Scraps Stuffs - Random musings from apun ka desh

The deluge - 944 mm in one day.

Most places in India do not receive this much rainfall in the entire year.

No other city in India could have coped with this the way Mumbai has. Bangalore would have been paralyzed for weeks, its roads completely washed out and the IT industry shut down. In Mumbai, people actually went to work in this weather, no excuses.

Yesterday, the police thrashed workers demonstrating outside the Honda plant in Gurgaon. Trouble started when the management fired several workers and they demonstrated. Problem appeared to be that there were few workers and lots of "outsiders". They beat up the local policemen at the police picket. Idiots. The police retaliated and the workers and outsiders were thrashed good and proper. I mean, this is Haryana right? Land of the Jats who cannot be argued with, let alone angered. There was no reason to beat the police up, no wonder they got wild, called for reinforcements and then beat the living daylights out of the workers.

As usual the fucking media was biased. NDTV only showed clips of the workers being beaten up not the initial scenes of them beating up the police. The bleeding heart liberals from NDTV went on and on about how the poor workers were being mercilessly beaten totally ignoring the fact that the workers started it in the first place. Only DD showed the initial new clips.

As usual the fucking communist talking heads appeared on news channels and started siding with the workers who started the problem in the first place. Some of them even threatened the entire lot of Japanese companies who have setup shop there. These anti-nationals will be the ruin of our country. They represent a clear and present danger to national security today because they are holding the central government to ransom.

BTW, Brinda Karat, the wife of CPM big boss Prakash Karat, is the sister of Radhika Roy. Who in turn is the wife of Prannoy Roy who runs NDTV. Such a small world!

Don't expect anything even remotely critical of the commies to be aired on NDTV.

It poured cats and dogs in Mumbai yesterday. According to my mom, it was raining off and on yesterday morning but picked up steam around 2 pm in the afternoon and didn't let up until 2 am. I heard so many stories about my relatives:

1. My brother-in-law couldn't make it home and had to swim over to his uncle's place which was near his workplace. Yep, swim, because the water levels had reached close to first floor levels!
2. One of my aunts reached home from her clinic in the morning spending ten hours in a bus which didn't move at all! All the other passengers in the bus couldn't get out either and had to sleep there!
3. Two of my cousins and a few of their friends had to walk and wade for close to ten kms. to get home. They all started trooping in from 2 am in the morning!
4. My mom was almost out of milk and bread. Ditto relatives. And the worse part is that nothing is likely to be available for at least the next couple of days.

It really rained tons. The good part? At least my mom had uninterrupted power save two short cuts for half an hour duration each. And her phone line didn't go down, so I could call her and check on her.

Wish we had such rain in Bangalore - it would mean a forced vacation since the roads wouldn't be able to handle that much rain and the whole city would have been flooded.

India is already energy starved with huge power deficits that will only increase in the years and decades to come. To bridge the gap we need to

1. Cut down the transmission and distribution losses (euphemism for power theft) considerably - this cannot happen to a large extent because of political reasons (read vote-bank politics)
2. Generate more power at a faster rate

We have various methods of generating power with their consequent pros and cons

1. Hydel power - unpredictable because due to the large scale climate changes that are occuring, rainfall patterns will become more unpredictable, displace lots of people with consequent resettlement issues, lots of arable land is lost and lots of forests are usually lost too
   
2. Coal fired thermal power - damaging environmental effects due to the huge amounts of greenhouse gases that are released. Besides, the coal available in India has high ash content that needs to be removed and this is costly.
3. Naptha/Natural gas fired thermal power - not available in India in the required quantities yet. Imported fuel supply is unpredictable because gas tankers are vulnerable and pipelines are politically sensitive and who knows whether they will see the light of day.
4. Nuclear power - getting cheaper, able to build them faster, pretty safe but with long term environmental consequences of spent fuel which is highly radioactive. Positives are that no greenhouses are released, we have the technology to build what we want now and the research capability to be able to build what we need in the future.

We seem to be taking the view that nuclear power is the way ahead and that's why the nuclear deal with the US is so important in terms of what we are supposed to be getting. Since we don't have enough enriched uranium in the country (what with our enrichment capabilities being pilot scale/lab scale) we need to get these from outside. The problem is that the Nuclear Supply Group (NSG), a cartel of suppliers of nuclear materials and technology that was specifically created to deny these technologies and materials to India, will not sell us the enriched uranium we need. This deal allows the US to negotiate with the stakeholders - US Congress and the NSG countries - to sell us all the enriched uranium that we need. This will enable us to develop bigger nuclear reactors (assuming we are able to handle the expense) which generate more power. This will ameliorate to a certain extent, the power deficit.

