nuke deal

i do not understand this simple fact...how much of india's future energy needs are to be fulfilled via the toute of nuclear energy?
most of the experts say it would not be greater than 15% in any case.
while it is understandable that we should plan for energy security, i do not understand why this should be with nuclear energy, which is the costliest source of energy right now.
we have cheaper options like coal and hydel, why don't we plan our energy security based on these rather than something that we can not afford?
then there is the fact about the radioactive waste....most of the countries that went nuclear have huge stockpiles of radioactive wastes lying with them and they do not have a clue as to what to do with it...
every aspect of our country is jam-packed with population.....any adverse incident may poison a large swathe of population.....
or we don't care as we didn't care about survivors and victims of bhopal tragedy....
if US really has our interests at heart why do they not declare us a nuclear power nation and exempt us from any sanctions, why go around in a roundabout way?
no... despite lefts rhetoric, there is some point that has not been explained by the government...
and that bothers me.

a window of relief

the exams are finally over, and however bad they might have turned out to be, just the fact that they are over finally has come as a big relief. the worst thing about is similiar to the best thing about sex - the anticipation of it!!
however, it has been a very small relief for me. as i have to go job hunting now. got to keep the moolah coming now...i am a family man you see. for the moment i am enjoying the feeling.

कुछ गम जिंदगी के

एक गम यह कि डाक्टर कयों बने।
जिंदगी किताबों में बीत गइ। जवानी में बूढ़े हो गये। और पूरी जिंदगी भी किताबों में ही बीतेगी।

एक छोटा पोस्ट ऊबंटू से

बहुत जल्दी में, मैं यह पहला पोस्ट हिंदी में ऊबंटू से कर रहा हूं।

another great day for justice!

today is another great day for justice, additional sessions judge sentenced vikas yadav and vishal yadav as guilty in the murder of
nitish katara.
it is a strong message to the children of the mighty and powerful not to consider themselves as invincible.

bhootnath

going to this film was not optional for me, i had to go to see this film as it had amitabh bacchan in it. it has been a routine for me right since kabhi khushi kabhi gham.
and i must say, i was not disappointed......
amitabh bacchan is pure gold, somehow i feel he is better in his twilight years than he ever was!!!!
bhutnath is not a horror film. lovers of that genre will be disappointed with it, it is not even a children film.
it is a sociological drama about a father son relationship, concept of family, loving and leaving through the eyes of A GHOST.
the child actor is wonderful, and the person who plays the role of ABs son impressed within the short time he was on the screen.
rest of the actors such as shahrukh, juhi and satish shah were perfunctory and routine....
the songs are average but the package packs a punch....

muslim problem

a nation is never a monolithic organ, it has so many different components pulling in so many different directions that the path of the nation is sum total of all these different vectors.
a very significant portion of the nation can be a very powerful impact over the country, take for an example, the parasees, with just a population of 65000, they employ more than 65 lakh people and contribule almost 20% of our GDP.
a small sect of music loving muslims have contributed more to hindustani classical music than any one else.
the communist movement is virtually led by upper caste brahmins in our country.
bhumihars have taken up half of leadership of naxalites in our country.
then there are people like me who like to get on with the daily life, earninf a comfortable salary, never really wishing to do anything radical, but willing to talk and analyze.
what can we do about the muslim problem?
is it truly a law and order problem? can you truly classify 16% of your population as law and order problem?
is it social, if yes what can we do to help them without raising indignation in other communities?
or does the problem lie with us?
if then what can we do to change ourselves?
i have my own take-
as a first step, ban all other madarassas, make it compulsory for muslims to send their children in a multicultural multireligious schools that are at least of the level of DAV or navodaya vidyalayas.
that could be a start....

Tashan Vashan

oh my god, some one tell the yash rajs that if the keep torturing people so much their brand value will go down.
first they give us jhoom barabar jhoom, then they give us lagaa chunari me daag and now this?
guys this film is utter torture, kareena is not hot, she is famished, someone feed her something soon!!! a banana will do all right, no make that a dozen bananas,
listen to this gem guys, kareena steals 25 crores from anil kapoor which incidently fits into a single bag and then hides it at all the tourist spots in the country..
one bag to a rajasthani nomad, one to backwaters toddy tapper, one to mohiniattam dancers, then when anil tells her to get it back they go dancing and singing all the way to these places and just clap these guys hands and they give the money bags back. just like that!!!!
and yes another gem, when going from haridwar to rajasthan they pass through ladakh.
this film is this years ram gopal verma ki aag guys avoid it like plague.
and yes the only way they can make kareena any hotter is by removing the last bits of cloth from her body, she doesn't impact any more. her oomphs leave a sorry taste in the mouth and no she doesn't have chemistry, physics or mathematics with saif ali khan only biology and that too is their private matter.
what a pathetic bunch of loosers.

