Uber Accident

 Recently around mid April I met with an accident when going by Uber to Ma's place. I had noted since the driver looked to be a novice and the car was stopping and starting at times. Suddenly when we were at the A S Connector, he didn't brake in time and the car slammed heavily into the car in front. My phone flew from my hand and I was slammed bodily into the front seat with my head and neck taking the brunt of the impact. This was the first time something of this sort had happened. The driver was luckily unhurt. He looked around and I screamed at him "Kya ho gaya?", "Accident madam, brake fail ho gaya". I was searching for my phone which I had dropped in the chaos, and on spying it near the driver's side reached down to retrieve it. The driver ducked, I saw fear in his eyes. I think now that he was probably thinking I would hit him with my mobile or something. I tried to call the uber company but could not find any helpline number on the app. Then I called the police number 100 but no one answered. Luckily immediately I had called police, I got a call from Uber asking about why I had called Police. They were not bothered about whether someone had sustained injuries or needed help, all they were concerned about was that this accident should not involve police. I narrated the accident , they asked me if I had any injuries and I said yes I did. In spite of reporting that I had injuries they advised me to get to my destination by taking some other transport. They did not offer me the option of sending another vehicle to take me, or inquire about my condition after the incident.  Some bystanders had gathered around the cars observing the drama. I noted that no one came to our car to find out if we were ok & needed some help.  Later on I did not get any other calls from uber. I was so shaken I sat in the car for half an hour. The driver meanwhile was arguing with the occupants of the car he had hit, trying to reach a monetary settlement. After the accident he had been asking me not to report the accident to uber, possibly he was scared they would deduct damages from his earnings, or penalize him. After some time I felt a little better, gingerly walked out of the cab, handed the driver Rs200 as token fare and reached Ma's house by a bus.

Summary of Sadda Haq Season 1 & 2 #SaddaHaq #HindiSerialonISRO

 

After a long time binge watched a totally engrossing TV Serial on Disney & Hotstar- Sadda Haq  Season1 & 2. The acting by the actors Harshita Gaur and Param Singh as the rivals turned college sweethearts Sanyukta and Randhir was very appealing and took me back to nostalgic engineering college days. This is the first hindi serial of its kind where an attempt has been made to show how engineering can be as a career choice for youngsters. On the flip side it is a very addictive serial, so aspiring engineering students might spend a lot of time watching this rather than devoting 10-12 hrs studying as is required to get into a good engineering college. The first meeting between the protagonists is memorably portrayed and this clip is one which is shown again and again throughout the seasons. Season 1 portrays the stress of exams, project deadlines and competition for grades being at the forefront of the student activities. FITE (The name of the engg college) seems to be modelled on IIT Roorkee where mechanical engineering is a most coveted branch for the students.

The serial shows the journey of an aspiring and ambitious woman Sanyukta Agarwal who dreams of becoming an engineer and join her father’s automobile business. In the face of opposition from her own father and brother she is determined to fight for her rights (sadda haq) and the message from the serial is that rights must be snatched if they are not given. She is supported by her mother in her aims to achieve her career goals. Her father is portrayed as a typical regressive man who is interested in getting Sanyukta married and resorts to all sorts of intimidating and underhand means throughout the season 1 to achieve his goal.

Sanyukta clears the tough engineering entrance exams and reaches college only to be faced by a fresh set of hurdles in the form of her arch rival Randhir who is determined to throw her out of college. The serial takes an interesting twist when there is a blast in the lab which prevents Mr Agarwal from dragging Sanyukta back home from her college as it becomes a police investigation.

Sanyukta somehow manages to ward off her family and pursue her dream of an engineering degree. She becomes a part of Vardhan Sir’s dream team a coveted club of students who complete challenging engineering tasks with admirable ease. As an aside I wonder at some of the tasks which the dream team completes which may be out of the league of 1^st and even 3^rd and 4^th year mechanical engineering  students.

The bonds of friendship between the protagonists progresses very naturally and the backstory of various characters is intertwined in the plots to justify their characters and choices they make.

