IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

DEAR READERS,

I am greatly obliged by your great response towards my blog posts. Due to some commitments towards my civil services, I have not been able to successfully update my blog in the recent past following which I have decided to move on to Instagram for blogging given its more user friendly interface and ease of access for you. You can access my instagram profile through this link.

Thankyou for being such a great audience. This is not an end but the beginning of a new journey for achieving new destinations and keep moving on to find even better ones. THANKS.

Manipur... India's natural treasure unravelled

Finally, after the hectic mains examination i got a chance to visit Manipur, the place where my brother is posted and let me tell you it is nothing less than heaven. Though when I reached it was raining, still I managed to visit some places. And a small 3 day trip combined with early mornings and me getting up late with sun setting early coupled with rain gave me a time less enough to explore Manipur. However, I enjoyed every bit of it. Here are some of the photos of the places I visited and the food that I had there.

The one in the above picture is the Loktak Lake famous for phumdis grasses which make the Keibul Lamjao National Park on it, the only floating national park of the world. You can literally walk on these grasses.

This is the Bora (pakodas) and Chapori (tea) that we had at a small spot on one the phumdis.

Artefacts by Manipur craftsmen

There are more photos to come... there's more to story... Probably a video in the next post. Stay tuned.

We humans have failed as emotional beings!

So, it was a usual day for me. Woke up early, freshened up, had my breakfast and sat down with my modern history textbook to read the struggle for freedom. A fear, but more than that a feeling that can possibly be not described in words has been haunting me since the last night. My mind at unease, unable to concentrate, I pickup my phone and login to facebook & lo! here's the reason for the disquiteness.
My wall is filled with 2 majors feeds - Kathua & Unnao gang rapes. The incidents that had been a cause of my temporary state of insomnia last night. Lying on my bed, reading the story of the gory and horrendous rape and the cover up, an uncomfortable thought engulfs my mind. I am a brother, a son, a maternal uncle of a 6 yr old girl child, a good friend of a few ladies, possibly a father to a daughter in future, an aam aadmi (a common man) and ultimately a human being. And this thought of something similar happening to any of my acquaintances causes shivers to run down my body. A feeling that these words can partly describe. What's even worse? Think about the mental trauma the girls' families are going through. In one of the cases, a daughter, the victim, lost her father and in the other a father lost his daughter (the victim). Without the access to the corridors of power, they are just sculptures of mud without a soul - aam aadmis just like I am, just like you are and just like every other common citizen who still dreams of a Ram Rajya.
But alas! fools we are, because we don't have the access to corridors of power and hence even after being the victims, we are made the culprits so that people in power can create an apparent "Ram Rajya" for themselves and create a rhetoric for us fools to believe that their "Ram Rajya" is our "Ram Rajya".
I ask you a question! To what level can these so called "representatives" stoop down? (Note that I am intentionally not calling them politicians because the fault is ours that we chose them and they represent us, our mentality, our thoughts. Yes, I voted for them, you voted for them, we all did.) Well, I have no words to describe. You can gauge it, just as I did, with the fact that these "representatives" have been shielding the culprit and not in just one but both the cases. I ask you another question! How far can these "representatives" go? If at all God had  created boundaries for them because laws are for aam aadmis not for those in corridors of power. Crossing all the limits, they gave the Kathua incident, a communal tinge. And alas, we fools, we aam aadmis were made a prey to the rhetoric again so much so that a few amongst us supported the rapists amidst slogans of "Jai Shri Ram". I am a proud Hindu and a proud Indian and I am well aware that neither my religion nor my country teaches me to shield criminals in the name of God.

I am saddened to the core. My soul is crying from within. I want to do something about it but I can't. I am powerless because I am a foolish aam aadmi. 

Amidst all the communal tension and atrocities on women and the way it is being handled, I have started losing faith in Governance and the Government and ultimately in humanity. But yes! the only thing in which I have developed strong faith is - in petty politics. Yes! It can do wonders. Needless to give examples. I have been blabbering for quite sometime.

The last time I could restore my faith in humanity was during the 2012 Nirbhaya protests. I am waiting for something similar to happen to muster up my belief in humanity, believe that we still are rational emotional beings and not just puppets in the hands of political parties. A wave has been generated, this time not on the streets of Delhi, but on social media. And it seems to be apparently bigger than the 2012 one. I hope that this will force the govt to conduct a fair enquiry and punish the guilty while also setting a strong precedent for people with sick mindset who use their power illegally to shield their ills.

