Groping at Gandhi Ashram

I have to say it was very comforting to read the news about a foreign tourist being molested by drunk youngsters at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, in the morning paper. Ironically they were viewing the photographs of the Indian freedom struggle when they found found themselves struggling for their dignity.

Well what happened was totally against Gandhi’s dreams and what followed was violence. One of the youngster damaged Gandhi’s photos and was later beaten up(castration could have been better), the pther escaped. No complaint was lodged keeping in mind the sanctity of the place.

Is Gandhism dead? Doesn’t his principles and teachings hold no value any more? Was He just meant to liberate us from the British Raj so that we could freely molest our women? Why is Indian Youth forgetting that they are the pillars or the country?Is bad parenting to blame?

He dreamt of an India safe for women, and what did we finally deliver? Strip teasing women in public and marry off couples in public(thanks to Bajrang Dal the whooping marriage cost is avoided). Celebrating Gandhi Jayanthi would be more insulting now.

Ask anyone if Gandhi’s teaching hold any value and 90% will say Yes. But does it really? Ask yourself…

Facebook Banned !!!

This is what happens when you talk about social-networking at a cafe …

[ news courtesy : Leader News ]

07 - India - 08 Report

2007, India turned 60 and yet She has the vigor and sensuality of a 16 year old. She still has the tenacity and the power to indulge herself in anything. Indians have grown at a tremendous pace in the last 5 years.

2007 bids good bye with the threat of another election looming at large. The Nuclear deal with US is proving to be a bit costly for the Indian National Congress lead UPA Govt. With Gujarat and Himachal polls suggesting that Congress rule at the center is loosing steam, they cant afford to go on an early election. BJP did it and they lost. The question of aam aadmi, is likely to prove costly for INC. There are enough over-the-teacup discussions on politics, lets move on..

In the name of GOD, still proves to be a hindrance in development process, with politicos going to the extend of deliberately forgetting the fact about a Secular state. Wounds of past events are kept fresh. The sad part is that, even the highly educated people fall for such roadblocks. Education is still not able to curb the differences. Yes the literacy rate is up for the Nation from approx 52% in 1991 to 65% in the 2001 census. But yet we heard about infanticide in some of our modern cities.

2008 We scored 2+1+’A whole hostel’

If it was the New Year’s eve on 31st Dec 2006 that in Mumbai ‘we’ strip searched a girl, we just made sure that we area  ‘progressive’ nation. This New Year’s eve we did 2. Way to go …
Are we Indians so sexually frustrated so that we behave worse than dogs. How will these people ever understand that its because of this attitude that they dont stand a chance with any girl and have to be frustrated all the time. Perverts!!!
Now that molestation is the new media key word. IBN Live has some interesting facts - One estimate says a woman is raped every 32 minutes, murdered every 22 minutes, and molested every 15 minutes in India.
There are reports from all around India -
Patna had its share of boys barging into girls hostel, and in Kochi, people molest 15 year old Swedish Tourist.
They should all be caught and castrated!!!

2008 Wishes …

Wishing all the unfortunate ones who stumbled on this blog …

HAPPY NEW YEAR …

2008 !!!

Yes the prophecies of End of the world has been proved once again and we celebrate another new year ….

Yippieee……

SPIT Zone India

We Indians are developing with a tremendous pace. We are all set to even concur the moon. But inspite of all that we just cant kill the habit of - SPITTING

We are just oblivious to the fact that ‘Spitting in Public Places is a Punishable offense‘. But who cares, look at our tradition. We have been traditionally a pan-chewing-spit-anywhere-you-like community. So we carried our tradition to the 20th and now to the 21st century, not to mention that we infected the Britishers too who left after 400 years.

When will we ever stop this? We pump out more and more gutkas and pans. Something like the BJP lead swadeshi movement against Wrigley’s chewing gum. Chew!!! Indians chew!!! Spit and make every place red at first and then maroon. Or may be they are just trying to make India a communist state.

Who prompted this short post? - the guy who was with me at the railway station this morning. He would just walk in circles and spit all round the place. As if he is tired he would come and sit occasionally and then spit every where in a 1 meter radius. I have never seen a much more disgusting fellow in my life.

Literacy can be a PIA…

PIA is Pain In Ass and not Pakistan International Airlines.

Being a Mallu or Malayali (not being offensive in any way by calling myself a Mallu), i’m proud that when it comes to literacy we are doing fairly good as a state. So when this article came to my attention - 300% increase in violence against women in India’s most literate state - i did feel very bad. Being literate we were supposed to be as a model for others to follow and we all together portraying a wrong picture here.

But the i saw the other angle of that. They reached that statistics coz women in Kerala realized the power of law and that there are laws that protect them from domestic violence. They approached the law when in need. The clause that caught me is - “cases files”.

