jabdakhata

The rebranding exercise at the cost of tax payers for department of post is going on for quite some times. They have revamped some of their post offices from dilapidated shacks to decent looking outposts in association with Deutsche Post. But more things change, more they remain same. Has anything changed at the service level? simply nothing. Indian bureaucracy is one of the most inefficient and most corrupt, esp. at the lower levels and India Post is a very symbol of the same. I had speed posted one RTI application to income tax department twice, based on pin codes given for their Hyderabad office in their associated websites. Every Tom Dick and Harry knows the location of Income tax office, but not India post. The speed posts came back twice, after roaming around the city for a few days, the reason cited was "insufficient address". The post offices whose stamp was marked on the envelope were stones throw away from the Income Tax office and yet they did not know the address.

Does anybody remember who Nevil Chamberlain was? Oh yes! He is synonymous with a foreign policy of appeasement and weakness. To the uninitiated Chamberlain was a former British priminister, who signed the Munich agreement in Germany in 1938 conceding Sudetenland to Hitler, overlooking and overruling the concerns of Czechoslovakia republic. He praised Hitler and Musolini and was too anxious to buy peace with Germany, even at the expense of Czechs and Austrians. Probably he was handicapped by his domestic problems, probably he had a wishful thinking that by placating Germany and Hitler a war could be avoided, or probably he truly believed that Hitler and Musolini were gentlemen who did break agreements and Sudetenland would be the end to Germany's ambitions in Europe. Well, history shows that whatever his intentions were, however good a man he was, he was wrong. Similarly we have a good man at our helm, who is anxious to buy peace with Pakistan and China, to placate the "wounded

You think Feudalism was in vogue only in Europe during the dark ages and in the early medieval period? well, you are mistaken. Feudalism is back with a vengeance in today's India, the modern India, an India which competes with China and other tiger economies and aspire to become a world leader. This feudlism does not have explicit feudal lords and serfs, but have a class of patricians and plebians like that of ancient Rome. The patricians are the privileged classes, while plebians are not so privileged. Now who are these patricians? In modern Indian context they are the politicians in power, the ministers, the bureaucrats or the adminstrative services guys, the big businessmen and corporate honchos, the big media men and of course, the celebrities - film actors, cricket gods etc. These feudal lords, though they belong to diverse sections of the society and may have different backgrounds and circumstances, share a common thread, their disdain for the prosaic, mundane common men and

Tagore had traveled all around Europe, middle East, America, Russia, Japan, South America, in short, almost the whole world in the 20s, and 30s of last century. He has written lucid accounts of his travels and perspectives. We need to remember that during this time Europe was going through a major crisis. Communism was taking its root and Stalin's iron hand was almost established in East Europe. First world war was just over and Europe was still struggling to get out of the mess. In Italy and Germany fascists were fast gaining grounds. Persecution of Jews had taken legitimacy in many parts of Europe. British Empire was getting increasingly shaken, esp. in India by a thin, lean shrewd ascetic called Gandhi. Middle East was probably flourishing, Palestine crisis not yet created fully, Shahs were ruling Persia with a mighty fist and secularism was at its height there. Turkey had newly tasted democracy with Ottoman empire lying in pieces and Mustafa Kemal having established his authori

It is the worst of time, an epoch of incredulity, age of foolishness, season of darkness, winter of despair...as far as new LPG connection is concerned. I always thought that getting a gas connection would be a cakewalk. That was my expereince in 2003, when I walked into the nearby Hindustan Petroleum dealership which had opened recently in Madhapur, and got a connection. The mistake I did was returning this connection before I went abroad. After coming back to India in 2007, well, it proved to be a herculean effort to get a new connection. Almot all dealers I approached - HP, Indane, BPCL, told me that the minimum wait period to get a new connection is 1 year after enlisting. Some even refused to enlist my name saying plainly that its of no use. I had to take up a private connetion from Shakti gas at a much higher price, but the service proved to be unreliable. So I finally gave it up. Private gas players are mostly out of business owing to absence of any level playing field. Therefor

