Anna Hazare: Assassin or Saviour?

The following article was originally published on Infinity IIT Delhi website - http://infinityiitd.com/anna-hazare-assassin-saviour/

India is on the threshold of writing history; thanks to Anna Hazare and company. I respect Anna Hazare, but I am not a big fan of his attitude and his methods. The way Hazare is handling things is totally against a democratical form of government.

Our government is elected by electoral processes and not by mere revolt by a group of people.

A law is made by the discretion of the parliament, a body which is capable enough to amend and make laws. People can only suggest the parliament to make certain laws, not bully the institution. Who has given authority to Anna Hazare and his entourage to negotiate with the government? We are disrespecting our prime minister. Our acts are only demoralizing the government.

Right to Information act, a first of its kind bill was introduced by the present government only, and this is the reason the past decade saw so many scams being unravelled. Manmohan Singh is no fool. He is wary of the situation of the present government. He knows that letting in an extremist bill won’t be of much help. Making a new law won’t stop the people from taking or giving bribes. The mentality of the people needs to be changed. By punishing the criminal, crime cannot be liquidated.

 In the current situation, the system is diminished by the hollow ‘revolutionary’ gestures of the crowd. A nation’s general public collectively cannot make or amend laws. Only the representatives chosen by the public have the true power to make laws. A ‘crowd’ has no name, no accountability, no sense, and no brains. They are blind followers and sometimes even bought. Babri Masjid was demolished by a ‘crowd’; riots in Gujarat were an act by a ‘crowd’; the mass killings of 1984 were also initiated by a ‘crowd’. Thus, a crowd is not legitimate enough to support the bill.

Winning general public’s support or being popular doesn’t suffice to authorize someone with electoral rights. Hazare is setting a wrong example by taking public support into account to pass the Lokpal Bill. Tomorrow someone else will propose a new bill and tag it with public support. Baba Ramdev is a recent example of the same. The public is seeing only the bright side of the bill and doesn’t know the inner politics behind it. They are blindly supporting the ombudsman; half of them don’t even know what the Lokpal Bill is. We are ourselves weakening our institutions by our very own hands. The voice of Arvind Kejiriwal is not the voice of the whole country. He is imposing his thoughts in the name of public’s.

Anna says that Jan Lokpal Bill will reduce corruption by 65%. My take is – if all the people pledge not to give or take bribes, all businessmen pledge to honestly pay taxes, then corruption will reduce more drastically.

Comparing Anna to Gandhiji is disrespectful to the latter. Gandhiji fought against a foreign rule. Anna is fighting against a government chosen by the citizens of India. Gandhiji’s voice was solely his own, but Anna seems to be borrowing voices.

Anna Hazare has said what he had to, which has come to the notice of the whole nation and the government as well. Now he must rest his case and give the government enough time to complete the cause.

Precognition

The night was engulfed in black with little stains of white here and there. She had admired the night so many times that she didn't even give it a second look. Her heart was hammering so hard that it would explode any moment. There was chillness in the wind which was stopping her to take a step forward. Her eyes had swollen up due to the inevitable events which she had been circumventing till yesterday. She had wept to an extent that tears seemed just another body part. The train took a turn and she could see in the distance the reflections of the moon in the river. She gripped the bars more firmly. As the train took the bridge she slowly closed her eyes. Breathing deeply she offered herself to gravity. She jumped off the train into the cavity below. She could count the seconds in mid-air. She was floating, or was it the sensation one feels after dying.

                Akshita woke up from the terrifying dream. Her head was aching and she felt all wet in the abstract sense. It was 4 in the morning. She could not sleep thereafter. These dreams were tearing her apart day by day. She could no longer take them. Few hours later in the morning newspaper she read news of a girl who had committed suicide by jumping off a train over a bridge. How could this have happened? This couldn’t be true. This had happened to her herself in her very own dream. Or was she just trying to make a connection between her dream and the news? She needed to tell this to someone. She readied for the day and on her way to college called up Anchal, to meet her first thing in college.

                Akshita narrated everything to Anchal in the longest possible way. Anchal had hardly seen her best friend look so uncomfortable. She didn’t want to sound very serious or to upset her more so she simply told her that the connection seemed very vague. But this was not what Akshita was willing to hear. She knew no one would believe her because of the dreamlike element in her talk. Agreeing to Anchal she also tried pushing away the thoughts.

