar,Me,Ruchir and Ruchir's wife and daughter

Inflation and Recession

Ghost of inflation is back to haunt. Inflation this week surpassed 6%. There are chances that interest rates of loans will be further increased to cool off inflation. Finance minister has already given indication for this. This means that EMIs for loans are going to increase further. This means that EMI for loans will increase further and taking loans will also be costly. I had planned to take loan about a year back. But the rates increased. I expected the rates to come down and decided to take loan after it. Unfortunately after every interval rates have been increasing. Already there has been three rate increases.

Increase in Inflation in India is mostly driven by hike in food prices.Vegetables, food oil,Food grains have become costly.If government had any policy to tackle the food prices then inflation would have been history.But it seems government totally neglected food security.Today I saw on CNN that shortage in Rice is expected globally. From past four to five years Indian government has decreased its stocking for food grain buffer stocks.As a normal practise govt used to stock 30 to 40% food grains more than that was required to tackle any food crisis.But now government has actually reduced the food grain procurement to the levels that is lower than that is required to maintain food security.

Effect of inflation on current food prices

In order to tackle inflation government is planning to same age old trick of increasing CRR and loan rates.But what is happening in America is in direct contrast with what is happening in India. Rate cuts are being announced every now and then by Federal Reserve. Rates of houses are crashing down. While in India real estate prices have sky rocketed. Apart from that many economic indicators in US are not showing sign of recovery.From past couple of years there has been decrease in US consumer spending that affects the global export markets.Many economists have all ready predicted that recession is about to begin in US economy and that will hurt global markets.

Holi Hai!!

Last week we celebrated Holi. I celebrated Holi in Mumbai after a gap of around 7-8 years. Last time I had celebrated Holi was before taking admission in engineering. This year a day before Holi I got call from Amit. He told me to come early morning to his place for holi celebrations. So next day I went to his home. Before I could reach his home I was assaulted by water and colours by people on road. By the time I reached Amit’s home I was drenched in water and was full of colours. When I reached his home I came to know that Abhishek (Amit’s younger bro who shares his name with me) had also come to Mumbai. Also Rajesh and Franklin were there.
Now Rajesh wanted to have Bhang. The first thing he told after coming out of home is that ‘Chal yaar Bhang dhoondte hain’. For next 2 hours five of us kept roaming in areas around Malwani in search of Bhang. On the way Franklin started mischief. He had brought some colours in small bottles. These colours were very strong(traces of it remained on our face and body for 2 days). Amit joined Franklin and smeared Rajesh of the dark colour. In a moment Rajesh’s face became perfectly black body.
After our bhang khojo abhiyaan we came back to Amit’s society where rain dance was taking place. We all danced taking bath and cleaning out faces in artificial rain. Amit’s face was most funny. His beard was colored in green and face in black. In afternoon we all got hungry and tired. Then we all came to my home where we had hot Kachoris and laddos. By that time Manjo came. After eating we attacked Manjo and changed his appearance.
Manjo(at extreme left) before he was colored by us.


Manjo(third from left) after he was colored

Rajesh's with complexion that will shy even Robert Mugabe

We all were tired. Amit told that we should take bath and go for movie in evening. But Rajesh insisted that we go to beach. No one was able to rule out Rajesh’s orders and after half an hour we were on beach. After getting out of rickshaw we had our favourite Vada Pav. Initially only Rajesh told that he will go in waters and we decided to stand on shores. After eating Vada Pav Rajesh didn’t look left or right and directly went into the sea. Seeing him and other people enjoying in water we were not able to control ourselves. Next minute all of us were in water.
After enjoying for two hours we reached home in evening.




Amit and Rajesh playing Holi with their best friend

US Elections and Office Romance

These days I am too much interested in US Presidential Elections. Its not only me….may be its whole world who is all ears to listen the issues being raised there. Specially to listen the views of Candidates on Iraq, Terrorism and US foreign policy. This year there is not much fuss over Outsourcing issue. May be Americans are too pre occupied over problems at home.

So John Edwards has quit the race. So has Rudy Giuliani.
I guess John McCain will be Republicans Candidate and as far as Democrats is considered, deadlock between Hillary and Obama will continue.

I read something nice about John Edwards and wished he had become Democrat nominee. Read this on NYT, Edwards Effect.

“…..If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.
It’s hard, in particular, to overstate the importance of the Edwards health care plan, introduced in February.
Before the Edwards plan was unveiled, advocates of universal health care had difficulty getting traction, in part because they were divided over how to get there. Some advocated a single-payer system — a k a Medicare for all — but this was dismissed as politically infeasible. Some advocated reform based on private insurers, but single-payer advocates, aware of the vast inefficiency of the private insurance system, recoiled at the prospect…..”

Whoever becomes nominee, and hence President, removing US from Siberian Dilemma will be Herculean task.


Now something from India.
Apparently there was some sort of survey done in India on office romance. See the stats.


*Click on the image to see details*

I don’t know why they didn’t mention the names of offices where they had done the survey and which were ranked on top in Office romance. Had they mentioned it, I would have tabled by resignation today itself .


I am regular reader of blog of MJ Akbar,Editor-in-Chief of Asian Age newspaper. I got this amusing piece.

"....as the plague that wiped out half of Europe in the 14th century was known (The Great Mortality, by John Kelly). The plague started in Mongolia and reached, via the trade routes, the port of Caffa on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, controlled by the Genoese and rich with the wealth of silk from China, timber and fur from Russia, slaves from Ukraine, diamonds from Golconda and spice from Kerala and Ceylon. The overlords of the region were the Mongols, who had become Muslims by then in central Asia and south Russia. Tension between the Genoese and the Muslims sharpened into conflict and in 1343 Janibeg Khan drove the Italians to the point of surrender in the port. Just then the plague hit the Mongols. The Genoese went down on their knees to give thanks to the Almighty. They were premature. Janibeg Khan proved to be something of a germ-war strategist. He loaded infected corpses on to his catapults and flung the corpses into Caffa. The Genoese were decimated, and he ensured that both sides lost. That was how the Black Death entered Europe."

Cool !!

Its so cold here in Mumbai. Mercury has dropped too much and has broken many past records of winter season.By this time Mumbai normally returns to its hot,sweaty atmosphere but not this time.Entire North India is engulfed in cold wave.

On Saturday evening I got call from PS. She had called me after a long time. She asked if I can meet her at any Coffee shop. I was at home whole day and was aneways bored. So I told her to meet at Barista near a place called Mith Chowki.We sat there sipping hot Coffee and talking about friends,work and life.I told her that I have never seen snow.....to which she promised that she will take me one day at a place where theres snow.When we decided to leave at around 11PM, I was almost shivering.