Me: सुना है 3 idiots बहुत अच्छी फ़िल्म है..
She: हाँ, मैने भी सुना है। कल देखने चले?
Me: नही।
She: परसोँ?
Me: नही।
She: तो फिर सुन कर क्या किया?
Me: बस सुना और तुम्हे सुना दिया।

Twitter has been downright silly for me since the very beginning – but then I thought may be that is because I don’t use/understand it well. Then I saw this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/twitter_stop and was very glad. Some nuisance about twitter:

• “tweet tweet” – someone is doing something somewhere – go check
• “tweet tweet” – retweet – someone really did it
• “tweet tweet” – this url is f**king bit.ly – you have to f***ing click it to see what the heck I am talking about
• “tweet tweet” – gawd this news I heard was really the same one every one else knows about – retweet!
• “tweet tweet” – i want to so follow you for the reason of you following me in reciprocation – puhleez
• “tweet tweet” – sent from my chuck-phone – I bought a $500 device to tweet all the time, how cool!

All that said, I still am on twitter in some automated way, where blog posts get tweeted. Heh.

Well, I just thought I’d add this one in too: http://theoatmeal.com/story/reddit_how, on how bloggers and tweeters have a gazillion share buttons on their blogs/posts or anywhere else. And then, once again like:

• “tweet tweet” – that road is like blocked for the last 2 years, but let’s tweet about it #road #bangalore #fail #totallyapocalypticfailure
• “tweet tweet” – the keys I forgot in my backpack, came thru from my car’s back seat #keys #forgetting #stupidme #stupidyou #car
• “tweet tweet” – vote my ?post=3441 on reddit #reddit #mybloodyawesomeblog.com #my…com?post=3441

Was wondering about all the dogs I’ve had either as pets or just good friends on the road (thanks to my better half for reminding me about them). Soni wants to have a pet for herself and I am quite adamant on not having one, even though I don’t love any other creature as much as a dog. Seeing one on the road, I cannot resist my temptation to caress them though it’s not something advisable.

For the record, I am not a certified dog trainer, but I have assisted in dog training sessions for about three years. Though it’s not much, but it did tell me something about dog psychology and how they generally would behave and function in a set of stimuli-response sets. As such, please do not touch any stray/street dog however friendly you think it is. This is especially more true in case there’s a gang. Stay away.

I have had 5 dogs as very close friends and have fond memories of those guys (all gone now). One of them was a pet we planned to keep at home – but it passed away in about two week’s time. That and other sad instances have kept me aloof from the idea of having or developing relationships with dogs any more. Though I should have learnt to live with the idea that they are not indefinite, I have not been able to cope up with the grief that strikes every time. I love them, but would not prefer to keep them home.

For any one reading this, who has known the buddies I am talking about, I hope you have the same memories and cherish them.

So if you have done your history right, it’s time to witness it this time around because it’s gonna repeat.

This article here talks about how China’s threat over New Delhi has been growing while we have been engaged in fruitless activities. This is probably the best time for New Delhi to flex it’s muscles completely over Pakistan and get rid of the placement they find in China. China has already taken over Tibet, is virtually there in Pakistan (guess where the recent war-heads tested their came from?) and dictates to Burma.

As India gave away to the Chinese claims on Tibet, now it’s China asking for Arunachal Pradesh (a sizeable area of the size of Taiwan). We never thought they would be coming for AP, but they always had there eyes on it. What’s more, Sikkim was supposedly accepted by the Chinese to be an Indian state – but recent news has been let off where Sikkim has been mentioned twice over (thus putting light back on to where it was) – and the Chinese obviously want more and more every single day. This is why China wants AP so badly.

Chinese presence in Aksai Chin (that’s the northern portion of India – a part of Kashmir) has been strengthened and so has been Tibet. China has delivered tons of nuclear content to Tibet and has started pointing missiles towards Indian cities. There is a strong possibility that China will be engaging in strong muscle flexing before it explores the possibility of a strike.

It’s now that Indians have to wake up to this threat and start working towards a goal that will take us to the next level. India’s reopening of an Air Force base near the Chinese border is a fact that something is really serious. Time to get really serious guys. Really serious.

So, then what is it that would change India’s game? What can a normal person like you and me do? A lot of stuff.

• Sincerity in everyone. People have to start realizing that there are somethings that ought to be done. Seek out every possible way you can affect the Government and it’s decisions. What are the guys on top doing? Are there plans? Use your “right to information” to develop these questions and throw them out.
• Vote! Vote! Vote!
• Put your prejudices aside, if not get rid of them. We need to counter a bigger threat now. Get rid of your castes and religions for another two years (that’s all we have).
• Start reading up and spread awareness among people about how we’re really going to need a lot of intellectual capacity, strength and any other such help.
• Tell everyone in your family, in local discussions and every possible way that we are going to be affected if we don’t realize.

That’s the first step. Realization that there’s a problem is what we need to spread first. Next thing would be to focus on long-term and short-term goals and objectives.

For once, India is a bloody big state that cannot go down just like that. This is a ten grands old civilization we’re talking about. So let’s be positive and start working it out right away.

Update: In other news, there were Pakistani rockets fired into Punjab from across the border. I guess it might be time soon that we increase our military strength two-folds and finish off these issues with Pakistan right away. In all shamelessness, there are bloody hopes soaring when the Indian High Commissioner sends an invite for iftaar to ISI  master minds.

Pretty recently, three people I know became fathers to their lovely daughters. I feel so joyous about this fact that I couldn’t help writing it up here. About an year and a half back, another close colleague fathered his daughter and that gave me unbound joy.

