Metro terrorism

How many more Black Friday's do we need to wake up our govt.?

When will they give us an answer to the serial bombings of Delhi, Jaipur , Hyderabd , Bangalore and then Ahmedabad... with the latter two taking a toll of 50 and injuring more than double of these. A sequence of attacks struck the two cities in less than 24 hours. It demonstrated the extreme sadism on part of the terrorists to seism the peace of our nation with impunity. What for do we need the nuclear deal when we have our morning newspaper stabbing our eyes with such images.

[ the image had to be removed on my friend's request]

The character of this violence is horrifying, after all it takes a special kind of savagery to bomb a hospital,with victims being unsafe even inside hospitals. This enormous threat cannot be countered by words of condemnation and "announcements" of monetary compensation to the families of the innocent dead. What India urgently needs are strong anti-terror laws, and an elite internal security force trained in handling terror and militancy.

Soon we will get back into our busy lives and these headlines of exhausting killings will dissolve away with the useless investigations.. Till another terror strikes in response to our : zero retaliation.

April fool in " Dell " style

Nothing can transcend this when someone in your office played with your emotions. Well emotions entrapping your intense wait for the delivery of a newly ordered laptop;that too a blossom colored laptop!Probably people who know me can feel my passion for blossom;) My new laptop's delivery was supposed to be unfortunately on 1st April in SISO premisies and thats what my team mates used or rather misused... called me from some unknown number with an unknown voice with an unknown courier service and calling me to the reception claiming to have brought my laptop. What fears me is when I would ignore the honest and final call from Dell as a phony phone call :)

{ back}

Hi All ( if someone is still there),

I am back again…
Don’t ask me why I left … temporary insanity has no justification and sometimes you lose control over all circumstances…sometimes created by your own people, friends and family.And when I wrote temporary here, it could also mean the thing about being a “phoenix”,that you have to rise back, but also, that it is your destiny to be reduced to ashes every once in a while. :)
Complexities of a normal life ::: For the time being there is something different about this air. I think right now life is going with the right amount of goodness and I wouldn’t want to spoil it … at any Cost! Somehow I have realized that being oblivion of your goals and responsibilities helps more in being happy than staying positive could. I think days that have gone in the recent past are just impressions that have been carved on some sandy beach, which are bound to wash away before you can even look back what life wrote. I don’t know what to expect of people or friends .Sometimes I fear that anything I do, might just distant me from them.Sometimes its better to be alone than having to think about so many people or care for them..
Keep expectations at bay::: As a very good old friend of mine..pointed out that I was actually never her/his deserving friend... I am pretty pretty sure that you all wouldn’t believe that what proves to be the reason behind this hypothesis is my malfunctioning laptop , ipod ,mobile and few unexpected expectations…..On a serious note the culpable laptop has a macabre tale hinged on to it. Well, my Compaq laptop’s hard disk crashed in less than 24 hours after I had spent a whopping 4k on its display cable…poor me, why would anyone pity on someone like me who had absolutely no idea how to get a laptop repaired that too in an IT hub city, Bangalore. But I bet you people it aint that easy as you might percieve.When the authorized HP people charge you 7K for a 30Gb harddisk, while a 80 Gb is easily available for less than 3K in the market. Weekend is surely a nice time to relax and enjoy , but not for me…for it took me 3 precious weekends .. or I say a month to finally see my laptop back in shape.. That’s when I realized how long the month of February could be.
{/back}

Ephemeral joys of winter

This time around I could not taste the pleasure of the winter chill as much as I have already been enjoying past two decades or more. Last weekend, was redolent with chilling experiences, unfortunately not for me but my family and some dear friends.

Bardog, an hour drive from Chd. which had been a somnolent town all this winter suddenly got privy to nature's own beautiful phenomenons and got blessed to bathe in the snow shower after a pretty long hiatus.The whole town sheen in a lovely basket with a blanket of snow.
Undoubtedly, Bardog seemed to have usurped to its neighbour's land (Manali) in terms of its acquired beauty. Well all this was palpable to me only thorugh the snaps which my mom emailed over to me the other day & I could get the vicarious thrill and chill of the winter through my families joyful shrieks over the phone ,while my dad was throwing snow balls naughtily on my mum:-D







In a vain attempt to avoid gild the lily, to my previous post, I am continuing the spiritual chronicle by adding few more pictures of my last week trip.


P.S- Whats your take on the beleaguered tennis ace , Sania ,shocking the country by opting to skip $600,000 "BANGALORE" ;) Open. Her rising stardom has always been accompanied by one ugly controversy or another. Be it the fatwas against her dress code during her matches or uproar over her shooting of ads near a mosque. It aint normal for any youngster to block such pressure and keep performing. Calls for a real bruiser!

