Google logos or an impending announcement

Google has been showing flying saucers and extra terrestrial logos whole of September. On September 5, Google changed the logo to a flying saucer dragging away the O in google followed by a tweet ".12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19" which means "All your O are belong to us".

Now google has changed the logo to a logo of crop circles being drawn by a flying saucer.  This was followed by a tweet "51.327629, -0.5616088" which seems to be a set of coordinates pointing to Horsell in Surrey, England which was the town that was the center of initial invasion in H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds.

What makes it really interesting is the fact that Well's birthday is September 21 and because of that there is a buzz that Google is going to make some announcement on that day. Is it going to Chrome OS or availability of Wave, Something to do with Android or something different. Let's wait and see.

F1, Renault and cheating

Renault always seem to have a knack of getting into shady situations as far as their F1 team is concerned. Last year they were in the thick of Mclaren, Ferrari issue this year the Piquet has caused the stir by claiming that he was asked to crash so that team mate alonso can win the race.

After the meeting with Mr Symonds and Mr Briatore, Mr Symonds took me aside to a quiet corner and, using a map, pointed me to the exact corner of the track where I should crash. This corner was selected because the specific location of the track did not have any cranes that would allow a damaged car to be swiftly lifted off the track, nor did it have any side entrances to the track, which would allow a Safety Marshall to quickly move the damaged car away from the track. Therefore, it was felt that a crash in this specific position would be nearly certain to cause an obstruction on the track which would thus necessitate the deployment of a safety car in order for the track to be cleared and ensure the safe continuation of the race.

It does seem like the word of one person against another but the statement is too graphic to be just discarded. Also the other rumours that the engineering chief of Renault gave evasive replies further points to the fact that something is wrong.

56-year-old Symonds, whose team tenure dates back to its Toleman days in the early 80s, admitted that in a pre-race meeting with Piquet in Singapore, the Brazilian driver made the suggestion of a deliberate crash.

But when asked if he knew Piquet was still planning to crash on lap 14 when the race began, Symonds declined to answer.

When probed about Piquet's claim that, no longer in boss Flavio Briatore's presence, he showed the driver on a layout map on which corner he should crash, Symonds again said he did not want to answer.

He also gave a similar answer when the FIA interviewer asked about Piquet's claim that the crash site was selected due to the lack of recovery cranes.

The additional leaked information on Thursday also showed that Fernando Alonso was brought in for his pitstop before the Piquet crash two laps early, with more than 8kg of fuel left in his tank.

The Spanish driver's race engineer was at the time concerned about the change of strategy, to which radio evidence shows Symonds replied: "No, no, it's going to be alright."

That's what is interesting about F1, even when they don't race, it is better than a hollywood thriller.

Rich people, poor people

So H1N1 has gripped the country.  It is sad that this happened. Following points that I believe are important in this regard.

• I think NRIs are responsible for bringing this epidemic to the country. People don't follow quarantine rules. There have been cases of people running away from quarantines.


• On TV one sees journalists creating panic, running like headless chickens.

What worries me most is everybody is just panicked by H1N1. As of today there are 8 unfortunate people who have died. But there is absolutely no or very little mention of Munger. Munger has 30 people dead with cerebral malaria. Why there is no media scrutiny? I believe it is just a case of rich people and poor people. Just because people that are dying in munger are poor and H1N1 people are comparatively rich with access to media, their voice is being ignored.

Infosys issues travel advisory to pune

Infosys has issued a travel advisory to its employees to restrict travel to pune in the light of swine flu. Great step, but I don't remember them issuing a travel advisory to US or Mexico where all this started.

EVM/EC and attention whores

The circus with electronic voting machine has come full circle. I know little bit of technology and I always believed that the fact that the voting machines are made by only two public sector manufacturers and has a set of handling procedures that are physically verifiable makes it pretty much tamper proof.

• The voting machine has a physical lock that makes sure that it has not been physically opened.


• The voting machine has the software code in a non-writable ROM makes sure that once the software has been validated, it is tamper proof


• The voting machine is a unconnected device i.e. there is no chance of somebody hacking into it remotely.


• The voting machine has no knowledge of the order of candidates on the machine. This is just a manual mapping that is made outside of technology. The machine in the end just tells the number of votes for candidate at each position and the candidate to position mapping is an offline mapping and is maintained using a ballot paper look alike.

