Finally, I have decided.
Yes, I have decided. I have decided which place am I going to visit. The place is Mumbai National Park. Sanjay Gandhi National Park was on my agenda for a long time but I was not making the decision. But now I have.
The only question now is, to assemble like minded fellow enthusiasts for the trek. I would like it to be this weekend. Which means day after tomorrow. Saturday morning India time. The place is not very far from where I live. It is hardly 6-7 kms from my place. A bike ride away.
Check out these really great pictures that a chap who is much ahead of me has uploaded. This fella is great. I need to beat him.
http://amitkulkarni.info/pics/kanheri_caves/
http://amitkulkarni.info/pics/silonda/
National park here I come.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Paritrana - Their effort deserves backing and publicity.
Paritrana is what I am going to write about. Its been a while since Paritrana hit the news. Remember these names like you remember all people worth knowing, Rajpurohit (Tanmay), Chandrashekhar, Ajit Shukla, Amit Beesen, S Vasudev and Dheeraj Kumbhat.
For those who do not know what Paritrana is, it is a political party that these people have started. What makes their party special? They are people expected to be in boardrooms and scientific establishments. They are techies who are generally people most averse to joining politics and contesting elections. Social work many would have done, monetary contribution for social causes many would have made, but active politics is perhaps the last place that today's youth go for; given the current state of Indian politics which is considered, dirty and corrupt. I would have considered politics as the last thing I would do my self.
While poverty alleviation and good governance is something all political parties have in their memorandum, but these issues are sidelined by vote politics which means "any thing that can bring in the numbers needed to win". Division on cast, religion, language, race is a good way to earn votes and so is muscle or money power. These things are no doubt an integral part of Indian politics these days.
What makes me a fan of Paritrana the most, is that is has been started by people I used to think contribute most for themselves and least for the nation. IIT graduates. While I figured that even an IIT grad needs to prove himself and do good for himself by utilising the best opportunity s/he gets, but number of IIT graduates who are in US which is 40,000, always made me feel that we produce bright engineers for US in IIT and that is all what we do.
My skepticism has ended thanks to the contribution of these 5 IIT brats who might just bring the change that India needs. It is hard work but not an impossible task. After all so many parties gather a lot of votes with much less to offer. It is said that people in some states of India don't cast their vote, they vote their cast. Division is what brings votes and seats in Indian politics. These young men who dared to break convention, and dared to risk their careers for the good of their country, deserve all the good wishes and backing we can provide. Wish they bring unification not division.
I have never voted in my life. I could have been voting for last 8 years but I haven't done that yet. There was nobody I wished to vote for. I don't know if my name is in the voters list at all or not. It appears from news articles I have read that they will contest elections in my home state. I will have to ensure that at least my name is there in the voters list. Let us see if they live up to the expectations that people now have from them. If they do then they might be the first party I vote for. Hope they find good candidates.
I wish them all the best. Paritrana way to go.
They sum up their ideology in their Hindi shloka:
"Sabhi sukhi hon"
"Sukh ka mool samriddhi hai"
"Samriddhi ka mool rajya hai"
"Rajya ka mool dand hai"
Translating in English:
"Let everyone be happy"
"The root of happiness is prosperity"
"The root of prosperity is rule"
"The root of rule is reward/punishment principle"
Paritrana - May you be tough as a Rock.
Paritrana is what I am going to write about. Its been a while since Paritrana hit the news. Remember these names like you remember all people worth knowing, Rajpurohit (Tanmay), Chandrashekhar, Ajit Shukla, Amit Beesen, S Vasudev and Dheeraj Kumbhat.
For those who do not know what Paritrana is, it is a political party that these people have started. What makes their party special? They are people expected to be in boardrooms and scientific establishments. They are techies who are generally people most averse to joining politics and contesting elections. Social work many would have done, monetary contribution for social causes many would have made, but active politics is perhaps the last place that today's youth go for; given the current state of Indian politics which is considered, dirty and corrupt. I would have considered politics as the last thing I would do my self.
While poverty alleviation and good governance is something all political parties have in their memorandum, but these issues are sidelined by vote politics which means "any thing that can bring in the numbers needed to win". Division on cast, religion, language, race is a good way to earn votes and so is muscle or money power. These things are no doubt an integral part of Indian politics these days.
