Deja Vu!!!

Another Saturday, a bomb blast at Delhi, the following Monday another blog from me. Seems like routine now isn't it? Nothing has changed since the last strike by the cowards!!! (I've decided to call those responsible for such bomb blasts as COWARDS rather than Terrorists, Cowardliness is the apt word to describe these acts of insanity!), probably only one thing, there wasn't a mail from Indian Mujahideen this time. Probably because all unsecure Wi-Fi networks in Mumbai have been secured(?) and Tauqeer is afraid to send out an email and get caught.

Over the past two weeks Our PM has kept himself busy trying to secure the nuclear deal and addressing the UN on "terror" awareness and how to stand united against terror (Shouldn't he be first following these before preaching others??) . UPA chair person has been acting the Just and SE(I?)C(K?)ULAR person that she is by ordering Orissa and Karnataka Government to punish people attacking Churches (Where was she when the entire Congress party was man handling and killing Sikhs during the Anit Sikh riots??? - scars of which are still seen on many Sikhs of the UK). She obviously is least bothered about the killers of Swami Laxmanananda at Kandhamal (Of course he was killed by Naxalites Wasn't it Sonia??) or the publication of "Satyadarshini" by few Christian Missionaries in Karnataka containing derogatory text on various Hindu deitys. This link contains the scanned copy of the book (in Kannada) of these derogatory texts (This again is scandal by BJP, to incite the hatred of Bajrang Dal towards Christians. Isn't it Sonia?? )!! After the bomb blast she has issued statements that she would root out terrorism out of India (Why was terrorism allowed to grow into such big menace in first place?)

The Home minister has changed his attire twice everyday and kept himself very hygenic that he decided to even avoid the camera this time, lest the lighting etc might affect his complexion! The UPA is so confused now with the roles of each of their ministers that now the Home minister is taking advise from the Foreign minister for an in-house problem (Is dealing with Terrorism inside India related to India's Foreign policy???) Why is the External Affairs minister assuring the nation during a bomb blast, have the ministers too lost faith in Patil? From time to time all of the spokespersons (or should I said crap speakers?) of UPA issue contradictory statements on how to tackle terror, whether we need a stronger law? So good for calling themselves United Progressive Alliance. Can as well rename themselves as Ugly and Pathetic at Administration!!

Arjun Singh (I feel its beneath us to even address him as a minister!!) has been busy defending the terrorists involved in the Delhi Blast. You would think that the Union Human Resource Department minister's duty is to take care of the human resources (read lawful citizens) of our Country. But know Arjun Singh thinks otherwise, he feels its his duty to defend the terrorists! I guess, he actually works for Terrorist (read COWARDS) Resources Ministry. You ask why? because, the Jamia Mia University had decided earlier to name one of its buildings after Arjun Singh for his noble work towards the University. God knows how much of the tax payers money was swindled to help out the university and these Cowards! Its a pity that we are currently in this state of affairs. A Government which is supposed to protect the lawful citizens is using the tax payers money to protect the cowards!!!!

The pseudo secular Indian media (read CNN-IBN, NDTV, The Hindu etc..) were busy coming up with views on how the police have been unjust in the encounter. How people (read Hindus) have been victimising a community and a place (Azamgarh) for all terror attacks. They even went to the extent of questioning how come there are more terror strikes in India when police claim to have nabbed all the major people involved in the previous blast??? Does the media mean that the only terrorists involved are the Indian Mujahideen cowards who are currently in Jail?? Terrorism would never be wiped out as long as there more people are brainwashed in each of the Madrassas with distorted views on a religion. Islamic Terrorism can only be controled by teaching religious tolerance to all gullible youths who are being tutored in various madrassas. Media needs to play a more responsible role in the fight against terror. Doesn't any of the channels understand by reporting whatever they are at present, they are inciting further anger and division amongst an already fragile religious harmony. In Country's like US and UK after every terrorist attack, the media has played a very responsible role by reporting correct facts and never ever sympathising with the terrorists, but India alone can we see the media equating SIMI/ IM with Bajrang Dal. (Yes, Bajrang Dal is run by hooligans who don't have the correct way of expressing their dislike for conversion. I do not agree to their views, but then that doesn't equate them to SIMI or IM). The media has not even bothered to report the publications of Satyadarshini and the role of Christian Missionaries.

