Shameless cheater of India 2009 - Award Nominations

Who says Indian eCommerce is yet to kickoff? I say it's already kicking asses, however on receiving end is the Indian consumer! To help Indian consumer come of reluctant mode and start spending freely, shopping sites of India are offering huge discounts, gifts, offers and cash-backs. Up to 50% cash-back across range of products. But... all the cash backs are virtual. The schemes are tailored in a way that either you get zero discount or you end up spending almost six times of the cash back value.

I am a regular at IndiaPlaza.in. I like the site for price research. The items sold on their sites are all grey-market ones but the prices are in sync with street prices of 100% genuine products with bill-warranty. While looking for a washing machine on the site, I came across a banner that shouted '20% cash-back on all items except air-tickets.' I have always been highly wary of IndiaPlaza's offers but this banner amused me and I clicked it to read terms and conditions. There were a hell lot of conditions but the most primary one is "The cash-back will be given in form of gift-certificates. The Cash back gift certicates will be in the following denominations: Rs.100/-, Rs.200/-, Rs.300/-, Rs. 500/-. Example: The 400/- GC may come to you as two Rs.200/- GCs or One Rs.200/- GC and 2 Rs.100/- GCs."

Sounds good so far? But here is the catch. I I buy a washing machine worth 20,000 rupees and get a cash-back worth 4,000 rupees, they will send me a whole bunch of gift certificates ranging in 100-500 rupees (I am sure Rs.100 gift certificates will dominate). Now, as a policy, you cannot use two gift certificates to buy one item on IndiaPlaza (it's not written in the terms and conditions but I know this). It means you are left with numerous gift certificates of 100-200 rupees which you either cannot use at all or if you use, you will end up paying much more. What a creative sales-strategy!

But wait, yesterday I happened to visit IndiaTimes and to my horror, it too have the similar offer going on. Two changes, though: 1. You get 50% cash back!!! and 2. In terms and conditions it's mentioned that gift certificates are nonmergable and must be redeemed before 31st March.

So, we have two nominations for 'Shameless Cheater of India 2009' award. And both are too close.

Hunt for a perfect cellphone goes on

My SE K750i started creating problems in terms of joystick malfunctioning around three months ago. Before it goes worse and the phone becomes unusable, let's buy a new phone, I thought. I never knew that the search of a perfect phone is going to be worse than earlier. I was looking for a business phone this time... er... in fact still am.

Preferences are (in descending order): Very good web-browser, full QWERTY keyboard, non-buggy OS, effective push email support, contacts sync, 2-day battery backup with a little overuse and GPS. Yes, GPS is the only fancy feature that I wish to have in my next mobile phone.

I had short-listed BlackBerry Curve 8310, iPhone 3G and HTC Dream (Google G1). Curve being the cheapest and iPhone the costliest. It seems very easy comparison at the moment and it looks like that coming up with a winner is not a difficult task. But it became difficult as time passed on and as more and more options started coming in.

Blackberry Curve 8310 has great battery life, excellent email service, good keyboard, OS and everything else that I was looking for in a phone, except my top priority i.e. good web browser. Then I came to know about Curve 8900 coming to India. It was a better phone than the 8310 but had similar web browsing experience. Blackberry Storm was better at this but turned out to be one of the worst Blackberry phones every existed. My bad luck! I ruled out Blackberry Curve 8310, 8900, Bold and Storm. Another reason not for going with BB at the moment is the fact that I don't want to shell out about 1200 rupees per month for BB services. I don't roam around (I do but I am in office or at home most of the time), going for BB seemed like a waste of money. Bye bye Blackberry. See you later!

Rajeev has an iPhone 3G and I love it for its web browsing experience. But it has bad battery life and it's expensive! Rs.31,000 for a phone is a little too much for me!

I hated Google G1. It looked like a phone from stone-age. But as I kept researching about the Android platform and its capabilities, I fell in love with it. It is coming for about 21,000 rupees, if someone you know in USA can bring it to India for you. I could have bought it if the phone looked like a full-fledged working device. Android is evolving and the phone is yet to go where it should be. No donut for me here either. But anyways, my next phone would be an Android, G1, G2 or whatever.

Back to square one!

Had started blogging with Blogger a couple of years ago. Moved on to use WordPress, hosted my blog on my own site and now I am back to Blogger all over again!