As I pickup my book to read the struggle for independence, I am reminded of the India our freedom fighters dreamt of, a Ram Rajya for which they sacrificed their lives. I am sure none of them  wanted and none of us would want our country to remain this way - a country where women's dignity is at stake. We have gained freedom after a long strife. Let's not waste it. Let's save the world's largest secular democracy from dying. I have faith in my fellow countrymen, in the laws and in judiciary. Sooner or later they will make us regain faith in us humans as emotional beings.

The Unforgettable 90s - Part III (TV Serials)

So, I recently came across a petition being signed on a site requesting to release the episodes of one the most revered sci-fi TV program of the 90s - Yes!! you guessed it right. Its Captain Vyom.

Courtesy: Wow Teens

Kids, teenagers and youngsters - all became fans of this program. There were many such programs encompassing a wide spectrum of genres like music, drama, thriller, horror, comedy, fictional, superheroes, religious, magic shows, detectives etc. To name a few - among dramas we had serials like Shanti, Kora Kagaz and others aired on DD Metro's 9 Gold. Rib tickling comedy shows like "Mere Samne wali khidki", "Office Office", "Meri Mrs Chanchala", "Tu tu mai mai", "Nukkad", "Shriman Shrimati" made us burst into laughter until our belly started hurting.

We had a couple of superheroes to save our day - "Shaktimaan", "Captain Vyom", "Junior G" etc. However, such shows had a negative impact on the kids then. Such shows were the talk of the town and many of the kids lost their lives imitating superheroes like Shaktiman. But then, Shaktimaan also emerged as the saviour with his - Choti Choti magar moti baatein (small but useful tips). And then........... there were serials like "Aahat" which scared the hell out of us. Musical shows like "Surabhi", "Chitrahaar", "Antakshari" combined music & entertainment in a unique way.

Among thrillers and detective shows, "Tehkikat", "Byomkesh Bakshi" and "Raja aur Rancho" were two of the famous shows. And who can forget those all time favorite fictional shows like "Alif Laila", "Betal Pachisi", "Chandrakanta" etc. Among the religious shows - "Jai Hanuman", "Om namah Shivaay", "Mahabharat" became an integral part of the religious lives of the people so much so that when these shows were aired people used to pray in front of their TV sets with Puja plates in their hands and believe me at the time these shows were broadcast the streets lay deserted. 

However, times have changed since late 2000s. With the flooding of TV shows and the coming up of the concept of TRPs TV serials have lost their originality and have become repetitive in the bid to give it a tinge of suspense. Characters respawn in a bid to stretch the story. Adding more spice to the story making it more fictional than realistic to garner more TRPs led to deterioration in the quality of episodes. However, the best thing about the TV shows of 2000s was that they mostly revolved around the concept of social evils with most of them giving women the central role. Such drama shows focused on social evils like child marriage, female foeticide, poverty etc.

Comedy shows stooped down to a level where vulgarity became common in the jokes of the comedians. Sci-fi shows became almost non existent and fictional shows in their new avatar could not recreate the glory of the older ones and hence faced failures. Even mythological shows tried to recreate the same aura as the older ones but in vain. The younger generation born during the 2000s have lost interest in such shows which during our times kids used to watch with exorbitant zeal. Today reality shows are the talk of the town. But with so many reality shows being aired on so many TV channels, the winners seldom gain much popularity. 

This is not to say that today channels do not air quality TV programs but that the quality has degraded for sure. Though interests have changed but most of them have been moulded because of the lesser "variety" of options available with the people. Earlier a single channel had a complete spectrum of program running 24X7. Today, channels have resorted to niche shows. With too much of advertising the experience has also degraded. All these reasons have led youngsters to quit watching TV and spend more time watching web series on the internet.

We are heading towards a time where saturation seems to be evident. The new trend that is emerging is oriented more towards the internet. In such a scenario TV channels must learn from the programs of 90s which with more originality were more entertaining.

The Unforgettable 90s - Part II (Technology)

Casettes, Floppy Discs, Walkman, Radio transistors, a Black & White TV connected to either an antenna or a big dish. This was the list of gadgets one (apparently from the lower middle class) used to own in the 90s. 