Javed Akhtar during the weekend edition with Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN wanted a ban on Bajrang Dal and all other Hindu organizations which supported or shared the views of Bajrang Dal. I am sure that nearly 90% of Hindu's are against forced conversions hence they share the views of Bajrang Dal. So lets ban Hinduism itself!! I wonder if he, Shabana Azmi, Teesta Setalvad, Arundhati Roy and other such social activists have ever been critical of the hooligans who manhandled (woman handled?) Taslima Nasreen. Manhandling of Taslima Nasreen isn't an incorrect act, because she was being derogatory against Muslims and that in this Secular Country is a crime. But Hindu and Hinduism bashing is past time for all Secular Politicians in our Country. The "Self Respect" group in Tamil Nadu does not believe in God, but Karunanidhi would take time from his busy schedule to attend Iftaars, but he would never ever share a stage with a Hindu priest (Sai Ram being an exception here, because then Karunanithi very badly needed the money)! This doesn't make him communal. He is just being helpful to the minority and taking care of them. But when a person from the majority community speaks up for the discriminations against his/her religion he gets branded as COMMUNAL!!!

It is time for some action, radical change. Its time for another Wednesday.....

PS: As I was publishing this blog, there was news of another two blasts at Gujarat and Maharastra. We've got to do something before these cowards wipe us out. It doesn't matter what it takes to bring justice...because "The Nation is always bigger than the Individual" as pointed by APJ Abdul Kalam.

Kapil Sibal and his mindless rantings.....

Karan Thapar has every now then brought out how pathetic our politicians really are...The latest among his list is Kapil Sibal. The following is the text of Devli's Advocate interview with Kapil Sibal. Where the minister claims that the UPA govt has been more successful in combating terror than any of the previous governments!!! The aam aadmi might be wondering how can a minister claim such blatant lies in front of the media, when every citizen of India knows the truth. Guess what the minister had as a proof of his claim.

Quote

"Quite frankly, if you look at facts and numbers, the record of the UPA Government“"in terms of terror“"has been much better than the previous governments. There were more civilian deaths in the previous government: between 1999 and 2003 there were over 4,000 deaths - Kapil Sibal"

Unquote

I now wonder, how could such an a$£$£%le even become a minister. As per Kapil's statement, as long as the number of people to have died during the UPA's rule is considerably lower than the number of people to die during the previous Government, their performance in the battle against terror is great. Its a real shame, is this a Cricket Match??? are we keeping scores on the number of people to have died to measure the performance of the Govt??? This is ridiculous!!!!

The minister is least bothered about the number of innocent people being killed, how could he possibily think of giveing such a reason. Its a serious insult to the people who have lost their lives to such cowardly acts by the Cowards!!!! And politicians like Kapil Sibal are making use of the number people to have died to claim their position as a minister. Kapil Sibal should have felt apologetic and someone within the UPA must have owned up responsibility.

To all families who have lost a kith of kin in any of the terrorists attacks over the past years, I can assure you that there are many nationalists like me in our Country whose heart reaches out to you. We nationalists apologise to you for the these mindless rantings by our SICKULAR Govt. UPA ministers have long lost any credibility in representing the aam aadmi or for that matter any citizen of India. God save our Motherland from the cowards (aka terrorists) and these SICK politicians!!!

Operation BAD ?? or Management BAD !!!

Saturday was the 3rd time in 2 months that the Indian Mujahideen has managed to bomb another of India's cities and god knows how many times have in the past 4 years. Everytime a these A£$%$%^ strike, the Union minister goes on air saying that everything is being done to nab the culprits and justice will be done. But apart from Gujarat police nabbing few terrorists last month nothing has occurred and none of the others culprits have been brought to justice.

While the government is still contemplating on punishing the terrorists already tried for the 2001 parliamentary attack, scores of new terrorists are being recruited everyday. I read an article the other day on some website which says Nagori (The SIMI head who is at present in Indore jail) wanted 2 new recruits for every person from SIMI who is nabbed by the police. Nagori was also instrumental in formation of the Shaheen force, which another front of the SIMI recruitment division consisting of women (mostly elderely) who brainwash young minds and convince them to take up terrorism.

There was another report that suggested that India is only behind Afghanistan and Iraq in the number of civilians killed in terrorists incidents. With all such incidents, we as citizens would think that the government would become more responsible and proactive in preventing terrorist attacks. Its clearly seen that the existing laws against terrorism is a clear joke and we do require something more stringent and strong that would discourage these would-be terrorists in becoming one. All countries have very strict terrorists laws and these laws are occassionally misused everywhere, but that does not stop them repealing the law and bring in a "joke". The pseudo-secular media is very instantaneous in pointing out that POTA had been misused, but what is the solution then. How long are we gonna take to realize that the existing law is not enough. The UPA says that POTA is extreme, the pseudo-secular media supports it, but clearly the number of terrorists incidents show that the existing law is not enough. How many more people need to die for the Govt to come to an agreement that the current law is just not quite enough. DAMMIT! no need of POTA, but something far more stricter than the existing law.

The UPA has for long now been suffering from Stockholm syndrome, their ministers have gone to the extent of visiting the terrorists and providing them consolation, but these people rarely care about the innocent people who are losing the lives regularly during these acts of cowardice by the terrorists!!! Its a real shame that today we are in a situation that terrorists have the audacity to mail all tv channels ahead of the blasts making a complete mock our security and intelligence. Lets face it there has been a complete intelligence failure during all of these blasts and the investigations by the police department has been totally pathetic and lets not even talk about the Govt!!! I've heard that hospitals in Delhi are having a torried time taking care of the security measures for the visiting ministers that they have started to ignore the patients who require the actual attention.

