Open Letter to Mamta Bannerjee

Dear  Momta Didi,

WHAT is wrong with the Indian Railways? Ever since you have taken over the damned portfolio, the railways are going back to where they were before Chara Chor hamra Laloo had taken over. Yet another accident has taken away from your credibility as the Railway Minister. This time in Madhya Pradesh.

23 people lost their lives on Monday morning when a goods train ran into the Gwalior- Indore Intercity Express. The accident has been blamed on 'human error' as the cabin man forgot to change the track for the goods train that jumped a signal. Didi, you thus have a more than pathetic track record of 270 deaths in 15 months in your tenure as the minister.

Only if you had bothered with the railways in depth instead of changing the menu of the trains and adding fish curry to it and starting duronto trains to and from Bengal (wtf is with the name anyway? Sounds like yet another Bengali dish) You also gave more priority to your elections in West Bengal and have never made your ambitions of becoming the CM of WB under wraps. In fact you are brash about it. Then pray why are you bothering with railways anyway.

But what really gets my goat are sentences that follow news articles of accidents.

"Railway minister Mamata Banerjee has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh for the next kin of the dead, Rs 1 lakh and Rs 50,000 for those with serious and minor injuries respectively.

Besides announcing monetary compensation, the government has also promised jobs to the next of the kin of those killed in the mishap."

Didi, do you know how much money has the Railway Ministry had to give out thanks to your lack of leadership skills? Lets not even start to think about the jobs. First there are the million and one quotas for jobs, and then this. Kin of railway accident victims. Don't get me wrong didi. I think they deserve the jobs more than anyone in any quota does. But wouldn't it be better if they had their family members alive and well, still working, still earning and happy? Or maybe if the 'minor injury' victims had their limbs about them?

Time for drastic measures Didi. Shape up or ship out. You've had more accidents to your name in recent times than most other railway ministers. Don't start off about the Naxals already, let me finish. Something somewhere is clearly amiss. Be a good leader and set things right and NO, I don't mean a Kolkata Bandh for the love of God.

Yours pissed offed-ly

Nishtha

To Dadoo, With Love

Written on 28th August 2010

Today, I return the books Dadoo, my grandpa, my nana borrowed in 2008 from the library he had been a member of for 25 years. Today Dadoo will truly be at peace. Overdue books was never his thing.

Dadoo could read two books at a time.He travelled VT daily till he was well into his 80s. Dadoo could do a lot of things others couldn't. He was undoubtedly the most extraordinary man I've ever met.

I never really could tell him how awesome he was. But I have a feeling that he always knew. After he passed away in February this year, I've been inundated with stories about Dadoo I had never been told before. I just can't stop feeling bad about the fact that I had but 20 years with him.

Wherever you are today Dadoo, I hope they have tons of books for you. The thriller ones. :) Miss you Dad!

We Cut, We Copy, We Paste!

I have been getting a little nostalgic about college ever since our results got out. Was going through a couple of old projects and found one worth putting up here.

We Cut, We Copy, We Paste!

Sometime ago, on a not-so-cold December morning last year, we were informed about yet another assignment which made us, the class of TYBMM Journalism groan. I especially was anything but enthusiastic about it. Group projects, with more than a couple of people always end in a disaster. And Good Lord in Heaven! This included eliciting co-operation from the entire class. Mommy has always taught me to be thankful to God, regardless of the situation. So I uttered a small prayer thanking Him we were not a class of sixty anymore.

I poured over my daily dose of crosswords instead. The rest of the class, sufficiently excited for a 7:50 AM lecture heard Sridhar Sir, our lecturer for News Media Management, out. What did he say? I have no idea! I was busy figuring out 8ac., “French Friend”.

Sneha, my life saver, manages to explain to me the entire concept in the break. The conversation was somewhat like this:

Sneha: We have to make a paper. COMPLETELY. From content, to design, to marketing to selling, it’s our baby.

Nishtha: Oh dear Jesus!

For a person who was never religious, remembering God so many times in so short an amount of time was a big deal. So was the project.

