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.