India and the fallacy called Democracy!

I dare call India, a state of many monarchies. I agree that we have elections once every 5 years which are bought on the basis of biryani and some blankets, but what happens in between those 5 years is nothing close to Democracy. We have a political party which should be better known as Gandhi pvt. ltd., another which supports radicalism and many more which are born and based on thugs and dacoits. These people rule the roost, spend national assets, try to divide people based on caste and religion and shadow it all in the name of democracy and the so called supreme parliament. The agitation for Lokpal bill is a classic example, where even though we saw the middle class and the old man, Anna Hazare sweat it out, all that the political class could come up with was a debate in the parliament which said that we(parliament) are supreme, we will do what we want, you guys can keep ranting or ridiculing us on media.

A look at the political parties brings back the memories of the monarchs that ruled India pre-Independence. Congress can't dare to think beyond the Gandhis, DMK has its own monarchy with Karunanidhi who has kept up with the tradition of a king with many wives. Mulayam Singh, Late. MadhavRao Sindhia,Late Rajesh Pilot,Pratibha Patil, Late YSR Reddy all have their sons/daughters in politics. The only saving grace here is the BJP which hasn't followed this trend yet. Also, I must thank Narendra Modi, Didi(Mamta Banerjee), Amma(Jayalalitha) and Mayawati for not finding suitable matches when they were young. Regardless of the monarchy, most of them are run with the support of/by local thugs, who aspire to become MPs or MLAs one day. A resume with many murders and rapes would be perfect to become a politician.

Talking about the media which is supposed to be the fourth pillar of democracy, instead acts like the fourth pillar of the parliament. All primetime shows are parliamentary type debates moderated by Darth Vaders(star wars anyone?) such as Arnab Goswami. The funny part about all these debates are that you can listen to the same tunes in all the news channels because its the same politicians that flock from one channel to the next. Since when did moderating debates become part of news reporting?

 The result is pretty clear, India is far behind in all kinds of indexes, be it poverty,literacy, human rights,women empowerment , infrastructure etc. The growth India has experienced is entirely due to personal efforts of the people(middle-class) who are just fed up of expecting anything from the government. Classic example is the suburb of Delhi; Gurgaon. The total lack of governance in this part of the city is made up with personal efforts like generators for electricity, personal taxis for transportation, private security guards for security etc. The reason for low voter turnouts in the urban areas can be traced to this very reason. We have created our own mini India. Those who are still expecting free grains, free electricity to run their pumps and other incentives ,constitute the backward sections of the society. These people constitute the majority of the voter turnouts. Hunger and poverty drives them to beg/plead for the basic necessities from the government. Meanwhile, the government is busy in improving its statistics by lowering the below poverty line bracket to Rs26/day. I dare Sonia Gandhi to leave her mansions and try to live on Rs.26 for a day.

PS: Why do we have a mannequin in place of a Prime Minister?

The death of Bollywood

Why should I care if you lost your job when you can still drive an open car in Mumbai,get drunk in the world's most expensive places and go for a spa! Yes, folks my life's precious few hours were wasted on this gaudy monstrosity called Ek Main Aur Ek Tu, the name of which was based on the number of people that were supposed to watch this movie. I thought freedom for an average Indian meant getting to eat at all, little did I know that it actually meant to make a choice of whether to use chopsticks or hands while eating. Previously, Karan Johar only used to buy Filmfare Awards, it seems he has extended his reach to buying the film reviews as well.My frustration is not directed only at this movie but to this genre/director/producer/karan johar/shahrukh khan in general. Please explain to me why a Bollywood movie should be thought out and made from bottom up in Vegas/Spain/Germany/The Moon. A decade ago it would just be a song or two which would be fine because everyone's eyes would be concentrating on the landscape of the actress rather than that of the background. Are Spain's mountains more beautiful than the Himalayas/Nilgiris? Is the sport where you get killed by the bulls in Spain grander than "Jallikattu"?
I know what the problem is. This new generation of actors living on the new found richness of their parents(who were also actors) have lived all their lives abroad, as a pseudo Indian ,aping all the things western. So, they do not know what a life of an average Indian looks like. Hence, all their movies are rip offs of Hollywood and made in US/Europe which the Indian can neither relate to nor tolerate.
I would rather prefer watching those hindi soaps on star plus/sony. At least they stick to their script of the Indian family, although they do change the name of their serials once a while.
The effect of all this neglect towards India is pretty clear if you switch to the movie channels on your TV(zee cinema/sony/sahara filmy). A dubbed version of a Telugu movie is all there to be seen on primetime, matinee or any other time. If these movies are getting more TRPs than the Bollywood ones, that's saying a lot. There is a reason "Why this kolaveri di" got more hits than "chikni chameli" on youtube,it touched more hearts than the semi nude katrina kaif ever could.
How hard can it be to stop badnaaming the munnis, stop the chikni chamelis from getting their pahuas and get back to what Bollywood stands for, pure, undiluted India.


