Rajesh Khanna

It was 2:30 pm on 18 July 2012, Wednesday working in my office and there comes a pop-up on my screen. It’s a ‘Hi’ from my uncle (mama). I was not as busier as other days in my work and hence started chatting with him and more over he is one of the closest person in my life and I don't hesitate to stop my work little bit for him.

After few minutes I typed ‘Rajesh Khanna is no more’ and he replied…. ‘What a shocking news, really??? I am his fan.’ And I could feel the stubbed silence from other side. The silence said it all. My uncle is such a huge fan of Rajesh khanna. Back home in his collections were numerous audio cassettes of Rajesh Khanna, all the nostalgic music of his films. During my childhood days I used to listen to these songs and sing along when we visited his place.

Today when he heard the news from me, he felt that he has lost one of his family members and that is the emotional thread what my mama shared with legendary Rajesh Khanna.

We remembered the famous dialogue from Rajesh Khanna where he plays a role of a person who is suffering from blood cancer and wants to live through is rest of the life in a lively manner and believed that the ‘Life has to be bigger and not, longer’.

The dialogue goes this way

{ Babu Mushay........... Jahanpana.... Zindagi ki dor upar wale ki haath main hain. Hum sab is rangmanch ki katputaliyaan hain. Kaun, kab aur kaise upar utega yeh koi nahin janta. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha } in Hindi.

….. and the translation goes this way

Babu Mushay…. Respected Sir…. The control of everybody’s life is in God’s hand. We are just the puppets on this stage of life. Nobody knows… who, when and how each individual dies….. and….. (laugh).

This dialogue has nostalgic effect on almost all the people in India. Girls believed he was one of the most handsome actor in film industry and believed have crush on him at some point of their life.

People till today stop by the TV channel in which Rajesh Khanna is shown and feel cherished to see him.

Its indeed a great loss to film industry and I dedicate this blog to my mama who is still depressed and mourning for the loss of his Idol.

Pragmatic or Enigmatic

‘The enigma of Indian engineering’ an article in Hindu forced me to come back on blog and write something about it. (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3547601.ece?homepage=true )

The lines what I liked the most or may be the bottom line of the article – ‘it is not the lack of money that influences national poverty as ineffective engineering that imposes crippling high costs for water, energy and other essential services. Good engineering liberates human effort for social developments such as governance, healthcare, education, social services and even recreation’.

After I read these lines the immediate thought that struck to me was – how paralyzed the current Indian engineering is standing on weak pillars of service industries. When the world economy is trembling down and trending topics of the country are Presidential elections, Cricket, lifestyles, facebook etc etc, when are we going to link infrastructure developments to daily life requirements by Engineering.

Now a days engineering is considered to be a colorful certificate which can endorse a colorful VISA stamp to fly to foregin countries. It is sad to see when Engineers are most required to build the amenities of one’s country, they are being fled away or infact lost to other countries. Currently India is thinking of increasing the funds on Fundamental research from 0.1 % to 2% and I would say stop thinking and just implement things which don’t need much thinking. We are so happy when we compare ourselves to immediate neighboring countries and say that we are better than them.

We are not ready to accept the reality of the situation. It’s time to STOP doing this!!!!

In fact, the article says it to be ‘Enigma’…. I don’t see anything enigmatic in it because we have forgotton our fundamentals and it’s very clear. It’s time to get back to our fundamentals of engineering, fundamentals of developments and fundamentals of industrialization.

Engineering in its education and application should be more robust because it is one of the most important link in building better India.