Hoorray!

Importance of this huge UP mandate, and the ways in which it will spill over, beyond today's results. Parliament and State Assemblies BJP & NDA gain majority in both houses of the parliament. They are also in power, in about a dozen state assemblies. This will impact two issues. Presidential Elections   Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can comfortably appoint the person of their choice to be the next President. In line with this, they can - the must - use the additional support to appoint the right people in key institutions - and I hope they go into serious detail, not just stopping with Governors and Chief Justices. We are in a dire need of replacement for those old fossil remnants of a foregone socialist era. The institutions needs a thorough spring cleaning, and dynamic, vibrant and dharmic personalities should be appointed to key positions.  This is so, so crucial because all we have are self-important, dynasty loyalists, sitting in seats of influence, ...

One of the first news report I read this morning is this - http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/muslim-techie-beaten-to-death-in-pune-7-men-of-hindu-outfit-held/#.U46d2V4S8zI.twitter It immediately elicited a flurry of responses along expected lines from the usual, useful idiots. Even the basic courtesy of expressing condolences for the dead person and the bereaving family was seen to have been forgotten, in their haste to tie their favorite punching bags to the conspiracy. They did not stop to think that the outfit named here had as much probability to be NOT related to RSS or any other parivar organizations, and could be floated by anyone, and funded by anyone. Not that the useful idiots ever demonstrated an ability to think. Now they are also demonstrating their insensitivity to loss - because it is a loss only to someone else and not to them. Without digging back on their 1400 year history, and with events of only the 21st century, we can conclude that the follow...

I thought of a lot of titles for this post: "Ache Din Aane Wale Hain" "Iss Bar Modi Sarkar" "Time for a new India" Some more are running around in my head. But the most predominant emotion in my mind was - relief. When the election dates were announced, I couldn't wait for this day - the counting day - to come sooner. Now that it has come and is almost over, the feeling of euphoria has given way to relief. As of this moment Modi is taking 268 colleagues along with him to the Lok Sabha for sure, according the Election Commission of India 's website. In a few more minutes, that number will change to 280. This is a big relief, since to run a government - the central government or The Government of India - he needs only 272 members in parliament. Along with the MPs from his allies, that number is somewhere beyond 330+. The trepidation and the excitement I felt yesterday when I penned the previous post were long gone - in fact they were dis...

Tomorrow is a big day. It would be a day marked in the history of India and a turning point in Indian politics. After a lengthy 9-Phase election, counting happens tomorrow - all the epithets like world's largest democracy, largest electorate, just a 100 million short of the combined population of US & Europe at this moment have been trumpeted again and again. Still, we need to keep the numbers in mind. The number of Indians who were eligible to vote were 814.5 million.  Of these 66.38% or 551.3 million people have voted (including yours truly, exercising my right to vote in the fifth election since 2006).  Our votes have been recorded in 1.4 million electronic voting machines, which will reveal the numbers tomorrow.  For more of these numbers you can refer this comprehensive page on Indian General Elections, 2014 over at wikipedia. This is a big enough spectacle to attract the attention of a large part of the planet. Running around right now are exciteme...

What exactly is patriotism? Is it also just a form of lust for land? What does a militant fanaticism towards language hide? Instead of freeing you, do these abstracts immerse you in emotional extremism? The strong emotions that you feel when you think of your Motherland, Mothertongue - Do they bind you much more firmly to the dirt of the land? To hatred? To violence? "Daanah Pah Daanah Da Nana..." Long before the singers began singing, the beat got me going. This song is written in a language of a small group of people who tend to sheep and goats in a harsh landscape. Akhtar Chanal Zahri is the writer as well as the singer. Born in Balochistan, he grew up belting folk songs in Brahvi, his mothertongue. In Brahvi, he has penned this incredible song, to describe his land, its beauty. This language may be tribal and harsh, but it blends itself to so much lyrical beauty and is thereby lofty and sweet to me. I have been listening to this song repeatedly, mesmerized by i...

Do you love masala movies? If you do, then you’ll definitely like Along The Way. To be true to the style of the book, it is the story of one Mr. VSA Tanikaburla by Mr. TGC Prasad. Venkata Subramaniam Adisankara Tanikaburla, also called as Venkat or more jovially as VSAT is our hero - who starts off as a very unassuming third year mechanical engineering student at NIT, Kozhikode and ends up as a... easy to guess if you like or at least have watched a masala movie - especially the Telugu or Tamil varieties. When you watch one such movie, you can predict what will happen next. This book is very similar, since it is full of cliches of the ‘boy-meets-girl’ kind and has everything - love, friendship, family, sorrow, trials and triumphs, except one thing - fights. In spite of the cliches, I couldn’t help laughing at the so many humorous digs at friends, girlfriends, parents, in-laws and most importantly - managers at workplaces. And our hero is honest enough to be “vocally self-critical”(...

