The Pulse of India

The capital city of our country rocked again not from the crackers of the Ganesh festival but from the serial bomb blasts. When the news start filtering in of blasts many of us think " Oh God !!! it happened again!!!" and within seconds hundreds of lives change forever and within minutes our politicians start politicising the issue.
We had just recovered from all the violence that happened in Jammu and Kashmir and then this happened. There is no shortage of solutions offered by people and experts on how to tackle this issue. We should have tougher laws for terror, a federal agency which will look into such issues, we have to look into the root cause of such terror acts, are some of the solutions offered. But if these are the solutions, then why these solutions are not implemented? If we have tough laws for terror, can we trust our politicians with such laws and hope that they will not misuse it for their own gain. We have seen this happen with Ms.Indira Gandhi using MISA to arrest opposition leaders during the emergency and other leaders (mis)using laws as TADA and POTA. I think the real solution is a combination of all these suggestions, we should look real hard into issues and not just have some committee appointed and give them infinite extensions (Liberhan Commission) or when such a committee submits its report , reject it arbitrarily (Sri Krishna Committee) we should also have a federal agency on the lines of the Election Commission of India which is not answerable to any government (state or central) and also a tough anti-terror law with enough safeguards against misuse against an individual or a community. But I sincerely hope by the time we come up with these solutions or any solution for that matter we will not lose any more innocent lives.
There are a lot more such incidents that have in the last few months that have affected thousands of lives... we will talk about more such issues later....

The whole world is acknowledging that India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The story of the rising middle class of India, spending power of Indians is being told again and again but what is not talked about are manners which come along with these products and which are not listed in the user’s manual.
Everyday on my way to office in my company’s bus I have to go through the torture of hearing people’s problem who can’t seem to talk softly over the phone and sometimes they will be speaking so loudly I end up wondering do they really need to the phone since the other person can hear him even without the phone? The person has bought the phone but what he is not able to buy is the etiquette for using the product.
How many times have we seen on our roads that someone gets down from his car and relieves himself by the roadside or someone spitting from the window of his car or the honking of a car in front of a school or a hospital?
I always dread overtaking a bus on the roads fearing that I will be showered by someone’s saliva.
So what makes to behave us in this manner? An honest answer is that I do not know maybe we are like this only.
As someone had rightly said, the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.