Jokers on the road

Pune road is filled up with jokers on the road. They simply don't care about their lives or of the lives of others.

Take for example a joker, who is riding a motorcycle. Suddenly a call comes in. Now this joker will not stop driving. Instead what he will do is bring out his smartphone from pocket, put it between his shoulder and ear. Now in this awkward position he will keep on driving with his both hands on the handle. Everyday i see 5 such jokers on the rode in my 2 hour daily commute.

Then there are others who will be checking their email or sms while they are driving car on a busy road or crossing an intersection. Buddy what is that important that you cannot wait for few minutes and then park your car on roadside and check it.

This list can go on and on and i am sure this is not just a Pune phenomena.

Book Reading : Asura Tale of the vanquished

This weekend i had got the opportunity to read a good book (Asura: Tale of the Vanquished by Anand Neelkantan) on Indian Mythology. It is his first book and was a fascinating read.

I have grown up watching Ramayana on TV and then reading different stories based on the epic war between Ram and Ravana. In those stories Ram and Ravan has been shown as God and Monster with mythical magical power. So mostly i had assumed that these are the pure works of fiction and lets gather whatever moral value we can get from it.

But recently after reading Shiva Trilogy (Amish Tripathi) it has started dawning that maybe there is a real story behind all the grand stories of our mythology. Maybe the real event has been hidden and obscured by the salt and pepper added to these stories.

So in this book the story of Ramayana has been told from the point of view of Ravana and one of his aid Bhadra. Ravana is telling the story from the point of view of his struggle and rise to glory and the problems he faced while ruling and empire. He tries to tell us why he did what he did.

Whereas Bhadra being a lowly aid of Ravana, tell the story from the point of view of a poor citizen of any kingdom. How he loves and hates Ravana at the same time. His comparison of Ravana with Rama is very interesting to read.

While reading we get to realize that in everyday some of the things which we see as virtues can be real evil from another person's point of view. Good and evil are the opposite sides of the same coin.

This book tries to provide an answer to some of the questions like

1. Why did Ravana not hurt Sita? She was helpless and in his captivity. If we ignore magical powers then it is improbable to think that a mighty ruler of vast empire will be afraid of a woman.
2. What happened to Lanka under Vibhishana's rule?
3. How was Ram Rajya in essence? What were the fundamental differences between Rama's ruling and the Ruling of Ravana?
4. What happened to Ram and Laxmana in the end. In many stories i have read that they simply went to Dev Loka (abode of gods), which i think is an attempt to hide some interesting details.

Further the book draws very apt comparison between current society and its problem of caste system, bribery etc in earlier times and gives a sense that fundamentally nothing has changed from then till now.

Asura and Shiva Trilogy both have Shiva as one of the central theme. However in Shiva trilogy it is shown that Shiva descended from Kailash long after Ram Rajya ended. But in Asura, Shiva existed long before Rama and was the god of Asura's for a very long time. This is a disconnect and maybe Amish can explain the reasoning behind it.

Mithila Painting

Recently i had visited Madhubani (my native place). During this visit i got a chance to go to meet one of my cousin aunt. Her in-laws place is in Mangrauni village. There i had met her mother in law. She is a very wonderful person. I got a chance to look at her Mithila paintings. The paintings are so colorful and depict a wide variety of colors and traditions of Mithila region. Some samples are shown below.

These paintings are typically put in Kobar (Wedding room) of newly wed brides and grooms. The paintings have several images of birds, animals and insects showing the natural harmony of humans along with other inhabitants of this earth.

While looking at these posts she told me a very wonderful folktale of Nag-Nagin, which i will share in my next post.

Bhaja and Karla Caves

Last weekend we went to explore the Bhaja and Karla caves. They are near Lonavala almost 50 Km from Pune. Both are located on top of hills, so you should be ready to do a little bit of climbing up the stairs. You can read more about their history below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaja_Caves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Caves

Both caves were made by Buddhists and are almost similar in architecture. However now Karla is more commercialized and is very crowded in comparison to Bhaja. I am posting few pics of the place.

