Indian song vs Assamese song!

One day a friend of mine was going with me in my car. He is a Hindi-speaking guy from north India. I was playing an Assamese music CD of Zubin Garg in my car audio system. I offered to change the Assamese song; but he said that he'd like to hear that. After a few minutes, he told me that Assamese songs are as good as Indian songs! I was a bit surprised. What did he mean by Indian songs? I asked him if he meant Hindi songs. He corrected himself and said that he meant Hindi songs. I wanted to argue with him whether he thought that Assam is out of India and in that case I'm a foreigner! I decided not to argue.

A painful moment

Yesterday evening I was driving to EDM mall at Kausambhi from Sector-62, Noida. My parents and Gitika were with me. I stopped at the traffic light after Ghazipur from where I'd take the right turn for EDM mall. Traffic was very chaotic. It was an auspicious day for weddings and wedding processions created these traffic-chaos. I saw some hugely decorated pandals being setup at a little distance away from the traffic light. I'm sure lakhs of rupees, or may be crores, must have been spent on all of these weddings in Delhi today.

All of a sudden, just to my right I saw two little girls trying to sleep on the divider in this busy highway. It was cold outside and they had a small piece of a torn blanket to share with them. The elder of the girls tried to cover the younger with that piece of the blanket; but she herself was shivering from the cold. There were noise, flash lights, cold winds, wedding processions around them. Then the green lights came and I had to drive away from the signal.

I know my country has seen lots of development in past one or two decades. There are new cars, new roads, new malls, apartments, and widespread use of mobile telephones etc etc. There are jobs in IT, ITES, retail, media etc. But at the same time, we've these street children who don't have the basic shelter in life! I always dream of seeing India as a developed country during my lifetime. But can we actually become a developed country when we still have many of our people who don't have a basic needs of life?

I don't know if any of our governments (central/states) is doing anything to help these street children. They might be; but I'm not aware of any such schemes. Our politicians are busy these days in discussions for giving more reservations for backward classes, religious minorities etc. But do these street children have any class or religion? Do any of our law-makers think of these little kids when they discuss about reservations?

We ourselves need to do something to alleviate these problems rather than waiting for actions from government. But I'm not sure how can I help them. I'd love to get involved with any agencies who work for the street children.

Amazing medicine for cough and cold!

A few months back, Gitika (my wife) had a cold. She recovered from the cold; but there was a cough which decided not to leave her. She suffered from it for a couple of days. Then one of her colleagues at Sahara told her about a medicine which Gitika could prepare herself at home. She recovered almost within a day or two after taking that medicine.

I had the same cough and cold this weekend. On 8th Dec night, I could hardly shut my mouth because of the cough. Gitika gave me the same medicine and I recovered very soon.

What is this medicine? Let me tell you about it now. There are just three ingredients:
1)Ginger
2)Jaggery
3)Ghee

Crush some small amount(e.g. 10gm) of ginger and mix it with small amount of jaggery. Then mix it with about half spoon of ghee. Then heat up the mixture for a few minutes and serve it hot.

I took it only once in a day before going to sleep at night. And I was cured of the cough. But you may eat it a few more times if your cough is severe.

I found it really amazing!

Riot

At about 9:30am today, Parthajit called me and said that there was some accident on the Bhangel road. He asked me to take the Expressway while going to office.

It was about 10:55am when I was at the T-point from Sector-82 to Bhangel road. I saw some crowd; which I thought is quite normal at that place. But when I approached the crowd, I saw something crazy. It was actually a riot! A frenzied mob stopped a bus and asked the passengers to get down. They went berserk and started to attack the bus with lathis and stones. There were already about 6 or 7 cars including mine. Mine was the first car facing the mob. Those people threatened us with stones. It was difficult to take an about turn. Somehow I could take an about turn. Then I took the road by the side of sector-82 which reaches the petrol-pump. But I saw crowds all along the road. Then I decided to come back home.

I'm still very frightened. At one point, I thought that I'd leave my car and just run away.