State of my blog poll - Exclusive

Its unofficial now. Barely 5 months and a handful of posts into this blog, it has been rated as the number one blog by everyone, including people who haven't read this blog, those who haven't heard about it, people travelling in trains, a person named KrishRao(he is from the days of the British Raj) and many others. Frankly, I did not want to publish the results of this poll since I do not believe in numbers. But pressure from people who have helped make this blog a reality and also from KrishRao forced me to publish it.

This was a poll conducted by "AC Ramachandra Rao - Guruwrites", a reputed and reliable agency for opinion polls of any kind. The poll interviewed 5483 people from 17.32 states in the second half of the third week of August. The poll interviewed people from urban as well rural areas, people moving in trains, children above one year and also the one and only KrishRao.

One clear truth that has emerged from this poll is that, people feel that this blog has kept its promise of producing only nonsense. This is a feeling shared by not just by people across the north-south divide but also by me. Another likeable feature of this blog for the people of this nation is that they do not know much about it.

Let me get into some numbers now. Nearly 7.32 percent of the people polled(including those who don't know about this blog) say this blog is one of its kind, hillarious, informative, thought provoking, never-before-never-will-be-such-a-blog. This number can be a bit more than this, if we take into account the volatilities of the stock market, failed monsoons and high prices of vegetables.

People who feel this blog is not good is a negative 0.32 percent. In other words there are no such people. People who said this blog can improve were later found to be invalid voters and hence their votes were not taken into account. But we have accepted their invaluable feedback. The rest of the people felt, this blog, especially its name - guruwrites, is very good and innovative.

Children, who were an important part of the people polled, say this blog has helped them in ways that cannot described in simple words. So I will not describe it. KrishRao says , this blog reminds him of the days of the Raj. Since this is a feeling, KrishRao says, cannot be reasoned out, I shall not attempt to do so respecting the opinion of this octogenarian.

Many people say, such fantastic results are because of people's love, affection and faith in this blog. But I strongly believe, it is because of having conducted this poll we have had such good numbers. Otherwise how would we have known that this blog is at the top.

I would conclude this post, by giving details of some of the questions asked in the poll and people's answers to them.

1> Do you know about this blog?
Yes : Undisclosed percentage
No: Only invalid voters said no

2> Do you feel this blog has helped bring peace in the middle east?
Yes : 97%
No: 3%

3> Do you feel this blog can help the nation to become a superpower?
Yes: 98.79%
Partially Yes: 1.21%

4> Do you feel that the posts on this blog have made train travel more enjoyable?
Yes: 88%
I dont have words to describe my joy: 12%
(Here the gap becomes wider in the semi-urban areas with good bus service)

5> Will you believe the results of this poll as and when thay are out?
Yes: 100%

Disclaimer: This post might not contain facts.

Vande Mataram

Setting apart the controversies, the centenary celebrations of the adoption of "Vande Mataram" by the then Congress has done a lot of good. It first of all made more Indians aware of this beautiful national song. Secondly we were able to listen to the melifluous tune of "Vande Mataram" quite a few times on television today. Set in the very pleasant Des raag, Vande Mataram song gives you a kind of joy that can only be described as transcendental. It stirs up the patriotic feelings in us even today, a good 130 years after its publication. No wonder this was the theme song of our independence movement.

With due respect to"Jana Gana Mana", Vande Mataram, to me is a song that treats the nation as a whole without individually referring to states and provinces. In this way no state can feel left out in this process.

Vande Mataram is also indicative of our culture. This is a nation whose time tested culture puts the mother on a high pedestal. In accordance with this, Vande Mataram offers salutations to our nation in the form of bowing to Mother India. Being in devanagari, it is also in the language of our great epics Ramayana and Mahabaharata which undoubtedly are an invaluable contribution of India to not just world literature but also to humanity.

At the end of the day, irrespective of how high the nation scores in secularism, the national song of a nation should reflect the culture and traditions of the nation. If it invovles a bit of religious touch, so be it. A national song should be one that can spur on the nation, not one that is the product of consensus or compromise. Vande Mataram undoubtedly qualifies on all these accounts. Yet it stays religion neutral.

O Bharata Mata!, Salutations to thou! Vande Mataram! Vande Mataram!

Oh God! Save This Nation!

For a significant part of the freedom struggle, Vande Mataram was a song that inspired our freedom fighters to give up even their lives for the cause of liberating our nation. It continues to be one of those things that can unite Indians across the region, religion, language barrier. But unfortunately and to the dismay of every true Indian, such a truly national song is being made a victim of the tyranny of "Indian secularism", a euphemism for "vote-bank" politics.