After a lot of dilly-dallying we decided to hold a meeting regarding who does what in the newspaper. Sigh! How I was wishing for this project to end! Why? I don’t know, it was probably a mental block. Did I get rid of it? Read on to find out. Why should I ruin your surprise? We collectively voted for Nishit Morsawalla and Sharanya Subramanian (or was it Subramaniam) to be our Editor and Publisher respectively. In retrospect -and I’m sure my classmates will agree- they were usually, regarding issues, on one side, while the rest of the team was on the other. The Eighth Wonder of the World and probably a Journalistic first, an editor and a publisher who were in agreement on probably everything!

We had our share of false startups on the newspaper. All the meetings were held in Candies like all group meetings are always and people didn’t turn up for many, including yours truly because something or the other always crops up when a meeting is scheduled

Finally, the most interesting aspect of the newspaper finally got us interested in working for it; the name! Yes, the age old perennial question that haunted you even when you were born. “Naam kya hai?” We tried LSD. Not the drug silly, LSD stood for Lights, Sound and Drama. We even tried S.E.X. No idea why, just because sex sells probably! We finally zeroed down on Cut Copy Paste, the three words that excite any and every BMM student; after all our marks depend on it. So CCP- that’s what we called our baby- was finally making some headway! After a lot of hullabaloo, which I will not get into this time, we decided on make the issue of CCP on the Media (duh!) and interesting career options in the field. Something like an Education Times meets JLT.

The next few hurdles we faced were the most trying times of our project. Assigning stories, finding advertisers, procuring permissions from authorities, et al. After being assigned stories with Nishit’s blessings err… approvals, we launched a man-hunt to search for our missing partners who we had to collaborate with. In my opinion, working on the stories was much more a mammoth task than finding advertisers for CCP.

Although finding advertisers was as daunting a task as climbing Mount Everest. To people who’ve never needed to struggle for anything, literally having the phone slammed on your face can be very demoralizing. I uttered yet another small prayer to thank God for Uncles with businesses and deep pockets. We chased everyone from Nationalized Banks to the corner Xerox waalah. Maybe not to everyone else, but it felt like prostituting my newspaper to people and it wasn’t a good feeling. I decided that I would stick to Journalism, something that is sacred to me. The long drawn battle between the Ad guys and the Edit guys saw me take the side of the edit guys.

Working on the stories, while simultaneously working on other projects, tested our multitasking abilities to the hilt. What a sight it was; a phone in between our shoulder and ear, one hand on the keyboard, the other scribbling something on a notebook while Sneha gives me a pedicure… (okay, forget I mentioned that, tee hee) On a serious note, a lot of research and hard work went into each and every article we wrote. Yes, seriously.

More than anything else, I think the design team should be applauded for the eye catching layout they made for CCP. Our articles would get read only if people liked the layout and design. And that’s how CCP was sold to many people.

Once the top bosses had skimmed through our stuff, rejected, re-revised and edited, the design team had done their bit, the paper went into print. Wow! How I loved saying those words. CCP has gone into print. The night before the paper was to be launched, none of us slept. Thanks to a certain Miss Prakriti Sharma who tweeted non-stop about how awesome the paper felt. For the first time in three years, people reached college by 8 AM… on a public holiday!

The D-Day had dawned and the fresh copies of CCP were in our hands. We stood outside the college gates and waited for the crowd to pour out after the Republic Day function. I felt like a newbie matador waiting for a killer bull, personally. My aforementioned interaction with marketing had not been so good and I was afraid of what would be next. Thanks to my team members, I went and attacked every single person that came my way, asking them to buy our paper.

Not many were initially convinced with buying the paper. The cost or the subject or a peculiar hatred towards our cover-boy Ranbir Kapoor were cited as reasons, the last one inviting a raised eyebrow from me. We tried tricks like: “We’re from your college man!” “Help us with the project, na,” and even “Bees rupaye ke liye kya chindigiri kar raha hai” And voila! It worked! People actually brought our newspaper. We decided to widen our base and try our strategy elsewhere. As a result, we made sales in coffee shops and even places like Bandstand and Carter Road.

