Le Me of the Meme

OK I was disappointed in myself for not having written anything in over 3 months, so.. well I had to write something.. but nothing really interesting is coming to my head, anyway so this is a small post, its about the million memes that have been doing rounds.. there doesnt exist a topic, public event or a celebrity who or who's actions havent been made into a meme.. people make memes of their friends, colleagues or even themselves .. here's one of the few that I made at work..

ok that wasnt my best, dont judge me yet.. it was a colleague at work, she wore a lot of rings thats all :D

Now, whats this post about, its about the me and normal people saga of the memes.

here's an example:

hilarious right? here's another

you see a pattern here?
No? ok here's one more.. this till with 1 comment.

You spot it yet? the comment reads "same here"
thats exactly the reaction I had and sometimes even made such comments on the "normal people and me" saga memes.

Theres some more memes like that.. heres a frisky one

I know perv thought.. but come on.. every guy thinks like that once hes hit high school.. or even less nowadays I guess..

OK one last one.. and this had the most "me too" comments

So what I'm trying to say is every damn person is "me" or Derp(the meme guy).. and no one really is the "normal people" So... everyones Derp and think the others are normal (lame and boring basically) so we can say being Derp is the normal thing to be.. every Derp is normal..

here's my meme..

As it Turnsout

I always have an opinion about votes, but I almost always shy away from debates on voting. It’s frankly because till date I haven’t had an opportunity to vote.  (I’ve seem almost 6 to 8 elections pass by btw) You can simply say I’m lazy, I don’t care about electing, or I still don’t feel empowered enough to actually believe that my vote can make a difference. 

The General Elections of India are probably one of the biggest democratic exercises on the face of earth, and with it comes a lot of drama, games, schemes, garlands, and well... some shoes too. The problem in the Indian electoral system since the earliest times has been the voter turnout. People don’t see it to be worth the effort.   The average voter turnout in the General Elections is around 60% meaning less than two thirds of the people were responsible for deciding whom to elect and assuming two thirds voted for the party(ies) forming the government, only about 40% of the total (voting) population of India chose the ruling party. So about 60% were in no way responsible for the central government! But I’m sure they had their share of complaining on how dysfunctional the government is. (Me included)

Ok here’s little info,

Voter turnout can actually say a lot, they are generally used to send political messages too. The 72% voter turnout in the Assembly election of Arunachal Pradesh in 2009 was hailed by the media and a few voices in India as a message against the Chinese aggressive pursuit of annexing Arunachal Pradesh. Similarly this time around (2014) certain groups... well ok terrorists (I was just trying do a Reuters and not use the word terrorist :D ) put up signs and distributed flyers telling people not to vote, in an attempt to show that Kashmiris don’t feel like voting or participating in the democratic system of India. 

www.mirror.co.uk

Now lemme tell you why I haven’t had a chance to vote yet. When I turned 18 I was sure I could cast my vote in the coming election, I was born in the beginning of the year and by the time the next election came in 2008 I was eager and well, had not yet figured anything in politics but wanted to vote, I was eager and was taken by the ‘right to vote’ thing. But my name was not in the list, disappointment. The next election was in 2009, I tried to register myself, the clerk at the official looking koisk asked me to fill form and took 2 or 3 photos, loksabha election 2009 – ‘sorry your name is absent in the list’, ok. 2010 – Municipal election, the guys came home (supposedly) and we weren’t at home; result – no vote. It’s been so through till now.  In the initial days I wanted a voter ID so that I can have an address proof, (then I got my passport, so lost interest all the more) Oh I forgot, last time I registered online, after everything is done, they want us to take a print of the sheet and goto the election commission office of our district, I got the print, but sadly never found time to do the submitting part. OK enough about me.