 Me and Kundan on the way to Karla Caves

 Anshu and Kundan on the way to Bhaja Caves

 Outside Bhaja Cave

Sculpture in Karla Cave

Ganesh Puja

India is a country of million gods and goddesses. Among the many gods and goddesses each state/region has one which is most revered in that region. In Maharashtra that is most definitely Lord Ganesha. Every year during this time, you can hear loud slogans of "Ganpati Bappa Morya" (Lord Ganesha is mine). This festivity is celebrated for 11 days. Many Ganpati idols will be put in homes and public places. And at the end of worship days (some do for 5 whereas others for 7, 9 or 11 day) Ganpati idols are immersed in river/sea with loud requests to Ganesha for coming early next year. Immersion is preceded by a procession in which trained people will play many musical instruments in a very coordinated way. The beats of drums are very splendid to hear. Here is one such procession video which happened near my home

Moral Policing by Police

We Indians never lose a chance of talking about high morals and values. We are always clinging to our glorious past and of the achievement that we invented zero. However things are not improving upon that zero.

Recently read a news that Police in Pune raided a so called high class party. There were pictures of man and women drinking and smoking in the newspaper, as if it was crime. Police used sticks and other means of physical force on man. Even women were slapped on being questioned of their crime. What is this. A moral policing. But why is police doing it. Has a law been broken? Has a crime been conducted? Has the police a right to beat innocent people? These are the questions no one either bothers or dares to ask.

I have heard that young couples are always harassed by Police on the beaches and in the park. I am sure that there will be few who are using this opportunity to do what should have been done in the privacy of a room. But most of the couples are not there to cause embarrassment and they are just having a nice time which is most probably being paid by their tax money. So why do Police or other vigilante of moral police torture and harass them.

I will like to change the term "Moral Policing" to another vulgar term "Sexual Policing" which is more apt to what these people are trying to do and should be aptly reported as that. And does our society need "Sexual Policing" to control whom and how we are supposed to live our lives.

Thoughts and feedback are welcome.

Road Rage - Happy Ending

Today was very quiet in office. In first half i was working on the prototype application which i have been trying to build for past couple of weeks. Then in afternoon one defect got assigned to me. Grudgingly i had to stop my prototype work and start working at this defect, as we are very close to the release date and thus makes it urgent. By 7:30 PM i have figured out the root cause of the problem, found a solution and sent my code for review. Tomorrow it will be checked in the accurev (place where programmers keep their code).

I packed my bag and started my 20 km drive from office to my house. It typically takes about an hour to reach home during normal traffic. India is a developing nation. Further Pune is a growing city in India. A sleepy pensioner's paradise has suddenly emerged as a major IT hub. Thus Pune has seen lot of growth in last one decade. However development of infrastructure has not kept its pace with growing population. Further people are always in a rush. So driving during peak hours can be very challenging. It gets worse if you are on a car, as 2 wheelers will try to overtake you from left and right. And if you escape them, then you have pedestrians coming from every direction. Sometimes your driving experience will be rewarded with presence of a herd of cows and buffalos.

If it is not raining or too cold i too prefer to commute on my motorcycle, but today it was both rainy and cold. So i was driving back home in my car minding all the usual hurdles along the way. I will say that my driving skills in India have improved a lot in past one year. Truly practice makes a man perfect or near perfect. To make this journey enjoyable i typically listen to songs or play some audio books. Today i was listening to Atlas Shrugged. Right now it has come to a very interesting turn. There is a stretch of two way one lane each side road along the way. So here i was minding my own way and listening to the audio book. Suddenly I heard an irritating sound of horn. I looked ahead. There was a car in front of me. I looked in rearview mirror. There was a person driving a scooter and honking continuously. As nothing i could do i ignored him. Then again "Peep Peep" and again and again. Now it was getting irritating. What did he want from me? Can my car fly? Of course not. He kept on doing this for next 5 minutes. Now i had decided that i must give him a taste of his own medicine.
A narrow space emerged and this guy overtook me. Now i was behind his scooter. And here it comes. A big "Pop Pop" and then another one. He raced his scooter. I speeded my car. And then another honking and another. He looks behind and i press horn hard. And then another horn. Ah it was so pleasing. By now we have reached the Khadki over bridge. It is a multi-lane road. So i changed lane and brought my car parallel to his scooter. I rolled down my window and ask him - "How did you find the sound system of my car". He slowed down and made a salute to me. I thought he had got my message and again i returned back to my audio book and rest of the journey back home.

(c) 2012 Anup Mayank

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An alternate ending of this story is available at
Road Rage : Sad Ending 

Chokhe Dhani (Pune)

This was a long weekend we had leave on Saturday, Sunday and on Monday(for Independence Day). Well the question to do something in this was in the air at home. While talking to one of my colleague i got to know about Chokhe Dhani (Rajasthani theme based resort). Did some enquiry about it and decided that this is the place for this weekend.