What makes me a fan of Paritrana the most, is that is has been started by people I used to think contribute most for themselves and least for the nation. IIT graduates. While I figured that even an IIT grad needs to prove himself and do good for himself by utilising the best opportunity s/he gets, but number of IIT graduates who are in US which is 40,000, always made me feel that we produce bright engineers for US in IIT and that is all what we do.
My skepticism has ended thanks to the contribution of these 5 IIT brats who might just bring the change that India needs. It is hard work but not an impossible task. After all so many parties gather a lot of votes with much less to offer. It is said that people in some states of India don't cast their vote, they vote their cast. Division is what brings votes and seats in Indian politics. These young men who dared to break convention, and dared to risk their careers for the good of their country, deserve all the good wishes and backing we can provide. Wish they bring unification not division.
I have never voted in my life. I could have been voting for last 8 years but I haven't done that yet. There was nobody I wished to vote for. I don't know if my name is in the voters list at all or not. It appears from news articles I have read that they will contest elections in my home state. I will have to ensure that at least my name is there in the voters list. Let us see if they live up to the expectations that people now have from them. If they do then they might be the first party I vote for. Hope they find good candidates.
I wish them all the best. Paritrana way to go.
They sum up their ideology in their Hindi shloka:
"Sabhi sukhi hon"
"Sukh ka mool samriddhi hai"
"Samriddhi ka mool rajya hai"
"Rajya ka mool dand hai"
Translating in English:
"Let everyone be happy"
"The root of happiness is prosperity"
"The root of prosperity is rule"
"The root of rule is reward/punishment principle"
Paritrana - May you be tough as a Rock.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Time has gone by lazily. It's been over a month since my last post. What I intented to be a weekly post has already missed 5 eposides.
So much for adventure.
Well I am to be blamed for the most part, but perhaps not solely. My internet service provider turned out to be just as lazy as me. He would't renew my internet connection which expired in the first week of January inspite of my repeated persuations. It turns out he is too lazy to make his money.
We all know what we want and what is good for us and yet it turns out some of us are too lazy to even try. Same goes with me. Lazyness and fear are perhaps the only two things that prevent a person from getting things that are good for him.
Today is Martyr's Day, 30th Jan 1948 is when Mahatma Gandhi was assasinated by religious fanatics. Only yesterday I finisher a book on freedom and partition of India "Freedom at Midnight - Dominique Lapierre and Larry Colins". It belongs to a friend who recommended I should read it. Facts in the book appear to be well documented and provides a whole lot of references, so for now, I take it to be authentic. A deeply moving book that I could not let go once I started reading it. I finshed it over a weekend, starting friday evening I was done by Sunday dusk. For once I showed no lazyness in reading a book worth reading and a history every Indian ought to know.
The Mahatma died a martyr and achieved in his death what he had sought so dearly to achieve in his fasts. Secession of communal frenzy. Perhaps in guilt of what the people of India had done to themselves they finally gave up rioting. They were perhaps seeking vengence for what had happed to them or their friends and family, but they were seeking vengence by killing another group of innocent people. Beacuse Hindus were thown out of their homes in Pakistan, Muslims were thrown out of their homes in India.
The fact that Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu was considered by the establishment as a necessary point to be emphasised in offical news broad casts, in order to avoid more backlash on Muslims. But I believe, had it been a Muslim who murdered the Mahatma the guilt would have been the same, and perhaps people would have felt it the same way.
The police were too lazy to apprahend the people responsible. The first assasination attempt that had failed on 20th of January perhaps left enough clues. If nothing else then it had left behind a co-conspirator of the attack, Madanla Pahwa who had detonated the guncotton bomb which was ment to distract people while others did the act and was caught. Other consprators froze and panicked and could not do what they had come out to do. They dispersed. The police turns out was too lazy to get Pahwa to reveal every thing he knew. He took them to the site in Delhi where they had stayed, he could have even taken them to the places in Poona and Bombay and Ahmednagar and Gwalior where he had been if nothing else the police had enought time to carry him around in trying to identify the co-conpirators. Some senior police officer in Poone was too lazy to hand over the photographs of Nathuram Ghodse the person who finally commited the crime 10 days later over to the police in Delhi, even though he had a report on his desk. I wish they were less lazy.
