Another email forward, its kinda old, but a good read !
The Story of Ant & Grasshopper
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter
so he dies out in the cold.
Modern Version of the Story….
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this
poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding
that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Unite Nations criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .
Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘Bharat Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act’ [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services. The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing
left to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it ‘A Triumph of Justice’. Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice ‘. CPM calls it the ‘ Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden’ The United Nations invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly….
Many years later…
The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley ..
100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ..
The automatic machines for paying bills are installed at the BESCOM (Bangalore Electric Company) to save money (government) and time (for the consumers). Now the interesting thing is that they have actually employed a person to accept cash and deposit it to the machine. Strange? No ! when I saw him for the first time, I thought the machine was at fault, But this guy was there accepting our cash and feeding it to the machine everytime I went to pay my power bills! Now what’s the need of a machine then??????
In ‘Silicon valley of India’ we have such machines at the railway station too. This one is quite different from the one I have seen at other railway stations (other ones had old Telephone like buttons and was crappy looking). This machine was state of the art, had good displays and would accept 1Re, 5Rs coins to issue platform tickets. Recently I went to pick my wife and her mom (the usage mother in law is a bit harsh for her). Considering the queue at the ticket counter I thought of giving this machine a try. <<Also my last experience at the ticket counter was horrible. The guy at the counter was rude and did not issue a ticket until I gave him change for 3 Rs. He did not accept a 5 Rupee coin!. My wife had to vandalize her purse to get the change.>>
So here I am at the state of the art ticket vending machine. Wait a minute the first one is not working, so I proceeded to the second machine, wow they have machines everywhere I thought. I found this little guy who was protecting the machine with his both hands. People were giving him the money and he in turn put the coins in the slot and gave the ticket to them.
Oh so they have employed one person here too. I thought.
I gave him the coins. He put them in the slot, the machine grumbled and he handed over the ticket to me.
One rupee. He said.
WHAT?. I asked
One rupee sir. He repeated.
That’s when it struck me; he was making money out of it. J I handed over 1 Re to him.
Apparently he is a freelancer.
//I had this post in my ’drafts’ for sometime now, while ish had the same opinion at Youth Unite. You can read his post here.//
Now the oil prices have been hiked in India, we are in a tight situation. Now, what can we do to save some money, fuel and help save the environment along the way?
***This is to suggest some points (which you already might know) with which you can try cut down your fuel bills, I am not suggesting you to avoid using your car. The best place to start would be your daily drive to work****
· Car pooling is the best solution, you can cut down on your fuel bills, pollution and traffic, that’s one word (or rather two words) solution to many problems. Have I done this? YES ! In my previous company, we used carpooling a lot. We had the forum where we would post the carpooling details and yes many availed them. Its an excellent way to cut your bills, save money and help the environment.
· Take the Company Transportation, this is a more practical approach than the one above, especially if your company provides one. Avail it please ! May be it won’t give your the flexibility in going/coming back from office at your desired times, but its sure gonna help. I use the company transportation for my daily journey to/from work.
· Public Transportation. Now, it might not be flexible at all. I am talking about our daily travel, if you have no company transportation available and you have access to public transportation, use it! If you are a student ask your dad not to drop you at school, tell him you want to take a bus instead. If you are college goer, use the college bus for a change.
· Deviating from practical solutions, I would suggest Electric Cars like the Reva, its small, convenient and cheap in the wrong run. But the only problem I see with it is that its a very small car and is costly with all the taxes. I guess the government should try cut down the taxes on environment friendly vehicles. But for those who travel in the city a lot, especially if you are a businessman, who cannot depend on either of the above three options, try this ! Its prized at around 2.5 Lakhs (its expensive alright), can go around 60kMS for a full charge (8hours), on an average 40 PS/KM. Frankly speaking I wouldn’t be investing in a Reva if I intend to buy a car, one reason would be that I wouldn’t want to spend that kind of money for a city car. I would suggest this for people who travel in city a lot and can afford it. For the rest of us? Well we do can try to follow the first three points at least.
