Gujarat riots = genocide, Bhopal gas tragedy =?

If you call it Gujarat genocide what will you call Bhopal gas tragedy which has more than 20,000 people died, 5.7 lacs of people injured and still infected and new generation is also effected? Where are Tista Setalwads? Medha Patkars? Arundhati Roys?

aamiro ki suno

aamiro ki suno vo tumhari sunega, tum ek kar rahat doge wo lakho fund dega! congress ka hath aur bjp ka kamal dono amiro ke sath. garibo ko subsidy. who is looking after middle class? Middle class is divided into lower middle class- upper middle class, Hindu-Muslim, Marathi-Bhaiya, Shahrukh-Anti Shahrukh...            

middle class is so much divided that there is no party who cares for it as it is not strong vote bank.

Now there is need to get together for middle -class also. Will there be any party formatted for middle-class only?

Amitabh and Narendra Modi : Rishtey Main To Hum Sab Ke...

Recently Amitabh Bachchan visited Gandhinagar and chief minister Mr. Narendra Modi for promotion of his own film ‘Paa’. They both have entered into mutual admiration club. Both praised each other in their respective blogs. Seeing both in above photograph, we can not restrain ourselves from comparising both. Following are similarities between them :

(1) Both keep grown beard (dadhi). Amitabh is having ‘Pa’ (in Gujarati, Pa = 1/4) dadhi while Mr. Modi has full beard.

(2) Amitabh has played most time character of Vijay who was always fought alone against system, against evils, against goons. He was always shown as ‘angry young man’. Gujarat chief minister has also got image like angry young man. He has fought alone. He has defeated all oppositants. However, characters played by Amitabh and also Amitabh himself and Mr. Modi have good sense of humour.

(3) Both hate media equally. Amitabh has written against media’s badmashi several times in his blog. Mr. Modi is known for media bashing. In many public speeches he has mocked media.

(4) Both are very workoholic. Their day starts very early with exercise and extends to late night.

(5) Both have their unique way to connect with ‘aam janta’. Both write on blog. However, Mr. Modi is unable to keep it update at regular interval.

(6) Both are literature lover.

(7) Both have good voice. Both are good orator. When they speak audience get hypnotized. Both have speaking eyes.

Another point. When Amitabh came to visit Gandhinagar, same day Amar Singh had resigned from Samajwadi Party posts. Connecting both these things, media made a story that ‘Shahenshah’ of silver screen is coming close to ‘Janta Raja’ (a play on Shivaji which was liked by Modi). This table story may be or may not be true. However, where Amitabh is finding himself, it is quite understood that he may have good relation with politians, as Shahrukh has good relation with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Amitabh had good relation with congress when there was Rajiv Gandhi. But after that both - Gandhi and Bachchan family relations were not so good and in the troubled days, Amitabh found Amar Singh as great friend. However, he remained far from entering politics again, but let his wife to enter in politics and winning Rajya sabha seat. But now as Amar Singh is distancing himself from Samajwadi party, may be Amitabh has decided to come close to Mr. Modi who is quite powerful in BJP.

Amitabh had expressed his desire to become brand ambassadar of Gujarat. However, Modi doesn’t need any brand ambassader till he is there in Gujarat. But BJP can think to make Amitabh party’s brand ambassadar. Here are the reasons : (Please note that there is emphasis on ‘image’ word.)

(1) Amitabh is familyman. If said affair with Rekha is excluded, Amitabh has retained his imaga as one woman-wife man. He was his parent’s son. He has friendship like relation with his son Abhishek. And if we ignore past of Aishwarya, she can be fit for ideal Bahu.

(2) He is very disciplined person. very cultured man. Always speaks Shuddh Hindi. He asserted for Shuddh Hindi in ‘Big Boss season-3′ too. Dilip Kumar whom BJP and its sister organisations will like to identify as Yusuf Khan, Javed Akhtar, Shahrukh Khan always speak Hindi with big doze of Urdu. Amitabh has very good manners in comparision to Shahrukh. Shahrukh is very outspoken and often insults his seniors in bollywood too. Amitabh doesn’t look like proudy man.

(3) He can be seen visiting temples here and there with family. Thus, he is very ‘religious’ man too.

(4) He is competing ‘Khan’ brigade like Shahrukh, Salman, Amir, Salman at this old age too...

Thus, if BJP and Amitabh join hands, they will be benifited mutually.

(To read this post in Gujarati click : http://jaywantpandya.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/અમિતાભ-બચ્ચન-અને-નરેન્દ્/)

70s-80s : Ballbottom, Maxis, HMT Watches, Fiat...etc.

Below text I got from my US based friend named, Nilesh Trivedi. It contains very nostalgia factors of 70s-80s.

Here’s a reality check for those of us who grew up in the 70’s & 80’s in India !

1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 5-8 years, you were very proud of your first “Bellbottom” or your first “Maxi”

2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes. You can also nod your heads to names like Chandamama, Champak, Lot-Pot, Nandan. The brainy ones read “Competition Success Review”.

3. You took pride in turning to the back page of your latest Amar Chitra Katha and ticking off yet another title. How many ever you ticked, you still had many to go.

4. Your “Camlin” geometry box & Flora pencil was your prized possession.

5. The only “Holidays” you took were to go to your grandparents’ or your cousins’ houses.

6. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla softy in a cone or at most - a Choco Bar if you lived in a swanky town.

7. Your first family car ( and the only one) was a Fiat. Or an ambassador. This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going.

