the wintery summer day

It's been hot as hell and April is still a month away. Bangalore, the then garden city that didn't need even a fan in peak summer, today has A/Cs running around the year. In an unexpected but pleasant change, the last two days have seen the mercury fall, almost 6 degrees. Sitting in the middle of the southern peninsula, I can smell the heady scent of the rains soaked earth far away on the eastern coast.

Nature beckoning, I headed out to do the South Banglorean thing. Hot crisp dosa and a by two coffee with a friend at the famed Vidyarthi bhavan in Gandibazar. The fragrance of the garlands - hung on the road side trees for sale welcomes - the foodie in me.

Riding back was a relaxing enjoyable experience. It was as if the tensions of the city were some how removed by the calm soothing weather. I can't help but let nostalgia creep in - of the days gone by when Bangalore had a lot more of such days.

The Bull ride

After long, I had a lovely experience that made me wanna blog.

A friend of mine has got a new bike, a lovely Bullet electra with a thump that thumps up one's heartbeat. We decided we would hit the roads at night, being in Bangalore traffic is something that can kill the joy of riding even a "Bull".

A short ride ended up being a ride all the way out on kanakapura road till the AOL ashram. We crossed the bustling city streach and voila! The nearly empty, tree lined, winding road; the heavenly vault with the cresent moon, twinking stars and the bike head light leading our way; and the pollution free, warm, summer air united the heart beat with the thumping of the bike and the chords of nature.

It's been many years I went on a long ride being the pillion. It's been a decade or longer I sat on a Bullet. It was a first time experience riding out of the city late in the night. As we returned home, I was strangely at peace but I only wish...our highways were safer at night.

Im begining to wonder that we are indeed thankless

Mumbai terror blasts. The news channels have been raving abt this and blaming everyone from Pak to Politicians to People. In all this we forgot to say thank you to those who came forward and saved hundreds of lives. Be it those commandos who faced the enemy or the doctors who worked 3 days without sleep. All that we like to do is point fingers and blame. Can we get any less thankless? The media was all hyper when pak media blames them but why are they not showing images of doctors saving lives or the wounded commandos taken care of? And just say one word, "THANK YOU" for saving so many lives, for being brave and facing the enemy and bringing it to an end.

yet another ad with a missed attention to detail

Recently I saw Amir khan in an ad where he is washing utensils for his wife. I am not very sure but I vaguely recollect he had split up. Anyway, the actual annoying thing was that he had the tap running as he was just scrubbing the plate and talking into the camera, and the water was flowing in full force!! Why waste so much water!!! :(

Going global

Sometimes I wonder what makes Indians so desperate that we are ready to forgo our traditions just to make money. Especially so with the so called Global companies coming into the arena.

Deepavali/Diwali is a time of year where traditionally the company gives gifts to employees - at the very least a box of sweets. If a company sends a mail greeting people and saying gifts will reach in 30 days, perhaps the management got it's ideas really wrong, considering diwali and it's dates were known at least a year ago! I wonder how it would be to hear such a thing around Christmas time. Motivation... oh well ya a month later buddy :-)

I have even heard of companies where people are given holidays in line with US. In fact to such an extent that they get holidays for US independence day but not Indian. Did someone say globalization? Perhaps it's synonymous with westernization...

The iron ladies

I am pleasently surprised at the fact that the media houses are airing movies focused on LGBT life and for a change the movies don't focus on the only thing that everyone seems to want to link LGBT with - AIDS.

The first one I can recollect is Birdcage aired on star movies recently. It's about how this couple wants to lead a normal life involving getting the son married to a conservative politician and the like. This is a typical US movie. More here.

Today morning WM channel aired The Iron ladies. A thai movie shot in 2000 about this group of G and T group who play volley ball against straight men and win, that too at national level. It was quite nice to see LGBT being portrayed as sportsmen and better still that the team consisted of all kind of queer people, the quite and masculine to the loud and queeny types. More here.

Hope that the 377 case is fought fair and won. It's not just the health issues that is of concern here (I am sure AIDS does not discriminate homos and heteros) but more importantly the suppression of a minority's right to lead a normal life.

judgement call

Setting:
Riding to office on the bike. Stranger "uncle" on the road looking for a hike.