A Spiritual chronicle

Well as this is my first post in my newly created blog.. wil be lot grateful if u cud excuse me for all the wit, flavour and the expression that i lack....hmm... did i forget to mention those good sounding hifi words..words which u certainly need to look back in a dictionary for a person like me:).. in short , "The Always Impressive Vocab"....am a tyro in this blog field u c...ehhh...did i just unknowingly use a good word:).....Well, just before i write on anything ahead...just like we do Shri Ganesh before starting anything new...as in.. remembering and thanking Lord Ganesh... I cant go on eschewing the motivators behind....i.e my best of friends from college time ..Arjun and then Chetan(we call him Cd ..to be precise)... not to mention ..Cdz inspiration is Arjun only.Well,reading their frequently updated blogs inspired me to develop my poor writing skills ....how skillfully their posts keep morphing from one story to another..ok enuf talking.. lets get on the track ..


I had been very sad past a week.. as if something had dawned on me...had never been so my entire life....So,my parents planned to come down South to meet me as i could not afford to take a nice long leave.Mom dad came to Bangalore on friday...and Friday is when we left fr Madurai by plane.Surprisingly Madurai airport had just a couple of planes.. n when i say couple..its just a couple.The weather was cool, but not as cool as the kinds in my native city Chandigarh...whre ppl cant aford to even come outa their blankets to take a hot water bath even...uhhhh..
It was around 27degrees...pleasant i should say... just a little warmer than Bengaluru...

Next morning at 5 a.m we went to see the famous Meenakshi Temple... the one we all must have undoubtly read and rather mugged up from one of the chapters of our history books...We hired a guide and he showed us the enitre temple.It has a soaring and exquisitely carved architecture with around 1000 pillars and 4 gates..north south east west, and not to forget..two temples...Lord Shiva temple of 500kilos gold and Lord Meenakshi temple of 300 kilos gold...Inside, they make married couples exchange garlands just as happens in wedding ceremonies..I couldnt stop laughing watch my parents do so...:).Unfortunately camera stick was full because previous Kashmir trip pics of mom dad had not been deleted nor saved.That calls for a well planned trip ;oP
Next we headed for rameshwaram in taxi.It was a 4 hr drive and on our way we crossed a long bridge running right above the Bay of Bengal.The bridge had a rail track on it as well which opened up when a ship needed to cross it.Thats when i felt proud of the civil engineers of my country:).

Now,we reached Rameshwaram..Its a pilgrim place and certainly i am kinda too young to have visited it but, didnt wish to miss the ablution ceremony together with my parents..God knows when i would be blessed again to go later in my life..Just to throw a little light on those whose thoughts are darting here and there thinking what exactly it is..here is d gyan..

Rameshwaram is an island situated in the gulf of Mannar at the very tip of the Indian peninsula and just 24 kms from Sri Lanka. A very important pilgrim centre of the Indians. According to the Hindu mythology its the place from where Lord Rama, built a bridge across the sea to rescue his consort Sita, from her abductor, Ravana. Here Rama worshipped Lord Shiva to cleanse away the sin of killing Ravana. Lord Rama performed thanksgiving rituals to Lord Shiva after the battle at Sri Lanka and his triumph over the demon king Ravana. The temple has around 22 wells and we were to drink and take a small dip in the water of all these wells to cleanse our so called sins;).

The spiritual journey was still not over.On return to Bangalore, Sunday was the day to visit Tirupati Balaji in Andhra Pradesh,the ancient and sacred temple of Lord Venkateswaram.The temple has really acquired unique sanctity in Indian religious lore.The pandit told us that the Hindu hymns unequivocally declare that, in the Kal Yuga, one can attain mukti, only by worshipping the Lord of this temple...kinda hard to believe?..still.. no harms in believing:)..And so here , the darshan werent a cake walk.There was a six to seven hrs. long waiting queue for the darshan.The over-smart taxi driver promised us to get through to the main gate for a whopping 3000 bucks!..it was a black ticket ofcourse..My father agreed but thats when me and my mom acted smart as well.We went to the JEO's office and portrayed ourselves as NRI's from Canada with our return flight next morning.He asked me if i knew Hindi??:)and i was like ..'nopes!';)Guess what?We got the VIP pass at just one tenth the price..300 bucks only :D ... The perfect part is when a bunch of kids mistook me as Preity Zinta !!...All thanks to my Prada sun shades :-D
Getting on to what i saw in the temple was the most striking feature of the awe-inspiring black idol.Its the fabulous diamond crown, which is said to be the most precious single ornament in the world.Certainly its the richest temple in India, a master piece of South Indian Architecture. The temple has around five six hundis, a well where the devotees drop in their offerings to God.The most interesting part is here to come...In each four hour shift the amount of money collected from the Hundis is more than 3 crores!!.. There are around 60 retired college professors employed for the currency counting,who you can actually see them through the glass windows..sitting and doing there job under camera vigilance. Its heard that lately when Amitabh Bachchan visited the temple with his daughter in law, Aish., they put 20 crores worth jewellery in it!! No wonder I mentioned its the richest temple of the world.
Well i still have more boring stuff to write but probably in my next post.And ya, I promise, it wont be more spiritual again :)