                Later that day Akshita went through the details of how the newspaper girl had come in terms with suicide and she found that she had had a harrowing time with her parents over some issue which wasn’t coming to light. Fear and anxiety had made their abode in her mind.

                The day had been somewhat unusual and tiring. It was quite late for her to go home and she couldn’t even find a public transport. Sauntering on the footpath she was somewhat surprised to see the road deserted except for the two guys behind. The two guys! They were following her since she had left work. Her heart missed a beat. She quickened her pace on the narrow pavement and kept looking over her shoulder at short intervals to check whether they had lost her trace. The men were only a few decade meters behind her. She could sense the uneasiness inside her.  She tried calling 100 but her call wasn’t getting through. She typed her whereabouts and her grim condition on her phone and selected the Send-to-many-option in such a hurry that she didn’t even know to whom she was sending the SMS. And the next moment she was running. Her action was reflected by her followers. But she couldn’t run. She tried all her might but the world seemed to have plunged into slow motion. The men now were only a few feet away from her. The last thing she remembered was her arms being held by a pair of wicked hands followed by her dreadful scream.

                Akshita woke up, all sweating. Her breaths were audible enough to confirm that she had had a stroke of asthma. But that wasn’t the case. Her mobile phone beeped. Who calls at 2 am in the morning? What? No? She knew what was coming. Reluctantly, she picked up her phone. It was an SMS from Anchal and it read – “m @ the crossing of mg road nd lxmi ngr. 2 men folwng me. SOS!”

                Terrified, she hurried out of her room and hastened to the colony police station on her two-wheeler, without even realizing that she had left her room open. There were exactly three policemen on duty, two of whom were dozing off and the third on the verge of drowsiness. It took her a good 20 minutes to shake off the cobwebs of sleep in them and convince them to come with her to Laxmi Nagar crossing. Obviously she didn’t speak about the dream, covering the story with a fake call from Anchal. En route the crossing in the police vehicle, she tried calling Anchal for a third time but still the cell phone was switched off. Tension was spreading its roots inside her body. Retrospection of her dream sent shudders down her spine.

                They reached the exact place which Anchal had texted her. The place was indeed devoid of any living soul. Akshita climbed out of the jeep and began zooming in her eyes in all possible directions to get a sign of her friend. It didn’t take her long to locate a body lying beside a tree at a distance of a few meters from where they had parked the jeep. Her heart quickened its pace in accordance to her feet. She was running towards Anchal. The policemen followed her. Anchal lay there with scratches laced on her arms and her face all red. One of the policemen brought the jeep and they quickly took her to the nearby hospital. Akshita was weeping. Anchal lay unconscious on the seat of the vehicle. They headed straight to the emergency ward. From there the attendants took over. The receptionist asked Akshita what had happened. Akshita was not in a state to talk let alone explain the series of events. And what drove her mad was how she had come to know about Anchal’s condition. It was a precognition. Now she started fearing her own self. She didn’t want to sleep any more.

To be continued………

Dual Nature of My Heart

I look at her and then afraid of getting caught stealing a glance I pretend to look in a direction away from her. Then my eye balls start rolling to the side of the face and play a game of hide and seek. My detective grey cells spring to life and eye upon half a dozen other male members of the class playing the same game except that their neck plays the game instead of eyes. And then I chuckle at my fate. I know I can just be a distant admirer because the duality of my heart checks in to liquidate the flow of my emotions. The dual nature which was born in the recent past has become so mature at an early age that it just pisses me off.

The urge to be different and my ego keep me away from the pit of love. At an age when lust is always mistaken as love we tend to fall in this pit. The latter 4 letter l-word is a responsibility and carries a deeper meaning; meaning which our juvenile brain is not ripe enough to understand. Remembering a person sitting miles away, writing letters which carry superfluous meanings, giving presents, etc. is not love. Unbiased care and affection add to its meaning which is long forgotten in today’s definition of the word.

