Who is an Indian?

When our countrymen visit a developed country, say America or UK, they take to the queue culture of that country as duck takes to water. We eagerly look around for bins to dispose off waste and take utmost care not to litter the public space. The best part of all this is that we smile and even ask our children to behave well. No spitting, no littering and, of course, no urinating against the walls!
However, a quick and strange transformation takes place as soon as the plane touches down at the Indira Gandhi International airport, or elsewhere in India, and we get the familiar sights and smells of our beloved country. Most of us do not mind elbowing or shoving others to take hold of our baggage on the belt, without even saying ‘sorry.’ Soon we show our true colours and live up to the old adage: ‘While in Rome, do as the Romans do.’

Even at places where the people are decent enough to queue up, we explore all the subversive possibilities to get to the front of the serpentine queue. Oh, the agony of standing in the queue! If all else fails, then a search begins to locate an agent so that the queue could be bypassed by paying a small fee. Why is this change in our conduct as soon as we arrive in our own country? Why do we bid goodbye to the good manners that looked so wonderful in foreign countries? Why do we dump the basic etiquettes in the nearest dust bin on our arrival in India?

The answer is simple, it is in our culture. We follow the ‘chalta hai’ culture in india. If you jump a traffic light, there is always a way to ensure you don’t need to pay the fine. Rather, you bribe the traffic constable and continue to your destination. It’s a country where people are found of short cuts. There is a short cut to everything. In a country where 40% of the population is below the poverty line, and rich are getting richer and poor getting poorer , this is bound to happen.

No wonder you see an escalation in crime and burglary. Unemployment is growing and youngsters are falling prey to easy lure of money.

The basic necessities are not taken care of. We all talk of development but the government is not even committed to ensure that these basic needs of the people are met. You have neta’s who venture for overseas trips every now and then. But when it comes to replicating the learning's from their visit abroad and finding a method to the madness in their own country, they are clueless.

The whole country knows that who is corrupt, every third month the roads have to be done again, every time the bridges fall but who cares for the public.

Instead we have to pay more taxes, hike in petrol,diesel prices and more costly vegetables. They think this will cure everything and GDP will rise.

Right now the only thing rising, is an uproar, a young india is rising and soon there will be a revolution. Time has come when young india takes up the mantle and changes things.

Yes, India is the most backward nation when it comes to safety or the value of a life of a person. There are hundreds of people dying but no one cares. Not the police, not the administration. Unless there is a change, there will be loads of people leaving the country and settling abroad. And this doesn’t augur well for the country. The time has come to take the fight for our future in our own hands and make a difference. Yes, its high time we tell the people that yeh sab nahin chalta hai, and they need to change their mindset or get washed away by the tide of change.

The time is right to change the system, to change our way of thinking, we need to change the policies and the backward laws that are in place and only then we will see a change.

But Is the PM listening? (Theek hai?)

Funny One liners

Awesome one liners decoded-


Incidently, Hina khar anagrams to Hi Nakhra! (hina rabani khar -pak foreign minister)

If you want Arnab to shut up,make him the Prime minister!

Baby: a program that takes nine months to develop and a whole lifetime to debug

Innocence: the look on your face when you return home from a trip to bangkok

Arnab goswami is the only man in the universe who can see three sides of a coin.

Railway fares finally hiked. i think they were waiting to see if the world really ends in 2012.

LOC: Line of control or line of compromise

Describe delhi's winter in three words:
Mercury Mars Uranus

Arjun Tendulkar, SACHIN Tendulkar and Shahid Afridi: God, Godfather and Juvenille!

Literature festivals are usually a holy congregation of three C's
Chicks, Chic and Chicanery.

New Year resolution 2013

I have made not one but thirteen resolutions for 2013.

- Start a new venture and work for myself
- Make new friends and keep in touch with old ones
- Learn a new language
- Finish my second book and get it published this year
- Give an hour to medidate daily
- Exercise an hour a day
- Write a poem for someone I care for
- Teach someone how to read and write
- Learn a skill from someone who is less than 13 years old
- Find something to laugh about every day. Then share it.
- Watch a movie (without subtitles) in a language I do not know
- Do my bit to make a difference in society by helping an ngo
- Speak up and act when I see anyone being treated unfairly (This one is for you Nirbhaya)

Kuch nahi Badlega!

In the classic BBC political satire serial, 'Yes Minister', minister Jim Hacker asks his senior bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby how to deal with a group of protestors. "Don't worry sir, just appoint a committee to examine their grievances," is the reply. "But wont that be seen as surrender," asks the worried minister. Sir Humphrey smiles: "Committees buy you time, Mr Minister, and time is on our side!" What was true of the past is no longer the case: notions of time have shrunk.

