Author: Hemant Sathe

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The Right Turn – Prologue

I, like most of my friends who have to drive in Indian cities, am a frustrated and stressed guy every morning and evening. Simply because of the utter chaos on the roads. Specially after I returned from about 11 month stay in beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa, this frustration and stress reached new highs as I had first hand experience of the orderly and disciplined traffic. Over past few years although I have become accustomed to the traffic conditions here, the effect of disciplined traffic is etched on my mind.

Few days back one of my friends Sonali blogged about her views on the traffic situation here and how to take it in lighter vein. Even at that time I commented that we should start resisting it rather than just talking about it and treat it as normal or characteristic of India. To help that I am starting a series of posts to right about something I have observed and hopefully all the readers would have.

The right turn (as India drives on left hand side of the road) is a series about showcasing various patterns Indian drivers follow and probable reasons of why they do it that way. Once I started working on this I found so many variations in the right turn based on the importance/ width of the roads, the vehicle you are driving, type of crossing etc. I do not want to educate or give advice on what one should do, but I wanted to put down what is the “Right” way to turn right and I will start with that. Here is some verbose description:

Continue reading “The Right Turn – Prologue”

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Que Sera Sera – 20 yrs after graduation

While driving to office in the morning, I just realized that my entire batch completed 20 years of their graduation this year. So when I started thinking about all my batch-mates and where they are today and what we thought they will be when we were in college.

About 5-6 years back when I was living on planet Orkut, I made some friends and met a few but there was no real value add in being on social network at that time. All you could see around is pictures created with letters, birthday greetings, seasons greeting and so on. Most of those I was contacting / connecting on these networks were already on my cell phone contacts and lifting the phone to talk to them was easier.

As the years are passing, many of the old friends are drifting physically away from each other and suddenly two things happened to me or began happening. I was on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Suddenly this year I have started connecting to old friends again. I used to blog also but the readership was pretty limited. With these social networks I am reaching many more of my old pals. Continue reading “Que Sera Sera – 20 yrs after graduation”

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Jamiat & Vande Mataram Controversy

Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind upholds its fatawa to oppose Vande mataram. What I understand from the news is that they are opposing the national song on the basis that they believe in one god and won’t bow in front of anyone else but the almighty Allah.

If I understand the principle of One GOD for the universe correctly then He is the supreme power, there is nothing beyond Him. He is beyond time, beyond matter, beyond world. Even Hinduism has the principle of One GOD. Adwait Siddhant. (I named my son Adwait)

My simple question is when you accept this principle, then you need to accept that there is no evil because then God does not remain One and Only. There is someone else who is BEYOND GOD. The EVIL. SO the Supreme Power has to be really neutral. Not Good not Bad. Continue reading “Jamiat & Vande Mataram Controversy”