Bangalore visit

Just returned from a one day trip to Bangalore or should I say Bengaluru, India's "garden city". I must say, weather wise in India, you cannot beat Bangalore. The new airport is great and the flight was very smooth. Air India is pretty good.

The children of the Mughal empire

The Mughal Empire has always fascinated me. What would India be without the Taj Mahal or Red Fort? It is the Taj Mahal that is India's wonder of the world and the most attractive tourist destination in the country. It is the Red Fort from which the Prime Minister of India addresses the nation every August 15th. These are also two of the greatest monuments of the Mughal period, windows into a time that the Mughal empire was perhaps the greatest on Earth.

Tales of Akbar and Birbal are an old time favourite. The Mughal emperors hold a certain grand aura about them that most other kings, queens, emperors and empresses of the world do not match up to (with the possible exceptions of Ashoka, Alexander the Great, Victoria and maybe a few more).

Notable Bollywood films like Mughal-e-Azam and more recently Jodha Akbar have captured the story of the greatest Mughal emperor Akbar in reasonable detail. The Mughals are a part of our history and of our modern day culture.

But what ever happened to them? We know that Bahadur Shah Zafar was the "last Mughal emperor" although the empire had been decaying for one and a half centuries before him. This is a link to an interesting story I found about the conditions that the last Mughal emperor's descendants are living in today. I thought you might find it interesting.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/31340-mughal-emperors-descendants-penniless

Cattle class and Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor

OK, it is now a matter of debate. Was Mr. Shashi Tharoor, India's minister of state for external affairs right or wrong when he made his famous 'cattle class' tweet? He justified his online remark by saying that he was referring to the way economy class passengers are treated by the airlines. But then again, Mr. Tharoor follows his 'cattle class' phrase with 'the other Holy cows' in reference to other politicians like Mrs. Sonia and Mr. Rahul Gandhi who are also on this so-called 'austerity drive'.

Whether what Mr. Tharoor says is true or not, he needs to realise that while politicians and ministers also enjoy freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 of the Constitution of India, they also have certain duties as public servants and one of these would be to respect the actions and views of their political parties and government and think twice before tweeting. Mr. Tharoor needs to understand that he is now no longer a 'normal tweeting citizen', he is a minister in the government of India and needs to refrain from making such silly remarks that too for the whole world to read. Considering that he worked in the United Nations and almost become the Secretary-General, who needs to learn a little more about diplomacy towards his party and to the Indian public.

Delhi lashed by rains. Roads jammed

Well, it finally rained! Correction - it rained like Hell! But along with the rain came the utter chaos on the roads in New Delhi. It is absolutely ridiculous that the nation's capital gets completely screwed with just one rain! The roads are completely jammed. Traffic is in total chaos and it takes hours to travel barely a few kilometres.

Why? Obviously, the drainage system in Delhi is an utter failure. Is anyone cleaning the drains? We pay taxes to the government and so money should not be the problem. Maybe the problem is with honesty and the sense of duty in our public servants - which include the safai karamcharis by the way!

The next time you want to walk on the moon and visit one of the craters, don't bother applying to NASA. A walk down one of the roads in Delhi will give you a good enough idea. The roads have craters in them, obviously from the poor quality of materials being used in them.

I believe next year there is a certain Commonwealth Games happening in this same city. God forbid if it rains. I know for a fact that we will not win the Gold Medal for civic infrastructure.

We are spiritual beings

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

UberTwitter is cool

I was looking for a good Twitter client to install on my Blackberry. So, after some surfing around, I found Twitterberry. I installed it and used it, but it was not too user friendly and was very confusing when it came to uploads photos. So, I did some more surfing and found UberTwitter. This is a very cool application for a single interface between Twitter & your Blackberry handset. It is very user friendly and uploading photos is very easy. I recommend UberTwitter.

Indian real estate begins to pick up

It looks like the real estate sector is getting better in India, especially in the NCR area. Reports of increasing prices and renewed interest in buying of houses indicate that the worst may be over for Indian real estate players. Real estate companies on the stock exchanges have also been the main beneficiaries of the recent stock market rally.

Is this the beginning of a new 'bull market'. I think it is. Recent market surveys indicate that the NCR will see a surge of demand in residential real estate in the next five years. The study indicates that there will be a demand of about 1.5 billion square feet of residential real estate alone in the NCR. This is good news for real estate developers. Let's wait and watch.