Just one practical class in a week and during that golden period also my heart doesn’t allow me to sketch the full image of her in my mind. And what about the other officious rodents who are always hungry for a petty chance to make their presence be felt? The look on her face manifests that even she is aware of their ‘ready to mingle’ approach. Like them, I also don’t need her but I just want her. The purity of thought which travels in me is so strong that in a world full of sycophants I feel diminished. But I am proud of this purity because this sets me way apart from others.

I often question myself - does she even know that I exist? Why is she so special to me? Is it her simplicity? Is it her smile? Is it her laugh? Or is it just her face? It’s actually the mere thought of her which brings to me joy and a tiny smile and also a bleak hope that one day she will become my responsibility. My heart skips a beat whenever she comes in my 5 meter radius. I am afraid that due to my non gregarious eccentricity this radius will take more than a lifetime to reduce to 1.

Tunisian Revolution 2010-11

A revolution had sparked in Tunisia in the December of 2010 against their then President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who is currently on the run. This revolution was the initialization to the falling monarchies of the Arab World which resembles the falling of dominoes.

Tunisia is a country in the northern part of Africa, smaller than the state of Karnataka. It first gained popularity during World War II when it was under the French rule. A major battle victory was accounted here for the Allied Forces led by USA. Tunisia achieved independence from France in 1957 and Habib Bourguiba was declared its first President. In 1987, he was declared unfit to rule and it was then that Ben Ali stepped in as President of Tunisia.

Ben Ali’s regime saw a decent increase in the GDP of the nation, strengthening of its economy and an increase in foreign investment. With rank 34 Tunisia ranks above India (rank 41) in the list of World Tourism Rankings. But behind this fake façade of Tunisia lies what led to the revolution. Ben Ali and his family were accused of great corruption, which was a major contribution to recent events all across Tunisia protesting the theft of Tunisian wealth, and lack of opportunities for average Tunisians. Whatever the country earned used to go into the luxuries of the president’s own family. Ben Ali’s wife Leila Trabelsi, supposedly Tunisia’s First Lady, is accused of travelling to Europe’s many fashion destination travelling in Business Class all of which were not part of her itinerary.

Tunisia continued to suffer from a high unemployment, especially among youth. In spite of a rising economy, left out of the prosperity were many rural and urban poor, including small businesses facing the world market. Tunisia under Ben Ali saw problems of human rights violations, such as freedom of the press, highlighted by the official treatment of the journalist Taoufik Ben Brik who is a prominent critic Ben Ali. In 2000, he was accused of publishing false information and other spurious charges, and went on a hunger strike in protest. He has been periodically detained in Tunisia, and his family has also been harassed as a way to intimidate him and prevent him from speaking out against the regime. Concerns were raised during the 2009 presidential elections about the fairness of the elections. Tunisia did not allow international monitoring of elections. There also were reports of mistreatment of an opposition candidate. Candidates standing opposite Ben Ali were given few luxuries of speaking in public and of advertising their party, as a result they never became much popular.

The 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution was sparked when an unlicensed vegetable cart vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi burnt himself. On December 17, 2010 a policewoman confiscated his cart. In return Bouazizi tried to bribe her as he used to do since the last 7 years but the day was not his. He was greeted with a slap in return. The policewoman even spat in his face, and insulted his deceased father. When the local municipality officials also refused to hear of him, not able to withstand the humiliation casted on him, he set himself on fire which led to public outrage. This immolation and the brutal response by the police to peaceful marchers caused riots in Sidi Bouzid, the place where Bouazizi used to live and had burnt himself. He died 18 days later.

Gravity was eager to cast its spell on Tunisia, all was needed was a push. The protests saw an exponential growth in the number of people getting involved in the days to come. Marchers brewing with indignity went up to the country’s capital, Tunis expressing their anger against Ben Ali and his government.

Ben Ali declared a state of emergency in the country, dissolved the government on 14 January 2011 and promised new legislative elections within six months. However, events moved quickly and the armed forces and key members of the legislature had lost trust in the president and had decided to take steps on their own. With the army surrounding the Presidential Palace in Tunis and perhaps in fear of retribution, Ben Ali and close members of his family hastily fled in four helicopters bound for Malta, a small island North of Tunisia

On January 26, 2011, the Tunisian government issued an international arrest warrant for Ex-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali accusing him of taking money out of the nation illegally. He was also charged with illegally acquiring real estate and other assets abroad. On January 28, 2011, Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Ben Ali and his six family members, including his wife Leila Trabelsi.

