The cost of a Good Night's sleep

Its 2 AM in the morning. Minoo and Divyansh are sound asleep. I abruptly woke up some time back and then onwards have not been able to sleep. Papa, Mummy and Bai ( Grand Ma) left for our home town Purulia last evening for a fortnight. Suddenly I find myself as head of the family. Every time when I have been in such situations its been hard on my sleep. I have always felt restless. I feel how difficult it is to live without guardians. At this age also I feel so protected when parents are around.

The general culture in western world is to live of your own. I have not come across any one ( except some Indian families) as of now who live with their parents or adult children. I have read in history there always has been a joint family system there also but over the years now its non existent. What could have been possible reasons for this? I think we need to know this and find a possible solution for this as this culture is also slowly and steadily coming into our country. Is it just economical compulsions? Or generation gap? Or both ? What ever it is but I feel its not the best way. Life would be more colorful and beautiful if you always have parents living with you. Of course every one in the situation have to give others the breathing space and independence to live their personal part of life. And these minor compromises are too small a cost for a good nights sleep and I pray every one is blessed to have their parents around for long.

God has been even...

I write this during my train journey from Kuopio to Helsinki within Finland. Its been now almost 12 days traveling within Germany, UK, Austria and Finland. This is my second visit to Finland. Last time when I came here it was in April. It was cold at that time but this time during June the weather was excellent. Clear sky and of course 24 hrs day. I have traveled some 17 countries so far and but Finland is amongst the best places to travel and visit. Its so fresh and refreshing here. The air is clean. It must be among one of the most beautiful natural places in the world. The tall pine trees between huge lakes. Its hard to describe – you only can see and feel it. I would strongly recommend any one who loves nature to come and visit this place. But more than the nature what touches you is the people. They are honest, true and that’s why may be happy. There is no inhibition. Nothing artificial. Its all “I am what I am”. Its so natural.Its so different from India. We try to be so cautious of others that we start becoming artificial. And the biggest problem we have is we are dishonest. We flaunt what we don’t own. We believe in not paying taxes. We believe in short term gains and don’t have a broader horizon. We try to be good and not are naturally good.

But then I believe God does not give everything to everybody. There are so few people here in Finland. Its just a country of 5 million people. The roads look so empty as if there is a strike going on. The trains I traveled were never fully occupied. They don’t have enough people to sale their products. The population is decreasing and there are more old people than young. This naturally means their products become expensive and affordability goes down. So less people buy and this is a vicious cycle. For an example a metallurgical test we conduct in India for 50 Euros , our customer pays 600 Euros for the same here. It will not be long before they will land in an economical mess. I am sure the process has already started and except for very high technical capabilities things have started moving to India, China or Brazil. In India we have such a huge market that any thing and every thing is consumed. Our biggest strength is our human resource. Its high time these countries should start importing manpower from India or China. It does not make any sense by stopping or slowing immigration. I was discussing this with my customer and he said the government does not have enough jobs for present citizens so it will add to more pressure. But then there will be more unemployment if the cost of living is too high and not all can afford it. This will result in less sales and more layoffs. Its so complex. This is Gods way of not giving everything at one place. He has made his distribution very even. We inherit great strength and wisdom in India. If only we are good to what we have and truthful and honest we will be much better off. I don’t know how this will happen. Once this starts happening we will be more strong as a nation and happy citizen of this world. During my next trip to Europe I would certainly like to go to Denmark and try to find out what they do different then the world that its worlds happiest country for many years.

Why I like London?

Minoo and I took a small holiday to London last week. It has been some time when we have had a holiday. It was great to be at London and we had a perfect time there. Except that the weather had been bad and rainy for four of the five days we were there. But it was fun seeing history specially for me who likes to read history. London has been always a place which I liked though both times I traveled there I was on the bad side of the weather. There are several reason why I like London. The most important of them being it teaches me to be humble. I recollect being a part of a school play on Indian independence. My parents had come with proud eyes to see their son being selected in a school play but unfortunately I was in and out of the stage before they could even know it was me. Any way i recollect the starting lines of the play " The sun never sets in Great Britain". These guys used to rule 56 countries across the globe. Now the sun does not even rise for half of the year in London with rains.Just see what is left of the great empire. A country smaller than the state of West Bengal in India. This is a great example for all to be humble. You dont know when your arrogance can get back to you. Be good to all.

Its also good to see Britains acceptance of the fact that India and Indians are good for them. We have so many Indians now in the parliament. Even the tube has signs in just not Hindi but Bengali also. Ravi Bopara is among the many Indian cricketers playing for England. You dont feel out of place or afraid to travel around UK.

I also appreciate Britain's contribution to India. They have given India amongst the best structures like our parliament, Presidents house or the beautiful Luytens Delhi. The Indian railways is what it is today because of the Britishers built it. They gave us our heroes. Mahatma Gandhi and Peace is Britain's contribution to the world. If they had not tortured India to the level they did we would never have our heroes.

Well some other reasons I like London is because we located a shop in Oxford street which sells good shirts for 3 pounds. We ate the best pan cake at a street vendor on the other side of Thames from London Eye. Language and food is never a problem here. The people are friendly and very cosmopolitan. There is so much to see here that a week is not enough. And the best part is History is properly maintained. I pity the famous structures and old buildings decaying in Kolkatta. Hope we learn a thing or two from them. Like New York I would anyday like to go there for my holidays. There can never be enough of London. If just they return the Kohinoor. It was sad to see the dazzling Indian diamond lying in a London museum.