I like WordPress but I am sort of forced to use Blogger all over again. My previous web setup was a complete mess. I had hosted my website www.banwarilalsharma.com with a Chennai-based web-hosting company called Silicon House. It was a budget-hosting, I understand. I accepted the fact that it was a bit slow and the servers were down more frequently than they should. Everything was going good until one fine day when I tried to open my site and came back an empty page saying 'Cannot Find Server'. I thought the server is done. Tried the next day, next week, next month (yes, I am this lazy!). The same result everytime. I got curious and tried logging in to the control panel. I was shocked to know that I have no hosting. It looked like that the bunch of fools had erased the server hard-drive or something. My MySQL database was gone, all the static pages were gone. It took me a couple of months of email discussions with them to know that nothing can be done. My blog is gone!

Thanks to Blogger, I had around 35 posts saved in the control panel (before switching to WordPress). I could recover rest of the posts through archive.org (thanks to you as well). I am back to Blogger once again, until I find a better solution provider and some time to experiment again. :-)

Mumbai Under Construction!

I came to Bombay around 2 years ago. The day I landed in Vashi, I saw road construction in progress. Today, after two years, nothing has changed. Road construction is still in progress. I am not talking entire Vashi, I am talking about a small stretch of 5 kms that I need to commute on weekends. NMMC (Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation) or whoever is responsible for the construction is taking its own sweet time to finish the work.

What a non-sense system we have. One constructs and the other destructs. Cycle of constructions and destructions seems to be never-ending.

There are a lots of chaos because of this. Long, unnecessary traffic-jams, honking vehicles, frustrated people. Sometimes you feel like dying. Air-conditioned, music-filled environment inside of the car just doesn’t sooth you.

You cannot guarantee a time for reaching somewhere, no matter howsoever short distance you are considering. Past night, when I left for office, everything was usual but while coming back from office, I took 15 minutes. I would have traveled this distance in less than five minutes if I was on foot.

It is not the case with Vashi only. You name a place in Bombay where there is no road construction work going on. Forget place, you can’t even suggest a 2 kms stretch. It seems entire Bombay is under construction! When will I see a developed Bombay? As of now, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the problem.

Web presence of engineering colleges of Bhopal

CarWale.com have started a campaign/contest for finding talent in automotive journalism world. It’s about writing an article on anything related to car. Winners will be offered job from CarWale.com and the best writer will get a prize worth 50,000 rupees. Here is the link to the contest.

I remember in my engineering days, I used to go to net-cafes and find technical conferences, paper-presentations. If I found a good conference, I made sure that I write a paper as per theme and always wished that my paper makes it. The enthusiasm was just irresistible.

Thought of passing this contest’s information to a few engineering colleges in Bhopal. Finding email addresses of my college i.e. OIST and LNCT was a few seconds’ job. But that’s all, I couldn’t find email address of any college. Found MANIT’s site but there was no email address mentioned. To my horror, RGPV UIT doesn’t seem to have any website!

The world is making Internet its home and the most technically advanced places in M.P. don’t have web presence at all. They don’t even have email addresses.

Anyways, came across a nice blog on MANIT.

Halla Bol - A Message

Watched Halla Bol yesterday morning. Youths, rights awareness, patriotism. Nothing new. Still, I liked it. There are a plenty of movies more or less on the same plot but I still liked it. This movie too, like other similar movies, transpires a message. Fight for your rights, fight for truth.

I like such movies. I like them because they make my blood boil. I like them because they make me feel like becoming one of those protagonists. I like them because maybe I am one of the uncountable scared people who can’t come ahead and fight for our rights. I see truth being killed but I just take my eyes off thinking this is the way world lives. Nobody is bothered, why should I? I do something because everybody else is doing. These kind of movies wake my inner-self.

Halla Bol is all about a person like me who is lost. He is not bothered about what is right and what is wrong. He has accepted that what everybody does is right. This guy is just like anybody else. But someday somebody comes and provokes the hero within this person. He fights and wins. I am not a hero, I might not have enough guts to sacrifice my career, my life for nation. More precisely, I might not become the first person to do that. But I might be one of the many who will be standing beside the hero. I need a hero whom I can follow. The country is full of people like me. Everybody needs a hero.