देवनागरी का ह्वास

आधुनिकता एवं व्यक्तिगत उत्थान के इस घोर युग में हम सब अपनी भाषा के एक प्रमुख बिन्दु पर ध्यान नहीं दे रहें हैं. यह है हमारी लिपि.
बचपन से लेकर यौवन तक, जितने भी पाठ पढें, भले ही हनुमान चालीसा हो या फ़िर चाचा चौधरी, देवनागरी लिपि सदैव हमारे साथ रहती है.
जब मैं बैगलोर में रहता था तो आते जाते कभी सरकारी बैंकों के तख्तों पर जब देवनागरी लिखी मिलती थी तो बडा आनंद आता था. मगर जमाना ऐसा बदला है कि अब हिंदी भाषी क्षेत्रों में भी हमारी लिपी लुप्तप्राय हो रही है.
यदि आप ध्यान दें तो पायेंगे कि हिंदी फ़िल्मों के आगे पीछे रोमन लिपी का ही प्रयोग हो रहा है. जो चैनल अपने आप को हिंदी कहते हैं वे भी कभी देवनागरी लिपि का प्रयोग नहीं करते हैं.
किसी भी सीरियल का एवं उसके कलाकारों का नाम देवनागरी में नहीं लिखा आता है.
हिंदी समाचार चैनल भी कमाइ तो हिंदी की खाते हैं और गुण अंग्रेजी का गाते हैं, नहीं तो वे टिकर के द्वारा दोनो हिंदी और अंग्रेजी में समाचार क्यों दिखाते हैं. आखिर अंग्रेजी वाले तो कभी हिंदी में टिकर नहीं चलाते!!
देवनागरी मात्र हिंदी की ही नही बल्कि सारे ग्रामीण भाषाओं कि लिपि है.
यदि यही माहौल रहा तो आज से दस साल के बाद, खासकर के शहरों में देवनागरी पढने वालों की संख्या बिल्कुल नगण्य हो जायेगी और हम एक और चिर संचित रत्न अपनी सामूहिक याद से खो देंगे.

science and religion

none of the things that we know about time, space and universe is absolute.
the theory of relativity is a theory. you must be aware of the scientific progression of ideas.
hypothesis>theory>law.
whatever einstien has proposed may be turned overhead by future discoveries.
by claiming that our ancestors were aware of the theory of relativity as as nonspecific as claiming that we built boeings in the past as there is a mention of pushpak viman in ramayanas. it is mere idle talk and leads to degeneration of scientific spirit.
remember, modern science had to overcome a lot of obstacles from the church before they were able to prove anything.
it is this spirit of irreverence to religion that has made science what it is today. and when i mean religion, i mean the fantastic parts of the religion.
remember, other than rigvedas, every other religious texts in this country were written by poets, not scientists. and poets tend to exaggarate and produce tall claims. many of these claims would make it appear as if they had some resonance with scientific principals, but a further study of these texts would bely such claims.
we had books written by scientists such as charaka, sushruta, aryabhatta, and they never claim anything superstitious.
plus religion is a very personal thing and not beholden to scientific proofings. it satisfies our ego to claim that our religion is more scientific than the other, but it is a futile exercise that denigrates both science and religion.

संबंध के सच की कडवाहट

संबंध के सच की कडवाहट
दबे पांव, न करके आहट
धीरे से जीवन में आयें
कटुक स्वाद तालु पर लायें.

छोड भी दूं पर जाउं कहां
हर कोन में फ़ैली पडी यहां.
है बचना दूभर इस सच से
है बचा कोइ खुद के रच से?

मेरी भी गलती थी माना,
पर पश्चाताप तो था ठाना?
फ़िर भी तुम जाने कहां गयी
मानो कवि से प्रेरणा गयी.

पवन कुमार शर्मा

most pathetic government

this has been the post pathetic goverment in this country to date. it has not a single achievement to its credit in its now greater than four years reign. only the janata dal governments have fared worse.
the nuclear deal was supposed to be its showcase, but it has been shoved in the backalley by this goverment so that it can complete its pathetic five year life.
it touts NREGS as its achievements. the damned programme is a bloody failure. the number of people below poverty line remain the same and the whole scam is a drain on taxpayers money.
it has effectively halted the golden quad scheme of NDA government, prices have been rising astronomically. people have been left literally reeling.
despite having young parliamentarians, it opted for inept,old and corrupt ministers like churhat scam tainted arjun singh who came up with the grand idea of reservations in higher education.
unfortunately still there are people also who feel compelled to vote for this geriatric wheezing asthmatic party.
time has come to shove them out of the door like they deserve. time has come to think for a change.

svapn

जीवन के जो पल चले गये..
एक अलसाइ दुपहरिया में
बोझल मद्धिम सी आंखो के
आगे क्यों नर्तन करते है?

