Grumbling, Complaining, Cursing...call it whatever!

Load Shedding duration increased to 3 hours per day! Insufficient funds to obtain the required amount of electric power!
Why can't they cut down on the extravaganza allowances while some high profile politician visits the city? Is it needed to put up tens of thousands' worth of hoardings calling out- "Thalapathiye" "Idhaya Dheivamey" "thunai MUDHALVAREY" etc. each time the person described visits (the frequency of which has now become nearly once in 15 days due to the Tamil Conference) ?? And why on earth should the city resemble a brightly-lit and ostentatiously decorated Christmas Tree when the Chief Minister visits, while the poor tax-payers there swelter in the summer day's heat without electricity for fans and earnest students preparing for exams are deprived of lights during the night?
Oh the Weird Ways of the Wicked World!!

Inching towards the end of the Golden Period...

It was during a recent EVS class that this thought first hit me hard. The class was having fun, as usual, with Mr. SRK having given us the free rein he usually gives. "All this won't last long", told something within me. A few days later, someone casually said, "I'm scared to think of the future". Scared- an adjective I never use for myself - (well unless a lizard in considerable proximity glares at me menacingly) - seemed like it would describe my situation then too.
Inadvertently, the thoughts of "Where would I really be in another year?" started to gain a deeper perspective in my idling mind, to the extent that I had some kind of a gloomy dream even as I slept in a crowded bus on the way home one day and woke up feeling unnecessarily miserable.
Job or MBA- either way, will add a definite fullstop to the childish days and child-like ways. I will be expected to be a professional. My jumpy walk has to sober. My loud laughter has to tone down. No more pranks like tying up the duppattas of two girls sitting in front of you. Oh my!! And no freedom to doze off as per will like in class :-/
Why am I writing this now? Isn't it premature by a year?? Still, the serious placement preparations (by people around me of course) and the get-serious-about-CAT pep-talks I listen to, appear to have taken that element of carefree attitude away from me.
School was Heaven. Bliss. Then came college. It doesn't qualify as being even 10 percent as much great but I did enjoy a few precious moments in these three years. To think that the future will be even less entertaining is inexplicably sad.
Childhood- Adoloscence- the times of fun and frolic are slipping through my fingers and a future full of responsibilty (and unfinished Quant Books :-P) is beckoning...

P.S: Though I may think like a philosopher during post-lunch EVS classes and pre-lunch OS classes to fill up the blog-spaces like above, I am not yet ready to give up my childhood! A full year remains :)
Make Hay while the Sun Shines (or in my friend's words- "We have just reached the intermission. Sit back and enjoy the rest of the movie to the max!") :)

33 percent Reservation...Giant Leap for womankind??

Not really.
The women in power may well be the sari/salwar-clad mouthpieces of the actually powerful (read rich/influential) ones in the field of politics. There may actually be deserving men in a constituency reserved for women. Generalizations always fail with certainty when it comes to characterizing men or women as belonging to the gender that has better administrative skills. There are extremes (morons/mighty managers) as well as moderate ones in both genders and the intelligence or ability is purely a subjective matter.
People all aound are harping about the so-called upliftment of women, just because a bill allowing one-third of the seats in the Parliament to be occupied by women was successfully tabled in the Rajya Sabha. How on earth does this uplift "women" as a whole?? Well, other than Sushma Swaraj and Brinda Karat hugging each other, I do not see any great positive development that this bill might spawn.
Does this thing about upliftment mean that only women MPs will work for the betterment of women in the country?
Or maybe, the very presence of some women in the Parliament is considered to be some kind of a success. I remember reading an article about the Attendance of MPs in the Rajya Sabha prior to the Elections in May'09. The women (mostly from the cine field, who happen to get in easily) had extremely poor attendance and a very poor questioning record.
As an Indian Citizen, I would demand that the human being representing me in the Houses of the Parliament or the Legislative Assembly is efficient and takes proper measures to see to that the represented area progresses in all fields and copes up with dynamically arising problems. I don't give a damn about my representative being a man or a woman, as long as the person is capable.
"BJP-CPI supporting Cong in this Bill" might well be an act of garnering popularity (or better still, avoiding ill-reputation by opposing it). For, after all, we are supposedly a nation that "respects" women (against whom, incidentally, most crimes in the country are committed) and speaking well of the Bill (that "uplifts" the noble gender) in public will add to the respectability of the Party.

The People I Loathe on the Road

This is a post that has been in my mind for quite a long time. I was reminded of it just as I was driving this evening.

1. The first kind poses a potential risk to every two-wheeler rider (more importantly to one sans a helmet) who has to stop at traffic signals next to buses. The poor rider can anytime become the target of an inadvertent game of Hit-the-Spitoon by the passengers in the six-wheeler.
   
2. This is a more dangerous lot. The Murderers, I would call them. "If you want to kill yourself filling your lungs with nicotine, then go do it alone. Why try to kill us too?" is what I feel like shouting at them, especially in public places like Bus Stops. There have been many instances when I've woken up bright and left for college with a fresh mind, to only end up holding my breath or taking in the foul smell in the Bus stop early in the morning. Implementation of the 'Ban on Smoking in Public Places'? My foot.
   
3. This lot, resembles the previous one in its proposed threats. But the people here mostly do not harm themselves more than the riders behind them. Yes, these are the people who don't bother with the emission control norms for two-wheelers. I wouldn't have mentioned them had I not been afflicted with cough for over a month after an instance of having to wait at a signal just behind a dragon in a motorbike's form for about 100 seconds. The most irritating part came when the guy driving the contraption turned and gave a meek grin at all of us, the sufferers behind. Since then, I have conscientiously started checking my own scooter's emission (though Appa leaves no room for doubt there, normally).
   

So there we go! If I find more kind of people to hate, I shall update this list.

CONFUSED!

Seriousness flew out of my life exactly three years back. After I wrote the last digit on the Math Paper in the XII board, life has been a joy-ride for me. Going uphill, having fun, most of the time. Small valleys during semesters (that don't require any fervent preparation) and during internals (that always have the lovely best two out of three policy).
But the dreaded hour has arrived now. Fear and apprehension are undergoing an inflationary phase, fuelled by the release of CAT'09 results. Freshers are allegedly not many in number in the selected list. The tests were not fair (too many reasons which are already quite well-known. Will blog on them if I find time). And now the selection criteria have come under criticism. Today I heard a shattering news that a 99.6 percentiler (a fresher) has not got any call so far!
Where will everything lead to??!! What is going to be my position in a year's time??