What we are giving up in return is less clear. Separation of power and military reactors is one stuff that we need to do, as per the agreement. Agreeing to full scope safeguards including intrusive inspections without warning as per the additional protocol to be signed with the IAEA is another thing that we need to do. Its not clear how difficult this is to do. What is clear to me is that this separation will forever close down our option to use reactor grade plutonium for nuclear weapons, unless we cite supreme national security imperatives and say "Balls to the world".

As usual the devil is in the details and needless to say caveat emptor.

Yesterday was nice and rainy, started around 2.30 in the afternoon and didn't let up for long until late at night. It rained off and on. Sharp showers, then a lull, then moderate showers and a drizzle. My part of Bangalore received a thorough soaking and the results showed in the state of the roads, from bad to worse. But what the hell, I enjoyed the rains so I didn't mind the atrocious streets.

Last Sunday, at around 4.20 in the afternoon, while lying on my bed, I heard the following birds

1. Red wattled lapwing
2. White breasted kingfisher
3. Grey partridge
4. Coppersmith
5. Common crow
6. Common mynah
7. Ashy prinia

1. Too soon to tell
2. Too late to cancel
   

1. Exhilaration
2. Extravagant goals
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and promotion for the non-participating
   

Watched Sarkar last weekend. It left me slightly underwhelmed but it was nice all the same. Decent performances all around. And it was a short movie as well, so it was never boring. We were all surprised when the interval came, the first half was so engrossing.

We had the first "real monsoon rains" yesterday. It rained a whole lot in the afternoon and in the evening. Towards about 7.30 pm I heard a voice outside my house yelling that a cobra was loose outside and then I heard another neighbour, formerly in the army, enquire about this. I had a real fear that they would all try to kill the poor snake so I ran out. Sure enough there was a three and a half feet long cobra in the gutter and the guy who came across the snake said that it was crossing the road in front of him. He sure was lucky not to have been bitten because as usual there was no power supply and the street was dark. The house right next door doesn't have a UPS, so there was no light coming from its windows as well.

Another neighbour came out and started saying that it would be best to kill the snake as he had children! Idiot!

I called Saleem Hameed to ask him if he could catch the snake because if it was not caught it was sure to be beaten to death. Saleem was stuck in Bannerghata and couldn't make it so he gave me another number to call, which I did. Tarun, very kindly, agreed to come at once. He got there in about half an hour, in his dad's borrowed Santro and promptly caught the agitated snake - we didn't allow the snake to move much since we didn't want to lose sight of it - in an empty pillow cover and tied it up with a piece of ribbon. Good job!

Apparently snakes shouldn't be caught and then released in an area alien to them. This is something I agree with completely - snakes should be left well enough alone unless they enter a house. The recent heavy rains might have flooded its burrow forcing it out and on the street.

This cobra was a very beautiful creature and I'm glad he wasn't harmed.

What the Brits did by trying to police their own country so that terrorists have a tough time there, but not sharing information with India, is that they reduced the threat to their country by shifting the threat here.

Not in my backyard seems to be their motto. Good going guys.

Yesterday there were attacks by unknown disaffected people in the UK. They attacked Londonistan with explosive devices. Several people were killed and scores injured. UK needs to hold a peaceful dialogue with these people, understand their grieviences and take steps to remove them. Only then will these attacks stop, there is no military solution to these problems.

Take that, you motherfucking BBC!

Bastards have the gall to state that disaffected youths attacked the temple at Ayodhya. Well, well, well, terror comes back to bite those who advocated inaction in the face of grave attacks on our people, culture and religion.

Personally, I vote for our government to make all the right noises but do zilch to help the Brits track down the perpetrators. We should do with the Brits exactly what they did to us in our fight against terrorism. The Brits have allowed all sorts of venom to be spewed against India from mosques in Londonistan as long as it didn't affect them. To reciprocate, no help should be provided to them.

The initial three and a half kms. of road from my house towards anyplace of consequence is in a total mess. It was already bad with huge potholes and heavy truck traffic trying to make the potholes into craters. Now the bastard authorities have dug up the best portions of the road too :-( Granted that the plan appears to be road widening, but its taking place at a glacial pace, leading to traffic snarls and tons of dust. Talk about making a bad situation worse!

The only solution to Bangalore's mess is to get the heads of the state government, BDA, BMC and the mayor on the street and publicly flog them. Every person who is suffering due to pathetic infrastructure should be entitled to one crack at the whip.

If that doesn't work, then more drastic action needs to be taken.