Speaking of Democracy itself, I feel it doesn’t work too well with India. I mean, in a country like India, the biggest and most diverse democracy of the world, we need to tailor the idea of democracy. What we currently have is a crude form of democracy that involves participation of everyone at once. How can you actually expect one hundred crore people to actually come out and vote? In fact if the 100 crore came out to vote, I’m not sure we have enough logistics to support that kind of a turn out. What I’m trying to say is this idea of total participative democracy is actually a failure. It doesn’t work. We cant have everyone voting at once... because ‘everyone’ is NOT everyone. Maybe we need stages, maybe increase the levels, cut the power, maybe increase hierarchy... who knows that might have its own problems, but my point is, low voter turnout will remain a problem in this crude form of total participation. Thats it!

Btw facebook pics, all the ‘be responsible’ ads and everything is making voting a glamorous thing, which is good.. might just get the urbans to vote.. but hey.. I still haven’t voted.. not even fashion can me vote.. I wonder how anyone would vote.

AAP Bhi Aadmi Ho

Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the 7^th Chief Minister of Delhi about 15 days ago. It was a big day in the politics and democracy of India. I wasn’t really happy about the Aam Aadmi Party taking Congress support to form the government in Delhi. The day when the news broke that AAP will form the government in Delhi  with Congress aid, I made a sad facebook post. Here’s the pic:

Yeah, call me a sadist, and heres a comment by one of my high school teachers

And another friend of mine said:

Ofcouse I only had this to say:

And then the status died away.. and 5 days later Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the CM and he made quite a decent speech that day. 

I made a status:

I realized that I was missing something and this congress alliance may not prove that damaging and AAP would still be able to play a dominating role and provide the people of Delhi some good governance.

The days that followed saw a lot of changes and decisions like the transfer of DJB higher management, 700 liters of free water per day and maybe a few more that I don’t remember. But all the while and media, other political parties and sympathizers and supporters of the NaMo Movement started posting pictures, excerpts and quotes of how Kejriwal and the AAP were switching sides, changing tunes etc etc.. the 3 biggest things that the people have found hardest to forget and forgive are:

1.       Kejriwal won’t fight an election – He contested and became CM

2.       Kejriwal won’t take VIP security or government facilities (car, house etc) – Well he did that

And the worst

3.       Kejriwal swore on his children that there would be no support taken from BJP or Congress – Well, we all know what happened.

Now, ofcourse I’m writing this post to well somewhat justify his statements, now these three have not risen from different sources. The one reason is, he’s green, that’s it.

Being a.. well talkative person I know that sometimes you go overboard, get carried away and say something of paramount proportion when you don’t know the complete picture. Haven’t we all seen people who are ‘confidently wrong’? That’s what happened here, it’s practically impossible to have a CM walking the streets without security. I’m not talking about the CM, the people would swarm the place and hurt one another.. its so with any celebrity and he or any celebrity has no control over it.. so this was an innocent ‘confidently wrong’ statement. How can he say something and we take his word for something that isn’t in his control?

Speaking of the swearing on children part, the same goes here, he was ‘confidently wrong’ because of his innocence, as I said, he’s still a little green, now what do we do of an innocent first timer? Do we show some consideration or we scrutinize and criticize his every move? Expect him to be perfect from day 1? That’s just too much expectation from us, the media and other politicians. Given time, maybe he’ll learn his limitations and learn that every word is counted.

To be a little neutral here, I really am concerned about the ‘370 pages of evidence against Shiela Dixit’ statement. Ofcouse, thinking realistically, there’s no such thing as ‘unconditional’ support. Lets leave it as that.

Finally, why did he enter politics, contest and become CM? well, We must think of why AAP was formed in the first place, there was no option left, right? No Lok Pal Bill would be passed with all the Anshans and people were simple getting bored and eventually fizz out. 