This is the age of 20-20 cricket, of fast food, of instant messaging on twitter & facebook, of 24 x 7 television, where today's news can become the next hour's history. We have a woman president, we've had a woman prime minister. Yet in 2012, one of the greatest tragedies in our country is that women are on their own when it comes to their own safety. There is currently no special law in India against sexual assault or harassment, and only vaginal penetration by a penis counts as rape. As a columnist in the national Hindustan Times said of the attack: "This is a story of a dangerous decline in Indians and India itself, of not just failing morality but disintegrating public governance when it comes to women." Samar Halarnkar added: "Men abuse women in every society, but few males do it with as much impunity, violence and regularity as the Indian male." Halarnkar then offered as proof a survey that caused indignation in India last month: a poll of 370 gender specialists around the world that voted India the worst place to be a woman out of all the G20 countries. It stung – especially as Saudi Arabia was at the second-worst. But the experts were resolute in their choice. "In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour," said Gulshun Rehman of save the children foundation. But 45% of Indian girls are married before the age of 18, according to the International Centre for Research on Women (2010); 56,000 maternal deaths were recorded in 2010 (UN Population Fund) and research from Unicef in 2012 found that 52% of adolescent girls (and 57% of adolescent boys) think it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife. Plus crimes against women are on the increase: according to the National Crime

Records Bureau in India, there was a 7.1% hike in recorded crimes against women between 2010 and 2011 (when there were 228,650 in total). The biggest leap was in cases under the "dowry prohibition act" (up 27.7%), of kidnapping and abduction (up 19.4% year on year) and rape (up 9.2%). A preference for sons and fear of having to pay a dowry has resulted in 12 million girls being aborted over the past three decades, according to a 2011 study by the Lancet. It's also about the vacuum in the law, lack of security at leisure spots, lack of gender justice, lack of fear of the law, police and judicial apathy and the complete lack of awareness that men and women have the right to enjoy exactly the same kind of leisure activities." Our politicians can't afford to have a special session to discuss women centric issues, maybe that is one of the reason they have till date turned a blind eye to the women's reservation bill.

Last morning,I am sitting with my dad, discussing about the recent happenings in the capital and he convinces me that 'kuch nahin badlega'. It's all part of the system , he says. Its in our DNA. As long as the 543 goonda's are ruling, nothing will change in this country. Yes, i believe he is right. It really is a way of life now for people in the government and such is the plight of the common man. It's time we educate our men,change our beliefs and system. Its time for a revolution, and hope the generation X do something and change our beliefs.
And yes its time the PM realises 'Sab theek nahin hai'.

Review in Millenium Post newspaper

Bestseller book now on Kindle

Bestselling novel - Shit Happens-desi boy in america is now available for downloading as an ebook on kindle (amazon) Go ahead and read on!!! http://www.amazon.com/Shit-Happens-ebook/dp/B008732FY6/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338466799&sr=1-1

Diary excerpts of a single boy

Each day, I am bombarded with the same question. Apart from family, even colleagues and friends keep irritating me now.
It’s reached its peak actually. The eternal question, “When aren’t you getting married?” Hello! Why don’t they understand? Is it necessary that every guy in this world has to get married? I really don’t think so. I want to stay happy. Well, that’s what my married friends say I am. They don’t quite relish the fact that someone their age is still happy. The wives are jealous as their husbands are able to hang out with their single friend and bitch about their wives. The husbands are plain jealous, period.

I am 30 and still unmarried. Yes, society has made its own rules. But for me, it’s my life. I won’t be bogged down with pressure. So what if most of my friends are married and some are even going to have children? I don’t see myself going down that path.

My parents, well, they don’t understand me. Having a girl friend is never good enough for them. For some reason beyond my understanding, they also want me to be settled and have my own life. How on earth, is earning for a wife and kids going to help me have my own life? Am I paranoid of additional responsibilities? Though I believe that I would marry someone who I want to be with the rest of my life, an arranged marriage is just out of the question.

I am someone who can’t really understand how people can bet their lives on someone they’ve barely met or known. The idea itself horrifies me. It’s like jumping in a well with a stone tied to your leg. Immediate Death is imminent. The idea that your parents help you in the process is evidence enough that they are partners in this crime.

Moreover, the idea of judging the other person by her looks, brain, height and education is something that I am unable to understand. Am I looking for a life partner or a piece of furniture that I can display and please my family/relatives with? Obviously, I am looking for love to happen. But for that I have to find the one that rings a bell in my head. It’s not that I haven’t thought about marriage.


So let’s just wait and see what is in store for me, Love Actually or Shit Happens!