Here I sit all broken-heartedI came to shit, but instead, I farted
But now the process has finally started
Poop and bum will soon be parted
(The first 2 lines were written on men;s room wall, so I assume that means they are on a creative commons license. The 3rd and 4th lines are my own little touches, and therefore copyrighted. Can you extend the poem further?)
Categories: Rant
Huh?
So this triggered a rant (after a long hiatus).
There are 1.5 million private cars on the road.
- Nice
3 million two-wheelers, a lot of these will convert to cheapest small cars
- How is this a ‘fact about transport in Delhi’? What proof is there that this event occurring is a certainty? Delhi Metro and HCBS anyone?
And only 6,800 city buses.
- Ummm why is there the word ‘only’ in this sentence. One bus can carry say I dunno…50 people? 50 x 6800 = 3 lakh people. If these 6800 buses are all out at the same time, and make multiple trips, that’s a lot of people being transported. How is 6800 a low number? Idiot.
The city adds 41 vehicles every hour, 31% of them being private cars.
- Ok so that means that the remaining 69% consists of non-private vehicles - so that means private cars are not the dominant type of vehicle being sold. So shouldn’t we be worrying about the remaining 69%? Also, 31% of 41 = 12.71 cars per hour. Of course, that’s not what’s really going on, id it? What you did, was take the total number of cars sold in India in a year, and then divided that number by 8670, Clever Dick. This is a common scaremongering tactic, which should be obvious, because cars aren’t sold 24 hours a day. So it’s not like there will be 13 more cars on the street 60 minutes from now. Idiot.
Last 5 years have seen a 43% increase in vehicles, and 9% in road space.
- and what therefore? Roads aren’t manufactured in factories. Were you expecting to see a proportionate increase in road space?
Road area is already 20% of land area. Green area is only 10%.
- Okay so? Of course, this ‘fact’ conveniently forgets to mention that GREEN COVER IN DELHI HAS INCREASED OVER THE PAST 5 YEARS. Would it be better if 50% of Delhi was Jungle? Would that satisfy these morons? Is it possible for the road area to be substituted with Green area? Maybe we turned arid, desert land into road space, genius.
There is a limit in extending roads and flyovers.
- Very good. Have you finally been promoted to Class II yet?
Our collective automobile experience ends with traffic jam.
- Collective automobile experience? Is that like some weird sexual orgy involving cars? Wow, you’re a pervert.
And slower vehicles spew more.
-More bile? Venom? Bananas? This is a ‘fact’?
We should be ashamed that all we gained out of converting public transport to CNG has been offset by rising number of cars!
- It has? Is this another unsubstantiated ‘fact’? CNG helped reduce Acid Rain. That was a big gain. CNG can do nothing about RSPM, which has increased due to the amount of construction taking place in this city.
A car pays Rs 400 a year as tax, while a bus is charged Rs 13,000.
- I’m curious - considering that many of Delhi’s buses are state-owned, how this tax figure was arrived at. Also, smarty pants, there is a tax on Petrol. I’m pretty sure car owners pay for petrol, so the amount of tax paid by car owners will dwarf that paid by buses. Moron.
Government subsidises private vehicles with low tax, cheapest parking lots.
- Please define ‘low tax’. What is a ‘low tax’? And what do you mean cheapest parking lots?
Public investment in roads and flyovers are cornered by private cars only.
- HUH? Are we still speaking English here?
Private cars take up 75% of the road space, while buses get only 8%.
- I would love to meet the revolutionary mathematician who came up with these numbers. I wonder how they were arrived at. I can guess. Some genius took the number of total vehicles in Delhi. Then they first divided the number of cars in Delhi by the total, and repeated the same for buses. To arrive at a completely meaningless number.
Hence, there is no money left for public transport investment.
- Hence? Is this the same Hence that’s used when lays out a bunch of facts leading to a logical conclusion? Can anybody see any reasoning or logic used in the subjective statements made above?
All these, while private transport only 20% of passengers, and buses still carry 61%.
- So……?
Bravo Tabloid journalist. What an excellent link you’ve sent me.
Lately, there has been a new phenomenon rocking the Blogosphere. It is called….
Simultaneously, there has been an amateur comedian, going by the moniker “Jagadguru“, being unleashed on the public at large.
Like Niki, of “Heroes” fame, one day Jagadguru looked in the Mirror. And evolution produced his alter-ego, Urugdagaj. Happy reading!
Categories: Rant
There is a reason your country is still called a Democracy…and it’s a damn good one
In recent times, good ‘ol democracy has come under attack. Democracy in India, democracy in Pakistan.
Apparently, “We” are not ready for democracy. Democracy, they tell us, requires some sort of nonsense called an enlightened populace, i.e. Switzerland. Others will tell you that ‘pure’ democracies are nonsense anyway, when all you really need are Republics.
