Interesting report on India by UN

According to a new UN study, more people in India (which is the world's second most crowded country) have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet. The actual statistic is this – “India has some 545 million cell phones, enough to serve about 45% of the population, but only about 366 million people or 31% of the population had access to improved sanitation in 2008”
I am sure that since the time of the survey, the number of cell phones would have at least doubled. When I read this I wanted to add a photo to the information. So here is my work on that :P

(Thanks to 'indiapapa.blogspot.com' and stock photo website for the photos, also to 'Aviary' online tool - this is a wonderful alternative for photoshop!!)

The UN doesn't seem to know this - As long as there are transformers and EB Boxes alongside Chennai’s walls with “P. James Magic Show” graffiti painted on them, who cares about toilets?! – What Say Boys!!

Do It - Once Again

I have enjoyed lot of Vivek comedies, which of late are a lot more meaningful and informative. Recently I watched the “Koffee with Anu” show (Thanks to internet and those who host these videos on their website) in which the guests were Vivek and Mayilsami “Chandrayan” Annadurai. The show was very interesting. But what stood out at the end of the show was the message that Vivek gave. One simple mantra to encompass the meaning of several statements of advice. We have heard of all these : “Success comes to the one who never stops trying”, “It is not important how many times you fall, but what is important is how many times you get up after a fall”, “Try, try and try again”, stories of Gajini Mohammed and mulla stories of how the person who tried the 100th time succeeded over the person who gave up after the 99th attempt. But all these stories in 4 short words “Do it – Once Again”. I was awed by the simplicity of the statement and wanted to share it in my blog.

On a lighter vein, even if I am the only regular reader of my blog as of now, I am not going to stop posting here and am going to keep doing it once again each day ;-) with a hope to have many readers some day!!!

The magic number 33!!

The bill for 33 percentage reservation for women has been passed in Rajya Sabha after a 14 year long struggle. After a long wait, women might finally get a taste of democracy if the bill gets passed in Lok Sabha too!! Why is this historic and the most talked about bill in the past few years?? Here are some pointers for that:

1. So far, India has seen 14 Lok sabhas since the first house was formed in 1952 – the percentage of women in parliament has not surpassed 10% in all these years.

2. 13th & 14th (the past 2) lok sabhas had maximum women representation 45 out of 543 i.e. 9.02% (still not touching a two digit figure)

3. As per the bill: Reservation in Lok Sabha - 181 out of 543; Reservation in state assemblies - 1370/4109.

Though it is heartening to see a small beam that promises a light at the end of the tunnel, I felt so hurt reading through the negative comments at various websites. With the advent of news on internet with an option to comment, a common man’s (reservation to set this word rite too :P ) voice is heard by at least one another Indian. And I couldn’t talk myself out of rebuking them in my blog. So here I go

One most prominent comment was that “India will become a nation of reservation. The worthy no longer will stand a chance. Nation stands to lose worthy leaders”. My question is with so many years without reservation, how many worthy leaders have we elected to the parliament? If such is the case, can it not be argued that because of a male chauvinistic (I didn’t want to use this word – but again there is no other apt word here) society which will not elect a ‘worthy’ woman against a man, we have lost far more worthy parliamentarians. I feel that with this reservation, we can be confident of having at least 33% of worthy leaders in the house.

Another poor outlook on the bill was that, this bill would only help the elite & rich group and would only lead to more “discrimination and under-representation” of poor & backward classes. I think these comments are from people who have read/listened to the “Quota within Quota” arguments of few opposition leaders. My question here is why do people see this any different than what is already existing? Can the same not be said for the existing system where there is no reservation for poor or OBCs. The only reservation present is the 20% reservation for SC/ST which holds good in the reservation for women too. If there was no need for such quota when men were allowed to contest for all 543 seats, I don’t see the need why this quota must be there for the mere 181 seats that (hopefully) will be reserved for women. I just see this as a cheap tactic by oppositions to dilute the intensity and to drag the bill from being passed for as long as possible.

