Busy

Have been very busy lately ....hardly anytime to blog..would get back as soon as possible....

Running the Gauntlet

Driving on Highways in India is like running the gauntlet, it’s a huge relief when you make it safely home. Its almost unbelievable, about hundred thousand people perish in accidents in India every year. The Government seems to be least bothered, may be they think its another way of keeping population growth in check. Most Highways are still single roads, for both way traffic. Then there are all kind of settlements all along the Highway, Villages, towns, etc. No effort is made to stop these settlements.

The traffic itself so bizarre, on that 20 feet wide road you have the people on cycles, bullock carts, pedestrians, autos, stray cattle’s, you name it and you have it there….all going at there own pace, stopping where ever they want too, in the middle of the road. Worse, if u leave out the cars and mobikes, most of the other vehicles don’t have tail or the break lights, so u don’t have any warning when they are going to stop, you realize at the last moment that the guy in front of you has stopped moving, so either you hit him from behind or manage to cum to a screeching stop. The people, they walk along on highways as if its there neighborhood park. Night time its almost impossible to drive in those blinding lights from the on coming traffic, which are constantly in your face. Its very very risky to be driving in those conditions, for one I don’t drive at night, unless its really urgent. Majority of accidents occur during night time, not only due to poor visibility but also due to the fact that most of those truck drivers are under influence of alcohol.

A large part of the blame rest with people too, who have absolutely no road sense, they do all kind of stupid things, like running across the road from no where, the cyclists just turn without even bothering to look behind, and if by chance you fail to ‘save them’ and are involved in an accident, the local people will pile on to you, as if you are the one responsible for it, even though you did absolutely nothing wrong. They will thrash you, at times people have being killed too in this madness. Once on the Highway on a mobike, as the last truck passed by, I saw this guy on a cycle coming right across the road, there was no way I could have braked, I increased the speed and even went off the road hoping that he wud break, but he kept coming and finally…I went flying over the mobike, which got entangled with the cycle, stopped some 10 yards ahead, kind of miracle that I was in one piece, just my left hand was badly bruised, blood trickling from everywhere. Looked at that idiot..he would not move at all, shit is he dead….few people came running ..how you ride you killed him….it was time to counterattack…are you blind…you did not see what happened….being weak would have meant a thrashing, few jumped to my defense, amidst all this chaos the guy finally sat up and I left the place… Since then I am very cautious when ever I see pedestrians and cycles (the rural people), their behavior and those of animals is almost same, without any signal without any warning they will just do what they feel like…seem to be staunch believers in the nike advertisement ..just do it……Not only we need better roads, but road sense has to drilled in the minds of the people, If you don’t value your life its all right find another place to commit suicide but at least let the others live.
Tomorrow I am hitting the highway again, going to Delhi for about 10 days, I don’t know if I would be able to blog but would try whenever possible, till then you people be good. : )

Some Pics

Here is another of my numerous hobbies.......tht's clicking pics.....havent learnt any where..but i think i have some sense tht tells me wht will make a beautiful picture. How i wish i had some one to pose for me ..a beautiful gal :( but until tht time i wud i will have to do with nature.....the birds/sky /trees etc. Actually i am posting this cozz Suji thinks she is better than me haha ....
The pic of tht Bulbul (2nd last pic) is my all time favo., the one with tht white cloud..the moment i saw it it looked to me as if a Gorilla was floating with his hands in front thru the air...and each time i see tht pic it seems excatly like that....

Will U Save Him

This is an advertisement from Times Of India, dated 1^st June 2006, the little boy is from a poor family suffering from Cancer, I feel we can all contribute a little to save his life, if you think the cause is worthwhile then please put the link on your post too and tell your friends about it, so that we can have more people coming forward to help.

Master Yash Pradeep Shevade, a 5 yr old boy, is presently suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (a type of blood cancer), certified by a doctor and is being treated at a hospital in Mumbai. His family monthly income is Rs 2500/- and therefore cannot spend Rs 4 lakhs needed urgently for his treatment and as such his death is imminent if we do not help him. Your timely help could give him a new lease of life and he can lead a normal life.

We appeal to you to send your donations by Cheque/DD in the name of “Cancer Aid & Research Foundation” addressed to Cancer Aid & Research Foundation, Byculla Municipal School Bldg., Room No. 15-18, N.M. Joshi Marg, Near S Bridge, Byculla (West), Mumbai-400011, India. Please write the patients name on the reverse of the Cheque/DD and also your PAN number incase the donation is more than Rs 50000/-. The donor should give his/her full address and telephone number if any, to enable us to send the receipt of the donation and 80 G Income Tax Certification.

NRI’s /Foreign donors can credit directly in IDBI Bank, Prabhadevi Branch, Mumbai –25 SB AC number 026104000088372.

Other donors can donate through their bank directly to State Bank Of India SB AC number 10041949740, Jacob Circle Branch, Mumbai 400011 or IDBI Bank Prabhadevi Branch SB AC number 026104000080088, donors can also donate through our website by credit card… www.cancerfoundation.org for more information you can call 91 22 23005000/7000/8000 or contact through mail cancerfoundation@yahoo.com
I sincerely hope that our little blog world will come forward and make a difference. What are you waiting for pull out that credit card now.

