Wake up Nagpur!

Summers are here and nobody amongst us can live even a moment without electricity! But are most of us aware that our orange city pays the highest for per unit of electricity? Yes, higher than the metropolitan city of Mumbai too. We pay Rs.6.30 per unit of electricity. The highest in the state, followed by Vashi at Rs.6.2 per unit despite out of the top six power distributions in Maharashtra, five being in Vidarbha region alone! Ya you guessed it right. Power from Vidarbha lights Mumbai parties and we bear load shedding. There are villages in Vidarbha where there is electricity only for 5 to 6 hours in a day or even less.

                        This is just the beginning. Not just electricity but even for petrol we Nagpurians pay the highest cost! Even higher than metropolitan cities of Delhi and Mumbai! In a concise manner the petroleum costs per litre at some places in India are as follows-

Delhi	Rs.65.64/litre
Mumbai	Rs.70.66/litre
Goa	Rs.54.96/litre
Rajasthan	Rs.54.56/litre
Bengaluru	Rs.73.51/litre
Kolkata	Rs.70.03/litre
Chennai	Rs.69.75/litre
Pune	Rs.70.98/litre

       AND OUR DEAR NAGPUR PAYS Rs.73.11/Litre!!!  The central government quotes that states of Rajasthan and Goa are suffering the ache of price hike. Aren’t we?? Do we have literal “money plants” growing on orange trees?

I do not think this is a matter of pride at which we can exclaim that look how rich all of us are. This, in fact is a matter of shame that we are being ill treated and prejudiced against and still we choose to keep quiet.                                                        

                           Remember the last time you went to a hotel and enjoyed a cold drink with your meal? But do you remember checking the bill? Nagpur is the only city in India where customers pay from Rs.5 to Rs.11 extra per bottle of cold drink and bottled water as “cooling charges”. The MAXIMUM RETAIL PRICE is truly inclusive of all taxes and it is clearly mentioned on the bottle- “serve chilled” which implies the shopkeeper has to serve it chilled to you AT the MRP. But neither do we care to check that and even if some of us do notice seldom do we question the seller. Why? I do not, at all, say that I am too miserly to spend a5 or 7 Rs. extra but what is wrong is wrong. It is not a question of  large heartedness, it is a question of unethical methods spreading their wings all around us. The discussion shifts from the miserliness or large heartedness to the ethical and the unethical.

                     I distinctly remember a recent family lunch I had at one of the best restaurants of Amravati where we ordered about 4 bottles of cold drink and 3 bottles of Bisleri. The manager charged Rs.7 extra per bottle of cold drink and Rs.5 extra per bottle of Bisleri. I wanted to stand up against it but my dad RIGHTLY warned me against doing so. Yeah he was RIGHT because he did not want me, or for that matter even himself, to mess with the uneducated waiter because the extra bucks did not go into his pocket neither did he have any idea about what the manager was doing!

            But I want all of us to stand up and speak out. I don’t mean mess with the waiter because a complaint at that level makes no sense. Speak to the manager. Every place has a complaint book for the customers. Use your right! Nobody can deny giving you the complaint book. It has to be presented on demand of the customer any time every time whoever the customer might be. Now many of you might be thinking what change will that bring in the completely corrupt Indian system where corruption has seeped deep into the roots….

 Yes. It will bring a change and the change has to start from the grass root level itself. I would not talk in the air and advice you to shout at the petrol pump and protest about the high rate of petrol in Nagpur but at least we can speak against the illicit excess charge on cold drinks and bottled water. Now many of us would wonder whether those dusty complaint books are ever even opened? I would say, ya maybe or maybe not. But just because you think the complaint would never be read that hinders you from registering your grievance? No, that’s a lame excuse for your indifference. How much time does it take to write a few lines? And what consequences does that have? Even if an inch of a change, I say that matters a lot! All of us just practice procrastination and expect that some other person will bring the change and we will just sit and bake in the glory.

    Many of you might have seen the warning on boxes of sweets of a leading sweet maker of the city - consume within 48 hours of purchase or refrigerate etc?

Now I don’t know how many of you will believe the story behind that. Here it goes. Not so long back a man sent an office boy to buy a box of  rasmalai from one of the outlet of this chain, in the evening. The next morning, despite refrigerating the box whole night, there were signs of  decomposed sweet. The man sent the office boy back to ask the manager for an exchange of the box. The pompous manager flatly refused and rather abused the office boy saying “jo karte banta hai kar lo, hum exchange nai karenge.” The man then went to speak to the manager himself, politely telling him the whole story and when the manager refused to budge the man warned him of a report in the FDA. To that the manager quipped “aap jaise bahut aaye aur gaye, kuch bigaad nahi paye”. Then you know the true Nagpurian. He went to the FDA with the box. Lodged a complaint and the FDA officers took the man with them in their own car to this famous outlet, took samples of everything and checked every edible item. Later the owner had to himself call and requested the man to withdraw his complaint but now the man refused to budge and then the owner had to face the music and incur a loss of lakhs of rupees & a dent on his reputation too. One complaint can cause such damage so just give it a thought what would happen if more of us rise for a change?

     All I want to say is nothing will change if we don’t work for it. What if that man had decided to keep quiet? May be one of your acquaintances would have eaten a rotten sweet some time and got ill?

Nothing, just nothing will change unless we have the courage to bring it on! So WAKE UP NAGPUR!!!

ISHAQZAADE- not a “happy ending type bolly movie”!