I can still recall that moment when a good friend of mine living in my neighbourhood then bought a color TV in the late 90s and got a cable connection. His father used to call all of the children in the colony (including me obviously) and played new movies through his VCR. Sometimes, just for fun, he called us for a cartoon movie, he used to play horror movies, and by turning the lights off, increasing the volume and creating an "environment" which blended perfectly with the movie, we got the worst of a nightmare then but they were also the sweetest of our memories in the making. We even used to throng in front of his TV sets to watch some popular cartoon shows on Cartoon Network. 

For gaming, we usually played outside. But some of the boys had this hand held portable gaming console that became an object of show off. Nevertheless those "show-off boys" were kind enough to let us play on those devices but for limited time. I got one only in the mid of the first decade of 2000s when it became dirt cheap due to the increasing demand of modern gaming consoles and decrease in demand of these devices.

For music, we had only a few options. Music shows with fixed timings on Doordarshan and Cassettes were the most common ones. We did not have the luxury of creating a virtual playlist and listening to them just through a single touch. For us, more common and cheaper was the method of recording songs on blank casettes. We then wrote the complete list of songs (recorded in those casette) on the cover paper of the casette. But wait! finding shops that recorded songs was again a gargantuan task. After all this we felt as if we had earned the song and this added to the experience we had on listening the songs.

Everyone had their own set of cassettes. My father being more theistic brought cassettes of sermons of saints etc. I, my sister and my brother had a collection of songs recorded on those cassettes. And wait! we didn't have video cameras then and so my father recorded the voices of my childhood days on a cassette and believe me its way more soothing to listen to such recordings than to see your own childhood videos. And owning these cassettes did not mean that we could play it whenever we liked. We, unlike today, had no earphones. So, playing music was in no way a secret task. When it played, everyone in the home knew that it was playing. And, so our opportunities of listening to songs were limited. We literally earned these opportunities when our parents let us play these songs after a few hours of study.

We even did not have telephones at that time, leave alone smartphones. Only the richer ones could afford to own it and so the world was not so much connected as it is today. This was also one of the reasons why more common among ours were the games like cricket, badminton, carom, ludo etc and not counterstrike, clash of clans, subway surfers, candy crush or temple run. Personally, I came to know about PC games only in 2007 when I first saw some 8 bit games on display during one of the exhibitions in my school (though I knew about Mario but it was the only game that I knew about). It was during the late 90s and early 2000s that game parlours became the new buzz in town where we bought "coins" to play such games like mario and contra. Seriously, we had to go through a lot of scoldings just to get to play in these parlours.

The list is never ending. This world, though, now more advanced and modern will not be the same for us technologically. Any 90s kid would be ready to surrender all his gadgets that he owns now to travel back to the era of 90s where we owned less but were more happy. Ah! Those days... its really difficult to pen down those memories in words.

The unforgettable 90s - Part I (Music)

"Aankhon mein", "Maine payal hai chankayi", "Made in India" are few of those innumerable songs listening to which gives us goosebumps even today, drawing us into the remnants of those memories, making us nostalgic and producing a craving in this soul to go back to the same phase with the same people around it but without this so called "Modern" world of bassy songs, "cool" gadgets and consoles. Such a time travel is not possible for sure but what remains with us are memories - memories of a world that every 90s kid would love to visit given a chance.

Yes, our songs did not have exotic locations to boast of, neither did they have high quality audio and videos but believe me, those songs were way much more worthy than those of the present time. Sure, the present time songs have variety of instruments, random bass drops, electronic fusions, autotunes and what not but still they are no match to the quality of songs of 90s enriched with meaningful lyrics and better voice modulations than what is being done by technology today.

Not only the songs but the gadgets to listen to these songs were such that they made the listening experience even more delightful. We didn't have pen drives, neither iPods nor smartphones. All we had were Walkmans, MP3 CDs and casettes and tapes to play them. Walkman & mp3 CDs were generally priced high and the "purchasing power" of most of us being low, we had to go for casettes that we often had to buy by collecting the meagre pocket money we got. Sometimes we even had to hide the casettes that we bought without the consent of our parents and played them only when they went out. The experience of listening to songs on the walkman of my "rich" friends is as inexplicable today as it was 15 years ago. 

We waited impatiently for programs like "Rangoli", "Chitrahar" to be broadcast on TV. We had a show like Indian Idol of ours that was called "Antakshari". The timings of these shows and hence the timings for listening music were fixed and this raised the levels of our excitement making us wait for these programs more eagerly.

