Bitter Truth, Tweet and Cattle Class

Shashi Tharoor would have hardly imagined that a comic reply to a Tweet – “Cattle Class” would become talk of the nation and would cost him his profile at the cabinet, his twitter updates came under the scanner when he revealed in one of his twitter posts that the news which pinned him for staying in 5 star hotels on government cost, was not true as he was spending from his own pocket.

It seems from there journalist’s have being following his tweets for the spicy news they need and he has become target of another instance of sensational journalism disease within the media of this country which is more deadly than swine flu, Salman Khan has being criticized for being rude to media, people do not see the underlying reason to this, that few media houses just go overboard all the time to generate news out of nothing and they have being responsible to some extent of holding up his bad boy image.

Yesterday also India TV and Star News were airing clips of Salman Khan roaming around in his society with some black paint on his face which happened to get black since he was busy painting and he was surrounded by few people in his society, meanwhile he pulled off his t-shirt since that too had got smeared in black paint, he was spotted by the camera’s having a puff of smoke.

It was so dramatically presented on India TV I don’t have words for this, read this “Salman ne kiya EID par mooh kala”, “Salman ne utari t-shirt 5 ladkiyon ke beech”, “Yeh dekhiye salman kaise cigarette ke kash bhar rahe hain”  after this if Salman goes mad after the media, it’s no fault of his.

Sach Ka Samna show did send jitters to the babu’s in parliament who demanded ban on show, maybe their leftover consciousness in them caused a fear in their mind, it is true that even I do not have the guts to sit on that hot seat to be truthful, but I would not have a television show cause a upheaval in my personal life, if I am not comfortable I would not watch it, it is that simple, and few couples did take an extreme step watching this show, like the recent death of a lady from Agra, in this current cable generation it is very difficult to classify what classifies to be clean entertainment and what does not, every person would have a differing view to this, the irony here is that we can watch skimpily clad celebrities from a jungle based reality show on Sony but we cannot handle our mental state watching disturbing questions posed to contestants on Sach ka Samna.

A lot of Hindi film industry celebrities are now on twitter and I keep seeing mindless tweets being posted to these Bollywood celebrities, I wonder if a directive could be issued from the GOI to the cabinet ministers to keep away from posting their personal views on any social networking platform, Media had even reported that our PM has a Facebook profile, I am sure he would have received lot of unauthorized “Frand Requests” the same day,

 “Cattle Class” have we ever wondered what makes a “Economy Class” in Airlines, “Sleeper Class” in railways, or any decent facility equipped transport medium turn into “Cattle Class”, it’s WE, US the people who are very well known to abuse facilities given to us and put the blame on the government.

An office colleague of  mine was sharing a experience she had while she was on a family tour to Singapore, she encountered a family which was arguing at a shop counter while settling for a bill which they first told the cashier to make it separate, even though both the ladies were from same family , the poor cashier said the lady that she could have got a rebate of $7 in case her bill was combined since her purchase amount was above $100, both ladies snapped the poor cashier for not informing them beforehand and started demanding $7 rebate on bill, the cashier politely replied that this info is given to travelers at the airport itself.

Another incident she encountered was in Singapore was with another Indian family while she had gone to watch a dolphin show, she reached early and occupied the front row, and an Indian Family came with all the kids, uncles and aunts and they were causing too much commotion from the moment they arrived, they first got seated on a row behind where my colleague was seated with her family and they got up after few minutes from there and took the chairs from the back row and placed it in front of the first row of my colleague, the management staff at the dolphin show saw this and asked them to take the chairs back and get seated in the original place they were assigned to, even there they just kept arguing with the staff, my colleague really felt embarrassed to see fellow Indians behave this way, even the driver who was taking them on Singapore tour while driving through an Indian ghetto called Little India Town, was telling them that Indians when they first came in this country, used to defecate and urinate on roads wearing those lion cloths (lungi), it's only when Singapore government slapped a heavy fine for dirtying the roads they stopped doing it.

It is our such behavior that irks the people in other countries, then we raise questions why are Indians attacked, why are we put down by foreigners, we are LOUD in our mannerisms, unnecessary show off is high on our manner list, it is obvious not all would take this behavior in a positive way, P.Chidambaram was addressing a rally in Delhi today asking Delhi people to practice mannerisms and extend a warm Welcome to visitors coming for Commonwealth games In Delhi,  I really wonder if things were so easy, we would have being a different lot altogether, so goes the line of the song from the movie – Laga Chunari Main Daag “ Hum To Aise Hain Bhaiya, Yeh apna Tashan hai Bhaiya”

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Pirangut Trip Log

It was a very long time since i had been on a outing with my wife after we had our kid, after our trip to Goa last year, i was keen to visit Lavasa at Ekaant Resort, however when i checked in with the hotel reservation desk, they informed me that all their rooms were booked for weekends up to October, so i checked up other hotels in near vicinity of Lavasa and was also thinking of visiting Mulshi, i checked some info about Centurion spring hills holiday resort and decided to give it a try since it was on road to Lavasa, i could not find much reviews about the hotel, however thought to give it a try.

The drive to the hotel is just about an hour from Pune, taking the exit from chandni chowk towards the road to Mulshi, as you cross Manas lake resort, go ahead and once you spot a petrol pump, take the road left ahead which has a sign board indicating route ahead to Centurion Spring Hills resort, I took a holiday package inclusive of room tariff and food given on their website and was offered 20% discount on it, the hotel stay was good, our room was hygenic, with a good view of hills from the gallery, the hotel has a restaurant which has decent variety of food offered, Indian, Continental and Oriental food is available both veg and non-veg, however you do not have much variety in terms of Indian food. If you want to visit Lavasa and cannot get an accomodation there, this hotel is surely a very good option because the surrounding vicinity does not have much to see, but the drive through mutha ghats is very scenic and pleasent towards Lavasa.

It had rained a bit while we caught a nap in the afternoon, the sky was still somewhat cloudy, after we had our tea we set out just to roam around and check if we could spot some bhajiya's at some eatry in the nearby village which is 2kms from the hotel, the roads are very narrow and you need to watch the road while driving, herds of cows and bullocks would keep coming your way from the village, luckily the road condition was good and we stopped by a cliff on the Mutha Ghat road and took some pics from there of the village below, however we could not find a decent food joint to binge on a wadapav or spicy bhajiya's, we did sight some road side eateries but decided to give it a miss just not to take any risk eating outside food due to the on-going swine flu scare in pune.

We came back to hotel after a good drive, clicking pictures of sky turning beautiful by the sunset, we had our snacks at the hotel in evening and the next day after having our breakfast we headed towards Lavasa, the drive was very good throughout, there was lush greenery all around due to rain god's still pouring in the month of september, Mutha Ghat drive was really refreshing and as we approached Lavasa, we took a Halt near the dam at Lavasa foothills, and clicked pictures of the landscape for there, and while we drove few steep curves up towards Lavasa, we realised that we were already late and had to checkout from the Hotel, so we headed back again from the fourth turn i took at the Lavasa road, also i was bit low on my confidence to drive up on very narrow and steep curves to Lavasa, i had never driven in such condition also my car had frequent highway trips and was due for maintainance, i was not willing to take risks with my brakes, so i headed back downwards, rushing back to hotel, clicked some pics of some bird species spotted in the hotel compound, a Munia bird was actually building a nest behind the bathroom glass window, which i recorded in my camera, we had our lunch and checked out coming back to Pune city, the drive back to pune was also good as it had started raining on the way.

I'm planning to visit Lavasa this year maybe in November or December, had a really good trip which was long due for us, check out my trip pics here.

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