Day 26: Indian Humor

A resident of Panvel filed an RTI after he was fined Rs 100 for a traffic offense but was not given a receipt for it. That made the police tense and they tried to pacify him and what not. Fine. But what  that guy said is a joke. Speaking to the newspaper Mid-Day, he said, “At the time we crossed the signal the lights had turned orange, so this is not precisely a crime. Blah Blah. Blah Blah.”

India is the only place where the orange signal instead of signifying “go slow” means “press your accelerator and go before signal becomes red”. 😐

So our politicians and bureaucrats have a very good sense of humor.

Our Planning Commission has estimated that anyone who spends Rs 33.33 in cities and Rs 27.20 in villages per day is above poverty line!! 🙂

I think our esteemed members of Commission do not go to buy vegetables and staples from the market themselves. With onion at Rs 40/kg, potato at Rs 29/kg and cauliflower at Rs 25/kg (According to today’s HOPCOM price) and then rice or flour and dal, I wonder what can a person do with Rs 33.33 in my hometown, let alone metros like Bangalore! To go from home to office will cost more than Rs 15 in bus and if it’s a Volvo then …..!!! So that’s Indian humor. But wait it gets better! 🙂

After this, ex actor and now politician Raj Babbar stated a full meal could be had for Rs 12 in Mumbai!! Wow! Apparently he also provided a break up of his estimate – Rs 6 for two rotis, Rs 5 for half plate of dal and Rs 1 for a spoon of vegetable. But where all this is available that he kept it as a secret. Was he talking about real nutritious food for filling one’s stomach or just having a morsel/ an idea of it? Do these people actually live in India or some other planet? So again a very good example of Indian humor. 🙂

Now I suspect what to be the outcome of an eternal Delhi – Mumbai fight, Congress leader Rasheed Masood said a meal could be had in parts of Delhi for Rs 5. He said further that “You can eat a meal in Delhi in Rs 5, I don’t know about Mumbai. You can get a meal for Rs 5 near Jama Masjid.” Maybe we should leave Bangalore and move to Delhi!  * Sets a reminder – Have to search for houses for rent near Jama Masjid, Delhi* By the way which hospital in Delhi will be best after having that Rs 5 meal, dear politician? So again a very good example of Indian humor. Our politicians beat the hell out of famous stand up comedians!! 🙂

And now I am going to die of laughter!! After Raj Babbar and Rasheed Masood, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah has said that one can have the full meal for Re. 1. 😀 Firstly we know it is extremely hard to get a Re 1 coin (Read my post – Killer Chillar) and secondly even if we get the precious coin, the question arises again where? Mr. Abdullah says it depends on the common man – how much they can afford and they have to manage in that only.

So now they are going to teach us financial management so that we can have a meal at Re 1. Isn’t that an absolutely delightful example of Indian humor? Did you think we Indians are a serious lot? Humor is the only thing that is making us go on with our daily lives!!

Further reading

A hilarious cartoon by Jiggyasa

 

 

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Day 3: Around India

As a child I don’t remember being too fond of travelling. And our annual travel was to relatives’ homes in Kolkata during the summer vacation which was quite tortuous frankly speaking! The first real vacation trip that I went on was to Puri with my parents after I had started working. Since then it has been one trip after another; some with family, some alone and some with friends.

The inspiration behind this post is a book which I am currently reading. It is a non fiction/travelogue category book  (not my genre usually) titled “Around India in 80 Trains” by Monisha Rajesh. What impressed me first was the cover design. It is wonderful and so much attention given to details about Indian Railways.

The blurb of the book says

In 1991, Monishas family uprooted from Sheffield to Madras in the hope of making India their home. Two years later, fed up with soap-eating rats, stolen human hearts and the creepy colonel across the road, they returned to England with a bitter taste in their mouths.  Twenty years later, Monisha came back. Taking a page out of Jules Vernes classic tale, Around the World in 80 Days, she embarked on a 40,000km adventure around India in 80 trains. Travelling a distance equivalent to the circumference of the Earth, she lifted the veil on a country that had become a stranger to her. As one of the largest civilian employers in the world, featuring luxury trains, toy trains, Mumbai’s infamous commuter trains and even a hospital on wheels, Indian Railways had more than a few stories to tell. On the way, Monisha met a colourful cast of characters with epic stories of their own. But with a self-confessed militant atheist as her photographer, Monisha’s personal journey around a country built on religion was not quite what she bargained for…Around India in 80 Trains is a story of adventure and drama infused with sparkling wit and humour.

The tourist in me was aroused to read the book and found the concept so innovative and adventurous. I have read three chapters till now so review will be posted later. But the book made me think about my own journeys and the places I have visited around my country India. So I downloaded a royalty free map of India (which by the way had the yet to be formed Telangana state marked and some more mistakes are/were there) and marked all the places I have been till date. So here the places I have visited till now.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain

So many more places to go, so much to see….

P.S. To read my travel blog click here.

Ahmedabad Trip Part 1

My first flight experience and first trip to Vibrant Gujarat

Ghumakkar Chronicles

In April – May 2012, we made plan to visit Delhi to meet my sister and my cutest niece who were visiting India for the first time since her birth last year. We decided to include Ahmedabad, my SIL’s place, too in the itinerary. Visiting both the places in the months of April and May was going to be a real challenge due to the hot weather. Sight seeing and sun do not go together at all! But who knew the trip was going to be one of a kind experience for me!

