Destination driven destiny

Image via CrunchBase

I feel only one emotion towards Google and some German car manufacturers' research into self-driving cars. Hate. As someone obsessively fond of driving for hours through unknown roads, the idea of being only a passive passenger on a trip through the open road drives me bananas. When it comes to driving, I am a control freak.

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Sadly enough, I have to admit that this is an idea whose time has come. There is nothing more tragic than a death in a car accident, nothing more needless. The veteran of many a epic road-trip (often all by myself), I sorely accept that driving is mainly a mechanical task. Keep moving forward and avoid hitting anything encapsulates the basic logic of daily driving. Such cold, hard, simple logic is something a computer will always beat a human at. Always.

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In the early 20th century, when strange mechanical contraptions called automobiles first began clattering across carriage paths, I am sure they got murderous glares from men who loved riding their horses to their daily tasks. How can a nuts and bolts monster replace the emotional connection that a man has with his horse, they asked? 

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I find it distressing to think that the very next generation of humans will laugh at us, we who controlled the magic wheel of direction that took us down winding streets, using only the limited combination of our hands and heads and feet. Why did we trust our prone-to-fatigue human senses, they would wonder, when microprocessors can determine the right moves in pico-seconds every time without error?

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Basking in the bright lights of the future, the past seems odd-ball and needlessly 'inefficient'. I hear you now, Mr. Horseman, I feel your pain.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/08/gps-driven-destiny.html]

Pappu-purush v/s Puppy-purush

English: Narendra Modi in Press Conference (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If the choice is between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, it is fair to say it's not the best position to be in.

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Does Modi deserve to be the Prime Minister of India? Did Rajiv Gandhi deserve to become PM in 1984 right after his Congressi 'troops' had massacred innocent Sikhs by the hundreds in broad daylight? The answer, as they say, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind. Since none of us speak wind, let's wait till the 2014 elections are done.

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Did Modi have any role in engineering the 2002 riots? The justice system said no but media reports said yes. Bear in mind that it's the same justice system that let Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler of the Congress walk scott free when the same media had reported them to be leading the mobs against their Sikh victims in 1984.

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Does India desperately need clean and strong governance, now more than ever before? That I can tell you without consulting the wind. YES. IT'S ABOUT TIME, I WOULD THINK. 66 YEARS OF WAITING WAS LONG ENOUGH. Of all the things that his rivals and biased 'press-titute' reports (as his less-than-diplomatic fans call the anti-Modi media) have accused Modi of, corruption is not one. I am sure they tried their damnedest to come up with something. That alone makes his candidature stand head and shoulder and Kolhapuri chappals above his rivals.

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His decisions in guiding Gujarat's march forward and the ringing endorsements by industrialists of his leadership were perfect launching pads. Unfortunately Mr. Future PM had to open his mouth just long enough to put his royal foot in his mouth. Regardless of media spin and 'misinterpretation', bringing up puppies accidentally crushed by a car you are not driving in context of mass mob rioting, rape and murder is just plain vanilla wrong. Then to follow it up with a 'burqa of secularism' comment at a subsequent meeting was double clicking on the self-destruct button just to make sure.

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India/Bharat/Hindustan is a nation just not designed to accept or survive such blind hatred, neither historically nor today. Get the Muslims first, they are the problem, right? Christians, aren't they secretly funded by the Vatican church to overthrow Hinduism? Everyone knows it's those SC/ST people who are the speed bumps on our road to progress, don't they? Oh no, wait, isn't it the North Indians who are dragging us down? Shut up, it's them, the non Hindi speaking ones who are causing this lack of 'unity', don't you see? Communists, God damn, those communists! Where does the finger pointing and divisiveness stop?

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Incredibly, only possible in incredible India, Modi still has a golden chance. Only because of the capabilities (or lack thereof) of his presumed rival to the top post. The blank page of 'http://rahulgandhiachievements.com/' says it all, which  is basically nothing. The Congress haven't announced Rahul Gandhi as their Prime Ministerial candidate yet. It is the smartest thing they have done so far on their campaign for 2014 and their only hope is in that they continue this smartness.

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I envision a third scenario too. Modi has a longer term plan than most would imagine. He, I believe, is looking at 2019 or beyond for his PM attempt. The Congress as of now is solely focused on bringing down the 'Modi for PM' bandwagon. Repeatedly calling him communal is all the pebbles they have in their arsenal drawing attention away from the mind-boggling number of scams and mis-governance that UPA-II has put our country through. 