Season 2 of Sadda Haq takes place in ISRC (Indian Space Research Center) which is again the first time a hindi serial has tried to portray what goes on inside India’s hallowed institutions as ISRC is modelled on India’s own ISRO. Here the story again takes on after a gap of two years where the former students of FITE have joined ISRC and are working on India’s Mars Mission.

The serial is very entertaining and I am now left wondering how it did not receive more popularity as compared to the regular run of the mill soaps on television.

Murphy's Laws

Murphy's laws which almost always are uncannily true!

 Murphy's First Law:  Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

 Murphy's Second Law:  Nothing is as easy as it looks.

 Murphy's Third Law:  Everything takes longer than you think it will.

 Murphy's Fourth Law:  If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.

 Murphy's Fifth Law:  If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

 Murphy's Sixth Law:  If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

 Murphy's Seventh Law:  Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

 Murphy's Eighth Law:  If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

 Murphy's Ninth Law:  Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

 Murphy's Tenth Law:  Mother nature is a bitch.

 Murphy's Eleventh Law:  It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

 Murphy's Twelfth Law:  Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

 Murphy's Thirteenth Law:  Every solution breeds new problems.

 Murphy's Fourteenth Law:  If anything can't go wrong on its own, someone will make it go wrong.

 If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.

 Knowing Murphy's Law won't help either.

 Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

 Murphy's Time-Action Quandary: You never know how soon is too late.

 O'Toole's Commentary On Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.

 Proof of Murphy's Law: Murphy's Law cannot be proven, yet is correct, as when you try to prove Murphy's Law, you will see that the proof is incorrect. This is obviously due to Murphy's Law, therefore Murphy's Law is correct and proven.

 Stewart's Corollary to Murphy's Law: Murphy's Law may be delayed or suspended for an indefinite period of time, provided that such delay or suspension will result in a greater catastrophe at a later date.

China's Economic Growth Story captured in a single graphic

 

Magic Medicine

 Ever since Covid struck the world in 2020, I noticed from around Sep 2020 a stiffness in the left side of my waist which progressively became more and more painful like a nagging sore which wouldn't heal. I realised that age must be setting in and started doing aerobics and stretching exercises regularly which seemed to alleviate the pain somewhat but not completely. I thought it might be deficiency in Vit D or calcium, so I started to take calcium supplements and sit in the sun for 20mins everyday. The pain seemed to be less but never went away completely on any day. In Jan 2021 I visited an orthopedic in a reputed hospital and narrated my problems- constant dull ache around waist area specially on the left side. He advised X-ray in which nothing came up. I insisted that it was a kind of joint pain but the doctor seemed quite puzzled as to what medicine to prescribe. When I told it seemed to get better when I sat in the sun, he prescribed a course of Vit D capsules to be taken weekly and physiotherapy. I continued with the vit D capsules for nearly a year but the pain never went away completely. It always came back like a nagging sore. Then recently since the last month I started taking a Vit B capsule which is very common and easily available and found that when I took it the pain seemed to go, but with any other medicine it would not go away. So I discarded all other medicines and continued only with this medicine and lo behold I am pain free after nearly two years when I was thinking that I must have rheumatoid arthritis & would have to go for hip replacement soon. Hope the medicine continues to work wonders!

Inspirational Quotes/Speeches from Shakespeare

 

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

 

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
― William Shakespeare, Great Sonnets

 

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

 

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

 

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
― William Shakespeare

 

 

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

“What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

 

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?". - (Act III, scene I).”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

“All's well that ends well.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

 

“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

 

“There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

 

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

 

“If music be the food of love, play on.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 3

 

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

 

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

 

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

 

“O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?”
― William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

 

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
― William Shakespeare , Julius Caesar

 

“love is blind
and lovers cannot see
the pretty follies
that themselves commit”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

“a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

Love each other in moderation. That is the key to long-lasting love. Too fast is as bad as too slow.*”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 

“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.(Iago, Act II, scene iii)”
― William Shakespeare, Othello