My love for Sony Ericsson continues

Everybody around seemed to use a Nokia when I bought my first Sony Ericsson (SE), a K750i. Had used Samsung R220 and Nokia 6610i before but K750i was my first love. A state-of-the-art device, a beauty. It was barely eight months when it refused to charge properly. SE’s highly incompetent service-center people said, there is a corrosion in phone due to moisture in environment. Someone from SE called and told me that it might due to sweat. I agreed, dumped my first love and bought another K750i. I was really taking care of the phone this time (even paid Rs.300 for that transparent screen-care film, scratch-guard. It came off in just 2 months!), but perhaps God didn’t like this, he thought, how can this highly unmanaged person managing the phone well! It was third month running when I forgot my phone in a taxi in Fort. The taxi-walla was intelligent enough, within 5 minutes of losing the phone when I tried, ‘The Airtel subscriber you are calling is not reachable…’. Not everyone is good.

This time, I wanted to try something different. A PDA maybe. But prime criteria was sleekness. No decent PDA is sleek! Still, didn’t want to try K750i. Thanks to GSMArena, could shortlisted Motorola ROKR E6, Sony Ericsson W810i, Nokia 6233 Music Edition, Nokia N70 Music Edition and Sony Ericsson K790i in just 3-4 hours of research. Went to my favourite mobile shop at Vashi, Maaru NX and met Manoj (22-67910575). Discarded ROKR E6 almost instantly as didn’t like weight, highly shiny design, average music and bad camera. Nokia 6233 and Nokia N70 couldn’t appeal either. Was feeling like *upgrade*, hence discarded W810i too and chose K790i.

It’s barely 7 days I bought this device but I am sort of in love again. What I liked in K790i over K750i is, its 3.2MP camera, bigger and brighter display, EDGE (I am going to use it in a couple of days), looks and Radio (reception is better than K750i and it doesn’t have that irritating sound of tin-tin). SEs look fragile but they are quite sturdy, though camera-cover seems to be very delicate in K790. One thing that I am missing from day one is absence of MegaBass, however, since I have HPM-70 headphones, it’s not that big deal.

I had bought my K790i from Maaru NX, Vashi for Rs.12,500. The package included a surprise, a 1Gb M2 memory card. Manoj clarified that the phones he has, have 1Gb cards inside. Sony was offering them under a promotional offer. I wasn’t aware of the fact and was planning to spend a couple of thousand rupees for the card. Overall a nice purchase, I am happy.

AnswerTips: Double-click any word

Rajeev was reading the ‘Thai plane crash story’ on CBSNews a coupe of days ago and found something ‘cool’. He accidentally double-clicked somewhere and a small JavaScript pop-up opened up. The window had definition/meaning of the word Rajeev double-clicked. He showed me and I got interested immediately. It’s AnswerTips from Answers.com. I have installed it on this blog, test it by double-clicking anywhere on the page. If at all, you are interested, copy and paste the following JavaScript code anywhere on your page and your site is AnswerTips enabled too.

ICICI Bank responded unexpectedly fast

It’s just one month when I had all complaints for ICICI Bank. But today I seem to have differing views. I won’t say there isn’t any problem, but yes, the problem was handled like never before.

Actually my credit card’s last month bill was some Rs.27120. I paid Rs.27,000 in two part payments and couldn’t notice that Rs.125 are still to be paid. I was shocked when I noticed the statement. I was charged Rs.1300 as interest. I called up customer care and they declared that no matter how much is remaining, interest will be calculated on entire bill amount! Insane it was, 1300 rupees interest for 125 short-payment. Nothing on this earth can justify this calculation. Was already upset about something, hence accepted what that guy said and came home.

Past night, when came to office for a while, I found a mail from ICICI Bank reminding me for the current due to be paid. I became furious then, wrote a mail to ICICI customer care saying ‘why didn’t you send me a mail that sir, please pay 125 rupees otherwise we will charge you interest on entire bill amount’. I was so pissed-off that I warned that I will get rid of this card as soon as possible.

Withing 12 hours, I got a call from ICICI saying sorry for the act and promising me that they will reverse the interest charges. Just saw my online statement, they have really reversed the charges!

They made a mistake but this time they handled it in a wonderful way. I expect the same from every vendor in this world. Everybody makes a mistake but you can still remain good if you handle it well.

Alert!!! Renew And Secure Your Internet Banking Account Immediately

I was surprised when I received a mail from ICICI Bank (customercare@icicibank.com) with title Alert!!! Renew And Secure Your Internet Banking Account Immediately. The mailer had a ICICI Bank logo and the mail format was quite similar to what ICICI has. Below is the complete mail body:

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Security Update for Online Users

Currently, you are on the ICICI Bank Company Mailer

The internet has become widely accepted for banking online. While we have taken all the possible measures to ensure security and confidentiality of our online banking systems, as we are providing you 128-SSL Secured Server which is highly protected to store your passwords.
Now we are updating our 128-SSL Secured Server to 256-Encrypted SSL Secured Server which is highly sophisticated server to maintain your personal information as our prior service to you.
Important: Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of your online banking account we have issued this warning message.

