Atto Rik Sha

This is an incident that a occurred few months back. Before I start, a little information about what the premise is.

In Bangalore there was a move to replace all the analog autorichshaw meters with digital meters. These were "supposed" to be "tamper proof".

Well, fine Wednesday morning, after I was in office for almost the entire tuesday night, I go out hunting for an auto. I am waving at almost every auto to stop.

Few stop, and say they need Rs.100 for traveling 6 km. The standard fare being Rs 5/Km. It now stands at Rs. 6/Km.

Finally, after waiting for a good half hour, I get one guy. He just asks me Rs. 10 over and above, what the meter(digital) would display. In a firm and angry tone, I told him, nothing at all. Only what the meter displays. The response, left me stunned.
"क्या साब, दस रुपया एक्स्ट्रा देदो ना साब, येह मीटर दिगिटल हैं साब, इसको मैं
चेध कर बढ़ा भी नही सकता, देदो ना साब"

For those who don't know Hindi, this guy was asking me to pay him extra coz he was forced into being honest, as the digital meter dint give him an opportunity to tamper around, as he would have with an analog meter.

Finally I did make it home safe and sound, without giving any extra money.

naaaaaaaaa, I had to give him some extra amount, since the guy dint have a change.
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Another snippet.

This was when my wife, was my girlfriend. She was going to her examination hall in an auto.
This auto guy was "a complete cartoon". In his own words, he had a degree in MRA,
Masters in Rickshaw Administration.

300

Yes, I know, late for a review about this movie. But nevertheless, my opinions about the movie I just saw.
The movie, well not historically accurate, but yes some what close to it. An exaggeration to make it even more spectacular. Visually spectacular, a definite yes.

Visually I would say this movie is amazingly shot. But the violence is sometimes quite over the top. Haven't seen many movies before this which show the entire sequence of a person being beheaded. The action sequences are just awesome. I have seen the behind the scenes footage of this movie and I would say its definitely a lot of hard work. The movie has been made as close as possible to the comic strip its been derived from. The training that the warriors had to go through is so strenuous. Overall I would say its definitely worth watching. Though you might wanna avoid making accurate references to actual historical events. Just enjoy it as a visually spectacular and excessively violent movie.

Though, this does make me wonder, if this simple story of 300 warriors who stop the raging Persian army can be made so visually spectacular, the treatment of our own mythologies of Mahabharata and The Ramayana and many others could be made so much more wonderful.

Wish some major Hollywood studio decides on doing this.

I.S.T

I.S.T also known as Indian Standard Time. Well this is defined as UTC + 5.30 (UTC a.k.a Coordinated Universal Time, a.k.a GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)).

A brief description of time is

IST) is the time observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+5:30. India does not observe daylight saving time, (DST) or other seasonal adjustments, although DST was used briefly during the Sino–Indian War of 1962 and the Indo–Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971.^[1] In military and aviation time, IST is designated E* ("Echo-Star").^[2] Indian Standard Time is calculated on the basis of 82.5° E longitude, which is just west of the town of Mirzapur, near Allahabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The longitude difference between Mirzapur and the United Kingdom's Royal Observatory at Greenwich translates to an exact time difference of 5 hours 30 minutes. Local time is calculated from a clock tower at the Allahabad Observatory (25.15° N 82.5° E) though the official time-keeping devices are entrusted to the National Physical Laboratory, in New Delhi.

The above is an extract from wikipedia.

Now coming back to my blog... Over the world, IST is not understood as above, but as (GMT+5.30) + increments to it as per own convenience.

Imagine, you have something important to be done say @10:30 a.m. and this task is dependent on some other person, who though he/she might be competent, has a tendency to miss timings.
So what happens is that you end up missing the deadline. period.
I can go on about different scenarios which folks miss the timings, but this wont change the situation overnight.
I do not know what is it that makes folks insensitive about the value of the time of another person.
Is it because of the चलता है attitude inculcated in us since time immemorial?

I DO NOT KNOW!! BUT IT SURE DOES SUCK!!!

2 Guys, A Girl and a Pizza place.

Now that I have your attention, lets replace "A Girl" with a bottle of whiskey.
Aha...I never realized, that I am replacing one intoxicant with another!!!. And of course, lets drop the pizza place, not that when two guys are drunk to the hilt, they bother whether they are in a pizza place or a strip joint or dipping their head in the rest room(YUCK!!!)

Now to disclose the identity of the two guys. No!!! I am not doing that, for fear of my own well being and of course a humble request from them as well.

The whiskey was Canadian Mist.

I have seen what liquor can do to ppl. Not that I hadn't seen drunken folks before, but I had never been witness to a man drinking and going berserk.

I witnessed a sort of de-evolution. Here was a man, going back to his primeval times, the whiskey had triggered the mutant gene in him. Behold!!! for he had become an APE!!!!

He was banging down chairs on the floor like some gorilla playing with a log of wood, he was jumping around the whole room. The mention of members of the opposite sex elicited an amazing response. It was similar to that of a full grown gorilla with over charged testosterone. This was a full blown display of the awakened basic instinct which was lying dormant in him.

I wish I could capture in film, these moments of whatever you might think of it as.

I am sure many folks out there have plenty of bizzare tales about ppl drunk as though there is no tomorrow.

But this sure was a first for me.
And it pretty much strengthens my resolve to never take up drinking.