So we went via flight to Ahmedabad….my first flight experience ever! The field of clouds, the farm lands, the miniature buildings, the streams, the lakes and the sun from high above in the sky…breathtaking experience!

Next day we visited these places :-

# Adalaj Ni Vav – It is located at Adalaj village, around 19 kms away…

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Mother’s Love

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother’s love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star. ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Does your mother love you?

Does she care for you? Does she tend to you, comfort you, support you, provide for you, thinks for your well-being and comfort before hers ? Be the tree providing shade in the harsh sun called problems and difficulties which life gives to you?

Are you a mother and do you love your kids?

Does you care for them? Do you tend to them, comfort them, support them, provide for them, think for their well-being and comfort before yours? Be the tree providing shade in the harsh sun called problems and difficulties which life gives to your kids?

Holy Day in Kolkata

First of all I want to apologize for being absent on your blogs’ comment sections and not replying to your comments on mine. I have been really busy in studying and thesis work and will remain so for some more time.  But I had to write a blog post to keep this blog alive, right? 🙂 Also you must know when I come back I will read each and every unread post and comment 🙂 So please bear with me till then.

As I mentioned in my last post, D and I had gone to Kolkata in December 2010. During our stay there, we went on two trips – a one day trip in Kolkata only and a 3 day trip to Digha beach which is the most popular weekend destination for Calcuttans.

A Prayer

Patriotic Balloons, originally uploaded by Rima_B.

Wordless Wednesday – Heights of Hypocrisy

Wearing pink and attacking couples on Friendship day?? Even kicking a girl while wearing red??

HEIGHTS OF HYPOCRISY!!!

Proofs of Marriage

“Ek chutki sindoor ke keemat tum kya jano, Ramesh babu? Eshwar ka aasirwad hota hai ek chutki sindoor, suhagan sir ka taj hota hai, ek chutki sindoor, har aurat ka khawb hota hai ek chutki sindoor…”

Excuse me! I Beg To Differ. This is  Crap.

Recipe:- Puli Pithe

Sankranti means transmigration of Sun from one zodiac sign to the other. Due to the geography and size of India, this festival is celebrated for innumerable reasons depending on the climate, agricultural environment, cultural background and location. In West Bengal, Sankranti, also known as Poush Sankranti after the Bengali month in which it falls, is celebrated as a harvest festival Poush Parbon. The freshly harvested paddy along with the date palm syrup in form of jaggery is used in the preparation of a variety of traditional Bengali sweets.

One such sweet is the famous Pithe. After many years all the members of my family were together on Sankranti and it was decided to make pithes to celebrate the day. [My interests were solely getting a new thing to blog about and to eat 😀 :D]

Pithes are of various types: Ranga alur pithe (made of sweet potato), chandrapulli,puli pithe (made of coconut), gokul pithe and patishapta (sort of  pancakes). The recipe I am going to describe is a stuffed kind of pithe, Puli  Pithe. Puli basically signifies the shape of the sweet.

City of Nawabs and Kebabs

This year I and my parents spent the Diwali vacation with at a relatives place in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. The scenery of rural Uttar Pradesh is beautiful. One can see lush green and yellow fields, mango orchards, wells, cattle, eucalyptus tress and even peacocks roaming freely! But one can also see the lack of electric transmission towers, the darkness at most of the areas, the lack of any traffic rule and the density of population.

I didn’t get a chance to go out much in that town. We made plans of  a one day trip to Lucknow (the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India) to do some sightseeing, shopping and eating – my favorite combination 😀 So here is an account of that one day trip.

Incredible India!

A prestigious school in my city is taking its middle and high school students on an Educational Tour to Europe. For this they are taking around 1 lakh rupees from the parents interested in sending their kids on that tour. And strangely people are giving it to the school administration willingly. I do not understand that why do the students need to go to Europe for learning? What sort of education does the school want to impart by taking them to Europe? Till class 10th all students study History under CBSE board and 80% of it comprises of Indian History. Rest is just World Wars, Dark Ages, Renaissance and Industrial Revolution as far as I recall.

Summer Vacation Trip Part 3

This is the final post in my Summer Vacation Trip series. Click on the collages for enlarged view.

10th June 2009 :- Checked out of hotel at Pune early morning as our Volvo bus to Mahabaleshwar was to depart at 7.00 am. Bus left at 8.00 am!! A closed ac bus and Ghat road didn’t do any good to me due to my motion sickness problem. I think hired cars are better for people like us. As soon as we reached and got off the bus, I was well.

Summer Vacation Trip Part 2

So the day we arrived in Pune that is 7th June 2009 was a rest day for everyone except me. I had my first blogger’s meet that day which I described in my earlier post.

8th June 2009 :- We hired a vehicle to take us to Khandala and Lonavala and back. The driver turned out to be a mobile phone addict!! Thank god we had a safe trip. We stopped at a little restaurant “Shiv Sagar” just outside Aundh. The food was tasty and reasonably priced. Thats the place, our hired car, my parents and my sister’s MIL.