Did Helmet evolve from Hell Met???

I m not sure if the word helmet evolved from 'hell met'. But the new regulation making helmets compulsory for one year old (may be i m wrong..cud even be six to seven months child,since the Motor Vehicles Act doesnt prescribe an age and our beloved government servants too do not know) to the longest living person in Chennai, seems like hell for a few people.
One Sentence in The Hindu today caught my attention..it read something like 'What neurosurgeons could not make people do so far, one government order has.' It does not in anyway show that people in the state are law abiding..but just think of the embarrasment when a policeman pulls you over in full public glare and makes you pay a fine of Rs 100.Oh My God!! The whole world will come crashing down on them,cos they have been humiliated in public...one reason why the compulsory helmet rule has made people abide by it.
The trauma of being embarrased in public is much more than the trauma the person and his family will undergo in case he ends up in an accident and dies because of head injury or has a serious health problem due to it and they ll have to shell out huge sums of money to hospitals and doctors, who anyway mint money. Who Cares man? Let them get rich. A helmet at Rs 500 is too costly for a middle class person...but how the hell does the he or she from the middle class able to afford to buy a two wheeler. Seriously, if u are talking about being middle class and not able to afford a helmet..may be u should take the bus or the train. Oh but then they are too stuffy and crowded!!
Add to that the traffic jams..the unending honking by vehicles on the road, plus the sweat that will pour down the face and the hair on the head that they ll lose, seriously,losing hair is much worse than losing your life. Why give a damn!!
But the point why 97 per cent of the population is conforming to the rule is simply this : "Who wants to get caught not wearing a helmet..I don't want to pay Rs 100 fine , that too to a policeman".
Well neurosurgeons, sorry to inform you, but the state government just reduced your business!!!

The Media Laps it alll UP..!!

Kudos to the media. Greg Chappel and the Indian team have seemed to have hijacked the media for their own personal or professional reasons. And...the media both visual and print media are lapping it up. Anybody giving any information about the world cup debacle seems to have got some airtime or atleast space in a newspaper or website article. Well, a few have enough credibility and performance in their playing days to comment on the team's performance. I remember Krish Srikanth saying that Saurav Ganaguly should be dropped when the e-mail from Chappel was 'leaked' out. Now the same person bats for Ganguly!! well come on, we are not fools..former cricketers...but yes we are fools..cos as the saying for cricket goes '11 fools playing and 11 million fools watching' except that we are one billion people watching. People who will turn the cricketers into demi-gods one day and demons the next. Cos this is India...Indians who are so passionate about cricket that people have time to burn effigies, pelt stones on the houses of cricketers, demolish the compound walls of the houses they are building. Well, this shows something. Aren't these people supposed to go to work? Which brings us to another point..what happened to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, that promises 100 days employment to rural people. May be we should ask the Centre to extend it to these people who vandalise and resort to ugly gimmicks in the name of being cricket fanatics. Accepted that these are the people who have made the cricket board rich.
Wait..I m supposed to write about the media lapping it all up and not about cricket. Well, being from the media, that's what I have been doing all this while..trying to make sense of all that I have written above. Hope u have!!

Back...!! Not with a bang tho..!! :)

Welcome back. Well that's to me..not for u. After sometime of inactivity on my blog, I m back. Though, I dont have too much to write in this. Well, at this moment, what's there to write? The World cup of,course. Pakistan's loss, India's no show in the first match, Bob Woolmer's death or murder or whatever..Raikonnen's winning the first race in the F1 calendar this year, the heat in Chennai, MP's coming to blows in Parliament, Rahul Gandhi's statement on the Congress Party and the Babri demolition. Well!! Too many things happening. Too much to write and I m lazy to comment on all these.!! So there it goes. Everybody who has taken the time to read this post..Thanks for wasting your time reading this!! Go back to doing whatever you were doing.

Water

First things first about this topic. Deepa Mehta's Water should go down in Indian cinema history as a classic. Forget all the controversies that the film ran into and is at present also. Empty vessels make more noise..so all those empty vessels who have been trying to stop the film from being screened in some parts of the country..here's my advice. Go Watch the film. It is actually..in a sense controversial, set during the independence struggle, dealing about the freedom struggle that widows are going through. It's a struggle between traditions set down by the society and trying to live..yes trying to live one's own life.
In fact as Deepa Mehta has pointed out in a recent interview, why are we Indians afraid of showing and seeing the truth? It is a film that delves into what existed and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a culture that existed during the independence era and still exists.
One scene in the movie should as a matter of fact, stand out. The scene where Gandhiji says we all believe that God is truth, but in reality Truth is God (Satya hi ishwar hai).
Just one suggestion to Deepa Mehta, stop naming your films like Water, Earth, Fire, which doesn't go down well with our people...try something like A,B,C,D,E, G stuff (well they name tamil movies like it, you might as well try something like that!!)
All said and done..controversies may come and go..but very good attempt at showing such a subtle concept.
Kudos to you,Mehta.

