At that time, Docomo was good mainly because of its plans. The network was not too great, but it was as good as one could expect from a company just launched. It was not there in basements, lifts, remote areas and in some buildings, for example Manipal Hospital was one place where it wasn’t there in almost half the places inside the building.

But things were manageable and with the speed Docomo was putting their towers, I had expected that maximum within a year they’d have network as good as Airtel or Vodafone.

Guess I was wrong.

When my office shifted to Outer Ring Road, a few kms from Marathahalli Bridge, I was surprised to know that the network wasn’t there in almost half of the building. And then, in the lab, there were absolutely zero network for Docomo. But what is more surprising here is that the case is the same even today, almost a year and a half later. Just to clear any doubt, I’d like to mention here that Airtel, Vodafone, and even Reliance have network access throughout my office. Haven’t checked about others though.

But then, this is not exactly the reason I am writing this post. Almost everyone in my office and home knows that when in lab, I am not reachable, and I am quite okay with that.

The real frustration comes out when problems get bigger than this. For example, in the past few months, I have seen network access completely going at the center of Marathahalli Bridge repeatedly, and for more than ten, fifteen minutes. Ironically, some of the biggest Ranbir Kapoor posters claiming no getting away from network can be found within range of two kms.

Also, it frustrates me when every time at the HAL airport road, my network goes if I am talking. On the best days, only my voice breaks, while on an average day, call gets disconnected.

But then again, things still have to go over the top.

Earlier, Docomo gave a service where they used to give you detail of calls you missed. Now, Docomo has decided to charge for the service. Now that is again something fine enough, as long as you miss these calls because you switch off the phone. But what generally happens, is that DoCoMo’s unomnipresent network goes, sometimes when you highly need it (else, I wouldn’t even know it has gone, mostly) and there are tries to make calls, up and down, and then after some time DoCoMo network comes back and tells you that you have missed some call and if you pay 25 paise, you can get to know who called you.

So if you simplify the whole situation, you see that now a company can ask you for money because their network is bad, and call it a value add service.

Besides, I have had some good experiences with DoCoMo customer care in the past, when my money was immediately returned when I was once charged for something I had not asked for. The good part here also was that I have been charged extra only once in all this time, while such things are quite common with other operators. But then, recently there was a strange experience when a customer care person refused to tell me whether a particular package was available anymore and asked me to call the IVRS.

When I tried to contact DoCoMo on Twitter with some of these problems, the only answer I was given was to contact a nodal officer. On specifically asking whether not telling about packages through customer care was by design, there was no response from Twitter DoCoMo.

In short, while I enjoyed the services of DoCoMo for the first year and even after that, now the services, instead of getting better, are getting worse, and DoCoMo too seems to be turning into a money monster, even though not to the extents I have faced in case of other operators, not yet. But then, when compared to others, there are enough of problems with DoCoMo which may lead to me shifting to some other operator one day or the other. Don’t know if DoCoMo would mind letting their day one customers go, though I am sure I would not very much like it.

And so, one month back, I ordered the book from Flipkart and started reading it some two days after it arrived.

The book in the beginning was something very interesting. While Rahul’s book had been very well designed, this was not going to be that way. This was a travelogue, and as I read what went like a diary, I could almost see things as they were happening as Satnam gives quite descriptive a picture right from how he entered the Jungle.

As the book progressed, I found a lot of interesting things, about Guerillas, and more than that, about tribals in the area. This included facts like the tribals there did not drink milk and didn’t even eat eggs, or what they understood, chickens waiting to be hatched, and also details about development done by the guerillas with the tribals’ help inside the forests.

Of course, the book talks about the problems tribals and guerillas face there, especially the harrassment of the tribals by the outside world. I knew that things were bad there, but only after reading the book I was able to understand the scarcity of the very basic necessities of life. You might have heard that common sense is not common, but the book told me that in those places, even common salt was not common.

To tell the truth, even after reading such a well researched and designed book as Hello Bastar, I found Jangalnama interesting, except for a few negatives. One, the book starts getting a bit repetitive towards the end as the things author finds there are more or less the same with a few changes, throughout his journey and hence throughout the book. Two, the original book, the one in Punjabi, was written in 2003 and has things seen in 2002, not in the recent times.

