Tag Archives: India

Do what you can!

I always used to wonder how would people who lived in history felt when they had to undergo some calamity. Natural disasters, Wars, Revolutions, and whatnot. Well, we got the opportunity to face a pandemic during our lifetime as well. Pretty depressing couple of weeks, aren’t they. I just hope and wish that the crisis ends soon and whoever is becoming part of the stats, becomes part of those 98-99 percentage who survive with mild symptoms.

But as I write this, the city I am in, Bengaluru, is breaking records every day. As I recall, in the first week of March 2021, the number of daily cases was around 200-300. Today, it has crossed 20,000. I don’t know about others and don’t have to wait for the government, I have imposed a lockdown on myself and won’t be venturing out for anything at all till better air prevails. I am privileged to do that, fortunately. But sitting at home makes one feel extremely anxious when notification after notification just piles up the frustration and feeling of helplessness. What can I do with my limited resources and a family to take care of? Mind you I have seen what a family goes through when they fall prey to the virus. The amount of panic and frantic calls one makes to arrange a bed is suffocating figuratively, to say the least. Even right now, I have already had plenty of news after news of friends, colleagues, and relatives testing positive and nobody can help, to be frank.

Last year, people donated money to PM Cares wholeheartedly when hospitals in India could manage and avert the crisis to a certain extent. Since then, from the government’s side, what could or could not be done is all evident. People in power or with influence and governments who could do things didn’t do or delayed in doing, without any shame or remorse is also known. I would wait for the blame game for some other time but here are some resources I found which can help NOW. I am not a huge influencer or anything but can certainly help in my own limited way by sharing some genuine links which can be of some help.

Hospital Data

https://covid-19-hospital-data.el.r.appspot.com/

Meals

https://covidmealsforindia.com/

Donation Links

https://donate.indiacovidresources.in/

If you want to donate from out of India:

For friends who stay outside India: 

Through Cryptocurrency?

Telegram Group for Information:

Telegram group – https://t.me/joinchat/NPW-kgUldiAzMzQ1

Whatsapp https://chat.whatsapp.com/B4fvtqb1K0pLumoXFsdNrN

I can also do this minor thing, although again, I am not a pro artist, and neither this blog has a great reach but SEO works:

If you make a donation of Rs. 1000 or above, please share the receipt with me (http://abhinavbhatt.com/contact/ / http://twitter.com/abhinavbhatt01) and I can send you any one of the high-resolution soft copy minimal movie posters I made a few years ago. (please adjust with this for now)

https://minimalmovieposters.in/tagged/abhinav_bhatt

Nobody’s Perfect

To be without a king is better than having an arrogant king.

Kautilya

One of the most brilliant inventions of the human mind is Democracy. It gives satisfaction to people that their own representatives govern them back. At least in theory. In India, democracy is something we all cherish and be proud of. It took us an enormous amount of time for establishing Democracy and with a lot of sacrifices. We love the fact that about 800 million people get to decide the fate of our country for 5 years. 800 million is such a huge number that even managing them to cast their votes is as difficult as reaching Mars.

Democracy is like playing a biased sport. The rules of the biased sport are known in advance though. Sometimes the ideals of democracy go for a toss as well. The rules on which we based our biased sports, get bent. That ensues newsworthy scenes. Some countries have Black days, some have White days.

This happens because Democracy is not the equilibrium state. Chaos/high entropy/anarchy and the survival of the fittest is natural. Democracy is actually the opposite of natural. All the other ways of governing have overtime proved to be difficult or have failed. We all know that Democracy needs patience. It is certainly not ideal and all forms of Democracies have tradeoffs. There is no 1-way Democracy has worked. It evolves, twists and turns, and churns out a new form from time to time.

Only in a Democracy, a Tea Seller, or a Reality Show Star can become the head of the state. We can always vote them out too. Often, we take our Democracy to be granted. It is far from being perfect but the best of what we have. Cherish it!

Photo by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash

Not that highly but still a recommended reading:

FU News: Uber for protests launched

Thinking Fast and Slow.

Currently, I am reading the book Thinking Fast and Slow and as of now, it is amazing. But, this is not about the book, I just wanted to use the title.

Man thinking of which of the 2 directions to take
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Alright, I will admit that I have been slow this time. Probably not paying too much attention to news/Twitter has made me so. But finally, I have made my opinion about the ongoing issues of the world which are bothering my brethren, if I may.

In the beginning, when Citizenship Amendment Bill was tabled before Parliament, my initial quick reaction was ‘Alright! This might trigger some disturbance due to it sounding like discriminatory’. Having said that, I had no clue why it was being brought. We all already knew very little about NRC thingy going in Assam. Who was left out, who was kept, what happened finally?