The people of Tunisia wanted a brand new government, so the cunning Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi resigned his membership of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD - the political party of which Ben Ali and Mohamed Ghannouchi himself were members) on 18 January. His resignation was followed by similar action by other RCD members within the government; but on 27 January Ghannouchi carried out a major reshuffle of the government to remove all former RCD members other than himself.

Mohammed Ghannouchi said he would remain in his position as head of the unity government until a general election was held within six months. He also pledged to allow all political parties and to lift a ban on the country's main human rights group. In addition, anyone suspected of corruption or of having amassed huge wealth under the previous government would be investigated.

On 17 February 2011 it was reported that Ben Ali had suffered a stroke, and had been hospitalized for an indefinite period in Saudi Arabia.

What numbers tell us?

At 10 pm I was told to write a short article on the titled topic. The deadline for submission was 11:59pm. I couldn't think better, and this is it......

Old Password **********

New Password __________ thinking, thinking………..Well, what should it be – my date of birth…..nah! Too short! My mobile number…….nah! Guessable! My credit card number……nah! Too long! Passport number, PAN number, school roll number, car number, his number, her number, what should I prefer? And then I saw the news in the morning newspaper about ‘Unique’ Identity Number. Does a single number really identify us?

My mind then plunged in the deep pool of mathematics, and what it finds is quite exhilarating. There are numbers which one can’t think of, numbers which christen themselves as perfect, lonely, Fibonacci, Armstrong, etc. Numbers tell us that even they have feelings; that even they compete to excel. Every number has a story to tell. Have a look:

0 à a unique number, neither positive nor negative

1 à neither prime nor composite

2 à first prime

3 à only prime to come after a prime

4 à only number which results after multiplication and addition of the same number

5 à part of the only set of alternate primes (3,5,7)

6 à first perfect number

7 à again, part of the only set of alternate primes (3,5,7)

8 à smallest sum of two factorials of distinct primes; is also the largest cube in the Fibonacci series

9 à the digits of its multiples when added give 9 only

10 à first two digit number

11 à first palindrome number

I can go on and on.

Numbers also take pride in the fact that they carry with themselves a luck tank. Each number gulps down a certain amount of luck potion and arbitrarily chooses a sun sign just to advertise themselves in the horoscope section.

Well, as for my new password, I will keep it a password.

I am fed up of CRMD

3 minutes to go before the serpent would arrive. We were more than 100 people sweating in a subterranean area, our whereabouts unknown to our beloved ones. Tension was being mirrored on the new entrants of the cavity. Same train of thought ran through the minds of all the trapped people. Many thinking, why they ever chose to come down here?

2 minutes to go. More cherishing faces were pouring in only to become worried ones. The density of the hall was increasing exponentially.

1 minute. Why were the people so desperately waiting for the serpent? Didn’t they realize the atmosphere inside it would be much more venomous than what was outside? And then the sporadic sound of the awaited monster could be heard. By the face of it, it already seemed so full. Wait! Is it going to puke? No! But it was too late. Its many pores on the side of the body opened up and out came a clump of macro particles in immeasurable volume. And the anticipated sucking effect then took place, pulling us all inside the serpent’s body. The effect of gravity seemed to have shifted laterally and I was free falling sideways. My body was being guided by the people in my vicinity and theirs’ being guided by the people in their vicinity. Now we were inside ‘it’. The already existing faces inside the giant body looked familiar given the fact that they were also laced with the same amount of tautness as the ones outside. The serpent then swayed and made its way towards the opening of the tunnel which it was now facing.

My eyes activated their zoom in + search mode and started scanning the insides of our host, looking for what it was looking for. But the new macro particles (which included me) were blocking the view. If I consider myself as India on the world map then in the direction of Nepal my eyes installed its view, successfully finishing its search. Lucky Me! But USA, Germany, Japan have made such advancement in technologies that they attacked poor Nepal before India could take its first step. Hah! Unlucky Me!

As usual the seat in the coach of one of the trains of Delhi Metro won in the encounter to avoid me as one of its occupants and at the end of the journey from Hauz Khas to Chandni Chowk my legs were cursing me.

I am fed up of the Corporation of Rail and Metro in Delhi, or is it called DMRC!

