Sikkim Weeps...

The other day I got a phone call from a friend. He puts up in Passendam , a remote village in North Sikkim. A series of Hydro Electric Power Projects are coming up in the region. The villagers mostly Lepchas by origin have been protesting against them. But it has been falling on deaf ears. So they had to resort to drastic measures. Three of them are now on a hunger strike for the last 8 days. Click on the link for more details.

http://weepingsikkim.blogspot.com/

I wouldn't have heard about the hunger strike had it not been for my friend. I haven't seen any newspaper in Delhi or any major media channel covering it. Is covering marriages of celebrities more important for our media? Why do we alwys need a Medha Patker for the nation to wake up and listen. All that these people want is to be heard. It is very sad that in the 60th year of our independence even that is proving to be difficult.

the bench

I have always loved this bench at the electrical canteen (DCE). Have spent many memorable hours sitting there ...Eating piping hot samosas... Listening to Ankit's funny one lines and Neeraj's latest funda.... Planning out the next Daru Party.. Discussing the eccentricities of the teachers of our department..... and yeah staring (mind u not ogling)....


Now, there is a particular way of sitting on it. The bench has a table attached to the back rest. So you place your bottom on the table and put your foot where your are supposed to place your bottom. For your back there is the wall...

I dunno for how much time it wud be there.. may be someday someone might throw it away calling it an eysore.. or it just might give up on its own... I just hope that it doesn't happen soon... Electrical Canteen would lose its charm without it...

Zeher Khurani......

"Zeher Khurani Giroh Se Saawdhaan" screamed a warning written in bold letters inside the bus...It was hard to miss it.. especially if u were sitting on the front seat ... It was March end and I was going to Rishikesh with friends....

Zeher Khurani..... Dramatic scenes started flashing though my mind... Our bus rambling along a deserted highway..... fields on both sides.... Suddenly the bus driver sees a barricade on the road.. The bus screeches to halt.. In no time men apear from the fields brandishing their swords..... Turbans on their head...Red tikka on their forehead.... They kick open the door and swarm into the bus..... shouting Zeher Khurani Zindabad!!!! Kali Maiyya ki Jai !!!!

Off goes the head of the driver in one swish of the Sword.. The conductor also meets the same fate...then their Sardar points the tip of his sword on the chin of a pot bellied Seth and shouts "Tum Logon Ke Paas Jo bhi Kimti Saaman hai de do"..

Wow! The trip promised nothing less than a bollywood potboiler of the 80s.. but much to my dismay the journey was as boring as ever..... except probably that brief moment of panic when the police chaps came to check luggage... I thought they would discover our booze and confiscate it... fortunately no such thing happened...

Anyways later I found out about the Zeher Khurani Giroh.. They are a group of people who specialise in drugging people and running away with their valuables.. Baah! We live in such an boring world...

My fanged brother

It sometimes amuses me that most of the kids living in my block known the name of my dog and probably none of them know mine.. I once heard one of them calling me "Jojo waale Bhaiya" ... Jojo is incidently the name of my dog.. An adorable alsation*.... unfortunately this is something which very few people appreciate..usually getting terrified by the stream of barks he lets out moment they press the doorbell...

He came to us some 6 years back.... appeared as the runt of the litter.... and so was probably ignored both his by mother and the former owner... yet he had this mischveous glint in his dark brown eyes... something that remains till today...

His hard to imagine life without him now... his daily walks, the ticks which somehow always get stuck to his body, his fondness for icecream, the scores of rats he has killed, his welps pleading us to switch the air conditioner on ...and the look of sheer exhilaration on his face whenever he sits in the car (as if the whole "pack" is on a hunting expedition)... He has become an integral part of our lives....


P.S -I don't have his picture with me on the comp.. will upload it moment i have it.... and yeah the blog is now public

(*) Alsation and German Shephard both refer to the same breed... they are often mistaken to be different

Frustrated...

I have learnt two things during the past few days..
1. Past is not always a precursor to future..
2. Jogging is the best thing to do when u r frustated..

I am frustated.... Frustated about nothing happpening my way over the last few days.. absolutely nothing.... I have this horrible habit of not taking such things too well.. and this makes it worse..

and yeah jogging does make u forget ur woes for the time being...So i have started doing that... every evening ..At least this way I'll lose weight ....

Of small things and the greater good

A friend of mine is a big fan of Arundhati Roy.... He keeps quoting portions from The God of Small Things (TGOST) time and again.... His passion for the book rubbed on to me and I finally read TGOST a few weeks back ... and loved it...

During my School days I remember reading an essay by Arundhati Roy in the Outlook.. It was on the Narmada Dam... I read it again today and could probably appreciate it more than I could as a teenager ... Here is the link...

The Greater Common Good

I am not exactly a great fan of Arundhati Roy the activist... However the essay does make you think... about how a villager is denied his "basic rights" to give the urbanite his "basic comforts" .....about how the first world still rules the third world... about how we conveniently say that the "Natural Resources" belong to the country.... about how our policy makers have been ignoring conventional wisdom over the years.... and about how little we know about our fellow countrymen...

I intend reading more by Arundhati Roy soon.... but definately not today.. My(a) head is spinning.... the article was really thought provoking...

P.S- The blog already has 4 readers ... will invite more people soon...

An uncertain start..

It's not that I always wanted to have a blog.. neither it is that my mind is like a caged bird desperate to be free.. and neither is my mind brimming with ideas and thoughts... and i don't think i write well either... Starting a blog was just a sudden thought... a sudden desire for no reason.... something that has guided the 21 (soon to be 22) years of my existence..

This may exactly be the thing the confused contradictory person that I am needs.... may be I need a medium to pour my heart out... may be I need to find out what I am really passionate about... may be I need to discover people... may be I need to discover me...

and now that i have created one, I plan to be sincere about it.. I am usualy sincere about very few things.. I hope this blog would be one of them..

As of now i plan to keep this blog as private.... not planning to invite anyone to see it.... May be with time that might change...