Find happiness .. right now

Every bite of your favorite sandwich ... every sip of a sexy drink .. every minute of a calm sleep .. every laughter while watching your fav sitcom .. each of them count .. these are what happiness is.

What I would want to teach a kid

If I were to teach a kid, I would teach him or her beyond maths, science or geography. I would teach her how

• to introduce herself confidently to others 
• to speak on public forums
• to market her ideas and her positive qualities assertively
• to develop one passion and follow it whenever possible beyond studies
• politics affects our lives, hence follow it and understand it clearly 

I hope these subjects become a part of primary education if they have not already.

Menu for a multi-cuisine "Game of Thrones - Family Restaurant and Bar":

Appetizers:
• Daenerys potato wedges - served with Dragon Sauce
• Stark clear white soup (Add Rs 40 for extra "Red" version)

Main Course:
• Grejoy Soft Noodles
• Tyrion Mini-meals – Andhra Style
• Varys tender meat (“bone”-less)
• Sansa Finger chips (extra thin)
• Robb Steak (A Northern delight)
• Cercei American Chopsuey (Extra Spicy)
• Joffrey seekh Kebab – Taste of Westeros

Restaurant Specialties:
• Lannister 65

Desserts:
• Jon Snow badami kulfi
• Sir Jam Jam Jamie guava jam – Served with milk bread and raisins

Mocktails
• Dragon fire on the moon of Qarth
• Sunshine on seven kingdoms
• Bael”ishh”

Platinum Day of Love

The day I first tasted Dominoz's Deluxe Veggie pizza I fell in love with it. I used to order it almost every weekend. Sometimes with extra paneer toppings and sometimes in cheese burst option. Then I thought I should lose weight. And I stopped calling the Dominoz people and ordering pizza. 

The few months that followed were the weirdest ever. But every time someone dropped a pamphlet at my gate I prayed it was a Dominoz menu brochure. Every time the phone rang I thought I am just going to call Dominoz after I am done with this call. 

One day as I was preparing to order food from a local restaurant I received an SMS from Dominoz. It took me 10 secs to open it. Call it the slow OS of my old nokia phone, or my excitement, I don't know. It said "Order any medium size pizza and get garlic bread and cheese dip free, declare coupon code EMAIL09 upon ordering". I just couldn’t stop myself. That was my platinum day of love. It’s been two years and I’ve been ordering Deluxe Veggie regularly. I don’t have that SMS now but the keep on sending more such SMSs.

Me and Deluxe Veggie Pizza, Bangalore

The Only Sin

On a windy morning when the sun shines bright, you get ready for office and walk towards the bus stop, oh such a nice day it is. You are walking by the road on the pavement and suddenly a guy on a cycle passes by and spits the reddish contents of his mouth on your trousers and wheezes away. Your get all angry and scream on him but he’s gone. Your clothes stained and wet and dirty, your mood is sullen and anger is building inside you; what a start to the day you say. What that cycle guy did to you, is that abuse? Can you possibly classify that as abuse? Yes, but a very mild one, perhaps done inadvertently and yet it feels so filthy, bad and leaves you in such a bad taste. But you as a mature and smart adult, that you are, will cajole yourself and forget it in sometime. You will reason out with yourself on whys and hows of it and come up with a plausible explanation that will calm you down. Now magnify this abuse a million times and I’m afraid you still won’t be able to compare it to anguish, fear and pain that a child abuse victim experiences. Not under-estimating capabilities of a kid’s mind, children too know how to reason with themselves. Which is why, when they are correctively yet mildly made aware of their mistakes they do feel bad about it but slowly reason it out with themselves and get calm very soon. But the behaviors a kid’s mind can never reason out with are strong scolding, bad thrashings and the worst of all, a sexual abuse. Sexual abuse scars kids’ mind forever because they simply don’t understand why it happened to them, infact they don’t even understand exactly what is happening to them. It fills them not only with pain and fear, but also guilt, for they consider themselves as at fault for what’s happened to them. Such abuse during childhood deeply scars an individual and leads to so many complex situations for the victim even during later years. Worst thing with child sexual abuse is that in some of the cases it becomes recursive; where the victim when grows up turns into an abuser himself or herself, there by creating more such life-chains of negativity, abuse and ruined individualities.