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Modi, bear in mind, is just the BJP election campaign head as of now, not the PM candidate.  It's his first role at the national level and he may be learning the ropes on the big stage through every minute in the limelight. There is no viable BJP alternative to him in Gujarat who will become the Chief Minister, if Modi were to become PM in 2014. Making his crude aimed-at-a-particular-community headlines is only a way to consolidate his strongly right wing supporters even more. He keeps drawing the fire until it is very near Lok Sabha election time and then... he steps away.

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Someone more 'acceptable' to allies steps in for the PM post, maybe a Sushma Swaraj or a Arun Jaitley. Elections, as always in India are won or lost on local issues, not who is running for PM. BJP wins a decent number of seats. The allies like Nitish Kumar and BJD come safely rushing back, now that Modi is not a PM candidate. Lo and behold, the numbers add up and there is a BJP led government at the centre. Modi gets all the credit for running a successful campaign and his national stature grows exponentially.

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There will always be a next time, Modi, like all other smart politicians, knows, if you play your cards right. The fate of India hangs in balance on his actions and those of his political contemporaries who block his road to power. Is there some other dark horse, yet unnoticed, an exemplary leader who will trounce all others with his enthusiasm and energy, without bad-mouthing a section of Indian society or without the benefit of being political royalty, waiting to lead our country out of its current predicament? 
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The answers will start forming quite so very soon. Democracy can only give the people the leaders they deserve. 2014 will be a very interesting year, a very interesting year.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/07/pappu-purush-vs-puppy-purush.html]

July the 13th

July 13th, 2002

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It was happening. Again. This aggressive new Indian team was about to be tripped once more at the final hurdle, for the unbelievable 10th time in a row. The smokin' opening partnership of a 107 runs between Ganguly and Sehwag was to no avail. At 146 for 5, chasing 325, here was India in its all too familiar "Quick! Collapse so that we don't actually win the match" mode.

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At the crease were two players by the names of Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif who were only 3-4 years older than I was at the time. As an Indian cricket fan strangely fond of the pain that came with wholeheartedly supporting such a magnificently wayward team, I stopped wandering around the drawing room and sat down to watch the end, praying that it would come quickly and quietly. 

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It was a very turbulent and confusing phase of my life. The horrifying madness of the 2002 Gujarat riots was more than just newspaper headlines for me. That year I had given my 12th board exams, delayed by a month and a half in Gujarat, due to the violence and curfews, to determine which college I would join. Grappling with Gauss's law in physics while neighbourhood family heads met to discuss what to do if a rioting mob broke into our housing society was, should I say, a little complicated?

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I had lived in Gujarat since I was 3 and I greatly admired the efficient, peaceful and practical nature of the Gujarati people. My world was shaken up by the sudden violence and hatred in the air. Women and children murdered, burnt to death inside a train compartment and mass rape, robbery & murder on the streets - these were images I just could not associate with my adopted home state. But there they were, grim and true.

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And in this big picture dominated by conflicting thoughts about religion and unity and India's future was my own little picture. Which college was I headed to? Into which town and into the company of which new friends was my future taking me? I was happy to have something else to think about, in this case, the NatWest Trophy final between India and England. The thrill of the great unknown was on hold for the moment, as I waited for the remaining 5 Indian wickets to fall and then the customary 24-48 hours of depressed moping around to follow.

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I was kept waiting... for a very long time. Kaif and Yuvraj staked themselves in, stealing numerous singles, smashing the odd boundary or six, moving closer and closer to what was then a very very very tough target to even come close to, let alone overhaul. Most Indian fans can be forgiven for having foggy memories of this partnership. They were probably too drunk on their disbelief that these young lads were actually pulling this off, really doing this... for real. 

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And then, Yuvraj was dismissed. Tears streaming down his face as he walked back to the pavilion, the target still just far enough for all their hard work to fall short. Given what he had put into the partnership, his heart and his soul, surely this was the cruelest twist of fate. I remember commentator Harsha Bhogle's exact words "That's the problem with fairy tales. They rarely have happy endings."

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I thought to myself. Wait a minute, that's doesn't sound right, Mr. Bhogle. Fairytales almost always have happy endings. So it turned out. With the Turbanator's gutsy support, Mohammad Kaif stepped up to the challenge and in the final nerve wracking over, Zaheer Khan and Kaif scampered through for a couple putting India at 326/8 bringing them home.

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"India have won! India have won! India have won!" yelled Ravi Shastri on air as if he needed to absorb the fact himself first. The iconic scene of Ganguly whirling his shirt above his head and shouting unprintables from the Lords balcony forever stamped itself into Indian public memory. Rugby style take-downs ensued on the field between the members of the delirious Indian team and the joy, the sheer blinding disorienting rush of joy ran through a nation. 