After reading the chapter "Our people have gone mad" I felt India is as communally sensitive as ever. In 8 weeks of rioting about 200,000 to 2 million people died. The estimates are as they are estimates. But even the lower estimate is too big to believe. The families wrecked by the killings will carry the wound for generations to come. But perhaps in many cases entire families had been murdered.
The stories of abduction and rape and mutilation were too grotesque to repeat. Half the people of what Americans lost in 2nd world war in 4 years were killed in rioting in 8 weeks of mayhem.
Gandhi was killed by his murderers who were organized and not just some rogue group of angry people. They were also well financed for their task enough to afford a flight from Mumbai to Delhi and to pay any price demanded for their murder weopan. He was murdered because he opposed the rioting and because he fasted to make the government pay the 550 million rupees that Indian government owed and refused to pay Pakistan believing it would be used to procure weapons that would be used in Kashmir.
Why do I belive India is as communally sensitive today as then? Because I have in my lifetime already witnessed 3 major communal riots. Anti Sikh riots of 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assasinated by his Sikh bodyguards because they thought she was anti-Sikh, the riots of 1992 and the riots in Gujarat after the burning of a train in Godhra. Not that I was affected by these riots. Lukily for me I was not, but I have known people who have witnessed two of them.
When the news about the burning of the train reached newspapers all over India, I was in college and I remember discussing it in a college canteen with friends. I remeber how we felt disgusted by what was done and how we immediately knew that riots will follow in Gujrat.That is precisely what happened. The right wing parties called for a bandh in Gujrat and riots followed.
I wish police and administration is less lazy in dealing with riots, because only a few gangs of crazy people riot and 100 times more suffer either direcly or indirectly because of their acts.
I wonder why the rioters aren't too lazy to seek revenge by killing those who are innocent. Cowards they are for sure if not lazy.
So much for adventure.
Well I am to be blamed for the most part, but perhaps not solely. My internet service provider turned out to be just as lazy as me. He would't renew my internet connection which expired in the first week of January inspite of my repeated persuations. It turns out he is too lazy to make his money.
We all know what we want and what is good for us and yet it turns out some of us are too lazy to even try. Same goes with me. Lazyness and fear are perhaps the only two things that prevent a person from getting things that are good for him.
Today is Martyr's Day, 30th Jan 1948 is when Mahatma Gandhi was assasinated by religious fanatics. Only yesterday I finisher a book on freedom and partition of India "Freedom at Midnight - Dominique Lapierre and Larry Colins". It belongs to a friend who recommended I should read it. Facts in the book appear to be well documented and provides a whole lot of references, so for now, I take it to be authentic. A deeply moving book that I could not let go once I started reading it. I finshed it over a weekend, starting friday evening I was done by Sunday dusk. For once I showed no lazyness in reading a book worth reading and a history every Indian ought to know.
The Mahatma died a martyr and achieved in his death what he had sought so dearly to achieve in his fasts. Secession of communal frenzy. Perhaps in guilt of what the people of India had done to themselves they finally gave up rioting. They were perhaps seeking vengence for what had happed to them or their friends and family, but they were seeking vengence by killing another group of innocent people. Beacuse Hindus were thown out of their homes in Pakistan, Muslims were thrown out of their homes in India.
The fact that Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu was considered by the establishment as a necessary point to be emphasised in offical news broad casts, in order to avoid more backlash on Muslims. But I believe, had it been a Muslim who murdered the Mahatma the guilt would have been the same, and perhaps people would have felt it the same way.
The police were too lazy to apprahend the people responsible. The first assasination attempt that had failed on 20th of January perhaps left enough clues. If nothing else then it had left behind a co-conspirator of the attack, Madanla Pahwa who had detonated the guncotton bomb which was ment to distract people while others did the act and was caught. Other consprators froze and panicked and could not do what they had come out to do. They dispersed. The police turns out was too lazy to get Pahwa to reveal every thing he knew. He took them to the site in Delhi where they had stayed, he could have even taken them to the places in Poona and Bombay and Ahmednagar and Gwalior where he had been if nothing else the police had enought time to carry him around in trying to identify the co-conpirators. Some senior police officer in Poone was too lazy to hand over the photographs of Nathuram Ghodse the person who finally commited the crime 10 days later over to the police in Delhi, even though he had a report on his desk. I wish they were less lazy.