During our regularly scheduled account maintenance and verification procedures, we were unable to verify your account information. It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website .We demand that you take 5 minutes out of your online experience and renew your records to avoid running into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to update your records will result in your account suspension. Once you have updated your account records your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

If You Have ICICI Bank Personal Account , Click here https://verification.personal.icicibank.co.in/verify1.jsp

If You Have ICICI Bank Corporate Account , Click here https://verification.corporate.icicibank.co.in/verify2.jsp

Sincerely, ICICI Bank Security Department

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I didn’t think much and clicked the ‘Personal Account’ link and landed on a page that was quite similar to what I see almost daily (oh yes, I use Internet banking too frequently). But when I was about to fill it, I noticed it is asking me for somewhat suspicious information like ATM pin and all. Then I had a look at URL. Hell! It was anything but ICICIBank.com!!! The URL was

http://www.iikii.com/bemarket/imgs/save/3/rbc3/www.icicibank.com/Login[1][1].jsp.html

Then I went back to mail-box, saw mail headers and found that mail has been sent by sd1967.sivit.org. So, I was about to become a victim of phishing! Trust me, it could have been a disaster. I remember well that a few months ago someone trapped me and took away my orkut password. He looted two of my communities which had over 4,000 members. Though it gave me a shock and I left orkut the same day but it gave me a lesson also and I am wary of such things now.

If any mail asks you your email, username, password, ATM pin, credit card information or any such thing, please make sure that you are not being trapped.

Isn’t ICICI Bank going Indian Government way?

I am an ICICI Bank customer for a long time now. I also have a credit card with them. Trust me, having an Internet-banking-enabled bank account and credit card of same bank is a blessing. You don’t need to worry about anything, keep on spending in malls and repay sitting in your office chair. I appreciate ICICI Bank’s Internet/Phone banking capabilities (and fantastic security too), I really don’t remember when I visited my bank branch last!

But unfortunately I have had a few highly disappointing incidences with the bank. The latest was horrible. Here I go:

I had ordered some gifts against my reward points on 25th of July and I received them on 28th or so. I was to give some of them to Sudha. Before I could give her these, someone from BlueDart called me asking if I have opened the box? I answered in positive. The guy on the other side said, ‘Sir, ICICI has asked us to take the parcel back! There is some problem in the delivery’. I was surprised as if there was some problem why didn’t ICICI call me? Anyways, I asked the guys to come and collect the ‘opened’ box. I couldn’t do anything but to apologize to her!

Today is 12th August and there is no news about the gifts or my reward points! Mess!

Is this the way a bank like ICICI should behave? If there was some problem they should have called me regretting for what they have done and should have asked me for a balanced solution. Or were they supposed to ask some third-party to take the gifts back from my hands? Can you imagine, how humiliating it is? At that moment I thought of suing the bank literally but cooled myself off thinking, this is the way we all are. And ICICI is no exception.

Another bad experience I had was when I contacted them for a small personal loan sometime back. I contacted three banks i.e. ICICI, HDFC and Citi. Among them HDFC and Citi were more than desperate to give me the loan, in fact Citi committed to hand me over the cheque within 2 days. But since I bank with ICICI, I thought it would be better to get loan from these people but ICICI didn’t give me a damn even after receiving all the desired papers. They didn’t even bother to contact me since then.

Anyhow I don’t need a loan anymore but the practice was a lesson to me that DON’T SEEK ICICI FOR ANY SERIOUS BUSINESS! They have got enough mullahs and are happy with that. ICICI is happy to be what it is today and doesn’t have intention to expand.

In nutshell, I think ICICI is overall a great bank until everything is a success in one go, but if something needs a second attempt, you will have tough time with them.

Tesu and Jhainji in Bundelkhand

A fellow-Ambahite sent a mail in Ambah group a couple of days back. The mail contained something very special, well to me and every person belonging to Ambah or Chambal. The mail had a few Tesu and Jhainji songs written in Devnagiri script. All original bundelkhandi/brij dialect ones. Those songs and much more is composed by Mr. Mushtaq Khan and is available at this URL. All the stuff is in Hindi/Bundelkhandi language/dialect.