An Indian Dinner

After ten days of hectic traveling and schedule I have reached Tampere in Finland today afternoon. Tampere is one of the most beautiful towns to see and visit. I rate it high among the places I have been to. After a short nap at the hotel, I thought of exploring the place. also this was the first evening that I was alone. I decided to search for an Indian restaurant as it has been almost ten days when I last had Chapati or Roti. Also its difficult to get English menu in Europe which makes it difficult to decide on what you want to eat.

The experience turned out to be the worst Indian food any one can get. I started with Paneer pakoda. Four small slices of refried pakodas for 7 Euros. For the main course I ordered for Chapatis with Paneer Makhani. Unfortunately I asked the waitress to make it spicy. Oh man, it had all the garam masalas that you can imagine. At times our cook at home does this when he has to vent his anger after too much of poking by Mom or Minoo. The Paneer it seems had been imported from India and five weeks by sea to Helsinki and another week to customs clearance and further to Tampere. It was so stale and hard. The less I say about the Rotis( bread). It was hard like you needed a hammer and cutter to chop it off. I hit the axe on my feet when I ordered a masala chai to round off the food. There was no tea there. Only masala. The best part of the meal was the glass of french white wine. Fortunately it was not cooked or made here. I decided to share my feelings with the cook and asked the hostess for him. He turned out to be from Pakistan. Now I understand to what level these guys can go to defame India or things Indian. The worst was yet to come. I paid 62 Euros for this meal. A meal for two at Bukhara in Sheraton Delhi would have been cheaper. It was such a wonderful experience eating the spanish meal last night at Lahti. The crust of the story never try to eat Indian food when you are travelling in these parts of the world. I wish I would have gone to the Egyptian restaurant opposite this one.

Another election to be over - Hope we learn something this time?

We are at the last phase of the election and hopefully by this time next week we should be knowing our next Prime Minister. Hopefully. After six weeks and billions of money spent we still have to say hopefully. One thing is for sure we will have a Prime Minister. As no one would like to go back to election again. As all day the eminent analysts keep on saying we will have the worst cocktail and "khichadi" ever cooked. There might be some 50 plus parties sharing the 543 odd MP's with the single largest one not even having 1/5th of the MP's. Technically the party going to make the next government will have to have 50% plus one MP's. So where does the gap fill in with. The 50 odd small parties provide their Members of Parliament and why suddenly they will support the leading two major parties - for money, power and plum ministries and getting the most unethical things done. We are going to end up again with a government born out of unethical means. I am not sure if it was worth voting after all the excitement of voting first time. I hope we, the public, learn a bitter lesson this time around and choose candidates from major parties so that there is clear direction.

What are the options we can have to stop this rot? Well there were suggestions of making voting compulsory? A great idea but I am not sure how practical it is specially in a country where education is still not compulsory for all. I think the better way could be stopping post poll alliances. This will give no opportunity and bargaining power to the smaller parties who are there to be bought. We have cabinet ministers at this time who are ministers from 1989 with all three possible governments. They have only one line manifesto - be with the ruling government and make hay always. Hope the sun never shines on these guys.

If I could restart my life...

Last week I had some problems in my laptop and I called my IT guy to help me out with this. He asked me to restart the computer and once I did that it was all working ok. That reminded me of one of my friends who was working in Dubai with a bank as their head of hardware and when I was there for holidays , I asked him what exactly he did in his job. He said 85% of the time he simply asked his colleagues to restart their computer and balance 15% time he would call up the hardware provider to come and resolve the problem. I have come through similar situations with my itouch, blackberry or video games. This made me to think how wonderful it would be to have a restart system in our lives. If only God had created the restart button...... what would I change and do differently.

1. Studied sincerely and gone for post grad.
2. Spent more time with my sister
3. Never would have started smoking
4. Would have given more time to kids when they were growing up
5. Would have loved and married instead of married and loved.
6. Would have spent more time with my grandfather.
7. Started Tennis very early in life.
8. Build a smaller house.

While trying to build up this list I am not getting many points to include which means I am happy and content with most of the things in life.

Talibanisation has a new Synonym

The largest number of Member of Parliament in India come from Uttar Pradesh. A state with great history. A state which has given us most of our Prime Ministers. A state which has Taj Mahal , the monument of love within its boundaries. Our most sacred river Ganga flows through it. It is the state where Lord Rama and Krishna were born. It has been the karmabhumi of Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka and Harsha. UttarPradesh has contributed numerous golden chapters to annals of Indian History. But the present status of this great state is pathetic that people fear crossing the state while travelling east in trains. The recent hate speech by Varun Gandhi is to be heard to be believed. How can a young guy educated at London school of Economics with such a decent upbringing speak what he has spoken. What has happened to our so called Indian values. Is this the only way a candidate wins votes. I thought we in India never accepted this kind of harsh words. But then worse happened a couple of days back when a candidate was found murdered and hanged at Jaunpur. Such a shame for our great democracy. Almost 25% of our last parliament had people against whom some criminal investigation is going on. The UP assembly has more than 40% of members with criminal investigation on. Charges include rape, armed robbery and murder. The political parties in India have a moral responsibility to weed out corrupt and criminals from their rank. I need a genuine choice to elect my representative. Its so unfortunate that the two main stream parties have lost out of Uttarpradesh to being single digit representation amongst 80 MP's. If such criminal activities keep on happening and people are tortured and murdered, votes cast out of fear - shortly we may have a synonym to Talibanisation - UPnasisation.