Memories from a Scottish Christmas back in 2007… Took a bus from London to Glasgow, and then was on a roadtrip for a couple of days….
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Blog
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April is here…
And this is usually the month, when I am in the worst of my moods! I question myself, I challenge myself, I am critical about what I have been doing so far, and I see a lot of “should not haves” in my past year!
Why?
I was born in this month! that’s why! My new year begins every year in the month of April, and I more often than not feel sad about what I have been able to do over the last 12 months. Not that they are bad, or I did not achieve things.. more often than not, from an external perspective, I do fairly well.. and there are times when I know it myself.. but I cannot lie to myself! I know there is something which was missing, and I hate myself for it…
This year does not seem to be any different! and like every other year, I am going to think about how it has to change, it has to improve…
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Experimental
The next few days (or a week) are going to be a bit experimental for Chai ki Dukaan.. While there is no impact on the content, you might find the look and feel different every time you visit the website… that is because I am experimenting a little with the wordpress themes to find something more suitable, elegant and fast for the website…
Apologies for the inconvenience, however I hope you understand that I am doing it to improve the Chai ki Dukaan experience!
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Puduchery Pondicherry
Photographs from a short trip to Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu
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Elephantasia
I don’t understand what the fuss is all about.. Who lost, who won, why did a party lose, why did the other win the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh… The reason is pretty simple in my opinion!
If you remember, the Election Commission had ordered the, then, UP Government to cover all statues of Elephants in the State… This was done on the 7th of January! this is exactly where the downfall started!
I think the secret of wins in UP are all hidden in the respective party’s election symbols, for example!
Bahujan Samaj Party, or BSP had its symbol covered… Now no one knew suddenly forgot that the elephant was BSP’s symbol! After all covering all these statues meant that there presence would not impact the voters! We were expected to forget the Elephant = BSP = Behen Mayawati! Whatever seats that BSP managed to get were probably because of the wild elephants in the Rajaji National Park, and Jim Corbett, which could not be covered with plastic sheets. And some which have been domesticated, and again could not be covered!
Congress, by this logic should have won a lot as the summers were arriving, and there are not many people who cover their palms in this weather… also Congress kids have been shaking too many hands all around in UP… Now what went wrong for them, was the fact that while they were happily shaking hands with people in UP, the symbol of Congress, the Palm, seems more like a slap on the common man’s face!
BJP, got a few seats here and there, because of their symbol being visible in the village ponds, and a handful of high profile resorts all around in the state…
Now the big one… Samajwadi Party… They won, simply because no one (read Election Commission) bothered to asked the state government to ban the use of cycles till the elections were over! And with the fuel prices increasing almost every two months, more and more people are taking on cycles.. more cycles, more support for SP… every time a faithful BJP or a Congress or a BSP worker would use a cycle the vote bank shifted to SP’s favor… and it kept happening till SP won the elections by a huge margin!!!
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How long = f(time) or f(distance) or f(fun)?
If someone would ask me how long it takes for you to travel to work, I would have a few options to respond with..
Takes me X minutes, or its X kms, and you figure, or interestingly, I could respond by saying that it takes me 24 songs to reach my office 🙂 or maybe 36! It was almost this number when I used to drive the 45 kms to work in about 90-120 minutes one way every day! I don’t miss those days at all!
Last night, it took me 1 song to reach home! Radha running like a dream at a 3000 rpm (guess the speed, if you’d like), windows rolled down with the nippy wind hitting my face, and queen playing in the background at a volume and quality that would put a lot of car audio systems to shame… “I want to break free“!
Some Queen songs are just unbelievably detoxifying! This one is one of them! Not to forget that the artists of yesteryears seemed to real! So Analog! (There is something going on in my mind about Analog and Digital for weeks, and I have to write it down before I forget)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7xmH-Amt2k]
On a side note…Veda, when you are old enough to get a license and drive, I am going out on long drives with you! Our favorite music, our favorite roads and a destination unknown!
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Relatively Speaking…
I am sure this has happened to you a few times…
You stop at a traffic light, or in a jam, or at a turn… suddenly you feel that your vehicle is moving backwards… and you push the breaks, only to find out that nothing changed! You are still moving backwards… and then within a split second you realize that its not your vehicle that is moving backwards, its the one that you were looking at that has started moving forward slowly!
I feel life is very similar.. there are times when we are not moving… we are where we are, waiting for our opportunity to press the gas and moving ahead… but we suddenly feel that our movement is not in the direction we expected, but backwards… and we tend to take some corrective action before realizing what just happened!
We mostly act on relativity… and I am not done writing about it yet! I am holding on to this thought, while I pull myself together!