Now it has been a year in India and i have not been able to gather enough courage to take my car out it in crazy traffic. Chokhe Dhani is about 23 Km from the place we currently live. Lately i have done some practice in the car to drive it around the neighborhood and so on. This gave me some level of confidence that i will be able to manage manual transmission driving for this distance. (Though i have about 5 years of driving experience in US and have driven almost 50k miles, but you need guts to drive in India)

We left home at around 3:30 as the Chokhe Dhani timing is from 5 PM -11 PM. I had the printout from google for the directions, but those directions are not of much use. You have to do the traditional approach (ask people). Well one good thing was that we had been to Aga Khan Palace on bike and Chokhe Dhani is on the same route although a bit far ahead.

Near Bopodi bridge, i encountered my first driving problem. There were 6-8 buffaloes standing on the mid of the road and they were not ready to buzz. To make matters worse there were autos and bikes coming who will somehow push the buffaloes more close to my car. Anyhow with honking and slowly moving i overcame this problem. I am sure i will remember this moment for the rest of my life as this was the first instance of this kind of problem.

So we finally reached the place. It is almost 2 km away from the main road. There are no visible sign (or atl east we missed to see one). We found it by asking people and taking a u turn. Thankfully there was no shortage of parking which was a blessing as i am not yet good at parking in a crowded place.

The entry fee is Rs 450 per adult and Rs 300 for children between (3 and 12). Upon entering we were welcomed with tilak. Then there was a drink stand where we got jaljeera and sharbat. Very near to that was a big bell which was supposed to be hit with a very heavy hammer. We tried our hand on it. Then there came the snack stand, where they were serving kandi bhaji, kadi bati etc. Hungry as we were we had several doses of them. Then we had a cup of tea.

After this we started exploring the entertainments provided by the place. There were camel ride (but it had a big queue), horse cart ride, bullock cart ride, train ride etc. Further there were performers doing puppet show (kathputli naach), acrobat doing tricks on a thin rope and Rajasthani folk dance and song shows. But the thing which left a mark on me was the magic show.

Magic Show

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The show was being performed by a young person. He did several tricks. In one trick he took the ring from my wife and then hid it in a cloth and asked everyone to touch it and make sure that they can feel it. One lady was asked to hold the ring with the cloth and then with the 3 taps of his magic stick he made the ring disappear. Finally ring was found hidden in a tomato.

But the best piece was the last trick. He asked people to make fist and put one on top of other persons hand, so that the top of two hands meet and asked everyone to choose among several flowers (rose, jasmine etc). And with few magic spells, he asked us to smell the hand. And truly there were fragrance coming out of our hand. I am sure that he didn't touch our hand any how. To make sure that it was not a collective hypnotism, i smelled my hand again after leaving him and fragrance was there.

Dinner

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They serve food in traditional Rajasthani style, with a wooden small table to keep your plate etc, while you sit on the floor. Dinner starts at 8 PM. But if you want to eat in traditional way then you may have to wait for 10-30 minutes depending on the rush. For people who can't wait that long there is a buffet system also arranged there. We decided to go for the traditional way. After about 15 minutes our turn came in. It was worth the wait. The walls of the eating hall were nicely decorated with the traditional drawings. People who served food were wearing traditional dresses. Whenever we asked what it is this item? The answer always ended in "Sa". For example "Bati Sa", "Choorma Sa". This is a vegeterian menu. We liked the "Palak Panner" very much. Almost 15 different kind of dishes if you include pickle and papad too.

Post dinner while my wife and mother were busy in getting heena on thier hand, me and my son roamed around to see what else was there. There is an aritificial cave. We decided to go through it. Some portion of the cave was dark enough to terrify you. For a moment i felt that something moved and was scared. But anyways it was fun.

Finally we had our final dose of jaljeera and decided to leave, but not before i tried my hand on the heavy hammer bell.

An year in India

Last august we were busy in packing our bags. Busy on craigslist to find buyers for the furniture etc. I remember even on the last evening we had sold few smaller items. It can happen only in US.

So now it is almost a year and it is apt to write something about the experience so far.

Good things first.

It was a joyous occasion to be present with the family in my brother's marriage. The young couple seems to be enjoying the new chapter in their life. May god bless them.