Then I read a bit more and understood that it was to fulfill the long-standing demand of providing safe haven to persecuted minorities of Akhand-Bharat region i.e. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who are seeking shelter in India, after all, India is the motherland of all the included religions and all.

Then I made myself satisfied by putting this CAB thing into Things-I-Need-Not-Fret-Over. By this time, Jamia students had tasted the brutal blow of Police Lathi in Dilli ki Sardi, as they say. Now that caused a brouhaha over social media in all shapes and forms. Everyone I knew online and everyone I know offline were divided if you know what I mean. I couldn’t decide at that time as I thought both sides have their valid points. While Govt. was doing what they promised, as per their agenda since time immemorial, the bright young folks of our youthful nation were protesting as it was clearly a cause of concern because of it being a prequel to NRC. Which side to pick? I am still a youth and I am also a law-abiding citizen, last time I checked.

Then some more protests happened, more violent it became, more vocal / creative / loud, the social media became and it became a bigger issue than you could ignore just like that. Then I read more and saw more. Both sides didn’t want to budge down.

I had a few points in my mind which demanded clarification. I am listing them down and providing an argument to them.

ArgumentPossible Counter Argument
Minorities in Af, Pak, Ban need our support. We are big-hearted.Can we first support ourselves properly before supporting others?
Where will poor Hindus come if not India?They could go to Nepal, and anywhere else. Even the middle east. They are allowed mostly everywhere.
What would happen when NRC gets applied? After all, we should know who is a citizen and who isn’t.We all remember what Indian Govts. are capable of in terms of mismanaging a reasonable idea? Does anyone remember Demonetization?
Shouldn’t we trust Govt. when they are saying that no Indian citizen would be harmed?Harm is already done now. People have taken sides. The division has already happened. It has been there since 1947. Why fuel the fire? There are other ways to check borders? We can build a wall. *ahem*
NPRWhat?
Yes, one more card.Please.

And so on. My 2nd last post was about Indian Adhesives. i.e. movies, cricket, and ISRO which gave us reasons to celebrate and be united. Immediately after that, we have to see such scenes where police are brutally beating students. People who have no business and no understanding of the situation are burning buses and thereby making govt. more stern about their plan. The vicious circle has become more vicious and more circular.

So, what have I finally thought after thinking fast and slow? I think that if we align our energies to make simpler things better, we are better off rather than trying to be a Super Power by 2020. We have better aims to achieve. We have better things to create. We have better fights to fight.

We can do better than this.

P.S.: Don’t shut off bloody Internet again and again. And continue to try to avoid Social Media because everyone wants to shout out their opinions louder and the louder it becomes, the less truthful it remains.

The New Indian Adhesive

It’s ISRO obviously.

What else could unite us all at 2 AM in the morning? It used to be Cricket only. Sometimes movies. But from September 7, 2019, ISRO is the next Indian adhesive, I think!

Well, Chandrayaan 2 is a partial success after all. It reached pretty far accurately, even became the first Indian object to touch the Lunar Surface (right?) may be through a hard landing, but lost the communication channel to tell us about it. As soon as this image came onto the screen, deafening silence engulfed everyone over. It felt a bit hollow inside as if the heartbeat had stopped.

via ISRO Youtube

It is certainly important to introspect this image and the data it brings, but this should never deter us from attempting it again. Yes, we didn’t make it cleanly but ISRO is a winner all the way.

Recent feats achieved by ISRO (including this) will go very far for our upcoming generation. Sheer excitement amongst the folks who are least interested in space, or are cynical about anything India does, certainly got us united and got us cheering for ISRO all the way.

I really liked this one Tweet.

https://twitter.com/Abhina_Prakash/status/1170084662233849856

This is exactly why ISRO exists. It tells us that impossible is nothing. If we dedicate our focus on the right things, we can reach anywhere. It might take more than 1 attempt, but we will be there sooner or later.

Next time, ISRO does Gaganyaan or Aditya Mission or the exoplanetary mission, the cheer would grow even louder and we will all be stuck to our devices, watching the live streaming. The next time, it would be a successful touchdown.

Morning Motivation Served On A Platter

It took more years than I have been alive. And not only me, whole generations, in fact. It took so many alarms not at all snoozed and waking up early to see the leather brushing off the noses and the chins of Indian Batsman. It took so many sledging lessons. It took many greats which were deemed equivalent to Gods. It took so many VVSs, Dravids, and Sachins but the dream was still a dream.

