Day 87-2011 : Back to Fiction

There was a time when I would be borrowing a novel from a circulating library in the morning, finish reading it during the day and exchange it back for another one the next day in the morning.  This was during the summer vacations in my school and college going times.  Life then was a complete joy ride without a worry in the world.

Over the years, with the daily drudgery of earning your grub and tending to the family, the reading habit was put on the back-burner.  I could never find the time nor the inclination to pick up a book to read.  Even if I did so, I would find it very hard to finish reading it!  One of the resolutions that I made at the start of this year was to improve on my reading.  I am happy to report that I have met with reasonable success with it so far.  The kick-off was with Andrew Ross Sorkin's pseudo-fictional plot on the financial turmoil at Wall Street in 2008; Too Big To Fail.  I finished reading it within a month.  What I did however realise, was that, a generous dose of fiction is what might get my reading going again.  The fast paced, the better.  Hence, once I finished this, I read fiction with a vengeance.  I came across a bunch of Agatha Christie murder mysteries / thrillers, which I think was gifted by my colleagues at ACES.  I am now done with two of those titles and thoroughly enjoyed reading them!

I remember the first book that really ignited the interest in me for reading.  It was Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel, and of course, its sequels.  Over the years he has been one of my favourite authors.  Hence, I recently read his latest novel, Only Time Will Tell. 

I read this one entirely on the flights to and back from New York.  The impression that I got after reading it was that the author is probably not at his best.  His efforts here seem very laboured.  He painstakingly tries to recreate a plot which is similar to a Kane and Abel, and in my mind, fails to do that.  The characters are not very well fleshed out at all.  Mind you, as a story it is a good read, but I have higher expectations from an author like Jeffrey Archer.

So, here I am now, back to the murder mysteries.  But this time, it is not Poirot but Miss Marple.  Three months down and I am on my fifth book now.  A couple of others are in the queue, including Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and the more technical, Securities Operations, by Mike Simmons.

As of now, fiction seems to have done the trick!  Take care.

Day 80-2011 : Mother Nature Strikes...And How!

I haven't been able to post anything over the last couple of weeks.  I haven't been lazy; just did not get the time to pen down my thoughts, due to a number of circumstances.

The main culprit has been my travel schedule.  Looks like March is turning out to be as hectic as the previous two months on the travel front.  I have been now to Shirdi, Nashik, New York and Ahmedabad in this month.  The incident at Shirdi was of course a shocker.  By the way, we have been able to make some headway into the matter after I wrote the letter on the 9th of March.  Since then the SP of Ahmednagar District has taken interest in the matter and has promised strict action against the guilty cops at the Shirdi Police Station.  The visit to Nashik was wonderful as well.  One of my uncles, Ramesh Iyer, is a nature enthusiast, and specialises in terrariums. All of us like the place, especially the kids.  The weekend after Nashik, I had to travel to New York and then the following weekend was Ahmedabad.

This post however is not about my experiences during all of these trips.  It is about nature.  And its fury!  On Friday, I had taken the day off to prepare for my New York trip.  I was however, looking up the BB every now and then. Sometime during mid-morning, I got a note from one of my colleagues that he was on a conference call with Tokyo and the colleagues in Tokyo mentioned that they thought they were experiencing tremors. After that, there was only a flood of emails about the natural calamity striking Japan.  It has since been confirmed that all my colleagues in the firm based out of Japan are safe and there has been no loss of life.  Now, considering the scale of the disaster, this must be some sort of a miracle!  I am told this is purely because of the fact that buildings in Japan, especially in the urban areas are built to withstand very high intensity earthquakes.  This earthquake was the strongest ever recorded in the history of the country with a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale.

But then, there was more to come!  The earthquake triggered of a Tsunami which hit the coastal areas of North-Eastern Japan with a vengeance.  Some of the pictures on television were horrendous and heart wrenching.  The sheer size of the Tsunami waves was literally washing away anything that came in its path.  Houses, cars, planes, ships and everything else was washed away through fields and villages.  Just watching it made me shiver, I cannot even begin to imagine what people in Japan must be going through.  The calamity is also a setback to Japan's attempts to come out of a recessionary economic phase.  Some might argue that the resultant reconstruction activity would boost the economy.  There is, however, no proof of it from past such events. 