Some pompous armchair idiots even go so far as to claim that democracy doesn’t matter to the average Joe (or Ramu) when all he wants is to feed himself and his kids. (Then of course, they conveniently contradict that statement when it goes against their overall bias of hating India, but that of course, is another story).
Then there are the more conventional types of morons - the ones who first say that India was better off under the British, and also who cares about Democracy when you can host Olympic Games, and build flyovers. Besides, aren’t Indians just a bunch of indisciplined louts which need an Iron Hand?
Some people point to the latest atrocity in West Bengal to point out that Democracy is not working in this country at all. The irony is that everything that has happened in Nandigram just goes to show what A GOOD THING it is that India is a democracy, and not anything like China.
Shame. On all of you.
So let me hereby state that I am no relation to the CM of Delhi, nor do I have (ewww) carnal knowledge of er…
Interesting. I write a post about Delhi, and why it’s the best-maintained city in all India.
And then today, this article appears in Mint, where the Chief Minister backs me up (well sort of)…
And the best that Bombay can muster is this, linked to by Dilip D’Souza also a few days after my post, no less. To begin with, we have some unfair criticism and mis-statement of facts….
This isn’t Delhi, where public outcry ensued after Richard Gere recently planted a public kiss on the actress Shilpa Shetty at a fund-raiser.
Now, if someone had actually read newspapers, this is what they would have found:
The pair had appeared at a press conference in New Delhi as part of a campaign to preach safe sex to truck drivers in India, the country with the world’s largest proportion of HIV sufferers.
‘No condom, no sex,’ Gere shouted in Hindi to thousands of truckers who roared his words back in unison at a dusty fairground.
They whooped and whistled as Gere swooped on Miss Shetty to kiss her on her hand and cheek. Nationally, however, the reaction was of violent disapproval
(Emphasis Mine). Now for those of you who passed your English exam, the above paragraph says that in Delhi, the truck drivers were whooping and whistling (I’m pretty sure you could take that as approval) however it is NATIONALLY, that the disapproval was voiced - why is Delhi being blamed for this? Further, where else do you think people will protest about something - in front of fucking Karan Johar’s house or Rashtrapati Bhawan. Public outcry in Delhi MY ASS!
After her fashion show, Dé explained to me Mumbai’s social architecture. “If you are in Delhi, it’s which minister you know,” she said. “If you are in Chennai, it’s all about which caste you are. In Calcutta, it’s what your grandfather did. But in Mumbai, it’s not about that kind of rigid social structure any longer. It’s about what you have done.
Yea. Right. “Mumbai” where people from the North are discriminated against - “You’re from Delhi?” / “You’re Punjabi“ with an upturned nose. A place where non-vegetarian people may be banned from living in certain neighbourhoods. Right. No caste prejudices here. No no no, it’s not who you know at all in Bombay. So what if you are related to Bal Thackeray> Oh yes, that’s right, he’s not a minister. How VERY different from Delhi. Ah yes, Dawood Ibrahim is not a minister either. Yep, it’s definitely not about who you know in Bombay, not at all. Oh you don’t know Yash Chopra, or have a Khan or Kapoor in your last name? Well then, let’s sign you on to my next blockbuster, because, of course, it’s what you’ve done. Somebody get a shovel and a gas mask please…
Now the rest of article is just typical NYT trash. Example:
The culture seeks the kind of innocent enchantment Bollywood movies promote, yet the city’s red-light district, Falkland Road, is populated by prostitutes who pose in cages, and the country now ranks third in the world in people living with H.I.V. (roughly 2.5 million), according to a 2007 report from the United Nations.
Now what the writer of this article CONVENIENTLY forgotten to mention (because it would have ruined his oh-so-flowery contrast) is that this statistic is DOWN from ranking NUMBER ONE in the world with the most number of people with AIDS. Why? Because the UN counted wrong the first time, and a more comprehensive count revealed what some people already knew - THAT HIV IS NOT AS PREVALENT IN INDIA AS THE SCAREMONGERS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE. But let truth not stand in the way of good journalism, as the Times Of India would say. This is further backed up by the Daily Mail quote from above (the description of Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty) which states “in India, the country with the world’s largest proportion of HIV sufferers“. Between the Daily Mail article and the NYT article, the numbers were revised downwards….
And then it just gets funnier and funnier:
Despite the fact that she was raised in a palace with 30 servants, India’s culture then, she said, was not one of constant acquisition
Oh man, what a riot. Asking a real-live princess to comment on the daily-lives of Indians back in the day. Gee, when I was a feudal lord living in my palace, I didn’t see many of my subjects indulging in ‘acquisition’. WHAT AN INSIGHT! Not a culture of acquisition. This is just great…
Yes.. a Mumbai Moment alright.