So all those state that say that there is only a marginal increase in domestic violence or that the stats have fallen, RETHINK!!! It could be because that people dont know about the law. Tell them about the law and then lets see.

Even though the report said all that about Kerala, it still quotes this -

But change could happen fast in Kerala, thanks to high levels of literacy. Greater awareness, redressal mechanisms, etc. could help women move forward, as has been seen in recent times.

Thats why i say Literacy can be a real Pain in the Ass at times …

An innovation that ‘Kicks Balls…’

Innovation that doesn’t serve the purpose is like and over sized underwear; You have no other go but to wear it and you know you are comfortable without it.

Thats all that i have to say about the automated kiosks that have been installed by the city authorities of bangalore. Yes! its the Silicon Valley of India, where police check traffic violations using PDAs and common people no longer burns ordinary BMTC buses, but target Volvo buses. Apparently thats how they fight globalization.

Last night i went to the kiosk near my home to pay the water bill. Well if it was long queue in front of a ‘human operated pigeon hole kiosk’, i would have reached home earlier. It took me 10 min to make it accept each of the ten 100 bills that i had. Apparently it has an aversion towards money and even if its kind enough to accept the money, it would rather prefer an old bill than a new one.

If u may argue that the human factor is avoided and automation lets it run 24hrs. Hold on, i say! Apparently the then Hutch now Vodafone, introduced the same for billing systems. People were strugling to get the money in. So guess what they did? They posted a guy at that location, 2 guys in fact one for the morning and one for the night shift. At the end of the day, they end up paying 2 guys instead of one.

The only good thing about it is that if you want to make payment by cheque or with a credit card its faster. That means if u dont have a credit card, stay in the line for hours just to pay.

The fact is true that you can pay any time of the day, 7 days a week. But they just forgot the usability factor in that. Another loose underwear!!! The technology was supposed to kick ass, but it now kicks you balls and it hurts real bad.

SMS Gupshup - Its just a message

I met at Abhishek Thakkar at Barcamp Bangalore 5. A guy i got to know better only on the second day. We were the two guys who came early for a BarCamp on a Sunday. So what we went to the canteen and were the first to start the breakfast for the day.We chatted on, he a Mumbaikar, big fan of north-indian food and a real techie. Infact he wants to shift the office to Chandigarh for two reasons - the food and the girls. I couldn’t agree more. Food and Girls what a combo. What a combo!!!

Now thats not the topic here.

We happened to talk about SMS Gup Shup, the company that he represents, and the amazing idea that they have. So the stats goes like this -

April they go Alpha
May they go Beta
Nov they are close to a million (if you dont know what a million is … its 1′000′000 users)
The number of users doubling every 40 days

Now thats a growth. What makes them click? What is so great about SMS Gup Shup? What made we mutineers start a Mutiny group in SMS Gup Shup as soon as he told us what it is?
The whole idea behind SMS Gup Shup is to get connected via SMS, its a blog, its a mobile orkut and its much more. It works like this.

You create a group
Invite friends to join in or they subscribe to you
You post SMS-es and it reaches all your friends
Whats you cost? 3rs
How many you reach? That many people, who have joined your group.
Catch? - No catch!
How to do it? - Just SMS for all the above steps

Now how does that sound??? Its cool i say. Imagine you want to tell all you friends how good or how shitty a movie is, right after you saw it? You start messaging and goes on adding people to the list and then you send.

By the time the last message is sent. They would have as well seen the movie.
Instead what if you can send in one message … cool isn’t it …

Here are the steps straight from the site…

GupShup from Mobile

Start a Group - 3 simple steps to start a Gup Shup from your mobile phone:

• Create your group by sending an SMS to 567673434. Example:
  CREATE mygroup123
• Invite friends to your group:
  INVITE 98200XXXXX 99203XXXXX
• Send group messages to 567673434. Example:
  Hi, am Arun and this is my group for movie reviews.

Join a Group - Get messages from your favorite groups on your mobile phone

• To subscribe to group, sms JOIN followed by the group name to 567673434. Start your GupShup now! Example: JOIN GupShup

Come lets start GupShupping - Staying in touch is now just a message away…

Barcamp Bangalore - Day 1 - Post Lunch Session

The bloggers collective has started at the L21 room (Cappuccino).

Amit Agarwal - Digital Inspirations, is talking on monetizing blogs. He is having no slides, no laptop, no geeky gadget, just talking. He is the first professional blogger in India.

 

So one advice from him - don’t use TextLinks in you blog as it wont help you in the long run. Rather than reblogging, write an original stuff at least once in a while, coz reblogging and linking will make people leave your site and go after the original stuff.

People are just walking into the collective and the strength is building up.

Now amit is getting swarmed with questions…

And i’m still looking for the 2 guys who approached me b4 lunch for the blog review.