Abu Dhabi: First thoughts

My head felt as if it had a thousand tons applied on it, the feeling you get when you cram overnight for board exams. The fool of a pilot thought it wise to depressurize the aircraft only a couple of minutes before hitting terra firma. I looked around, only to figure out that the rapid depressurization was having the same effect on others in the aircraft.
After going through the above paragraph, I have come to the conclusion that there is no future for me as a pulp fiction writer.What the hell, whats important is that I have reached the place where I was born!
Yes my friends, I am in Abu Dhabi as we speak/blog. After the rather painful incident in the aircraft, I thought it only fit to go over to my cousins place and have them join in my pain! My moms advise to catch one of the free (you heard it right, fellow cheapskates: FREE) buses doing the rounds was promptly turned down so that I could walk the distance. This was the city I walked my legs off for innumerable tuitions : what better way to catchup with it?
On the way, I see some kids wearing the uniform of my school, ADIS. This, when they should have been dozing of in Mr. Fanta's* chemistry lessons. They say change is constant, but somethings never change!
Walking further down the road, I notice that someone had decided to weed away any non-20th century influences, the city may have had. The familiar Souq (old market) has given way to some modern looking monstrosity, the apartments with the Giant billboard has vanished into thin air. I watch stunned, as I see that the school buses in which i had to sweat and grin until the 10 th standard, now seems to provide air conditioned comfort. The utility of this, when the mercury is at 16 degrees, is highly questionable though.
I will soon be catching up with the friends who made this city special. Have no clues on what to expect, hope a few pleasant surprises are thrown my way.

* Real names cleverly concealed to protect Privacy Reputation.

Allo.. Allo..

Minutes after India had sent out a not-so-softly-worded demarche (which i am told is some sort of protest note, as in: I demarched my salary) to our friendly neighboring country (FNC), the Foreign Minister's office of the Friendly Neighboring Country (FMOFNC) received a phone call. The caller sang "We will... We will rock you..... ", which was unfortunate as it was deemed that it was a threat to rock the very ground of our FNC a la Afghanistan. The caller did not mention his name but had oh-so-casually dropped the fact that he is married to a smoking hot siren and that he is not seen in public without his trucker hat and a mop of hair stitched to it. Almost Immediately, the Intelligence Severing Institution (ISI) swung into action. They trashed their thinking caps and replaced it with all the trucking hats they could find. After all, you had to walk a mile in another man's cap to figure out how he thinks. Approximately a mile and a half into their one mile walk, they deduced that this would have to be none other than hamara Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee. What the FMOFNC failed to consider in the equation was that, India has had a great history of non violence and that the Foreign Minister detested anything other than Carnatic Music.

The Hot line to Washington was opened and a complaint was raised with the Kindergarten teacher Secretary of state of the States*. She immediately pulled up the two kids (albeit nuclear armed ones) and questioned them. This was when Ashton Kutcher thought it fit to end the prank (lest world war 3 be started/ his stupid show be pulled of the air). After taking a few hyperactive steps towards the FMOFNC, he yelled “You Got Punk’d”. Last heard, the FMOFNC was claiming that a one man “stateless” actor was out to destabilize their county by plunking it, and that certain areas of the country may have already been plunked. When Indians at random where questioned regarding this, no one cared to comment. Except for Rakhee Sawant, who has a comment for everything under the sky**.



*- Questions such as "Why isn’t she the secretary of all the states?" and "Who takes cares of the other states?" will not be entertained here. Although i will be glad if you can give me the answer to these mind benders.
** The comment was promptly ignored.

The alarm is ringing, to snooze or not?

As the dust settles down on what has been termed by our Media (in clichéd terms, I must say) as 'India's 9/11', we can introspect a bit on the change being felt around us. The Great (only to be read sarcastically!) Indian Middle class (GIMC), which has never been interested in civic responsibilities, has woken up. There has been a general consensus that the very leaders that were elected into power by us not voting, are not going to stand up and accept blame for the carnage that took place. I have been a silent follower of the blogosphere that till date, was absent of civic charged entries (I chose to emphasize the fact that politically charged blogs are very much different from civic minded blogs). The change that is happening now is visible everywhere from this blog entry by Silverine to this rally in Mumbai.
It has dawned on the GIMC that as long as it refrains from exercising its suffrage, its voice will not be heeded by our politicos. It doesn’t matter if we cry ourselves hoarse in our blogs or in editorials, in India the crying baby certainly does not get any milk, the voting one does. As far as our political bosses are considered, we are an anomaly in the system that does not effectively translate into any vote bank for them. A lesson learnt in the US presidential election was that, galvanizing a youth segment to get up and have their vote counted, translated into victory for the President elect. Once we have caught the attention of our politicos in this manner, they cannot choose to avoid our voice. As depressing as it may be(to be herded together as a generic unit), the GIMC will become a votebank that they will have to answer to.
The scheming overlords may take this opportunity to make this a case of the affluent vs. the poor. The divisive politics of the British have been inherited by our Politicos, who have refined it to an art form: North against South, State against State, and Religion against Religion. We should be wary of these designs and cast our votes for those that do not sing this divisive song. It should not matter who these people we choose are: their Political background, their religion, their caste. Elections are on in many states as we speak, and the rest of the country will soon follow. If we finally decide to stand up and have our voice counted in the electoral booths, this could very well be the silver lining in a very dark cloud for us.

For those of you who are in my situation and are just as confused about voter registration and the like: this site really helps.

Welcome back Myself

After a long hiatus, i have decided that i should start blogging all over again (If you can call haphazard posts at irregular frequency that). The raison de etre of this blog has changed, from being a platform to shout out stuff that used to get stifled in the real world to being a platform for stuff that should no longer be restricted to the virtual world. Before you all delete my feed and permanently block my blog, let me clarify that this is not going to be an activist blog of any sort! However in case if I accidentally do tread on uneven ground, please do not start flaming my blog as it will (most of the time) be in jest. This entry has too many reference to the first person(singular) and hence will not proceed any further (Error Code : 0x0000332A: Blowing ones trumpet).