Some news...Some Views - 10

In a way, I was much relieved to see that the thrid Satyagraha was a flop. Though I am a big fan of Anna, the way he and his team mates advocate for making laws in the streets does not augur well for our country. Let the Parliament decide everything for us -good or bad. Let the social activists and the Civil society make all efforts to influence the decision of the lawmakers without crossing the bounderies.


Lokpal bill may take time to take the final shape, but the Loop-hole bill is passed by the citizen of India much before. No one has any complaint about exclusion or inclusion of minorities or any other sections!! India is united irrespective of religion, caste or economic status in using Loop-holes.



No Bills or rules may not usher in good behaviour to the people. Look at the punishment for murder. Lifer is guaranteed if not capital punishment for murder. Still people kill just like sipping a cup of tea.


Let the umpteen number of netas, social activists, intelluctuals, superstars and human rights activists work towards this reformic the public mindset. Religions and their leaders, instead of spreading hatred and violance in the society, shall first read their own religions texts and understand their real meaning and then preach it to the followers.


Let us also teach our children how to be honest, be whatever be the cost of it. Most importantly, let us learn ourselves and teach our children Bhagavatgita, Bible, Quran, Guru Granth Sahib and so many other scrpits before the perverted and unbalanced minds, pretending to be champions of reliogion and Gods, do it for us.


Let everyone be exempted from the purview of the Lokpal but not the Chennai autorikshaws. There is no limit for the autorikshaw drivers' demands in Chennai. A two kilometer ride may cost anything near rupees hundred in Chennai. Meter in the autorikshaw became a showpiece long long ago. No one insists on meter and no authorities are interested in fixing fare for this commonman's taxi. If this is not corruption, then we shall sit up and change the definition of corruption first


Interestingly, travelling by hired taxi cars is much cheaper in Chennai. We will be paying at least rupees fifty less than what we pay to the Autorikshaw to reach our destination . There are so many Call Taxi operators in Chennai who give good service with fairly good punctuality. They run on electronic meters and issue receipts. So, if anyone happen to be in Chennai and need to travel, do never go for autorikshaws. Just pick your phone and dial the taxi operator. Have a cool ride without hassles.


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Recently three engineers from Mali, Africa had visited Chennai. The purpose of visit was to witness tests on one 220KV Circuit Breaker at the manufacturer's test facility in Chennai. There was another engineer from the Indian client and I too joined as the representative of the third party inspection agency. There were five engineers around an equipment to witness the tests. Look at the manpower and money waste involved here


It has become the order of the day. Customers depute third party inspectors to carryout inspections and then assigns the role of the inspectors themselves. The colssal losses in terms of manpower and money do not seem to have any takers anywhere...

Some news...Some views -9

Rose by any name smells as sweet. The same is applicable to gold too with minor modifications in the wordings. 916 gold, pure gold, beauty meets quality...the eulogies are lined up and the superstars of sports and the tinsel world are more than happy to promote gold. Does gold really need a superstar to boost its sale? There is room for doubt about the purity of the gold these super stars promote. If the gold mecheants were selling pure gold, they would never have needed such a seamless advertisement blitzkrieg.


Energy drinks manufacturers claim, if we feed their products along with milk, our cheldren will grow double fast. Their stamina multiplies by three fold and their sharpness becomes double fold. Even the Demi God of cricket does not find it uncomfortable in telling such a blatant lie to his millions of fans in our country that a particular energy drink is the secret of his energy.


All these supertars of cricket and films must learn from Kamal Hasan Yesudas. They  never promote any of these fake products. They rather appear in advertisements that promote social awareness. They show much more social commitment than all these money minting stars


Now that sports stars also will be considered for Bharat Ratna, we can hopefully expect that the prospective "Ratnas" will stop telling lies about  gold, energy drinks and soft drinks to his fans simply for money

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What will be the fate of Lokpal. Still not clear. However, Anna is constantly being linked to RSS by Digvijay Singh and his fellow partymen. I only pray, people like Digvijay campaigns for his party in the coming state elections. The party does not need enemies if it promots people like this man.