But when I was reading about this I also saw an interesting bit of information in Times of India. The average age of the members in our Lok Sabha has never been less than 46!!!! The youngest house was Nehru's one with an average age of 46.5 and the pitiable fact is that, for the outgoing Lok Sabha the average age is 52.6. It might be of interest to note that Obama is 47 & Blair is 44 and our prime ministerial candidates are Shri Advani (81) and Mr. Manmohan(76). I guess we have to target a reservation for young Indians next!! :P

Don’t you feel its time that we see young and energetic women in the house? Let us join in wishing the Indian women all success in the political front too. இனி ஒரு யுகம் செய்வோம்!


 P.S: Ouch! Too many numbers here :) . Please bear with this last bit of statistic. For all this crying out loud, with women constituting nearly 52% of the Indian population, a question that still lingers in my mind. Is 33% a fair share?

What Comedy?!

Today I received a mail from my cousin sister - the subject of the mail was "Potential Gold mines" and the mail contained few Keralites marriage photos. The bride in the photos were wearing so much jewels that I seriously doubted how their necks held such weight. I am not worthy to comment as I adorned a good amount during my marriage too but these are unbelievable. But upon seeing the last phot, I felt pity for the bride. I have put that picture here (its all over the internet already!). After all, it was the most important day of her life and she ends up looking like a big joke. Nowadays, even the garland worn during marriage doesnt come so low down. I dont know if she's wearing it to showcase the amout of jewels her parents are giving her or if she really was happy about wearing so much of jewellery. I just hope that the ppl of this region (not just kerala, the southern parts of TN also) quit doing this.

90/10 Principle Huh!!

One great person - Mr. Stephen Covey has invented a principle called 90/10 and the principle says '10% of life is made up of what happens to you and 90% of life is decided by how you REACT'. And he gives a cute little example - daughter knocks coffee over father's shirt on morning, he yells at daughter and yells at wife for placing the coffee mug there. Changes shirt, daughter is crying & misses school bus, wife cant drop her as she has to rush to office, he drops daughter off at school, daughter goes without waving bye, he gets to office late (after receiving a speeding ticket for driving too fast) and then realizes he forgot his briefcase. Now Mr.Covey says that all this happened not because the coffee spilled but because dad reacted in the harsh way. Had the father said 'Its okie honey' instead of yelling at daughter & wife and goes over to change his shirt, daughter'd not have cried, not have missed school bus and day would have been just fine. Agreed here sir!

But does this always work is my question? Don't both the parties in question need to know the 90/10 principle? Is that how life work? I can vouch that Murphy's law is always true. i.e. If you know about the 90/10 principle, by default the person whom you have to deal with in a 'situation' DOES NOT!!!!

So all great athmas out there, the world is still not a beautiful place, until you educate your partners with such things. But for some poor souls (like me) where you'd only be ridiculed (making it another bad REACTION) for suggesting ideas such as these to your partners, have a laugh!!

Angaadi Theru

At last a meaningful movie in this year! Amidst all the love stories and fight flicks, here comes a movie that hits a common man in the face with the harsh realities that showcases not so rosier side of life. The third venture of the director Vasanthabalan is absolutely fantastic. I was just hoping that he does not end the movie in the somber note as in ‘Veyil’. I sort of like the ending of the movie. I don’t know how this movie is doing at the box-office. Usually meaningful movies don’t make it good at the box-office - I wish this movie runs to packed houses.


The director makes sure that this does not end up as just another love story. There are so-many tragedies in life and Avvai says “kodumaiyil kodumail illamaiyil varumai”. That’s what comes to my mind when I saw the movie -the plight of youngsters toiling their lives at such super shopping ‘stores’.

When we used to go shopping with my dad and we stay on till late into the night, my dad has often said this – “poor guys! They must’ve been standing the whole day”. I am sure everybody who has visited Singara Chennai would not have gone back without visiting the famous Ranganathan Street – the angaadi theru shown in the movie. That brings me to another matter that I will write about in a fresh topic – of how we have transformed from shopping for necessity to compulsive shoppers. But coming back to angaadi theru, how many times have we felt irritated when the already tired sales boy/girl doesn’t respond to us and how royally we feel that they are bound to serve upon our command!

If the regular compulsive shopper changes his tone from a command to a request to a sales boy/girl the next time he is bitten by the shopping bug, this film has succeeded.

I would rate this move at 4.5/5.0 – doesn’t need a mass hero for this!