वो धूल भरि पगडंडी,
वो अध मंजराइ अमराइ
वो चापाकल के शीतल मे
मंडराती थी भ्रमराइ

Delimitation

After a lot of procrastination, the delimitation commission of india's notification has finally been accepted and passed into a law. Let us look at what it would do.
Basically it would divide the total number of LokSabha and VidhanSabha seats in each state according to the population so that each constituency has equal population.
Some of the constituencies will be abolished, others increased or pared down in size to reflect the demographic equality.
The urban centres within the states would get increased number of MPs and MLAs. thus increasing the influence these centres would have on the polity. this also reflects the growing population in the urban centres.
However the total number of seats would not be increased which is sad really. It has been increasingly felt that the parliamentarians have grown far apart from the common man. India needs in excess of 1000 loksabhas if it is to be governed properly. the number of seats have been frozen as the south indian states have protested saying thier numbers are coming down and they are being punished for a better population control.
There is a solution to this dilemma. let the number of seats be increased in all the seats in a proportional manner so that the relative number of seats for each state remains the same.
The next delimitation committee should be given a mandate to increase the number of seats and not just shuffle them as it has done this time.

did nawaz kill benazir?

for those of you who love the conspiracy theories, here is a new one. it says nawaz sharif more than musharraf stands to gain from the death of benazir bhutto and was thus responsible for her deaths. here is why-
1. PPP being a personality cult based party would be without its binding glue and would fall apart sooner or later leaving the country with only one national party.
2. everyone knows that nawaz sharif could only come back to the country with the help of saudis, everyone also knows that the saudis are the biggest financiers of the terrorists, at least unofficially. so they had it within their power to eliminate the biggest competitor to nawaz.
3. by next election nawaz is sure to emerge as the largest party as public hates zardari, this would give saudis an unimaginably large influence over pakistan.
4. PML-N is known for its softer approach towards fundamentalists and the consevative sections often end up supporting PML-N rather than PPP. so they are more comfortable with the idea of nawaz as the PM rather than benazir, who was a women and thus an anathema.

i am not saying that the above assertions are true and i kind of like nawaz sharif, but this guy has gone through a lot of trouble in the past ten years and led a very frustated and insecure life and sucha person can easily become a pawn in the hands of others more powerful people.

Jodha Akbar

So what is good about jodha akbar? i know it is a very odd way of starting with a review but very appropriate. i think the film should have a disclaimer- the contents of the film are nowhere a reflection of the acting abilities of hrithik and aishwarya, the laziness of the director and the editor has no bearing on the lead actors. having made that clear lets move on.
what was that about letters being written on parchments sorry thick paper in hindi? hindi in akbars time that too chaste hindi? this from the director of lagaan who had gone to britain to search for bats from that period? but there was aamir you said? you said it. so now we know the true spirit behind the authenticity of lagaan.
so what was it that gowarikar did? he took the budget..very generous one too and made something very grand with very grand actors but without any convictions. in the end you get something much more preachy than halla bol. when will these people stop letting the present cloud their judgement of the past?
what was it that gowarikar trying to convey, that akbar loved jodha and not just kept her confined in the harem? it took 4 hours to convey that. that akbar was virtuous and wise, so what made him think that he was also a stickler for women's rights in that age and time, isn't that looking at the past from todays perspective. the muslims spoke urdu and the hindus chaste hindi, wow.
where was the editor? the songs were long and boring. and after seeing films like mithya i find it demeaning that someone would try to hoist something so silly on us.