The only way the voting machine can be hacked with is somebody opens it, replaces the software code running. Even that is harder it do with well defined results because the the order of candidates on the machine is assigned much closer to the polls.

When somebody as responsible as Saigal who has been a senior bureaucrat in government makes an alligation, people will have to take him seriously and political parties will take him seriously because it is a question of bread and butter for them. But when election commission of India gave them an opportunity to demonstrate the tamper-ability of the machines he did not do much.

Saigal refused to demonstrate the points raised by him, using any of the 100 actual ECI-EVMs he was offered to choose from. He wanted certain arrangements for him and his team of hardware and software professionals from a private company before coming to demonstrate about the tamperability of the EVM. He also offered to show what he claimed as possibility of tampering using his personal computer and a look alike of the ECI-EVM, that was privately manufactured, and is also seen on several TV channels.

It was pointed out to Saigal that the ECI-EVM was not at all comparable with what he had brought. EC officials declined to deal with, what appeared to be an imitation machine, so as to avoid creating any confusion in public mind.

So in nut shell, he never claimed that voting machines can be tampered with, what he claimed that one can make a machine that looks like EVM and that machine can be tampered with. Nobody will argue with that. Actually I will even make another allegation that somebody can make a machine that looks like a EVM and it can be used to fly rockets.

Anyway, the net result of election commission hackathon was as follows.

On Saturday, the Election Commission asserted the infallibility of EVMs citing the failure of persons who had claimed the machines could be tampered with. This has come after a demonstration of 100 EVMs in the EC office that lasted for six days from August 3. These EVMs were randomly obtained from 10 states and kept for scrutiny to establish fallibility. The outcome of this exercise was that none of the persons, who were given the opportunity, could actually demonstrate any tamperability of the ECI-EVM, in any of the 100 machines put on display. They either failed or chose not to demonstrate, said an EC statement.

I hope this matter can be put to rest now. But one never knows.

Stupid main stream media again

The main stream media in India never ceases to amaze me. Here is a news item which has been reported in most of the news papers of the country. The headline reported by the media is as follows.

Kicking daughter-in-law or divorce threat not cruelty: SC

Now, what the supreme court seems to have really said was

Allegations that appellant No 2 (mother-in-law) kicked the respondent (daughter-in-law) with her leg and told her that her mother is a liar may make out some other offences but not the one punishable under Section 498A

and further said

Similarly her allegations that the appellant No 2 poisoned the ears of her son against the respondent; she gave two used lady suits of her daughter to the complainant (daughter-in-law) and has been giving perpetual sermons to the complainant could not be said to be offences punishable under Section 498 A

Now with very little knowledge of english that I have, I can only figure out that supreme court said that these acts are not punishable under section 498A, but the great media makes it out as if supreme court is saying that "it is not cruelty".

What is surprising that not only one news paper but the other one also reports almost an identical headline for the story.

D. E. Knuth and his phd

I am always amazed by the story of how D. E. Knuth got his phd. Knowing many friends who have done or are trying to do a doctoral degree completed, it is just amazing how he did it. Here is the ACM interview where he talks about it.

• The "Art" of being Donald Knuth


• Donald Knuth: A life's work interrupted

I got a listing from a guy at Princeton who had just computed 32 solutions to a problem that I had been looking at for a homework problem in my combinatorics class. I was riding up on the elevator with Olga Todd, one of our professors, and I said, "Mrs. Todd, I think I'm going to have a theorem in an hour. I am going to psyche out the rule that explains why there happen to be 32 of each kind." Sure enough, an hour later I had seen how to get from each solution on the first page to the solution on the second page. I showed this to Marshall Hall. He said, "Don, that's your thesis. Don't worry about this block design with =2 business. Write this up instead and get out of here." So that became my thesis. And it is a good thing, because since then only one more design with =2 has been discovered in the history of the world. I might still be working on my thesis if I had stuck to that problem. But I felt a little guilty that I had solved my Ph.D. problem in one hour, so I dressed it up with a few other chapters of stuff.

Atleast UP police redeems itself

Few minutes after I wrote this post about the UP police, they have managed to eliminate the dacoit.  Now only if WB police also can do something, I would be happy.