Time and again we have seen the (dis) functioning of these elected representatives, the rule makers and protecters, why should we citizens suffer for the mis-management of the administration. I believe its time we citizens take up the responsibility of National Security. If one tech savvy terrorist has managed to cause so much havoc, just imagine how much can we patriotic and tech savvy/educated/responsible citizens can be helpful towards national security. I think its time for Citizen Intelligence Movement of India (CIMI) because we have lost trust in the UPA govt and our Intelligence agencies require a lot of help from us citizens. CIMI must be an umbrella organization of all responsible citizens of India, who want to fight this menace of terrorism. Being responsible citizens, all of us have an important duty towards our Country and that's in helping towards national security. All of us can keep constant vigilance and be on the look out for various would-be terrorists and suspsicious behaviour on the Internet or in our neighbourhood. Any such behaviour must be immediately brought to the attention of the Police. You've would have heard of Friends of Police organization that available in numerous cities, this new organization can work in coordination with such groups. There is no substitute for People/Citizen power. If all of us take up an oath to weed out terrorism from India, we surely can. It is the responsibility of every citizen of India, we cant trust the politicians to this for us. its upto us now to weed out these cowards!!!

We have numerous NGO like Fifth Pillar etc which are very helpful in fighting corruption, why can't we have such an NGO to gather Intelligence and fight terror. I am sure, there would be numerous citizens like me who would want to help out our Country in this regard. This is a thought I've had for a long time, I know its too early and might sound stupid to a few, but this is just the begining of a long journey that we all responsible citizens have towards achieving a terrorists or a terrorism free India!! and I am sure if we do get some where with such a plan, CIMI along with the help of other Indian Intelligence agencies and the police department can fight and defeat SIMI, Indian Mujahideen and all such terrorists outfits.

PS:

As you would have already known by now, that all of the mails sent by Indian Mujahideen were done through unsecured Wi-Fi connections. Wi-Fi is relatively new technology in India and there aren't many people who actually take up the security of Wi-Fi connection as a serious business. Even in developed countries like the UK and US, you would find numeorus Wi-Fi un-secure networks. There are numerous sites that provide information on how to secure your Wi-Fi connection. Rediff has recently come up with an article on how to achieve this, you can read about it here. Although the details provided here are not completely foolproof, its a good starting point. All wirless networks must be regularly monitored to ensure there are no misuse for the same.

For people who think that what can an ordinary citizen do when our very own Intelligence agencies are not being successful. I would like to point you people Simon Wiesenthal, the world famous Holocaust survivor, who main aim/mission in life was to bring all Nazi war criminals to justice and he single handedly collected enough information on all Nazi war criminals who had escaped/disappeared after Germany's surrender. Its said that Simon Wiesenthal's data was used by Mossad (although they don't openly admit it) to capture various Nazi war criminals.

Kendriya Vidyalaya - The next target of UPA

I was about to blog about my second day trip to Cotswold, but then this news article on the web caught my eye and I was instantly enraged!!! How low can the UPA stoop?? This is pathetic!!! Ever since that a$$&$£$%^ of a guy Arjun Singh became the HRD minister he has been wrecking havoc to an esteemed institution called Kendriya Vidyalaya my almamater, and so would it be for numerous others throughout India and the World.

Talking about all his illogical and disgraceful decisions would require more than a blog and lots of time. I could as well write a novel about it. But this time its quite outrageous. I am sure everyother Kendriya Vidyalayaite like me would have been proud of our Logo, Song, Motto and every other thing attached to this institution. Why the hell are these politicians hell bent on tarnishing and changing this unique culture of ours???

So what if the logo contains a Lotus, does this make any of students or staff of these schools a BJP spokes person??? Lotus is our nation flower Goddamitt!!! Why dont you change that as well and change it to some flower that is unique only in Italy!!! I am sure you would stoop to any level to please your masters at 10 Janpath!!! Ever since the UPA government has come to power they have divided and continued to divide people based on religion, caste etc etc... They even replaced that Indian Map that appeared on numerous Rs 2 coins with something that looks like a Cross!!!! Before 2009 I believe they would have changed whatever had anything to do with India and we might no longer feel proud to call ourselves Indian.


