back again

Its been long since i blogged.. too many things happened in the mean time.. a new addition to my family, frequent visits to chennai(to be with them!!), two of my projects( i was slogging to my butt) got canned!!!!, idling around jobless!!!. Its extremely frustrating to just sit tight without anything to do.. especially when people around you are working!!!(the guy who sits in the next cube is the manager for the help desk folks.. so he is in the hotwater always!!.. His phone keeps ringing non stop.. previously when we had something to do, it was a major disturbance but now it has become an entertaintment.. )
Few things i did to kill boredom, browsed till my eyes became dry and head starts hurting.. watched a movie shared by a fellow jobless vetti.. at least 4-5 toilet/coffee breaks.. yet there is more time to pass. In just a week i can slowly feel me getting more & more irritant and gloomy.. I started wondering how people keep themselves busy when they have nothing to do. this question pops up whenever i see the lift operator.. what kind of job is that?? who is that moron who doesn't even know how to press the button of the floor he needs to go to. that fella just sits in a stool, giving a cold stare, going up and down all day.. Its the maximum torture a human can go thro. There are thousands of redundant jobs like this which definitely affect people's psyche.. If the lift operator and building security are the idle ones then there are certain jobs which will squeeze you to the core.. I keep seeing a traffic constable in an important junction.. man that guy literally battles all day in the middle of insensitive and discourteous bunch of people(me inclusive). he works his butt out amidst the carbon-monoxide cluster.. down the line he is sure to have respiratory problems.. Inspite of all this nobody is satisfied with what he is doing.. to me its the most difficult job on earth!!!!Thanks lord i'm sitting on a ergonomic chair in a posh office and doing nothing..(got to mention the fat pay cheque at the end of the month..!!!)

Football Fiesta...

Its kind of refreshing to see the amount of enthusiasm the Football world cup has generated in India.. Its such an amazing sport, or should i rather call it an art.. The free spirit of the game just fills your heart with bliss, kind of same feeling you get in a bhajan.. No wonder its the world's favorite sport.. Its terrible that we are not part of this mela.. The potential for the sport is very high here. It just has to be nurtured.. some home grown software companies can invest and sponsor an academy each..
As usual it brings the age old debate of Cricket Vs Football... Its just like comparing apples and oranges.. they both are comletely different.. Cricket is a technical game which brings in lots of parameters on how its to be played.. it has all those marks of gentleman tag associated with it.. It can possibly be compared with Golf or two some extent tennis.. However Football is like flowing water, its a Carnival.. It brings out the dionysian spirit(a feeling u get when u see Dhoni bashing the bowlers all over the park) of both the players and the spectators.. and thats the reason the its popular across continents..

Da Vinci Fiasco....

It has become a fashion for the Indian states to ban the movie DaVinci Code. When the people are allowed to see The Passion of the Christ why not the DaVinci code? Particularly Tamilnadu being one of them where the chief minister boasts about being atheist. Incidentally these fellas are involved in staging lots of plays deprecating Hinduism. It was freedom of expression at that time...Will K.Veeramani oppose this ban? Will Karunanidhi ban the Keemayanam play? This is not surprising at all.. in a country where minority appeasement is at its peak these things are very common. Its a shame that in a democratic country a movie which takes a differnt view of a religion cannot run and of course this perfectly applies to Fanna in Gujarat..

AMMA-just missed..

Taking a cursory look at the TN results can lead one to conclude that DMK alliance has swept to power, but in reality it was just a touch and go. With most parties retaining their vote share it all boils to the strength of the alliance. Also its just easy to conclude that Vijayakanth played a spoilsport for Amma. yeah! an alliance with him would have turned the scales in quiet number of seats, but its not all.. My personal feeling is if Vijayakanth would have gone with Amma then i'm not sure whether he would have commanded this big chunk of votes. Vijayakanth did spilt the votes from all parties(esp. PMK who had a pretty bad outing this time..) and a major chunk of his votes are from the neutral voters who want to see off these two dravidian parties.. So my personal opinion is despite starting from a favorable position AMMA grossly mismanaged the campaign. With respect to governance, people want to see something extraordinary to retain a govt. They are always prepared to take a risk of new government.
Just look at the way Chennai and the Tsunami belt reacted, the reaction of the govt. at the need of the hour has made the people forget other issues which were of importance before the disaster. The failure of Amma is, to make the rest of the state get the same feel-good factor. The southern districts and cauvery delta region have gone against her. The southern districts have not forgotten the anti-conversion act and the act to ban animal slaughter in temples. Particularly churches have made sure that this remains fresh in the minds of people. The DMK carried the delta region with its manifesto of cancelling the loans from the co-operative banks and special sops to the weavers. The way Amma panicked on seeing the reaction to the DMK manifesto and started giving freebies left and right, further reduced her credibility. In short if Amma has extened some sops little earlier focussed on these two segments it could have gone better. All she needed was a valuable advisor outside the purview of sasi, somebody who can feel the pulse of the people. So in short a little over confidence and lack of planning has spoiled what could have become a memorable victory and could have altered the politcal map of TamilNadu for good.

p.s. Its refreshing to see the number of votes polled by the LokParitran's candidates. Its definitely a good sign for the future.

Freebieess.................

The announcements of the freebees by the parties in the TamilNadu election campaign is going to usher to a new trend in the way the politcal parties are going to manage their campaign in the rest of the country. Accepted we are a welfare state and should take care of BPL segment... but by giving them color TV and 4gms of gold what are we conveying??... and the DMK cheif openly accepting that these fancy stuff are just for capturing power..
The reforms and subsidies should help the people to elevate themselves in life.. not make them look for more in the subsequent elections.. There has to be a vision in announcing a welfare scheme.. for eg. the mid-day meal scheme.. it just brought it scores of children to school.. for that matter the free cycle and text books scheme.. thousands of students and parents are grateful and this is called vision.. The same thing will become stupitidy if somebody wants to build on the scheme and say that we will send a teacher home to teach the children..(like vijayakanth's PDS scheme). It is the people's money which is being invested on all these things.. so when a scheme is announced they have to come up with the plan to finance the scheme.. instead of just transferring officials the election commision should start questioning these things. To me this is an irresponsible act of bribing the people for vote. Instead of investing thousands of crores in these, why not try and invest this in industrialization and education and provide employment to the same group of people, which will automatically build the financial base(for more reforms!!!) and make the citizens move up the ladder. One suggestion would be to distribute the money to every gram panchayats and let them make the decision of what they want to do with that like laying the road, digging up wells etc.. employ those people who are supposed to be benefited by this scheme.. To some extent this is what the Women Self Employment Group does.. It has borne a amazing result.. just extend this to more people.. lift them up.. please don't push them further by giving these cheap stuff which will get you votes but nothing else.. my 2 cents..