IPL, Fatigue and Mccullum

Indian cricket team's coach mentioned that IP fatigue could be one of the reasons of the team's pathetic show in WT20. Everybody seems to have pounced upon him. I believe what he says does have sense. There never seemed to be any sense of coordination in the team, most of the people were not 100% fit and both of these were major reasons of our defeat and could be caused by IPL's excessing cricket too close to the world cup.

Anyway, people may agree or disagree with the coach but the interesting comment came back from Mccullum. He said that the fatigue theory is rubbish. I can understand that. Only those people would be fatigued who were doing hardword. Mccullum, who lead KKR actually were passengers so for them it was really a jolly ride and that is probably one of the reasons he believes that fatigue can't be the reason of team's bad performance.

India's tryst with deflation

So the inflation numbers reported for this week stand at -1.61%. Technically that is deflation. I hope now my home loan rate would come down.

Pathetic police work -- Two examples

So today I saw two examples of pathetic police work in two different states of the country. The first one being the UP police which engaged in an encounter a single dacoit Ghanshyam Kewat alias Nanhu with 400 police personnel for overl 47 hours and finally he managed to escape.

"Company commander PAC Beni Madhav Singh and constables Shamim and Iqbal were killed in the encounter while IG, PAC VK Gupta, DIG Chitrakoot SK Singh and four others -- Navendra Singh and Akram of STF, Dileep Kumar Tiwari and Rajendra Singh -- were injured," the officer said on Wednesday.

The second incident is the incident in Lalgarh involving local administration and Maoists.  This seems to be total breakdown of any kind of administration in that place. Everybody is doing whatever they want.

Maoist gunmen on Wednesday emerged from their stronghold in jungles along the Bengal-Jharkhand border for an audacious strike near Jhargram town, killing a local CPM leader and two activists in full public glare. As Trinamool Congress activists and Maoists have battled to capture turf from weakened CPM cadres, nearly 25 people have been killed, mostly CPM workers and supporters. At many places, the anti-CPM forces have been supported by locals who see the CPM as a receding force in the face of Mamata Banerjee's electoral surge.

Atleast one news paper claimed that in the past police just outsourced the security to local CPM cadre and finally maoists just had enough and when the came the police, already having abdicated, was nowhere to save them.

The murders today underline how administrative institutions, systematically subverted over the years by the CPM, collapse when there’s threat of a power-shift reducing party cadres to sitting ducks. Nothing illustrates this better than the story of those who were killed: 27-year-old Tinku Mahato; Anil Mahato, 48, the branch committee secretary of the CPM, and 23-year-old college student Abhijit Mahato.

An MA in Sanskrit from Vidyasagar University, Tinku was recently employed as a “para-teacher” in the village primary school. But Tinku Mahato was also the secretary of a “security syndicate” that employed nearly 200 youths of the village as security guards. The other two killed, Anil Mahato and Abhijit, were also key members of this syndicate. Their job: to provide security cover to vehicles on National Highway 6 as they passed the vulnerable Lodhasuli forest stretch where armed robbery is common.

This should have been the job of the Jhargram police but they had, in effect, “outsourced” this responsibility to this syndicate largely comprising CPM supporters. Routinely, armed robbers deflate tyres of vehicles on this stretch by littering the road with “improvised nails” and loot passengers. The police asked Tinku Mahato’s team to take over.

Seems to have another disaster in the making.

Calorie Burning modern style

I stay in an apartment complex where the clubhouse is located some 100mtrs from the residential block. As usual the clubhouse provider a decent gym and many people make use of it. Here are some interesting things that I observed that make life interesting.

• A significant percent of clubhouse users actually drive in their cars from residence parking to clubhouse parking. As I have mentioned earlier, this distance is no more than 100 mtrs. In this distance these gentlemen (ladies) floor the accelerators of their cars, start honking when they are atleast 50mtrs from the clubhouse so that the security opens the gate and then don't have to slow down. Makes for a sight more thrilling then a F1 race start. Only doubt I have that most probably the car is burning more calories then the users of the gym.


• Even though lockers have been provided for people to put stuff when they are using gym equipment, it is not uncommon to see a IT style conference call going on while people are running on treadmill.

Anyway, all this makes walking to clubhouse really interesting.