It pains a lot to see even educated people recognizing themselves first with their state/area rather than being called an Indian. Thanks to the UPA we are all divided and the adage "Unit in diversity" no longer is applicable to India. UPA and the INC have been encouraging divisive forces to breed in our nation. They are encouraging parties and groups like MNS (Raj Thackeray), JMM (Shibu Soren), Naxalites, JKLF, PDP, Hurriyat...etc. In my opinion any party which does not consider itself to be National but rather identifies itself to a state or an area must be banned and thats the only way we can achieve nationalism in our country today. But how can we expect to achieve this when the Government thats ruling us is changing everything that we identify to be unique to India and Indian culture. Whats next on your list Mr. Arjun Singh?? Changing the Ashok Chakra of the Indian Flag because the Wheel would remoind everyone of Janata Dal???????

I leave you all with this favourite song of mine to ponder on what we have done to this wonderful nation of ours by electing such an awful and disgracefule Government and what must be our responsibility in ensuring that we dont lose something that dear to all of us.

Trip to Cotswold (Day 1)


Its been nearly month we've been in UK and had already missed out on two Indian holidays. So when we came to know that August 25th is a bank holiday in UK, we decided visit some good place for the long weekend (In UK 25th of May and 25th of August are two national holidays even though there are no festivals associated with these days). During a casual conversation with our colleagues here, one of them suggested to visit "The Cotswold" instead of any other major tourists attractions in UK as they would be too crowded and expensive during the August bank holiday weekend.(Edinburgh, Scotland celebrates a famous carnival during the month of August, hence almost all major cities in Scotland are crowded in the month of August, Cardiff again is a major tourist attraction during this month as this was the start of the Summer vacation in UK).

We hadn't heard anything about Cotswold(This place was never mentioned in any of the conversation with our colleagues during a our last visit to the UK). So we really didn't know what to expect of the place and what to plan. On some analysis that my wife did on the Internet, we came to know that Cotswold is a range of hills in West-Central England. This area has been designated by UK Government as an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". The place is also unique for a kind of oolitic limestone known as Cotswold stone which is quarried in many places in the Cotswold hills. This stone is used to build most of the houses around the Cotswold area. They have a unique "honey" or "golden" colour. Almost all buildings in Oxford, Cheltenham etc have houses built with stones of this colour.

After many days of confusing over the places to visit within Cotswold and the place to stay, we finally came to the conclusion of staying at Cheltenham which was easily the centre for all places to visit within The Cotswold. Not having prior driving experience on English roads forced us to travel by train(Although one of our colleagues forewarned us, that we might find it difficult seeing places without our own car). Being an Indian and having drived around in India for more than a year, We've always feared that our Indian instincts would take over when we drive in UK as well. Just for the note, 99% of the drivers in UK are very disciplined, they give preference to pedestrians, so if you are standing on the edge of the road in order to cross it, they would stop their car and allow to you to pass through (unlike in India, where you would be sweared at using un-parlimentary words!!). At all turns and round-abouts, the approaching vehicles are given preference before they turn (The generic rule is first to give way!), in India, there would have been a race to see who turns first by ensuring to block the other. Use of horn ins UK is considered to be derogatory (Don't even think about this in India!!!). People hardly use horns even at various traffic jams. All of them follow lane discipline and very rarely can you see anyone overtaking the other on a narrow road.

We had booked our accommodation at Holiday Express Inn at Cheltenham, which was reasonably priced and had good facilities. We had to take a train from Slough to Cheltenham Spa (One way ticket costs £34 per ticket, while a return ticket costs £35 pounds :-) with a validity of 1 month for the return journey). On checking the Nationalrail website (In UK there are numerous private railway companies that operate services on various routes), we came to know that a through train to Cheltenham Spa from Slough (which is about 10 miles from Loudwater) was at 8:07 am. We were targeting to catch this train on Saturday morning so that we have sufficient time for sight seeing on Saturday itself. The approximate journey time is 2:16 minutes. My wife had plans to prepare Chappathis for the journey(being pure vegetarians, we weren't convinced of finding any pure veg restaurants at Cheltenham), we decided to carry the bread toaster as well so that we can prepare our own food in case we didn't find any at Cheltenham. After an early start and some hiccups on the way, we finally did manage to board the 8:07 train, we had to changeover at Reading station to reach Cheltenham Spa. We checked hotel reservation to confirm our accommodation and enquired if we can handover our luggage under their custody (Since the check-in time was 3 pm) prior to check-in time. The hotel guys said that shouldn't be a problem. We reached Cheltenham at around 10:45 am and took a cab to the hotel( cost us £5). And surprisingly, we were allowed to check-in ahead of time at no extra cost (Since the hotel was not fully occupied). We then had our lunch of bread toasts that my wife had prepared that morning and decided to start off with sight seeing.

