Perpetually Perplexed

A 22 year old girl dies in an accident in Bangalore when she volunteers for fire department's safety exercises. Around 150 lives are saved in a fire in Russel market in Bangalore by an alert citizen who ran around the shops waking up the all the slumbering people.   He is yet to receive any award. A 17 year old rape victim in Noida is blamed saying she invited it by the police officer who openly also mentions the name and address of girl. A disabled lady was deboarded from a flight in Kalkatta stating that she is not fit to fly. What do all these events have in common? It is complete apathy and criminal neglect by our government for the common people.  

Few days earlier I posted something like rah me chood ke saya bhi chala jaata hai. But today I had some recollection which helped me to look at the facts from a different angle. My cousin, 5 years old at that time used to tell harmless lies and we all used to be amused by her lies. She used to say but everybody in her class tell lies. Now when I could laugh at that genuinely at these harmless lies, why am I feeling so angered by people's lies? Why can't I just give a om shanti smile at these? OK, domestic help says her uncle's brother's sister's son died by hanging himself and hence she had to go for the funeral. Fine smile at her. If she says she had to clean her house for her forthcoming daughter's wedding, will I let her to take a leave? Understand her and smile and let go. Not only her. Any one for that matter. They are lying as they have a reason. Do not try to analyze them, but just let go and let be. Be amused and at the most laugh it out. But not

Bangaloreans have beautiful names for everything. (I am not one of them. I am from remote small town called Sirsi. And hence the small town mentality). They call small orange flower, which is used some times with jasmine garland kanakambara. We just call it abbalige.  Anyway I brought this small kanakambara plant an year ago. The plant already had a flower bunch in it. The flowers stayed without withering for almost a month. Then when they did wither, I blamed my opposition party (spouse!!) for that. I pointed that, when he was spraying insecticide to the adjacent mango plant, my kanakambara flowers got murdered. Even after that I religiously was watering the plant everyday. But where are the flowers.? When I go to buy flower plants, I will be bewitched by the beauty of the flowers and bring them. But almost always, once these demo flowers wither away, there will be just plants, haughtily standing without even a single bud. Have they learnt a lesson or two from software packages?

Demo Version Reality Did I pay 60 rupees for one flower? The first flower is what was present when I bought the plant. Second is the one which bloomed one month later.

जग ने छीना मुझ से मुझे जो भी लगा प्यारा सब जीत गए मुझसे मई हर दम ही हारा I was wailing singing this song by Jagjit Singh. The reason being, the zee cafe channel has stopped airing the serial - Parenthood - one of the very few non-chor-police , non sac type of serial - also it reminded me that more than a computer addict I am a parent. Good to be reminded of that fact now and then. So singing thus I opened the window and chanced to see outside. There was this cow grazing in an empty side. My mouth closed shut. Yes, the world might have snatched the serial from me now and then, a internet connection few times etc. But I do not have to roam around the town searching for grass to graze. When I am hungry, I can just cook what I want and eat. Or if I am feeling lazy which is the case most of the times, I can just raid the kitchen shelves and gobble up cookies or snacks etc. When I feel cold, I do not have to stand in the middle of the road, I can select a sheet of varying thickness,

Little bit of context here : It was Sunday afternoon and I was watching muted TV. Muted because husband was asleep on the couch and I did not want to trouble him as there are  more satisfactory ways of troubling him. And one of the TV channels was showing some thing, some thing....SMS LIFE to some number. And my devil's workshop got busy. What must be this number? Of course it will be the number of HIM as he is the one who is in charge of life of us - mortals. But again, what do I sms? Do I ask for life? I already have life because I am alive, at least I think I am. Do I ask for termination of life? Naah, I don't think I am ready yet for that, though I often fantasize jumping from multi story building or hanging from the fan etc. Then, if I am not asking for gift of life or the removal of it, what do I ask for? Can I ask him to format the whole darned thing and re install it? Does HE grant it ? And again, what if this formatting is futile like my formatting my pc.  Wh

In a democracy, every one is equal, but some are more equal. We have a law minister who does not care about model code of conduct during election time. We also have a woman and child welfare minister who watches porn in the  assembly when the session is going on. And they go scot-free. They are telling us we are here to make laws, not to observe them.

