Curbing Corruption

I have many a times applied some 100 Newton force on my mind so that it vomits out any idea on how to curb corruption in our country and if the Railway ministry hears my words I might ascend a rung in my quest.
A week ago I was travelling from Sonpur to Surat by an express train. I was looking forward to a very hectic journey which was to last for more than 30 hours and to make things worse, my ticket was waitlisted. Two sleepless nights had switched on their vacuum and were sucking me in.
The TTE made his pocket heavy by Rs 300 and mine lighter by the same amount for allotting me an already empty seat for half the journey. That spared me a night and for the second night my well-wisher turned out to be the attendant who offered me a seat into the cupboard where they keep pillows and bed sheets. Robert Langdon would have surely succumbed there. That made me shed off Rs 150.
My dad had told me that at the station I may even bargain with the agents who sell tickets at more than double the actual rates. Overpaying again and again and yet again!
Was this all even necessary if the authorities had increased the no. of coaches in the train? The maximum number of coaches which a train can handle is 24, so why are only a few of them running at that number. Certainly increasing the number of coaches reduces the speed and the train takes more time to reach its destination but then how many Indian trains (except for Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express) make it on time. For the masses, ‘reaching there’ is more important than ‘reaching there quickly’. And then the authorities will say that it’s not economically viable. But can’t we ignore their economics and pay heed to the helplessness of people who have to travel. In fact, augmentation of capacity has been carried out in order to meet increasing demand in the past. The number of coaches on each train was increased to 24, from 16, which increased costs by 28% but increased revenues by 78%.
Since the max is 24, length of platform, stability of train on track and all these things come into limelight only when the number increases beyond 24. So why not make all the 17s and 20s 24.
My point here is increasing the number of seats will liquidate the petty bribe which we have to pay to the TTE. Corruption should be curbed from its root. If we start punishing the guilty more than half the government’s people or officials otherwise will come under the banner. Everyone as an urge to earn a little extra! People are fraudulent by force and not by will.

Colon P (:P)

December 2010

I was attending this English Creative Writing Competition at Mood Indigo in IIT Bombay. I entered the hall and asked for the topic of the event and in return got a supposedly rude answer to look on the board. The topic was boldly shining on the board – Colon P. Weird, isn’t it? Could we possibly write on so meagre a topic? From the looks of some of the fellow writers it seemed they had just come to while off. But I thought great writers can just write on any and every thing. And yeah, the word limit was 60-100 words.
The pen seemed too heavy to move. After ripping off parts of my brain I came out with this –


Dear Colon P (: P),

Thank God! You dropped into my life or else I would have had to write your ballooned form - Oooo....looo.....looo.....looooooo.....looo!

You are genX’s gesture and any SMS or chat message without you looks hollow. Your two characters stand tall and mighty enough to support the ladders of sweetness, cuteness, love and friendship. The tongue hanging from the side of your mouth in the form of text is a creativity which make my lips widen. When I win an online game against my friends I don’t say YESSS! I just write your name in the chat box.
When I first met you my face worked in automation to copy you. Your brothers are equally adorable. Do remember me.

Yours,

Homo sapiens

The Letter

December 2010

Dear ____X____,

You are my saviour, my friend and my life partner. You give me comfort and the ecstasy of embracing you each day reinstalls the functioning of my veins, arteries and capillaries. Every night you welcome this mentally tired man and in your arms I feel I am in a world detached from this world, soundless, sightless, only the loud thuds of my heart doing the talking. Every morning when I get up with you, my mind wanders for any and every reason not to let go off you. You are the reason why I dream.
But now I want to break up with you because you are making me lose focus of myself and my destiny. I am with you for more that a third of the day, much more than I used to be with you a year back and you still want more? During lectures I have to make sure the prof. doesn’t catch me cuddling with you. Out of the long list of questions I have for God, one will be why did I ever meet you? Don’t dare to reply back.

Yours,
Ankit

PS: X = Sleep; excessive amount of sleep has chained me to my bed in the last few months and as a result I gave birth to this article!