We first enquired the reception of the Hotel, if they can provide us with details on which are the easily accessible locations on a Saturday and to which places do we have buses on Sunday. But the blasted fellows couldn't provide us any information. He was googling from his desk and providing us information that we had already gathered on the Internet. That fool didn't even know where "Bourton-on-the-water" (one of a local attractions near Cheltenham) was. Had it been India, the guys at the reception would have provided a detailed history and geography on the local attractions!!! Frustrated we asked him to provide us directions to the Tourist Information Centre, which he thankfully did. We then tracked down the tourist information centre and queried the staff there on what would be the best to places to visit. The staff there were quiet helpful and they provided us with various pamphlets on the places to visit and even marked out few of them for us to visit, citing the days on which there is public transport to those places. By this time, it was nearly 2 pm and our next bus to the attraction "Bourton-on-the-water" was only 2:30 pm. Bourton-on-the-water, Stow-on-the-wold and Moreton-in-marsh are three classic Victorian villages (Villages by English standard!) which have numerous picturesque views. There is a bus that operates from Cheltenham which caters to all three of these villages, the frequency of this service is 1 bus every 2 hours on a weekday, there is considerably reduced service on weekends. Although these villages are a good 10 miles away from Cheltenham, they charge only £1.80 per ticket to reach Bourton, £1.90 to reach Stow and £2 to reach Moreton. There are no return tickets available on these buses ie you have to buy one-way tickets because the fares are anyway considerably lower, however these buses are not in anyway upto English standard, They seem more like their Indian counterparts, so you got to be ready for a bumpy ride on an English road :). The journey time to reach Moreton-in-marsh was nearly 1 hr, since that would reduce the time we had at our disposal for sight seeing, we decided to alight at Bourton-on-the-water and see around, which turned out to be a good decision. Bourton-on-the-water is a small village along the banks of the so called river Windrush (pictured). I call it "the so called river" because its hardly as wide as the sewage line that you cross to reach Sasi Nagar at Velachery (The velachery lake would seem like a huge sea, when compared to this river!!!). God knows what these Britishers would call one of the Indian rivers, The English rivers are tiny when compared to even the smallest of the Indian rivers!!

The entire village is located just adjacent to this and the place looks beautiful. Looks more a kind of set from some old English play. This place is used a picnic spot and is frequented by numerous people during the summer. We could see a lot of Indians too here. All of them were squatting along the banks of the river on their travel easy chairs or on the ground, with their children and pets playing on the water (The river is hardly deep, with the water reaching only till your ankles at most of the areas). Children and dogs all of them were fooling around in the water. Boys were running around, while the girls were playing with their plastic boats. There were others who were training their canine companions to retrieve sticks and balls thrown in to the water. There was also a reasonable duck population on the water, which fed on whatever was thrown in to the water by these picnickers. Here again we visited the tourist information centre to get an idea of the places to see before our last bus back to Cheltenham (at 5:15 pm). The lady there marked out the places for us. the places to visit there were

• The model village
• The Birdland
• The Auto Musuem
• The Maze
• The Perfurmery

Due to shortage of time, we restricted ourselves to three of the above places. We first visited the model village, all the while I kept wondering, why the hell does one require a model village of a village that already looks one!! The irony of this is, that within the model village, the have a model of the model village itself (So basically it goes in to an indefinite loop........). Although the model of the model village did not look too convincing. But to the credit of the craftsmen, the model village was desgined good ("Not-too-bad" would be the term if I have to sound English). They charged as nearly £3.50 for a ticket to view the model village.



The next place on the list the Birdland centre. This place boasted of a collection of a number of unique and rare birds and it also had a family of Penguins (Yes I mean it!). Apparently there are quiet a few zoos around the world which breed penguins, although this list is not complete, it still means that you dont have to go to the South pole in order to see a penguin. This got us excited and it was really nice to see these wonderful creatures. They looked pretty clean but smelled awfully bad. I guess all the pain they took in keeping themselves clean made their surroundings stink :). Jokes apart, the Birdland centre had two species of Penguins and apart from these it did have quiet unique collections of rare birds. We found numerous huge Owls as well (reminded me a lot of Harry potter's Hedgewick).



After the Birdland, we visited the maze. This basically was constructed similar to the maze shown in the final task of "Harry Potter and Goblet of fire". We were asked to look for 14 clues across a maze constructed from wooden fences thickly populated with dense creepers and using these clues we are to find out the location of a dragon fly. Getting around the maze was a real challenge, we lost our way on numerous occassions and had to tread back. We managed to locate 12 of the 14 clues available, but by the time we reached the position where we had to act upon these clues, there was a group already there who managed to track down the dragon fly. With this maze also done, we had very little time to look at the other places. So we rushed back to the bus stop lest we miss the bus. On the way back, we treated ourselves to ice creams and took a few snaps of the environment around us.




We managed to reach the bus stop before the last bus arrived, we boarded the bus and headed towards Cheltenham. We reached Cheltenham around 6 pm and then went in search of any Indian Vegetarian restaurants. As expected we couldn't find any, so we diverted our attention to look for cookies, bread, apple and tomato ketchup from Tesco. These would keep us alive the next day in case the breakfast at the Hotel was not good.


