Poor Vaishnavi

It was said that demons used to exist in the past when none of us were born, not us, not our fathers, not even our great-grandfathers. It was also documented that GOD used to take some or the other form to keep things in control and save humankind from these demons. But day-after-day this is proven wrong, again and again. Yesterday, I was sure that the demons are still alive.

Most of you might have heard about the kidnap of a cute little kid, Vaishnavi about 3 or 4 days back. Reports say that this girl, aged 10 years, was traveling in a car with her brother and a driver, when some masked miscreants attacked their vehicle. The driver who tried to tackle them was brutally stabbed and the girl's brother managed to run away. Then the kidnappers took the girl in the same car and deserted the car somewhere far. Everybody, including me, was hoping that the girl will be left alone once they kidnappers get their ransom or some shitty demands. But no demands are made and yesterday, the unthinkable happened. The girl was found dead, in fact her charred body was found.

Sad news is that her father got heart attack twice after hearing the news of his daughter's death yesterday evening and he died today morning.

Reports say that the persons behind this kidnapping are the brothers of the first wife of the kid's father. It was said that they paid 5 million INR to the kidnappers for this brutal deal. Now tell me, are the demons dead? Or they started living in human form? Or is it us who are making ourselves demons for silly issues?

GOD bless the girl's soul. Btw, with all these incidents, I am planning to take up the daring topic of "why should Indian judiciary system change" for my B2 speech in Toastmasters.

2009 or 2010 - we'll never change

Folks, I hope you all had a great New Year Eve. My celebrations were at tKs where I was the only single guy and the rest of the gathering were families. But still, it was fun.

Till 10 PM last night, I wanted to write this post about my icebreaker speech yesterday in Toastmasters club. But after 10 PM, my ideas changed and what I saw on NDTV, shocked me.

Those guys were airing some footage of a rural background where somebody was wounded. I got some interest and started watching it and as I came to know of the whole story, I broke into tears. The story goes on like this:

A sub-inspector(SI) was going to his police station on a two wheeler and suddenly, he was attacked by some miscreants with some crude bombs and sickles. Their plan is to hack him to death, but suddenly they saw that a convoy was approaching them and left the man wounded. The convoy belongs to a couple of ministers of the Tamilnadu state(one was Minister of Health, I suppose) and even a District Collector was with them at that time.

The police who were with the convoy try to chase down the attackers, but they managed to slip away by hurling bombs at the police. The real pathetic story starts from here. This SI who was wounded was literally crying and pleading for help and nobody even went near him. According to the news channel, the District Collector got down from his car after 8 minutes and called for an ambulance. The honorable ministers got down from their vehicles after 20 minutes and did nothing. An ambulance reached the place after some time and on its way to the nearest hospital, the SI succumbed to the injuries. He was crying and pleading the passerby's to help him for about 30 minutes.

The saddest part is that, after basic investigation, the police has stated that this is a case of mistaken identity and as the SI was wearing a helmet, the attackers mistook him for another cop whom they wanted to kill.

After seeing all this, I was wondering why the news channel crew was filming the whole incident without helping the dying man. But promptly, there was a scrolling showing that this video was shot by a freelancer. Let's hope so!

What is the need for us to celebrate a change in calendar, when there's no change in the mindsets of the people? May God bless the dead man's family with its choicest blessings and may people inculcate that helping nature in themselves.

Wicked Whisper: I think that all the people who are present there are as responsible for the man's death as are the attackers. Should we prosecute all of them?

You can click here and here for a couple of videos showing the incident, but beware, they are not for the faint-hearted.
Video courtesy: Times of India.

Happy New Year 2010

Dear friends, this has been a wonderful year, both in and out of Bloggerville. Life will never be the same in 2010. Yes, life is not going to be the same. I got engaged to Sravanthi and the marriage is scheduled to take place in April, 2010. I'll share more on this in the coming posts. For now, I am writing this post just to wish you all a very happy new year.

Let's hope for the below in the new year:

1. All(if not, a few) of our wishes come true.
2. There will no be any more disasters natural calamities like floods, tsunamis, hurricanes etc.
3. The terrorists change themselves and let others live peacefully.
4. India will stay on top of the world(in cricket, though).
5. We look at some more technically brilliant movies like "Avatar" and feel-good movies like "3 Idiots".
6. May Telangana issue be solved in Andhra Pradesh.
7. Last but not the least, let us all pray that my salary increases at least 25%.

Simply speaking, I hope All iz well in 2009 and All will be well in 2010.

My return to Bloggerville on a wonderful day

Folks, first of all, I regret being away from such a wonderful place, Bloggerville. The reasons for my long absence(more than two months) from here are:

1. There was a fund-raiser organized by TKS in the third week of November. Thank God, all iz well.
2. I was on vacation to India for about a month, right after the above said fund raiser. Here too, all iz well.

I've been waiting for some proper time to return back to Bloggerville and there it was yesterday. Actually, I started this post yesterday but couldn't finish it off then. Anyways, yesterday has been an awesome day for me for the below reasons:

1. It was sister's b'day yesterday. All iz well.
2. India won the tournament against Sri Lanka yesterday. All iz well.
3. It was raining out here in Bahrain yesterday. Loved the climate. All iz well.
4. I was awarded a certificate of appreciation and a Gold coin by my company here for assisting in the successful completion of a major project. All iz well indeed.
5. The day ended fittingly well, when I went for the late night show of the highly anticipated "3 Idiots". Believe me, the movie was simply awesome. Just like most of the sites reviewed the movie, all iz very, very, very, very well indeed.