This was a right decision, but sadly, we have a perception that nothing can be changed or that people who get down in the pit to clean also end up smelling like shit.. or people have no hopes of ever having a clean political system. Maybe.. but the one line I remember from The Shawshank Redumption is “No one can ever take away hope” So I’m gonna hope, hope that change is possible, change will happen and I will do my part. (by making blogs and fb posts? Sure why not)

Theft at Gandhi's Grave

“Holy day or just a holiday?” I took pride in this poor attempt at cynical pun. Today was a holiday but still I wasn’t happy when I woke up, reason being my father had told me that we would be going to Raj Ghat to see Gandhi’s tomb and pay our respects to him. I wasn’t interested; my mom even resented the idea. 

It was hot but not far. We reached Raj Ghat in less than half an hour. The place wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be. Not shockingly, Anna Hazare was also present, there was a small contingent of about 50 people around him, then there were tourists; local and foreign, a hoard of school children in Blue and white, and who could miss the loud and happy tamilians. 

The tomb was beautifully flower decorated for the occasion. I could say it was special because there was more than just the Genda Phool that you find everywhere in Delhi. People stood by the tomb, near the flowers, behind the torch and posed at a thousand more places in the 15 X 15 space. Momdad went ahead close to the tomb to offer the fist full of Genda Phool that they had bought at the gate for 10 rupees. I decided to stand this one out, I stood leaning to the parapet wall surrounding the tomb and looked at the crowd. Some offered flowers, some bowed their head and some just wanted to click more and more photos.

Just a couple minutes later I saw my parents panic stricken faces. My mom’s purse had been stolen. A girl had put her hand into my mom’s handbag and had stolen the purse while in the crowd paying respects. We were aghast. Spoke to the security nearby, and looked for the purse hoping to find it fallen nearby, but it was stolen, deliberately and consciously stolen.

I was angry, at mother for being careless, at father for thinking up this useless plan and at myself for not bothering to stick with my mother in a crowd. Then I was angry at the thief, she had stolen right in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb! Such irony!!

It reminded me of a line said by an 18^th century poet, he says “No man can be patriot on an empty stomach” Ofcourse he died 69 years before Gandhi was born. But there was only 1 Gandhi(and there were many other great patriots in history who almost fasted to their death), but the saying holds good for the thief, she was just trying to make a living, steal in front of Gandhi’s grave or from a pretty dame, it was just an attempt to feed herself. 

We spent the whole journey back thinking of what was lost and talking about how we could’ve prevented it and how people have lost their conscience. Stealing in front of Bapu! 6 hours after the incident I was still thinking, not about our loss, but the Gandhi connection. How these values of truth and justice and honesty and everything has turned out to remain just a sound of humbug! I thought about the Irony again and again, Theft right in front of Gandhi’s grave, how ironic how ironic... I said that aloud once.. then silently again. Then it struck me.. this wasn’t ironic, it was symbolic. Theft at Gandhi’s grave.

BMTC Ki Jai

About time I wrote something about the Bangalore Metro Transport Corp. AKA the BMTC. History has known the bus service, then called BTS (and with love called Bitre Tigra Sigalla) to be a loss making and inefficient public mode of transport. The rickety buses that broke down without warnings to no bus for hours and a few other bad memories of Bangaloreans of the 90s were all taken care by the dissolution of the BTS and the formation of the BMTC. 

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on boring you with history, but just know that the buses were not that good in olden times and are now better. That should be enough history.

So why did I start writing about BMTC? Well… I was always scared and unhappy about travelling in buses, as a 9-10 year old kid with his school just 3 stops away I had a lot to complain about. The bus would be so crowded, I couldn’t go deep in the bus or stand by the door and not to mention that I’d generally forget the pass and try to get by without paying. Apart from the school part, the 3 of us would take the bus on Sundays and on holidays to go visit the aquarium and other pet stores. I never really liked it. Once I remember someone sticking a burning cigarette in my ear while I was trying to get on. I guess smoking wasn’t banned in those days. 

It was probably in 2002 that the BMTC first started reporting small profits. It still didn’t matter to me; I stayed 3 just stops away from my school and didn’t like travelling in the bus. 

Oops! :D Even though I said I won’t bore you with history I guess I somehow still managed it. Anyway… So after I joined college, I was for the first time I was able to travel long distances. It was then that I fell in love with the buses and the BMTC.