New age five star hospital

Off late many new age five star type hospitals have started opening all over the place. I have always wondered whether the quality of healthcare delivered by these hospital is also in line with the shiny interiors and well dressed receptionists. My own experiences in Wockhardt hospital in Bangalore have not really been great. But since there is little most of us understand about medicine, one assumes that may be we are unduly worried. Here is someody's experience from Wockhardt which kinds of points in the same direction. Please make your own conclusions. I have just received this email through friends that I can not vouch for the accuracy of events or assumptions.

Rashmi's Story

My name is Rashmi B.T. I am 35 years old, married to an air force officer, Vivek, and have a four year old son, Dhruv, delivered by emergency Caeserean section in 2004. On March 4th, 2009, my life was changed unalterably. I lost a baby that I had carried inside me, completely healthy, for a full 41 weeks.

I understand that doctors are human, that mistakes happen. However, I have come to believe that what happened to me could have been prevented if the doctor and the hospital had provided the most basic level of care and expertise. What's worse, they refuse to take steps to prevent someone else going through the same nightmare, simply because they want to protect
themselves from the possibility of litigation - something I am not interested in unless it is the only way to force them to change their protocols.

The Beginning

In June 2008, Vivek and I learnt that we were expecting our second child. The pregnancy was uneventful. I was healthy and fit. Every prenatal visit and test showed that the baby was healthy and developing well. During my 35th week, I decided to consult Dr. Latha Venkataraman at The Nest, Wockhardt's Bannerghatta Road maternity facility to see me through the rest of my pregnancy.

Despite the fact that I had already undergone a C-section, she urged me to opt for a V-BAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean Section) or in layman's terms, a normal delivery. She brushed aside my concerns, telling me that a second C-section would be six times more risky and assuring me that a V-BAC would be less risky and almost pain-free.

My due date was estimated as 26 Feb 2009. I visited Dr. Latha on 28 Feb. She wrote on my record: "delivery will be attended by Dr. Latha/Dr. Prabha." Since I had neither met, heard of, nor been examined by Dr. Prabha before, I was concerned. Dr. Latha explained that Dr. Prabha Ramakrishna is another consultant at Wockhardt, and that it was a hospital requirement for her to write both their names down as possible attending doctors for my labor/delivery. However, she assured me that it was just a formality, and that she would be the one to attend to me when I went into labor.

On 3 March, I visited Dr. Latha again. Since I was so far past my due date, I requested that a scan be done to check on the baby.

When I called her to read out the results of the report, she did not want to know anything other than the liquor content, though I specifically asked her if there was any other information she would require from the scan. She told me I could either wait for labor to start or choose a day to come in and have my labor induced.

The Nightmare Begins
I went into labor at 2am on 4 March, and got admitted to the hospital at 5.15am.

By 7.45 am, I was experiencing contractions less than a minute apart. Dr. Latha came and did a quick examination. I was shifted to the labor ward at 8am where I remained until 1.50p.m., under the sole care of nurse Savitha. Dr. Latha was not present at all.

A junior doctor, Dr. Shirley, was available intermittently. She spent most of the time on her cell phone, talking to her husband. She was keen to see him before he left on an 11-day vacation. A Dr. Chetna substituted for her while when she went to see her husband off.

There was no other doctor present. Dr. Prabha was called each time the fetal heart rate fell (this happened a couple of times). She was seeing outpatients and attending two other deliveries simultaneously, so she was only able to come to the labor ward to see me four times, for less than 5 minutes each time.

At 10am, I was given Syntocinon, a drug used to enhance labor; the dosage was increased at 10.45am. At 12.30, there was vaginal bleeding, and the nurse phoned Dr. Prabha, who advised her to "keep a watch". The bleeding reduced, but I began to feel pain of increasing intensity during contractions. Dr. Shirley reappeared at 1.00 p.m., examined me vaginally and announced that I was almost fully dilated and would deliver by 1.30pm. I complained several times of excruciating pain but was told that it was
normal. At 1.30pm, Dr. Prabha came in and was told by Dr. Shirley that I was fully dilated and would deliver any minute. Despite that, Dr. Prabha breezed off to visit another patient in the OPD.