Thoughts:
a) Humanity and the crap, lets give him a ride. It's just another person looking for help
b) He has a helmet, bike might have broken down. He sure can afford a bus ticket as he looks quite well off. Bus stand 2 steps from where he is. Don't stop, might be a risky proposition.

Act:
Too many loose ends. Better to keep going.

Justified further by:
I live in Bangalore. Quite a few bomb blasts of late. Festival day. Better off without the risk.

vandalism and ads

Just when I thought of posting about an ad I saw recently on tv, I read this post. It verbalizes my thoughts most aptly.

vegetarianism and food crisis

I was watching TV the other day when the host was teasing the guest that according to latest news, about 10kg of grain goes into obtaining 1Kg of flesh. The guest kidded if he should go vegetarian.

Why not! As humans we really have acheived tremendrous acheivements. In all this advancements, we have lost some basic human nature, "we are social beings." There are hundreds of people without food but those lucky ones who can food on time done even seem to be bothered. I see the following places where we can make an effort and improve situation for our own species.

1) The world at large is non-veg mostly. There are hundreds of veg dishes. Why not switch to it at least once a week?

2) At homes and hotels, cook food that is sufficient enough to feed the amount of people who ordered it. Most places serve more than enough quantity, this is specially true of rice and noodles. Sometimes we pack the left overs but most of the times we just throw it. It's more profitable to give less isn't it?

3) Lots of food gets wasted at many office because they are just not edible. It's cooked that bad. Perhaps its time hoteliers take up this issue of massive wastage and cook edible food? This is particularly true where food is catered.

The world is getting better and these are a few things I follow to make it a little better.

Monsoons

Refreshing droplets
Cleansed air
Fresh thoughts
Elevated mood
Wet Greenery
Cool Breeze
- Life, Simple and Flying high

Dark clouds
Roaring thunder
Filthy streets
Overflowing drains
Depressed soul
- Man, Modern and Depressed

Bangalore and Heritage

It got me thinking, as I was reading the various posts about preserving Bangalore's heritage landmarks and how we are loosing a lot of the old buildings to the new mall and plaza culture. I can't but notice that people start harping about things only when the axe is to be brought down on it, be it trees or movie theaters of the begone era or the various charming buildings from the old Bangalore. Is just cribbing about the loss enough? Is it not more important that we do something before the crisis occurs and the buildings are forced to be torn down?

Let me take a particular example, Mayo Hall and Galaxy theater. While the former has got a new coat of paint and some renovation and is still earing huge revenues the latter is almost erased from people's memory and from the face of Earth. In today's economic scenario, these landmark buildings NEED to be renovated and made into an economically viable option. This city produces hundreds of top notch management and engineering graduates every year. Could they as citizens along with the owners of these landmark buildings not come up with ways to preserve these buildings and help them generate enough money to keep it standing for the years to come? Does the Government always have to do things? Do the citizens of this city not have any role to play at all except complain of the heritage lost or succumb to the greed?

Every day I pass by the Opera at Residency's and Brigade's junction. I can't help but conjure images in my mind of elegant shows and charming people at this lavish building and the spectators gazing in awe. I guess we will never see such an scene...

A surprise encounter

As usual I was scourging through the Citizen matters webpage when I came across an article about IIWC. This place has been my childhoood haunt and I have quite literally grown up reading and studying in this library. With my mum being the librarian there, this is quite expected I guess. Herez the link to the article: IIWC.

Trees - advertisement

Trees or No trees?

While we all love to claim that having a tree at home and it's advantages, it is often a pain to have random people pelting stones at the Mangoes/Gauvas et al. It becomes even more difficult when one intends to extend the house and axing the trees is such a difficult decision, one goes through a huge emotional trauma to see their favorite tree and child hood companion chopped down.

Looking for people who can design houses incorporating existing trees instead of axing them, any help welcome...

