Unicorn

Noun: unicorn 'yooni'korn An imaginary creature represented as a white horse with a long horn growing from its forehead. Though the popular image of the unicorn is that of a white horse differing only in the horn, the traditional unicorn has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hoofs, which distinguish him from a horse. Interestingly, these modifications make the horned ungulate more realistic, since only cloven-hoofed animals have horns.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Khandala Lonavla trip


It has been quite some time since I blogged about my journeys in and around Pune. since I will be going home tomorrow I thought I better blog it all up now. After Lohagad I lay low for a weekend and the next weekend my family came visiting. Mom, Dad, In-laws, Fiancee and sisters-in-law, All came here for a vacation (It is Dasera time and people down south get atleast a week off). When they all came here I planned to take them for a tour of hill stations around Pune like Khandala, Lonavla and Mahabaleshwar. I also planned for the Narayangaon Balaji temple as my in-laws were keen on visiting it. In the evenings I had to squeeze in shopping trips and dinner programs at branded outlets like McD or Pizzahut. All this hectic schedule left me drained but nonetheless I was enjoying myself. I even managed to take them to Dagduseth halwaai Ganapathi temple, Shaniwarwaada fort and konark bird park in that long weekend! Follow the next few posts and catch a glimpse of monsoon magic that bowled my family over and made them fall in love with Pune!

Friday, October 13, 2006

"Maha"rashtra

This is the e-mail I got from a friend today morning

Today i went to sation at 7:55 AM can u believe that there were 45 people in each line? 20 such lines but still i was hopeful that i would get a tatkal as this number reduced to 20 in just 45 minutes. Because every body (who wanted a delhi ticket) was returning without a ticket coz tatkal tickets were sold by that time but as ill luck would have it the server was so slow that for processing a ticket and printing it it was taking 15 minutes (per ticket) my turn came at 10:45 AM. by that time all the 100 tatkal tickets for konark were over and it entered into WL so i booked a ticket a bombay-hyd hussain sagar and hyd-vskp nizamabad exp (leaves sec'bad at 9:45 pm) ticket The first one is a tatkal i dont want to go tomorrow and waste another 2.5 hours. so u people carry on on thrursay. diwali time in pune rly station is horrible i have seen it last year and this year too.

Bye.

Mr. Xxxxxxx

Consultancy Services Limited

This was my reply:

Not just the railway station - Maharashtra (stands for “The great state”) government itself is horrible – stupid policies and policing … Like they don’t care about the roads but want censor on what’s being shown in TV. The High Court just asked to stop screening adult movies at normal times and these bungling idiots blocked all the movie channels and now the high courts is mum about it … It doesn’t care about the misinterpretation of its order!! All that those idiotic traffic cops care about it is lifting your bike off the parking lot if your back tyre has just crossed the white line but the traffic police never care about improving parking facilities! When it comes to railway station – the clerk always comes late and because of the stone-age computers and printers that adorn these offices they take at least 10 minutes to resolve each customer request and it takes at least 2 minutes to print each ticket on that old “dot-matrix” which keeps screeching all through! (keee … Ki ki ki … Keee ki ki ki!). To rub salt on ones wounds all these idiots who care a damn about rules, write registration numbers on the number plates in Marathi (making it virtually impossible to read incase they hit and run) claim themselves to be the proud sons of Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj!!! How atrocious can it get? Did Shivaji ever ask the Shiv sainiks “Chalo sab logon par gundaa gardi karo!” ?? This is perhaps the first time in my life I am seeing so many “Jaakat naakas” (Octroi tax collection centers) that burden everybody right from the petty vegetable vendor to the software engineer who wants to buy some piece of furniture in the suburbs because it comes for a little less there. Well, in my state it doesn’t have this octroi and yet they maintain good roads and infrastructure. The cable wallahs are the worst parasites of the lot – They charge exorbitant amount in my locality but that was fine because they were beaming down almost 90 channels. Now a premium part of the pay-channel list (movie channels) are gone owing to the misinterpretation of the HC order and still they didn’t bring the subscription down to compensate that! There is nothing great (“Maha”) about Maharashtra except some people like Sachin khedekar, Milind gunaji and Varsha usgaonkar screaming “Maajha Maharashtra” in some mobile service provider ad! Pune is great – It would have been even better if these “Dharthi ke laal” stopped spitting the gutka and pan on the walls and roads!

For this post my friend replied:

my ramblings about" maha"rashtra Plusses: It is the most industrialized, most urbanized state in the country. ample resources of any kind.. excellent tourism potential it is perhaps the only state that has so much agricultural production despite being so much industrialized Minuses: Worst Governance of all time, Highly mis-managed state u find tax of every kind: higher sales tax, service tax, professional tax than any other state in India. but still, worst possible basic infrastructure.