Lord Of the Ring

Zinedine Zidane, for me without doubt the greatest football player of all times will not be there any more on the field after the World Cup in Germany, without him football will not be the same again. His creativity, his magic has no parallels. He took football to another plain, sublime, the joy of watching him weave his magic hard to describe. Have watched lot of great players, but Zidane’s dribbling, his ball control just amazing, the ball always seemed to be glued to his feet. The kind of things he did, left the spectators baffled and crying for more. The bigger the occasion the better he was. Two stunning headers in world Cup Final buried Brazil in 1998, that made him the most popular man in France. In 2000, he starred again as France won its second European title, scoring a penalty to beat Portugal in the semifinals. Unfortunately he was plagued with injuries during the last World Cup.
He had retired from the national team, but when France looked struggling to qualify for the World Cup 2006 he came back from retirement. He was immediately reinstated as Captain, that is the stature of the man.
So during the World Cup the Lord will be seen for the last time, for all of you whom this isn’t making any sense, just watch him in that number ten jersey during the Cup.
He played his last match recently for Real Madrid, a star studded team, with names like Ronaldo, Beckham, Figo, Raul and a few more big guns. Real had paid a whopping US $ 82 million for his transfer from the Italian Club Juventus, the biggest transfer fee. He was voted three time as the FIFA player of the year and also the best European Footballer in last 50 years.

Bulls Eye

Recently I got my first gun, a 315 rifle, no it isn’t for those predators. Its absolutely deadly weapon, I fired it on a wall and it left a 10 inch deep hole, it can be effective up to a 1000 meters. Actually Dad was more keen but since he already has three licenses he could not get another one so I got the license. Yeah in India you have to first get a license to keep a gun. The kind of environment we live in I think one should have something for safety. In our family every one can handle a gun, including the females. With a gun I can go to any place at any time without fear, I have carried a pistol to the University for some time, we got entangled with some bad elements. Either you give in to them, or you stand up. The bad guys too fear for their lives, perhaps more than ordinary people. So when we made it loud and clear that we would not hesitate to kill if any harm came to us they backed off, and we never had any problem since then, if that day we had surrendered it would have been life long bullying.

Fortunately we never had to use a gun, the only place we did was at shooting ranges. Dad won the District Championship a few times, though he never took it seriously as a sport. Once he was dragged to State Championship and without any practice he managed to bag the silver medal in Pistol shooting.

I was involved in shoot out at the District Championship once in a Shot Gun event, it went on and on other events where delayed, finally I lost the first place to the guy from the army. At the School, once the NCC boys where having shooting, with .22 rifles, I wasn’t old enough to be in NCC. I went and pestered the NCC teacher to let me shoot. The event was supervised by two guys from the army. So the teacher asked me to borrow a uniform and use the name Vij, some one who was absent. I was there, 5 shots, each one of them bulls eye, the guys from the Army wanted me to go to Delhi for Republic Day Competition and the teacher was ‘arre yeh kya kiya marwoge mujhe’ (wht did u do u will get me killed) since I wasn’t from the NCC. The high point was when in NCC I used the Light Machine Gun, that was some fun.

But keeping Guns means a lot of responsibility and any one who is short tempered, the kind of people who just loose it, should not keep one. Never ever play the fool with a gun, the saying is, empty guns fire, so pointing a gun towards any one even if we are 100% sure that its empty is a strict no no. While firing a gun lot of things have to be made sure off, especially when it’s a long range weapon like a rifle. I would never fire until I am sure about the final destination of the bullet, it should either head for the sky or the ground or be hitting something which I can see. The angles are very important. Stray bullets have resulted in many accidents. And always keep out from the reach of the children. As a 7-8 year old I almost shot my sister. I picked up the Air Gun, thinking it was empty, aimed towards my sister from a few meters, ‘aaj mai tumhe khatam kar dunga’ and pulled the trigger and it actually fired, thankfully since it was too heavy for me I missed her, it could have been a real disaster, even though an Air Gun but from that close it could have been lethal.

To Kill or Not To....

We have this little garden at the back, which is frequented by many birds especially during the summer months. We leave plenty of water for them to drink and bathe, you can sense their happiness. It’s fun to watch them bathing, drying themselves and singing merrily. They let us come so close, perhaps they know that we will not harm them. Quite a few of them make it there home, nest and lay eggs. It gives me so much joy to see they building the nest, lay eggs, the excitement when the chicks hatch and when they grow a little big the parents teaching them to fly. However all those birds have begun to attract quite a few predators, attacking the birds, taking away the chicks, the eggs etc. and that leaves me so upset, like that ‘bulbul’ in the picture, a day after her chicks hatched the nest was attacked by a cat.
Both the little ones of the dove (the one in pic) were taken away by a hawk, the next time they laid eggs a mongoose cleaned the nest. It really upsets me, I want to kill these predators. You see those birds putting in so much effort and then it ends like this in a disaster. The dilemma is that a part of me stops me from killing those predators, I feel that by doing so I will be interfering with nature, after all they kill to survive, to feed their young ones. But what about my birds, the birds who trust me, who take refuge in my home. I actually keep an eye on the nests when ever possible but how long and more often than not those idiots win the battle…what do I do????