Singing of Vande Mataram, according to the ground rules of Indian "secularism", is not above the communal interests. Regardless of it being a national song, Vande Mataram is still subservient to the sentiments of certain sections of our population. Freedom of religion, say secularists, permits one to not sing the national song if it hurts their religious sentiments. This is a very dangerous argument. Certain things such as singing the national anthem or the national song, respecting the national flag and abiding by the courts of the land should be non-negotiable. This is natural if we are really serious about putting the nation first ahead of the individuals or communities. Otherwise, what if, tomorrow, another community says it will not salute the national flag citing that it hurts their religous beliefs or what if they do not adhere to the judgments of the courts saying courts are below their religion. Such arguments are real dangers to our national unity. But the all-knowing secularist, fails to comprehend this.

For the secular-wallahs, who rant the whole day about keeping religion seperate from politics, who preach us about how everybody is an Indian first irrespective of religion, who always claim themselves to be the keepers of this nation's "secular conscience", nation comes only a distant second to the sentiments of certain communities. I am sure such secularists only succeed in embarassing the very same communities, because these communities too want to put their nation ahead of their religion. Ultimately these secular loonies only divide the people along religious lines. This is what they want as it helps them to be in the limelight preaching their secular bullshit. Oh God!, Kindly save this nation!

Pluto

Scientists of the International Astronomical Union have suddenly decided to redefine what constitutes a planet and as a consequence, poor Pluto, which was sincere and honest in its revolution around the Sun, will no longer be the planet it used to be since 1930. It takes some time to come to terms with this disturbing news of our own Pluto being left out in this redefinition. One can only wonder if Pluto could have approached Rajdeep. He would have certainly brought Pluto's plight to public notice. "Has Pluto been given an unfair deal by astronomists? Are we, as a society, becoming intolerant?" would have been Rajdeep's question Facing the Nation (pun intended). Rajdeep would also have delved into other aspects of this path-breaking decision, such as reprinting of school textbooks to indicate this change and also the sense of deep isolation felt by the youngest, now former, member of this Solar system. But these are just hypothetical. Things have to move on. We can only hope that the remaining planets continue to stay as planets and co-operate with others.

Today, I successfully completed the fourth week of my "corporate" life at SAP (rightly pronounced as Ess Aa Pee) Labs. Life here is pretty good except for the travel. If you have to travel 25-27 kilometres to your office everyday, you know that the situation is not ideal. People have told me both directly and indirectly(indirect version is generally immediately followed by a direct version for my better comprehension) that such travel everyday wont permit you to "lead life to the fullest". But I answer all of them by decisively saying nothing.

That's it then for this post. Good Bye.

Temples - A Corporate Plan

While some of the temples in Kerala are busy purifying the respecive temples's deity because it was touched by women 20 years ago, India's richest temple, Tirupati, has really come out with an innovative idea to decrease the rush at Tirupati. They plan to open a similar temple in Bangalore. When I read this in today's newspaper (which, these days, has been infested by "moles"), I was really delighted at their thinking. But, then I thought, they can do better.

What they can do is, they can select a temple and certify it as meeting Tirupati standards. They can also have an organization called Tirupati Temple Standards Organization (TTSO) to do such certification. This saves them the trouble of acquiring land and building new temple. In such certified temples, everything, starting from the deity to the Prasadam, will be standardized.

Another benefit of such certification to the Tirupati temple group is that they can have temples, not only in Bangalore but across the country very easily.

The other important benefit of having such certification has got something to with the marketing of the certified temple. The certified temples can market themselves as having been certified as TTSO 1000, TTSO 2000, TTSO 5000, TTSO 4568 etc. Higher the ranking, higher the blessings of God.

Now, whenever there is such a healthy competition, the devotee is the beneficiary. He will go to that temple where he can get more blessings and also more ladoos. And here is a sample, albeit homo-erotic, conversation about visit to such a temple.
Raju: Hi, Ram, where had you been?
Ram: I had gone to TTSO 4000. Nice temple.
Now they are going for TTSO 8000. Then I can reduce the frequency of my temple
visit to half becuase I can acquire double the blessings in half the visits. Raju: Very efficient.
Ram: Ya ya.
Raju: Ok, bye. See you in TTSO 4000, next week.

With the implementation of such standards, the temples can also get listed in stock markets. Then we can see ads that tell us something like,
"TTSO 4000, Bangalore is offering shares at Rs 30 each. Hurry, offer closes on 15 August. For more details refer the Sacred Cow prospectus".

With commercialisation of temples happening at such rapid pace, these ideas may soon become a reality. What do you say?