Ah those Traffic Jams!

This is a general rant post. Rant against the mess that we call traffic. I was coming home today evening in my office bus and looking at the traffic jam (calling it traffic doesn’t make sense at all); saw the mess around me. It was horrific. I then started to think! Well, I was sitting in the comfort of my bus seat and not at the steering wheel. So I could think. Think about why are we the way we are on the roads. Why are we in such a hurry all the time? Why do we put our lives and other drivers' lives at risk to save some nano-seconds in our commute by doing such risky maneuvers? Why do we think that traffic rules are for others and we don’t need to bother ourselves with them? Why do we start with expletives and throw punches at the drop of a hat when someone crosses our path on the road while in a traffic situation?

I thought deep and hard on this. What is to be blamed for this plight on the Indian roads? I came to the conclusion that there are a number of factors responsible for this. The first and foremost is about the education of traffic rules and regulations. I realized that we are never formally taught any traffic rules in our lives. Whatever we learn is from our parent/ elder from whom we learn to drive. I sincerely think that at-least the people learning to drive from driving schools are being taught the rules. I definitely hope so! And how many people actually study traffic rules to take the driving license exam? We don’t know the rules properly because we never learnt them. So we end up doing what other morons are doing on the roads. Now only if there is a proper formal driving education in place, we should see some improvement. We can do something about this. Make traffic education a subject in schools and colleges. Hold sessions and seminars in offices and residential societies to educate people on driving do’s and don’ts. It is not very difficult. If each one of us decides to convert at least one person into a sensible driver, we would have done our duty.

The second part of the solution is to make yoga and meditation compulsory for everyone. Yoga will teach us to be patient. This patience will then help us on the roads. We will be more tolerant on the road with fellow commuters. Okay! I am just kidding. On a more serious note, people need to be more patient and tolerant on the roads. They should be courteous and respectful of other drivers and pedestrians on the roads. Road rage should be a strict no-no. Every time you are about to blow your lid off on someone who cut into your lane without signaling or the moron who is behind you honking continuously, just smile at him and think of all good things in your life. Your rage will go away in a jiffy. Road rage never benefits anyone. Be forgiving.

Third part of the solution is proper implementation of traffic rules. We have traffic rules in place. Problem is correct implementation of these rules. So what do we do? First and foremost, stop paying bribes to cops on the streets. Stop paying bribes to agents and RTO officials. This action alone will go a long way in correcting a lot of problems. Follow traffic rules. If you do encounter a jam, co-operate fully with the officer on duty. Cops are humans and they could do with any help from our side – legitimate help and not the usual kharcha-pani. And with no possibility of bribes, they will also try and target only the defaulters rather than harassing genuine people.

So here are a few things we can all start with to correct the situation – 

For Four Wheelers – 

• Wear seat-belt at all times – not just the driver but all passengers.
• Always drive within permissible speed limits.
• Follow lane discipline.
• At night drive on a low beam. Never drive on upper beams unless on dark highways and empty roads and absolutely necessary.
• Don’t park anywhere as if it is your father’s driveway. Park at proper designated parking places.
• Do not use cell phones while driving.

For Two-wheelers – 

• Always wear a helmet.
• Always drive within permissible speed limits.
• Follow lane discipline.
• Never ride triple seat – don’t have more than the allowed number of persons on the vehicles.
• Do not use cell phones while driving.

For Pedestrians – 

• Cross the streets only at zebra crossings – no jay walking/ crossing at any cost.
• Be always on full alert while walking on the streets/ footpaths.
• Follow all traffic signs

For Public Transport Drivers, Autos and Cabs - 

• I can write an essay on this. I will keep this for later.

More to come on this! I think it is very important to highlight the importance of road safety. It is a very serious issue. I will make this a series and continue writing on this topic. Till the time being, follow the rules and be safe and happy out there.

Its Just Not Cricket!

Since Cricket is the flavor of the month, here's some interesting anecdotes about the great game. These are some of the famous sledges of all times.

Rod Marsh & Ian Botham: When Botham took guard in an Ashes match, Marsh welcomed him to the wicket with the immortal words:“So how’s your wife & my kids?” Botham replied "The wife's fine but the kids are retarded..."

