Where have all the good men gone ?

With apologies to the one and only Pete Seeger…..

Where have all the good men gone ?

Long time passing

Where have all the honest men gone ?

Long time passing

Where have all the gullible voters gone ?

Coming our way

When will they ever learn ?

When will they ever learn ?

Coalgate- Keep Smiling

The other day my child asked me after watching TV what Colgate was. I was a taken aback for a while as I did not know whether she wanted to know the meaning of Colgate or Coalgate. When she clarified that she had heard it in an advertisement I was albeit relieved that she had chosen the right kind of word at least at her age , for the time being.

With the way we are progressing as a nation, very soon we should have a subject of General Knowledge on Scams in the school syllabi as that seems to be the most happening thing in the country. Not a single day passes without our coming to know of a new kind of scam somewhere in the country, via newspaper or other media.

The country is on the brink of an economic disaster as it is and now with the monsoon playing truant , any hopes of a recovery also seems that much tougher. And then we have our political leaders who do not have any administrative will and the parliament sessions are reduced to bouts of shouting and sometimes freestyle wrestling arenas. Looks like we sent the wrong kind of team to the Olympics, our hopes of winning more medals in boxing and wrestling have been dashed as we did not pick our MPs in the contingent as they are showing quite a prowess these days.

The media unearthed a group of Karnataka MLAs running off on a world tour of eight countries on tax payers’ money, for a so-called educational trip. The trip was sanctioned by the Speaker as per norms. What education they are gaining with an agenda that spans from visit to a fur factory in Scotland to the pyramids of Egypt is anyone’s guess. The party bosses of course are happy to sanction such trips as most times it is a question of you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours. The drought affected people of Karnataka are of course waiting for their MLAs to return from their junket suitably educated enough to help them.

Till then , we have Coalgate- keep smiling !

King Lie- that is BEST !

Trust any governmental agency to turn anything into a scam these days and you will not be disappointed.

After all the hullabaloo about the inferior quality of Chinese King Long buses used by the BEST, now we understand that those buses were not Chinese after all and were manufactured by a company in India only with brand name CERITA. Every time a bus used to break down (which these buses did with regularity) the Chinese origin was blamed as if “Made in India” is synonymous to “Made in Japan” or some such thing. The uncanny similarity of the two logos cannot be coincidental.

Something is fishy definitely as all along (including in BEST website) these buses have been officially referred as King Longs. If these were not of the Chinese origin why in the first place were they ever referred as King Longs, I wonder.

The officials of BEST are as usual suffering from short term memory loss which is quite common these days. An enquiry will be in place and a committee instituted to investigate. It will take donkeys’ years to submit a report by the time the episode will be forgotten as new scams would have taken its place.

BEST has right now spun a yarn- maybe it can be said it is a King Lie on the King Long !

Thoda Khao Thoda Pheko

One of my favourite Hindi films of all time will definitely be “Jaane bhi do yaro”. I have watched it many times over in entirety and also sometimes in parts on telly, but I am not writing this to talk about the film.

I remember a dialog in the film when a piece of cake is thrown out of the window and the actor says “Thoda khao thoda pheko ! Mazaa aya ? “ ( Loosely translated: Eat some throw some- it is fun !)

The recent statement of an UP politician where he advises his bureaucracy that they are allowed to indulge in little corruption as long as they work reminds me of this dialog in the film. What a state of affairs in this country !

While Coalgate dominates media coverage and we see the mystery of the two Sahay-s. Who is in our sahay (as in help )- only the Almighty knows perhaps, or even he has given up on this country.

We have one politician indicted for murder and another for inciting communal violence. The parliament is the only office in the country where you can be present for 7 days out of 88days and still not get kicked out of the job.

The general knowledge section of every bookshop and library must now have a dedicated section for scam news as it dominates most of the news that is made in this country.

Yet they govern this country- God give us a break !!!

Mad as a Hatter

Why do we say what we say ? There are certain expressions that creep into every language which with time people use almost on an everyday basis, but if we stop and ponder we are left to wonder why we say that in the first place.

It is monsoon time and though this year we are not having the monsoon as strong as we need it, there are some days when it really pours. We have a term for that: Raining cats and dogs. What does it signify ? That the clouds are actually throwing our feline friends and man’s best friend from the skies ? Or that these poor creatures have to run for cover too as have their human benefactors ?

It does not get over so easily by a long chalk, we sometimes say. As I remember from my school days and people engaged in education would also endorse, the chalk is generally about three and a half inches long and gets shorter by the minute smearing the fingers of the writer with regularity. I have never seen a longer chalk. So where from did the British (presume they invented this in their language ) get it ?

Sometimes we are pleased as a punch. Never really understood whether the pleasure comes from receiving the punch (as in stationery used to make holes in sheets of paper) or delivering the punch (as in boxing).

Some we try to do new things for the first time and those who are experts in that field feel we have not cut the mustard. Well mustard is used in Indian cooking and is also there in British culinary delights of having a salad dressing for savouring the fish, but have you ever seen anyone cut a piece of mustard ? It would surely be a sight.

Well there are many, and now that I am wasting time trying to understand them, it may tempt people to think I am mad as a hatter !!! So better sign off before the same….

Waterways for Maximum City

Almost everyone who lives in Mumbai knows about the traffic hardships faced by the commuters on a daily basis. The city population has grown manifold and is continuously growing (and no I do not subscribe to the idea of restricting influx like some of our politicians have been asked for a I feel that is against one of the very fundamental freedom every Indian has to chose and work in whichever place they feel deem fit).

The situation is further made complex in Mumbai by the longitudinal shape of the city and therefore the polarized traffic movement at most times. Although there are some projects being undertaken like the metro and the monorail and some more on the anvil like the express corridor on the harbor rail link and the sea link across Uran, it somehow feels that this won’t be enough. Also we have to take into account the speed (or the lack of it) with which these projects will progress and considering same it is going to be a cat and mouse game between the infrastructure and the needs.

What a city like Mumbai needs to harness quickly is its water-ways and I am not talking about the bridges across the ocean which are there, and more which are being planned. I am of the opinion that we should harness the potential of using the sea and try to connect the various land points by high speed boats capable of carrying many in speedy comfort. We are reading in the newspapers of projects being planned on these lines but by the time they get the clearances, it may well be another decade !

Some years back there was an endeavour to connect Navi Mumbai with South Mumbai by catamaran but the service got shelved in a short while. Really speaking lot of places along the eastern and western fringes can be connected and apart from the occasional inclement weather, can run almost round the year. Many cities of the world have such concepts with water buses and water taxis and there is no reason why we should use the shoreline gifted by nature to do the same. It will definitely not say goodbye to crowded trains and traffic jams, but will help in de-congest.

And we should undertake projects like these quickly under PPP model with a BOO concept with a political will that has been sadly lacking for some time ! And time government started clearing infrastructural projects in a hurry !

Designed for Humans

The recent happenings in India as well as elsewhere are depressing.

Over the last few days, we saw near-riot situation in Mumbai and then targeting of people of North Eastern origin which forced them to head home from cities and towns that they chose to live in and call their home. A few weeks before that, we witnessed the horrendous killing of innocent people in a Gurudwara in USA in a racial hate crime.

It is difficult for any police force to check on activities of each and every person in this world. We would then need a most of the people living on this planet to be police personnel itself.
These crimes of racial hatred deserve the worst punishment and in quick time too.

Somehow these things are forgotten as new news take over. This is how life has been always. Time we stood up united to ensure that innocent people are needlessly not targeted just because of their origins, race, community, colour etc.

It is time we reinforced that this planet is Designed for Humans (to steal a catch-line from a recent advertisement).