Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts

30 April 2012

Mumbai - A City of dreams...



Everybody knows how I am crazy about Ireland. But no matter how crazy I am about her, I have realized I can't deny the fact but agree that there is no other city like Mumbai. Why do I feel so?? And how can I be certain?? Well here are some of the reasons why I feel Mumbai is one of the best cities.. and why am I so proud to be a Mumbaikar...

1. Its a city that never sleeps - quite literally. You can take a stroll on the streets of Mumbai at 2am and you won't be alone there will always be a flock of people always.
2. You have shops/restaurants  in Mumbai that are open 24x7
3. You have the first local train at 4am and the last one at 1.30am
4. You have a train service every 2 mins & it carry a total of 2.2 billion passengers every year. Incidentally, the world's population is 6 billion.
5. You have a bus service every 5 mins
6. A city well connected with roads/rails
7. We have the Worli Sea Link
8. One of the safest place for women
9. The Most culturally diverse city - you will find people from every culture, race, ethnic, lifestyle here.
10. You can make it big doing anything here, whether it be window cleaning, shoe polishing, or even just by playing a god man.
11. The city where you have the most richest man living just feet away from the most poorest one.
12.We have the Queen's Necklace (Marine Drive)
13. The City with a 'Never Die' Spirit. We’ve survived repeated terrorist attacks, only to go back to work the very next day
14. Lamington Road - The street where you will find all the hardware & software's ever produced whether released or unreleased.http://s3.hubimg.com/u/5147134_f520.jpg
15. One of the most complex rail and road signalling system.
16. We have a national park right in the middle of the city
17.  It's a city where everything is possible.. especially the impossible.
18. Mumbai is the richest city in India and is the country’s commercial and entertainment capital. It has the highest GDP among any city in South, West or Central Asia and is one of the top ten financial centers in the world.
19. The famed dabbawallas of Mumbai are famous worldwide because of their efficiency, with Forbes giving them the `six-sigma rating, which means that they make about one error in six million transactions.
20. Spread over 535 acres, Dharavi is one of the largest slums in the world and has a population of approximately 1 million. The slum has around 5000 businesses and 15 thousand single room factories. The goods manufactured here are exported throughout the world.


23 July 2010

The Rupee Logo


So.. at last my country (India) too got its own logo for our currency, viz. the Rupee. I am not sure if that changes anything or if we have become a part of the elite class of people.. But it sure is fun to have a currency logo. Just waiting for MS Windows 8 or the MS Office 13 build to come with our new Rupee Logo... its gonna be fun..

01 May 2010

You Know You Grew Up in India in the 90s When…

I was on Facebook the other day and stumped upon this page 'You Know You Grew Up in India in the 90s When...' and this is the content of that page... its just too beautiful to miss if you were indeed one of those who grew up during the 90s... :)

You Know You Grew Up in India in the 90s When…

1) You know the words to ‘In-pin-safety-pin’ and ‘akkad-bakkad’ by heart

2) Cricket is almost a religion for you, and you idolize at least one of Rahul Dravid/Sachin Tendulkar/Saurav Ganguly

3) You have read at least some Chacha Chaudhary or Tinkle comics

4) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life. And you can immediately recognize the character when you see him.

5) You have some ‘NRI’ relatives.

6) You couldn’t wait for it to be December so you could have the Toblerone chocolates your NRI relatives brought you

7) You watched Cartoon Network, and then the late night movies on TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended.

8) You watched corny dubbed versions of Small Wonder, Silver Spoon, and I Dream of Jeanie

9) You were THRILLED when McDonald’s opened in your neighborhood (or even eight kilometers away)

10) A visit to Pizza Hut used to mean a special treat

11) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each

12) You still remember the theme song of Hum Paanch. (Hum Paanch, Pam Pam Pam Paanch!)

13) You have played hours upon hour of running and catching, chor-police, lagori, saankli, ‘Doctor, doctor, help us!’, ‘Lock and key’

14) You have seen girls play ‘Amina Super Sina’ more times than you can remember. (And you still don’t know what it means!)

15) Dog ‘in’ the bone was your favorite co-ed game.

16) Much of your free time in school was spent playing UNO.

17) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand why your younger siblings were obsessed with Pokemon and the other Japanese trends that followed.

18) Your summer vacations were often synonymous with visiting your grandparents or cousins

19) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it.

20) Bole mere lips, I love uncle Chips!

21) You know the song ‘Made in India’ by Alisha Chinai

22) You have seen many many many episodes of ‘Antakshari’ on Zee TV and know the only thing constant in the show is Annu Kapoor.

23) Many evenings have been spent watching little kids gyrate vulgarly on Boogie Woogie on Sony.

24) You were the coolest thing in class if you had a computer in your house while it was still the 90s.

25) You learnt LOGO and BASIC in school!

26) You couldn’t wait to start 4th standard so you could start writing with PENS instead of with pencils!

27) You often used terms and phrases like ‘two-say’, ‘same to you, back to you, with no returns’, and ‘shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name.’

28) You most probably saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at the cinema at least once. You also fantasized about singing songs in mustard fields as in the movie.

