My Uttaranchal snaps are here! Enjoy them on this Flick r Slideshow or here .

Great Bong has put up two very touching posts [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Quoting from [1] (GreatBong .. sorry for not asking for reprod permissions in advance :P ) "But therein lay the beauty of it. The beauty of conviction. The beauty of dreams. The fact that this man believes that one day he will make it as a poet . And what's inspiring is that despite the odds he faces every day, he still manages to radiate enthusiasm for his craft---a luminant joi de vivre that comes from believing in what he does. That sales pitch of "a poem for 10 paisa" accompanied with the boisterous recitation---he must be doing this routine about hundreds of times every day, mostly to people who are irritated by his presence (I saw another group on the grass who basically told him to f*** off) and just want this nuisance to leave them alone. Looking at him going about his work, I realized that not once during his numerous sales pitches does his enthusiasm or self-belief waver, nor does he ever sell his

Government of India has set up the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH) and National Accreditation Board for Laboratories (NABL) to strengthen the regulation of healthcare industry in India but the major purpose behind the move is said to be the intent to encourage medical tourism. India is trying to break into the humungous (and growing) global market of Medical Tourism currently dominated by Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. While India might be just a beginner but it has some inherent advantages of being recognized as the land of Yoga, Meditation and other parallel forms of medicine in addition to having doctors well qualified in modern medicine. While the increase of medical tourism and induction of accreditation services will improve the state of existing healthcare in India, it might not help in making up for the shortage of healthcare facilities. Accreditation will primarily be sought by large hospitals, or medium sized clinics in areas where the demand for premium

What is Ahinsa ? Simply Non-violence or something more symbolic? Quoting from HTOHL : "Gandhi’s words still amaze me with their simplicity and power. Here was a man who believed that anger controlled, not unleashed, could become “a power that can move the world”." Agreed that anger controlled becomes a power but why should controlling anger be equated to 'not unleashing' it? Anger controlled can be anger unleashed in a directed manner so as to use it contructively?? Similarly isn't Ahinsa the resolve to prevent all kinds of injustice? Why should it be simplified to 'Non violence' only? I wonder on Gandhiji's death anniversary whether we ever understood him correctly ..... Befitting Obituary to the mahatma: http://www.theotherindia.org/icons/remembering-gandhi.html On parallel thoughts: http://www.himalmag.com/2006/january/cover_story_7.html My own posts on Gandhiji: http://the-complete-man.blogspot.com/2005/12/national-education-by-mohandas.html ht

Me off to a 4 day trip to Uttaranchal today evening !!! Will be back to cyberspace with photos and narration of the trip starting Monday ... Btw: Check out the ProjectWhy Banner atop this Blog

Just back from the night show for Bluffmaster. Actually, I sulked and whined through the whole movie for the utterly bad screenplay and too-much-gyan; but the end of the movie was as surprising as refreshing it was. Agreed that most plots are picked up from a few Hollywood movies (I don't recollect the name, but one movie which is used most, starred Michael Douglas) - but its not a plain vanilla remake and hence the effort is quite commendable. Technically too, the movie is quite refreshing. There's one more distinction that I would give the movie - of showcasing outdoor locations of Mumbai. Bandra Flyover, Buildings in Walkeshwar and Mahalaxmi, streets of Colaba, distant views of Nariman Point and Marine Drive are quite discernible as are few indoor albeit public locations like CCD (Cafe Coffee Day) - Carter Road and the Renaissance - Powai. No movie in the recent times has used locations in Mumbai so effectively as this one. The trend of using foreign locations seems to be pa

I was a staunch Congress loyalist till 1996, but I was converted to being an Atal Bihari fan when I sat through (watching on TV) the parliamentary proceedings that led to the fall of Atalji’s 13 day government. The attitude and determination that Atalji displayed during the aforementioned session of parliament was repeatedly displayed during the 1998 elections and subsequently in managing the NDA coalition. Irrespective of whether his party had a covert agenda or not, Vajpayee himself came up with an overt agenda, which he started implementing immediately after assuming office. The May 1998 Pokharan tests were probably as much a demonstration of Vajpayee’s grit as they were of India’s military and technological might. While on one hand, decisions like Pokharan gave the nation a reason to be proud of, the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyaan, Gram Sadak Yojana, Grameen Rojgaar Yojna and other visionary schemes provided the much needed impetus for infrastructure development. Of all of Atalji’s ideas,

I discovered this challenge of writing a short story in 50 words on Deepak Jeswal's Blog. Never dared to take it up till now because I am generally a verbose writer; but had an overwhelming urge to take it up today because of an event that I was witness to ... Pardon me for any discrepancies .. this is my 1st attempt - "When truck driver Faulad Singh gave Rotis from the leftover of yesterday's dinner to the child beggar, he was rewarded with a chunk of expletives from the beggar. "Ehsaan Faramosh!" - hollered Faulad. Little did he know that the boy was simply thanking him in what he thought was his language." That's exactly 50 words! Clarification: No! This is not a joke! Pardon me if it looked like one - I certainly do not want to say that 'Thank You' in one Indian language is an expletive in the other. This in no way is a comment on the diversity of languages in this country. I wanted to comment that beggars and street children are not as poo

Which trend will be credited to have started in the year 2005? Reality Shows – but you had similar (albeit less orchestrated ones like Sa Re Ga Ma Pa) running even earlier; MMS – but again Podcasting or MMS are just improved forms of porn-exchange that has existed since we had earliest Sex sites on the net; Sensex – have you forgotten the dot com boom; Rain Havoc in Metros – no major precedents except the Tsunami; Blogs making news – ah! Any precedents here? I don’t have any. Indeed, blogs have emerged as sure opinion makers this year. Though, blogs usually cannot be counted in isolation – they created opinion while being supported by emails, instant messaging and websites – however, in the past one year Blogs have risen from being support structures to the web to being central themes around which the online world is slowly starting to revolve. Further, Blogs are rising in numbers ; overly optimistic estimates quote the number of Indian bloggers to 12 lakh – even a pessimistic figure o

"The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU's of body heat ..... What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this." - Morpheus, The Matrix Prologue Chris Andersen has written a classic post about how the new systems of mankind - Google, Wikipedia and Blogs - follow the probabilistic principles wherein information may not accurate always at the micro level, but as the volume grows "it is likely to become more and more accurate" . Do visit the link . Nick Carr makes the humanist case against Chris by trying to build a hypothetical case that fascism is closely linked with the "collective wisdom" which these systems rely on. He even quoted science fiction writer Simon Ings: "When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, on