Panic Kills More Than Pandemic

Swine Flu in Velacherry, Chennai, India. this being the place where I live, Velacherry is under spotlight after the maudlin demise of a 4 year old boy. Nearby schools have been declared holiday in the wake of the outbreak. People are almost in the brink of panic. We can see it in every other person we pass by. Most of them are either parents or hygiene freaks.

Every epidemic has a side effect, but for a pandemic it is going to be an outrage of panic people. The first thing to deal, in this link of situation is to setup access point for people to reach out for help both medical assistance or/and information. Not only the individual but the press and other representatives of any body. Panic kills more than a pandemic, now u Know. Let the wake-up call keep ringing till the Government gets the sense to hear it. They are whom we look out for help or are they the one to be helped. I don't know. God help those in need. Sigh!

Excercise Your Franchise... if given a chance.

When I was in my schools, this line caught me at my civics class, "Exercise your franchise. Well thats for the responsible citizen and his constitutional rights. I doubt how many had the chance to execute it (either willingly or not) in the recent Election, as they say the 15TH LOK SABHA ELECTION. Does people know that it is the 15th or 75th election. It is the darkness that prevails, you can call it unawareness or corruption or whatever. But the election proved to be all-out feeding frenzy. The cash flow, favoritism, empowerment, election commission and the list keeps on elongating to our fascination.

Coming back to the "Un-given Chance", most of the people I knew didn't vote this time, or they were not given a chance to. Most of their names has been missed in the list of voters. I had the same problem too. Further investigating what could have happened, I found some interesting facts on list preparation. The people deployed for preparing the voters list where send in the hot sun, they were exhausted even before they start the door to door enlisting. Once they reach some residence (in Chennai), they find Tenants, where as the owners of the house might be enlisted. The Answer they get from the tenants are that they don't know about people around the place or about the owners'. This makes their job pretty messy. As a result they can't do any good and either mark them as not found or shifted. This in turn rendered as a big list of voters with no names in the list they have. It was shocking for most of the voters, not finding their names and return after a long wait in the queue under the hectic weather. That disappointment is worse than anything. This kind of victimization has not left the celebrities too. I heard Kamal Hasan was affected too.

I wondered this never happened to any politicians... or did anyone had, mmmm!

A Foolhardy Jaunt

It may be a common sight for frequent commuters to see people, mainly college boys, climbing atop the bus and have a joy ride. But for most of us, it is too frightening. The astonishing part is that nobody can question them or held them against doing it. The driver and the conductor of the bus are mum to the puckish mob and let them face the consequences. The bus is one among the couple of buses that had such a "PAYLOAD" (they can never be called as a passenger!). Yesterday(17th July) afternoon, I managed to take a snap of one of the bus (location: Saidapet Bus Terminus, Mount Road, Chennai. ), incidentally the day was traffic intense, it was 1 p.m. and too hot . I wonder how these guys can do such a foolhardy act on a day like this!.... God knows!

(click on the image to see the enlarge version...)

Overcast, an outcast of Summer...

Believe it or not it was raining last night and drizzly-mizzly in the morning on the way to office. In the scorching heat that Chennai has in its summer (even post summer!), we look for a rain or something to cool. Man the fairy listened to us and granted a wish.


But with the joy it brought a little fright to me, as I'm forecasting the rain that's going to rock Chennai this year. Definitely it is going be cats and dogs. Hope we have proper planing for all the flood its going to cause.

Scary!

Helmet For Bike Riders...

The Government of Tamil Nadu, India, has announced that it is mandatory to wear a helmet by all motorbike riders. It also added that the pillion travelers are also required to wear one. The deadline is 01 of June, 2007.

But this one took the issue too seriously. She has worn a helmet, but forgot how to wear it.

(Image courtesy funtoosh.com)

I don't see much of the riders are taking it seriously. One of my colleague has met an accident couple of days back and got hit in his head leading to internal bleeding. Luckily he was out of danger and fine now. But the point is that other than head he had very minor injuries. This is not one incident but most of the time it keeps proving, that it is essential to wear one.