Last week, we decided to go out, and since there were quite a mumber of new malls in the town, we thought we'd visit one such mall.
Being a Saturday,we did expect a few traffic problems,parking problems and ofcourse a huge crowd at the mall.With the heavy rains, it has become a nightmarish experience to travel on the roads of Kolkata. And moreover with the tram lines being repaired and relaid in most places of the city,it has only added to the woes.
My husband had a wonderful time driving, trying dodge the water-filled potholes, trying hard to avoid the eccentricities of our favourite, reckless taxi drivers(who by the way consider they own the roads and all the other vehicles on the road, since they dont care if they brush against a few while they drive hysterically),and at the same time the tram lines which are in the middle of the roads,all this while its raining outside.
One might wonder why we chose such a day to go out,but the point is any day at any time this is the situaution in Kolkata,especially during monsoons(and yeah, we have rains here even in winters sometimes).
After about one hour on the road,for a 10km stretch, we were still about a few 100 yards from the mall and then there was this huge traffic jam completely halting all the vehicles. A few cars,including us were lined up for a U-turn,some had to take a right turn, some had to go straight and a few had to take a left turn. But the traffic constable chose to consider the traffic on the opposite side, completely ignoring this side bringing all the vehicles to a grinding halt for more than 40 minutes.
After all this chaos, we finally made it to the mall's parking lot and managed a spot faster than we expected. The moment we entered the mall,for a minute I felt I was in 'Kumbh mela' with people everywhere.The main motivation for us to go there was the huge book store we had heard about, but everything else was dampener.Every corner of the mall was occupied including the food court with each counter having serpentine queues and thats when we decided we should head back home where one can breathe and eat in peace.
What had to be a nice outing ,left us frustrated.

Congratulations to Abhinav Bindra!!!
He has indeed made us all very proud!! Incredible!!
This win at the Olympics will help us shift our focus to more deserving sports and athletes who can be big achievers if they have the right training and encouragement.

It has been 9 years since the Kargil war, which was in 1999.
Every year Vijay Divas is celebrated to commemorate our victory and to salute our brave soldiers who were wounded and have lost their lives for their country.
But for the families of those soldiers who have lost their dear ones is an everyday battle since theirs is a personal loss.

My husband was injured in the war, and even today the scars of the injuries remain.

I am posting an article from Hindu,which was published in 2000, with the interview of my husband, Major Shyam vijay Simha, who was then Captain.

Click here to read the article

I guess, we as a nation must be proud that we have soldiers who risk their everything for our country.

Khel Ratna for Dhoni??

Today's news headlines screamed about Dhoni being honoured with the Khel Ratna Award.
He is the second cricketer in our country to be awarded after Sachin Tendulkar.

What makes one wonder is, if he really deserves it more than others.....when some legendary bowlers and batsmen (who have contributed in many more wonderful ways making us a proud cricketing nation) ,were either not even nominated or were simply denied.

Dhoni might have won us the first T-20 World cup (It was a trial version,u rememeber,whereas Kapil Dev won us the Prudential World cup in the approved format) ,he might have appealed to the masses because of his attitude, and might have been in every possible advertisement that can afford his huge price tag, and he might have even denied going on tour to Sri Lanka because hes simply tired.
Probably Dhoni has all the stars in his favour. Good for him.

Finally, the IPL is over. People were really consumed by it, even if the purists argue about the nature of the T-20 format, it sure proved to be a big hit. Not that the restarting of my writing in the blog had something to do with the end of the 1st season of IPL, looks like they have coincided quite well. It has been a season of comebacks...with Madhuri Dixit-Nene recently making hers( n ofcourse, not a very successful one)...n so have I(I'm sure its gonna be more successful than hers ;))
Anyways, feels like fun, writing after a really long time.