In London all shops close by 7 pm, you can hardly find anything other than large supermarkets and pubs are open beyond 7 pm. We thought of shopping but this scenario was far worse at Cheltenham, this being a small city everything shutdown by 6 pm. We were planning to rent a car for the next two days thanks to the experience with the public transport, but we were in for a big disappointment, all car rental shops were closed and they remained closed for the entire weekend. Little did we know what was in store for us the remaining two days!! Anyway having faced the disappointment and with not anything else to do, we headed back to the Hotel and watched TV for sometime. The SKY network at the Hotel was able to pick one Tamil radio channel as well. We ate the chappathis that my wife had prepared that morning for dinner and went to bed early so as the start of with our second days journey of exploring the Cotswold...

to be continued....

We are the Champions!!!

This is a photograph that would be cherished by all victory starved Indian cricket fans around the world!! After all being an Indian Cricket fan is never easy. You need to get used to the agony, the tension, the pain after the defeat time and again against both good and lowly opponents.

But this time it was a complete different story altogether, Every Indian who watched the heart stopping final of the World Twenty 20 would have something to tell about to their grand children!!!

Agony of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows!!!

Are you wondering that this is another of those numerous reviews for the final book in the potter series. Well NO, I cant review it, because I haven't read it yet. The reason - I have been cheated by the website Indiaplaza.in...read on for another tragic tale in my life :(((

I had placed an order to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book on Indiaplaza.in website on 20th of July. The website had been advertizing quite a bit about delivering the book on time (21st July 2007 itself) if I the customer was a resident of a metropolitan city (Chennai of course being one of them).
I promptly got a mail from then confirming my order number (order # 200720070361) and the consignment number (U20218488) for the delivery being delivered by DTDC and also promising me that the book would be delivered to me by 3:00 PM on 21st of July 2007. Never once did I realize then, that what was to start now was complete agony probably more than the agony of the deaths to be read about in the final book of Harry Potter. I waited till 5 PM for the book and when it didn't come, I tried calling both DTDC and Indiaplaza.in Customer Care (which was perennially busy!!!!). I sent across numerous mails to both of them without any response. My initial mail from Indiaplaza confirming my order contained a contact person from DTDC whom I need to contact incase there was a delay. I tried reaching him (Chandrasekhar - email id: chandrasekhar@dtdc.com and Ph : 9381200918), but did not get response from him either.
At around 7 PM on 21st July I found that Indiaplaza.in was advertising that it has successfully delivered 15000 books across the country on time and it kept me wondering how that was possible when numerous other customers like me had complained on the internet on websites such as www.mouthshut.com and www.complaintsboard.com about their books not being delivered. I mailed again to both DTDC and Indiaplaza but all my mails and calls seem to be falling to deaf ears!! I got another jolt when I found that DTDC had disabled the mail id of chandrasekhar, now I was completely helpless, I called up my local DTDC (Velachery) office and the representative there said that he couldn't locate my consignment number.
On 24th July I finally managed to contact a customer care representative of Indiaplaza and gave him a piece of my mind and he promised to deliver the book the same day, if not by 25th July itself. When they didn't deliver on 25th I called them again and sent across numerous mails insisting that I would go to consumer court in case they do not keep their promise. I promptly got a reply telling me that my concern will be resolved in 2 working days. Its the 1st of August 2007 today and I am still sending them mails and calling them up (None of the customer service guys pick my call) I still haven't got a response to any of the mails I have sent after that. I am totally helpless and angered at the same time. I would want to take severe action against a fraud company such as Indiaplaza.in which makes numerous promises but hasn't till-date kept even one of them!!!!!
I hope that they would manage to deliver my book before J.K Rowling decides to write and release the 8th part of Harry Potter!!! :(

>>Favourite Authors <<

Reading has been my favourite pastime since time immemorial, having been introduced to the books by Enid Blyton by my dad during Class IV holidays. I have read a number of books by various authors and here are few of my favourite authors and characters.

Enid Blyton - Like many others, I have grown up reading her books. Secret Seven, Famous Five, Five-Find Outer's I have read them all. Her books have a certain charm that hasnt been matched by any other infant/young adult author until recently. Having spent nearly 8 years of my childhood at KV MEG staff quarters, I was able to correlate and get involved in many of her stories. KV MEG back then was a jungle with a lot of abandoned buildings then and was very similar to the abandoned buildings and etc described in her books. Only after visiting Beaconsfield, UK (Enid Blyton's residence) did I really feel the real effect of her books. Beaconsfield is exactly how she describes it in her books (although she doesnt call it Beaconsfield) and its a must visit place for all her fans. My favourite character among her books has been "Fattie" from the Five Find Outer's series. Enid Blyton books are a must read for all teenagers!!