The 2G Spectrum Scam from scratch

2G Spectrum, A Raja, Radia tapes – my mind used to wobble at the very sight of these words in the newspapers since about a year, and never did I take the trouble to enlighten myself with the 2G spectrum scandal until recently and there are so many things happening in my own country which I am unwary of that I had started feeling a bit ‘un-Indian’! But the ‘googling’ and ‘wiking’ brought back the Indian in me. Read further to know the A to Z of the scam.

The government of India, and for that matter the government of any other country, considers the radio frequencies as their national asset; which means any telecom company will have to pay certain price for their radio frequency traffic in air. The companies can use only a certain range of frequencies which are allotted to them by the government itself. Since the number of companies demanding these ranges are more than the available range, so the Ministry for Communication and Information Technology auctions these ranges to various companies.

During the 2008 issuing of 2G spectrum (spectrum just refers to the band of frequencies) licenses the Ministry of Communication instead of auctioning the licenses distributed the same on a 'First-Come-First-Served' basis. 9 telecom companies had benefitted out of the distribution which included top brands such as Vodafone, Tata, Reliance Communications, MTS, etc. Unitech Group and Swan Telecom were two companies which were new in the market without a single subscriber and issuing of spectrum to these companies further added to the hue. A. Raja, the then Minister of Dept. of Telecom, arranged the sale of the 2G spectrum licenses below their market value. Raja ignored the advice of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) which had recommended auctioning of spectrum starting at market rates. Entry fee for spectrum licenses in 2008 was pegged at 2001 prices. Mobile subscriber base had shot up to 35 crore in 2008 from 40 lakh in 2001, so no scaling of prices seemed insane. Unitech Group, a company which formerly used to invest in real estate and not telecom purchased the license for 1,661 crore and the company board soon after sold a 60% stake for 6,200 crore to a third company. The fact that the licenses were resold soon after their issue from the government clearly shows foul play. Similarly, Swan Telecom bought a license for 1,537 crore and shortly thereafter, their board sold 45% of the company for 4,200 crore. These two companies made profit without having a single subscriber under their banner. Tata sold its 26% shares to a Japanese company, DoCoMo. Nine companies purchased licenses and collectively they paid the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology 10,772 crore. The amount of money expected for this licensing by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (the person who is responsible for the treasury of the Indian Government) was 1,76,700 crore. A deficit of 1,65,928 crore or 16,59,28,00,00,000 was calculated.

All this would have gone unnoticed had the CVC (Central Vigilance Commission – a governmental body created to address governmental corruption) not put its nose in. The CVC found some irregularities in the reports submitted by the Telecom Ministry and delays in replies to queries raised by the CVC. The matter forced the Commission to conduct a direct enquiry into the allocation of spectrum. The initial investigations conducted by the CVC found that licenses were given to companies who did not comply with eligibility criteria (referring to Unitech and Swan). The case was handed over to the CBI for further investigations. Now the stepping in of CBI steamed up matters. In October 2009 CBI raided the DoT (Department of Telecommunication) office and lodged a case against it. It was then that Manmohan Singh came to the scene. He tried to defend the charges against A Raja saying that he had done no wrong deed. The opposition, BJP, didn’t miss their chance of making a statement saying that the PM should stay away from the CBI proceedings.

Calm had descended, as the case wasn’t seeing much of a progress, which was the silence of an oncoming storm. In April 2010, uproar took place in the Parliament when the news of a lobbyist’s, Niira Radia, phone tapping was revealed. The tapes confirmed her acquaintance with A Raja and her conversations with influential businessmen, politicians and advertising professionals. It was also clear from the tapes that Radia had brokered deals for Tata and Reliance Communications during the allocation of spectrum. The Radia tapes controversy was about the tapping of the phone of a high profile person. But the Indian Income Tax department had tapped Radia's phone lines for 300 days in 2008-2009 only after getting authorization from the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The auctioning of 3G spectrum in May 2010 fetched the government 67,718 crore compared to 10,772 crore which the 2G spectrum ‘distribution’ had brought home. The suspicion of gross under-pricing during the latter was cementing. Though, apart from all this A Raja was getting a lot of support from his party’s ministers. Karunanidhi deserves a mention for his frequent statements defending Raja. But the opposition wanted Raja to step down. A Raja was determined to stand strong. It didn’t help long, though. November 2010 saw the reluctant resignation of Raja from the ministry. “In order to avoid embarrassment to the government and maintain peace and harmony in Parliament, my leader M Karunanidhi has advised me to resign,” Raja told newspersons. He proclaimed that his resignation should not be interpreted as an acknowledgement of guilt, claimed his conscience was clear and aggressively defended his performance as minister, claiming he had brought about a telecom revolution and “done much for the country and the people”. He had also remarked earlier that the 2G spectrum allocation was done as per the law only. Kapil Sibbal has now been made the minister of Telecom Department

