height of vote-bank politics

Two otherwise unrelated incidents that occurred over the weekend have caught my attention and it is a rather disturbing conclusion that arises when i compare them. One incident pertains to the rescue of 'Prince', a 6 year old boy who fell into a deep, narrow pit while playing, and spent over 50 hours there till he was pulled out safely. The other incident relates to the israeli bombing of lebanon which claimed the life of Devendra Kumar Swain, an indian working in a glass factory there. Seemingly unrelated news, until you get into the details, political details that is.

Firstly, i must say that it is shameful that it took 50 hours for the combined forces of the army and the fireforce to rescue a child from a 50 odd foot deep well.

The disgusting fact however is the way the issue has been dealt with. The Haryana govt announces a relief of Rs 2 Lakhs to Prince, the Central govt tops it with another 2 lakhs and then the Haryana govt ices the cake with Rs 50k each to the men who went down under to help the child. A TV channel goes as far as offering to sponsor his entire education.

At the other end of the spectrum, the bereaving family of Devendra Kumar, for which he was the sole breadwinner, for who's wife it will from here on be a considerable struggle to bring up their 2 small kids; for such a family is announced by the Govt. of Orissa, a pittance of Rs 25000. I actually saw it on T.V when the CM of Orissa, Mr. Naveen Patnaik announced this.

Why?

All because Prince happens to be an OBC and further still, a christian. Poor Devendra Saini's family will have to be content with next to zilch probably because they belong to the 'general' category, i'm not sure on that. But what i'm sure is that the Haryana Govt. displayed outrightl cheapness with this incident. Consider this too. The Haryana CM spends one whole day at the site where Prince was trapped in the hole. Ofcourse he is a poor child, but by rescuing it, i think the govt has served its responsibility to its citizens. Whatever else transpired is a clear case of votebank politics and diabolical at that.

This is why no one will no nation will take india seriously, as T V R shenoy rightly pointed out for similar other reasons. Votes come first here. then comes everything else. what a pity!

an accent on accent!

I think i have stumbled upon quite an interesting discovery. I repeat, I think! If there is one word in the colloquial English language that I despise a lot, it is the word 'anyways'. Its on the lips of everyone nowadays and has somehow become a 'hep' word (or is it 'hip' word?). Anyways, (see! its contagious !!) I was pretty sure that such a word does not exist in the English language; that is before we Indians started speaking English. Just to confirm, i checked to see if 'anyways' has a mention in any of the online dictionaries. Here's what i found in merriam websters online

anyways

One entry found for anyways.

Main Entry: any·ways
Pronunciation: -"wAz
Function: adverb
1 a archaic : ANYWISE b dialect : to any degree at all
2 chiefly dialect : ANYHOW, ANYWAY


'Aha' shouted my mind. Unfortunate as it is that it does exist, just look at the explanation therein. Knowing how dangerous accent and pronounciation can be, i'm convinced now that it was a case of 'anywise' sounding like 'anyways' that gave birth to this retard of a word (pun intended). I stand vindicated and hopefully will convert my 'anyways' toting circle of friends to 'anywise' uttering enlightened circle of friends. 'Ahem Ahem' to that, will aver my dear friend

helpless to help

i am walking down residency road towards brigade road, just out of crossword. i've just spent some quality time there and my mood is all upbeat. I'm bouncing down the pavement watching the world, singing to myself. Some distance ahead, i see a confused family looking quizzically in all directions. apparantly they are lost. My first reaction is to develop a desperate urge to help them in whichever way i can. But i can't just barge into them and suggest that i could probably give them directions. You never know how they will take it. Who knows they might not even be lost. So suppressing my altruism, i silently walk past them. wish they had imploringly looked at me. It would have been such a good feeling to be of help.

extreme bull...

I happened to watch an episode of AXN extreme dhamaka today. The way these guys hype up childish stunts, the television oscars should have a special prize instated and awarded to the AXN team behind extreme dhamaka. Oh! and a consolation prize should be given to the masterpices that they select to perform these stunts.

This particular episode featured a stunt wherein a person has to drive a bike through a burning bus. Sounds treacherous? well, i have to hand it to AXN to make a mockery of it. The setup consists of a bus' skeleton placed on an elevated platform. There is a ramp leading up to it and out of it, along the length of the bus. Basically, it is big enough to comfortably allow a maruti 800 to pass through it. The purported 'challenge' is to drive a hero honda karizma through it. utter bollocks considering that the rider is padded from head to toe in fireproof clothing, his hair is coated with fireproof gel and whatever little of his face is exposed is also coated with fireproof cream. the whole stunt in reality translates to drving a bike over a small bridge with ample side space to have two other bikes beside you.

Tania Zaetta is all nervous and our masterpiece has almost peed in his pants after seeing the burning skeleton of the bus. Pardon me for this slight deviation, but there is also a muscular puppet man who is supposed to be the co host with tania. All through the episode, he does not say one word..wonder if he's her bodyguard? Anyway our stuntman here manages to accomplish the stunt without even having to move a muscle, though in all probability he was already a vegetable while riding through it and unable to move a muscle even if he wanted to. I'm sure about this because as soon as he's back in front of the camera, he exults, "i did it" as if he just jumped of the Mt Everest without a parachute and lived to tell.

It would be interesting to follow what other challenges they have up their sleeves. For all you know, the next episode might require another masterpice to hmm...lemme think.....aah, forget it. They'll beat me hands down anyway, when it comes to conjuring hair raising 'challenges'

Tata Crucible 2006 - B'lore Zonals

Giri Balasubramaniam a.k.a 'Pickbrain' is a very good quizmaster. After an engrossing Tata crucible zonals, he comes across as an ideal blend of quizmaster qualities. His questions are pretty good, he doesn't forget his sponsors, but doesn't bloat about them, unlike some others i know ( b'lore quizzers will understand whom i'm referring to). He has a subtle way of putting across the sponsors and a good sense of humor. a very enjoyable quizmaster indeed. To top all this, he's got a top notch support team and the logistics are exceptionally immaculate, i'd say.

Now to talk about the quiz, the elims saw the last year all india champions, WYSE technologies, crashing out which was sad because i became quite a fan of them after watching them perform in illuminati-05, a local quiz conducted by concorde motors in association with ITM. In the finals of that, these guys were shown the logo of a company which had the shoot of a plant in a circle or square and they worked out the correct answer. Monsanto was the answer and i was damn impressed.

Moving on to the actual finals, we found a demolition man in a guy from Kotak mahindra who along with his teammate, at the end of the quiz, had 20 more points than the sum of the scores of all the other teams. Absolutely scintillating answers from him. believe me when i say that i got goosepimples on hearing some of his answers.

there were a lot of workable questions and that is the heart and soul of a quiz. A question is called good, if on hearing the answer you exclaim, "ohhh!". There were a lot of them today.

Overall, a nice quiz and a very good quizmaster. Except in terms of the display of genius, even better than Parnab Mukherjee...may u'r tribe increase

the i'm ok u're not ok types

as much as i hate to do it, i just have to crib about certain despicable qualities that i see in people around me. one is false prestige and the other is inflated ego....bah! whats the point? my write up is not going to change them. In turn it'll spoil the mood of the reader when there are so many nice things to write about.

i can understand moderate amounts of ego. its needed...but beyond a limit, abhorable...sad