fried idlis.....yumm

I have got used to eating out so often, probably situations forced me to, but nevertheless no regrets!!

best places to eat............. not in any specific order though

• Sangeeta's - fried idlis, sambhar vada's, rasa vada's
• Ashok pan shop - Anna Nagar - Spl Sandwich, Masala thumbs Up, Cheese Puff
• Gangotree - Chaat - all types, esp the curd varieties
• Shiridi - Behind stella maris - good food, good view (;P) ....unlimited
• Outside Alsa Mall - Sandwiches
• Vishranti - besant nagar - just about anythin

Am no great foodie, and i don't experiment much... but then who wouldn't love good food?

back to cycling...back to life

Often i've noticed in my frens house...or wherever, there is a lifeless cycle that lies in corner with spiders, cobwebs and dirt for company...

Ever since i got my bike, my obsession with cycling, walking, running and traveling by public transport has faded....and in the corner of my house lied a lifeless cycle...

I remember, remember the days when i used cycle to school, speeding through the morning bustling roads and honking horns (aaarrrghh!) .......... i never wanned to be late, esp to chemistry class (I loathed chemistry as a subject, not that i liked others - i just hated them), which was always a special class every day without fail. And as chemi ma'am(the most sincere person ever, who tried hard to make some chemical reaction in my head and make it work - I'd dedicate a post to her RDS someday) put it... if no one came to class on the time she'd indicated, she'd rather start teaching d walls (I had a secret desire to catch her doing that, but unfortunately the bright "brainy" and budding kids of Hindu would nevertheless make it on time), and so as ever it always ended with me panting & rushing in.....

I remember, remember the time I graduated from an ugly but faithful "captian-paalkaran" cylce to a BSA SLR (it was d time of hercules MTB's with shox which i used to love). Now when i say graduated I mean that I inherited my brothers cycle - if u are a younger sibling probably, infact most likely you would have experienced the "hand-me-down" syndrome, where whatever your bro/sis used is passed on, right from dirty sneakers to cycles.... i'll probably write a separate post about the hand-me-down syndrome by itself.....


And yes, yes it feels great to get back air into the wheels of that rusty but trusty ol' cycle and pedal away.......into bliss.

India @ 60 - my first post

I started to write this on august 14, 2007 (in a word doc). the eve of india's independence....and it sees the light of day only today........ testimony that i am really lazy!

It's been quite a few years since I've got introduced to blogging. But I've never really blogged though i used to read a lot and post comments...

I always wanted to express and pen down my thoughts in a book and not a blog. Times have changed so have I.

To the point, though as a nation we tom tom about our achievements... frankly speaking I feel we've gone no where. The very legacy of the British rule stills holds good - Divide and rule. It's been 60 yrs more since ambedkar drafted the constitution, but we loom over the very same British raj .... "divide and rule". The only diff being that our blissfully happy politicians have taken us for a ride with reservation. It was ambedkars dream to bring equality through reservation, but I think it has failed to deliver.

Now we've advanced to religion based reservation... I mean how much more can you fragment the society. The blacks were slaves in the states, they never demanded reservation! the states doesn't have it.... aren't they a flourishing economy?

What I fail to understand is the how we manage to divide in the name of equality!

Also, some policy makers decide that the capability of certain people is only so much. To explain if you tell a guy passing is enough to get a seat, that's all he/she aims for, most often. Isn't that denial of knowledge/education? who decides the capabilities of whom? some moron decides you can score only this much since you belong to x caste. I've seen students doing just that by studying enough to just scrape through. Isn't that denial of their capabilities, isn't it limiting their capacity? People argue saying that your parents are educated whereas a guys a parents who have been stitching shoes all their lives cannot offer the knowledge that yours may...accepted in one way, they cannot teach at home.... but isn't teaching supposed to happen at school? does that mean our education system is flawed?

The worst arguement in this context that I've come across is where a person said your forefathers denied us, so we deny you... you pay back the loans they left on this society as you reaped the benefits earlier...what an utterly thoughtless, baseless idea? is this some tit for tat..

I love this country, a country that has accepted religions, cultures, langauages.... by nature India from ages has been very tolerant, be it the mughal invasion, european or any other, we've accepted them as leaders too. Is this a flaw of Hinduism? not it isn't, in fact this is what I like most. That we accept others... and will continue to do so...