We could literally see 20 buck notes circling our head and hear the ‘ka-ching’ of the cash register when a potential client walked by. Over a cup of coffee, we were informed of the profit we had made. It was nearly double of what we had put in! Yayy, I could finally buy the new phone I so wanted!

But most of all, when people came up to us and said that our articles made a difference to them, helped them, entertained them, etc, it touched us. I’m sure our face would have been illuminated with the pure joy.

Did I change my mind about the newspaper? The suspense is over and to those who did not manage to guess it, my heart warmed to CCP just like a mother’s heart melts when she sees her newborn. Hopefully this is just a snapshot of what we should expect from the coming years in this field. Nowhere else will you find the joy that we have felt in every step of the production and the final result which blew us away, except perhaps the feeling of becoming a parent.

Nationals BMM Class of o'10 \FTW/ :') I miss you guys!

This Is The End, My Friend

A friendship died a couple of months ago. I didn't feel like writing about it before. But seems like its time now.

Friends come and go. Some friends hang around forever, with most the equation changes over time and the rest fade out from your scheme of things and leave behind sepia tinted memories. This one met with a different fate. An abrupt end. 

A companionship of years torn apart by non adherence to the one simple principle of friendship- truth. Yeah, I sound like a cry-baby, a whiner. So sue me. I've lost a lot. 

Sigh, there I go again losing my will to write about it. Who cares anyway. And even if you do, there isn't much you can do. There isn't much I can do either. 

I simply wish this didn't have to happen. I haven't had the will to tell the person in question about The End. Probably, they know. I know I'm probably being a bitch by not telling already, getting hopes up. But I really do not want to go that way again.

I tried and I tried for years. To salvage the friendship. Tried to make them see that what they were doing was wrong. I don't know where I fell short. As a person, as a friend. But is it right to blame myself? Anyone who knew the two of us, would say that I shouldn't. But what good is the friendship if you can't grow as a person? 

I always told my friends, "I'll warn you that there is a ditch right ahead, several times in fact. I'll warn you till the very last minute. Falling into it would be your choice, I won't pull you away. Everyone needs to make their own shares of mistakes. But I'll be there to lend you a hand, help you out of the ditch. We're friends" But for how long? There has to be a limit to how many times  you want to subject yourself to falling right? Wrong. 

I failed a friend. All 'cause I couldn't save them from themselves. I wish you the best D, and I hope you can run away from yourself. 

Top seven things I hate about New Years

Well since the whole world and it's sister is writing down their list, why not me?

Presenting my herd mentality blog with a difference

Top few shitty things I hate/ despise/ loathe about new years :D

,|,,) The Best and Worst lists of the year: Yes, you guessed it. 10 days left for the year to die in peace and everyone from TV channels to newspapers and your baaju waali aunty conduct an elaborate postmortem on the year past and compile their very own '6.75 best *insert random category here* of 2009'

,|,, ,,|,) The Best and the worst of the decade: Oh my FUCKIN' God! As if the best/worst of the year was not enough, some nincompoop realized that it was the end of the decade. God damn it. 10 years ago I was a 10 year old school going kid whose only problem about the new millennium was not Y2K but Christmas homework. Isn't that shit loads to dissect?!

,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ) What are your New Year's eve plans? :D : Main Kyun Bataun? This question only reinstalls my faith in the voyeuristic nature of human beings. I'm not inviting you to whatever I'm doing, you're not inviting me to yours. Point kya tha?

,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ) Naye varsh mein baba ramdev ka aashirwaad aapke saath hai DONT DLTE THS MSG. PASS TO 50 FRNDS AND U WILL GET 'BIGST C*****A AWRD' DNT DLTE PLS PLS: *sigh* Enough said?

,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ) Older people asking you what your new year's resolution is: Why is it so essential to waste ten minutes of my precious life making up resolutions that I'm going to forget as soon as the clock strikes 12. This year, just to make offenders of this rule miserable, I'm going to tell them, "I plan to earn more than what you currently earn in a matter of a few months. Then I'm going to spend the money right in front of you and make you feel miserable about your own life. Does that make you feel better? *bats eyelids*"

,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ) Fucktards who will be spending new years in front of the TV watching pre recorded shows with shitty artistes performing: DUDE! If you are going to ring in the new year watching Rakhi Sawant gyrating to 'Dekhta hai tu kya' , I'm so sorry for you.

