I Swear

Yes, I swear. My parents will be ashamed that their daughter actually swears. The words rush out of my mouth while driving (currently on Bangalore Roads, but I guess that will happen on any road in our country).
Every morning I decide to be calm on the roads, not to honk, not to speed unnecessarily be patient. But within five minutes of being on the road, I loose all this determination.

The roads are absolute chaotic. No one following any lane discipline, no overtaking rules being followed, absolutely zero parking sense, talking on the phone while driving (though the usage of handsets has increased). The culprits mainly being the cab drivers, company buses drivers, public bus drivers, autos drivers, the cyclists, the jaywalkers etc. on the road. The situation is so bad that the moment I get on to the roads, I become like everyone else. It’s literally getting into the rat race. I get aggressive, not wanting anyone to overtake me, not wanting to give space to anyone. Why is there is so much impatience on the roads? Or is it something else? The other day, my colleague and I were discussing about this situation and the cause for all these. And we thought it’s the education, the minimum importance that we give to civic sense in our education. I remember being taught the way to cross a road (look right, then left, then right and then cross the road) and that ends there. What else is taught to the children these days ( I seriously don’t know the answer for that). But then again, is this something that needs to be taught? Should it not come from within us?

I guess, the traffic situation is the most visible thing about our attitude. We keep comparing ourselves with other countries and make a common statement – Our country will never change. When will we treat ourselves as a citizen and do something to change this?

I certainly think that it is entirely within us to change this situation on the roads. How? (Am taking a risk of sounding stupid here J ). What will people fear the most on the roads? I guess the fear of an authority. That already is in place in form of the traffic police. So where is the problem? I guess this authority is either not a strong one or not enough. I would go with the second option. The traffic police I guess are getting less corrupt and taking more effective steps. But I guess the number of traffic police is not enough to control the mammoth traffic on the roads. Why not we do something about this? Firstly, we as individuals have a discipline in our driving. Secondly, help out the traffic police by volunteering to control traffic at places with huge volume of traffic. People violating traffic rules – small to big violations should be fined on the spot so that they are not repeated again.

Whatever steps are taken, major responsibility lies on each one of us on the roads. If each one of us is disciplined, even if there is a huge traffic, jams and deadlocks on the roads can be avoided.

Reservation for Women?

A topic which is widely discussed and argued.

Reservation for women in all fields around (including the latest one – in parliament) is really a great thing. But do we really need it? I really don’t think so.
Is it not surprising that being a woman myself, I feel this way.

In my MCA class, there were 33 students of whom 9 were girls. Most of us were good rank holders. But believe me, there were many a situations where we were made to feel that we have deprived someone (a boy with a better rank) of studying in this prestigious institute. We were made to feel guilty about that. I used to get defensive during those days. But isn’t that the truth? A girl with a rank of 100 gets into a college because of the reservation, but a guy with a rank of 75 may not make it. Isn’t that sad?

Reservation as such is for the upliftment of the underprivileged. Its quite a nice concept. But in this case I don’t think it works.

In our country, how many girls go to primary school, how many continue high school, how many do their graduation and how many do their post graduation. Going a step further, how many do a job after all this? Agreed that the situation is changing in urban areas, but what about rural India?

So my point is, when there are not many girls/women in competition, reservation will only bring down the standard of an institute. If a girl/woman is really capable, she will earn her dues like a man does. Things should be done at the grass root level for the betterment of girl education.

I know of many cases where a girl gets a seat in an engineering college. The parents send her for studies for 4 yrs and then marry her off the moment she passes out. Why does she waste the seat then? Because an engineering degree is a very good match fetcher. Believe me, this happens. Think about what would have happened if this seat was given duly to a boy from a poor family background who scored a better rank than the girl.

When it comes to the reservation in parliament- I think this is one place where it should not be there at all. Because it will be here that it will be misused to the maximum. This reservation will fetch a seat to a woman but there are all chances that the woman’s husband/father/brother etc actually make use of the power. A leader has to be made from within, not from reservations.

A really capable woman will shine on her own. All she needs is the encouragement and the motivation to do that.

I really feel privileged to have studied in a good college (and that’s because of the reservation), but I know that I have denied a better student of the seat. This will always remain in my mind.

The Beginning

We guess the beginning is always the biggest problem for anything. It had been the same in starting this blog. There have always been many ideas/topics that we wished to share our views with others and starting has always been an issue. Many reasons have been stopping us – telling ourselves to wait for the right time to start (now that sounds too silly ;-) ), sometimes not getting enough time. The fear of writing something silly has also been stopping us. Family and friends kept telling us that there is nothing like the right time, we just needed to start off.

So how did we start? Well, we were sitting at home getting bored. We had some shopping to do but were feeling too lazy to go out. And here we are atlast with our blog with the hope of writing articles on various interests of us.