8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at the two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The window went down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to pull it down. Locking the door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky,non-rotary handle downwards.

9. Your mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all the windows of the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad was the comfort-oriented kind, you had a magnificent small fan upfront, below which screwed to the board was the cassette player.

10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You “earned” yours after 8th or the 10th standard exams.

11. You have been to “Jumbo Circus” ; have held your breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the “Mautka Gola” and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms!

12. You have atleast once heard “Hawa Mahal” on the radio.

13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn’t have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered
little if you knew the owners or not.

14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two side clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!

15. Black & White TVs weren’t so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.

16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own ( the family’s; not your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started. Everyone else got the same idea as well and ever since, no one came over to your house and you didn’t go to anyone else’s.,

17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the T V. After all how much “Shashtriya Sangeet” can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn’t smile during the mourning.

18. You knew that “Indira Gandhi” was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that’s all you needed to know.

19. The only “Gadgets” in the house were the TV, the Fridge and the Mixie..

20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers...

21. Movies meant Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory “newsreel”.

22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and BoneyM

23. You had a turntable “stereo” and a collection of LP Records.. Your hormones went crazy when you bought “Disco Deewane” by Naziya Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.

24. You couldn’t contain your happiness when you suddenly had knowledge of Grammy awards and Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper & OMG even
Michael Jackson became familiar names.

25.. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.

26.. Photograph taking was a big thing.. You were lucky if your family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation & “setting” & the “posing” for each picture. Therefore, you have at least one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention!

(To read this post in Gujarati,click : http://jaywantpandya.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/વો-લમ્હેં-વો-પલછિન-હમ-કો-યા/)

Mobile, email, facebook, orkut : Where is the etiquette?

(To read it in Gujarati, click : http://jaywantpandya.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/મોબાઇલ-ફેસબુક-હાઇ-પ-ઓર્કુ/)
Orkut, facebook, hi 5, mobile phones...there is no doubt in it that we are getting hi fi day by day by way of technology, but the big question is the aticate or manners in use of these things.

Now evey Tom, Dick and Harry has mobile phones because they have become so cheap. (Ofcourse, I am talking from price point of view!) But where is the true way of using it? The Bhartiya caller will ask first (in Gujarat, I have marked this thing particularly), ‘Who are you?’ Man, you have called. You should first tell your identity. Ok. Many a times, it happens that after asking ‘who are you?’ he will ask you to give phone some body else. (He will order it, not request). If you want some another person, why did you ask for my identity? Some people will ask after calling, ‘Where are you?’. Buddy, after getting call, I am not in heaven that is for sure. There may be no connection between the intention of calling and the location of receiving person. And many callers also do not bother whether the receiver is realy have time to talk.

Another interesting thing happens is that you have gone personally to meet some Mr. Joy. Now Mr. Joy gets a call on his mobile. Now you become less important for Mr. Joy, but the person who is calling from distance gets importance. What a tregedy! And it is not sure that the conversation will take short time.

Now take sms services. In language of Himesh Reshamiya, fabulous, mind blowing, fantastic that is what we can say about sms service. So fast, so quick, so speedy! But many sms writers forgets or do not bother to write his or her name at and of sms. They take it for granted. Ofcourse, it may happen that sms senders number is saved or even not saved.But even if it is saved, many a times name is not shown in sms or call. Lets assume that sms sender writes his name only. Will it be suffice? No. there can be many person having similar names. He or she should write his or her full name with some fact revealing identity. e.g. Vijay Malhotra, de. manager, SBI.

Now come to email. Many persons just forward emails without deleting the previous persons’ email address and other details. It can be some time dangerous or even some time mischief can be happen as receiver can get email ids of so many people in one mail and you can not say with full confidence that receiver is 100% good person.

In social networking sites like orkut, facebook and hi5, every Tom want to be friend of Dick. Just click on button- add friend and request is reached. Mahesh becomes friend of Ramesh and sees that Nilesh is friend of Ramesh, sends friendship request to Nilesh. Now not necessarily Nilesh is knowing Mahesh. Whenever I get this type of friendship request in orkut or facebook, I send message, ‘Do we know each other? Yes, then how?’ If the requesting person gives appropriate answer than and only I approves him or her. But one case happened with me gets me laughing and same time annoying also.

One person requested me to become friend. I asked same question written above. It replied back with asking me who I am! I told it that I was journalist. Without telling about itself It replied me, ‘Welcome!’ 

Suchitra Krishnamurthy too says this...

Hey, I found support for my views at noisy celebrations or ceremonies in our country.

Read this :
http://www.suchitra.com/2009/06/the-5-am-wake-up-call/

Celebrations even though death!

On last Tuesday (22nd Sept.) evening, one of my relative staying in Vastrapur, Ahmedabad passed away. He was took for funeral at 8.30 pm. When we came back after last rituals, we were shocked to see celebrations of Garba were going on with loud music playing through loud speakers! Have we become so much insensitive that we forget one death in our society?

Please note that society is not too big and Garba were being played exactly opposite that block where death happened!

I remember one case of my life. It was of my childhood. In 1982-83 we were returning to our home at Ranavav, Dis. Porbandar in autorikshaw. Music was being played in rikshaw. As there was death of one old lady, staying exactly opposite our home, music was stopped as soon as we entered in gally where our home was located.

Really time has much changed! Today's people believe in one mantra - Jalsa Kar Bapu Jalsa Kar.