Life As I Know It

The road that leads to the colony I live in was a very muddy road. The road wasn’t level nor did a tar road plan materialize till a month back. Plan came and was immediately executed. It is such a pleasure to ride on that road now. No more fear of ever skidding on the post rain quick sandish road ever. I don’t use the horn often [Never], but recently while riding on the busiest and most accident prone road I was pressing the horn in vain. It had died a silent death. Probably because it wasn't often used or because I left my vehicle under the rain one terrible day and hence there might be some trouble with the wiring. I used to think that the kick start was like a vestigial organ because when you have the automatic start what use could the kick start be of? I discovered that as well. Rains can really make you rediscover the various utilities of your vehicle. The parliament was debating about a TV show. The TV show in this case is the desi version of Moment of truth. I decid...

Chetan Bhagath had achieved “Cult Status” after his success with 5 Point Someone. I liked 5 Point Someone, even though the book lacks in style and story. The story is nothing close to reality but is funny nonetheless. For a really long time like a million others (IIT aspirants who did not make it to IIT and non IIT aspirants) I thought the book was excellent. It depicted the general feeling of students who were repelled by the system which cowed them and made them slog like buffaloes in the field on a hot sunny afternoon without being given a drop of water till ALL the work was done and when the work was done the same was never appreciated. There is always a shortcoming, there are always “you could have done better”, “Improvement needed”, “You just deteriorated the standards”, “I expect more from you ”. But the system is not half as bad as it is portrayed in the book. I blame all the three characters for being so utterly foolish. It is really ridiculous to think that working for an ent...

I got off of Orkut because there were so many people on it and if one did not accept the friend requests sent offence was taken easily plus it gives one all access to everything in your scrap book and people are often reading all the scraps and nobody bothers to send “sensitive matters” as messages instead they put it in the book for all to see and instead of the person who actually wrote in the book the person in whose book it is written gets blamed and gah! You finally have a nice dirty mess. Facebook is relatively better, I add friends and then remove them after a months time[The ones who aren't really friends.]. You get to hide certain boxes, you can block feeds from annoying people and nobody gets a peek of your profile unless you consent it or if they are on your friends list which is why it is wiser to accept only people who you know are not crazy. All was going fine until I got a friend request from a pesky kid i knew while I was growing up. Ok this guy is grown ...

Part1 When in school I had learnt a story on unity. An old man had four sons who did not get along. The old man did not want to see his fields divided. His only wish was for his family to stay together. So he calls his sons and gives them a stick each and asks them to break it. Each one obeys and breaks them. He then takes four more sticks and hands all to his eldest son and asks him to break all four at once. The eldest son fails so do the other three. The moral of the story is that if we stick together and remain united nobody can destroy us. What are the lacunae in this story? 1. If all four had placed the four sticks on a wedge which would act as a liver with two men on either side putting all their weight on either sides you would have 2 bundles of nicely cut sticks. 2. It is true that one person cannot break a group. But if the number were even on both sides I am guessing there would be a decent fight. 3. Honestly which sane "individual" would go attack a grou...

I didn’t watch much T.V in my childhood and that is all thanks to my parents who didn’t want their kids to be influenced by grotesquely portrayed characters on the screen. We instead got to see people [real-live-people-right before our eyes] play those characters. When there was no TV, people at least used their brains, explored their imagination and came up with the most creative ways to entertain. But see, today it is not like that. Actors don’t act, they just babble their lines. The audience watches them closely observing everything about the character that they can best relate to and imbibe the same characteristics in them. Once the TV is turned off they [Audience] play out the role in real life. That explains a lot of things: 1. Why it is hard to understand others [Because they sometimes get so muddled with being themselves and the character they want to be] 2. Why people are fake [They aren’t the character but would like to be like them and hence the whole mess] 3. People never l...

1. A bartender. People come to drown their sorrows be it recession or no recession – I would have earned a living. I once told my French teacher that I’d buy a villa in France and own a vineyard and make my own wine and live happily ever after. 2. A journalist. News happens daily. Even if it is not news they make it news. I guess I could add a little bit of my own imagination to the stale news and make it more interesting. 3. A dog trainer. My expertise in all modesty is limited to having trained Fenny. Actually I never trained her. Just spoke to her and guess what she is a smart dog who can respond to 3 different languages __________________________________________________ Ashwini Shenoy (B.A.L;LL.B) Dog trainer Specializes in teaching dogs different languages. _______________________________________________________________ Would the above sign attract people to bring their dogs to my training centre? 4. A wife. I’ll marry a very rich guy and ask him t...

I managed to survive without the internet for exactly 90 hours. This is a record in itself. The fact that I need to remain connected with the world outside without leaving my home is of great importance at least for the next 5 days. So in the last 90 hours I had a lot to ponder over. 1. Why do the dullest books ever get the Booker Prize? Why is it that Sidharth Dhanvant Sanghvi’s book didn’t receive the same praise as other Indian authors? Is it because he was being an Indian telling a story about Indians in India without making them out to be black magic believing, spell casting, utterly stupidly behaving people? Or is it because there is plenty of the desi vernacular scattered in his story? Or is it because the story is very normal, something that everybody has seen happening around them, something that is so normal that such normalness is universal. Or is it because the story is set in the 1920’s and such normalness was not expected out of Indians back then? Je ne sais pa...

We have a minister who claims to have killed his first tiger when he was 8. I will not name him. His son works with one of my friends. This minister’s son’s cousin went to South Africa on a safari to kill a lion. Which he did. A huge one. He sent a photograph of his conquest to his cousin –the said minister’s son, who showed off the snap to all his colleagues, my friend included. Apparently, In SA one is allowed to kill animals at a price. This guy who shot the lion, had to shell out USD 50,000. What was this money for? He ha ha ha ha ha ha Conservation of wildlife! If you want to shoot a deer it’ll cost you 5,000 USD, a female Lion 8,000 USD… the list goes on. Coming back to India . My friend went to Ooty yesterday. On his way he took the picture below. Now I have never seen a skinny elephant. Never seen one look like this. Made me feel so sad. Wished I could go give it a hug if that would make it feel better. I must have stared at this picture just feeling re...

Some men love women and some men love men and so is the case with women, some love men some love women. Sexual orientation is something that has been a mystery to some and obvious to some. But the fact till today remained that Indians thought Homosexuality to be a crime. The only provision of law relating to it was Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which talks about Unnatural offenses:" Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with [Imprisonment for life] , or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable for fine. " But TODAY is definitely a day that all Indians will remember. Section 377 has been decriminalized, thereby recognizing homosexuals. Now that I call progress. It's a shame though, that religious groups have already started their rants about "the end of civilization" and the age old argument that god didn't ...

They were two young people in love, rebelling against their families. The two families in question thought the other to be inferior. Their hatred grew apparent when they decided to wrench the young couple apart. The stars helped too. They were meant to be star crossed lovers. Alas! Their love bore a symbol. A child was conceived. Something that the couple and their families had not foreseen. What was to be done of the wretched sin? One said kill it. The other said if it is a boy we shall want it to live. If it is a girl we shall kill it. They never asked the man or the woman what they wanted to do with the child. Having thus decided the child’s destiny even before it was bigger than a thumb the families began their 9 month long wait. The wait ended when they heard the wailing of the child. The heads of both families rushed in to the room. What do you think they saw? A child. A girl child. “Kill it”, said both. You can’t play with destiny. A young couple had visited the hospital only t...