Osteoarthritis

All of you must either have experienced or known someone who has experienced pain in their knees at some point. That constant dull aching pain that is present with every step a person walks has troubled many and in fact is a common factor in reducing the quality of life of a person especially as one ages.
This disease is misunderstood by many and often results in people changing their doctors frequently and also has resulted in many people turning to quacks who take advantage of a patient by charging exorbitant amount of money and by giving them spurious medicines laced with steroids which though give immediate relief to the patients, sometimes have disastrous results.
So what is this Osteoarthritis? How does it start? Whom does it affect? Is it really incurable? These are some of the queries that we would try to answer in this article.
To answer the first question, osteoarthritis is a disease of cartilage, not only of the knee but also of almost all the joints in the human body such as fingers, hip and spine. Cartilage is that smooth but tough tissue that lies between the bones at the joints that enables us to have smooth yet painless motion. This joint is lubricated with a highly viscous fluid that enables us to walk without much friction between cartilages. It is this fluid that is called as water by your neighborhood know it all. This whole structure is covered by synovium, the tissue that produces the synovial fluid.
To be truthful to you, modern science yet does not know the exact reason for the beginning of osteoarthritis however we have known certain constant associations between osteoarthritis and other factors. These are female sex, increased weight and older age. What it means is that female, obese people and elderly are all liable to develop osteoarthritis much more than those of us who are not one of these. Just look around you and you will find this assertion to be true. However this does not mean that all female, obese and elderly will get osteoarthritis. There are many a elderly who have a knee that would put an young persons knee to shame.
Another association is with repeated trauma to the knee, we shall explain how in the coming paragraphs.
How does it start? Well all of you must have seen the unraveling of a sweater. The thread once pulled out never stops until whole of the sweater is unraveled, you may try various things to prevent it or delay it but it invariably gets worse. Similar is the case of our cartilage, it is made up of very fine filamentous structures that are interwoven at the microscopic level to make a very firm but elastic and compressible cartilage. However it has one distinct weakness. It is that once its surface has been notched due to any reason, trauma or otherwise the fibers unravel, water seeps in, it begins to swell and things go downhill from here.
So how would one know that he has osteoarthritis and not something more sinister, after all there are other conditions that cause knee pain too. Rheumatoid arthritis is a very common disease of the joints that may cause knee pain and mimic osteoarthritis. It is a treatable disease that must not be neglected. One simple way is to contact the doctor for every knee pain but for those of you who are wary of seeing a doctor here is a simple differentiation, pain of osteoarthritis is very less initially and usually affects one knee more than the other, the stiffness of the joints in osteoarthritis that comes after sitting or resting for a while lasts less than half an hour. Rheumatoid arthritis on the other hands affects both sides equally and the stiffness lasts greater than half an hour.
Injury to the knee can produce pain acutely by a simple soft tissue trauma or something more troublesome like ligament or meniscal damage so it should not be neglected and a consultation with a doctor is necessary as timely intervention can be very effective. Letting things fester can cause further complications later.
A patient with osteoarthritis of the knees will complain of pain in his knees usually associated with walking. Difficulty in climbing stairs or rising from a chair, stiffness in the joints after a period of inactivity. Some patients may even complain of swelling in the joints and in later stages of the disease deformity of the knees in which the knees may bow outwards.
So, is the disease incurable? In a word yes but is it untreatable? NO. the disease is treatable. There are ways in which the progress of the disease can be slowed also there are several ways by which the pain and disability of the patients may be alleviated.
First treatment is cause specific. Obese patients should lose their weight and patients with trauma to the knee should get the underlying ligamentous or meniscal damage assessed and treated as these can lead to osteoarthritis.
For those patients who do not fall in these categories the first line of treatment is physiotherapy of the joints. Physiotherapy strengthens the muscles around the knee and thus decrease the rubbing of the cartilage to each other thereby decreasing the pain. It also keeps the joint active and prevents the formation of deformities in the joint.
Analgesics in moderation and under supervision gives good relief of pain but its injudicious use can cause gastric ulceration and damage to kidneys. This is the reason that the doctors do not recommend taking the tablets over the counter.
Certain supplementary treatments such as glucosamines and chondroitin sulphates also provide relief to some patients.
Intra-articular steroids give instantaneous relief but cause further damage to the cartilage so they should only be given under supervision of an orthopedician.
Viscosupplementation with hyaluronic acid which is a natural constituent of the synovial fluid has been found to give reliefs of upto one to three months in the patients and are very useful though limited form of treatment.
Among the surgical methods of treatment available with us, the first treatment that we prefer is an arthroscopic debridement and lavage of the knee joints. It is nothing but a cleaning up of the joint by which we introduce a scope through a small incision and pass a lot of water through it and also remove debris and loose fragments of the joints. This procedure gives relief to relatively younger patients with lesser severity of disease.
Final tool in the orthopedician's hands is a total knee replacement. Again it is a very useful tool in the patients with severe osteoarthritis , unbearable pain with deformities of the knee joint, it is a proven method with more than 99% longevity of the replacements by the 20th year. The improvements in both the implant and the operation methods have been such that this operation can be done in younger patients than was possible earlier so the patients need not wait till the condition worsens to a great extent. As the results then would not be as good as they would be at an earlier stage.
To summate, osteoarthritis is not a disease of despair and can be effectively treated by a doctor using the various modalities at his disposal but these modalities vary from patient to patient depending upon the age, severity and the associated conditions.