During all this commotion, the Janta Dal leader Subramanium Swamy kept writing letters to the PM seeking sanction to prosecute A Raja in the scam, but according to him all he got in reply were acknowledgements and a letter stating that it is "premature" to consider sanction for prosecution at this stage due to an on-going CBI inquiry into the matter. So Subramanium Swamy filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the Prime Minister, questioning his silence in the matter. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh again came under the limelight when Supreme Court asked the government to explain why the “sanctioning authority” — in this case, the prime minister — remained silent for 11 long months over a request seeking sanction for the prosecution of former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam case. The PM office submitted a 11-page long affidavit in this regard, telling that the case was under CBI and the PM need not have intervened. Breaking his silence on the 2G scam, the PM promised action against anybody for any “wrong thing” done. “There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that if any wrong thing has been done by anybody, he or she will be brought to book,” Dr Singh said.

As of now, CBI has arrested A Raja, Raja's personal secretary R K Chandolia, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura, K Sridhar and DoT deputy director general A K Srivastava for questioning.

Harry Potter Simulator? Yet Another Harry Potter Post

When I had started blogging (though, it’s been only 3 months!) I had sort of sworn to myself that I won’t post anything about Harry Potter, not that I am loathsome about him but because every second person is a Potter fan and among his fans whosoever is into writing can’t help writing about him. So, initially I didn’t want to be a part of this entourage. But then, having read Harry Potter and not mentioning him in my blog is a sin in itself.

I was in class 8 when I first laid my hands on the series; read 6 of them in a month. I fancied myself as a marathon reader during that one month – used to sit in the last row of the class to skip lessons and read the book, used to miss sports to read it, used to read the book during my prep time. I know there are zillions of others who read the novels with the same fervour. I remember reading the 7th book while standing in a long queue; it had been only 6 days since the book had released and there comes this guy who tells me – “you are a very slow reader!” And a few days later his comment echoed back in my ears when I read – “Started on 12:00 am, 21st July; finished reading the same day at 7:00 am.” written on the inside cover page of one of the copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Whoa! The news of JK Rowling confirming that she won’t write any other Harry Potter book was like someone telling me, all the libraries of the world were going to be closed. I had this dilemma of how would I survive without knowing what’s happening in Harry’s life. Believe me I am not exaggerating; but then that was a 15 year old kid’s doleful tale. People don’t know the name of their great grandfather but know the full name of Dumbledore. JK Rowling has certainly cast a spell on the whole world. There are schools in the United Kingdom which have Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as their A-Level English syllabus. I wish the Kapil Sibbal gets inspired from the Brits and makes Harry Potter part of the Indian curriculum as well. The popularity of Harry Potter is x --> ∞ and will be eternal.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there is this part in which Ron tells that Voldemort’s name had been jinxed. I thought that JK Rowling was hinting to the origin of the term ‘Voldemort’. It made a very obvious impression in my mind that ‘Voldemort’ had been the name of some ancient spell which when casted disrupts the ambient enchantments, and that Tom Riddle had purposely chosen this spell to be his name. Doesn’t it sound more astounding? But my piece of fantasy bit the dust. But I still think this ancient spell thing was worthy enough to earn a place in the novel.