Universal education is a concept fairly close to my heart. Of late, there has been a lot of deliberation from various quarters on universal education access. The major problem is the access to quality education. Not every institute or school has great faculty or infrastructure. Second thing to ponder upon is whether we are doing it right. Education in today's world is career oriented which creates competition and when the demand for few lucrative careers outstrips supply there is bound to be a fierce competition at various levels, resulting in rat race. These factors, competition, fear of failure, lack of proper education and of course the affordability part of it results in large scale school dropout, suicidal tendencies and building up of stress in the society. Also a large number of people do not have proper access to education. I think the access problem is easier to solve than anything else, leveraging technology. Esp. since mobile phones are now ubiquitous, once 3G comes thro

I would dare say that Bengal poll results has surprised me, although I hasten to add, thats its a pleasant surprise. There was an undercurrent of change, but that the undercurrent would soon convert itself into tidal wave was beyond my wildest dream. Honestly I had almost given up on ever being able to witness a West Bengal without leftist regime in my life, since the better part of my 32 years had been under their rule. Why is it a pleasant surprise? Reasons are multiple. First, vindication of my own stance. While most educated middle class was busy villifying Mamata and her so called politics of driving out Nano and anti industrialization stance, I had a subtle feeling that what she was doing was absolutely correct in the long run. She was playing straight from her heart. You may ask, what did the communists do wrong? They wanted industrialization and a prosperous Bengal. My answer, what were they doing for 30 years? Let me put down in bullet points what wrong they did, and why th

Remembering Tagore's poem - Keno cheye accho go Ma Mukhopane Era chahena tomare chahena je Era apono Ma yere nahi jane Era tomay kichhu debena debena mitthya kobe sudhu hino porane Tumi to ditechho Ma ja achhe tomari Shorno shoshyo tabo Janhobi bari gyano dharmo kato punno kahini Era tomay kichhu debena debena mitthya kobe sudhu kato ki bhane monero bedona rakho ma mone nayano bari nibaro nayane mukho lukao ma dhuli shayane bhule thako jato hino santane shunno pane cheye prahoro gono goni dekho katekina dirgho rajani dukhho janaye ki hobe janani nirmomo chetanahino pashane Translating this beautiful poem in English retaining its sense is next to impossible. However here is a feeble attempt. Why are you staring at our face mother, they don't want you, they don't know you, their own mother. They won't give you anything except for lies and more lies and pretension. You have given us all you have - golden harvests, pure water, knowledge, religion, virtue. But they don'

I was really enjoying my stay at Heinzelinweg, even though I hardly stayed there. Almost every week I was away travelling to Utrecht, waking up at 4 Am, booking a taxi the n ight before, rushing to catch a flight at 5.30 AM. The picture is of my one room in Heinzelinweg. The major attraction was a water bed, which comfortably suited me as it was fun sleeping on it. Even then I could manage weekend gateaways to Zugspitze, to Strasbourg in Alsace region etc. I also managed another trip to Paderborn to meet my friend Seshadri who worked with SAP labs and had come to Walldorf near Heidelberg, and we had a rendezvous in Sujoyda's place. It was a memorable trip, culminating in our visit to Koeln and seeing some exotic villages in Northern Germany. The photo below shows our pose in front of Cologne Dom across the Rhine river. Prior to that Sujoyda along with family and friends had visited me in Stuttgart. They had come to tour Southern Germany and enroute they took rest in my cottage. So

Heinzelinweg is memorable for a variety of reasons. I settled down here peceafully for a much longer time and there was no need to worry about cleanliness and relocation. The area itself was very peaceful, far removed from cacophonies of busy city streets. Not far from it were several great lush green meadows,and forested regions.I often used to take long evening strolls in the afternoon which used to take me past the meadows with horses grazing, past a small locality with neat shopping areas and bus stops, towards the railway tracks, or towards the forest. You could walk miles along the railway track. However for the first few months I had so little time to myself owing to incessant travelling. From my place, it hardly took 10 min and 10 euros to go to Echterdingen airport. And return could have been using a S Bahn, only if the time was suitable, number of S Bahns being very few on that route. In October Stuttgart holds what is fondly called as Oktoberfest or Volksfest - a kind of fe

