The Y-AXIS LIVE!

I just returned back from Ranchi which is also my place of birth. Ranchi is a weird city. Unlike most cities in India where usually a political figure of past days occupies pristine town estate, this one has a martyr soldier of the Indian Army who has his statue in the main town plaza. Lance Naik Albert Ekka died fighting in 1971 and was awarded the Param Vir Chakra. He stands tall in the heart of the town holding his rifle and in a ‘charge forward’ posture. You ought to see the statue to feel the awe.

But that is not all what makes Ranchi earn the title of ‘weird’ in a positive sense. The city is a highly multi-religious and multi-cultural. If the marwaris from Rajasthan running the wholesale business, the best restaurants in town are owned by Punjabis. The tribal cultural is all around. Then there are folks from Bihar and Bengal who are living here for ages. Arguably, the best Durga Puja celebrations outside Calcutta happen in Ranchi. The best part is, it is possible to get a flavour of each and every culture in this city. That, one can say is the Ranchi culture. The sense you get there is of an extremely proud and confident city. Proud and confident, just like MS Dhoni.

Dhoni incidentally is not just the captain of the Indian cricket team, but a super class icon, the most well known sportsman that the city has produced - and by the way, they have produced not one or two, but dozens hockey players that have played for India- both men and women. Coming back to Dhoni - Everything around Dhoni is followed with a microscope. His arrival into town during Christmas is a front page picture in newspapers, as well as his departure out, with details right up to which flight he took! I incidentally learnt that his much talked about upcoming villa is just couple of hundred yards away from where my parents stay. However, in the interest of MSD’s privacy, I have no pictures to post here. Instead I have a picture taken by my phone when I went to see MSD’s boys at CSK play the Delhi team at an IPL match at Chepauk.

What I also noticed was a Mahi eatery close by, which had heavy advertising across the town. It isn’t owned by Mahi, but someone saw a business opportunity around this brand and decided to act. See the billboard on top of the Firayalal building.

The Rock Garden next to Kanke Dam was an absolute revelation, where the terrain has been beautifully used to create an ambience of leisure.

We also went to the Jagannathpuri temple on the other extreme of Ranchi. This temple is atop a hillock.

Like Puri’s annual yatra, Ranchi has a mini-yatra too, in which the mythological Lord Jagannath (Lord Krishna) goes to his aunt’s place for a brief period every year in a wooden cart (’rath’ hence rath-yatra, and this event held at Puri is the etymological origin of the word ‘juggernaut’) pulled by enthusiastic devotees. This is the picture of the frame of the cart. As a child I remember seeing it drawn by crowds on a rainy day.

In closing, there were some amazing dahlias and roses in my parents’ garden, and I made this collage out of this.

Continued from part I.

Those who do not know, the Canine Caucus of Peninsular India was in emergency session to discuss matters of urgent canine concern. To participate in this meeting, all dogs, pets, street, and uncared alike, had run away from their homes. Lunata, the bitch was incharge of canine defence was the next to begin. She was furious and began without much ado. “We must not forget that the first life to be lost in the Man-pen at Mumbai Taj was a member of this community. Fellow canines, we must remember that man is collectively territorial given that it has things such as ‘countries’, it has its own limitations. Moreover, in matters of loyalty, we must rate man at par with ants and termites. we must therefore, rely on a member of this community to extract a suitable revenge as per canine law”, said the hon’ble canine defence councilor. Then she let off a series of barks, which given the undulations in her voice, appeared to represent anger and resolve in equal measure.  The dogs applauded, “wuf, wuf”.

The Canine Caucus of Peninsular India was in emergency meeting. The mood was indignant and unforgiving. “We must teach these humans a lesson”, barked hound Tommy, the usually quiet member of the society. “What do they really think of themselves?”, he wondered, with his right paw pointing towards a human settlement, otherwise called a city. “Wuf, wuf”, agreed all other dogs in the audience.  Tommy was a Boxer, gray, and had a business line look on his face. He concluded, “And with this friends, I hand over the session to our councilor responsible for public hygiene to elaborate his vision for 2009. Dogs and Bitches, here’s Jacky.” They clasped hands and Jacky the Terrier began his bitching.

In line with the code of the Canine Caucus, it was completely unacceptable to call anyone to deliver a speech, since it was an expectation in the canine community that they were hear to discuss facts and plans, and not fiction. Or dog bark human talk if you like.

Jacky began slowly.”We must ask the municipality to invest substantially in our human free area programme.In light of the new research that has emerged recently, we must also do all within our means to discourage our members from keeping humans as their pets. And more so in homes which have growing pups, so that they do not catch infections or pick up bad words. The new human pet policy will allow humans in dog pens only if their enclosures are at least thirty feet away from the nearest dog pens. Further, the license will require you to take humans for neurological exam twice a year, in addition to the prescribed shots. If there is any evidence of mental activity in any human, the law would require that such human must immediately be moved of dog pens in accordance with the law. Such humans, it goes without saying, are considerable risk to the dog society”.

End of Part 1. To be continued, hopefully, all of December. In celebration of you know what.

Part II here

Having grown up traveling long distances in trains in India (Since 1989 kms, have stayed more than a thousand kms away from the city my parents lived in). As a student, I used trains extensively for the travel and if you have travelled even half as much as I have done, you would know that ascertaining the location of a train in India can be such a problem.

No more, because someone has started this mashup that gives useful bytes of information. It gives fairly detailed position but not real time information which is still pretty good. I wish someone could give me a solution to an answer that I oh-so-frequently heard from the Railway Enquiry office which was that the train is almost in (In Hindi, the answer used to be ‘Outer par  khadi hai’). The same answer would be repeated for upto an hour sometimes!

The second must see site is this Mashup which mocks up Swiss Rail train movements. This site lets you almost travel with the train and see birds eye view of locations as a train passes along but does not use real data but only simulates the movements and the stoppages based on the time table.

And if you thought not having real time data is a bad idea, wait till you read the below notice available from the Swiss Rail mashup. You have obviously forgotten that Swiss Trains operate on time and hence real time data is inconsequential and so wasteful of money!