Delhi 2010: Triumph or Disaster

September 2010

"I will be very unhappy if the Commonwealth Games are successful because then they (the organisers) will start claiming to host Asian Games, Olympic Games and all these.”, said former sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. The statement speaks volumes about the ‘patriotism’ of the leaders of our country. This is an indication of how very united India is, just 45 days before the Games.
Agreed, that the Commonwealth Games is inching closer to being a faux pas rather than bearing the hallmark of success for India but can’t we Indians, take an optimistic approach and liquidate our accusations against the Sheila Dixit government. A bunch of corrupt personnel doesn’t make the whole system fraud. The frustrated lady CM ended up saying –“Aap mujhe jail bhejna chahte hain kya?”
Recently, I read this novel by Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol. The adrenaline laced, exhilarating book talks immensely about Noetic Science (for all those who haven’t heard the term before, it is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of mind and intuition). It said that a unidirectional nature of thought process from the masses can shift the substructures of any physical, real world process towards that thought process. Re-read what I have written to grasp the true meaning of the statement. So, if we people coalesce and hope for the Games’ speedy recuperation, I am sure Delhi can show a gleaming face to the world, in October.
Flashback 1,2,3………a few years down the line, did Delhi have a world class airport, more than 100 km of Metro network, the all new City Airport Terminal, the DTC’s green and red busses, the state-of-art stadia, red-light free Ring Roads…….its a Nile size list? In preparation, the Indian government has allocated a generous budget of well over US$1.6 billion – the largest yet for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) – to prepare the infrastructure and spruce up the capital ahead of the games. People are forgetting that CWG project has indeed given the capital a plethora of services. Can’t the people just take pride in what the project is giving the nation?

If the people continue with their flapdoodle, they will be proving that India has cities but no citizens. I can just add what Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight – “Night is darkest just before dawn, and the dawn is coming.” So let us unite to rename Beijing 2008 to Delhi 2010!

Father of all books: Facebook

August 2010


Started in 2004 in a dorm room of Harvard; Facebook now peeps into the dormitory of ‘almost every institution of the world’ and beyond.

50,00,00,000 – 50 crores is the number of people who are the enthusiastic users of the website. Every time we surf the net, an automated reminder system comes to life guiding our fingers to type f-a-c-e-b-o-o-k-.-c-o-m before leaving. From everyday conversations to ‘googling’ quotes, we try to capture a phrase so as to make it our facebook status message. We are so embroiled in writing on walls, poking, commenting, ‘liking’, tagging etc. etc. that we don’t even get enough time to think about how these petty things are changing the way we live.

The reason why the website is way ahead of its counterparts is that it gives unprecedented access to public figures and celebrities, has never-ending game list, allows photo and video sharing, tweeting, chatting, mailing all in a single environment. In India, till now we have seen facebook only as a platform for social networking. Not many of us know that Chris Hughes, co-founder of facebook helped Barack Obama in his ‘online election campaign’ via facebook.

Talking about money, most of Facebook's revenues come from Credits and advertisements that are displayed on the website's various applications. Facebook Credits is a program and ‘virtual currency’ that users use to buy ‘virtual goods’ in games and applications on Facebook. A user receives 10 credits for every dollar that they spend and some percentage of the money goes to Facebook.

Facebook is certainly a creation in itself, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. Like Google has become synonymous with ‘search’, facebook will soon supersede the word ‘communication’. But the sorry part is, instead of the world taking over facebook, the latter is engulfing the former and people are forgetting that it’s only our ‘want’ and not ‘need’.

And So It Begins!

July 2010


As I entered the domains of Kumaon Hostel, I had the same feeling I once had while entering Durgadas House in Mayo. Looking for my name on the notice boards, I searched for Rancho & Raju. It was a deja vu moment for me keeping in mind that '3 Idiots' had already released. It seemed that the hostel was waiting for me. Kumaon also has its own family of Megabyte, Gigabyte and Kilobyte.

On the very first day I stupidly locked my cupboard with a click lock leaving my keys inside. Thanx to DJ, Deepak, Anurag and Arpit, who were like 'friends in need and friends indeed' ,helped me through.

"I welcome you all to the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi", the name sounded much more heavier when it came out of the IIT Delhi's Director's mouth. We were seated in the historic Dogra Hall for our first orientation program. Probably this was the moment, I was unknowingly waiting for, since the past 2 years. Putting it is Isshaan Ghosh's words, I was in the college of my dreams. Stupid thoughts rained in my mind - "what if this place was bombarded with missiles, the country would lose a some hundreds of geeks!"

My course coordinator's name is Sunil Pandey. The prof tells ,in a very dissimilar fashion in which Pramod Kumar Ranwaka told us that he had taught Vivek Oberoi in Mayo, that he has taught Chetan Bhagat. The former was lying beyond a shadow of doubt. The words were sharply thrown from his mouth but became blunt before reaching our ears. And then came one of his famous lines - "I am a kind of professor who produces only Rachos and not the Chatur Ramalingams." Hmmm, impressively said!

Devesh, Yuvraj, Parth etc. etc. were amongst the few people who had asked me "Ragging ho gayi?" as if it is an official and a prestigious event. Ragging is no where inside the periphery of Kumaon. 'Culture' is a word synonymous with the house.