Sin

Let’s talk of a hypothetical world which can be as practical as it is allowed to be; a world without any morals, any laws and any ethics what so ever. And if you are asked to decide one law that shall govern all the populace of this world, one statement which would define all ethics, morals, values, all good and bad, what would it be? A sensible and logical generalization would be “You shall not hurt anyone in anyway.” Very ideal you say, very impractical in a way. Yes. But hurting someone, abusing someone is the only sin you can commit. And a kid, who is like flower, like a plain white piece of cloth, like pure water falling from zenith of its source, untainted, unstained, gullible and weak everywhere in mind and body; hurting such a sweet creation of our nature, I believe is the greatest wrong one could ever do. One may not believe in God or religion or any ethics and morals, but if you consider yourself a human being you do believe in humanity and you then know that abusing a kid in any way is the greatest sin.

Solution

A solution is only to a problem, right? And yes CSA is a problem which is corroding our young ones and demeaning the base of our very society which eventually will further decimate the health of our so called civilization. What’s the solution? An ideal answer is don’t view the fight against CSA as a solution, but as a way of life, fight it at every nook and corner of your life, educate and empower your kids about bad touch and bad people. But to practically implement this we need a practical way, we need to make a start, which is SPEAK. No that is no fancy acronym I am going to expand here. It’s the simple word ‘speak’. How-ever bygone it may sound but parents in India are still shy or wary or ignorant to talk to their kids about sex, about sexual abuse. Yes we are supposedly conservative, but at what cost? At the cost of our kid’s physical and mental health, perhaps our kid’s whole life? Speak to your kids about Child Sexual abuse, encourage them to speak out if they even sense wrong intentions and most importantly don’t be embarrassed to confront and speak out to an individual, WHOEVER HE OR SHE IS, if your kid hints about him or her. A few words spoken at right time can prevent your kid from heinous treatment at hands of abusers, just a few words of courage, confidence and affection can provide your kid with a healthy environment and well being, which he or she very well deserves. Just SPEAK.

Entertainment or News: Newsotainment?

I have always believed that Aaj Tak and India TV are unique experiments in the field of Indian electronic media. They over these years have transformed themselves from news channels to entertainment (perhaps cartoon) channels.


"Dhoni ki Saloni", "Baagh-baaghin ka pyaar", "Woh tha sabse alag", "Chudail maange pyaaz" such have been their previous news stories.

Their news stories are mostly a writer's imagination of what can happen and those of them which come close to genuineness comprise of basic facts at best. They are 90% percent of an entertainment channel and 10% of a news channel, which in itself is a very intelligent strategy. They pretend that they are serving news to people, but in the guise of that they are entertaining people, which keeps their investment in reporters, journalists and other reporting resources minimal, but at the same time provides them a nice audience and good TRPs and hence nice advertising revenues. Pretty good business model, no?

You can die!

You can die, very well die. You can be killed. In a busy market, while watching a cricket match in a stadium, while in a crowded bus. Its truth, just think of it, it’s very much possible. There is no pattern, no type, class or religion to income group as regards to people getting killed. They just got killed. Yes you might be earning well, you might preparing for some special exam, you might taking a course in some college, you are about to be married or you might be settled with kids. You might have many future aspirations. But what if you or some loved one of yours gets killed. What if you or your loved one gets amputated, blinded, handicapped for life?

These questions might seem to you as the ones that arouse bad and sad feelings in you, but it is a reality that you or your loved one can very well die any coming day, in a terror attack. All your plans for a good life, all your thoughts for a bright future for yourself or/and your loved ones, will be gone.

What are you going to do? Stop going to busy markets or stop travelling in crowded buses, can you afford that? Yes a little amount of cowardice is required.

You can say, what can we do, we are helpless, we cannot take a gun and go on roads. You can sit and watch TV, surfing through news channels and watching politicians and news presenters saying all sorts of things.

You can surf internet and read news, so as to what was the progress in ongoing terrorist investigation.

Don’t blame politicians please, they invest so much money to win, should they not be corrupt to recover the money? Some of us go to vote for money, some of us for false ideologies (bhai hum toh is party ke janamjaat supporter hain, ya hum toh us party ko hi vote karte hain), some of us vote for caste, some for religion, and most of us do not vote. Sorry to those few, who vote for genuine reasons, Sorry guys, you are a minority. With such a voting distribution, what do you want from politicians? Development, security? When our intent is not correct, how will we choose leaders with correct intent.

Now you are going to ask, Mr. Writer, you write so much, what is a solution, should we go on roads and protest, make politicians responsible and all that. NO, do not think about that at first.

There is just one thing you can do, just pledge, just swear on your loved one’s name, just swear on whoever/whatever you cherish the most, that is YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THIS TERRORIST ATTACK AS IF YOUR SOME LOVED ONE RELLY LOST HIS/HER LIFE, if you could just do this, just remember how we were humiliated on 26 November of 2008, how some animals came and killed some of us and went, not because we are incapable in any way, but because we forget that there was a attack before, and not long ago.