Robert Arthur - After reading Enid Blyton I was introduced to the Three Investigators series by a friend of mine and I really loved it. Unlike Enid Blyton's novels, the three investigators series had more fundoo stuff involved. "Jupe" was my favourite character and it was really wonderful read about their adventures, their gadgets, their tunnel etc.. "The Three Investigators" is a must read again for all teenagers interested in mystery fiction. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are another set of mystery novels available for teenagers, but its the casefiles series among these books that are good, the mystery stories are at times a bit lethargic!!

J K Rowling - Who wouldn't have heard of this author?? She is the first person to become US-dollar billionaire by writing books alone!!! I guess everyone in this world would have heard of Harry potter and more than 2/3rd of the population would be a read/watched a Harry Potter book/movie!!! At first I didnt know what was the big deal about this book. I was told that it was a fantasy story and I didnt like fantasy stories much so was very reluctant to pick this book up initially and then one day I came across an online version of one of its books and I read it, I became too engrossed in it and started to like it very much after reading nearly the entire book I realised that it was a fake Harry Potter book written by a fan!! So in this way, it was a fanfiction that lead me to the real author and kindled my interest in the Harry Potter Series. The very next day I went in search of the real book and bought all the four books at the same time and read them all together on the trot!! Man I couldn't describe the feeling, its was something beyond great!! JK Rowling has revived the habit of reading among children and adult alike (she did get some help from Dan Brown with the adults) at a time when the whole world had moved completely towards the idiot box!!! My favourite character in the Harry Potter Series has to be Albus Dumbledore.

Frederick Forsyth - Words wont do justice in describing this author. He is level (probably even two) above the rest of the authors in his genre. You've got to read one of his books to actually understand what I am saying.

Onsite Blues...

It all started when I in the midst of an interesting arguement with my wife regarding how a piece of code should be coded in one of the extract programs, I completely involved in the argument that I didnt realize for sometime that my phone was ringing and its was my manager calling up. I rushed and picked up the phone and guess what I heard..."Hi Partha, you and priya are travelling to UK in few weeks, Get in touch with the travel desk and get your visa stamped!! [click]". Ramesh (My manager) has always been direct in all conversations and I kinda liked it, but even I could not believe that he would be so direct and upto the point in such a thing. It took a moment(probably more) for me to digest and realize what I just heard.....Oh My God..We are travelling to UK!! I am travelling to the UK!!! My first onsite assignment and whats more great, I have been official chosen to travel onsite along with my wife!!!! Not everyone gets such a chance...but never did I realize that the next few weeks were going to be one of the most amusing and tiring weeks of my life!!!!!

Onsite is supposed to be every Indian Software whizkid's dream!!!! Believe me anybody who says that he/she is not interested in a software assignment is a bloody liar!!! I have been in this industry for 5 years now and before that I was aspiring to get into this field for 3 years and all these years, I would have thought about an onsite oppurtuinity atleast once a day!!! I have been laughed at, teased, mocked by a lot of people citing this reason (I have never been to onsite eventhough I have 4+ experience). My wait was long, people of my batch kept travelling but I never lost hope, I have known people who have waited longer than me...I knew that I would get my chance someday for sure........
But not even once did I imagine that my oppurtuinity would jump in at this moment when I least expected it!! Now you might be wondering WTF?? This guy says he has thought about an onsite oppurtuinity atleast once a day, but now he says he got one when he least expected it... Hmm yes its true let me explain, After I joined my current company around Feb this month, it was informed that everyone of our team members would be travelling to UK in the coming months for an onsite assignment, but since we were new and werent yet confirmed, our chance would come eventually but not immediately. A colleague of ours was supposed to travel acouple of months back and all arrangements were complete, but the plan was changed exactly the day before she started!!!! This resulted in the shift of my paradigm :))...

What I describe now are the incidents that took place after I received the call from my manager!!

First both of called up our parents and brother/sister to inform the news(It isnt good still - coz we are not sure if it would happen!!) all of them were ofcourse happy but were very cautious and asked us to be cautious too.

Secondly we spoke to the travel desk regarding the visa processing stuff and initiated that process.

Then came the important part, planning the travel and this what made us crazy. We realised that we had lots and lots of things to do...citing a few, Shift our house, buy winter clothing(its winter in the UK and its nasty cold!!!), buy travel bags and few dresses....etc etc the list was endless....

