Posts from — September 2006

It’s new theme time, here at The Opti Mystic!!

I have gone in for Subtle, from Glued Ideas because I like the soft pastel colours and the rounded edges. It has a certain Web 2.0 feel to it. Me like! :)

It’ll be a while before I can get it tweaked to fully personalize it with custom headers et al. Also, it’ll need some work to get all the plugins I use, to start working the way I want with this theme. Hmmm… I wonder if I can get Lightbox to work with it too! That means… the look and feel will be work-in-progress for a few days on this blog. And in that sense, this blog will be in “Beta”!! … now that’s Web 2.0 most definitely!! ;-)

Now that Venugopal Dhoot (MD, Videocon) has managed to woo Daewoo Electronics, Indian media will no doubt go nuts in hyping up the man till he seems like the best thing since vadapav.

But this is the same person who has been known to favour gender discrimination citing “Indian traditions”.

Some time back, I had the opportunity of hearing Kumar Ketkar (currently chief editor of Loksatta and formerly editor of Maharashtra Times and other leading newspapers) speak at a private function. It was a freewheeling talk without structure but a lot of relevance. I usually don’t agree with his political views, but his talk that day was not political. He spoke of the genesis of his leftist leanings and the part played by his school, teachers, friends, etc. in his life. An important point that he stressed quite elaborately was the manner in which Marathi was fast losing relevance in contemporary times in Maharashtra in general and Mumbai in particular. He was quite saddened by the fact that not a lot of people could articulate effectively in Marathi. Most of the people present there nodded in silent agreement… Marathi has indeed been reduced to a second-grade language, they thought.

Cut to yesterday…

I was commuting home after a long day at work when I saw a huge billboard exhorting people to take their pick. On choice were two newspapers, ‘Mumbai Mirror’ and ‘Maharashtra Times’. The offer was to choose either one of these dailies as a complimentary accompaniment to a subscription of ‘The Times of India’.

I could not help but cringe at the thought of pairing up an institution like ‘Maharashtra Times’ (true it has lost a lot of its sheen in recent times, but it remains a Maharashtrian institution in spirit) with a sensational tabloid like ‘Mumbai Mirror’.

I know this isn’t fully representative of a general apathy towards Marathi, but it does go a long way towards that! And I couldn’t help but nod silently as I thought back to Kumar Ketkar’s words while staring at the hoarding before the traffic lights turned green and the bus lurched headlong into the rush hour traffic.

It may be termed as Havana appeasement or Dr. Singh’s Stockholm syndrome, but after reading statements like…

If the joint mechanism between India and Pakistan to tackle terrorism does not produce results, then New Delhi will have to think of winding it up, reliable sources said on Monday.
[source: IBNLive]

… it just seems that this trial and error diplomacy is all about putting up Indian citizens as cannon fodder for terrorists!

This vile, self-serving and rudderless foreign policy just lurches from terrorist strike to terrorist strike… disregarding the simple fact that “results” in this case are human lives at stake, not hypothetical outcomes of hare-brained schemes of some foreign policy academic!!

Observed in Pune…

Condition of roads + (Lack of) traffic sense = Hell

I do not believe in heaven or hell, but if ever such places existed, driving in Pune would definitely be a close approximation of what is termed as “Hell“.

The huge craters on Pune roads are beyond the ambit of the term “potholes”. The stretch of Ganeshkhind road from Pune University towards Shivaji Nagar is an excellent subject for test runs of a lunar rover, should India feel the need to test one ahead of its lunar mission! And as if the roads weren’t bad enough, the abysmal lack of traffic sense and road discipline is enough to drive one up the wall.

Much has been written and spoken about Mumbai’s potholes and the BMC/MMRDA inaction. And all this resulted in a judicial rebuke which at least got the authorities started in the right direction. I wonder if there is such activism being pursued in Pune. Left on their own, the relevant authorities would rather indulge in blatant corruption with unscrupulous contractors. And this would be seriously detrimental to Pune’s image as a haven for industries… engineering as well as IT.

I think another thing which contributes to the mess is the absolutely pathetic public transport in Pune. This loads the roads with more vehicles than necessary leading to the degradation of the road surface and multiplies the bad-driver effect! Come to think of it, this has been the bane of most of the Indian non-metro cities which have experienced an IT boom in the recent years. Investing in better public transport will go a long way in preventing people from experiencing “Hell” before they actually get there! ;-)