Life is…

Two of my friends started a new website PunjabiFirst. As of now only blog has been set up. I am also one of the contributors. Soon we hope to put other content also.

Do pay a visit !

http://blog.punjabifirst.com

Self explanatory, i think

Attaullah Khan has been one of my favourite singers since i started listening to music. Today i watched a ghazal sab maya hai on youtube. Its written by Insha and rendered beautifully bu Attaullah Khan. A must watch if you are a good music admirer:

Then i watched another video of the same ghazal which seems to be a newly recorded one. I was so sad to see that Attaullah Khan is getting older. The difference in his voice is clearly visible.

I wish he continues to sing for years…Insha’Allah !

I read almost daily in newspapers, magazines or watch on TV that India is progressing at this rate etc etc…describing things in some financial language that is away from the understanding of a common man like me. I was just thinking about this so called progress and thought about writing it here. Some of the common things i see, observe or read about almost daily, in no order are:

• First page of the newspaper is full of news of murder, robbery and rape.
• Daily there are some girls being killed due to dowry.
• People have become so heartless. Nobody cares about what is happening around.
• Let there be an accident on the road. I don’t think there will be someone coming forward to help. Recently a man died in Delhi after he met with an accident and nobody came to help him.
• From top to bottom, each and every system is becoming (”has become” in fact) corrupt.
• Nobody wants to obey any traffic rules. Try to observe the scene on a red light. Bigger is the car more they mis-behave. That means more money and access to best things just snatches whatever little functionality of brain you have.
• How many people think about the thing called “my country” ?
• Can we just guess the degree of selfishness in us ? To what extent we can go for little of our advantage ?
• Where is that so called great Indian culture ?
• See politicians of this country. All of them are enjoying the luxury life ? Who, what the heck country ?
• Use a public transport and see the behaviour of people and driver/conductor ?
• See how many people are homeless and sleeping on the roads/footpath ?

Just few of the things which came to my mind in these 10 minutes. And then we say we are progressing ?

or creating multi story buildings means progress ? I guess no…

Well, it does somewhat look like Baby’s day out

Me, my friend Rajesh and his wife planned to go to see Lodhi Garden (in Delhi) and then have dinner at Lodhi Garden restaurant. We had only one bike so decided to take an auto and left for Lodhi Garden. Very first moment the adventure started. He took us from some stupid route and we didn’t get a bit of an idea where we were going ? Finally he reached near about but had to ask again. So after asking 2-3 people we were at the gate of Lodhi Garden restaurant.

When we entered the main gate, after looking around, a nice calculation went through our minds that it might be really expensive. Very nice & impressive ambiance. So we were happy. They have set tables and chairs in open. It was looking really sweet. So we asked them about sitting there. But the guy told that it was booked for some party and we couldn’t sit there.

So there was an option to sit in the hall: either ground floor or first floor. We entered the hall and went upstairs. That guy lighted the candle and gave us the menu. It was a full size, pretty heavy & complex 8-10 pages book. I just started going through the pages. Hmmm…the prices were pretty nice and moreover i couldn’t find anything like snacks and dinner. Oh ! it might be drinks only menu ? I asked Rajesh to ask about it and the waiter said “Yes sir…i will just give you the main menu”

Ah…the main menu was there. It was comparatively a fatter book of same size. Again the same thing: i went through the pages and could hardly understand what they were offering . Then on one page i noticed “Iced tea”…pretty recognized stuff…but for INR 395. So it was almost clear that it was time to leave as even menu was not understandable properly. We hurriedly left from there and came to Lodhi Garden.

It was already dark outside so not much fun over there also. We exited from another gate and didn’t even know where we were ? Again we waited for an auto but . Then we saw a bus and got into it but ahhh ! it was going in the opposite direction so we had to get off at the next stop. There were some chances for getting an auto. Finally got an auto and we went to a Mall, actually planning for dinner as we knew about a food court there. We reached there and found there was no north indian food and only outlet serving it was closed

Then…another thought…i knew about another restaurant called Punjabi Rasoi…so we headed for that to find

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.

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that it was also closed

Then we headed for 4th target Bikaner Wala even knowing that we might not get a seat. Yea the same thing happened…long queues…by now Rajesh’s wife was in pretty sweet mood We waited for 10-15 minutes and thought about leaving. While leaving she (Rajesh’s wife) blasted the guy at the counter that you have no space even to sit. There was another lady customer standing and she said “yeh bhi kya kar sakte hain” (What can they also do ?) and she said “I am not talking to you”

Then we headed for our 5th target which was a simple and genuinely priced one. So finally we had our dinner there and came back by 10:30 PM.

Surely our day out