2 Months at Home

We are made to believe that good things come out of difficult times. I recently fell sick. Doctors found it difficult to diagnose. In all the confusion and attempts at getting well I ended up spending 2 months at home.

That time was freaking awesome!

I can't remember the last time I had been at home, peacefully( Yeah I was peaceful! I knew mom and dad were doing all the worrying :) ). Before Class 10? Maybe. In class 11 and 12 I was too busy doing what every third person is busy doing i.e. Preparing for IITs. In college I was always too restless to hang out with friends or make up for being such a ghissu in school. After college I moved to Bangalore. Trips home happened but there were too many things trying to get fitted in too little a time. In short it had been a really long time since I had been home and NOT upto anything.

A few of the things I enjoyed the most when I had nothing to do and loads of time to kill-

1. Arguments with Mom - They ranged from my career to my health to me not getting a girl because of my unpredictable career and bad health :). To fix all that I was allowed to return to Bangalore only after I wore 2 stone rings in my hand. And guess what? I think they are working!

2. Being righteous with my younger brother - Trust me on this. Preaching is a lot of fun. Specially when you are doing it to your younger brother who is either listening to it intently or getting pissed at you for saying things in front of your parents. E.g. How can you expect dad to drop you at metro station every day, why don't you exercise, itna khaega toh saand ho jaega, how about you get serious about your career. Aaah...the joy of having a brother 6 years younger to you. You can act as if you have seen the world!

3. Evening Tea - Tea in itself was okay but what made it a lot of fun was the family gossip that came with it. It usually started with Anant and if he had been unusually good the last few days it moved to all the neighbors and if the neighborhood had been quite, then it moved to all the grannies, aunts and cousins. Yeah yeah I am a big gossip.

Needless to say I had a fun time.

What gets me worried is that what made it happen was me falling sick. I did not plan it and I don't know when it will happen next. Sometimes I wonder where am I running.....

My take on DCE-DTU Controversy

I haven't blogged in quite a bit.

Today, I had gone to college to collect my degree. I had forgotten that in current days the college is in the thickest of the DCE-DTU Controversy. Seeing what was happening brought all the old memories back. I felt like supporting it in my own way.

This post is my take on the whole thing.

More stuff on Naxals

I had made a post about the Naxal problem some time back.

Today I came across a few answers and well they were mind numbing. I am making this post just to document this article. I highly recommend that you take some time out and go through this.

Is this the price for progress?

Things I remember from my childhood

Time for a fun blog entry. For some time I have had the urge to write some of the fondest memories I have of my childhood. I find some of them very funny, hope I am not the only one who feels that :)

1. Although now it doesn't look like my brother could ever have been small but there was a time when he was. He was extremely good at making me aware of my bullying tendencies:P My favourite was me tickling him just enough that he falls off the bed. His ego hurt he would hurl himself back only to be tickled off again. Oh my god! that was so much fun. Now there are times when I think of the 90 kilos of fat in his six foot three inch frame and despite being an atheist, pray to god that he did not take those things too seriously.

2. Well this one is my favourite. I am the eldest in my family from both my mom and dads side. I think that led to my being the default punching bag of the family. Whenever anyone wanted to give a lecture, all they had to do was get hold of me. I have had lectures that continued for more than two hours on how my book shelf is not tidy, how when my grandparents were young they used to walk for five miles to school and so should I, how I have to make the family proud. The most irritating part was how mom used to add fuel to the fire by saying the wrong things at the right time. Interestingly, she does not remember any of it now. When grilled on how she could do that to me, her response is, " Really? I did that? "

3. I have faint recollections of this one. I was in prep class in my new school. Since my mom was always shouting at me, my dad was my favourite teacher and I used to study only with him. The class had 3 term exams. I secured third or fourth rank in the first two ones. In the last one I came twentieth or something. When my mom asked my dad how did this happen, he said to her, " I wanted to see how much he can get if he gives his exam without studying. Twenty is not that bad! " .

I can go on and on, but I have to get back to work and this looks like a decent enough blog entry to not get judged by S and D about me being a sucker for increasing my blog counts. So thats it for now.

350 Cycling Rally

For those who do not know today is 350: The International Day for climate action. Find the details here . As part of this we had organised a cycling rally in Bangalore the details of which can be found here .