Daryll Cullinan & Shane Warne: As Cullinan was on his way to the wicket, Warne told him he had Been waiting 2 years for another chance to humiliate him.“Looks like you spent it eating,” Cullinan retorted.

Glenn McGrath (bowling to portly Zimbabwean chicken farmer Eddo Brandes): “Hey Eddo, why are you so F**ing Fat?” Eddo Brandes:”Because everytime I F*** your mother, she throws me a biscuit”

Robin Smith & Merv Hughes:During 1989 Lords Test Hughes said to Smith after he played & missed:”You can’t f**king bat“. Smith to Hughes after he smacked him to the boundary: “Hey Merv, we make a fine pair. I can’t f**king bat & you can’t f**king bowl.”

Merv Hughes & Javed Miandad:During 1991 Adelaide Test, Javed called Merv a fat bus conductor. A few balls later Merv dismissed Javed: “Tickets please“, Merv called out as he ran past the departing batsman.

And of course you can’t forget Ian Healy’s legendary comment that was picked up by the Channel 9 microphones when Arjuna Ranatunga called for a runner on a particularly hot night during a one dayer in Sydney… “You don’t get a runner for being an overweight, unfit, fat c**t!!!”

James Ormond had just come out to bat on an ashes tour and was greeted by Mark Waugh…….. MW : “F*ck me, look who it is. Mate, what are you doing out here, there’s no way you’re good enough to play for England.”    JO : “Maybe not, but at least i’m the best player in my family”

Yet another Australian witticism with this time porky Sri Lankan batsman Arjuna Ranatunga the victim. Shane Warne, trying to tempt the batsman out of his crease mused what it took to get the plump character to get out of his crease and drive. Wicketkeeper Ian Healy piped up, “Put a Mars Bar on a good length. That should do it.”

Ravi shastri v/s the aussie 12th man Mike Whitney -  Shastri hits it to Whitney and looks for a single…Whitney gets the ball in and says “if you leave the crease i’ll break your f***ing head.” Shastri: “if you could bat as well as you can talk you wouldn’t be the f***ing 12^th man”

Malcolm Marshall was bowling to David Boon who had played and missed a couple of times. Marshall: “Now David, Are you going to get out now or am I going to have to bowl around the wicket and kill you?

Fred Trueman bowling. The batsman edges and the ball goes to first slip,and right between Raman Subba Row’s legs. Fred doesn’t say a word. At the end of the over, Row ambles past Trueman and apologises sheepishly. “I should’ve kept my legs together, Fred”. “So should your mother” he replied.

Cullinan is well known for being Warne's bunny, and so New Zealand keeper Parore greeted the South African, carefully playing the first ball from kiwi Chris Harris, with a cry of: " Bowled Warnie!"

God of All Things - A Tribute to Sachin Tendulkar

 Michael Kasprowicz

"Don't bowl him bad balls, he hits the good ones for fours." 

Dennis Lillee

"If I've to bowl to Sachin, I'll bowl with my helmet on. He hits the ball so hard."

Shane Warne

"I'll be going to bed having nightmares of Sachin just running down the wicket and belting me back over the head for six. He was unstoppable. I don't think anyone, apart from Don Bradman, is in the same class as Sachin Tendulkar. He is just an amazing player."

Steve Waugh

(after being defeated in the Coca-Cola Cup finals in Sharjah) "It was one of the greatest innings I have ever seen. There is no shame being beaten by such a great player, Sachin is perhaps only next to the Don''.

Don Bradman

I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on Television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two...hi compactness, technique, stroke production... it all seemed to gel! in reference to Sachin Tendulkar.

Mathew Hayden

"I have seen God, he bats at no. 4 for India"

Mark Taylor

"We did not lose to a team called india...we lost to a man called Sachin."

Brain Lara

"Sachin is a genius , i am a mere mortal!"

Harsha Bhogle

"If Sachin plays well..india sleeps well"

Andy Flower

"There are 2 kind of batsmen in the world. One is Sachin Tendulkar. Two all the others."

Michael Kasprowicz

During the Bangalore Test, frustrated, he went to Dennis Lillee and asked, "Mate, do you see any weaknesses (in Tendulkar)?" Lillee replied, "No Michael, as long as you walk off with your pride that's all you can do".