Supremacy of parliament needs to be protected. In my considered opinion, Anna can wait till the lokpal bill is discussed in Parliament. In a democartic country, laws can only be made in parliament, not in streets. Let the law makers come out with their form of the Lokpal law. Then, if it does not his requirement, Anna can go on satyagraha

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Frighteneing news is coming out from Egypt. Was this all that the citizens of Egypt gained by ousting the dictator Mubarak a few months back? Army took over from the dictator and they became another tyrant unit. Only the Almighty knows what will be the end of all these. Now that hardline religious outfits are gaining majority in elections, the picture is still becoming murkier by the day.

One of the national dailies, while writing editorial about army crackdown on women, mentioned the colour of the bra this woman wears! How insensitive it is to add an adjective here!

Appooppanthaadi -30

Look at the picture on the right side. A red ribbon on a 135 Mega Watt Generator! This generator, during inpection gave out a lot of wrong results. The vendor struggled hard to get it through the inspections. At lest, before offering this equipment for the final inspection, they tied a red ribbon on it


A red ribbon, according to the Chinese belief, fetches good luck. We can see so many cars on the roads with red ribbon tied to their wheels. Red is their traditional colour. They decorate the entrance of their houses with red colured paper. Superstions are present worldwide in different forms. Some are funny, some are obnoxious and some are objectionable


The Chinese send money to their dead ones. Once in a year, most likely on the occasion of the death anniversary, they burn peices of paper in the public places - mainly on the road sides. These papers are believed to be money, that may be required in the heaven for their near ones to meet the expenses!


There are many shops that sell paper currencies.  Though, nothing can be taken along when we leave this place, we can arrange everything we need!! It will be interesting to know who receives the money in the Heaven and how he/she distributes it to the recipients...


Let me show another picture. The image on the right side was taken from my  Hotel Room in Harbin. Everything is at hand's distance. Just reach out and have unlimited fun. No raids. No papirazzi reports. Only fun and nothing more.


One night, as I was about to hit the bed at 1 o clock, the room bell had started ringing continuously. Taken aback by the sudden sound, I hesitatingly answered the call. There stood two girls- of course skimpily dressed- who too were taken aback upon seeing me! They mistook the person and disppeared from the scene in a jiffy...


Look at this. Chairman Mao's image on the backdrop of palatial apartment complexes and magnificient express Highways. This was a picture I captured while I visited Hunan Province.  Occupants of those posh abodes will certainly not be the people for whom the Chairman fought for in his life time... Confusing...perplexing...mind boggling...


Hunan province is where Mao was born and worked for long. The driver of the taxi, pointing at this image told me in pure Chinese and with some actions that Mao is like a God for him. Like this young driver, there are millions in China who consider Mao as god.


 During various interactions with many young Chinese, I could make out one thing. They do not harbour any deep rooted ill feelings against the autocratic communist regime in their country. In fact, like those 'drugged' tigers in the Siberian Park, the citizens of this country are just living their life enjoying discoteques, pizza huts, Walmarts, never caring for what's up in the political scene. 



Most of the vehicles, unlike in our country do not hang a religious symbol in the front. Still, there too we can see several vehicles, especially cars with images from Buddism. Interestingly, Budha was against idol worshipping but his disciples made His own idols to worship. I too have a Budha idol in my showcase that I bought from Colombo in 2004.



This image is from the backyard of the well constructed cities. Behind all pomp and pageantry we see in the cities of China, there are secenes like this which we will not miss even in the much celebrated city like Shanghai.

There are motor vehicle workshops  and Bicycle workshops right on the footpaths of the roads.  These scenes are nothing better than those we have in our ciuntry.


