Thursday was a welcome holiday here ...Me along with two friends went to a Beach Tourist place called Knokke ...Its just 1.5 hrs from Brussels by train .....even though we were disappointed by the clouds when e reached there ...the Day became sunny afterwards ....

I went to a Beach after a long time ...in fact the Best thing I like about Chennai is the beach ...the Beach here was quite different though ....there were many quite luxurious looking sea facing apartments ....I immediately wanted to buy one ...

And there was a lot of crowd ...involved in cycling , Jogging or just simply relaxing on the beach ...

But the water ....ahh it was tooo cold for us ...I am more used to the Pleasant cold water in Chennai's hot climate ...but here it was ...I missed my usual 'Walk in Water' ...

We took lotsa snaps also ....one of which I am attaching below ....

There is a good blog on Blog Maintenance and I just learned how to upload images over you blog ...

So here is my first image on my blog ...



On Friday, after office went to a Friends' house and saw a couple of Hindi movies after a long time (I have to catch up on lotsa of them ...) ...Saw Hungama and Darna mana hai ....

Hungama is good ..but not as good as 'Hera Pheri' ...there are scenes where the overacting really shows even to a Naive Actor like myself ....

DMH is pretty good ...gosh I admit I was really scared ...its good that some new directors like Ram G V are making movies which are a break from the lot ....

I am riting after a long time here ...Lotsa things have happened in India in the past one months ...first the elections and then the suprising results ...Personally I supported the NDA ....and felt bad when Vajpayee found himself in a postion to be the oppposition ...this was his last chance ...

The news channels here BBC and CNN attributed the defeat of NDA to the so called 'Pro Rich policies' which disillusioned the poor .

But I feel that its might be only part of the reason (or no reason at all) ....On the face of it .... Congress also has not won ....Congress and BJP have got roughly the same no of seats ...what has made the difference is the choice of Allies ...Take TN ...one ally DMK with 40 MPs has made so much difference ...that taken with Defeat of TDP in Andhra and no suprise BJP is sitting in opposition .

Congress is making the govt and its such a relief that Sonia Gandhi is not becoming the PM of the country ...No self respecting Indian would have felt nice on an Italian hoisting the national flag on 15th Aug from Red fort ....

Overall Manmohan Singh is a good guy ...but the problem is he is not a Political Heavy weight ...he wud need a lot of help in managing the affairs of the Coalition ...

The Dynasty still controls the congress and no wonder if 20 yrs down the line we see Rahul gandhi's Columbian Girl friend as India's Prime Minister :-)..... I don't understand why the hell Indian public is so stupid .....

Coming back to the "Have-Nots Dissatisfied - voted NDA out of power issue" ... I don't think any govt can really make a huge difference within five years without undertaking massive reforms ...corruption and Population are also a big problems ...

Massive Reforms will be difficult to implement with Left supporting the govt ....So its a tough ride for the Congress .....

Frankly I don't understand why the communists are still there in politics ...they know that they can not implement Marixism type Communism in India now ...and even Chinese communist govt is so liberal to allow McDonalds/Starbucks/WalMart/Carrefour in the country ...
The irony in indian politics is that the parties who are no 3 , 4, 5 in the final seat tally calls the shot in govt formation and its policies ....

Just read about half of 'India a Million Mutinies now' By VS Naipaul and left it there .

The title sounds pretty philosophical and sophisticated , and to some extent the book indeed is .

The central theme of the book is the thousands of different small categories of ppl which divides the indian society ,categories of Casts , Religion,Language ,Sex, Rich-poor etc All overlapping at the same time .

There is no single idea of an Indian . Naipaul contrasts this to his own small Indian Community in Trinidad where the indians were in minority so they lived together with each other and there was only one category he was placed in, that of an indian .

But my feeling was that the idea of 'India having a Million mutinies within' gets dissolved somewhere in the first few chapters .

The Book basically is a kinda travelogue of VSN of his visit to india during 1988-89 . He starts with Bombay , then goes to Bangalore , Mysore , Chennai , calcutta and so on . Basically he meets different kind of people , A local siv sena politician , A Secretary and a Dalit poet in bombay , A former Royal Priest in Mysore , A Brahmin in Chennai , A Lecturere (also former Communist activist) in Calcutta .

He talks to them about their lives since birth , their struggles in life and tries to understand the times they have gone thru .

The Text is classic VSN full of minute observations . Sometimes here and there Naipaul writes about his own Ideas of india and his link with Indian culture while he was being brought up in Trinidad . Also since he visited India in Early 60's , He notices changes in all those years .

After reading a few chapters I got pretty bored reading about the goddam lives of those people Naipaul is narrating . Also I got slighly pissed off on the fact that how little I have seen of India .

Anyway , So I left it midway and settled for 'The Catcher in the Rye' which looks goddam promising till now (its slang reminds me of 'Love story' by Eric Seagal). Its Review next time ....

It has been 4 months for me here in Brussels now , 4 long months of a Boring Assignment , Sometimes I think I am being too pessimistic in mu views on this assignment , but then Life is really boring out here .....I have frequent discussions about my Rommie abt this ....He is also of the same opinion , the problem is of social life , I don't make friends easily , and the presnet lot of ppl around me (at workplaces) doesn't offer many choices .....

The only fun part of my stay was my Trip to Paris in which I visited my College fast friend ! However Lately I have began to enjoy the benefits of the public library here ....

The city is generally good compared to india . The Living stds is much higher , but you don't feel at home . Neverthless I have got new prespective on life and the opprtunity to understand another part of the world which is geographically as well as economically so much away from india .

As is my ususal habit I have been following the events in india for the past few months via internet . There are going to be elections , I have had a few verbal arguments with my roomie over the politics in india , He seeems to be against the BJP and me a fan of Vajpayee , I am getting a good feeling as I feel that I am able to articulate my support for BJP much more better than him .

I told him that I also don't likewhat happened in gujrat or Ayoodhya , but still out of a foreigner and Vajpayee I am definately going to chose the later , on one side you have a seasoned statesman , on the other side is a lady whose only claim to fame is her Marriage into a ruling family . I don't have anything against the Gandhis but then they are propogating hereditary politics and the rest of the congressmen are reduced to a level of sycophancy not seen in any part of the world . There was a comment from one of the congreessman "Priyanka and Rahul are the Born members of Congress" and now they are primary members also" .

I am getting a feeling here that I might be getting too political here . but nothing else is coming to my mind now for the moment .

Fir vapas aakar kuch aur post karta hoon .