kayarbee

. In this digital age Face Book has become a major source for staying in touch with friends right from School days to College times to your one time office associates to your current associates of senior citizen clubs. Over the years I have become so addicted to FB that the first thing in the morning post coffee I  sit with my I pad scrolling  my feed in the FB On the 26th of November early in the morning as I was scrolling through my feeds in FB, suddenly I noticed a photo with a caption  श्रद्धांजलि.....that left me simply numbed .It was like a punch to my heart which made it surge so hard that for a moment I thought it will stop. It was the photograph of my very close friend from college days Pramod Bajpai. Our friendship dates back to late 60's  those were  our college days . Pramod ,I still don't want to believe that you are gone.I know even if I close my eyes and pray you will not come back but memories of our 50 years of friends...

No country has as many stray dogs as India and no country suffers as much from them. These free roaming dogs number in tens of millions, bite millions of people, young old and elderly. An estimated 20 thousands die of dog bites annually in India. The people killed by dog bites are more than people dying in terror attacks.  Stray dogs are endangering human life at every nook and corner of streets, roads, lanes by lanes, villages, towns and Metro cities across the length and breadth of this country However given the way national discourse is conducted in this country it is very difficult to even suggest that stray dogs roaming the streets constitute major problem that need to be addressed urgently. Today even slightest mention of dog as a problem is enough to invite the wrath of dog lovers, animal rights activists, our liberal media and the likes of  Maneka Gandhi. Whatever the stray dogs do to hapless  human being and the citizens of this Republic of India, the...

Not very longtime back politics in India essentially was dominated by upper class families and so called ancient political inheritors. Then politics predominantly was a practice of dividing the public on the basis of their religion, ethnicity and class.  Even decades and decades after independence, we as a nation never came any were closer  to  what Gandhiji the Father of our Nation had planned for us. Corruption, poverty, unemployment, lack of education, lack of proper sanitation and communal intolerance kept the nation hooked to politics of intolerance and economics of uncertainties.  Gradually people started losing hope of any revival from their political leaders and it became a commonsense that politicians came to power only to use it to suppress and throttle other political parties from rising up. They used their political power to nurse their arrogance and quench their hunger for  "moh maya and money".  It was in such hour of extreme disillusi...

WE don't know how big the filth and garbage in our city will get with every growing day.  We don't know when and how soon will we get respite from the frequent outbreaks of Dengue and Chikungunya. We don't know when the threat of open drainage will end.  However we do know that this Sunday we will once again go and cast our vote and  elect  candidates  for our respective wards Yes the election to the three  Municipality Committees of Delhi will be held on this 23rd.  Do you  know that out of the two thousand and plus candidates contesting for 272  seats, there are around 180 candidates who have criminal cases registered against them and another 120 candidates who have serious cases of murder, kidnapping and crime against women pending in various courts. Incidentally BJP has highest number of such candidates when compared to Congress and AAM ADMI  parties. Our  discomfort against the political parties is always there...

This Sunday 1.32 crore  voters will go to the polling booths, press their choice of button just once and 'only once' to decide the fate of 272 candidates in the eight districts governed by MCD. which incidentally covers  96 % of Delhi's geographical area. Delhi is spread over 1485 sq Km and has five Municipal corporations namely New Delhi Municipality  Committee(NDMC), Delhi Cantonment Board North Delhi Municipality(NDM), South Delhi Municipality(SDM) and East Delhi Municipality(EDM). The first two Municipality comes under Central govt and hence not a part of this Sunday election. The number of  wards under NDM and SDM are 104 each  while the number of ward under EDM is 64 .  Thus put together there are 272 wards.  The  total number of candidates on the fray for this 272 wards are 2315, out of which 637 candidates are crorepatis  and 163 candidates have criminal cases against them. There are 18 political parties on the field  th...

In our country God men are as old as the concept of God and Religion. The gullible common man ever remains  fooled by these God men so much so that they have become a power unto themselves Over a time all such organized faith, cult and  religious movements have effectively become the smartest and most flourishing start up ideas that has over a time become a superlative profiting business ventures. The Guru-Baba duo of Ravishankar and Ramdev are currently  the emerging nexus of Modiism  Ramdev Baba's nine year old Patanjali Ayurved reports Rs 5000 crore annual revenue from virtually nothing when it started in year 2007 and now  is all set to double that figure in the current  financial year .Ramdev is  going after big established multinationals like Nestle, Colgate Palmolive and Unilever and he insists they will be left clueless. That  speaks the kind of political clout that he garners. Seeing Patanjali's success, Ravi Shankar's Sri Sri Ayu...

