I hate blogging about ‘people’s demise’ on my blog! Just couldn’t help this.

“Veteran Congress leader and Khairtabad MLA, Mr P. Janardhan Reddy, died of a massive cardiac arrest here on Friday. He was 59 and leaves behind his wife, Sulochana, four daughters and a son. The funeral will be conducted with State honours at Amberpet on Saturday. A mass leader, Janardhan Reddy held sway over city politics for nearly three decades. His sudden death was a shock to the people of the city.

The news of his sudden death was relayed to the GHCC meeting by Congress MP, V. Hanumantha Rao. The meeting was then stopped. His family members including son, Vishnuvardhan Reddy, rushed to the hospital and cried inconsolably. The popular leader’s supporters too broke down and beat their chests raising the slogan,”PJR Amar Hai. ”

source: Andhracafe.com and mynews.in

May his soul R.I.P!

The interesting part is that we have a quasi strike here on the roads of Hyderabad! Most of the shops , even petty footpath ones have been compelled to bring down shutters. Banks, Medical shops et al! How silly can people get?

Agreed his supporters are deeply mourned by his death. I would be too, HAD i known about him and his services. But what is the point in bringing down day to day activities in the city just because their leader has expired. This guy popped because of a natural cause. No one shot him , It wasn’t an attempted murder, It wasn’t a suicide. The docs have verified it to be due to cardiac arrest and still, we have this wonderful , sincere, coveted, devoted, true Hyderabadi followers display their misery by rampaging on the streets. True CITIZENS that they are. Huh! Ah! Did I tell you that my Aunt actually found a couple of Ayyappa devotees arguing with a Bank Manager to close the bank for the day?

I’m just waiting for tomorrow’s News paper headlines. The congress is gonna blame BJP for not arranging proper facilities , not giving him due respect.. blah blah blah.The BJP is gonna refute the statements. His son is gonna join the fray. Contest for the next elections, Get sympathy votes. Wins it , becomes the people’s man and we know what follows !

Wonder what would be the state of affairs had he been assasinated!!

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There’s this wonderful group called Adventura for adventure freaks that operates from Bangalore. So if you are into trekking and stuff and stay somewhere near bangalore it’s high time you enroll yourself in this group. They arrange treks in and around Bangalore almost every weekend. Even if you haven’t really been on a trek and are pretty much a novice, you can still enroll yourself. Each trek outing is classified as Beginners, Intermediate and the like and I believe they’ve got gears for beginners too.

Join the following group to enroll yourself: adventura@googlegroups<dot>com

I haven’t really been there out with them as I’d been in Bangalore only for a brief span of three months and odd. I wonder why we don’t have any such active group here in Hyderabad. Or do we?

A couple of my friends and I plan to start one. Nothing has materialized though. Shall let you know in case anything props up.

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Finally, Installed Gutsy on my system today! After failed attempts to install it last weekend, I was a bit apprehensive this time. But today, two minutes into the install I realized where I was faltering. I’d created four partitions on my Hard disk of 30 Gigs each for Windows. Fiesty was running on the remaining 40Gigs. Last week during the installation I’d configured the setup to create a Primary ext3 partition instead of making it a logical one.That was what was leading the setup to freeze! Surprisingly I was never warned during the initial stages. Anyways, I fortunately happened to notice the goof up this time and then the rest of the Installation was a breeze! Flat 10 minutes and I had Gutsy live and kicking!

The first thing I’d looked for after logging in was to check out the classy desktop effects that Gutsy comes bundled with. But to my dismay the OS threw up messages telling me Advanced Desktop effects could not be configured. It didn’t even specify the cause. A bit of Googling brought out the hidden mite – My Hardware settings were blacklisted since it couldn’t support both video rendering and classy desktop effects at the same time. But then I just wanted to find a workaround to get things working. Finally I happened to find one in the Ubuntu Forums itself. All I had to do was to deactivate the Hardware config. check that Compiz by default does when initiated. This could be done by running the following command in the terminal.

mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz/ && echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

Once that roadblock had been dealt with I only had to install the Gnome Compiz manager through the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic installs are cakewalks. All relevant dependencies get installed and broken installations are pretty rare. Installation of the Compiz manager led to the creation of a Preferences tab in the Advanced Desktop settings. This is where real FUN starts. A bit of tweaking and you have your desktop at your whims! I’ll probably let the pictures do the talking!