The scientific fact is that daughters are beneficial to the society in more ways than one (if you can please keep your sexist prejudices aside). This article from NY Times talks about how an increasing male population of the society can actually harm the internal stability of a country. Not surprisingly, both India and China feature in the top two such societies that want more male population than female. Uneducated people are not the only ones though, it’s the socio-cultural fabric which makes this demand from the people. There are highly skilled people who would prefer male over female because of social and religious shit.

There are some spurious (or seemingly so may be) studies too that say that “attractive people are more likely to borne daughters”. This article from associated content talks about one such study and it’s numbers. I feel the numbers are too convoluted and the theory is too good to be true. This other article talks on how evolution is going to make women more beautiful. “But the forecast isn’t so rosy for men.” Heh.

Well, for the close friends and colleagues, I am confident that these daughters would take their families much further ahead than anybody else could. May they always prosper, grow and beat all the guys! (BTW, I don’t have anything against guys. Just that my preference is for the girl child.)

The question is  more about “how and for what you define your love” than the actual “why”. Why do we love India? Why are we proud of it? Are the words in the constitution making me proud? Is the rich history enough to give me a kick? Or the lands and it’s mountains?

I raised this question at a local platform and got various answers with vivid points of view. If anyone has seen the “Discovery of India” tele-series, this question was beautifully answered by the character of Nehru played in there. (I am not really sure if that was indeed the answer Nehru gave, so I am just being politically correct here).

That answer seems correct to me as I long pondered over the question before finding the same answer somewhere else.

So here it is, the answer. The reasons behind why you love your country could actually vary a lot. The fact is, the real reason should be the country’s people. If you really do love your country, you should respect and love all it’s people without any prejudice. Blind love for one’s country means blind love and respect for all the inhabitants there. You work for them and their goals and that is when you can really say that you are patriotic and love your country truly.

Patriotism actually comes without the drums and music. I saw it in an old man walking along the intermediate ring road (Bangalore) wishing “good morning” to everyone jogging past with an occasional “how are you?” or “why are you sad?” (True story).

I really am looking forward to a day when everyone looks at their fellow people with respect and dignity. I have heard that there were pockets of our country which cultured this, and they used “patriotism” to instill this. In the long run, a lot of us were left with patriotism which is either meaningless or means dying in a war of some sort.

There’s a dire need to upgrade and increase the capacity of the Indian Railways. When you look at the 6-lane, 4-lane and sometimes 2-lane highways in the US, you feel how could India have had something similar. We don’t need anything of that sort.

India’s answer to the US and European highways would be the Indian Railways. We don’t need to replicate what everyone is doing, we just need to have a way of our own to do it. Every Indian would use the Railways as efficiently as people use the roads or air travel elsewhere in the world. Instead of bailing out Air India, bloody shut it down and use all that money to make a new track between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Calcutta. Just kill the Maharaja.

We have an excellent mesh of Railway network that just needs to be upgraded. There are hundreds of stations in just about an area of thousand kilometre square, which makes it the best point-to-point network that has ever been. More so, the Railways are an automatic way to reach from point A to point B, with minimum risk and fatigue. The advantages are way beyond what anyone could imagine. My point is, India needs a major infrastucture investment in the Railways and not the highways.

Consider this article from SCIAM. The article points to the fact that selfish drivers would do better in an environment of less convenience rather than in an environment that was better suited to their needs. The very fact that they tore down a highway between two points in Seoul and increased the traffic efficiency, is indicator enough of how things can churn out.

Consider the fact that India invests another hundred thousand crores on the highways. It would only add more pressure on the cities and that now the infrastructure is available, fuel prices would go up for want of use of the highways. Instead, let’s build more railway tracks. Here’s what we could do:

• Build more railway tracks – upgrade two lane tracks to four lanes between major junctions
• Upgrade all single tracks to a minimum of two lane tracks
• Re-enforce all bridges along major railway tracks or build alternate bridge routes with hard deadlines
• Increase the number of central stations that exist in a city – upgrade normal stations to central (or junction) status to de-pressurize the number of passenger boardings on central or city or junction stations
• Increase the number of general class coaches to a minimum of 10 coaches in short distance trains and a minimum of 5 coaches in long distance trains. Right now, there are at most 3 general coaches in both long and short distance trains.
• Reduce the number of classes – abolish coupe class, abolish AC first class, abolish First Class (2 tier sleeper)
• Do away with Pantry cars and catering services – focus on what we have to do – travel.
• Make mandatory electrified routes between all major stations: Delhi – Lucknow, Bangalore – Chennai, Mumbai – Pune (which doesn’t even have a train route yet), Bangalore – Hyderabad, Bhopal – Raipur, etc.
• Ensure that if there are more than 36 (half of the number of berths in a Sleeper Coach) waitlisted passengers, then all of them should be guaranteed a seat with extra coaches being added to the train.
• Run emergency trains to cater to any extra capacity required and increase the number of coaches/engines.
• Introduce Ultra-super-fast trains for long distances that would run on dedicated tracks and stop only at junctions
  • Target run-time of such trains should be less than 24 hours. It is doable:
  • From Jammu to Kanya-Kumari, the distance is approximately 3500 Kms
  • If a train runs at an average speed of 180 Kmph (which is a doable speed on a new dedicated track), it can do the distance in 19.5 hours.
  • Add to that any extra time taken for boarding/stopping/cleaning etc. and you have another 4.5 hours.
  • If the train stops at 12 points for an average of 15 minutes at every point (which is extremely sufficient), it would have used only 3 hours out of those 4.5 hours.

There are a million other things to do. If even half of my above wishes see light, we would see a much better India in future.