We also have some similar memories from the early 2000s where we were introduced to newer music channels and cable TVs. I still remember that time when me and my friends gave each other a missed call when the others' favorite song was being aired on TV. Then we only had a handful of music channels like Channel V, MTV, B4U music. It was our version of Saavn and Gaana.

But Alas! Times have changed. Today, that zeal, that enthusiasm and that excitement to listen to songs has faded with globalization bringing in the latest technology, the growing demand for greater accessibility and ease of listening to songs. I am happy that we have moved ahead technologically. But somewhere, in this bid to come at par with the developed world, we have lost our originality, technology has taken prominence and vocals a backseat.

The fact remains that we grew up listening to music which finds little ears today. That music has died a sudden death in the music industry but left with itself a decade of awesomeness that will remain evergreen in the hearts and memories of the kids who have been through the golden era of the 90s. Memories which such souls will cherish for a lifetime. Memories, which will bury only with their soul.

LIFE IS SO ENIGMATIC!!

How dubious can life be? Well you may enumerate to me a 100 incidents where people of young age, pretty healthy and fit succumb to some common incidents that are avoidable or those that occur due to someone's fault. But what if I say I've seen a young, fit person in his mid 20s battling for a rare disease that has affected only a few people - a number so less that you can count them on the finger tips of just one hand. Yes, you read it correct. My friend, my college roommate was the fifth one in the world (according to the doctor) to get this rare disease - "sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis (SEP)". You may search it on the internet to find there's nothing grave about this disease and that my claim of my friend being the fifth one is factually baseless. But what I want to say is that his problem doesn't end but it starts here.

As a result of this SEP, a part of his intestine was affected by gangrene. Doesn't sound grave enough?? Remember Nirbhaya's case? Her intestine got damaged because it became gangrenous after it was contaminated due to the metal rod inserted in her intestine. Got some chills now? Though Nirbhaya's was the worst that can happen to a person. But the condition of my friend is no better because its not just SEP but gangrenous SEP as we may call it. 

What I want to point out here is that how can life be so cruel, so harsh, so rustic to a person so jolly? Just a fortnight ago, I had a chat with him and he was all fine. As usual, we talked about our UPSC preparation, I inquired about the status of work in his office and everything was fine until suddenly he stopped replying to my calls and messages only to know that he has been admitted to a hospital in Bangalore and was in a serious condition after he reported ache in his abdomen. As of now (23 july 2017) he has undergone 3 surgeries within 10 days, with the third one being the most critical - open stomach surgery" and the only one who can save him now is, you know who, GOD!!!

We are so critical about our life, always complaining, always crying. To achieve what we crave for we leave issues like health, family etc on the backseat. To achieve what? - Satisfaction. We tend to remain unhappy with what we have, with what we have achieved and there's always a craving in the heart to get a little more. But do we ever ponder, do we ever think that there's more to life than just achievements, there's more to life than what we want to become.

True, the fault is not ours. The system in which we grow up moulds us to be like that. In a bid to grow "better than the others" what we miss is the moment we live in, the people we spend time with, the memories that would remain to be cherished for a life time. What do we do then? We compete to be "good" then to be "better" and then become the "best". We may become achievers, people will remember us but that remembrance will be temporary, short lived and the next time some other person achieves the same fete, our name will be a forgotten one. Deep down under there will remain a soul so hollow that, time and again it will pinch us for not living the moment.

Thankfully, I had tried to live my college days to the fullest and so I had spent some quality time with my friend the same as he did. His bond with some of the other college mates is so strong that they are spending days and nights putting in relentless efforts with the only hope that their efforts will make a huge difference - and I believe it will. Writing this post teary eyed, I have nothing to say except that there's much more to life than wasting it criticizing people, things around us etc. Experiences teach us much more than books or internet can. And with this incident i've learnt that the only mantra to live a life to the fullest is to be happy, to do better but not to crave for it so much so that you forget enjoying the good moments that make memories for a life time because there are many means to achieve an end. What matters is the means that you choose.

Ending this post with a hope that tomorrow would be better than today for my friend, for me, for you and for everyone. And yes a small request - Please pray for him. Why? Because when medical science fails, prayers heal. Amen.

STAY HAPPY! STAY BLESSED!