Home Sweet Home...

I'm all excited. Seriously I am. Another 24 hours I will be flying over Europe. Another 48 hours I will have zipped across Bangalore - said hello to few of my friends and at this exact Indian time I will be on the train to go to my town. Along with me will be my cousin and a long time friend. We all know each other since the time we learnt to wear chaddi. My cousin and my friend know each other too. And we are the type who freak out. We will get down at each stop and eat all the tit-bits that people sell.

My bro wanted to come to B'lore to pick me up but I told him not take the trouble just for my sake. I'm not a lit kid am I? And its not like I will be travelling alone. But one day I plan to do this: I want to visit them just out of the blue. No one should even know that I am going to come down. I will just one day land up in front of my house and press the door bell. I can only imagine how surprised they will be

I have stayed in various hostels and places before. But the thrill of heading back home is something undescribable. I am sure there is not a singe day when Sonal or Satyen or even others studying in various places away from family, don't think of home. I don't know if others notice it but I feel I have been humbled by living abroad. I now appreciate my country a lot more and I appreciate little things in life much more than I did before.

And you know whats the best feeling? It is when you hear the aircrafts' tyres do the thud and a small screech on the touch down. And you know you are back in India

Duck that lays golden eggs

That was one of my favourite stories when I was a little kid. The story about the farmer having a duck that laid one golden egg a day. And the farmer thought that there must be a treasure of golden eggs inside the ducks stomach and in his greed he cuts it up and finds that there is nothing. Evidently this story has been around for too long and even our dumb ass politicians have learnt the lessons from this story.

Law makers are a funny lot. If George Orwell had lived in India he would have had the opportunity to experience a live "Animal Farm". One of the disgusting, crude, unsophisticated, outdated laws in India is the fact that even the head of Government Audit (CAG) does not have any power to look into the accounts of covert military and police operations. Therefore all the STF, BSF and other such operations which are done covertly for security reasons are out of Government auditors ambit. The amount quoted by papers and other journalistic sources are only 'guesstimates of experts'.

Coming back to the earlier story - Veerappan can be seen as that duck. Every year the combined state governments in South India spend circa Rs.100 crores on hunting him down (of course this is experts guesstimate). Roughly 1,500 STF officers comb the forests day on day, year on year. They need food, shelter, clothing, equipment and not to forget their salaries. In critical times this number of STF doubles. But I hope you get the overall picture that all this is to catch a 55 year old, chappal wearing, self-styled commando. And it is well known that the so called STF personnel are sent to these operations not because of their efficiency but because of punishment.

What actually goes on in the wild no one can tell. How many bullets were fired, how many guns were lost, etc etc is something that state governments make a list and get the refund from the central. And there is no one to check the tab. As long as that old duck roams the forest killing elephants and smuggling precious wood, our politicians can be assured of their 'cut' in the un-audited funds that flow down. And that is why I mention that our politicians have learnt a lot from the duck story. They will never catch him or kill him. Instead they will continue to put our nation to shame - so that they can make their money.

Do we all see the same colours?

Iris. The complex structure of cells through which we see this entire world. And like our finger prints it has its own unique shape and design for each of us, giving us an unique identity.

Why am I saying all this? Well look at it this way - does an uniquie iris for each of us mean that we all see different colours? Yes we all see a variety of colour but do we all see the 'same' set of colours? For instance this line is yellow. At least in my eyes. But are you seeing the same yellow that I am seeing? You may be actually seeing my pink but you have been told from childhood that, that particular shade is yellow. Like wise the yellow that you see, could be green for me - but again I have been taught to point at that particular as yellow.

Confusing? I know it is but if I had to put it succinctly then all I can say is that - I have this innate feeling that we all see different colours from each other (for the same object) but we have just been trained to point at certain colours to say this is this. My gold could actually be your silver. Your burgundy could be my peach.

Why did I even think of this? Because I was reading that bees see thousands of more shades of colours than us humans do. They can also tell from quite a distance if a particular flower has nectar or not just from the change in colour.

I on the other hand have to wear glasses hahaha

Sorry that I haven't blogged for the last couple of days. Been a tad lazy along with the last minute shopping that I have to do before I head home for a nice break :-) Another 5 days and I will be eating Idli and Sambhar in Bangalore :-))

I read Suku's post today about the differentiation between people. It reminded me of a dumb American that I met while I was studying in US. Those who read my blog quite often do know that I love playing pool and it was no different when I was in States.

One day while I was playing with this friend of mine a couple of seniors came and asked us if we would like to play doubles with them. We said fine and in the 3 or 4 games that ensued we beat them fair and square. This got on their nerves and they started to make some ludicrous comments about me.

What got me the goat was when one of them said "How could a large country like India allow itself to have been ruled by a puny country like England?". I stopped the play and looked at him. He just snickered.

Me: When is your independence day?
Him: July 4th
Me: Why do you celebrate independence day?
Him: ***silence***
Me: A couple of hundred years ago - even your country was ruled by the same puny England. And keep in mind your country is three times the size of India.
Him: ***silence****
Me: Before you point the dead rat in my soup, make sure you don't have a dead donkey on your plate!