Bangalore Pundit

Lalu was campaining in Bihar with a Osama look-alike (if you haven't read that news yet). Meanwhile several trains were de-railing or disappearing in various parts of the country, that is a whole different story. Here is what LK Advani has to say about it:

Its a crying shame. Irfan pathan or Sania Mirza can be role model for
Indian Muslim youth, not Osama.

My friend sent this link, which is quite amusing. This pakistani dude finds anyone taking to the begging 'profession' as a social evil. If you are not

• deaf
• dumb
• and/or living under a rock in tora bora caves

you by now can realise that, the social evil is the mullahs and the Musharraf who is clinging to power showing one finger to the mullahs, one to the Paki public and the other to India and rest of the world.

Read on here:

With the arrival of holy Ramadan the number of beggar has once againincreased in all the metropolitan cities of Pakistan. These days theyare everywhere; bus stands, post offices, railways station, mosquesand markets are their favorite haunts. Beggars in the market pursueyou like a shadow. It is impossible to move about peacefully. They arealso present on all the Chorangi's of the metropolitan cities. If youshow generosity and open your purse; you are surrounded by a host ofthem. These beggars include even small children and a large number offemales. The condition is much worse in the holy cities of SaudiArabia where we found (usually) Pakistani beggars. They do not evenbother about begging in the Holy Khana Ka'bah. These Pakistani beggarsusually arrive in Saudi Arabia on an Umrah visa and then remain therefor a month or two. Since a large number of Pakistani devotees visitthe holy land during the month of Ramadan for Umrah and most of themare well-off people, the beggar succeed in securing their alms. Thepractice has been going on for many years but the sources say thatthis time the number of beggars from Pakistan are astronomical. Thereason behind the increasing numbers may be the increasing rate ofunemployment because of which sometimes even white collared men do nothesitate to do begging in foreign countries. A prompt action on thepart of government is required to check this social evil. -WAJIHAJAWAID, Karachi, via e-mail, October 21.

According to Govindraj Ethiraj (a reporter at CNBC TV18 India), your have a competitive advantage when you make people feel at home. He has a good blog to follow here.

Read the post. It has a pic of the Palm Meadows, the California style villa community that set an example for others in Bangalore.

This is really taking it too far. I think we should stop the screening of overly melodramatic bollywood movies to our soldiers. Many Indian newspapers and Pakistani newspaper Dawn report that Indian soldiers crossed Loc to help re-build Pakistani bunker! Why? Should we be helping civilians or soldiers on the other side?

The soldiers crossed a bridge that spans the Line of Control, Col Seghal
said."A few soldiers from the Pakistani side shouted for help to our boys to
clear the debris and in adverse weather conditions our soldiers went across to
re-do their flattened bunkers so that they could sleep at night," he said."If
they (the Pakistani soldiers) want our help and if we want their help it is no
problem," said an Indian army commander as helicopters from the two sides
crisscrossed the usually heavily militarised LoC — something that would usually
involve being shot down

But Pakistanis are quick to deny it (as many bloggers pointed out). BBC has a story

He said the lullaby contest was in line with singing allowed by Islam, which was
to strengthen family ties."This is important. For example, a husband returns
home tired and when the wife sings to him, he can sleep soundly. "When he
awakes, he is a happy man and this will help build a great relationship between
husband and wife.

Read it here

I don't know if there is any other country (other than India) where so many effigies are burnt for some random reason or the other. It is so much, so that I think there is a huge market waiting to be tapped!

Lets just look at the 'effigy burnings' this week (the ones that caught my eyes)

• Manmohan Singh (for selling out to the US, by the commies)
• PC (for selling out India, by the commies)
• Mani Shankar Aiyar (for the fuel prices, by the commies again)
• Actress Khushboo (for making some true statements about women's sex lives, by various quasi-militant tamil outfits)
• Greg Chappel (by Ganguly's supporters)
• Saurav Ganguly (by people who are fed up with Ganguly)

Now, use the oppurtunity and make some quick bucks and send me a contribution for bringing this out.

Stallman seems to be annoyed at Canada and the enterprise that makes too much money with HP. Read and and have fun!

It has gems like, "Making Canada respect human rights will be hard". How about USA and rest of the world? Is it any easier?

Stuff that caught my eyes today in the newspaper:

• Businessmen are coming into the city for business and fly back to Chennai for the night's stay. You know why? No hotel rooms available!! Even if they are available, the ARR (Average Rent per Room) is around Rs 8500. Leela Kempinski is 15000 Rs per night if you book on short notice. In Chennai the rates are 60% of Bangalore - can you believe it?
• No new infrastructure project actually started in the past one year! Incidentally it is the same time Dharam Singh government completed a year in office....quite an achievement!

I was expecting this to happen, hope that sooner or later this becomes a phenomenon. IIT Madras reports 40% less interest in going abroad (US especially).

A comment I would agree with fully (with my own experience)

"IITian Arun John, a software engineer who worked in Texas for seven years, is one of them. Late last year, he came to settle down in Bangalore: "The US is a good place to spend some years. Not to work your whole life. I hated the idea of working for a lifetime in the US," he says."

Article here on Rediff