With this, I end this post and promise you that I'll be back soon with a lot of news as there are many things happening around me right now and I need to tell you all those.

A couple of feel-good movies

Folks, sorry for being away for quite a few days. I was a bit busy with work both in & out of office(TKS). My vacation is due in about 4 weeks for now and still I have some departmental objectives to be finished before year end. The only time pass that's keeping me in senses is a few movies here n there.

Recently, I saw a couple of movies which are worth mentioning. One is "Wake Up Sid"(WUS). I was not interested to watch this one until my adamant friend, Deepak, wanted to watch it. I went into the theater with half mind expecting the worst. The movie opened well with an interesting scene of how our protagonist, Sid, is preparing for his boards. From then on, there was no looking back. As soon as the movie finished, I was thinking of watching it again.

WUS is a perfect example of how to keep things simple and achieve the desired result. The director did a good job in that aspect. The sentimental scenes are handled well, the comic timing was perfect, the emotions are up to the mark. There are some scenes which I liked well:

1. The scene in which Ranbir makes fun of Konkana by pouring water on her and then he asks her in an innocent way, whether she felt bad.
2. The confused look on Konkana's face when Ranbir asks her out for a walk on their first meeting.
3. The scene where they both sit at the beach and Ranbir explains to Konkana about how the ocean looks at the times of monsoon(felt like I was standing in rain after this scene).

The above are only a few scenes out of a whole set. If I write all those that I liked and why I liked them, this post will be as big as a novel. As a whole WUS is a wonderful feel-good movie which reminds us of our college life(if you are not one of those nerdy types). Ranbir is now the new addition to my list of actors to watch out for.

The other movie I liked is the "The Proposal". I picked this one from the DVD store just because I can't find anything interesting there. In fact, I kept even this one pending for a few days before watching it. But when I saw it, I was really impressed. It's been quite a few days since I watched a decent romantic comedy and this one perfectly filled the bill.

The story is simple. An immigrant, yet sort-of-nuts boss, perfectly portrayed by Sandra Bullock, has been issued notice that she'll be deported after her work-visa is not renewed. She immediately puts up an act that she's going to marry her sub-ordinate, a wonderful Ryan Reynolds, and hence can stay in the US of A. Both of mutually agree to help each other provided that he'll marry her(and then divorce her), while she promotes him to a higher position in office. But before that she had to spend a week at his parents house. Everything seems to go well inline with the plan, until they both really start falling in love with each other.

Both these movies are worth a watch over the weekend and gives you a break from the usual pot-boiler masala movies. Happy weekend, folks.

Happiness

I was under a lot of stress yesterday(in fact, throughout the week). The various reasons are:
1. Am suffering form a very bad headache from the past 50 hours or so.
2. We had an unexpected server crash yesterday and nobody has a clue of why it happened.
3. One guy called me over for a snack last evening and I ended up paying for that.
4. Last evening was my fifth straight evening at the TKS office.

Well, I was in a pretty bad shape because of all the above crap n a lot more. But, while walking back to my flat from TKS, there was this lovely little breeze that changed all my moods. It was normally a walk of just above 10 minutes from my house to TKS, but last night my heart wanted to enjoy the walk and it took me more than 25 minutes to cover the distance. Suddenly I felt like a child and did some weird things which included:
1. I was trying to balance myself on the edge of the pavement while walking. This went on for quite a distance.
2. I saw a hump on the road which resembled a landmine in the PlayStation game "Black". I couldn't take my eyes off it and in front of a heavy traffic, I lifted my hands and positioned myself like the protagonist in the game(a soldier) and tried to shoot that hump. Everybody waiting at that signal was shell shocked. I literally looked at them and laughed n went away.

All this made my heart lighter and I was in a cheerful mood for the rest of the night. But today, struggles have started yet again.

Random Ramblings

Folks, had a lot to post but very less free time to do so. So am putting up a brief notes of what's going on these days.

1. Today's the much-awaited India-Pakistan cricket match. Our cricket brothers of the neighboring country are giving too many statements to the press and our guys are calm n composed as usual. So let's see who wins the battle, which's going to kick-off in a few more hours. All the best, Team India.

2. The great slogger whom International cricket has ever produced, Mr Shahid Afridi was telling to the press the other day that the GOD(read as Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar) was no longer a threat. Brother Afridi, do you know that he's back into his prowess(mind it, he was never out of it) and made his way back into the ICC top-10 even after missing from the International ODI cricket for quite some time? Did you read in the newspapers a few days back about what happened to the Lankans in the tri-series finals?

3. Well, looks like my parents are feeling bad that they are not able to find a bride for me, even though they are trying hard to do so. Will write a post about that in the next few days.

4. About a month back, the PR manager of Coca-Cola Bahrain, Mrs Leila Rajkumar was kind enough to induct us(me n my friend Deepak) into their elite group, Thirst Quenchers. You all know how hot it gets in summer in this part of the world. So Coke will provide us with water and some soft-drinks. We(the Thirst Quenchers) are supposed to carry these around the island and give them free-of-cost to the laborers toiling out in the hot sun.
It was a very good example of what-a-little-help-can-do. I still remember the thank-filled eyes of those hard-working guys when we told them that we are there to give them free water n drinks. Some locals were curious enough to know why we are distributing them free-of-cost. Long live the human spirit. Find below the certificate that Coca-Cola has given me for doing whatever little I can. It was so kind of them.