Six days to India

It's that time of the year again, when I go back home to inject a concentrated dose of Indianess in me. An almost yearly ritual, only this time around I had only two week to prepare for it. The main casualty of this short notice has be the usual goodies that have to be carried to India, specially "American" chocolates (Not that I am complaining). I have no idea where or when this ritual started but, from time immemorial, people who 'return' from the US usually carry enough chocolates with them to start a candy shop! The irony of this ritual is that, these same chocolates can be bought in India for a fraction of the cost.

For those in India: yes this is an excuse for not bringing any chocolates this time around ... need a better excuse? I'll give you one next time!

The cost of love

In a stark reminder of the huge pseudo-cultural war between "supposedly-Indian" culture and "new-age western" culture, a couple were shot on the way their marriage because the girl's brothers did not approve off it. I cannot but find it ironic that the society frowns upon 'love marriage' while at the same time churning out 10 movies a day themed around "love".

Any Indian movie would not be complete without a major love story in it, but if it were to happen in real life there is hell to pay. Are we still that hypocritical in the day and age? We most definitely are!!

The inspiring rags-to-riches tale of Sarathbabu

The inspiring rags-to-riches tale of Sarathbabu: To understand the raggedness of this person, you need to realise that his mom earned less than a quarter a day while supporting a family of 6!

Jai Hind

It's India's 59th Independence day ... long live the republic

Did you say slave labour?

So the Indian government finally banned all kinds of child labour effective from the 10th of august. The only downside remains the government's ineffective way of rehabilitating the rescued children combined with the lack of a viable and effective strategy to mitigate the circumstances forcing the children to such a resort.

Though this is a very welcome ban, the ground realities still remain the same. These are kids of parents who cannot even provide one square meal a day. The fact that the kids cannot work will put a further strain on such families. Some governments provide a lunch with free schooling ... but sometimes that one meal is not enough. What I am hinting at is that private organisations and corporations should take a more active and constructive role in the local community. Indian corporations are woefully lacking in this respect when compared to their "capitalistic" western counterparts.

Someday maybe there would be social capitalists!

Calling India

I am not one to forward emails, no matter all the "bad things" that could happen to me or that I am "ashamed" of Jesus!! But this one really put me over the top and I just had to share it ... not just with my emails buddies but the rest of the world!!

http://callcentermovie.com/movie/movie2.html

Now you know why you have to wait for 30 mins to get tech support or customer service!

One the same not I had a interaction with the HP online tech support and it is more than excellent, I probably had to wait for 30 second before I had somebody helping me. Compared to the 45 mins I had to wait on H&R block!

Human ingenuity #3854

So this whole post is about this guy in one of the most backward states of India who runs a radio station 'illegally' to provide FM coverage to villages spread over 20 miles using a home spun transmitter that cost him all of 1US$. Just goes to reiterate how people progress inspite of the system! Click to read about it.

"There are some who conform to this world and some who conform the world to themself, any human progress depends on the later"