Of course, town management and discipline by the citizens of this country can never be compared with ours.

for more photos : Images from the road sides

Appooppanthaadi -29

The major difference I find in these four years is that, in 2007 we could freely access facebook, orkut, picasa and any number of community portals and blogspots in China. (four years back, I stayed in Tianjin, one of the biggest cities in China after Beijing and Shanghai)  Now, at present, none of these websites and portals can be opened. There are strict monitoring and blocking of many a portal that may cause inconvenience to the ruling deispensation in Beijing

Still, there are loopholes. Internet is flooded with proxy websites. Many proxy sites are payable. They help people access all blocked sites and portals for a price. Just pay USD 5 per month through Paypal, the entire internet is unblocked for you. I too used one of the proxy sites to keep my blogspot ticking. There are a few free proxies too, which, many are using for opening Facebook.

Media is under government control. All television programmes are aired after getting government’s nod. People are allowed to watch what the government decides. It reminds us of the period of 1970s and early 80s in India.  In the age of internet, people has many other alternatives to get the news. But, I am afraid, the citizens of that country may not dare peep into any stuff that is presumed to be anti-government.

There are so many Chinese television channels on the air. Whereever we go, we can only come across such channels. CCTV, the government owned 'Doordarshan' looks to be as boring as the latter one. People may not hae any choice but to be content with what they get. They learnt the art of being cintent. Ask no quastions. This is what even the genaral public loves to tell us.

CCTV has an English News channel. There they always air the government propoganda besides the news about protests for democracy and enonomic equality elsewhere in the world. Anna Hazare's fasting, Egyptian and Libyan unrest and the Occuppy Wall Street dmonstrations were all found prominant place in the news channel. We can hardly find any news about a protest being taken out on the Chniese streets. We do not even know that the Jasmine Revolution that started in Tunisia an year back had repercussions in China too. Inconvenient news items cannot penetrate the iron curtain so easily. The Chinese version of the Jasmine revolution was nipped in the bud by the authorities.

The coconut chutney...

No one can resist the temptation of having a couple of hot idlis drowned in delicious sambar. Imagine coconut chutney (thenga chammandi) is accompanying this heart stopping combination! A ship can easily float in the mouth now, isn’t it? I can see it from here, from this desert.

The homesick, expats of India always long for this. In their yearning for being in the company of their much cherished traditions, they definitely recreate whatever they followed in their beloved home in India. Many a time, these acts of re-building the tradition do not go beyond symbolism, to put it with a little displeasure.

I have a very funny story to tell about the coconut chutney or otherwise called in Malayalam “ thenga chammandi”. Let me take you to an innocent childhood. A childhood that has been cared and showered with affection by a rustic, down to earth old woman with the help of another equally old woman.

Grandma is the best thing on the earth that was ever created by God. Like everyone else, I too had a woderful grandma. She was very sincere in her love and very serious in our up bringing. Of course, the ignorance and innocence of a village grown woman was evident in her too.

She could never help us in our home work. She could never even read a word in Malayalam, because she was illiterate. Interestingly, the only home work I used to do in my lower classes were copy writing. Malayalam copy writing in two lined book and English in the four lined book. But, still, luckily, we had a good Brother to compliment grandma’s ignorance. He took over the responsibility of educating us well. He did his job the way a brother is expected to do. Not even a day passes by in my life without remembering him.

Ask no more. These were the words the care- taker of the orphanage used to tell the inmates in the famous Dickens story  Oliver Twist, while disbursing the gruel. Oliver twist recollects those stories so vividly in his “memoirs”. I can never draw a parallel with any of the incidents that happened to Oliver Twist in my childhood days.

I just quoted those infamous words, only to tell you that my grandma too used to utter these words in disgust when she runs out of our favourite thenga chammandi. But for the similarity of the words, there is no comparison possible between any of the people in the strory and my grandma.