“Okay, if you elect us, we would help curb inflation”
Public “But sir, if you know how to, can’t you help the current government”
Party “NO! ONLY if you elect us”
Public “Don’t you think our country is in a crisis and we should stand together”
Party “Stand together? My … . Elect us !”
Public “The election is far and the public is going to suffer, can’t we work together for the best interest of the country”
If you can’t follow what I am saying read this on how parties keep the country for ransom.
Now for something interesting. Mr Lalu has started his own blog ! YES !. We have seen Aamir Khan’s blog with some dog story, MR B with his diary blog and a quite a number of other celebrity blogs.
I think Lalu has his place in the list of celebrities. This should be interesting. You can check out the blog here.
Got this as a forward ! People might be losing out on money, but not their sense of humor !
The petrol price in Karnataka is the highest in INDIA ! With the City of Bellary charging a whooping 58.78/litre, and Bangalore is not far behind with 58.47/litre. Major cities like Chennai (55.07), Mumbai(55.88), Kolkata(54.29) and Delhi(50.56) pay much much less.
With the oil price in the international market going up, there was no other choice for the government but to increase the prices. What I cant digest is the double standards that the parties are having over the issue.
BJP and(UPDATE) The LEFT (they are ruling the state) is observing hartal in kerala. (no surprise there) They demand the central government to withdraw the prices. Kerala! only in Kerala. Update (also in West Bengal) Why are they not observing hartal 700Kms away in the state of Karnataka where they(BJP) are ruling now????? the funny thing is if the BJP was ruling the country, then the congress would have declared the hartal. HARTAL is a must in kerala.
Why cant the Karnataka state goverment cut the 64% tax on the base price of the petrol? The other cities like Chennai and Mumbai has a tax of only upto 40%. thats 24% more Mr CM, !!!!!!
The opposition are just making a huge fuss out of it in Kerala. The BJP in kerala is planning for blocking law abiding, poor citizens tomorrow. WHAT? Already we are burdened with the extra 5Rs on petrol, now you want to block our way too?????????????????????????
The last time I checked we were still a free country.
**sigh**
**I am not anti-any party, I am against double standards**
Related Reading
<<Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Mathew 7:3>>
Do dreams connect with the real world? I think yes. Read on. (Looong post ahead)
Two days back I had a dream.
<Dream>
Few of my friends from college came to visit my house in Bangalore along with Roger (lets call him that for now, we were in same batch in college). We had good chat over coffee and talked about our life in college. Time went by and I noticed that Roger taking my wallet which was on the coffee table and exploring it. He kept it back as soon as he noticed that I was staring at him.
As soon as they left I checked my wallet…my credit card was missing! I quickly called the bank only to know that there was a 25000 spending on my card. (that would be impossible, because I called as soon as they left, but then it’s a dream). May be I was so dumb that I did not chase them (haha, it’s a dream nightmare). I cancelled the card.
Next, I called the police. They came over in white uniform (I think those were traffic policemen, what were they doing here ????, well it’s a …..) they did a round of questioning and left.
Two hours later the door bell rang and I found Roger standing there. He did not talk. He told me he wanted to use the restroom (WHAT ???). I directed him to the rest room. I did not ask him anything (Aargh !).
As soon as he went in, I closed the door from outside (now my instincts are working! Hooray) and I called the police again.
They arrived in 15 minutes, but we found that Roger had made his escape through the restroom window. He broke the metal rods and escaped! Aaargh !
</Dream>
Now before you guys lose your patience with my weird dream, let me explain.
I could connect this dream with three things that has happened in my life.
- Roger (the guy who stole my credit card in my dream) was a person who always lied. He lied about his relationships he never had (with gals of course), the grades he got, almost everything. He had many backlogs which we knew about, but he always told everyone that he had cleared every exam. May be because he had a serious inferiority complex building up around him, but the thing is, he was not a bad student after all. He had good marks in other subjects.
