Girish's Blog

Once you go through the fine print in Budget 2010, you ask yourself what does it actually do - for R.K. Laxman’s “common man”. Everybody is waxing eloquent on the budget – calling it a budget for the “aam aadmi”. I would like to debate that for a moment – who is India’s aam aadmi? Is it the educated employed, is it the uneducated employed, is it the farmer, is it the son of the soil, is it India’s super rich, or is it the vast majority of unemployed who cannot afford to have a square meal a day? I leave it to you to decide who is India’s aam aadmi. Who has the budget benefited? This is a no brainer, with the salaried tax payer and individual tax payer getting a lot of relief through stretching of the tax slabs. There is a little bit of everything for taxpayers who benefit. But what is the percentage of tax paying populace of this vast country? Excise has been raised on petrol and cement which will have a ballooning effect on prices of food and housing. The common man who is looking fo...

The first batch of Geo Pilots started off on their paragliding course on the 19th of February from Mumbai. We had twelve adventurous souls including our Chairman who put their hearts, bodies and minds into completing the course. Day one started out with introductions students with trainers and instructors at Rangoli restaurant, Kamshet. After being briefed about the course, going through the training booklet, signing off on the Templepilots indemnity our boys were ready to fly. We went off to a new site at Kara about 60km from Pune, a flat plateau. We had three vehicles, of which one managed to do off-roading very well – Scorpio belonging to Sanjay Sarkar – the two hired vehicles a Tata Safari and Chevrolet Tavera played safe and did not venture to do the steep climb to the training site. Our boys got off and walked in the afternoon sun for their first feel of a paraglider. A lot of the trainees had stated that they had done a lot of adventure sports but those were all connected to the...

Yesterdays 200 in 50 overs against South Africa – one of the top teams in the world – not a Kenya, Bangladesh or Zimbabwe – was a truly master-class performance shutting up hopefully once and for all the detractors in the media and outside. I still remember all the visual media hatchet men on India TV Aaj Tak and assorted channels talking about Sachin should make way for younger players. This, when they were aware that he was battling injury and STILL averaging around 40 in both one dayers and Tests! The know all commentators on TV – guys who have probably used a cricket bat for washing clothes and nothing else – trying to put down an icon and a person who talks little and only performs! Anyone who does this for a living must be a very small person indeed! This recalls a quote by Malcolm X in 1964 “The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press...

Well, well, well it has ultimately happened – the cubs have ultimately proven themselves to be kittens that too spoilt ones at that! Rahul Gandhi by one swift stroke proved to the rest of us (me too) that he has the makings of a statesman. Traveling by train while all the rabble rousers with black flags were waiting at the airport was undoubtedly a stroke of genius – connecting with the masses and showing the kittens the way forward for inclusive politics. The demonstrators’ black flags will have to be shelved for a later day – so sad na, tch tch tch! Both the kittens are claiming that what he did is high drama – well agreed – but that is drama with class for the mass population! The kittens are left chewing sour grapes, slurp, slurp, slurp, burp, burp, burp! The burps I am sure are leaving a foul taste in the mouths of the kittens – like the saying goes “the best laid plans of mice and kittens go to waste”. Coming to the moot question which now dwells in the minds of the kittens – “t...

The number of suicides amongst the youth, students and working youngsters in the recent past is extremely disturbing to say the least. This just points to the pressure the youngsters face from parents, peers, teachers and society which just manages to send these guys over the edge. Our system of education needs to be revamped and a grading system introduced as suggested by Aamir Khan in 3 Idiots. The ranking system is a caste system which just manages to shame sensitive students into thinking they are no good – when that may actually be far from reality! I have an elder brother for whom academics was a piece of cake – I was always compared to him during my school days. There were rewards for doing well in school for him and I used to get the wooden spoon . But that really did not bother me too much – as I had decided mentally that my elder brother was in a different class academically and there was no way I was even going to try and compete! In fact I was happy being average and ranki...

The marathon this year was different in the sense that the half marathon started from Bandra and ended at CST whereas the full marathon, dream run and other events began and ended at CST. As I have been running the half marathon for the past three years after graduating from the Dream Run, for me the start point was in Bandra. This was close to home and it just took me ten minutes to get to the venue. As this was the first time that the marathon was being held from two venues, I expected certain logistic problems to crop up as the usually do in such cases. From my point of view the entrance to the holding area for corporate challenge participants, veterans and general runners should have been separate. The coporates pay quite a hefty chunk for their runners, plus the runners themselves raise money for charity so a different treatment was expected, as it has happened in the past. Once we entered the holding area we were cloistered together for almost 45 minutes. Luckily it was not as co...

This is a post by David Rose, UK Mail, 10th January 2010 - it is worth a read as it throws the theory of Climate Change by proponents of green house gases for a complete toss. A must read if you are keen on knowing whether the world as it is today is going to end and whether the politicians who are trying to monetise carbon credits are right or is it a new financial scam in the making. The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists. Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans –challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013. According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 sq...