Further we went to our native village for my son's Mundan (first hair cutting ceremony). It was after 8 years for me and first time for the wife and kid. Things have changed very much there. Now we have solar lamps in our village. The roads have improved a lot. The road from Mujaffarpur to Darbhanga can be compared to expressways. (Maybe i am exaggerating here a little bit)

Workwise i like the challenge. Getting lots of opportunity to learn new things ex. we have worked on 2 agile projects. Now there is focus to learn new UI technologies which i didn't have to so far. Further learnt a couple of things about estimating software projects. Had to learn it in a hard way though. More on this in upcoming post.

Pune (the city where we are currently living) has very nice weather. It was not too hot nor too cold. Although it does rain a lot here. I don't mind that. It is pleasant to drive my motorcycle(maybe a bit dangerous too) when rain is hitting on my helmet.

Not so good things

Driving a car is pain. We have got a manual transmission car. First there is a learning involved in how to switch gears. And then you have to be careful about who is coming from which direction. So far i haven't dared to take my car to a movie theater and find a parking place. Someday i will gain that courage.

Housing expenses are huge. Rents and cost of houses have sky rocketed. I don't have a big salary but kind of earn enough as per the market. Even then i am facing this pinch. I wonder how can common government salaried person afford this.

Late evening meetings. Since being an offshore development organization we need to hold meetings with our US counterparts. And most often they start at 7:30 in the evening. But i guess that is just part of the job.

Sorry State of Indian Judiciary

These days we are seeing a season of scams in our country. CAG, 2G, Adarsh, Onion etc are just to name a few. First few days are filled with blame games and then some inquiry starts and if we are lucky someone like Raja is arrested. And it is just the beginning of a process which is so long that we will die without seeing any resolution of it.

I am talking about the judicial system of India. It is so time consuming and complex that common man rightfully wants to stay away from it. "Jane do court kachahari ke chakkar main kaun fasta hai". This is one of the reason someone will pay bribe, instead of taking it to police and court.

We continuously hear stories like these

• A case of petty theft is yet to be heard. Person is in jail for more than 2 decades
• Some film-star killed sleeping poor laborers on footpath when he was drunk driving and court is yet to deliver judgement on it.
• A divorce case took more than 4 decades
• A rich guy shoots a model and it takes so many years to punish him
• Bofors case is still pending
• And so on..

These are only some of the media sensationalized stories. There are many many more in which victims are not so influential to bring out media outcry on it. Thus their cases keep on pending from one hearing to another (which maybe an year after the last one).

So what is the root cause of it? It is simply lack of courts and judges and lack of proper information system. We need to do following

1. Increase the number of courts. Make lower courts more powerful to take on smaller issues at a good speed and with more efficiency.
2. Hire more judges and competent lawyers.
3. Get away from paper based system. Have a proper digital information system, so that all the required information for a case is present to lawyers and judges whenever they want them.

All of this require a strong political motivation. As we can see that many of our politicians are already involved in one or more scams, so they have less incentive to bring any changes in judiciary. A Supreme court judge recently lamented that "Less than 1% is budgeted for Judicial System". So we as citizens need to demand from lawmakers to take corrective action in this slow functioning judiciary system.

Well all is not that gloomy. I am very happy at some of the recent developments. Right to Information Act is kind of a revolution. This is putting pressure on government officials to get their act together and making them understand that they are at their post to serve the common man not the other way around. Recently read the news that Delhi Police is putting all the FIRs online. These all are step in right direction. But a lot more need to be done and they should be done soon. Because we all know that "Justice delayed is Justice Denied".

Flag hosting ceremony in car.

In the spirit of Indian Independence day.

Good news from Kolkata

Just now read this good news. Looks like government in India is getting serious on pollution issues. It is really a great news for people in India and planet earth in general. By imposing ban on very old commercial vehicles, i am sure it will improve air quality. But at the same time it will also help in preventing so many auto related accidents. I think government should also impose smog test rules on all the vehicles.

Indian Budget 2009 and Stimulus for print media

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4744252.cms
It is surprising to see that government is providing stimulus to print media. The question is why? What general good it will bring to us? Print media is failing everywhere. The news they provide is already outdated. New generation is less and less dependent on them for information. Failure of print media is not only limited to India, it is happening everywhere. If they cannot sustain themselves, let them reorganize themselves or fail. It is not tax payers duty to save them.