 Harriet and David wanted a large and happy family. They bought a large house with many rooms and a dining table which can easily accommodate more than twenty five people. Their parents are unhappy and worried about the maintenance of such a big house. Four children came and Harriet's is a happy family, Every Christmas and Easter holidays, their house would be filled with people, happiness and laughter. The four children are adored by all. And Harriet and David look at each other and smile. But all that changed with the arrival of the fifth child. He was unplanned. And since the beginning of pregnancy, Harriet is having severe stomach pains. The baby is moving around and kicking continuously inside her and she is unable to bear the pain. Finally in the  eighth month, the child- Ben  arrives. He is strange to look at - with yellow eyes, flat nose and sloped head. And he is strong and hyper active. As the days progress, people see that he has a violent streak. When one year

How do you bring up great kids who excel in whatever they do. Who will be successful and more importantly who will be happy? I am no psychologist. And I don't think I understand kids well. But my feelings are as follows. First of all we need to make learning as a fun activity. Compare a toddler who learns to walk, to talk and to run around the house to a child who learns to read and write and do math in school. The toddlers are exuberant about their learning, they cherish their achievement and they enjoy this entire process of learning, Have you ever seen a baby crying or sulking because he is not able to tell his first words? Then why is school learning such a hated activity? The point is  to understand how to make learning fun again so that child thinks he is playing again. Here technology can come to assistance. Some animation films, some slides can be used to assist each class in the school. I have seen some math learning cds back in 2000's and I was enchanted by it.

Bhala tumhare rangoli mere se behetar kaisa? Something similar is happening in our house since many months. It all started with me being jobless and thinking of drawing rangolis. I had this domestic help who would draw nice rangolis. And I have this neighbor who wants everything best in their house. When that girl left our house, I started downloading rangolis from net and drawing them. Learn one rangoli each evening and draw it next morning. Not to be left behind, my neighbor instructed the wife of watchman (a house is being constructed opposite to mine. That is another looooong story) to clean the entire road with water and draw nicer rangolis paying her 300 per month just for that.  When that watchman woman is not around, watchman would call some body else from somewhere for that purpose. I became over obsessed with this. I would fight with spouse if I see his muddy foot prints next my beautiful design. I even went and bought 3 books with rangoli designs. (which were way be

Supreme Court has caused a havoc by cancelling the licences of many telecom providers. Newspaper articles say 5% of the consumers will be affected. Some other articles say 10% people will be affected. But I am distressed as we may be seeing the following things soons Men and women will be walking around telephones holding the receiver to their ears and talking incessantly, not bothered that the cables are disconnected and dangling. Aadat you see.   Kids and teenagers would suddenly become extra proficient in mathematics, arithmetic in particular. As they can not type away messages, they would be typing 34 + 1234 or 2567 * 11 etc. on their now useless mobile phones throughout the day. OK that is one good news for us, parents.    Men will heave a sigh of relief as they need not worry about their spouses checking their phone logs or messages.   Mothers will be slightly worried as they have to find  extra reasons to nag their children. "Will you keep away the mobile."

She is old and fragile. Still she is bending and mopping my floor and I just watch her. It is bad. Some of you may even call me cruel. But I can't do much. She has agreed to do all the works in my house and I pay money for that. Only thing I could do and I did was to tell her that ask her daughter to come and do the work instead. She is not the only one. There are many maid servants near by who are past retirement age but still continue to work in many houses. Some are trying to help their children repay the loans, some are living separate from their children. Who will care for them and tell them "ಅಮ್ಮ ನಿಮಗೆ ವಯಸ್ಸಾಗಿದೆ. ನಾನ್ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡ್ತೀನಿ ಬಿಡಿ " Another aged lady. Her economic condition is far better in comparison. In fact her family is rich in Indian standards. But she has to slave down from dawn to late in night. They can afford a domestic help, but getting a help is next to impossible in these villages. So she has to clean this enormous house and cook not only fo

We Indians have right to speak, right to participate in any event and so many other rights including the right to release a book by one of the greatest authors. Only if the police and administration do not apprehend any trouble from some section or the other of religious fundamentalists ( even if this section consists of five to ten people).

I have started reading The reluctant fundamentalist by Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid. It is easy read with good style. I have finished around thirty pages but so far I haven't found out any thing about fundamentalist or reluctance. But again, we can relate to the author as he is also from our sub-continent with shared culture and values. But the word reluctant is apt adjective for me in so many aspects. I am a reluctant mom, reluctant home maker. I am not reluctant eater may be. But no, I do not relish eating also, I keep eating with anger, sadness and pure rage some times. But for you bad luck, I am not a reluctant blogger :)

I was thinking of just posting two lines from an old hindi song वख्त इन्सान पे ऐसा भी कभी आता है राह मी छोड के साया भी चला जाता है And to accompany that I imagined I would draw a human figure with lot of wounds and some red color here and there and surrounded by arrows. (I did not draw because I can not. I can not draw on computer nor on paper) But what is the context? Remember I crashed our computer . A computer technician came and spent two days and spent 1200 rupees (our) and repaired the computer. Now , the anti virus can not scan and programs would not install and to top it all, our computer is a work station with local ip address as 0.0.0.0. I as usual googled and typed commands, googled and typed commands and deleted files and stopped processes , to no avail. The end result was internet stopped working. Another technician, this time from BSNL came and told the modem is not functioning properly and temporarily replaced the modem with another which does not have