The twin disasters have also opened up possibility of another monumental disaster occurring.  The overheating and the resultant fires at the nuclear power plants in Japan is a huge worry across the globe.  People are fearing another Chernobyl like calamity.  There are reports of traces of radiation being found in nearby areas of the power plants.  This has, of course, triggered another debate around the usage of nuclear energy, which I am sure, is likely to continue for a while in the foreseeable future.

While all of this is happening, my thoughts go out to the thousands of people who have lost their lives, those who have lost their near and dear ones and those who have lost their livelihoods.  We should do all we can to help the Japan and its people at this critical juncture. 

Mother Nature provides.  But just like your real mother, sometimes Mother Nature pulls out all the stops to remind you who's the boss!

Take care.

Day 68-2011 : Letter to DGP, Maharashtra (Abridged)

To,

The Director General of Police
Maharashtra.

Dear Sir,

I wish you to bring to your notice an incident that happened on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at Shirdi. I and my family members, names and ages attached, had travelled to Shirdi for Darshan on that day.

During the visit jewellery from my aunt’s purse was stolen. The jewellery was kept in a yellow pouch, in the purse carried by my aunt. The list of items stolen and their approximate value are attached herewith.

Following is the sequence of events:

1. We reached Shirdi and joined the queue for Darshan at 13.00 IST.
2. We reached the Sai Samadhi at the end of the queue at approximately 14.15 IST.
3. All of us came out and went to the donation office opposite the exit from the Sai Samadhi.
4. We realised that the jewellery has been stolen at the donation office at approximately 14.20 IST.
5. We immediately lodged a complaint with the temple Security Office.
6. When asked to review the footage from the CCTV cameras, the temple security office control room advised that we should lodge an FIR at the Shirdi police station, only after which we could see the CCTV footage.
7. We went to the Shirdi police station at approximately 16.30 IST to lodge the FIR.

On reaching the Shirdi police station, my aunt was first of all rebuked by the constables on duty for carrying the jewellery to the temple. When asked to lodge a FIR, we were told that ours is not the only such case that has happened; 10 such cases of theft are reported on a daily basis. When we still persisted on registering the FIR, we were told that nothing would come of it and it would be a futile exercise. Moreover, the authorities at the police station did not want to register a FIR because we were outsiders (from Mumbai) and they assumed that we would not come back to follow up on the case or when summoned. When this did not work, the officials on duty started threatening us by saying that we were asking for trouble and if we do not turn up when summoned for a follow up on the case, even warrants could be issued against us! We were also told that the FIR will not be lodged till the Police Inspector of the Shirdi Police Station comes back to the police station from his rounds, for which the ETA was not known. This was another delaying tactic used by the officials in the hope that we would abandon the thought of registering a police complaint. All along, the officials on duty were rude to my aunt, who is a senior citizen, and the rest of us. There was no empathy for the fact that a 68 year old lady had lost her jewellery and she would be mentally distressed due to this.

I would like to escalate this matter to you in your position as the head of the state’s police force. Instead of helping people in distress, the police force is being rude to them and do not have the sensitivity to deal with such cases. If the police force of the state behaves like this, I ask you, what is the recourse for the common man?

I request you to please intervene in this matter and help us find the stolen items of jewellery. I would also like to request you to please look into the matter of the misconduct of the police officials on duty at Shirdi Police Station on that day and take the appropriate action against them.

I hope to get a favourable and swift response from you.

Thanking you,

Yours Truly.

CC: The Superintendant of Police, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra

CC: Shri R. R. Patil, The Home Minister, Maharashtra

Day 66-2011 : The Artist In Her

The lady is just unstoppable!  And the kids are loving it! 



She has been eyeing the walls for some time now.  Ever since we moved into our new house, my better half has been wanting to paint the walls in the children's room by herself.  Sensing that I might have no objections in using the walls as a canvas, she went for it.  And the result is an oil painting of Tom & Jerry in the children's room.  Quite apt, I would say.

 

Tom & Jerry @ Mumbai!



The walls are her canvas!

Noddy & Co. @ Chennai.

I think Priya is very good at this.  Of course, she has always been a performing artist, having been trained in Bharatnatyam for a number of years.  But this is fine arts and that is a completely different ball game.  I guess she has a knack for this too.  And this is not the first time that our walls have borne the brunt of her artistic expressions.  She had converted the whole length of a wall in our previous house at Chennai into Toyland! With crayons!

The children are imploring her to do Spiderman next.  Warli painting on another wall is on the cards next, I think.  She has been talking to me about it for some time now, to test the waters, I guess.

I think it is time to invest in a proper canvas!

Take care.