Its now last week of April and I should have to search for a new house. Next month two more of my colleagues were coming, so I decided to share an accomodation for a change and got a pointer from an agency called Schwaben Stern, promoted by Frau Carmen Maier. The house was in Echterdingen Leinfelden, in the suburbs, near Stuttgart Flughafen or airport, the address being Goldaecker strasse no. 1. It was with some difficulty that I finally located the Goldaecker strasse. The bus no. 72 from Echterdingen station dropped me at the bus stop from where it was another quarter of a mile walk. The landlord was Signor Franko Pala, an Italian working in Lufthansa. He was fluent in English, with a goati and specs and we hit on instantly. The rooms were nice, clean and tidy and there was no problem in signing off a 6 months contract. However once myself and my colleagues Shailendu and later Ashish Malik settled down, we had the first signs of troubles. The landlord often use to come to apartment in

By this time I had to start travelling, to Netherlands, Utrecht to be more precise, where our project was going on. It was not a very engaging thought to wake up in the morning at 4 AM in biting cold, take a bath (esp. when hot water does'nt run continuously), pack your bags and hop on to a taxi at 5.30 AM to catch a plane at 6 AM. But precisely those were the things that I had to do. And then for the whole day you sit with a bunch of clients who are still not very warm with you for various reasons. In the afternoon you sometimes have a rather tasteless lunch and yearn for that rice and curry which you miss. And then evening after everybody else in the office goes home, you call yourelf a taxi and go and check in at the hotel, take a shower and even though you are too tired to go out, drag yourself along to a nearby restaurant to have dinner, or else opt for the room service, and then blissfully go to sleep thinking what is awaiting you the next day. The days when I was in Stuttgar

The next few days went away like hurricane. The next day I had to get up and join office. I gave a miss to the breakfast thinking that it would cost me when all the time it was just free (an information which I got later from other colleagues), took a taxi and landed at Am Wallgraben 129, the DaimlerChrysler (erstwhile, now it is only Daimler) ITM office address. Our team was sitting in the ground floor on the right hand side and since it was befor 9 AM, very few had bothered to turn up, one of them being Paparao Venkata. An intelligent and extremely helpful chap, he soon provided me with basic ingredients of information for my survival, including a 5 Euro calling card for which he atfirst refused to take the price but upon my insistence relented. Then slowly came the others and I met them one by one, all the voices that I had heard over telephone or all the names that I saw on the emails now became a full blown person. "Oh my god, she looks like this!" or "Well, this gu

Let me see if I can remember a major chapter of my life, the eventful stay in Germany, those memorable three years which I would cherish for ever because of a multitude of events that were associated with that stay. I was working as an SAP consultant in Infosys at that time. I still remember that when my greencard came for the CESAR project in Stuttgart, my passport was not ready. It had expired just then. So I had to first renew it with Dada's help, from Kolkata RPO. It took a month and more than 1000 bucks and atleast one agent for my passport to get renewed (even under the so called Tatkal or instanteneous scheme). Finally when it came my German green card (three months duration) was about to expire in 15 days. So I hastily raised a Payana and booked my flight tickets, got approval from Sushil Tiwari (project manager at offshore), got the forex (around 4600 Euro with travel advance) and booked a taxi from my home to airport on 13th March, 2004. The Jet Airways flight to Chennai

I normally do not like to write political blogs and express my political opinion, because I believe politics, like religion is every individual's own belief, and must not be a matter of heated debate or discussion. However, I thought that some facts should be highlighted because in this era information and misinformation both travel hand in hand. The situations narrated below consist mostly of facts and some analysis but rarely of opinions (except at the end). It is not a newspaper article (which incidentally nowadays is almost always devoid of facts and full of opinions, of the reporter, editor and the newspaper group head). West Bengalis must be having a ball of a time. Not a single day passes without some major news on the papers, becoming subjects of heated discussions and addas. It all started in 2000 when Buddhadeb Bhattacharya first came to power. Indian media went into a frenzy as he was the so called "liberal communist" ( an oxymoron if u ask me), who believed in