The Workaround explicitly mentions that crashes are prone to occur if both video and Advanced Desktop settings are run at the same time. So keep in mind to get back to the default settings when you plan to watch videos on your Gutsy. A pain but still worth it!

There’s still a lot more to explore ( or should i say exploit ) . Will get back if I happen to find something interesting!

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I picked an auto today to get back home from Vidyanagar. Was really tired and was in no mood to get back hanging in those RTC buses. I randomly stopped an auto and got into it. The driver had his son by his side. They were having muffled conversations and I just couldn’t help not listening. His wife was terminally ill and things were really getting worse. They didn’t have money to pay hospital bills and that’s the reason why he’s still driving people to their destinations just to earn some money to make ends meet. What was more touching was half way through the driver started singing songs loudly to cheer up the kid! It was probably a way of giving vent to his emotions. What else could he do!

Today I realized, there’s a lot that we get to learn from these people. Busy in our own world all that we’re bothered of is about the fare that they charge us. None of us ever try to get into their shoes and understand the reason for their demand. Driving is their only means of livelihood and it’s business for them. Something that their family depends upon. Moreover the onus is higher since they are more or less on a lower rung economically. I don’t mean to say just pay what he’s asking for. It’s a different case if he’s demanding exuberant amounts, But why squabble for a few rupees? It wouldn’t do you any good but then it could mean a world of a difference to him!!

Just hoping his wife gets well soon!

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Ghai hamari mataa hai. Ghai shaakahaari jaanvar hai. Ghai ghaas-phoos khati hai. Ghai doodh deti hai. Ghai khali ya safed rang hoti hai…

I still remember that wonderful essay I’d written as a test to gain admission to Sandeepam Vidhyalaya! I was reminded of this episode today during my French class session. We were asked to write a short composition using a couple of basic sentences on some famous personality and even before I could pool in the Je’s, Il’s, fait’s, suis et al, my thoughts started drifting back to that particular day 10 years back.

My bro and I were in Johnson Grammar High School, an ICSE board school till my fifth grade. It was a common belief that syllabus in Math was much better in SSC schools when compared to ICSE ones and since my bro was in his seventh by then, people in my family wanted him to shift over to the state syllabus By default I had to tag along as no one ever trusted me, thanks to my consistent flunking in quite a few papers. But for Math, English and Biology, I barely managed to pass other subjects. The moment I got to know I’d have to write an admission test to gain an entry into the school I was all tears! They wanted to test my hindi. Something that I was extremely bad at then .

Mom , Bro and I went over the Princi’s office. My cousin who was then studying in that school introduced us to her. Both of us were asked to go into separate rooms. I was given a paper and asked to write a composition on ‘Gomaatha-The cow’. This was one standard composition that I’d been learning by rote for quite sometime in JGHS. Nevertheless, my written hindi was pathetic! Real pathetic! Bharathi Miss , the then Vice Princi evaluated my sheets right in front of me. I still remember that ‘WTH!’ reaction on her face when she was skimming through my composition. . I was half expecting to get rejected and I wanted to in fact. The very thought of meeting new people, getting accustomed to a new environment and all that was no way close to appealing. All I wanted was to get back to the 5th bench of class VI-A the next day. But unfortunately Bharathi’s mind worked the other way round – If my bro was intelligent , there’s a high probability that his sibling would do just the same with some help. How could SVHS afford to lose such brilliant students? They’re in!. She comes out and tells my mom that though my Hindi was real bad, I’d be given admission. My bro’s admission stays granted without any hitches.

Under the persistent guidance of my Hindi teacher Mrs Sahani, I got a decent command on the language . Things slowly changed for good and I surprisingly started performing well. All thanks to the Cow!

At times, I wonder how some incidents just get etched in your memory!!

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