The Independence day fad!

Been a while since I've written here, and it's feels good to be back, rather pushed to be back in a wary attempt at voicing an opinion on the latest bandwagon, The Indian Independence day.

It all began with a WhatsApp forward message which everyone of you have most likely received 97438954 times if you're Indian/Live in India/have Indian friends/joined a group with Indians. No one is spared.

Disclaimer: You most probably received it on a different date from what's mentioned there, but your argument is invalid.

Ask the sender, "Okay, I will change my DP, do you know which Independence day it is this time?"

"Dude, just change your DP. Everyone's done it."

WUT?

The point is lost. What's the use of having a friend list fully clad with tri-color display pictures, a timeline filled with patriotic pictures shared and 100s of designs of Independence day wishes ready to forward when you were trying to get the proofs together for tax evasion a week ago? Or when you were skipping voting because it was crowded at the polling place a few months ago?

Not saying social media shouldn't be used to express oneself but if that is the lone motive, you need to re-evaluate yourself. What's sad is it going down to a level of saying on FB how much you love your mother on mother's day being considered more important that telling your mother itself.

"See your contact list, you feel so good when you see everyone's profile picture" itseems. You're more likely to feel the fear of texting the wrong person with the same profile picture than the pride itself.

For me, do what you can, what you think would help, however small maybe, for the country, even not littering, doing your basic duties, claiming your rights, not breaking the laws. Then you can feel proud and tell yourself how proud you are to call yourself and Indian, which is miles ahead of just telling 1000s of your FaceBook friends about it.

Choose your pick, Happy Independence day in advance!

Hours in Hell!

It's been long since I wrote here, and I’m not sure of a reason to why I didn’t write this long but the reason to this sudden re-start is my weekend stay at home after quite some time.  Not once in my life a day at home has been this pissing off thanks to the power cuts all through the day. Thank you TNEB. To get you a real feel of how it is, the power shut down timings are:

2am to 3am

9am to 12pm

3pm to 6pm

6.45pm to 7.30pm

9.30pm to 10.30pm

INSANE? Totally.

I made this!

As irony must have it, BSNL leading ISP in TN had to increase internet speeds just before the beginning of the ‘dark age’.

This aswell!

All possible ways of surviving the power cuts have been exhausted by most of the people here. Have an inverter – Give it time to charge up? Go out – Cash? Watch a movie – Can you watch a movie more than two times? Read books, Music, Play  – How long and for how many days? I wonder what survival strategy the other people are using. The saddest example of the situation is the fact that I am typing this in MS Word rather than the blog page itself and have to wait for a few hours to post this when I am done. I have done some research on the plausible reasons for the insane power shutdowns and come up with these:

Reason #3

One of the vital reasons to the situation ROLLING BLACKOUT in TN is due to the governments that we have had and the decisions that they’ve chosen to take. When the government decided to give freebies like televisions, mixer, fans to the commoners, were we thinking it was out of their own pockets? Who are we kidding anyway! It was indeed the hard earned money paid as ‘tax’ by ‘everyone’. Now the people who actually received these stuff from the rural areas suffer from around 20 hour power cuts/day. So much for all the hardship in standing in long queues and fighting it to get the tv and look at the blank screen all day. Not to forget the innumerable scams which lost all the money which we could’ve used to SOS. Thank you government. Thank you TNEB.

Reason #2

MNCs in Metros and Cosmos of Tamilnadu. Definitely looks like the government and TNEB decided to sign a MoU with the MNCs in Chennai and its outskirts which deprives the rest of the state of its share of electricity. Our government has signed agreements with MNCs in Chennai and Coimbatore for 400MW and 80MW ‘uninterrupted power supply’(We’ve forgotten what that even means, Thank you TNEB). This shows that we may experience power cut much more than 60% of what it is now in the short future! Nobody wants to see shiny and posh buildings wasting electricity when they have nothing but darkness at home. Life is miserable for people of all age categories: Kids cannot study, Teenagers don’t have internet, Adults cannot work and veterans cannot watch tv. Thank you TNEB, not long before everyone wages war against you.

Reason #1

The Koodankulam Anti-Nuclear Movement. This is a story where nothing much is revealed in public. After research it is known that Koodankulam is a large village near Tirunelveli and the shores of Kanyakumari. The population there being majorly fishermen fear that the nuclear dump into the sea might kill the fishes and ruining their lives. Also the major fear is at the repetition of the Japan nuclear incident incase of a natural disaster. But it is not understood by the people how huge the opening of the power plant would help solve the crisis. This problem has just surfaced but has been going on since 1974 when the project was first proposed. Life can be miserable with a nuclear plant in town but with the security tech it must not be that difficult after all. For a state with a power plant already functional at Kalpakkam, Chennai, this must not be tough at all. Read here for more on this issue. Thank you TNEB, now you have people fighting with each other.

Oh! The irony!

Everyone is expecting a solution to fall from the sky when we can solve it ourselves making few adjustments everywhere. This situation can be best described by quoting a character from South Park TV show, 

“ If Irony was like strawberries, we’d all be having our smoothies right now.” 

I think we are having two each already. Thank you TNEB.

Still an hour to upload the post… Aww GOD DAMMIT!

P.S. All the Thank yous have indeed been written with ‘other’ words in mind. If you know what I mean! :D