The  king of good times who fled to UK  after his Kingfisher Airlines fiasco has been finally arrested by the UK police Though the reason for arrest is not very clear, it could be for all you know  a beginning  of  the extradition process for deporting  Vijay Mallya Vijay Mallya who fled to London around last year in search of  Achhe-Din may finally be back. Since the time he  defaulted on  bank loans amounting to over 9000 crores and fled to UK the battle between this flamboyant businessman and the PSU banks  has become a classic example of idiom: Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Reviewing the huge quantum of Indian Banks Non Performing Assets (NPA) the Ex Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan had suggested during his tenure that the Govt should  go after corrupt Bank management as well as corrupt Promoters. However his suggestion was never put on fast track instead he lost his second term for RBI go...

It was Deepak Chopra who said 'when you make a choice you change the future' but I am not very sure if that proves true in the coming Delhi civic poll. This time when you press a particular labelled button on the "Electronic Voting Machine" , it will be more to keep alive Democracy than making a choice between "good,bad and ugly". Civic bodies are good notion nothing more.  MCD is a politically accepted  den for corruption and the fact that  BJP  is ruling it for a decade does not make it any better. Since Anna Hazare started his war against corruption , all the political parties have become self acclaimed Anti-corruption institutions . However it is a living fact that CORRUPTION  today has become the very DNA of politics in the country . The quantum of corruption that can be attributed to a particular political party will always remain in direct proportion to the  power and influence  that it can garner,nationally,regionally or locally. So p...

Since independence our political parties have been using secularism to appease the minorities yet on the ground no tangible upliftment of minorities has been attained.This in itself speaks of how our politicians remain engrossed in politically exploiting the minority card to garner votes. Uttar Pradesh one of the most populous state in India and a home for almost 17 % of  our population is also one of the largest state in the Republic of India. All political parties here remain arrogantly thriving and prospering at he cost of  State's bleeding economy and a besieged fate of its  minorities.  Be it 'Mulla' Mulyam Singh and his SP or be it 'Behenji' Mayawati and her BSP , each of them have taken turns in criminalization of politics as well exploiting the plight of people in poverty to retain their political supremacy in the state. It was in such a political scenario that BJP has emerged victories without playing the Muslim  appeasement politics. This his...

My mother would read out the bed time stories for me from Rudyard Kipling's"  Jungle Book"  I grew up re-reading Jungle Book till the time I got addicted to the those daily comic strips in TOI which introduced me toTarazen and Phantom. So goes My Tale of My times "Jab Mein Chota Bacha Tha." Very recently I was privileged to get a complimentary copy of Short Stories"MY TIMES MY TALES" (Published by:Peoples Syndicate Pvt Ltd) This  is a collection of 27 short stories .All the 27 are captivating and are first person narratives. Each of them revolve round those 'here and there' incidents that we stumble upon in our everyday life  The way these random thoughts and incidents are brought out as a story does keep the reader both engaged and engrossed.  The author Dinesh N Verma  is a retired civil servant. This book of short stories is his first venture into the domain of storytellers. Like me I am sure every reader of this book will find h...

The only time when the politicians remain totally united is when either the Parliament or the State Assembly has to give approval to MPs and MLAs salary hikes,or rising their allowances and other perks.Otherwise pulling at each other remain their everyday need .Eventually it is the  election time when they are at their "malicing best". Ten States this year will be going to the polls. From this month to end of March, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab,Goa Uttarakhand and Manipur will witness massive political jamboree. As I write this post, Punjab and  Goa have completed the poll with a voter turn out of 83%(Goa) and 79%(Punjab) while  UP is all set to poll on the 11th. The Presidential election will be held in July this year. This year therefore is going to be an all election year. No other country in the world has so many elections and so often every year as we have. .Also no country remains as noisy and as festive as India during election times. Incidentally this 2017...

India is changing faster than any other country in the world. Internet and High-tech Start-Ups are thrusting the India  economy to newer heights. India is the the home of  Bollywood the movie city which is  larger than movie life called Hollywood. Besides being the largest Democracy,India is also the 7th largest country in the world that has to her credit a most ancient civilization that taught the world to "count'. India is not a country of snake charmers but a land of countless wonders. India story in short is a grand epic of  history and heritage. Today the idea of a Digital India may keep the hackers overworked, yet as a country India  remain  not only exited to experiment the emergence of a cashless society but also feel happy of becoming the world's largest consumer market.I am naturally therefore proud to be an Indian and in India. Growing up and being here has  allowed me to encounter the every day fact of living. For instance for...

                             I do find myself every now and then being someone who believes in a cause be it be a "Justice for All" or be it "Being Humane".However I have found that organizations that  solely remain dedicated for a cause generally end up being a political opportunist and become too very selective while working for the cause they subscribe for . PETA in my view is one of them. I am always very much behind anti animal cruelty and I do find despicable the way we humans treat or mistreat animals. Be it horses,be it goats be it elephants or be it dogs & cats. Some animal protection objectives we do find in our Constitution but they are selective and does not therefore talk of "justice for All". Life is as precious for a Horse and a Goat as it is for a Bull. So why there is no Animal welfare society for protecting the interest  of a Goat or a Horse and why creating  a ruc...