Brett Lee

"You might pitch a ball on the off stump and think you have bowled a good ball and he walks across and hits it for two behind midwicket. His bat looks so heavy but he just waves it around like it's a toothpick? "

This one is not by any legend, but some fans

"Commit all your crimes when Sachin is batting. They will go unnoticed because even the Lord Is watching" - Placard at the SCG as Sachin was making his century, January 2008

Virendra Sehwag to Shoaib Akhtar after Sachin hit Shoaib for a six in 2003 World Cup match

"Baap baap hota hai aur beta beta hota hai"

But the finest compliment must be that bookmakers would not fix the odds - or a game - until Tendulkar was out.

What Friends Say..

So after a long hiatus, I am back to putting a post. The long break was a result of lots of work and maybe what people called writer’s block. Just did not have the inclination or the ideas to write for a while. In between too many things have been happening and those will be revealed or written at the appropriate time. And till the time I start putting in more regular posts (Which will be soon), find below a very apt definition of friendship. I came across this somewhere (cannot recall the source now), but it is so perfect. Atleast in my case, this is how my friends are (due credit to the source; I will add the link when I recollect it) -   

Friends don’t say “I am sorry” ……………….. They say “Abey! Teri galati hain”

Friends don’t say “I am there for you” ………… They say “kahan mar gaye saalon”

Friends don’t say “It happens, I understand” ………….. They say “sab teri wajah se hua kamine”

Friends don’t say “I care” ………………. They say “kamino tumhare bina kaha jaoonga”

Friends don’t say “I m happy for your success” …….. They say “chal party de saale”

Friends don’t say “I dig that girl” …….... They say “saalon usko izzat se dekho, woh tumhari bhabhi hain”

Some Deep Thinking

We are living in the 21st century. We are in an age of cloud computing and technological convergence. We are in the age of the ‘Avaataar’ and ultra-mobility. We are in the age of nuclear families and women heading organizations. We are in the age of sharing every minute of our lives via micro blogs such as twitter and facebook. This is the day and age where women and men are competing for everything – be it ranks in schools, admissions to colleges or jobs in MNCs. This is the day and age when couples start looking for day care options the day after the pregnancy is confirmed so that the new would be moms can resume their jobs as soon as possible.

And this also the age where we still watch the saas-bahu serials. We still read of honor killings and khap panchayats. You may call it a paradox or the strange anomaly of our times. On one hand we have a society that is racing towards a technological revolution. The society that has their entire lives on a small cell phone. We have parents learning to use skypes and g-talks; emails and desktop sharing. We have 3G coming soon. We drive in swanky cars loaded with Bluetooth and GPS but yet navigate our way through cows sitting on the roads. We buy the latest and most advanced appliances, but put vermillion and flowers on them before using them. We carry ‘Coach’ and ‘Louis Vuitton’ bags but still do not forget to put ‘sindoor’ on the forehead. This is the uniqueness of the cultural ethos of India. It is like a two lane highway. One lane is the ultra suave urban life competing globally and ever dependant on technology; while the other lane is the rural, rustic India trying to catch up but at the same time holding its own. So which lane do we take? Maybe find a middle path - keep our feet in the age old lane but our heads in the urban, progressive lane. What say? It’s worth a thought, isn’t it?

The New Avataar

My Blog is back with a new look! Again! So what? It is my blog, my space, right? So I can change the look and feel as many times as I want. Now that being established, the reason for this particular change was that I was struggling to find the right look for the blog for some time. I was not happy with the reds and the greys I subjected it to in between. I was experimenting with different looks. Finally I got this one and decided to keep it. This one is minimalist; a plain white canvas. And I get to customize it the way I want. Okay, I don’t have the time or much inclination to do a lot of customization. But I thought I will bring in some changes that I had been planning on doing for a while now. First and foremost I wanted to add proper labels or tags instead of the categories that I having been using. The categories were pretty neat to classify the posts under various heads – random, sports, technology, etc. However that way I could not tag the posts based on content. So it was not possible for anyone to search for posts they wanted to read based on key words or tags. Unfortunately Blogger does not have an option to have both - categories and labels/ tags like Wordpress has. So I decided to use the tags or labels by key words and do away with my earlier categories. Hence now you see a huge cloud of tags/ labels on the right side column.