29) You have seen David Dhawan and Govinda movies and laughed at them.

31) You have said ‘haw’ or ‘yuck’ when you saw people kissing in English movies. (nowadays kids are used to it!)

30) Titanic was your FIRST favorite English movie.

31) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever.

32) You remember the Gujarat earthquake very clearly and could possibly tell everyone EXACTLY what you were doing when the earthquake occurred (yes, this happened in 2001, January 26, 2001, to be exact — but this group is about the things that Indian kids that GREW UP in the 90s remember and identify with).

33) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. You just wanted more more more and more. And how can I forget Hot Wheels, for both boys and girls?

34) You thought ‘imported’ clothes were definitely way better than ‘made in India’ clothes (never mind that a lot of clothes brought from overseas by NRI relatives were actually made in India, before ‘Made in China’ started appearing on EVERY existing thing)

35) "Jungle Jungle Baat Chali Hai Pata Chala Hai! Chaddi Pehen Ke Phool Khila Hai Phool Khila Hai!" You watched "The Jungle Book" every Sunday morning at 9.a.m" and just loved mowgli, bhalu and bagheera. A few years later, you watched Disney Hour, which had cartoons like Aladdin, Gummy Bears, Tail Spin, Uncle Scrooge!

36) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word.

37) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness.

38) You have tried to convince people around you to not burst crackers on Diwali, and then gone straight back home and burst them yourself.

39) You have had endless packets of Parle Gluco G biscuits, and of Brittania Little Hearts biscuits.

40) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.

41) There were no Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma- Bata and Liberty was the way to go for your sports shoes.

42) You have probably consumed more Frooti in your lifetime than there is oil in Iraq.

43) You watched Baywatch on Star World when nobody was home even though (or because) your parents said you shouldn’t watch it.

44) You bought packets of potato chips for the specific purpose of collecting Tazos. And you had Tazos depicting everyone from Confucius to Daffy Duck to Daffy Duck dressed as Confucius.

45) For the longest time, the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini, THE Fiat, and THE Ambassador were the only cars you saw on the road, and the Contessa was cool because it was bigger.

46) You would literally jump up in excitement if you ever chanced upon an imported car (Oh my gosh, is that really a MERCEDES?)!

47) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better.

48) You used to Fuzen gum. You also chewed Big (big) Babool and/or Boom Boom Boomer chewing gum. They were bright pink and disgusting tasting, but you loved them for the temporary tattoos.

49) Talking of temporary tattoos, you sometimes had contests with your classmates about who had more tattoos on their arm, leg, knee, hand, forehead, wherever.

50) You thought Mario and Contra were the coolest things ever invented, especially if you were a boy.

51) You knew that having the latest Hero or Atlas bicycle would make you the coolest kid on the block.

52) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection.

53) You have, at some point of time, worn GAP clothes (real or fake) like SRK in KKHH.

54) Seemingly senseless acronyms like SRK, DDLJ, DTPH, KKHH actually make sense to you..

55) You have at some point debated who was more beautiful- Aishwarya or Sushmita.

56) Baskin Robbins ice-cream was THE thing to have!

57) You know what Campa Cola is. And you also knew that Coca Cola was THE drink.

58) You would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and loved Bret Hart "Hitman"! really thought Undertaker had seven lives and he made an “actual” appearance in the Akshay Kumar- starrer Khiladiyon ka Khiladi.

59) When all backpacks (or ’schoolbags’) and water bottles and tiffin boxes had strange cartoon characters that were hybrid versions of seven or eight different characters, and you still bought them, because a green man wih a water pistol, boots, a jet-pack, Johnny bravo hair, a rajasthani mustache, gloves, and underwear (long johns) over his pants, called ‘Mr. X’ was OBVIOUSLY a status symbol.

60) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle.

61) You remember the Nirma girl.

62) You remember the ‘doodh doodh piyo glass full doodh’ ad and also the ‘laal kaala peela, gulabi hara neela classic hai badia bristles wala’ and 'roz khao ande' ads.

63) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Babysitters Club, Animorphs, Goosebumps, Sweet Valley series, Judy Blumes, and Tintin, or Archie comics. Because naturally, reading foreign authors made you much cooler than reading Tinkle.

64) Towards the late 90s (1998-99) at least some of us started our Harry Potter obsessions!

65) You absolutely HAD to go to Essel World if you were with cousins! “Essel World mein rahoonga main, ghar nahin nahin jaaonga main!” (I never went but always dreamed of going there!)

66) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously. The smarter ones amongst you actually took part in it and had your entire school and your entire extended families watch you on it!

67) Maggi 2 Minute Noodles = ultimate snack (and tiffin, lunch, dinner)!

68) If you grew up in the early 90s, you recall the nation’s obsession with Mahabharata on TV

69) In the later 90s, you religiously followed Hip Hip Hooray on Zee. Maybe Just Mohabbat on Sony too

70) You remember parzan dastur sayin "JALEBI!!!!" in the Dhara Ad

71) You eagerly awaited Friendship Day, so you could give friendship bands to all your friends, and get bands from them in return. Then, of course, those with the most bands loved to show them off.