Congested roads and congested airwaves

Are we justified in allocating a big piece of spectrum to the police force? Today as I was riding to office I passed through 3 signals with cops manning all junctions and fully equipped with wireless handsets and the works. An ambulance gets stuck in the first junction and with some difficulty it manages to get through. I would have expected the police man to call ahead and keep the traffic moving. No sir, I was mistaken, the guy just stood there least bit bothered. The same repeated at the next 2 junctions and the ambulance was stuck at the signal multiple times! It's appalling to know that our taxes are going into buying such expensive equipment and precious spectrum wasted, for this? To make matters worse, key roads in the city center are in a terrible state for years! Agreed they can't keep up all the roads but the city center needs to be maintained! Roads here cant be left unusable! More than half the road is full of potholes! Repairing these would make traffic so much more smoother and reduce the need for one ways! When are we going to wake up and realise the world is going by and we are going to be left behind if continue to be lazy and carefree! Can people imagine how painful it would be for a injured person to be taken on these horrible roads! Disgusting!

flowering trees in Bangalore

It's that time of the year when Bangalore plays Holi and turns colorful, the greenery gives way for a riot of colorful flowers as a number of trees start blooming. Karthik has put up a list of the commonly seen flowering trees around http://www.wildwanderer.com/journal/flowering-trees/

So next time you take a stroll don't forget to look up at the trees! :-)

unidentified

Everytime I read the paper, I come across this "wish to be unidentified" sources. I can imagine only 2 things then, gossipy people who just can't keep confidential stuff to themselves or selfish people who are ready to sell some small tidbit to a newpaper for some money. Unfortunately I dont like either breed of people. Anyone has a different opinion?

The world gets clearer

and I can see the murkiness better...
Finally after months of procrastination I went and got myself a pair of spectacles. It is simply startling, the difference in clarity with the glasses on. Everything is crip and sharp and ohhh I am lost for words :-)
Every once a while I am so tempted to look out of the range of glasses, see the hazy picture in front of me and then look at the clear pic through these and smile at the change in perspective of the vision before me! :-)
Not to forget I am more in love with my intellectual looking self.

BIAL - thoughts

I sometimes wonder if we Indians are just pure lazy and careless or we really dont want to be progressive. Bangalore, host to IIMB, on of the top B-Schools in India, host to huge companies like Infosys and Wipro with the most talented planners and visionaries, is facing a tremendous lack of planning. The international airport is an example staring in our face of how careless and carefree we are. Come April and we will all be made fools and idiots. The government's planners are going to be mocking at us for our disinterest our own welfare. We see time and again that the projects are a result of a capacity crunch, be it metro, airport or flyovers and roads. Why is it that we get educated people up there if they can't foresee growth and make an initiative to plan the growth? This is so irritating! I wish the human kind perishes. We are not worth of our intelligence to plan, languages to communicate and science for good health. We are very greed and selfish to the point of disaster. As a friend of mine said, I wish kalki takes form soon!

The OFCs race begin, hope we see light soon!

The recent disruption in the internet services across Asia brought to focus the lack of infrastructure to avert disasters such as what occurred. The Atlantic is teaming OFCs connecting Europe to US with a huge amount of capacity going waste. The boom period plans of cabling companies got busted and they incurred huge losses. The positive side of the story is that the infrastructure exists to come up with applications taking advantage of the surplus availability. The developing countries are trying to catch up now since the hunger for bandwidth has shot up. Communication companies themselves are driving the installation and expansion.

There is a fear that this boom might come to an abrupt fall and affect the companies investing in this venture. This might indeed become true. However, I feel that this infrastructure might in the long run help innovation. Today people still tune applications to bandwidth constraints, reducing the rich features that could perhaps be provided. It's in the good will of innovating that we need to overcome the bandwidth hurdle. It may not kick off the first day or first year, but there will be time of boom soon and we should be prepared to ride the tide.

I knew it would happen!

We hear this so very often in out lives. Every time we encounter failure there are ample number of people who come up and live up to the expectation of saying "I knew it would fail!". An interesting way to look at this failure comment is to assume that the idea failed even before the release. To get people to say why they thought it failed. It might lead to exposure of some serious flaws and give ample time to fix it in a rational, well thought of manner. A better bet at success or an increase in all round pessimism? I would say the former. After all, we hire testers and the best one better be pessimistic!