I felt no urge whatsoever to push, yet was asked to do so. The stirrup on the delivery table kept breaking off - I was told that this is a recurring problem that "needed attention". At 1.50 pm, the fetal heart rate dropped to 80 beats per minute. Dr. Prabha was called again. She checked the fetal heart rate on the CTG, explained that this was normal when the baby
was passing through the birth canal, and asked me to hold my breath and push hard. I felt no sensation in my cervical area, but felt intense pain tearing my stomach apart. I felt like my baby had rolled into my stomach and could see its body pushing up against my ribcage. I was screaming, pointing at my stomach, and telling them that my stomach was hurting, and there was no urge to push. But she told me to "push, push harder". I then heard Dr. Prabha saying "Get the OT ready". She told my husband that she was going to attempt to deliver by forceps - if that was unsuccessful, she'd have to do a Caesarian.

The OT wasn't on standby, wasn't ready. I was numb with pain. They wanted me to get up and move to the operation table. I couldn't move. They eventually slid something under my back and I pushed myself on to the OT table, as there was no transfer stretcher available. I complained of severe shoulder and chest pain. No one paid me any attention; everyone was busy
preparing the OT, and the anesthetist was attempting to top up my epidural.
The fetal heart rate was never monitored in the OT. Dr.. Prabha unsuccessfully attempted a forceps delivery at 2.20 p.m., and then cut me open. I heard a deafening sucking sound, after which I must have passed out.

Later, I learnt that my uterus had ruptured along the scar of my previous Caeserian section. My baby was found floating in my abdomen. He had no heartbeat and he wasn't breathing. He had been deprived of oxygen for a long time - 43 minutes. They "resuscitated" my son and put him on a ventilator.

When I opened my eyes I saw Dr. Latha leave, followed by Dr. Prabha. Dr. Shirley was suturing me while laughing and talking with another nurse. I felt reassured that my baby was okay, even though I had neither seen nor
heard him. "Don't Worry, You Can Conceive Again"

At 3.30pm, a nurse struggled to take my BP reading; the BP apparatus wasn't working and had to be replaced. Dr. Latha met Vivek at the NICU and told him that the baby was doing fine and had to be kept under observation.
She also told him that my scar had ruptured, but said that I was okay. At 4.30 pm, my husband repeatedly begged the nurses to give me pain relief. I was then shifted to the ward.

At 9.30 pm the neonatologist told Vivek that the baby had been deprived of oxygen for over 40 minutes, possibly resulting in "some extent" of brain damage. This was the first inkling we had that something had gone wrong.

The next morning, I was given a sponge bath at 6am. I then lay unattended until 2.30 p.m., when Dr. Prabha, Dr. Latha, and Dr. Prakash (the neonatologist) saw me for the first time after the operation. Dr. Latha unceremoniously ripped the dressing off my wound without using any gel or spirit, and pronounced the wound clean.

We were told that our baby would be kept under observation for another 24 hours. Later that night Dr. Latha came in at 9.50pm. Her only words to me: "Don't worry, you can conceive again. Your uterus is intact." "Do Japa and Tapa To Get Better""
None of the consultants saw me on 6 March. That night, my milk came in, and my breasts became swollen and painful. I asked in vain for assistance. After repeatedly begging for help, I sent Dr. Latha a text message at noon on 7 March. At 4pm, a nurse told me that the doctor had instructed them to use a breast pump to relieve my pain - however, since the hospital didn't have one, I would have to go and buy one.

Dr. Latha finally visited me at 7.30 pm. She confessed that she was unaware that there had been a 43 minute delay in performing my C-section. She also admitted that instructions delivered over the phone could never substitute for personal supervision. She said, and again I quote, "Do some pranayama, japa, and tapa to help you get better."

Throughout my stay, nurses didn't know what medication I had been prescribed. They kept asking me what medication I was to be given. They had to be repeatedly reminded to give me medication.

For the next 13 days, Arnav was in the NICU on a ventilator. Throughout that time, he was completely reliant on ventilator support, his eyes were dilated and non-responsive to light, and there was no sign of movement. After a week, the neonatologist asked me to express milk and said they would feed the baby with a pipe inserted from his nose to the stomach. I did this for the next six days.

On 16 March, we decided to let Arnav go. We requested that he be removed from life support.

"We Would Do Exactly The Same For The Next Patient Who Walks In"
Vivek and I wanted to learn what had gone wrong with such a healthy pregnancy. Basic reading indicated that scar rupture is a well-known risk when you attempt to deliver vaginally after a first C-section, and must therefore be monitored very closely by a doctor if attempted at all.