72) Backstreet Boys' "Quit Playing Games" was one of the first English songs that you LOVED!

73) Andaz Apna Apna is and most probably will always be your favorite comedy flick!! "Aila Jhakaas!!!"


And I miss that age, it was sooo awesome!

26 March 2010

Truly... A Class Apart...

For sometime I was wondering what do I post next on my blog.. Now... I am not a person who spends a lot of time on forwarded mails.. or ever interested in sports whatsoever... and though I am an Indian, I am not a fan of Cricket. But there is this one person who I really admire and that's Sachin. Not because he is a world class player, because he is a man of character. It is truly difficult to find someone of that stature. So when I got this email from my cousin, I thought I had to post it here...

Nothing bad can happen to us if we're on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it.
- Hashim Amla, the South African batsman, reassures himself as he boards a flight.
"Sometimes you get so engrossed in watching batsmen like Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar that you lose focus on your job."
- Yaseer Hameed in pakistani newspaper.
"To Sachin, the man we all want to be"
- Andrew Symonds wrote on an aussie t-shirt he autographed specially for Sachin.
“Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don't know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their TV sets and switch off their lives."
- BBC on Sachin.
"Tuzhe pata hai tune kiska catch chhoda hai?"
- Wasim Akram to Abdul Razzaq when the latter dropped Sachin's catch in 2003 WC.
Sachin is a genius. I'm a mere mortal.
- Brian Charles Lara.
"We did not lose to a team called India ...we lost to a man called Sachin."
- Mark Taylor, during the test match in Chennai (1997)
"The more I see of him the more confused I'm getting to which is his best knock."
- M. L. Jaisimha
"The joy he brings to the millions of his countrymen, the grace with which he handles all the adulation and the expectations and his innate humility - all make for a one-in-a-billion individual,"
- Glen McGrath
"I can be hundred per cent sure that Sachin will not play for a minute longer when he is not enjoying himself. He is still so eager to go out there and play. He will play as long as he feels he can play,"
- Anjali Tendulkar
Question: Who do you think as most important celebrity ?
Shah Rukh Khan: There was a big party where stars from bollywood and cricket were invited. Suddenly, there was a big noise, all wanted to see approaching Amitabh Bachhan. Then Sachin entered the hall and Amitabh was leading the queue to get a grab of the GENIUS!!
- Shah Rukh Khan in an interview.
He can play that leg glance with a walking stick also.
- Waqar Younis
Sachin Tendulkar has often reminded me of a veteran army colonel who has many medals on his chest to show how he has conquered bowlers all over the world. I was bowling to Sachin and he hit me for two fours in a row. One from point and the other in between point and gully. That was the last two balls of the over and the over after that we (SA) took a wicket and during the group meeting i told Jonty (Rhodes) to be alert and i know a way to pin Sachin. And i delivered the first ball of my next over and it was a fuller length delevery outside offstump. And i shouted catch. To my astonishment the ball was hit to the cover boundary. Such was the brilliance of Sachin. His reflex time is the best i have ever seen. Its like 1/20th of a sec. To get his wicket better not prepare. Atleast u wont regret if he hits you for boundaries.
- Allan Donald
On a train from Shimla to Delhi , there was a halt in one of the stations. The train stopped by for few minutes as usual. Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century. This Genius can stop time in India !!
- Peter Rebouck - Aussie journalist
"Sachin cannot cheat. He is to cricket what (Mahatma) Gandhiji was to politics. It's clear discrimination. "
- NKP Salve, former Union Minister when Sachin was accused of ball tempering
There are 2 kind of batsmen in the world. One Sachin Tendulkar. Two all the others.
- Andy Flower
"I have seen god, he bats at no.4 for India "
- Mathew Hayden

03 June 2009

INDIA - World's #1 Racist Country

So... there have been a lot going about the Aussies treating the Indian students badly and causing physical assault to many. And they have been tagged acts of 'Racism'. I was talking to my friend yesterday who has been studying and living in Melbourne since over 2 years now. He told me that its over-hyped by the Indian media, and though its true, it isn't bad as it is portrayed to be. And now its getting worse as the Aussies are portrayed as Racist. But he did tell me that in his over 2 years of stay in Melbourne, he never encountered any racist comments or assault whether physical or mental on him. He always said his Aussie friends were quiet cool with him.

Anyways, while he was talking to me, I began to think about Indians... I think we are far more racist than any other country. We are racist to our own people. We are blessed with so many different cultures and color and creed, but we are racist to our very own. Look around you and you will know. Why do we not like to associate with people from the north (the so called bhaiyas), or the people from the south, who look funny and speak funny... We like to welcome our guests from foreign nations, especially the white folks but do we really show the same interest with our black guests?

To think of it, we are unofficially the world's #1 racist country.

Here is a song I would love to dedicate to all who are hurt or ever been on the receiving end, whether Indian or Australian or any other national... sing it to your oppressor.

----------------------------------------------------

How to save a life - The Fray
Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came