India

People using Tata Indicom Broadband (and several other services here in India) seem to be affected by heavy packet loss in their Internet connections. When I called up the Tata Indicom Customer Care almost in what seemed to be the umpteenth time I was calling them in last two days, I was told about some "submarine cable damage", "main server issue" and few other such things.

I don't know how many of us would remember the 501, Nirma and similar soap bars that had become so much a part of life back in those days when Rin, Surf Excel or the fancy German detergents had still not entered the market. I remember people taking those detergent bars with them to nearby water source to wash their clothes. Much has changed now, but I still remember the fragrance of 501 or even Nirma. It has been years since I last saw one, though. Today, I stopped by a grocery store in a village on the way home. An auto driver was unloading his stock of "N S" bar.

So much has been discussed about what happened in Mumbai. Local media has went overboard in reporting, deducing and also debating almost everything surrounding it. Politicians are getting booed all over, at last, and deservingly so. If the boo continues and sustains the intensity, anger till the elections, it could bring about a sea of change in India. But how much would Mumbai 26/11 aftermath really change India? Will India really 'wake up' to the situation?

(Click above for full view) Not as much take on the present situation as I'd hoped when I started sketching this, but its a take on the situation nevertheless. :-)

While Abhinav Bindra made those among the billion Indians who get a chance to bother about Olympics (enough to check it on the news) proud, it saved the same billion from what could have been a huge embarrassment of a much publicized event. But then, several things may go unnoticed or just shadowed. This report for instance which asserts on, but never quite gets noticed when it says:

"And Sports Minister M S Gill had the last word.

Low intensity or not, would just condemning the terror attacks suffice? There has to be some serious rethinking of how media portrays acts like these, how we as people react to it and how much of it we remember enough to do something about it. What strikes blatantly though is how devastation and death becomes just the content for News Channels and withers away in the memory of the public.

Indian Express reports that one more person has been arrested for his posts on Orkut.