PS:I suggest a pre-production approval board on the lines of censor board to allow whether our precious weekend money should be spent on a cricket match and bag of chips or popcorn and Bollywood.

Smile, dear, I will put on the horns on top of your head later

Back in the good old days when computers could only count only to 10, cameras were simple optical devices with one or two pieces of glass called lenses and a film roll. This made our lives easy because if you were on a vacation you could take only 24 photos because that was the size of one roll. Now however, thanks to Bill Gates, Steve jobs and the guy next door who wears fat rimmed glasses and studies at IIT/MIT, computers have gotten smaller, so small that they dare to fit in all the cameras making them sophisticated pieces of equipment. Not that I hate what technology has done for us, but consider how complicated our lives have become. Just after returning from a vacation I realized that my camera had more than 500 photographs. Previously, you would pick and choose which moments were worth capturing on a photograph, but now you capture even your dog yawning.Pet dogs get more photos shot than Aishwarya Rai must have when she became Miss Universe. Well, getting back to the story, I realized I had to transfer all the vacation photographs on my hard drive (which will eventually crash) or on a DVD(which I will eventually lose). So, I get the DVDs from the store and hook up my camera to my laptop. Then I realize that I can be more creative and add captions to the photos, reduce red eye, maybe put some horns over my sister's head, replace the landscape etc. All this effort just to dump all these photos in the DVD which will be kept in one corner for the rest of my life. Unlike the old days when we would get a print copy of all our photos and keep them around us in the form of photo frames or albums, now they are just dumped in folders beneath folders on our computers. That is not what bothers me the most though, its the diarrhea of photos that are posted 24 hours on the social networking sites. Squiggly and disgusting insects would be the happiest of the species on earth getting so much importance.
How hard can it be to pick and choose what you want to shoot, print all your photos leaving the innocent insects to squiggle around and die to a HIT spray!

Sorry star wars, we love Rajnikanth

Yes I am addressing all those hypocritical people who will put on their recycled 3-D glasses and watch the so called intergalactic, supersonic, light emitting nonsense called the Star Wars and ridicule a simple guy who can merely jump off buildings, light a cigarette in a fashionable way and maybe punch 10 guys at once. I like you Rajnikanth and I will support you even if you want to take on aliens from Independence Day or the unknown bunch of weirdos from The Lost. I see the difference, you are just a human being trying to do his thing. What if you are just a step ahead of us normal people, you are still one of us!

Don't say the green word please, I'm an eco-mentalist

No, I haven't changed all my household lighting to LEDs, I don't drive a Toyota Prius, I don't even compost my tea bag. In short, I haven't given in to the green peace activists and I am not contributing to their market share. That doesn't mean I am one of the guys who drives those big black SUVs. I still contribute in every way I can(at least try to).
Last night I left my full shopping cart inside Walmart(in one of the less frequented tire and lube section) frustrated from all the packaging I would have to remove if I bought the stuff. The amount of waste I contribute in one trip to Walmart is immense. There is actually more packaging than the material itself. I have a separate shelf at home just to keep all the packaging. Being fed up from all this I found an easy solution of bringing bags from home for a shopping trip! Why not take a can for milk and empty the carton they provide you and throw it back in the shopping cart? Similar solution is possible for vegetables, fruits etc. Not only will you have less wastage to deal with at home, you will also discourage Walmart from a packaging. Others will try to follow your suit. Just say you work for green peace. Wear a OM necklace and wooden sandals to prove your point. Start a green peace revolution of your own!

PS:It goes without saying that you might be barred from that particular Walmart after they notice what you are doing. In that case just switch to a different Walmart. EASY PEESY!

Female Infanticide and India

India has a population of 1.2billion people--->Population explosion is getting out of hand--> Easy solution= kill all the girls,legalize homosexuality---> Problem solved, easy peesy.

Similar solution suggested by South Park. More on the episode here
Yes, we can!!!

PS:For inspiration read the telegraph article about this issue