Life's a crazy mess!

Hey guys, I'm back...was a little busy with life and hence didn't really get the time to blog. Alright, first for some news, the queen of England has invited me for tea ;) So maybe the queen of England in reality didn't but my cutie pie niece did...and I'm off the UK for a holiday! Yep, will be off in a week's time and will get back prbbly sometime next month. Shall blog from there as often as I can and keep you posted on how pretty the daffodils are.....uhm..alright other stuff too.

Started the day on a very wrong note today....had to drop my dad off at the airport and since I happened to have an Indian license, I can't drive a car :) Just kidding, so maybe i can drive a car, but well I don't have one and hence can't get anywhere. We rented a cab to get to the airport and on the way back I made a huge mistake of responding to the cabbie's conversations. Ended up getting pretty pissed off and well I still am a bit.

It all started off with a discussion of the recent revision of fuel prices here. Hey I agree it may not be thoroughly justified, 'coz all of us have to end up paying a huge sum from our tiny pockets on fuel, which is an essential commodity. But when you think in numbers, it doesn't seem so bad, considering the fact that the oil prices have risen a whole 10$ a barrel while the increase has been restricted to just 3Rs a litre. Yeah I know, there is a huge difference between a barrel and a litre and they could have kept it a notch lower. Oil prices have been on the rise for the past few months and continues to rise all over the world, and India ain't the only place this is happening. Why else would you explain ppl around most developed nations switching over to more efficient engine technologies and environment friendly means of transportation (read as walking). Our country, atleast my state seems to think otherwise. Guess the communism inside them just makes them want to give everything off for charity and put our government in a greater loss than it already is in. Alright so they want the excise duty reduced, I agree that could help. And I really wish the Central Govt does take a look into that....but seriously, will that end all our problems? I don't think so, if its not fuel, its something else! Yesterday was a state-wide protest on the same and none of the taxis, ricks, and private buses were running. Thankfully Trivandrum has a mass transit system that is run by the State Govt, and hence we weren't affected, but the rest of the state suffered....and well this ain't the first time!

Most people here love talking about how China did this and China did that and then about how Russia did this and Russia did that...hey im no anti-communist, infact I was a pro-communism guy till I got down to Kerala (odd isn't it, most ppl change otherwise...guess my Civics texts had me fooled for a while). At present I just can't understand why each party in our country seems to be contradicting their views which they held when they were the opposition. So China has been growing fast, well so have we...the figures show, and that's one of the reasons why Foreign investments in the country are on the rise and that's the reason why most of us have jobs with pays that our parents and grandparents couldn't dream of when they were youths. China has a lovely way of giving everything to their ppl, but they expect their ppl to do their duties perfectly as well, if not....guess I wouldn't know much but I've heard its hell...Indians on the other hand love getting freebies and goodies out their way, but if you ask them to take a walk down the park and buy a newspaper on the way, they'd say its none of their business! You have people here who actually run around protesting for "God knows wat" just 'coz they get a free meal and 50 bucks at the end of the day (at most times even they have no idea wat they're protesting for!). If they had used their senses and just worked for something that could prove to be productive eventually, we'd prbbly never have had to protest in the first place! What's worse? There are people here who complain about VAT. Guess the rates aren't really all that sensible but well I'm glad they're finally auditing taxes...and hopefully within a year or two the rates should come further down rather than the usual up. More than 50% of our population doesn't really pay taxes properly. Do you?? Why even I doubt if I do. Lets take a normal procedure of buying a computer for example (alright so maybe its not normal but this is one instance i could think of), most shops ask you a question before you pay up....do u want a bill? Uhm...if this was any country besides India, the consumer would have screamed the hell out and probably called up some friends in higher places 'coz of that question, but we indians casually ask if the rates would be lower, to which we get a response that we don't need to pay the sales tax then and we readily agree to purchase a 20k-40k commodity without paying a penny to the government. The government at this point must have an idea to probably build a lovely new road from you home to your office, but its short of funds thanks to you not putting in your part. We end up with a road that has more holes than the moon has craters and end up protesting for the same (oh yes, ppl in here would protest for that). I pity our finance minister who tries so much to get some sense into our ppl's heads about this fact, 'coz well as we are, we just prefer taking everything for granted!

Anyways, I put the conversation to an end when he actually mentioned that he would prefer having the rules of Saudi Arabia in India (no offense to those from KSA). hmmmm...so i guess he's a guy who prefers being held on four sides by bars rather than the freedom which our forefathers so bravely fought to achieve. The air we breath, the words we speak and the thoughts we let out....our freedom! Just can't understand how ppl could have such thoughts crossing their minds. Trust me guys, I've seen things there and I've met people from all over the world (Indians ie.) who just wanna get back and get work here if our country is ready to provide them a decent living. Something that at present seems possible, provided we do something. :) You have no idea how proud I felt when I was in Abu Dhabi talking about the oppurtunities that our country promises us now, our IT sector (it has its problems but its great)...our airlines industry....and almost everything under the sun. Life's just so much better here and we've got all the freedom our heart desires. And yet we complain about the same freedom we take for granted! Oh well.....this is out to deaf ears...so might as well shut up.



Disclaimer:

To all those from the US (including any Govt Agency that may be reading this including Blogger.com's administrators), these are individual views and not meant to cause hatred, but just love for my country. I have absolutely nothing against any of the nations I've mentioned in the article or yours and respect the way of life in the respective countries with all my heart. All I wish to express in this is my frustration at my own people who so readily complain about their Govt, when they are not ready to do anything themselves.