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I may have standing on my head, or screaming from the verandah or high-fiving the drying papads on my building's rooftop, I frankly can't remember. What I do remember is that it was a significant day in my life as it was for millions of other Indian cricket fans, this one day 11 years ago. It will remain so for the rest of my life. Since then, the Indian cricket team has gone from strength to strength and the beginnings of its rise may soon be forgotten but it does not lessen the significance of those golden moments.

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That it can be done, because it has been done. Passion and grit driving imperfect dreams to epic conclusions. The secret to be able to is to be willing. All this re-inforced through the course of one life-changing, history changing match. For those who feel that cricket is just another game, I offer my sincere sympathies. To those that understand I say, happy July the 13th, happy July the 13th!

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-13th.html]

Verification

NBA player LeBron James answers questions during a press conference after a preseason practice session Sept. 28, 2010, at the Aderholt Fitness Center at Hurlburt Field, Fla. The Miami Heat used the fitness center for their week-long training camp. James is a forward for the Heat. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An ordinary Tuesday was drawing to a close and all I wanted was to make it a little more memorable by watching the feats of some extraordinary people. Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs was scheduled to begin at 21:00 and on the dot, I cranked on my X-Box 360.

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And of course, this was the exact moment that my identity needed to confirmed. Give me an e-mail address, demanded my X-Box and so I gave it my G-Mail ID. No, we have that on file, it said, give me an alternate e-mail address and so with a mild furrow on my eyebrow I punched in my Yahoo ID. Go check your e-mail, it then told me, that's where the pass code is.

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Off to my laptop then and into Yahoo mail I sign. But wait, I was signing in on a device from which I had never accessed my Yahoo ID before so now Yahoo demanded proof. Give me an e-mail address, an alternate one, Yahoo asked of me. So where else do I send my verification code, but to good ol' G-Mail. Into G-Mail then, for my Yahoo pass code which then enabled me to enter my Yahoo mail to see my X-Box Live pass code. Talk about complicated!

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But it's not over yet. Now the ESPN app on the X-Box demands a pass code. No basketball for you otherwise, it declares.  Back into the waiting arms of my laptop again to the URL given by the ESPN app. On ESPN.com, I hope to find my salvation. But no, I have to select my Internet service provider first and I select Comcast. Any guesses on which website I had to sign into now? Comcast login, here I come.

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I am good to go... finally says my Comcast screen. By the time I get back on my X-Box and the game starts streaming, LeBron James is looking seriously downbeat at the end of the first quarter. The Spurs under the leadership of Tim Duncan have clamped down on him hard. 

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Later in the game, the Heat come back spectacularly in the last quarter to squeak out as winners pushing the series to a 7th & final game on Thursday. LeBron proves that he is LeBron by defending like a demon and scoring 20 odd points in that 4th quarter. He needed to, with his fans rooting for him claiming him to be the GOAT and his critics waiting for him to screw up to call him the GLOAT. All that superhuman effort makes sense.

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What doesn't is why I have to work so hard to prove that I am me.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/06/verification.html]

Chauvinist

"You are such a chauvinist!" accused a female colleague from across the office cafeteria table I was at. Loud enough for colleagues on neighbouring tables to turn around and give a inquisitive look. Taken by surprise, I had nothing to say in my defense.

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I had made the mistake of expressing a simple wish. A wish that the baby my sister was expecting in December 2012 be a boy. There were some very clearly selfish reasons why I wanted a nephew, even though the parents-to-be, my sister and bro-in-law heavily favoured a daughter. 

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It all goes back to my days of after-school cricket. My idol of batting technique being Rahul Dravid, I liked to be SOLID at the crease. In 8 overs a side cricket, my impeccable front foot defensive technique was not widely appreciated or encouraged. 
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Most times, with a lingering sense of unfulfilled batting practice, I forged match-winning partnerships with a big hitting batsman, forced to knock the ball around for singles to give him strike as hitting the ball out of the park didn't gel with my natural philosophy.

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My plans for my future nephew-to-be were simple. I would brainwash him into wanting to be a fast bowler and then practice my batting. That's all. Batting nirvana right here on earth, I dreamt of. "Why can't a niece be a fast bowler, huh?" continued my colleague's interrogation. That I realized, was a painfully true question. Why can't she?

