Tid Bit from My Diary

There was repeated outage of the internet signal and I kept watching those irritating circles on my screen every time the system tried to retrieve information for me. I became philosophical as I was forced to ask myself the what if question.  Does everything that we believe to be our own, belong to us or its all Maya, an illusion? All documents, important project information, communication and testimonies received through emails are not ours but captives in the servers belonging to Microsoft, Yahoo, Google or some other service provider. Without a proper connection I don’t even stand a chance of viewing them. We work tirelessly and what remains of our hard earned money are nothing but numerals in our bank accounts, other financial institutions, stock exchange or maybe a builder who has agreed to deliver a pricey bit of real estate. Probably you would never dwell there as it’s your second, third or nth such property. The valuables acquired over a lifetime ar...

My Faking News NEW DELHI: Information and broadcasting (I&B) minister is likely to take a view on the contentious issue of whether to proceed with monetizing the crime investigations in the country though selling of broadcasting rights of all information related to the case. The high cost involved in the case of Sheena Bora murder including air travel of her un-extended family has been an eye opener. The ruling party has agreed to bring a bill in the parliament to allow provision for self-financing of such investigations.  A well-informed source in the ministry said that many options has been considered and zeroed down on auctioning of the broadcasting rights. Sources say the Government is ready with a draft on One Crime One Sponsorship (OCOS) scheme in addition to annual broadcasting rights. These could be rolled out as early as January 2016 to take advantage of the usual high crime rates during the New Year revelations. A general consensus exists on this among the ...

I was coming back home yesterday. I looked up at the sky and thought I spotted an animal up there. Felt an irresistible urge to stop for a photo shoot. .. and so did I. Not sure what it was, I consulted my daughter and she said, "It is a wolf. It has pointy ears, two hands and fur like a wolf." How can someone question such conviction!

We were final year students at one of oldest Engineering Colleges of India, near Calcutta and two of us joined our first job as undergraduate trainee in a company in New Delhi by the name of DCS (name changed). This was formed by borrowing the first alphabets from surnames of three partners (Dhawan, Chopra and Sharma) and the firm specialized in Master planning and landscape architecture. We as Bongs, an identity we discovered for the first time after reaching Delhi, grew up with the notion that corruption was rampant in Delhi and any other Indian cities outside the boundary of Bengal. Consequently we too were suspicious about all activities going around us both inside and outside our offices. One evening my friend came back home bewildered.   After a bit of persuasion he confided in us and disclosed what found out by chance. “Our firm is running a racket and have multiple operations under the same name” he said softly. We were all ears to him as he continued, “I heard...

I looked at the Sun while returning home this afternoon and found it setting. It looked lovely. I pulled up the car to the side and took a couple of pictures. I thought I was Sun-struck! Despair : Silly me! I thought I invented the term Sun-struck. I imagined myself at the threshold of gaining fame and prosperity for being able to use my fertile mind in successfully remixing the word Moonstruck. Reasons : I looked up in the dictionary and lo, it enlightened me that this exists in full glory. It refers to someone who is affected or touched by the sun. Incidently it has been in use since 1794. Conclusion : Inventing something is becoming increasingly difficult, 'am say!!!... but we can discover something new in our world every moment.  

Image Source It’s good to learn a new odd thing every now and then. Today I learnt about “Space Burial”. Space burial refers to exactly what its literal meaning is. The cremated remains are carried out to the outer space into the orbit of earth, or other planetary system or maybe into the deep space. But don’t worry, these won’t be scattered into the space to add up to the space debris but they stay sealed within their space vehicle till it reaches its final extra terrestrial destination. More information are available in the wiki site  wiki/Space_burial Private companies such as Celestis, Inc. and Elysium Space offer space burial services. I have found out that the cost starts from around $2000, which is actually quite a small price to pay for being able to flirt with the stars. This is an option, I would not mind considering when time comes for my final destination. The website of Celestis celestis.com  declared that there are two missions scheduled for this year...

 Ashutosh, Santosh and Arijit were not established writers but dreamt to be one since their college days. During the good old days in Kolkata, they used to spend hours in the college street coffee shop arguing. They have now known each other long enough to understand one another and are at peace with their agreement to disagree. Not always though!   Sometime they would find themselves on the brink of publishing their first novel after striking a fantastic plot or encourage one of them to apply for the position of an editor of a leading newspaper. But once out of that place, money and relationship took precedence over writing their journalistic dream always got pushed to the back-burner. After so many long years things haven't changed much in this respect except for the fact that now they have access to portals for publishing their thoughts. The coffee house in the college street is famous as a breeding ground of intellectuals and artists, while at the same time it en...