But still, the book gives you a good insight into an unknown land and its unknown people, who we hardly acknowledge as our own. So if you’re interested in the topic, go for the book.

But then, the movie has some anti-dalit dialogs that come from the alleged upper caste people. And again, I would say that Jha has handled things very carefully here because while it’s not possible to make a good movie on the subject without including at least some such dialogs, he has put the counter-views in the same place to keep the balance.

The interesting thing here is that while the villain here are clearly politicians and businessmen who try to get their own profits out of every policy, Jha has shown the plight of everyone who becomes a victim. While on one hand he explains the problems of ‘dissimilar start line in race’ very clearly, he also shows the pain of an upper caste peon’s son who could not make it to the college of his choice because of reservation.

And then, there is his hero who does not want to believe in caste, does not believe in untouchability in the least bit, but asks his ‘Pandit’ peon not to touch his feet saying he’d be a sinner if the peon does that, even though not seriously. But most important of it all, his hero believes that he as a teacher should be above caste etc. but gives free education to those who are less affluent and do not have ‘equal’ means, irrespective of caste, and on the same ground he personally supports reservations so that everyone can rise.

So, in a way, the movie can be called pro-dalit, or anti-anti-dalit as it goes against those who are anti-dalit, but it can not be termed as anti-upper caste. Calling it anti-dalit is not even a possibility, even with the presence of a few anti-dalit dialogs in the beginning of the movie, because while Jha has tried to show the problems and emotions of everyone, including a mother who thinks a rule that goes against her child’s life/career is wrong. Yes, she sounds biased, or rather is biased, but she is true too. And towards the end, he has tried to give a solution as well, though it is not too practically applicable at a large scale and which needs highly selfless politicians which looks next to impossible today.

But overall, I’d say that the movie is almost as good as it could be. And while watching the movie, at some point I was feeling that Amitabh was right in asking Rajdeep Sardesai to watch the movie and then comment, especially in view of the former’s own character in the movie.

(Views expressed here are my personal views about the movie and do not endorse any political or other agenda)

And something inside me, probably the curiosity to know the ‘other side’ of the story (add to that my recent obsession with Flipkart), made me order the book instantly. Two days ago I got the book, and Tuesday morning I started reading the book while on the road to office. On the journey back home I read again, and then kept reading through the evening, to 1:45 AM, when I turned the last page of the book.

I think even the story says something about the book. I do not say that it’s a book you can’t put back once started, but if you are interested in the topic and want to know, the book can be easily finished in a reading, that interesting it is.

As for the Author, I would first like to praise him for the research he seems to have done for the project and then for coming out with the book. I cannot decide which of the two needs more guts.

About the book, the first thing I would like to say is that it’s the outcome of some real hard work, and the research done for the book is extensive. The author has not only gone to the areas and interviewed people, but has also got their pictures, and more than that their experiences, which cannot come without a sincere understanding and rapport.

At the same time, Rahul has clearly written about the agendas of the the Maoists, including the ‘Urban Agenda’ that, according to the book, they plan to follow. I am still trying to understand how the Maoists have opened so much of their plans, even though just in shapes of basic ideas, to the Author.

As for the other side of the story, Rahul hasn’t really written a lot. Except for a few small incidents and the ‘big’ incident, the attack in which 75 CRPF personnel were killed, not much is talked about. This may be taken as a negative of the book, but then where state is giving us all the details about the other side of the story anyway, there is not really such a need to write about the state’s side of the story in detail.

Now, I don’t think this is part of the book review anyway, but in case you are interested, a line from the book even expresses my thoughts about the Maoists plans. The last line of the chapter Urban Agenda says, “It may sound like a far cry, but it’s not as far as the government thinks it is.”

To end the review, I have just one thing to say. If you’re interested in the topic, read the book. And if you don’t have any interest in this, develop some. After all, it’s about our own country.

You can buy the book from Flipkart on some good discount HERE.