         Mai pareshaan- the song was an all time hit even before the movie hit the screens! And pareshaan you will be if you, like me, are a true bollywood buff, a person of “and they lived happily ever after” clan!

           The story basically is a slap on the face of those Indians who are still against inter-caste marriages and for whom their RULES and IZZAT are much more important than human emotions and happiness of their children. It is also a reminder to the women that no matter they are educated and empowered today but still there are spheres where they are rendered helpless and alone.

        The story starts from the political rivalry between two different religious clans in a small town in U.P. and explores gun shots within which,is a beautifully woven rustic love story with the main actress firing at the drop of a hat. Generally the suspense and shock in a movie comes at the end but here it’s a little different. The turning point is the interval itself. The story, if I spill out here, will be disheartening!

                          All I would say is PARINEETI CHOPRA is the star of the movie. Arjun Kapoor is good too but parineeti steals the show. The extremely appropriate locations, dialogues and background music adds to the glamour of the film. At some points the dialogues are pretty funny too. Gauhar Khan is good at her small act. “Pareshaan” is the song you hum while leaving the theatre and other songs are just average.

            Go enjoy the action packed political drama!

                     A must watch but a one time watch!

And the best of all is “hum haramzaade nai isaqzaade hain!!”

P.S. I personally couldn’t digest the “not a happy end”!

"GOOD" OLD DAYS....?                         

                           This has been one of the most debatable topics ever- 'Are we happier than are forefathers?'

                          It is a common sight nowadays and I am sure most of you must have had a first had a firsthand experience of it at least once, people grumbling about how different (rather 'in'different) modern children are today than they were during their childhood. The GEN Y is ever busy in computers (now i pads!) , they prefer angry birds to street games and much more lands up in the List Of Laments!

                               I would like to raise just one question. A seemingly simple one though. Whenever you invest in any kind of a developmental scheme always what you get is mere profit? The answer, of course is a rebounding NO!! Just because that is virtually impossible. Nature has not made things in a way that the consequences are strictly profitable always! Then I would like to ask the “lamenting people” how do you expect everything goody goody when you have already marched your children to the path of development? A mere (yes, now a mere) 80-85% in school was considered too great a performance in the “good old days” and today the highest marks go up to 98.6%!! People with 99.9 percentile in CAT get into top most IIMs with difficulty, over 12lakh children compete for 28,000 seats in AIEEE and I remember Sapan Parekh an all India rank 6 in CLAT (entrance exam for Law) that “Bangalore Law school milna mushkil hai”(it is difficult to get into Bangalore law school). With so much of cut throat competition people still expect to see children whiling away their time in gilli danda and lagori? I do not, dare not say that these games were useless but, I do strongly agree that the aptness of a thing lies in the time! Buying books were meaningful at an earlier time and not now because now a reader can download any book he wants at the click of a button!

          

                            

                                    Loads and loads of people complain about their killer jobs and how peaceful life was at an earlier time. To such people all I would say is you can conveniently go back to a peaceful village. But wait. Will they? Will I? NO! Why? Because all of us have been so accustomed to the technological comfort of the cities that the mere idea of shifting to a village itself is revolting! People in villages are happy no doubt, more satisfied than us because they have been just there forever. They are not running behind development like us all. We complain about the same advances to which on one side we are thankful for the comforts it has provided. We humans cannot have it both ways because for everything there is a price to pay.                                   

                                       Many of you might remember that not so long ago Sunday mornings were booked for vegetable market trips spending a few hours searching for fresh vegetables among the immobile cows and stuffy by lanes and returning home all drenched and exhausted. If those were the good old days then what about the comfort of fully air conditioned Reliance Fresh outlets you visit today where you get every exotic fruit and vegetable? Now I know advocates of “we are not happier than our forefathers”  will spring up and quote the earlier ‘regard’ of vendors’ livelihood and getting fresher vegetables but haven’t they heard of a much older theory by Charles Darwin “survival of the fittest”. Dominoes saw the upcoming class of techno freak, lazy brats who wouldn’t ever want to deal with a messy kitchen after chasing targets all day long in the office and hence came up the ‘dial a number order a pizza’ trend which made the owner a multi millionaire! Everything changes, only a change is constant and those who do not change cripple and fall!                         

                    I do not refuse to accept that modernization has its own drawbacks but then name the things which have absolutely no drawbacks? Not even a simple sand glass! One part of it has to empty itself in order to fill the other! I agree there has been a rise in murders, thefts, molestation and rape cases, bribes etc. but hasen’t there been a rise in GDP. literacy rate, turnover per annum and most importantly your income.

                  A grocery shop owner had a regular customer in an 80 year old man who, every time he came to buy ghee complained about its cost quoting “hamare pitaji ke zamane mein 1 sikke ka 1 kilo ghee mil jaata tha” (In my dad’s time I could buy I kilogram of ghee in 1 coin). The patient shopkeeper after a long time  respectfully told the old man- “baba. mujhe us zamane ka 1 sikka la dijiye mai apko 2 kilo ghee dunga”. (Sir, get me a coin of that time I will give you 2 kilograms of ghee) Surprised? Don’t be. The old man and the shopkeeper both knew that the coins of that time were made of silver which today costs Rs.56,210 per kg!!

                           This escapist attitude will really take us nowhere. We should learn to adjust with the drawbacks if we are so greedy about development. All I would say is if we want to develop, we have to bear the consequences too. So lets muster courage to stand up and fight back.

“Always pray for a stronger back. Not a lighter load!”                                                                           

                                                                                   Signing off.....

                                                                                       palak :)