another nail in the coffin

as i have commented before, our judiciary has been surely and steadily dealing one blow to the another to politicians. i can remember a long list of cases now in which bahubalis have been shown the door.
to this long list were added the names of Rajesh ranjan alias pappu yadav , rajan tiwari and today Romesh Sharma.
both pappu yadav and rajan tiwari have been part of the rangdari culture in bihar that was allowed to fester and infact actively abetted to by lalu prasad yadav.
they had become so brazen under his rule that they had no qualms about indiscriminately killing people without impunity. both have been awarded the life imprisonment by the district court.
nitish government has been doing a great job not by doing something actively but by passively letting the law takes its own course. and that should come as an eye-opener for others.

art-2

art-1

open source

Katukbihari loves his web browser, he has been online for the last fifteen years and has used Netscape, Internet explorer by default and firebird (before it became Firefox) followed by firefox in different versions. Finally he had to leave firefox too as it had become vulnerable to adware. He shifted a year back to opera and has not left it ever since.
Opera is blazing fast, very secure- no pesky adwares as yet- and can be decorated with a lot of widgets as well as themes. What the heck he also plays chess on his opera. Opera also has a very rapid update cycle that makes it very very secure.
Katukbihari takes his commitment to open source very seriously. So he uses openoffice in place of Microsoft office and vlc media player in place of windows media player. But one thing katuk is not willing to change and that is his support for windows. He feels it is robust and very simple to use, extremely customizable, ubiquitous and there is nothing like it. Katuk also bill gates a lot and feels he is being victimized unnecessarily.

open source

Katukbihari loves his web browser, he has been online for the last fifteen years and has used Netscape, Internet explorer by default and firebird (before it became Firefox) followed by firefox in different versions. Finally he had to leave firefox too as it had become vulnerable to adware. He shifted a year back to opera and has not left it ever since.
Opera is blazing fast, very secure- no pesky adwares as yet- and can be decorated with a lot of widgets as well as themes. What the heck he also plays chess on his opera. Opera also has a very rapid update cycle that makes it very very secure.
Katukbihari takes his commitment to open source very seriously. So he uses openoffice in place of Microsoft office and vlc media player in place of windows media player. But one thing katuk is not willing to change and that is his support for windows. He feels it is robust and very simple to use, extremely customizable, ubiquitous and there is nothing like it. Katuk also bill gates a lot and feels he is being victimized unnecessarily.

हरिद्वार की सैर

चार दिनों के अपने हरिद्वार की सैर के बाद हम फ़िर आज दिल्ली वापस लौट रहें हैं. शुक्रवार की रात मसूरी एक्स्प्रेस से हमने हरिद्वार की ओर रुख किया था. यात्रा तो साधारण ही रही. मात्र दो सौ कि.मी. की दूरी को यह ट्रेन आराम से सात घन्टे में पूरी करती है.गनीमत यह है कि पूरी यात्रा हम सोते सोते ही बिता देते हैं.
सुबह छः बजे हम ज्वालापुर स्टेशन पहुँच गये. हरिद्वार शहर से ठीक पहले स्थित यह स्टेशन निहायत ही मामूली है. इतना मामूली कि ठीक से उतरने के लिये चबूतरा भी नहीं था. खैर फ़िर भी किसी तरह हम उतरने में कामयाब हुये, जल्दीबाजी इसलिये भी क्योंकि यहां पर ट्रेन मात्र दो मिनट के लिये रुकती थी.
पापाजी थोडी विलम्ब के बाद कार ले कर आ गये और मैं कार चला कर शिवालिक नगर ले कर आ गया. पहला दिन तो बडे आराम से सोते सोते बीता. बीच में कुछ देर के लिये मैं बस खाना खाने के लिये उठा. मेरी इन हरकतों की वजह से मेरी पत्नी ने मेरी कुछ कम खिचाइ नहीं की.
दूसरा दिन रविवार था.दोपहर में हम सब दक्ष मंदिर एवं हर की पैडी गये. मेरी पत्नी दक्ष मंदिर पहली बार गयीं थीं.
तीसरा और चौथा दिन सोने में बीता और चौथे दिन के रात हम लोग मसूरी एक्स्प्रेस से वापस लौत आये.