After planning we were down to implementing few of them,w e bough winter clothing and shifted our house too, but suddenly we started to hear rumours that ours too would be another cancelled onsite assignment and to make matters worse my manager wasnt willing to give me the exact date of travel!!!! Imagine what would have happened then... :))

Having invested quite a few amount in shifting the house and winter clothing we were left in doubt whether we had taken the correct decision of buying/planning things for the travel before the confirmation of the date. This period of stalemate continued for few more days and then finally we received the date of travel and finished all the necessary processes. We got a visas on the expected date without any hassles and finally we received our tickets too!! So we were all set for travelling, but if u think that was the end of all tensions and we had a very smooth flight, then you are more than wrong!!!!! Whatever happened next would take an entire separate blog, so I would describe those events separately tomorrow........until then c ya all guys!!! :)

Early memories
I was born on the 1st of June 25 summers back. My dad was then TGT (Science) in Kendriya Vidyalaya C.L.R.I and my mom was a house maker. We lived in a joint family along with my grand parents, my dad's younger brother and my mom's younger brother. We stayed at Saidapet Subramanian swamy street. The house was too smal, I still cant imagine how did 7 of us stayed in a house which had a small hall a bedroom and a kitchen. I was the second son to my parents, my elder brother had died when he was just 50 days old and because of this I was treasured by the entire family. There was hardly a day when I wasnt alone. No one ever thought of letting me down and everyoen kept me constantly busy by chatting with me. My mom says thats the reason why I learnt to speak much earlier than I learnt to walk.
I remember just flashes of incidents that happend during my first 3 years, few of those are my grandpa telling me stories of Mahabharata, Ramayana and other stories from Jataka tales or Amar Chitra Katha. I also remember a dream that I had probably when I was 3 years old, I dreamt of standing on a wall and trying to reach-out to someone on the other side of the wall, the wall seemed to have an additional security of iron bars. I wasnt able to reach out, but then I find a hole in my palm and this hole seems to be growing bigger every second after I while I find my hand to be hollow, I grow terrified and suddenly wake up crying. Till this date I havent understood the meaning of that dream (If you read Sigmund Freud, you will know that dreams do have some meaning), however that dream has still remained in my mind ever since and I havent been able to forget it.
My younger brother was born nearly 2 years after me, I was happy to have him as company. My dad at this time decided to pursue his PG degree and was also doing some course in journalism so he often returned home late. I used to spend more tiem with my mom, my grand parents and with my younger brother. My younger bro' (about whom you can know here) had a passion of ahem...extra-ordinary stuff right from his childhood. Once he chased me all around the house in order to experiment the strength of his jaws. Although he used get spanked a lot of times by my family members for his work he never seemed to lose his concentration or enthusiasm to try out new things with his teeth or fists. Another of big passion of his was to experiment "running away" from people who took care of him. He got claustrophobic too often and ran away from our house either to the nearby temple or to the main road. Every now and then it became a routine for chithappa or mama to go in search of him. I had a knack of locating him though. I am not sure whether this was because I too had similar inclinations and thoughts as his (the only difference was I never executed them). I remember the day when my cousin Raja, decided to take care of brother because he was troubling everyone at home with his mischief. My cousin took him near the gate and was chatting with him and it so happend that he had to adjust his dhoti and so he let my brother down and adjusted his dhoti and when he turned back my brother had vanished!!! All this happend in matter of 3-5 seconds...there was a gr8 confusion at home afetr this happend, all of us ran outside in search of him running helter skelter...I too moved out in search of him along with my chithappa and after a while I noticed someone my bro' standing inside the temple that was opposite to our house and watching our house gate and enjoying the commotion out here...I motioned my chithappa and then he went after him and brought him back...after this incident, my cousin became very cautious whenever my bro' was around. One of our favourite past times was breaking up all the new toys our parents got us. My brother was an expert at this. If you get him a car, he would play with it for a few days and then break it open and start experimenting with its bearings and other stuff. My grandpa said this was due to the engineering craze in him....the rest never paid much attention as long as he doesnt ask for a new toy..anyways we neded breaking most of the toys and inventing new toys from the broken ones. We were also crazy about gas balloons, we kept pestering our grandpa every now and then to get us gas balloons. One incident that I remember is when our grandpa brought us 2 gas balloons and had asked us to play with them on the terrace without letting them fly..but my brother couldnt resist the urge and decided to let it fly..and both of watched watch the balloon break away from earth and fly high..we kept staring at it until we could no longer see the balloon. Right from that day both of us have been crazy about flying objects. Whenever there were guests at home, few of us slept on the terrace and this was great time since we kept talking for a long time into the night..I kept staring at the stars and night sky...Watching the night sky is a wonderful experience, although I dont get a chance to that often now, it is something that eery child must do. It gives immense pleasure in seeing the stars at night. These are the incidents that occurred before I was sent to school. What follows next would be the incidents that I recollect during my tenure at Cambridge Convent and K.V C.L.R.I during the years 1985 to 1986.

Reason to Blog

Everyone has a unique reason to blog. Blogging has now become a part of every netizens life nowadays. Infact a lot of software guys start of their day blogging and quite a few spend the entire time in office blogging!!! :)
So why did I decide to blog?? and what am I gonna blog??
I thought about this for quite a long and then decided to recollect all of my experiences, memoirs of my life till-date. The reason being that I have had one of the best childhood memories that any child can dream of. This would be something that children of today can read in leisure and come to know how it was to grow in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It would be a good read for me too in future when I wanna walk down the memory lane.