Another change is that I wanted to do away with my twitter updates showing up on the blog. I thought that having my twitter updates on the blog was not adding any value to the blog. And anyone out there interested in reading my tweets can follow me on twitter. So I thought I should just leave the ‘Follow Me’ option and not display the tweets. And that’s what I did. It makes the blog look cleaner. The biggest trade off I had to do in adopting this look was not able to carry my blog description. I had to do away with. But just like me and my writing, my blog should also keep evolving. So from now on, my blog title will go without any description. Atleast for the time being! So I wish my blog and this website all the best. May you attract a lot more readership and appreciation in the coming days!

Reality Show Bytes!!

Most of us people all over the world are suckers for reality shows. This is a global phenomenon - be it ‘American Idol’ to ‘Dancing with the Stars’ to ‘Indian Idol’ to ‘Britain's got Talent’ to ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ to ‘Rakhi or Rahul's Swayamwar’. There is an overflow of reality shows all around and different people follow different shows. I have never ever been a fan of these reality shows except for the initial days of ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ (when Sonu Nigham used to host the show) or an occasional ‘American Idol’ or ‘DWTS’ (how can you not watch it when you have Pamela Anderson as a participant?). Though I don’t watch reality shows, I don’t have anything against them either. They follow the general principle of getting viewers involved and then appealing to their emotions.

First is your regular run of the mill talent shows. Examples of these shows would be - The ‘Idol’, ‘America’s Got Talent’ to our desi ‘Boogie Woogie’ and ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’. These shows have contestants competing against one another on a common skill (singing, dancing, etc) and or a combination of skills. Most such shows require people to vote for their favorite contestants and the winner is decided by the one who gets the most votes. But just like in real life, even here people do not vote for the right candidate and the wrong person wins.

Second are the reality shows of the genre of ‘KBC’ or ‘Dus Ka Dum’ or ‘Jeopardy’. These shows are general or specialized knowledge based shows and tests the intellectual skills of the contestants. The person who answers the most questions correctly wins. This is a rather straightforward version of the reality show and everything happens in front of the studio audience. No hocus-focus voting here.

The third type of reality shows are the stupid ones – ‘Rakhi ka Swayamwar’ or ‘I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here’ or ‘Big Brother/ Boss’. These shows are stupid because they are not showcasing anything productive of any kind. They are plain stupid and show stupid people desperate to get their faces on camera. There is no reason for these shows to be there.

Fourth is probably the most popular category right now – reality shows on people’s lives. So we have ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’, ‘The Real Housewives of New Jersey’, ‘Girls Next Door’, ‘Kendra’…the list could go on and on. This category is reality TV at its worst. People live their lives on camera. We see them sleeping, eating, fighting, etc as it happens. Why is this worst? From whatever I have read on life after these shows are done with; the families always break up after all the intense glare of the camera. Classic examples being the Hulk Hogan family that broke up after the show ‘Hogan knows Best’ got over.

But I have a huge problem with one type of reality show. This type of shows get me all worked up. These are the reality shows that use, portray or feature children. Shows like John & Kate plus eight, The Toddler and the Tiara top this list. John and Kate…show is about a couple John and Kate who have eight kids – a set of twins and then a set of sextuplets. The show features the family’s everyday life. The parents are both fame and publicity hungry people who want to cash in on their kids. In the process of the shows, they separated, blasted each other in the media and made total idiots of themselves on TV. Who ultimately suffered? The kids of course! Why is it that parents push their kids into media spotlight when they should know beforehand that the kids are always going to be affected negatively? Is it so hard to understand that if you expose a six year old to 24 hour camera, he will not grow up into a normal human being?  Aren’t all the cases of Hollywood and TV child stars straying towards substance addiction a case to prove this? Even in India, the emergence of all these singing and dancing competitions has shown parents pressurize their kids to become the next child superstar. Parents want to live their own dream through their kid. There is no harm in that. But they also need to ensure that a kid is a kid at the end of the day. Push them only to the extent till they enjoy the act or the competition. Beyond that it is not fair. And nothing gives you a right to exploit a child! Even if it is your own!

So there it is! My take on the enormously popular ‘Reality Shows’ of today! I will continue to not watch these shows. And I will continue to crib about them. And that is the Reality of it!