Life has settled in to a routine after coming back here to Kochi. The routine involves 10 hours of work and 8-10 hours of sleep. That is why I have not posted here for a long time. I got some new friends here and I must admit I am enjoying the stint at entry level.

Meanwhile, the calendar tells me I am another year older, which delights me. The journey is as exciting and challenging as always. I get the feeling that the next one year would be crucial as far as my personal life goes. Will Mr.Dee finally decide to get married or will he choose to stay happily unmarried?

A Kozhikode trip is on the chart for the month of June. My dearest friend is getting engaged. Looking forward to meeting my old friends there at Kozhikode, have some fun....

What a budget Sirjee......

Rahul Gandhi may sleep on the footpath or travel in a bullock cart for all I care. What I need is for the government to provide some solace from the record price rise. The economic report presented in the Parliament by the Government talked about the alarming rise in prices of food items in this country. Yet, Finance Minister of Manmohan Singh government went ahead with increasing the excise tax for petroleum products. This one single proposal will surely heap another hefty burden on the family budget. The government says that financial crisis is over. It may be so for the corporate sector and the rich elite. But who is there to care about the common man in this country?

Too bad that Kalavatis of this nation end up as no more than vote mongering sob stories...

Back to the grind..and loving it...

Back in my home town, in a BPO and best of all as an executive...

I just love it....New friends, new process, new things to learn and some time to enjoy before I move up the ladder. Of course it is not easy to start off, especially since I like setting such high standards.

It helps that I have developed such a thick skin over the years and can easily do away with my hearing capacity. Where would I be with out the famous Teaurean stubbornness....

Electoral reforms – some dreams...

I often feel proud that I am a citizen of the world’s largest democracy. The onus of choosing who gets to rule my nation is vested with millions of ordinary Indians like me. But the need for electoral reforms is ignored time and again. Recently the Gujarat Government came up with a legislation that makes it mandatory for every citizen to fulfil the obligation of taking part in the electoral process. Commendable as it is, such legislation would be more meaningful if we are offered the choice of “None of the above” in the electoral machine.

A highly unlikely but equally desirable step is to enable the citizens to remove non-performing representatives from the legislature subject to appropriate regulations. Of course, these are highly unlikely to happen in the Desi version of prajatantra. Still we do have every right to dream.....

Mallus should be worried..

As days, months and years fly by, we the Mallus, are left stranded on the path to nowhere. The rulers and the public ignored the early warnings which could have prevented most of the major terror attacks that rocked this nation in recent years. Even now, when it is obvious that God’s own Country has fallen prey to Devil’s plans to annihilate India, we fail to take corrective measures. We leave too much to chance and are yet to wake up to the catastrophe that awaits us. The polity that successfully shielded the terror modules continue to reduce the various investigations into a mere farce focused on a highly controversial fundamentalist leader and his family. Everyone knows that the rut runs much deeper, a fact that is the main obstacle in the road to justice and national security.

Another disturbing aspect of Mallu life that is sure to blow up in coming months and years is our love-hate relationship with neighbour Tamil Nadu. Mullaperiyar issue has been dragging for far too long. It is a colossal failure on the part of judiciary as well that the issue is nowhere near a solution. One can only thank the Almighty that the old dam is holding on, though in a precarious position. Today, violence erupted in a border village in Trivandrum over the issue of collecting water for domestic purposes from a pipe that is inside TN territory. Vaiko has threatened to block all goods transport that comes into Kerala from Tamil Nadu if Kerala does not yield to TN stand on Mullaperiyar. That would indeed be a brilliant move, considering that wise Mallus have reduced themselves to a position where we are totally dependent on TN for food supplies. Mallu leaders are simply incapable of bargaining for Kerala’s demands unlike their counterparts from TN and other states.

Where will we be 50 years from now? Mallus should be worried...

Back to home town...

After an interval of over six years, I am back at my hometown Kochi. Another twist in the tale for me, and as my favourite star Mammootty said in the block buster Big B, “Kochi is not the old one. But, I am still the same old guy.”

The city is trying desperately to expand in all directions and is becoming more metropolitan in the process. While earlier the immigrants were limited to certain pockets and the heart of the city, these days we come across people from outside Kochi and Kerala at almost every small junction in Ernakulam district. The city is showcasing itself as “The most desirable residential address in Kerala”, which I don’t approve of. Still it is obvious that if you are in Kerala, Kochi is the place to be.

The traffic congestion has only gotten worse over the years and continued negligence by the civic authorities has ensured that mosquitoes, civic hygiene and waste disposal are worse than ever. The movie halls continue to test the patience of viewers with two or three power failures each show!! The promised bus stand is still to materialise and the LDF Government has successfully sent the Smart City Project to hibernation. Metro rail and other infrastructural projects that should have been implemented over a decade ago are still being debated, planned, re-planned, scrapped, and implemented?????

Just like me, Kochiites have also retained their skill to get used to any conditions and live on. They still manage to put on a smile where many others would have simply collapsed. Way to go dear Kochi....

Will we ever learn our lessons??

As voters in three assembly constituencies from Kerala go to the polling booths to elect their new representatives, I can’t but worry about the futility of such an exercise. In spite of being a staunch believer in democracy I must admit that the Indian version of it is certainly giving me more reasons to be sceptical about it. Having said so, I cannot even imagine the plight of citizens in other countries around the globe that don’t even have a semblance of democracy to talk about.

What keeps troubling me time and again is the total apathy and lack of accountability that we see so often in Indian political and administrative system. One could always argue that it is but a reflection of the society at large, but that is beside the point.

An enormous mishap like that of Thekkady could not help us be a little more cautious and Areekkad occurred. Nothing really changed in between, not even the psyche of the common man. We had a series of road accidents some years ago in which the vehicles involved (mostly buses) caught fire. This saw stricter implementation of laws regarding emergency exit doors, only to be forgotten about sometime later. How many buses still have emergency doors that actually work?

The tragedy at Uphaar movie theatre at Delhi caused such uproar across the country. But many of the big buildings across the nations still have fire exits that are redundant and stairways that are wide enough to allow only two or three people to get out at one time.

As star politicians crisscross the country in search of dilapidated mud homes and starving families that could host them for the night and demonstrate their pathetic existence to him, the same old story keeps repeating. What a sad plight for the common man in the world’s largest democracy...