,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ,|,, ) Christmas Vacation Homework: Drat! This miserable thing will never let me enjoy new years in peace. Mummy!

To all those who managed to go through my entire rant without divorcing your hair and head, have a happy new decade and a happy new year and a happy January and a ... OK, you get the drift. And to the offenders of my list, a Hindi saying of the back of a truck in some part of North India should be enough:

"Buri Nazar waale tere bachche jiye, bade hoke tera hi khoon piye"

Cheers! :D

Hate

I'm pissed. Waking up every morning to read at least a couple of stories on women being raped isn't what good mornings are made of. Minor raped by brother-in-law who was in 'love' with her, NRI techie dupes girl saying he'd marry her and then goes 'Muhahah, I aint marrying you, I'm here to rape'

Every time I read something of the sort, it disturbs me. As opposed to people who just read about it like yet another story. But the story that made me cringe was the one about Aruna Shanbaug.

For the ignorant, Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM was sodomized after being strangled with a dog chain by a ward boy. The attack made her lose her speech and left her paralyzed and in a vegetative state. She was 25 at the time of the attack. Oh and just for the record, this happened 36 fuckin' years ago. She is 61 and still in a vegetative state. Pinki Virani, the author of several heart wrenching and disturbing books had written a book on Aruna too. She has now moved SC with a plea to "direct the KEM not to force feed her". Effectively, this means, Euthanasia.

I'm not writing this blog to debate on the morality of Mercy Killing. So let me just get to the point.

In all of this... where the fuck is the ward boy who left Shanbaug in this stats. Sohanlal Walmiki was jailed for 7 years for, get this, attempted murder and robbing Shanbaug's earrings. Full stop. NOT for rape. He apparently is employed in a Delhi hospital.

I'm disgusted. I cannot fathom the mass illness plaguing men in India.

And the only solution I can think of, as punishment and as a deterrent is... castration. No hanging, no life imprisonment, simply chop their weeners off. Life imprisonment and death sentences are easy ways out. Let them be subjected to pain and a life of humiliation as the women they raped were. That ought to do the trick

Oh yes, and I dare... I DARE you pseudo-intellectuals and humanitarians to give me bullcrap about the inhumanity of this, India not believing in the eye-for-an-eye thingy. I DARE you.

Signing off

(ignore any grammatical erorrs, I wrote this in 10 minutes flat)

Words are all I have...

Wow, Sneha just inspired me to start blogging again. I'm sure she isn't even aware. At a time when even twitter is starting to bore the hell out of me, I'm back to the Pappa, the blog instead of trying to cram in my thoughts in a measly 180 characters.

Like Alan Shore says in Boston Legal, "Words are my friends. I don't know what I'd do without them." Oh man, don't I agree with him. It's a woefully difficult task to edit words in my mind and tweet it out; the end result often resembling a poorly typed out SMS.

What is the big deal about twitter anyway? People often tweet at the rate of 15 in as many minutes on my list. To search for a particular person's tweet is one mammoth task. And I always thought blogging was pointless.

I'm halfway through the third year of BMM (woohoo!) and I am in serious need of doing some thinking.

One, I'm losing my friends, my words. Never ever have I felt so helpless and so much at a loss for them. I cannot seem to pinpoint the real reason for it. Influence of other people I'm surrounded with, who of course speak in 'Indian English' is not a reason surely. I speak Hinglish too. But when I wrote, good English came naturally to me. I don't mean to sound vain. It's a gift I have (rather, had) and I treasure it. But they seem to be reluctant to come to me.

Maybe I should start reading full-time again. And writing... Yes, write, I have to. The gift of gab is too precious to me to let it wither away. It's time for desperate measures.

There! I blogged. Now, could I have fit this in 180 characters? I bet I'd need even less.

nishtha_k: at a loss for words :P :(