- Back in college, during our second year we found that many things were missing in our rooms, things like books, magazines, even trousers. Once a friend of mine lent his book to Daniel (name changed). Daniel did not return it after months of enquires from my friend. After a term my friend asked Daniel to return the book as it was taken from the library. Daniel asked that how can he return a book which he has not taken in the first place !!!. Pissed off, my friend broke Daniel’s suitcase(when Daniel went home) and was surprised with what he saw. He saw books, trousers, carom coins, cards, library books (books that many had lost) and in the middle of it he found the book!. Clearly, Daniel was a kleptomaniac. Everyone wanted to beat him up, when another friend of mine and myself talked to everyone to make them understand that it’s a disorder and we should not make it worse for him. Anyways we both did talk to Daniel and we did not find anything missing (from room atl east) for the rest of our life in college.
- Recently a friend of mine had problems with his credit card. One fine morning he got a message on his phone that read Thank you for booking ticket with Yatra.com. He checked online to find that his credit card has been used online to purchase tickets to Switzerland !!!!! He got in touch with the credit card company and the matter is still pending.
Now, do you think my dream nightmare is connected with all these?
So how did last 7 days go? Firstly, Well HT aadeed one nail to its coffin(in the blogosphere) by losing its credibility by stealing a blogger’s photograph.
Secondly, I asked my newspaper vendor to stop delivering TOI and switched to The Hindu.
For the past few months, I was depending on Internet to get the latest news. TOI? well it has all the latest gossip, all about movies and hell lot of pictures of film stars, models, and I have wondering if Mr Vijay Mallya has a share in the newspaper. His cutout would be coming along with the newspaper almost everyday !!!!!!!!!!!
Third, I hope everyone is forcing themselves to use less plastic nowadays. Well the sooner we force ourselves, the better.
Fourth, I mentioned somewhere that I was happy with Hathway ! I AM NOT ! Since Friday I am facing problems with the internet and noone seems to be interested in resolving them. And today when the hathway guys knocked on my door… its working. I was like “WHAT the….”
I thanked them and they left, I turned to the modem only to find that the connection is gone again ! I was again “WHAT THE ….”
I called them again (fourth time this weekend). And yes I am blogging 3 hours later.
Interestingly there is no word called Blog in the OpenOffice writer’s dictionary. (explanation here)
Fifth, you should read the Dilbert for sunday. Its hilarious.
Six, The meteorological department says that the monsoon will be coming to kerala in 2 days. According to the people living there, its been raining continuously for 3 days now. 
By the time I typed till here, the connection is down again. Now I will post this once the connection is established ! 
Update : 9PM Sunday : The connection is up again.
8AM Monday : The connection went off yesterday when I clicked publish. I am trying again.
12:45PM Monday : The connection went down again (WHAT THE !!!!) I am trying again.
We talk, blog, rant, but what do we do to make a small difference?
I am not sure how this is gonna be successful. But we can give it a try. Let see, there are around 10-15 regular readers for this blog. Some of them are from Bangalore as well.
What can we do? Let reduce the usage of plastic.
Back home in Kerala our place is a less-plastic zone (we call it less because we can’t fully avoid its usage). Dad and mom makes sure that they get less or no plastic when they go out for shopping, the thrash primarily contains those tiny plastic shopping bags, which can’t be reused. So what can we do? Don’t accept them.
Now how do we reduce the usage? Follow these simple rules:
1. Carry a shopper bag. Do not accept plastic bags from the supermarket. In fact, Subhiksha in Bangalore had an offer running “If you bring your own bag, you get a discount on the bill” I wonder if more supermarkets do this.
2. Stop littering. This is easy said than done. But if we change, the rest would follow. Many think ‘what the heck’ this is not going to change anyone else. Well stop thinking like them, if you do, then what would make you different?
3. Always throw the waste tied up in a bag (plastic what else? L ) and dump it only at the waste bins (with one hand covering your nose of course !, but do it).
The first rule would sound simple. Try practicing it for a month, check on how many plastic bags are lying around your house. Check on how many you disposed off that month? Its gonna be very less! Dedicate a post of yours for this initiative. I don’t need a link exchange. Just do it for the environment.
Come on guys, let make a small difference ? !
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You say it @ Crapbook !
