Provoke some...

In March 2011, Delhi businessman and Congress MP Kanwar Singh Tanwar created a record of sorts of 'The Most Expensive Indian Wedding' by spending a colossal  250 crore on his son's wedding. The big, fat Indian wedding was attended by more than 15,000 guests and  included performances by Bollywood actors. More than a thousand staff served over 100 delicacies including more than 30 different types of kulfis. Presents for wedding guests included an expensive shawl, safari suit,  2,100 in cash and a silver coin each. The groom arrived in a top range BMW, and was gifted a Bell 429 helicopter, valued at more than Rs 29 crore, as a wedding gift along with not one but two private jets. Similar weddings, to name a few, include the wedding of Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's daughter Vanisha, at the Palace of Versailles costing  220 crore; Socialite Kajal Fabiani's marriage with Gaurav Assomull, the CEO of luxury purveyor Marigold Group, enjoyed their royal rituals

After 65 years, we still look forward or sincerely wish to gain independence from at least these 65 things, not in any specific order and some might seem repeated, but what the hell: Ageing politicians (thank God they didn't understand IT industry) Servile mindset (Still Ghulam) "Gora" is superior (Colonial hangover) Cows & dogs on the road / dirty congested dilapidated Roads Untrained drivers Encroachment "Chalta Hai" attitude Female foeticide Strikes Cricket as the only sport Corruption (that was easy) Fear of entering a police station (dichotomy) Crime against women & children Child labor Babu creating education system (Where are the enterpreneurs?) Khans in Bollywood (All touching 50s) Public urination / defecation (Never a good sight) Government run companies (esp Railways, Airlines) Total lack of mobile phone manners Inadequate places for orphans, invalids, elderly Insufficient po

It was 15 billion years ago when the Big Bang happened and I have no intention of getting into any debate involving the scientists and the theists and whether the Big Bang originated from Higgs Boson or was is the initial blasting of the furnace when God started His manufacturing process. Compared to that, human race came into existence just yesterday, about 500,000 years back. So, God (or whatever anyone calls Him), took 14999.5 million years to manufacture the universe before dropping us on this planet and the effort shows. Since then, the Sun has continued to do its job with, I am sure, better that the six-sigma standards, planets have religiously revolved and rotated and closer to home, our good old Earth continues to produce natural resources to ensure our survival. So why was God in so much of a hurry to create us? Actually now I know where we got this trait from? Straight from God. Don't we also, while executing a project, spend more than the required time on the first ha

“What is, Was not. What is not, Will be.”                                                 -    Me ________________________________________________________________________________ Just as a man giving up old worn out garments accepts other new apparel, in the same way the embodied soul giving up old and worn out bodies verily accepts new bodies. ·          Bhagwat Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 22 ________________________________________________________________________________ It was in 1931 when Jainulabdeen’s wife Ashiamma gave birth to their fifth child in Dhanushkodi village at the southern tip of the Rameswaram Island , at the eastern coast of the Tamil Nadu state of India . He rented out boats to local fishermen and lived a middle-class life. Jainulabdeen didn’t possess much formal education. They lived in their ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th century on the Mosque Street of Rameswaram.  Jainulabdeen, just like any other responsible fath

So how does your world look like? You work 10-12 hours a day for a reputed company in one of the big cities. Your kids study in one of the better schools and attend evening classes to learn tennis / karate / mental maths / dance / music / golf. On weekends, you hit a multiplex or get together with your friends over a drink. At least once in a year you take a holiday, international if you can afford. Every passing year, you yearn to earn more, save more and increase your assets. Each day you get up in the morning, read the newspaper, drive to office cursing the traffic, have the daily battles in the office cursing your boss and pushing your subordinates, drive back to home cursing the traffic yet again, watch television or read an occasional book and hit the bed only to start over the next day. Sprinkle a little here and there with some garnishing but this is mostly how your world looks like. Right?  Yeah, OK, so what? Isn't that how everyone's life is? Well, that's true

So now all of us are on FB. Well, yes, almost all of us, leave aside the underprivileged, the uninformed, the unwanted and the unwhatever. Most of us have a potpourri of friends from our various phases of life - school friends, college friends, colleagues, parents, children, in-laws, siblings, cousins, distant relatives, neighbors, spouse's friends' spouses, children's friends' parents, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends and then some complete strangers. When we receive a friend invite irrespective of who has sent it, it is considered rude to reject it or not accepting it for a long time so whether we like it or not, we end up adding everyone. While we might not be interacting with most of these 'friends' yet, consciously or sub-consciously, we get exposed to 'their' activities - status updates and photos & videos. A study of the entire melange of the varied personalities that I have as my FB friends, I have been able to group them int