Though it’s peculiar, but I found Harry’s character proves dominating only on a broomstick and in fleeing away dementors. The meagre ‘Expelliarmus’ against the jet of green light sounds too coward. Harry uses ‘Sectumsempra’ against Malfoy but only a disarming spell at the person who had killed his parents and was then after him. Avada Kedavra from Harry’s wand would have proved more heroic in the final duel between him and Voldemort. But then JK Rowling is far great a writer to disapprove what she has written and anyways these are my personal take on the scenes.
I know of people, and that includes myself, who have an utter desire to live within the enchanted walls of Hogwarts, who desire to have a wand, who desire to play Quidditch, their aspirations pile on and on. Imagine, the sorting hat resting on your head and placing you in Gryffindor. My ‘engineering mind’ (though I am not an engineer, but because of the fact that I study in an engineering college, I am allowed to use the term) thought of transfiguring this day dream into reality; and it thought of ‘simulators’. We surely have heard of flight simulators. Why not a ‘Hogwarts Simulator’? People would go into a room with walls covered with 3D screens, with movable floors having numerous axes of rotation. Some laser technology (like they have in Laser Tag) to imitate spells being cast out of wands. The idea is very vague but what an impact it would create on the world if implemented! And people would expect engineers only to make this ‘wonder’!

Parting with the boy who lived is sorrowful but someone has rightly said – “All good things must come to an end.”

The power of Missed Calls

If you have heard of ZIP DIAL, then no point reading further but if you haven’t then you will regret not having read this article before.

1985 - First mobile telephone service started on non-commercial basis in Delhi. Call rates at its zenith. But 25 years down the line here we are where even a rickshaw puller owns a Nokia 6600, possibly 2nd hand! And the time frame is just 25 human years. We have heard of minute changes sweeping past centuries, finding the true nature of light took more than half a millennium and now we use the same light to connect two mobile phone devices.

What really made me pen down this article is the power of ’missed calls’. ”Give me a missed call when you reach the metro station”. A missed call from the vegetable vendor, signalling his advent in lieu of shouting out aloudissed call from the pool taxi – a request to you to get down and be ready to board etc. etc. etc. These are, you might say, trivial things which don’t really need a mention. What really is intriguing is ZIP DIAL, an innovation so enticing that it might be SAMSUNG’s ‘next is what’! Call 08030050055, a computerized call, automatically become a ‘missed call’ after the first ring and seconds later you have with u an SMS containing the latest cricket update. Try it, you will, if you don’t believe me. All it costs you is your phone’s particulate battery.

I am not running an advertisement campaign for ZIP DIAL. I just felt that a nation whose heart throbs for cricket deserves this piece of information. This isn’t limited to cricket. Recently, I attended Mood Indigo in IIT Bombay. A missed to xyz number made you aware about the upcoming major events at the fest. Imagine the future, a missed call to Star Movies would let you know the days movie schedule; missed call to some stock exchange would enlighten you about the current dollar-rupee rate. But missed calls show magnetism only when directed in areas of huge public interest. And reminisce; these are still missed calls, i.e. free of cost information.
And next comes the crore rupee question – how does the ‘missed call’ operating company earn from this. Well, I don’t want to go into the depth of their economics but their direct income comes from the advertisement that follows after their cricket update.

Happy missed calling!

GIVE IT A THOUGHT – Why hasn’t man landed on moon ever since the 1970s?

In the recent past, we have heard of rovers on Mars, we have heard of men and women on International Space Station (ISS) but why hasn’t man been sent on moon since December 7, 1972. Well, after a little googling and some time spent on Yahoo Answers I had available with me almost all the answers.

In total twelve people have landed on the Moon. Out of the 20 Apollo Missions only 17 made it while the last three were cancelled to cut costs. The main reason to stop manned moon missions was that the projects used to cost in multi billions and used to fetch nothing but dust from the moon, and of course an evening walk for the astronauts, which other astronauts had already brought before. In comparison to the money spent the information gained by scientists about moon used to see only a minute increment.

Richard Nixon, the then US President approved the development of NASA's Space Shuttle program, a futurist program which would enable NASA to explore the space beyond their limit at that time. Under the Nixon administration, however, NASA's budget declined, NASA’s Administrator was drawing up ambitious plans for the establishment of a permanent base on the Moon by the end of the 1970s and the launch of a manned expedition to Mars as early as 1981. Nixon, however, rejected this proposal.

Also, the reason why the USA hurried to get on Moon was to take a clear lead ahead of USSR in their Cold War. Once they became the invincible occupiers of Moon later moon missions were not required.