Of Autos, Buses, Cabs, Drivers etc.

Driving in India is a challenge. It doesn’t matter if you are driving in Kashmir or in Kanyakumari, it’s damn challenging. First, you have the roads or let’s say what’s left of the road and then the way the traffic finds it’s way on the roads.

Getting a license in India is easy. A little bit of monetary persuasion and the Dept. of Motor Vehicles will issue you one right away. Well this process of getting a license is the best way to find whether a person can drive or not. Just ask them casually, “Do you know how to drive?” If they reply, “I have a license” and if they ever happen to drive a vehicle, the one they are in and the ones on the road better be insured.

Even if you’re a good driver, the rest of the traffic on the road makes you feel like Mario trying to dodge the obstacles and reach the Princess. You have buses, cabs, autos, cows, dogs, IT Engineers, traffic police, regular police, women, children … and the list goes on and on.

Let’s take the buses and its drivers for instance. The drivers are good human beings when they are off duty. But once they are behind the wheels of those buses, they take driving a bit too personally. They start to consider the buses as an extension of their prostate. Once that thought gets into their mind, they just need to show off. They attack every gap in the traffic like they are in heat. You better watch out for them. If you ever see ‘em coming your way it’s always better to move out of their way. If not you’ll get screwed.

The cab guys are a bit different. They have regular sized prostate but with a huge ego. They will always approach you from the rear, honking. Then they try to get ahead of you. Once they are in front of you, they will be driving in the middle of the road like they need both the lanes. It doesn’t really matter what you do, they won’t budge.

Ohh the poor auto (tuk-tuk) drivers! It’s like they have the smallest. The problem with a small ‘ding-dong’ is that it comes along with a really really huge… err… ego! People like that just want to go around, screw anything that moves, just so that their inferior manhood is satisfied. This quite explains the manner in which they drive and ‘attack’ on road. A small gap to fit a finger is all that they need to drive through. Now what does that leave one with? Anger, frustration and road-rage!

You think, you have a car and can get even with a puny li’l auto. No you can’t. Pick a fight with one and in a moment there will be a hundred that you have to fend off. Remember, at the end of it they will make you feel that it was all your fault!

Enough of complaining about other drivers!

Have you given a though of how big your dick size is while driving? Just give it a thought! Remember that each time you think you have a bigger dick than the driver in the next vehicle; he too is thinking the same!

Drive safe!

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Have you ever felt the need to recognize a person from you locality for his or her contributions to the society, may that be big or small?nba logo Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Have you felt the need to recognize a Govt. employee that goes beyond his duties and sets an example by outright commitment to his work?

How about recognizing an NGO for its public service or a Residence association for its diligence in waste management, maintaining the greenery or its initiative in having a rain harvesting project?

Bangalore is a city that is vibrant because of its people that make so. There are ordinary people among us that do extra-ordinary work to help the society and each other. How about recognizing them? Wont that be an inspiration for them to continue doing what they were doing and for others to come forward, making The Garden City, truly a great place to live in.

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 is aimed to do that.

Straight out of their site  -

An initiative by Member of Parliament and Convener of ABIDe – Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Namma Bengaluru Awards is launched with the vision to inculcate a sense of optimism and interest in the minds of the common man and bring to the limelight ordinary citizens for their extraordinary contributions, recognize exemplary contributions made by individuals who have contributed to Bengaluru’s developments, for those who have enriched the lives of common man, to the ordinary citizens for their extra ordinary contributions and to create Ambassadors of best practice who set standard for the rest to follow.

The citizens of Bangalore will be recognized under two major categories -

  • Namma Bengaluru Awards for Public Officials and AgenciesTo recognize public officials and government agencies (Like MPs, MLAs, MLCs, Officers & Staff of Civic agencies like BDA, Bescom, BBMP etc)
  • Namma Bengaluru Awards for Private Citizens and InstitutionsAimed at recognizing efforts of citizens and private institutions including NGOs, RWA, Companies, schools and others

I know what you’re thinking. Why would you ever want to recognize anyone from BDA, Bescom or BBMP or any Govt. Official for that matter. Thats where you’re missing the point. Inspite of the fact being that we all hate the govt. officials and brand them as lazy 9-4, job secure, bribe-demanding people there are some really gem-of-a-characters among them. Why cant we just recognize them? Why cant we honour them? Dont belive me?

Well if u ask me i would love to recommend the BMTC Volvo bus drivers and conductors for their courteous behavior. Every time i have travelled in one of them, they have always had service-with-a-smile motto. Same goes with the Bescom guy who turned up on a Sunday evening because there was power out-age at our area.nominate Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Last day i was at Namma Bengaluru Foundation‘s office, which is more or less the same as Mr. Rajeev’s office, to be briefed about the whole initiative. I was joined there by Balu and we were both surprised with the magnitude of responses that Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 has received.

The nominations were opened on 14th of October and closes on 14th of November 2009. Guess how many nominations they got till now. Well Balu and me guessed somewhere around 250-300. No, they have so far got close to 2000 nominations. Yes thats right – 2000. And in one case, all the students of a class wanted to nominate their teacher for the award. Thats the beauty of this. Only two categories, Govt. or Private sector and you can nominate anyone!

Go ahead Nominate! Spread the Word!

Read more here about the awards and how to nominate.

Why I Support The Attack On Women

Off late there has been a lot of reports, both via the main stream media as well as blogs, about the increasing number of attacks on women. So i decided to do an RCA (Root Cause Analysis) of the situation myself. Basically i wanted to find answer to these questions -

  1. Why do such attacks happen?
  2. Who are these attackers? Are they teenagers or people well in their late 30s?
  3. Whom did they target? What was so special about the people who were attacked?
  4. What they did, is it wrong? … etc.