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If I was comfortable with girls becoming doctors, engineers, scientists, artists and politicians, why the barrier when they wanted to be sportspersons? Too manly a thing for a girl to take up? I guess that was definitely my line of thinking but when challenged, the stupidity of such an opinion was evident.

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More so in my case, as I was usually the first one to be plucked out of the Republic Day march-past trials for my gloriously un-coordinated marching while my sister led the contingent bearing the flag. The only trophies which came home on school Sports Day were those won by my sister as I hadn't even threatened to come close to qualifying for the heats.

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On December 11th, 2012, my beautiful little niece, Annika arrived with fanfare and adulation from all around. Given her vigorous physical antics even in her crib, I see potential for my brain-washing scheme to come through. Boy or girl, it is all irrelevant. All I care for is that I will bat.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/06/chauvinist.html]

PMji Samjhoji

"Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

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Once I was asked to write to you as part of a Letter-a-thon to the PM initiative. This is the letter which I never got around to sending.

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Let me begin by stating that I am a fan, as in, am still a fan. A lot of people seem to think that a chest-thumping gorilla will be the true representative of India. I disagree. Quietness or loudness has nothing to do with inner strength.

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A fan of you, I must clarify, not of your rotting Family driven corrupt party that uses you as a pawn in their dirty games. You were the visionary tasked with saving India, while others were busy stuffing their pockets or plotting a mosque destruction for political gain. You made a decision to let the evil foreign money in. 

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That was 20 years ago. I am part of that economic section and age-group of India which benefited. There are still hundreds of millions of our countrymen who remained untouched by these changes but as an individual, if I crib about how my life has turned out, I deserve a punch to the nose.

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The Lok Sabha elections are around the corner and all indications seem to point to your government's exit. I feel extremely happy about that. Your present circle of friends is an unsavoury one and the sooner they are kicked out of power, the better it is. 

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You are a honest man yourself but compelling circumstances prevent you from being effective anymore. It is best now that you leave, as Maun-mohan Singh to your detractors, as the guy who never spoke out. But some of us know that actions speak louder than words.

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The alternatives to your government are not awe-inspiring but deserve a chance to implement their promises all the same. Democratic change is good. It shakes things up. Different parties, different philosophies. In a country like ours, who can really tell when the right idea will click?

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As you would know, India is always getting written off by the realists. This can't be fixed. That'll NEVER happen. Ha! Good luck with that! So on and forth, from its very inception. "The existence of India is in itself a miracle" school of thought is the only respite in those dark moments. 

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The critics rightly cite this "It could have been worse" defensive line as an excuse of mediocrity. Come to think of it, in any God-forsaken situation, it always could have been worse! That just can't be a real excuse.

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I feel extremely lucky to have seen in part, the older India of Doordarshan, pension plans & Ambassadors. I KNOW things have changed... drastically. The pessimist might rightly say that now we have an India of MTV Roadies, 2G scams and BMW-hit-and-acquittals, certainly a bigger tragedy. 

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Shut up, pessimist, I say. Enough with the downers already!

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You rarely smile these days, indeed have very little incentive to. A very gentle, wise man's smile does make an appearance in some earlier images of you. A smile of belief, it is, I might add.

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You seemed to know that India would be up to the task, the second time around the foreigners came back in, unlike 250 odd years ago. However different and regionalistic, we were one nation now. That Indian was an established identity and given a reasonably level field, an Indian could stand toe-to-toe to whatever or whomever he had to face.

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Optimism and confidence alone never fixed anything. But however misplaced, they give us beautiful illusions of possibilities. Possibilities that were visible only when you showed the guts to take us there. If I were to use a weird metaphor, you were our economic Felix Baumgartner (Super-cool man, sir, the first man to jump from space to earth. Check him out on YouTube!) 

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I think you must be worried by now about how long this letter is getting to be, but guess what? That's how true fan letters look like. 

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You, sir, have done more than most people in India's history to advance India's cause. Behind those bottle-glass lenses and underneath the blue turban, resides a very sharp mind who did his bit despite the muck that surrounded. Some people did emerge to realize their potential thanks to your mostly lonely battle to push forward your reforms.

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It is for them to pick up and run the race from here on in. The naysayers may b*tch, but the race is on. The CAG is an ultimately answerable to government body but it is refreshingly fond of slapping its master in the face, if all the scams it has been unearthing are any clue. 

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The media (when it is not discussing Pamela Anderson on Bigg Boss) has a TRP/readership incentive to name and shame every two-bit man-in-power accused of corruption and sexual harassment. The courts are in an unhealthy hurry to confirm death penalties but the urgency & pressures may soon begin to tell on the lower courts too, where some of the justice may be delivered during the lifetime of the disputing parties.