Smaaallll World

Well...I have been thinking about this for sometime now. The world is too small. Recent incidents have proved it to me and add to that technology and online communities like Orkut and Facebox where you run into people, who you might never again would have wanted to meet in your life and you end up scrapping them!! you run into friends of your friends who had met you at some point of time in their life and still manage to remember you at quite the most inopportune moment!!
Globalisation has also ensured that people and places are not actually that very far off.
Imagine what will happen if a telecaller for some product or service rings up when you are busy or sleeping (much to your obvious irritation and mental agony) is or was your friend in school or college or at present or is your son or daughter or niece or nephew or your neighbour who you love to hate from the bottom of your heart and where each call is monitored!!
Technological disasters(!!) like the cell phone can make one feel secure...but when you want to be left alone and need some privacy and some silence, (god forbade the person who calls or messages), can make one go wild with anger or irritation or even pity.
To make matters worse, the worst possible invention by mankind(oops!! i can explain....:) ) ..the internet has ensured that people are connected easily, but also terrorists and other anti-social people use the medium to create havoc and torture. While the world has become small (smmaalll worldd...should rhyme when you say it..like Kamal Hasan in the movie..i forgot the name...will get back on that), divorces, break ups and marriages also are happening technologically. Marriages happen through the telephone and internet.Certain countries allow divorces through telephone. So in case, you are thinking of a divorce, just make a search of the country that allows telephone divorce, go there and get it done, free from all the legal hassles that are there. You will atleast get to see a foreign country than go and sit in one dull, drab courtroom and hear orders being read out and seeing people being herded in and out like a pack of sheep!!
As you meet people in your life everyday through some medium...directly (eye to eye), telephone(ear to ear), internet, telephathy... elepathy,sympathy, empathy(just to rhyme with telepathy!!, your world starts to shrink in size. Each one brings in new thoughts, new ideas, new experiences(there are no good or bad experiences..i read in a book somewhere..don remember the name tho).The world starts to shrink, but experiences grow.
Soon, the world will be one big democracy. And the internet with its unrestricted capabilities will show the way to it.

Everything happens for a reason

Everything happens for a reason. Those who believe in destiny think so..Paulo Coelho says so in most of his books and it does seem true. Paulo Coelho says go with the natural flow of things..everything happens as it has to. May be I am writing this post because I am supposed to? Well I do not know. But then, the Alchemist is one damn good book that I have read in my life.
Coelho's theory does seem to be true, atleast to me.
And there is this email doing the rounds that says..some people come into ur life for a reason, some for a season and some for a lifetime.
Isn't that true? Because, each person and each situation is so perfectly placed for us to learn something or unlearn something, do or not to do something, fight or let go, become strong and face our fears or just succumb to pressure, reassess ourselves and see if we are heading in the right direction.
Well ...see the theory works out properly. Because, if somebody had not invented the internet, someone wouldn't have invented the blog and I wouldn't be spending my time jotting down my thoughts on the topic here rather than be sleeping.
I actually cannot figure out a reason for my blogging this..but then everything happens for a reason and may be I will get to know what that is!!

To B or Not to B

About 5 months left for the hot seat. The man who is occupying it now says he wants to go back to teaching and ignite the young minds. Rocket science is better and easier than the hot seat, he feels. So wat do u do next...put the man who quizzed other ppl on the hot seat sometime back as a candidate for the real hot seat..ya we are talking about the race for the post of the President of India..the hot seat at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The so-called third front(SP,TDP and AIADMK plus other fringe parties...as if the country has already not been destroyed by these ppl...atleast the states they have ruled) says they ll put up the Big B or rather Amitabh Bachchan as a candidate for the post.

So currently the Big A is keen to go back to teaching. Since the A(Dr Abdul Kalam, by the way, in case I have confused you) is leaving ..its only logical for the B to follow(alphabetical order!!). But then he has got both the first two alphabets in his name Amitabh Bachchan ( A and B). Numerologists might be able to give an answer to this while astrologers might have a different point of view and what about asking vaastu shastra experts?

By the way Mr Amar Singh, can you explain wat happened to that poor souls at Nithari and why the Police force and ur government do not take responsibility for the incidents? Or how and why did ur govt give away arms to people? (This ain't America Mr Amar Singh)

With due credits to Amitabh, I believe he is better off acting and entertaining people than put in a cage of presidency and hear mercy pleas, arguments on quota, women's reservation bill apart from other political idiocy. He would surely make a wonderful 'role' model for people.

However, Amar Singh must be credited for making the media go ga-ga over this announcement. They got two days of wonderful bytes from people, smses, calls over whether he should contest for the post or not. Well, Amitabh himself 'dumbed' them down saying he was not worthy of such a post.

Well said, Mr Bachchan. I think people would like to see you on the silver screen almost every month, entertaining them than reading out vision statements on the eve of Independence Day and Republic Day, which nobody ever bothers to watch, thanks to the entertainment revolution.

My own funeral!!

Well this happened quite some time ago..sadly one of my colleagues committed suicide.hearing the news at about 11 pm in the night..we were spreading word to those who knew him..well..to my surprise one of my former colleagues called me up on my number and asked me if i had committed suicide..(he was extremely serious!!) probably he was mistaken cos both our names had sort of rhymed to this person and eventually he was shocked nevertheless.
Talk about arranging your own funeral!!