The speed of death - is decided by the man himself

The man physically, is probably one of the weakest multi-cellular creature to have walked the earth.
While a lion has might, the cheetah - speed, lizards - camouflage, birds - flight, elephants - the heft, the man has none of these physical assets.
The speed is paltry with two weak legs, the strength - the lesser mentioned the better. The strongest of wrestlers would be sitting ducks to a lion or a croc.

But what we have is a 300 gram network of 'intestine-looking' bunch of wires. This neural network surpasses any strength possessed by any creature on earth, a fact misused most of the times by humans to dominate the planet.

The man for long has misused this intelligence to hunt/poach and kill the other beings on this planet so that he is secure.
Once the man is secure, the number of people on this planet rises to unimaginable proportions.
To serve the needs of the hordes of people, barbaric jungle law of 'might-is-right' will not work in the human scenario.
Therefore, the civility which is more 'acquired' than genetic steps in and saves the mankind.
The mankind does business, grows crops, sells natural resources and advances technology to build better lasting businesses. All this, to fill the stomachs of 6 billion hungry people.

Technology is a huge catalyst in determining a country's business doing capability.
And who better than USA and Russia fit this bill.
They literally tore into the world's economic scenario post world war-2, when global liberalization took centrestage.

In the relentless pursuit of advancement of technology, the human has created things which are 'beyond compare'.
No doubt, these are things that the modern man uses everyday to further his business interests, build faster and stronger travel methods.
The aeroplane is one such invention that epitomizes everything that is intelligent.

This machine, a complex hard winding of about 30 kms of cable, huge propellers and the mighty engines is but anything that the common man understands.
All the common man knows is the airfare is high during the peak season and low during off season. If I travel now, I get a better deal, else I burn a hole in my pocket.

The wise say, courtship is far less complex than marriage because the former just is a planning phase, a visualization of the rosy future-to-be, a pre-cursor to the life that would be so different from now.
But marriage is when the execution of plans start, the nitty gritties which need to be worked every hour, minute and second to ensure that the machine is well-oiled.
The moment, you forget to oil a part, it creaks, you ignore, and it crashes.

Aeroplanes are not much different.
Like countless Indians, I was shocked and dismayed at yesterday's AI flight crash disaster in Mangalore.
Initial reports suggest it was pilot error because of which the plane landed much beyond the landing zone on the runway.
The result, a hundred and sixty innocent lives lost.

Technological innovation conceptualized is always rosy... but unlike what people think, it takes a lot of attention to detail that keeps the execution smooth.

I will not harp on the tragic loss, but I will salute the thousands of aircraft maintenance engineers, the ATC controllers and the pilots who perform their duty with full sincerity. A lot depends on them.
May they be bestowed with the best of health and alertness which will help them avert disasters like these.

This only again proves the point in one of my earlier posts that Death is above all truths and supercedes everything else in the universe.
In the never ending mayhem that we create to be fitter, faster and stronger, we will at many occasions be at the receiving end.

At the very end now, I would only present 2 view-points to you :
One :
At present it takes 11 days to build a 737 aircraft with about 5800 airplane unit hours of work.
This is the same one which crashed yesterday in Mangalore. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft.
This is victory for the mankind in terms of technology.

Two :
22nd May, 2010, 6:02 AM
The plane lands safely, (Mohan, a passenger with his family coming from Dubai, tells them : "Once we take the luggage from the belt, we'll head straight to the taxi stand, I just cant wait to get to my home town"
His 8 year old son says : "Dad, but then the taxis..."
Booooom.
The fuselage of the plane splits into two, the cockpit separates leaving behind mounds of burning wires and freewheels into a deep gorge.
The rest of the plane hurtles to the same destiny.
The passengers seated in the front row can see the road beneath them whizzing backward at speeds of 200 km/h.
Suddenly a globe of fire blasts through the whole passage incinerating everything in its way.
A passeger manages to jump from the crack in the plane, falls to the ground only to see the huge back black wheel of the aircraft hurtling towards him .. he closes his eyes on the ground.)*

This is the speed of death.
And it has been decided by the man himself.


* The above is just a rendition of the disturbance that has gone through my mind after seeing yesterday's disaster on countless yellow press channels.
The reconstruction of the crash scenario was fictional.

a few things that've kept me busy!

Yeah.. the workplace now resembles a russian warzone.
Scant respect for ethics and total emphasis on results!
This is how the russians work.. and if we need to make them happy.. then we better do the things they like and more importantly do it like they like it.

This apart, mom and dad haven't been home since a couple of weeks.. so its me and Tina all alone!
Its always delightful to be on your own.. everytime this happens, you discover a new facet to yourself.
This time its cooking.

Now, i have been a non-entity in the kitchen till I was 25-26 maybe.
The only thing I knew to cook was Maggi ( which most Indians would know ).
The tryst with cooking took shape in Apr-May 2008 or thereabouts.
There was a colleague in Moscow, who used to come over and that's when i started learning the basics of cooking.
At the end of the trip I could make rookie dishes like bambino vermicelli, egg bhurji, dal (it was a super spicy andhra variety dal) and rice.
Nothing much to be proud about.. but still, the seed had been sown.

Much later, whenever I got a chance, I tried my hand at small experiments.
None too extraordinary, but I always managed to be kind of above average.

With 3 ladies in then house, my kitchen stint was always a non-starter.
Tina herself never got enough chances to enter the kitchen, poor me stood no chance.
And then, there is also a thought that I could end up making a fool out of myself!
Tina is light years ahead of me, when it comes to cooking.. so I prefer to remain in the shadows. :)

But, this time around, I thought why not try something different.
How long will I sit on the couch and watch Tina make all those yummy dishes... all this when I knew the abc of cooking.
My help never went beyond fetching vegetables from the refrigerator or washing utensils. :P

Now, then Divya was here for a couple of days too, that was when I decided to do a little something of my own..
A colleague from office was coming for lunch too.
That day I decided to make chhole :) and believe me they did not come out bad at all...
That day served as a further inspiration... and I was only too glad from there on to try my hand whenever possible.

The coming Thursday I made some more chhole, this time to be had with puri. So they had to be be a semi gravy kind and bingo.. they turned out exactly like that.
Tina was thrilled and so was I :D

Then today, I tried out Rajma chawal.
The planning from the onion paste to the tomato pulp to all the masalas were all planned and there was Rajma in front of us in about a hour and a half!

Satisfying and refreshing!
Another one of those feelings that money cant buy!

Was so thrilled that I told her in the late evening to watch a movie and not get up from the couch...
meanwhile I went, made some noodles and did some extra garnishing over the Rajma chawal that we couldn't finish in the day.
Got a green chilli too to enhance the contents of the dish :)

It was a wonderful weekend.

Will leave you with some pics of the chhole :













And now, some for the Rajma :

I stand corrected

I stand corrected on my stand on 'Dancing'.
I now understand. Its not about how the world would feel when you dance.
Its about how you feel.
I have always respected singers.. now i respect good dancers as well!
My wife and her sis are some of the best that get produced!
I felt good today... doing crappy movements... because i was enchanted.
Loved it... thanks Divi and Tina!!!

You guys rock!

All the Mithun's thumkas now work for me!! love u guys!