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Anna Hazare's movement and its political offshoot, the Aam Aadmi Party may yet fizzle out but the sentiments they generated will not. Upcoming leaders in the BJP/Congress genre of parties may think thrice before even thinking of any underhand dealings. Fear of being actually being punished for wrongdoings may no longer a theoretical concept in the circles of power.

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If the above read like a lot of Mays, I am sorry, because it is still April. Sorry, I also make really bad jokes sometimes... Yes, there are too many mays, I know but I am sure you already knew that too, you being a two time Prime Minister and all. It don't seem like that scared you from doing what you needed to. 

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After all, there are only a couple of options. (A) Do something about it (B) Roll over and die. And God knows that there's enough of us that even the smallest percentage of people doing something about it, would mean a huge lot of something being done.

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Happy Baisakhi and Happy Bengali New Year to you, sir! You must be wondering, where and why this dosage of the can-do spirit is coming from!

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Regards

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PS: Did I tell you that you and I share the same birthday? OK. Now I did. Just an interesting side-note."

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2013/04/pmji-samjhoji.html]

Smiley

Nervously, the 6 tourists on the airboat scanned the pond in front of us, fringed as it was by the thick mangrove vegetation of the Florida Everglades. The sun shone bright and it was a cozy morning, despite this being the end of November, a luxury of being in the South. But we had a little something on our minds right then. We were on the lookout for the big 'un.

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An airboat is a very low, very flat bottomed and very fast boat with an enclosed aircraft-style propellor tagged to its rear end, a machine designed for navigating the swampy shallow terrain of the 'Glades. Trouble was, our captain (pilot?) had killed the motor and we were lazily drifting along in the water. He didn't look like he wanted to get away quick just in case things got hairy.

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If things got... scaly would be a better word, I guess. For if you know of the Everglades, you know of their most obvious residents. We had already seen a momma alligator from a safe distance away basking on the banks and shielding her young ones, 20-25 of them. All of 7 feet in length, she was lethargic enough to provide ample photo opportunities, without giving us cause for worry, by moving towards us. But now we were in open water.

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As if in tune with a communal sixth sense, we turned around to check on the one place beyond our collectively scanning eyes had missed and sure enough, a member of a species which had stay unchanged in shape since the day of the dinosaurs was silently sneaking up on us. It was with a mix of fear and awe that we realized such a massive animal could swim perfectly soundlessly. With that peculiarly reptilian crawl often times seen on TV wildlife documentaries, he came cruising right alongside our boat.

At this point, all the 6 non-Floridans on the boat including yours truly shrank towards the centre of the vessel, instinctive self preservation, I guess. The captain was hardly re-assuring in his 'assurances'. Sitting high on his seat in the middle of the boat, the farthest away from the creature, he pronounced "That's Smiley. Almost 11 feet long. If he wanted to, he could leap clear of the water and land on my lap." Having a nickname for a huge alligator might earn our captain some brownie points in the regional macho-man competition but we were not eager to have some particular aspects of Smiley's physical abilities on display.

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11 feet is hardly a record breaker, especially if you think of how other big crocodilians like the estuarine crocodiles can get, but 11 feet of scales, teeth and muscle circling our boat with an interested eye was alligator plenty for me. At about 450 menacing pounds in weight, and with 55-60 years of hunting experience (Fast fact: Alligators grow a foot a year for the 6 years of their life and from then on, their length increases only by an inch a year!), Smiley wasn't quite ideal company to have when out boating. A swamp creature of my nightmares was now within biting distance of me and there was no telling what was going on in the pea-shaped brain of his as he evaluated our boat and its passengers.

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We joked and laughed about dangling fingers in front of Smiley and about this being a especially bad place to fall into the water, for the most part, to stifle that queasy feeling generated when a large predator is encircling you quite casually, in his own domain. This was the cliched tourist experience we had come for, wasn't it? The whole "Been to the 'Glades, seen a gator" photo-op deal to boast about when we got back home. Only for that pesky voice inside to pipe up and say that is a real big ALLIGATOR and that we were on WATER and if he wanted to, there really was NOTHING stopping Smiley from making that humans equal to meat connection.

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It's been centuries since we have moved out of the food chain which sustains the rest of the natural world. We have devised our own fancy but safe ways of obtaining food for ourselves. A little reminder once in a while does help a lot to appreciate this privilege. Out there in the REAL real world, we are not at the top of the chain. No. Most definitely not.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/12/smiley.html]