Tid Bit from My Diary

I will start with this news excerpt from News channel and it says it all. Following this is a set of instructions that shows a way to use the symbol in our PC. Indian Rupee finally gets its symbol NDTV Correspondent, 15 July, 2010 Finally, the Rupee will have a symbol like the Dollar ($) or the Euro (€) or the Pound (£). The Cabinet today finalised the design for the Rupee. IIT post-graduate Uday kumar's entry has been selected out of five shortlisted designs as the new symbol for the Indian Rupee. The government had organised a symbol design competition with a prize money of Rs 2.5 lakh. Five designs were shortlisted from a competition and all new notes will bear the design finally approved. The growing influence of the Indian economy in the global space is said to have prompted this move that will result in the Indian rupee joining the select club of global currencies like the US dollar, the British Pound, European Euro and Japanese Yen that have unique symbols. The ab...

People say that every good action of a man comes back to him multiplied several times more . Something similar happened to me last week. I used to collect postage stamps as a hobby when I was a kid. When time came to leave home for college, I somewhat detached myself form my worldly possessions and handed them over the stamp album to my kid brother. Soon it was his turn to leave home he handed them over to one of his juniors and thus the collection left our home. Old habits die hard - that’s what they say! A decade later I restarted my hobby of stamp collection. Not as actively as before but as passionately as ever. One close friend of mine recently decided to hang up his gloves and give up hobby as well as his collection. This doesn’t interest my son and daughter, he said. So he asked me if I would take it over. I was overwhelmed and more than eager to give his collection a new home. Last week I received the first batch of his lovely collection and it made me smile to say the least. I...

These are very hot this summer days here in Doha. The mercury has been soaring very high. I have recorded 50 degrees twice during the last two months or so. Since my Mitsubishi is carrying me without any complaint in this rough weather, I thought she was due for some well deserved therapeutic treatment this morning. This morning I took my mate for a bath. There are not many places around here where you have this facility. Not many that we am aware of. I am probably right as even on the unholy hour of 7:30 am in a weekend morning I had to queue up behind 2 cars to have my turn. Even after reaching my turn, it is a considerable amount of time to wait as it is quite a task to get her cleaned inside out. It reminded me of my days as a regular smoker when we used to light a cigarette on every occasion. When I had nothing else to do I would light one. I would have smoked 4 - 5 cigarettes this morning. I should have had brought something along to read even though it was quite diffic...

T ime is always at a high premium for all of us! But these days I feel it more than ever before. Not because I have reached that part of life when one graduated from “growing up” to “getting old” but for the unique reason of not being able to manage my time too well. I have started to realize that it does not belong to me anymore and life is getting over between rushing to work and hurrying back home. The most irritating moment of the life on the road is perhaps when you are approaching a crossroad with the traffic light green but the car in front of you is moving with a very slow speed or has decided to slow down. It was one of those days when I was about to lose another 2 minutes of my life just after having lost once in the previous signal. The car ahead of me was moving at an irritable slow speed with no intention of dashing for the green light. She finally reached the signal and stopped as the light was changing to amber. Usually motorist in this part of the world don't sto...

A couple of weeks back I took a break of 10 days and went to Kolkata. It was a great feeling to be back and spend some time with the family after a solitary stint here. We took a step to further enhance the experience and made a dash to Agartala, the place where we spend our childhood days. It was an indescribable feeling to be back in the places which meant so much to life there after more than 15 years. Those were the places like my school, the streets, the play grounds, and above everything our home where I lived for so many years. I will not go into describing that aspect in this post. I wish to introduce two temples from my childhood land. The first one is the Tripureswari Temple the temple of the Mother Goddess of Tripura who protects all her children. The other is the  Bhubaneswari  temple immortalized by the great Rabindranath Tagore in his novel 'Rajarshi'. Agartala is the state capital of Tripura an erstwhile princely state now an undisputed and integral part of Indi...

Petrol... petrol... give (pronounced G-EVE) more petrol... Do not hold the steering so hard... If you required so much of strength then no women would be driving a car... Give indicator....... stop the indicator baba! Do not look behind while taking a left or right turn... even if Sultan Qaboos is behind you, he will stop! These are some of the dialogues that one has to get used to hearing if he has to take classes to get a Driving license in Oman. Muscat is a friendly place and for me it was all the more friendly as it was full of old friends. The piece of inside news that I received after landing at Seeb International Airport was that having a driver’s license was like having another degree. I was quite excited at the idea of giving a test without having to study for long. I smiled to myself and said it must be as easy as a blood test! But the reality struck me quite soon. Our family never owned a car but my father had a Government car at his disposal which it used to be park...

koii dost hai na raqiib hai teraa shahar kitanaa ajiib hai Soon it is going to be three months that I have stepped into this new country and this how I can describe this place today. The line above is borrowed from a poem which has been immortalized as a gazal by the famous singer Jagjit Singh. For those who are not conversant with Ürdu I would like to translate it into English. Your city is quite a strange land where there are no friends neither are there any enemies… now Raquib is a word which cannot be truly expressed by saying enemy. Enemy poses a threat to you and might hurt you or inflict deadly blow. While one’s raquib is the man who is loved by the girl you have fallen for. This can be a cocktail of a competitor and an opponent. … so it is quite an intense word ... isn’t it! I am having such a feel about this place because I find people here are too busy with their own life and their circle of trust. I still haven’t figured it out if this is a big city syndrome or a smal...