Well, that’s the condition in the center of the city. Come to the areas a bit on the outer side of the city. Now whitefield is officially a part of Bangalore and comes under BBMP. But the autowallahs probably don’t. Auto prices in Whitefield are outrageous and are now crossing all limits. For example, my home is almost 1100 meters from the main road. Generally autowallahs charged Rs 20 for the distance or simply fit in four people in a ‘shared’ auto for Rs 5 each. Rs 5 for a km was okay for people while Rs 20 for a km or so is pretty good by the meter standards, say almost triple the rate, or at least double if the road beyond my home is also calculated (almost 1.5 km).

But now, with the petrol prices up, autowallahs have made a stand (that is actually a queue) on the whitefield bus stop and have decided to charge Rs 10 for a shared auto. That is, for a kilometer, or say 1.5 at max, they will be getting Rs 40. Calculation says at least Rs 27 a km. Compare this to Rs 7/km that was the official rate, or 9-10/km, the would-be rate. We pay almost thrice of what is the actual price. (more than twice even if you take into account the minimum applicable distance of 2kms)

OK. Whitefield is very much out of the city, totally a corner, come towards the city. What’s the status at Marathahalli Bridge? The bridge is one of the most trafficked areas of Bangalore, with hundreds of thousands of people commuting over and under the bridge/ fly over. Go there and ask the autowallah if he’d go to my office, the EMC Corporation building. The building is actually 3 kms away and the meter used to give you a bill of Rs 21-23 in the pre-hike era. But when asked the price, the autowallah asked for Rs 50 straight. And that’s the fixed rate. All of them would stand with their autos there but none would take you to your office even for Rs 30.

The condition in the central areas of the city also doesn’t look too well. I remember when I came to Bangalore for the first time, some 12 years ago, things were much better. Especially in places like railway station an autowallah wouldn’t even ask where you had to go until he turned the meter and started moving. But now, seems like the law no more exists for autowallahs. And I wonder if there is any hope.

To make the Rupee symbol, simply go to Google transliterate and Switch it to Hindi. Now type R and press Enter/Space key. Now you can see a Hindi ‘ra.’ Copy this, open MS Paint or any similar software, go to add text box and paste it there. Now you can change the size and color of your Rupee symbol to be. The rest you have to do is, draw a line parallel to the top line just below it. Make sure the thickness of the lines is same and the distance between the two lines is almost the same as the thickness of the lines.

Here you get what looks almost like the Rupee Symbol. What is actually different here is that the actual symbol is a bit more curvy and goes less up in the middle. If you have patience, you can try some other fonts like Agra Thin (available here) and follow the same technique to get an even better result.

I will not go into the story of the film. I would just try to talk about certain aspects of the film which if absent could have made Rajneeti a classic. First is the screenplay. In the first half of the film it almost resembles a Yash raj drama! Specially the scenes between Ranbir and Katrina! The scenes went by too fast and editing was really bad which hampered the flow of the film. The songs were complete misfit and could have been given a miss! Prakash Jha should really learn how to use songs as background scores. Some concepts were cliche ridden. Dialogues were stale in most parts and evoked laughter in some serious scenes (like “tum mere jyesth putra ho”). The director’s attempt to adapt Mahabharata boomerangs. He lets many strings loose which becomes very difficult for him to sort out by the end of the film.

This is an extract of Aagan‘s review. Complete Review at Aaganzworld.

Update: I watched Raajneeti and absolutely loved it. My suggestion, Do watch it, if you like or have any interest in that bad game called Politics. I have.

Schedule:

Sat, May 01, 7 PM
India v Afghanistan
Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Sun, May 02, 7 PM
India v South Africa
Beausejour Cricket Ground, St. Lucia

Interestingly, many of Group C winners’ matches after the league stages are at the same time, that is 7 PM, though some of them are late too. Semi finals and Finals of World Cup T20 are at 1130 local time, that is 9 PM in India. So in case India reaches there, you can watch those matches.

The Model, IN 2020 QT, is a dual SIM GSM handset with 1.8″ screen and has a LED torch too. The phone has two languages, Hindi and English.

For details, read the Mobigyaan page here.