After reading the chapter "Our people have gone mad" I felt India is as communally sensitive as ever. In 8 weeks of rioting about 200,000 to 2 million people died. The estimates are as they are estimates. But even the lower estimate is too big to believe. The families wrecked by the killings will carry the wound for generations to come. But perhaps in many cases entire families had been murdered.
The stories of abduction and rape and mutilation were too grotesque to repeat. Half the people of what Americans lost in 2nd world war in 4 years were killed in rioting in 8 weeks of mayhem.
Gandhi was killed by his murderers who were organized and not just some rogue group of angry people. They were also well financed for their task enough to afford a flight from Mumbai to Delhi and to pay any price demanded for their murder weopan. He was murdered because he opposed the rioting and because he fasted to make the government pay the 550 million rupees that Indian government owed and refused to pay Pakistan believing it would be used to procure weapons that would be used in Kashmir.
Why do I belive India is as communally sensitive today as then? Because I have in my lifetime already witnessed 3 major communal riots. Anti Sikh riots of 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assasinated by his Sikh bodyguards because they thought she was anti-Sikh, the riots of 1992 and the riots in Gujarat after the burning of a train in Godhra. Not that I was affected by these riots. Lukily for me I was not, but I have known people who have witnessed two of them.
When the news about the burning of the train reached newspapers all over India, I was in college and I remember discussing it in a college canteen with friends. I remeber how we felt disgusted by what was done and how we immediately knew that riots will follow in Gujrat.That is precisely what happened. The right wing parties called for a bandh in Gujrat and riots followed.
I wish police and administration is less lazy in dealing with riots, because only a few gangs of crazy people riot and 100 times more suffer either direcly or indirectly because of their acts.
I wonder why the rioters aren't too lazy to seek revenge by killing those who are innocent. Cowards they are for sure if not lazy.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Last week went by pretty fast, in anticipation of the new year to bigin on Sunday. This weekend was special, it brings last year to an end and today the year 2006 has started. Many activities are planned for this year. Where there arent many big things to remember that occoured last year, well 26 July deluge in Mumbai is a date one wont forget and there are some work related things that were more than routine.
Coming to 26th July well I was damn lucky to face perhaps the least of all troubles on that day. We had got the message that an extraordinaly amount of rain had fallen that day, and came to know that Pune office has closed early. We could see the streets outside the office flooded in knee length water, and could guess that we may have to walk back home, thinking that we won't get a conveyance to home. But non of us had an idea as to how much flooding the rain had really caused. Only after walking for a couple of hundred meters did we realise that the flooding was pretty bad. There were 3 of my colleages with me.
On some streets the flow of water was strong so we had to hold hands while walking. It was also a sensible thing to do keeping in mind that streets could have open manholes which are nothing less than life threatening. On the way you could find a lot of people walking on the streats. If one remembers the live pictures of the scene in New york after 9/11, one can imagine what had really happened. In the end we managed to walk home in an hour or so. Then since electricity was out I had to walk up 16 floors in the building.
As in all tragedies lives were lost, but a lot of lives were saved an injuries avoided by people who came out to help those in touble.
We witnessed positive spirit by individuals but negative spirit by administration as ever. I hope the infrastrure of Mumbai improve but then one can only hope, it does not look likely.
Coming to 26th July well I was damn lucky to face perhaps the least of all troubles on that day. We had got the message that an extraordinaly amount of rain had fallen that day, and came to know that Pune office has closed early. We could see the streets outside the office flooded in knee length water, and could guess that we may have to walk back home, thinking that we won't get a conveyance to home. But non of us had an idea as to how much flooding the rain had really caused. Only after walking for a couple of hundred meters did we realise that the flooding was pretty bad. There were 3 of my colleages with me.
On some streets the flow of water was strong so we had to hold hands while walking. It was also a sensible thing to do keeping in mind that streets could have open manholes which are nothing less than life threatening. On the way you could find a lot of people walking on the streats. If one remembers the live pictures of the scene in New york after 9/11, one can imagine what had really happened. In the end we managed to walk home in an hour or so. Then since electricity was out I had to walk up 16 floors in the building.
As in all tragedies lives were lost, but a lot of lives were saved an injuries avoided by people who came out to help those in touble.
We witnessed positive spirit by individuals but negative spirit by administration as ever. I hope the infrastrure of Mumbai improve but then one can only hope, it does not look likely.
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