A quick overview of Tesu and Jhianji: As the Deshahra/Vijay Dashmi finishes, Chambal starts to celebrate a very interesting ceremony. Almost every chambal family takes part in this ceremony but at individual level. At least one boy (5-15 years age) in the family buys a Tesu ( a three-leg statue, resembles a king/prince) and girl (of similar age group) buys a Jhainji (a pot made of mud, resembles a queen/princess). Now boys and girls roam in streets in groups, singing Tesu-Jhainji songs. They go to every door-step and ask for money (usually 25 paisa to 1 rupee). This goes on till Sharad Purnima (15 days prior to Diwali). On Sharad Purnima, the Tesu and Jhainji's marriage takes place. It's just like normal marriage. All major events take place in this marriage. Even a pandit is hired to perform the pooja. I had performed pooja in a few such marriages and could be able to get some 15-16 rupees ;~) Parents of the children too participate in this and enjoy the event. After marriage, Tesus and Jhainjis are broken by hitting hard on floor. Crackers, sweets, songs are all around to celebrate this mega-event.

Well, I should have described all this in past tense as nothing happens now. Chambal is modern now, unfortunately! Trust me, Sharad Purnima used to be a bigger festival than Diwali at my place. It's all over now. Thanks to technology for providing TV, CD players, mobile games...

Anyways, I don't know Mr. Mushtaq Khan but I sincerely thank him for making so much efforts for us. And yes, I am thankful to Deepak as well to bring up such a great thing.

'The Wanderer Thinks' shifted to my own website

Happy News! 'The Wanderer Thinks' has got a new address: www.BanwariLalSharma.com/Blog/. :) Site doesn't have anything apart from this blog as of now, I will try to upload a few pages in a while.

Well, if you have been redirected from http://banwarilal.blogspot.com, then I am sorry for the inconvenience. The information you are looking for, can be found in the archives. Notice the URL you clicked on, there is a date format e.g. /2007/04/. It says this post was written in 04 i.e. April of 2007. Browse relevant month to read the post. :-)

A bad day...

A bad day began when I left to office without breakfast. It was hardly one hour in office when I burnt motherboard of Rajeev's machine. While coming from hardware shop, tyre of bike got punctured! Got a repair shop around and got the tyre repaired for 40 rupees. Yes, fourty rupees for a puncture-repair! Just 400% costlier than Bhopal. It wasn't enough, I felt worst when I saw a Palio S10 in this condition...


Luckily, day didn't end this way. Got news that Arun sir's marriage has fixed. Had a quick party, took two samosas and one-and-half glass of Pepsi. :-)

My sweet Bhopal and its sweeter Bhopali language

A few days ago, Mohit sir asked me to search 'Bhopali Bakar' in wikipedia. Though I am very much comfortable with the meaning of the term, I was wondering what will it come up with. Searched and found a page with Bhopali Bakar title. Went through it and found myself laughing like anything. I had been in Bhopal for around seven years and I enjoyed this special Bhopali-style language a lot then. This page just reminded me old sweet days. Thought of sharing the same...

Maniratnam is the Guru

Watched Guru last Sunday. Though I have a lot to say but considering that fact that I am at work and that too it's morning, I am keeping it short.

What an acting! What a direction, cinematography, music! What a movie! Maniratnam, A. R. Rahman, Abhishek Bachchan, Mithun Chakravarty... Everything is so good about the movie. A big thumbs-up to junior Bachchan and Mithun Da for their class-leading acting. I think, it's time for Mithun Da to do second-round of mind-blowing acting.

Indian cinema is growing and growing like anything. So many great movies in such a short span... Rang De Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai, Dor and now Guru! It seems every new movie I am watching now is making an entry in my all-time-favourite list.

I watched Guru in R Adlabs, Mulund. Happened to visit Nirmal Lifestyle too. Apart from the great movie, what amused me most was this dance event for children at Nirmal Lifestyle. Despite of the fact that photography is strictly prohibited there, I managed to click a quick snap there. :-)

Is it Modernization or Westernization?

I and Rajeev were standing on a tea-stall behind our office. It's almost a routine for me and Rajeev to visit the tea-stall at least twice-thrice a day, no matter how many teas we have in office in a day. ;-)

There is a private college with some Tilak... name. I am not sure about the courses offered by the college, but I saw MBA/MCA written below college's name on a wall nearby. Every-time I go there and see the students, I find myself thinking unnecessarily. There is always a debate going on in my mind. Topic? Westernization vs Modernization! Every student has got something different as far as looks and outfits are concerned. Take example of their pants, they wear pants those are so bizarre in looks, it seems they haven't washed them for months. They are so low at waist, it seems they can fall anytime. Underwear are apparently visible and if they bow in front direction by 30-40 degrees, you can consider yourself one of the people who got a chance to see private parts of this gentleman/lady!