This was my first experience as a member of a cycling community and to say it was fun would be an understatement. Around 50 cyclists travelling together for a forty five minute ride in the heart of Bangalore was bound to attract a lot of eyeballs. Riding in pairs and chit chatting with people with whom the only connection you have is your interest in cycling is not an experience you often get.

Highlight of the day would be two seven year olds Advaith and Arpita riding with the gang. There mom came to the starting point and left them responsible to the group. (My double thumbs up to the mother of A & A) It was amazing to see their enthusiasm. I am pretty sure there will be someone who will start cycling just because they saw these kids today.

MMs efforts despite the fact that she almost ruined last nights party were highly appreciated. It was awesome to see everyone wearing blue coloured bibs spreading the message of 350. That she did not ride herself is altogether a different matter!

However, I was not able to appreciate the climax of the rally. At the end we were supposed to get together in a "350" formation and get photos clicked. Somehow we got permissions to do it in the middle of the road. It took us around 20 mins to get this thing done. Obviously, we caused a lot of inconvenience to other people. Sometimes people ( I am including myself) get carried away when they do things they passionately believe in, forgetting the impact it is having on other people. The next time I see a jam because of people doing something on the road, I don't think I will have the right to call them jerks.

Overall it was a very fulfilling day. Three cheers to D, MM, Dodo and Hallidude for pulling it off. Dodo is one of the most enthusiastic guys I know of in Bangalore and Halli is on his way to becoming a politician in his own right.

Btw today I rode the maximum I have ever done till now in one day. 24Kms! Hopefully I will break this record next week :)

Kolkata governor's lessons to Al Gore: Sufficiency, not just efficiency | India Environment Portal

Kolkata governor's lessons to Al Gore: Sufficiency, not just efficiency | India Environment Portal

Posted using ShareThis

Naxals: Do we understand the problem?

1. 220 districts out of 660 are Naxal effected.
2. X number of Cops have been killed.
3. Our Home Minister has declared a war against Naxals.

These are the kind of news items that you get to see whenever there is any mention about the Naxals in the media. What I would want to hear is how the problem really started, what were the points where we failed as a community,as a state, as a country.Did this problem became so huge all of a sudden?

The media often limits their side of the story to them demanding (besides release of their leaders:) ) all inclusive growth. "All inclusive Growth", wow! What the hell is that!

We have pushed tribals out of forests where they have been co-existing for centuries . Our landless farmers get into a debt of FIVE THOUSAND RUPEES and commit suicide. Our leaders just before the elections use our tax money to waive off their entire loans as nothing but a popular measure. But Equitable Growth, what the hell is that!

See this post which I had made on Praja some time back. At the end, is a mention of the discussion some of us had with Dr Balu from SVYM.

"
The highlight of the day was meeting the person who started all this, Dr R Balu. He told us that his mission was to reduce the inequity between the Urban and Rural India. Then he explained what he meant by inequity. He gave examples like-

1. The Kabini River dam which is in HD Kote supplies 40% of the water supply of Bangalore. Yet,at HD Kote all they get is water enough to irrigate 3000 acres of land!
2. The hydroelectricity generated over there is around 27 MW. If all the electricity needs of HD Kote are meet the maximum demand it can have is 3-4 MW. Yet all they get is 10-12 hours of power supply. All the electricity is sent to Bangalore.
3. The Contribution of the tertiary sector in Karnataka's GDP has increased from 18% some years back to 36% now. However the population engaged in it has grown only from 1.4 % to 2%. During the same time the population involved in Agriculture has declined from 65% to 61% only. In short the inequality is increasing.
4. In Rural India, for every 100 children that start schooling, only 7-8 children complete it. While for Urban India the figure is around 80.

He further said that it is difficult to get industries to HD Kote because of poor infrastructure, even promises of cheap and skilled labour are not enough to compensate for badly built roads and power shortage."

Based on all this, is equitable growth too much to ask? Are these kind of issues at the heart of the trouble which we are facing? Is declaring a "war" part of a long term solution? Don't you think these guys were pushed to the walls by their own state? Did they actually have a choice?

Right now all I have is questions. I hope some body has answers.