Till today. Today, it has finally been achieved.

Congratulations Indian Cricket Team for defeating Australia 2-1 in the tests for the first time ever.

The Indian players pose with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
The Indian players pose with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy via David Gray/AFP/Getty Images

Shoot for the moon

In case you have been following this blog lately and have noticed a break in the blogging streak so early, please note that I was out vacationing and all. So, kindly excuse. I said I will blog almost daily. 1-2 days off in between should be okay, I guess!

A few days ago, I came across an article/ news that ISRO and Indus Moon Mission have parted ways in a not so happy manner which means that India’s first ever private moon mission and in fact India’s very first mission with a Lunar Land Rover is in danger of getting scrapped.

This was heartbreaking. For those who are unfamiliar the Indus Moon Mission is a private firm based in Bengaluru which is competing in a brilliantly conceptualized Google Lunar XPrize contest.

As per the contest:

The competition’s $30 million prize purse will be awarded to teams who are able to land a privately funded rover on the moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high definition video and images.

This is the future we see in the movies. Private firms competing to land their spacecraft on different planets.

The deadline for this is March 31, 2018. But due to this fallout between Team Indus and ISRO, it seems bleak that India’s entry would have much chance, as of now. Fingers crossed. Not only that, PSLV of ISRO was also slated to carry another competitor of XPrize Japan’s HAKUTO.

I have always envisioned our country (no sarcasm) as one which will always be at the forefront of space missions. Despite our economic conditions, I strongly believe that if we put aside some budget to aim for these gigantic scientific feats and put trust in our able team of scientists, it would always work in the end. For those who argue against this and put forward the notion of spending money only in uplifting poor should understand that the amount of inspiration a young poor kid can get by seeing their fellow countrymen sending things in outer space on a tight budget but with an unmistakable accuracy, that amount of inspiration is unfathomable and can lead to an amazing future generation. Each such mission could mean putting seeds of inspiration in young kids minds who would turn up and be the next Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

This setback for Indus Mission was quite a shocker as all these days, they were very much enthusiastic regarding this partnership made in heaven. However, things might not be that bad as Indus Team is still marching ahead with their plan and looking forward to another partner.

It would have been doubly great with ISRO but if they are able to sustain and maintain their zeal, hopefully, they will shoot for the moon and hit the target (via a soft landing).

I wish them the best and hope to write another congratulatory blog post after March 2018. Also, ISRO is planning for their own Moon Mission pretty soon as well. Kudos to them as well, as always.

You may read more on Indus Moon Mission here:

  • https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/team-indus-the-first-indian-space-start-up-drops-out-of-moon-race-1797928?amp=1&akamai-rum=off&__twitter_impression=true
  • https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/isro-teamindus-deal-falls-apart-japanese-moon-mission-delayed/articleshow/62502748.cms
  • https://sputniknews.com/asia/201703021051195419-india-moon-mission/

Update on Jan 24, 2018

An Ode to the Bengaluru Road

Gone are those days, when people’s talking taste was only about Weather and Traffic. The new talk of the town, hey smile.. don’t frown, is the locations of potholes so specific.

They add to the beauty, and act as the dimple, oh road you cutie! They’re spread across everywhere in the city. They don’t spare anyone, a pedestrian or a wheeler, but only the helicopters and that’s a pity.

They are spread across all the roads in a peculiarly random fashion. You might avoid one, or may be even 2, but you cannot help but get into another and learn a quick driving lesson.

Because where else will you get such a lovely training to drive and BONUS: open your senses to the unpicked garbage’s stench for free? With increase in concentration and ability to stretch, (the answer is everywhere in the country).

Some manholes would be open, some would be absent. Some men will fall and become God’s tenant. Some holes would be wide, some will be narrow. If you haven’t bathe since yesterday, it will rain again 2 days in a row, carry an umbrella or you can take open shower tomorrow.

You have nothing to lose. It will only make you good, while driving with one hand as and putting the other to cover your no(o)se.

The randomness of the holes cannot be measured but at least that’s what makes them something to be treasured. As one survives the potholed lanes, one finally reaches the city’s foamy veins.

I saw one guard, stopping a cameraman from taking the pics of one of the lathery Lake. But all in vain as the froth was in full flow, lake gave everyone around a low blow, we inhaled more toxin than the pics that he could ever take.

So is the condition everywhere in Monsoon, or otherwise. The asphalt is laid but withers away too soon, and we keep tolerating it like common loons. We cannot be optimistic or get our hopes up because whatever dream of development you have, will, for optical fibre cable, get dug up.