We two brothers, ie the one who is just elder to me and myself used to consume a lot of chutney while eating idlis and dosas. We sit together always for the food sessions. Laced with a lot of love and affection, grandma serves us idlis with delicious chutney. But, she innocently utters the words ‘ask no more’. She receives an immediate response from both of us. We needed a lot of chutney to eat each idlis. Making a big quantity of chutney was very difficult, because we did not have a mixer at our home. Meenakshiyamma makes the chutney on the crushing stone. She could make it for us. She never gets tired of serving us. Even a half part of a coconut was not enough to satisfy our needs.

We two never left her. We sit at the table itself, making all types of nuisance to her. Disgusted grandma shouts the same words many times - ask no more. We are unmoved. I tap the plate with spoon or hit the plate on the table. My brother even turns violent sometimes. He throws the plates and spoons. We have some bent spoons at our home even now! Still she had never beaten us nor even uttered a word that might hurt us.

She used to wake up at 4 in the morning along with her aide, and prepare all our breakfast and lunch by the time we get ready for school. She considered it her solemn duty. This spirit deserves a salute indeed. The commitment was unconditional. The attitude was unmatched. The love was no holds barred.

After a long battle of nerves between grandma and the two of her grandsons, grandma surrenders. Coconut is ground, made chutney and served. Meenakshiyamma never complained about the extra efforts for our sake. It could be very difficult for the two elderly women to cook food as they have to depend on crushing stone to crush the coconut and cook in primitive wood stove. We had no gas stove or a mixie at that time. We quietly consume the extra chutney and leave the scene quietly. This was a regular scene in our house for a long time.

Recaling those events now makes us a little embarrassed, though it evokes laughter at times. Whenever we remember our grandma, we could never help reminiscing these incidents. With a sense of apologies to our loved grandma, may I offer a few petals of gratitude in her memory

This story taught us a lesson too. Never say no to a child. Whenever little Govind demands something, which I can not meet, still I say yes and then, slowly divert his attention from his objective. This saves a lot of our energy. We need not fight with him, make him cry and then patch up with him.

I get another opportunity to remember my beloved grandma and of course our Meenakshiamma when Govind fights for the things he needs! Perhaps, while enjoying the best facilities at the Heaven, grandma must be rejoicing the events that unfold here. The hunter is now hunted!

Some News..Some Views - 8

Hillary Clinton hugged Aung San Suu Kyi very tightly. Of course, it was a spontanoeus display of affection and awe towards a lady who stood by her struggle to liberate a country that is reeling under an autocratic dispensation from 1960s onwards. The military junta had already pulled the nation at least a century backwards.


In 1990, Suu Kyi's party won the general elections with convincing majority. The military rulers struck down the results. She remained in house arrest from 1989 to 2010. Though a free woman now, she is largely confined to her home and is watched by the strong men of the government.

Dawn of democracy in Myanmar is still far. US may not show much eagerness in taking the country to the end of the tunnel. Myanmar does not seem to have any strategic importance to them, at least in the near vicinity, though they are wary of Myanmar's drifting towards China.


Why don't we Indians usher in such a rule in our country? There are so many people in our country who are increasingly vocal against democracy and the politicians. I used to counter their arguments in favour of military rule or autocratic rules by pointing out the happenings in our neighbouring countries.


Never mistake. There is no alternative to democracy. If anyone is not convinced, just ask that lady- Aung San Suu kyi... She paid her life for it...


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The government bites the dust, yet again. It has become a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the government to first introduce the bill in parliament and then consult others to get their support. In the case of FDI too this has happened. Even the government's alliance parters were not consulted before introducing the bill in favour of FDI in parliament.

Let them hold it, for, there are so many other business to be transacted in the parliament. Walmarts and Carrefours can wait till the antagonists comes to power. They will allow 100% FDI!!! Relax and watch it for the time being...

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She is out on bail. Is it the end of the story? Perhaps yes- very sadly. Let us only hope that the long arm of law will definitely catch up with her. When she arrived Chennai the other day, her party accorded a rousing welcome. The entire route from the airport to her residance was dotted with so many welcome banners and party flags. How many crores she would have taken as "loan" to arrange this welcome?