We met with the hospital administration and the doctors. All we wanted was an explanation. To hear the words, "I made an error in judgment". Instead, we were met with a wall of defensiveness. Dr. Latha said that despite knowing the outcome, she would take exactly the same steps with the next patient who walked through her door.

I decided to get a second opinion. And then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Three of Bangalore's best-known gynaecologists (and other doctors too) categorically stated that given my age (35), the estimated weight of the baby (> 4 kilos), and the duration of gestation (>40 weeks), a vaginal birth should never have been attempted, and scar rupture was a logical, obvious outcome.

All reading I have done has backed this up. Even a layperson's book like "What to expect when you are expecting" (pages 363-364) says that abdominal pain during a V-BAC indicates a scar rupture and outlines the procedure for safe delivery of the baby. Given that I was complaining of excruciating abdominal pain, shoulder pain and chest pain, the doctor should have known my scar was rupturing. I should never have been asked to push; it exacerbated the rupture. Nor should I have been given a drug that intensified my contractions. By Dr. Prabha's own admission, she did not know about the rupture until she opened me up.

Several doctors have also told us that keeping Arnav on the ventilator for 13 days was an exercise in futility from the first. At no point were we told that he would never survive if taken off the ventilator - had we known that, we would never have subjected him, or ourselves to two weeks of anguish. All we were told was that he "might be" brain damaged to "some extent" but they couldn't predict how bad it would be.

A Brick Wall of Defensiveness; Discrepancies Galore

When I attempted to engage with the hospital to ask them to change their protocol of treatment based on an unbiased review conducted with the inputs of external gynecologists, I was met with a brick wall of defensiveness. They refused to conduct a fair, transparent investigation, claiming that their internal investigation showed that they had done everything right and that losing the baby was "my destiny". Dr. Latha went so far as to say that since I am educated, I should have been better informed about the procedure.

I don't want to sue them for money. I just want them to change their policies and protocols so that this doesn't happen to someone else. I have been hitting a brick wall for two months, and feel that the only way to make them pay attention is to tell my story to people.

There are many discrepancies and attempts to cover up the hospital's inefficiency (to name a few: baby's weight recorded as 3Kg despite the fact that he was never weighed; post-facto note of fetal heart rate as 180bpm despite the fact that the heart rate was never monitored in the OT; discharge summary says "live term baby extracted" even though Arnav had no heartbeat or respiration at birth; half-hour discrepancy between CTG trace and labor room clock). I asked questions to which I was given ludicrous answers (Eg: Our pediatrician is very experienced, so he can guess the weight of any baby just by looking at it).

We were charged approximately Rs. 2,20,000 by Wockhardt. Of this, we found over Rs. 7000 billed for things that had never been done (spinal anesthetic, an extra day of room rent, food not consumed). We subsequently found more extraneous charges, amongst them an amount billed for tests that were performed on 18 March, two days after Arnav's death.

My Story Has Just Begun...
My uterus is still healing. My back still hurts from the trauma. And my heart aches for Arnav, the baby I will never hold.

More than that, I am filled with the fear that this will happen again. After all, Dr. Latha says she would "do exactly the same again" even though she knows the outcome. And the hospital agrees that she - and they - did everything right.

Wockhardt delivers approximately 80 babies each month. With BP machines that don't work, a delivery room stirrup that's falling off and that has "needed to be fixed for a while", nurses who don't know what medication they are supposed to administer, and one (yes ONE) OT dedicated to emergency deliveries. That OT wasn't ready when I needed it. What guarantee do you have that it will be ready when you need it? Sure, they claim to have nine other OTs in the hospital - but if they are all as woefully unprepared as the one I was in, my story could be yours.

I want them to change their policies, and I won't give up until they do.

Thank you for reading.

Restaurant Review : Taste of India, MP Nagar, Bhopal

On my trip to Bhopal recently, I ended up visiting this restaurant called Taste of India. Looked like a decent place, not really posh but good and cost effective food. Service was good and quick. We ended up having soup, paneer handi and dal tadka. After really long time, I ate good dal tadka in a restaurant. I am really amazed at number of times I have seen restaurants messing up something as simple as dal tadka.
Paneer was good, really spicy. Breads were also good. All in all a really good food that finally costed Rs. 197/- for two people.

Indian Election Results

Finally there seems to be a clear trend at 11AM that UPA (Congress+) seems to be headed to form the next government and Dr. Man Mohan Singh seems poised to form the next government. There seem to be some clear plus points that have come out from these elections.