Problem Statement:

As far what i read in the news papers and what i heard from others discussing, these attacks were orchestrated by people who say they are supporting the ‘Indian Culture‘. They call them selves as the conservators of Indian Culture. The good Samaritans who resorted to a quick resolution of the problem, attacked the women to save the Indian Culture form getting westernized, the same evil forces from which the Mahatma delivered us (they might argue so)

Hence we have our Problem Statement as : The Attack was to preserve/conserve the Indian Culture.

Analysis:

Now that we have defined the problem statment, lets looks at the analysis. Lets define what happened, what were the public reactions like.

The people who attacked women in Mangalore, Bangalore, Mysore (???), some-other-’ore’ etc. ( lets refer them for the time being as SenaPpl), just couldn’t digest the fact that the bharatiya naari (Indian Woman) dressed in jeans and T-s. Plus the fact that they were dining at a lounge, crossing-the road, waiting for a bus or even minding-their-on-business when they where attacked.

The people who were attacked (we will refer them as Victims), were teenagers and techies. The Victims all had one thing in common, they were wearing western clothes – jeans, t-s, skirts etc. If you might notice the attacks were not on women who were wearing saree/salwar/any authentic Indian dress. The SenaPpl were all men. There were no incidends of women attacking men or women attacking women. It was the XY chromosomes attacking the XX Chromosomes.

Continue reading

The Media’s Negligence of the North-East

Face the fact – the media has always had a sloppy side in reporting whats happening in the north-east. The Indian Media, simply fails to actively report any incident thats happening in the North-Eastern parts of our country. The only time it ever appears in the news is for some ULFA bomb attacks or if one of the so called ‘famous’ politicians makes a visit. Apart from that the Indian Media seems to have no reason what so ever to report on the incidents of the north-east.

So what exactly is the north-east. The North-East, as its commonly known across India, consists of the 7 states located at the north-east part of India, viz., Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura. Tough many people have heard about Assam in the news, the rest of the 7 ‘sisters’, remain in a total negligence from the media. Partially blame it on the political leaders leading the country. Though they have the time and money to go to every other state in the country, they just cant make it to the north-east.

manip 313 The Medias Negligence of the North EastI have friends who hail from that region, and i admit that, if it wasnt for them, i would have never even realized about this. The media, just feeds us with all the rubbish things from a shoot-out in Delhi to the local political party’s march in Cochin. These things are hailed and showcased as things of national interest, but not the killing of a law abiding officer and how it subsequently put a population into crisis. I’m talking about the killing of Dr Kishan, who was brutally murdered.

The sad part is that, when i got a mail from a friend asking me to help him report this event, i googled for it. The top results for – “Dr Kishan murder” – didnt even reveal any of the top news sites. Here are a few links -

It was indeed sad when, i was faced with the question, “We are also Indians, why are we treated differently every where?”. It time for us to stop ignoring whats happening to our brothers and sisters out there, and ask for more stringent action from the government. This news were actively reported by many sites and media, based out of the north-east, but none of the main-stream media picked it up.

Following is the mail that i received -

Respected Sir/Madam,
Three unclaimed bodies lie in the morgue of Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, Imphal since Feb. 17. They have been brutally murdered, hit with spade on head and then smashed with rock. One among them is Dr. Kishan, gold medalist at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, a civil servant of Manipur government and Sub-divisional officer of a remote village in Manipur. His mistake – he stood against diversion of development fund by the mighty extortionist, the self proclaimed savior of the region, popularly known in common man’s term as inner government and more powerful than the democratically elected government. He did something which no one, not even the Chief Minister of the state, dare to do. The other two were his sub-ordinate staff.

The incident brought already troubled state into complete standstill since last four days because of Bandh, Strikes and curfew. The bodies are not claimed and ex-gratia rejected by families demanding injustice. With no transportation, market, medicine shop etc. the entire state has turned to a hell on earth. Essential commodities are not reaching the state. People are not having enough food to eat now. My brother is sick and my parents could not even step out of the house to buy medicine. Families of vegetable vendors who buy 1-2kg of rice everyday by selling their vegetables are starving now. The schools and colleges in the whole state are closed.

But what is more shocking than the incident and the situation following it, is the fact that the national media, as usual, is ignorant of the situation. Perhaps, Jawaharlal Nehru’s ” Jewel of India” and “the birth place of modern day polo”, is not as important and as valuable as SRK’s shoulder. Dr. Kishan was as Indian as S Manjunath, a sales manager of IOC, who also met the same fate a few years back, which media took up making it an issue for whole nation which is in fact a great thing. He belongs to the state whose people still praise for Indian cricket team, the state whose sportspersons still proudly represent India in all international sports events. But why so much partiality in recognizing a hero? Is it because the state contributes very little TRP of news channels, buys less copies of newspaper and appeal less interest to the sponsors? Is heroism recognized by a place of birth rather than act he does to the Indian media? Doesn’t the situation of 30 lakh population have anything do with anyone in India?

Manipur is turning into a killing field with daily basis killings on the card. In such a situation in Manipur, when the responsibility of media becomes twofold, where are they? They need to look at the reality faced by the people of the state. They made the news of “Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur Break-up” as breaking news but don’t bother to look at the traumatized situation of a whole state. Do the people of state deserve such treatment? It hurts when all these things are happening right in front of our eyes.

The world will laugh hearing the much hyped term “Superpower India” when the people of the country does not even know the boundary of their own country and not aware of what is happening inside their country. Thanks to the responsible Indian media. Hats off to you!!
Regards,
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Its indeed sad.