By this time the BMTC had started reporting profits almost every year. They had increased their fairs, but they had also introduced new things that were never seen in Bangalore. They started by abandoning all old buses and got new coaches. Here they introduced the auto door system. The Driver would open the doors when there’s a stop and he would close it as soon as the bus departs from the stop. This idea of having a door surprised many people. People believed it just made things bad from the public, so we can’t climb onto the bus when the doors are not open? What about signals? Well, they generally wont let us in even there! 

Then came a rush of ideas, a pass bus for all those who have passes, it was generally intended for students but everyone with a pass, even monthly and daily pass would be allowed. Then came the Pink Bus, the women’s special bus, it worked well first, but you might’ve seen the pic on fb, men got in and the idea failed. Then they still maintained the Pushpak bus, which has better suspensions and costly by a rupee. 

A Lady Driver of the BMTC

There was also the advent of Vajra, the Vovlo AC bus. This took everyone by surprise. An AC city bus! Yay! After a couple of years, BMTC bought a few Marcopolo buses too, these are the AC buses that run on the streets of New Delhi. They are a little cheaper but eww! Look so ugly! :D 

You can say BMTC is the Muhammad Bin Tughlaq of Bangalore, they came up with so many innovative ideas and well... Not all of them caught on.  

Some such ideas were:

Janti vahana: Two coaches connected (like a train!)at the middle with a seating capacity of about 60

The Orange and Blue Lines: High Frequency buses that go around a route

Big 10: Buses that connect suburbs on 10 Big and famous roads to the center of the city.

The Atal Sarige: Named after PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the bus connects places with low income earning people with the city.

Bus Day

The Hopital Bus: Makes a route around the bigger hospitals in Bangalroe

The ORRCA: Outer Ring Road Companies Association route, that goes around the IT companies on Outer Ring Road. 

The 156 Stops On Route 601

Ring Route Buses: These just keep circling around the city. My fav in Route # 601, it has 156 stops!! 

Then theres the Vayu Vajra AKA the BIAS, it connects the city to the Airport, now this is interesting, the then transport minister R Ashoka tried a lot of new things here too, like LCDs and Mobile Pantry and WiFi hot spots on these buses. Some of them still work I suspect.

Bus Day:  The 4^th of every month is to be Bus day in Bangalore. It’s to spread awareness of public transport, buses won’t cost less, but there would be many buses that day. And the officials of BMTC won’t use their personal vehicles that day. 

Now there are the JnNurm Air Suspension buses, Metro Feeder service and a lot more. Another thing that deserves mentioning is the maintainance of these buses. Well, I'm not much of a mechanic, but you dont generally see a broken down bus these days :)

The Only Remaining Double Decker in Bangalore

So the thing about BMTC is that it’s sitting on a huge pile of money and the officials and ministers are not afraid of trying new things. Ofcourse all this came because they improved the service and improved their coverage. BMTC covers... well lakhs of KMs everyday and ferries even more people, you can look for more facts and figures on their site. 

BTW they launched a new site a few days ago, check it out its got all the details from routes to fairs to maps and everything!

http://www.mybmtc.com/

KSRTC is not far behind; they have lots of services too, from regular non A/C to A/C pushback, multi-axel Volvo’s and Mercedes to buses with LCDs on the back of every seat, mini pantry and on board chemical toilet! The KSRTC has got to be one of the best state owned bus service in the country! 

 

Recently, Or maybe that was last year, I read in the paper that BMTC and KSRTC are the only profit making Bus service in  the country, and traveling in BMTC actually made me like buses now, I make it a point to take atleast 1 bus when I’m in another town. 

The contrasts... well we’ll talk about it some other day :)

Here are a few more pictures

Collage of Airavata 

A Fleet of  KSRTC A/C Volvo Buses

Flower Decorated Mercedes Benz in Front of the Vidhana Sauda