• Left parties are out, I think apart from their negative politics in respective states, they might have been better served by taking credit for good things happening in the last five years.


• I believe it was a good thing for congress to go alone in UP, atleast they provided an alternative to people


• Nobody believed LKA when he said that there is nothing to give credit to congress for.

I think this would be a good election result for this country.

Varun Gandhi

As I am watching in mumbai airport and listening to the news, it seems Varun Gandhi is in making waves again. He wants to bring back forced sterilization and compulsory military service.
We all know the futility of the first one but the second point is bizzare. If he felt so strongly about that, why did he now bother to join military. He is not too old, he could have joined military before this fulfilling political career.
But then politicians never were known to do sane things.

Indian political parties -- they will say anything to make you happy

It is election time in India and during these times, the political parties would say anything that makes their constituencies happy. Some would even say things that sound outright illogical.
Here is a political party that has declared in their manifesto that they are against computers and English.
So I tried to analyse if these guys really get elected and have their prime minister installed what would be the scene of India at the end of five years. Please add your things in comments if it comes to your mind.

• We will be booking train reservations the good old way. No e-ticketing, no computerized ticket. It the good old large sized register in your city station. What would be real impact of all this? Quotas based on per station basis. You can not book through tickets, you have to bribe the TTE to pretty much every booking and many other things.


• Mobile networks and all the CDOT revolution would be yanked out, you will be back to the manual exchange era where a person would be connecting your telephone lines.


• No income tax filing electronically.


• No online banking, No ATMs, No NEFT and RTGS. Everything will be rolled back. You will be back to an ear when transferring Rs. 100/- from Delhi to Mumbai took 15 days.


• Stock exchanges will be closed down. No equity, only debt would be allowed to run the companies.


• Different governments in India will be communicating in their own languages, for example a government in Delhi will write a letter to Tamil Nadu government in Hindi which will be translated in Tamil on the way. You can replace your favorite state with Tamil Nadu here.


• Half of the TV channels will have to shut down because they broadcast in English. Poor Mr. Pronoy Roy and Sardesai will be out of job.


• Malls will have to be shut down

Reading all this, I am wondering why do we blame Taliban in Pakistan. Many of these things sound so much like what they are doing there. Better still why don't they just take us back enough so that we don't have to worry about complex things like currency systems, we can just live off barter system.

I can only hope that better sense prevails in the states from where these morons derive their base of power and people just kick these guys out.

Nothing logical or scientific about Economics or Economists

I am really fed-up with economics and economists. They just can't seem to be able to make up their mind on what is the right thing to do. They almost sound like an old-boys-club for rich people. Take following as examples

• When Government of India declares loan waiver scheme in 2007-08 for farmers a majority of whom can't repay their loans because of failure of crops and other reasons, everybody is up in arms. Everybody starts talking about how it is the worst thing to do. When President Obama talks about trillions of dollars in bailing out US banks who are essentially private enterprises and they are in trouble because of their own mistakes all of a sudden it becomes a prudent economics. So somehow it seems that bailing out really poor private citizens is bad while bailing out private enterprise is good.


• When GoI talks providing stimulus to economy, S&P and their friends worry about fiscal deficit while when same things is done by US government it seems to al right.

May be nobody just has a clue and they just keep on propounding their favorite theories till the time these are debunked.

India's horrible neighborhood

As I watch this news update by the NDTV and The Times of India, I come to know that Sri Lankan cricket team has been attacked with guns (probably grenades etc. as well). This again brings out the fact that we live in extremely dangerous neighborhood. Our neighbor have just descended into anarchy. If the country's security apparatus can not guard a cricket team which, everybody knows, is under threat, then one can only assume that there is not control in the hands of police/military.

I have always believed that societies would have to pay for ignoring troublesome elements in their midst. I think it is about time that societies that harbor dangerous elements are asked, they either need to get rid of these elements or they have to pay the price for letting these elements exist.

Hopefully the world will realize, what India has veen saying for all these days and do something about it. But I know that everybody is looking after their short term gains and unless this problem becomes their problem, nobody is bothered.

More signs of recession

Lately as you move around, you see more and more signs of recession and when a top MNC can't afford to pay even for signages, you know that cost cutting is in full force.



Just so that people don't think I am making this up, here is the photo with more context.