The Secret of the Nagas is the part two of the Shiva Trilogy and continues exactly where the first book The Immortals of Meluha stops. The book begins with a small, but intense skirmish between the mysterious Naga warrior and the Shiva-Sati couple. The couple underestimate the Naga and end up injured. But what puzzles them is the apparent lack of viciousness on part of the Naga, who, although he had many chances to kill either of them, leaves Shiva and Sati alive with only minor wounds. From this point the story thrillingly unfolds further. A lot of new characters are introduced, and identities and backgrounds of quite a few old characters are revealed - many of them quite shocking. But nothing is as shocking as the revelation on the very last page of the book! Like in the first part, in this part too, Amish, through his protagonist, continues to raise the question - if something is apparently evil, is it actually evil? What is good and what is evil? Through Shiva's dis...

These are protesting times. A large number of people have taken to the streets - I don't know the real numbers but I am being assured that there are thousands of people on the streets, taking long marches, holding candle-light vigils etc - protesting corruption. I have covered the movement and the ripples it is creating in my other blog. So, I am not going into those details again here. I have a few basic questions though (as usual). What is it that the people are protesting against, essentially? Yes, we know it is corruption, but corruption does not sustain itself. It is perpetrated by individuals. That raises the next question - who are the individuals that perpetrate corruption. Or to simply state - who are the corrupt individuals? Are only those who take bribes and get involved in scams corrupt and dishonest? What about those who pay to get driving licenses without attending the exams? What about those who encroach upon a few square feet next to their own properties an...

I just finished reading it this morning and... WHOA! What a book! I cannot stop thinking about all the stuff that the story has in it - I'm drowning in a deluge of my own thoughts! No, Shiva is not the hero of the entire story. He is still the protagonist, but someone almost displaced him as the hero of this particular book in the series - by his valor, ability and courage, as much as the stoicism he displays (for which he is even chided!) No wonder he's the namesake of the most popular God of the Hindu pantheon, who has awesomed his way into the faith systems of other lands and peoples too! Someone else almost became the villain, but like his dunderhead, "goat headed" fool of a namesake in the Hindu Puranas, he's simply too dumb and incapable to be one and has to be remain the puppet of the actual mastermind. And who that master puppeteer, is still a mystery, in spite of the smug presumption that makes us think that we can hazard a guess. I know I am just r...

We are influenced by some people at some periods of our lives. It is particularly evident when we reflect on our childhood and adolescence - the formative periods. Individuals and individuals of a specific kind, hold tremendous control of our lives when we are young. Parents, relatives, friends and along with them, another important group of individuals who have great influence are our teachers. A teacher can be anybody from the people mentioned before - parents, relatives and friends. Quite often, a stranger can also be our teacher; like the writer and the poet, who speaks through his characters and ideas; like the artist, who speaks through the images he creates; like the so many actors on this stage called life, who teach us how to be and not to be by their actions, utterances, reactions and replies, innocent of the knowledge that they are actually teaching the onlookers i.e. us. Nature is one of the greatest teachers. So are events influenced by nature or enacted by individuals...

The post started with this judgmental title It’s official: Internet Explorer users are dumb that spurred me to read on. After the initial few lines it aroused my interest enough to read it fully and even write a blog post (the one you are reading right now!). But a comment the author (who confessed to a low IQ) made at the very end of the post made me wonder how did he end up as a writer. These are actually not writers, but recyclers who cut and paste stuff from other sources. Large herds of such recyclers prowl the internet and are dreadfully substandard. What it says The post begins by advertising the results of a survey done by some consultancy, who hosted an online IQ test and kept track of the browser used by each participant to reach the test. After the end of the survey period, they compiled their data and concluded this following result (as the author of the post claimed): A significant number of individuals with a low score on the cognitive test were found to be usin...

I was spurred to write this in response to the stupid statuses and comments that were being posted in the facebook group - Youth for a corruption free india. It is imperative that the members of this group use their brains instead of ___ to think. 1. Regardless of Baba Ramdev's background, the cause he's championing is worth fighting - for EVERYONE, whatever their persuasion may be. The only criteria is that they have our nation's, and it's people's good at heart. 2. This is the "biggest scamster govt in the world" at the moment, as Chetan Bhagat tweeted . There are no second thoughts on it. 3. The Baba having a *multi-million dollar yoga empire*, or getting *entire islands gifted by his devotees* are non-issues here. None of them are underhanded dealings unless proved so. And until now all of his activities since before the campaign have been quite transparent - the media has been sifting through them with microscopic scrutiny and so is the govt, ...

Seriously? Can a cat, or any other animal, however cute it might be, resemble someone you know? Some one says so in this post . No, I'm not saying it's not possible or it's stupid. But it's really weird to think that way. Hmmm... I do find that people actually resemble animals (which is the other way round of animals resembling people). Some people look like monkeys, who obviously are close relatives. And some people look like reptiles and birds. At times people's actions and words, unforcedly makes me liken them to animals. I know I'm not being too kind, but it's just a thought that flashes in my mind.