One young gentleman was shouting abuses at someone on phone. His opposite-sex batch-mates were standing very close to him and were giggling all the way. This guy was center of attraction for everybody passing by. I would rate those abuses below C-grade, only a sadak-chhap drunk moron can abuse this way. We Indians use incestuous abuses and we (men) can digest them but the abuses seemed alien to me, felt like approaching the guy and slap very hard. The only thing I could think was, 'These are under-graduate students. Future of India! What happened to their manners?'

Suddenly, many questions seemed to blow up my mind! Is abusing aloud a sign of being contemporary? Wearing highly obscene/vulgar clothes a symbol of being modern? Are they modern? Or are they going Western? Or are words Modern and Western synonyms? One part of my mind says, Banwari, beta, you are too much traditional to digest this. You have come from a very small place and these young fellows have been living in the fastest Indian city for their entire life, and this makes a difference. But another part of my mind is not able to accept it and keeps me bugging, always. It says, 'Mumbai is going towards Westernization, not Modernization!' :-)

New Year, New Resolutions... New Blogger!

Another year passed finally and I am in 2007! Unlike every other year passed, this time I have set some goals for myself. There are some new year resolutions. Most of them are very much personal and I don't want to bore anybody with my personal life. One resolution I can talk about here is 'I will try to blog more. At least 5 posts per month.' Well, I seem to fail at this resolution of mine. 17 days have passed and it's first post of the year. Blogger has come out of Beta stage and have provided some new cool features (still figuring out, what are those?).

I have many expectations from 2007 and myself. Will have to try hard to live up my own expectations. So, 2007... I'm coming. :-)

How my worst nightmares become reality

I personally believe that one's worst nightmares become reality sooner than one expects. It happens with very often. Whatever I considered to be a nightmare for me becomes reality the next day. Something similar happened two months ago. Its not like that this happened to me for the first time but it was one of the worst!

The latest example of this fact is my Mumbai arrival. I always used to tell my friends, family and all that Mumbai would be the last place I will prefer to work in and within a few months I am here in Mumbai. I am still not able to digest that I am in Mumbai, Mumbai??? Firstly I left my home when I was selected in Navodaya school. I studied there only one month before I called my papa and asked him to take me back to home. I was too young to live separately. It's not that I was the first who went to a boarding school in age of 12 but I simply didn't find the environment friendly and I had to leave it within a month. Again I left home in 2000 when I had to prepare for engineering entrance test. Then onwards I couldn't get chance to go back home. Gwalior, Bhopal and now Mumbai.

Bhopal was second home to me. I consider myself one of the most fortunate persons on this earth who get this comfort and love away from home. In Bhopal, I didn't realize for a day that I am not at home. I entered D-12, Patel Nagar, Raisen Road, Bhopal - 462021 as paying guest and became part of family in no time. I lived in that house for 6 long years, exactly one-fourth of my life today! I got there every relation, elder and younger brothers, bhabhi, father in terms of Uncle and above all, mother in terms of Auntie. Everybody so caring, loving, respecting. Auntie used to say, "I won't let you go until your marriage. After marriage you will have to buy a house closer only so that I can come down to talk to your wife or invite her in here for a while". I never ever intended to leave any of them but what happened at last? I left them on a short notice of eight days! Life takes terrible turns, very true!

People say, Mumbai is the city of opportunities (pardon me if this term is used for some other city!). Maybe there are correct, I might agree to them but for me these opportunities are coming at very high price. A price that I wasn't about to afford!

My second month in Mumbai has just passed and I have a lot of to talk about. Will write sometime in details. I hope you are not wondering why Mumbai is a nightmare to me? Now, I am living in the most advanced, most costly and fastest city on India. I am not able to decide whether its a matter of happiness, excitement or sorrow

Indian-Literature is no more

I have just abandoned my yet another blog The Great Indian Literature. Reason: I couldn't do justice with that. 1 post in a month is not anticipated frequency. Here I will not only write about Indian Literature but also on a number of things.

I have copied all the posts of that blog in this blog and put a refresh-tag there. All posts are copied today i.e. Saturday, May 20, 2006. If you are looking for them just read out previous 6 posts.

Now its the only blog I have, wait, Carwale.com blog too. :-)