Appooppanthaadi -28

There are more reasons for the flat belly and fit body. The Chinese mostly eat semi cooked vegetables and meat. They use less oil and more sausages.


Almost all food items are cooked and many other meat based dishes are fried directly over the fire. This probably avoids a lot of fat getting accumulated

Another interesting thing  about the Chinese food habit is that they take supper as early a six in the evening. By six in the evening all eateries will be full with customers. They sit out on the walkways in groups to have their dinner.


At home too, the dinner will be over before seven o clock. It is a common sight on Chinese roads scores of people sitting on the foot paths and having their dinner on summer days.  Intake of food much before they go to sleep help digest the food before all the organs slow down during sleep.


They eat rice with every meal. Chiense rice, unlike ours becomes sticky while boiling. Boiled rice comes off to the chop-sticks like lumps that is put into mouth with ease.


Most of the Indians living in China mastered the art of using the sticks. I was a miserable failure however. Till the end of my stay there, I had to depend on fork and spoon. Many of the ordinary restaurants never keep spoons, fork or knife. They serve only sticks with the meals.


Every meal is accompanied by a few bottles of beer. Everyone takes it over their food. Beer is cheaper than water, it looks. A 4% concentration beer has a price of 1.8 yuans for a 380ml bottle. A water bottle of same volume costs a little more than this


There is another interesting story to tell about food. Last time I happened to read The China Daily, an English News Paper that is rarely seen in China. There were two prominant articles in the daily. One was about killing dogs for meat. In some parts of China, dog meat is widely used as a delicate food. Now animal activists are campaigning against this traditional food in China.


The another article was about gutter oil. It was reported in the newspaper that, used oil in restaurants are collected by some people, recycled and then reused in restaurants. This oil is called gutter oil. Authorities are taking strong measures to force restaurants to let the used oil down the drain.


One of the Chinese engineers I met during my stay there told me that he never gave the local milk to his baby for fear that it may be synthetic. There are many cases of milk being adulterated. He buys milk that is imported from Europe. Though the imported milk is much expensive, he wanted to avoid risk

Some News...Some Views -7

Of course, we must dicuss FDI. Nation as a whole is dicussing this at present, putting the issues of corruption and terrorism in the back  burner- at least for the time being.


Almost all major opposition parties in our country are vehemently opposing Government's decision to allow 51% Foreign Direct Investment in multi brand retail outlets. Why do they make so much of noise against this?


From a commonman's point of view, FDI in retail sector is a welcome move. In our cities there are already big desi retail outlets exisiting alongside the small retail shops. I do not think FDI will make any big difference in the present scenario.


Giant retailers like Walmart or Carrefour is not going to affect the small kirana shops next door in a significant way. We have to depend on the small shops still to get one washing saop or a packet of chilli powder for the immediate use.


Look at the local kirana retailer. If we ask for a soap, he hands out a soap that benefis him the most. We are never given a choice. If we need a packet of salt, he gives the salt that fetches the maximum commission from its manufacturer. In comparison to this, a big departmental shop allows us to pick and choose what we need. They offer home delivery too


In short, foreign direct investment in the retail market will benefit the general public. These outlets will never alter the game here. In  fact the local retailers will be forced to improve their service when faced with quality service the customers are promised to get through the new move.

One of the several Carrefour outets in Harbin, China

In the Harbin city of People's Republic of China, I could visit five Walmart shops. There, we get things at a cheaper rate than from any other shops. I bough a few items from there. For many of the Indians visiting China, Walmart is a preferred shoping destination. The Chinese too patronise it to a great extent. In most of the China cities, Walmarts and the French retail major Carrefour are common sight


Why anything that is good for the goose is not good for the gander?

BJP, as expected opposes the government. They will implement the same if they are in power. Leftists as usual take double stand. In fact they do not have any fixed stand on any issue.
Earth will not shake if FDI is allowed in India. Also, erath will not shake if FDI does not come to our country. It may help improve the quality of service in a way. Let us support the Government on this issue

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