Pune roads in this monsoon

Since 2005, western part of India started recording more rainfall every year in monsoon and so the Pune. It improved the ground water level at Pune but the biggest bad effect of extra rainfall was seen on roads in Pune. In last two years during rainy season, Pune roads were usually full of potholes and were dangerous to ride or drive your vehicle. This year the situation was far improved. Roads were not in that much bad condition. The municipal authorities have "perhaps" taken more care or may be the change in guard at the administration of the municipal commission has done the trick.

Power Of Youth

India is ICC 20-20 world champion. They played some really exciting cricket throughout the tournament. In bits and pieces each member of team contributed in this journey. The one thing noticeable is that team was young, captain was new. The famous trio of Sachin, Saurav, Dravid were not in team. Altogether that helped the team a lot. That helped them in dressing room. That helped the team in field. That helped the team in celebrating the victory with full expression with all media attention on them.

Let’s see how. This is almost the same team which traveled WI for WC 2007 in early this year minus three seasoned (mentally and physically tired, exhausted) cricketers plus few very new young players. But the result is totally different although the coach is missing, captain has zero match leading experience, Indian cricket fans were pessimistic and media had almost no attention. The absence of three famous senior players did the trick. In dressing room almost everyone was young (forget Agarkar he was a lost case in this championship at later part and that was a great decision) and new and was expressing his thoughts freely there was no shadow of heavyweights and their experienced thoughts. In field, the captain was feeling all the freedom to experiment and was able to direct the team as per his plan. In final match against Pakistan, Dhoni sent Yusuf Pathan to open the inning. Imagine if Sachin, Saurav would have been in team, they would have felt bad and forcibly tried to go to open the innings because they think *they* play better as openers (this story has been in news during WC 2007) and it doesn’t matter if team performs bad with that opening combination. Similarly in crunch situation like in last over of final match where Pakistan had to score 13 runs, the poor chap Joginder wouldn’t have got the chance to bowl because Sachin would have thought that he is a better bet in dead overs. Even media would have highlighted this point. Thus the purpose of having a captain would have been defeated every now and then. Imagine Saurav running breathless while going to stop a boundary and Sachin rubbing his knees in slips :) with Dravid chewing his nails. But in absence of these guys Uthappa got a chance to play and he fielded a ball played by Younis khan and broke the stumps of Imran Nazir to get a smart run out. The same guy jumped forward to hold a difficult catch at boundary line which he could not but at least he tried. Similarly Rohit Sharma demonstrated some smart piece of fielding in earlier match to get run outs. Limited over cricket is truly for young and energetic players who are looking for the dawn of their career than for them who should get retired instead of sticking (chipaku) with team like glued with FEVICOL by using their demigod image.

This victory was also a great comeback for player like Irfan Pathan. I feel we should also appreciate behind the scene contribution of last coach Greg Chappell who worked hard to create a pool of pace bowlers to strengthen the bench and thus we have pace bowlers like RP Singh, Sreesanth where even one of them clicks, India performs well. This victory also has an unsung hero in Gautam Gambhir who played well almost in every game but no one talked about him. This victory also indicates that perhaps Indian team knows to play better in absence of a coach. Dhoni took some decison which fortunately clicked but he needs to continue his approach to the game and the team. He has to prove his leadership quality in upcoming Australia series.

Online Rail Ticket booking with IRCTC

I am planning to travel to my native in November and I had to book a rail ticket. I don’t have enough time to spend in endless queues at various Indian Rail reservation counters and so I decided to use IRCTC (http://irctc.co.in) to book my tickets online at my home on broadband internet. I was aware that it was a big risk. I had to prepare a lot to do the successful booking at IRCTC. Tickets for the desired day starts getting booked 60 days in advance (that is today) at 8:00 AM and I was fully prepared. I got up early today and first logged in to net and checked whether everything is fine. I was able to login to IRCTC and it was very fast to use. I was confident that at 8 AM I will surely book my tickets in Rajdhani express.

Booking at IRCTC for festival season tickets is risky, unreliable and Herculean task.

At 7:55 AM I again started a fresh session at IRCTC and logged in. I prepared my query and got ready with all details. At 8 AM I pressed the OK button at IRCTC website and was shocked to see a blank page with "Service unavailable" message displayed. I kept trying many times. I tried with Internet Explorer, I tried with Mozilla firefox. Mostly it was not proceeding a single step after getting logged in to IRCTC website but Sometime I was able to proceed one or two step ahead and then it was displaying "Service unavailable" message or was hanging. I started getting frustrated. I was sure if I cannot book in next 15 minutes or so I cannot get a confirmed status railways reservation. I didn’t loose my heart and kept trying. Till 8:30, I might have logged in and logged out to IRCTC at least 100 times and somehow I could never proceed because of all the different kind of error displayed by IRCTC website. Looked like the server of IRCTC got unresponsive and got chocked due to heavy load at opening time. At 8:30 AM suddenly I could go one more step ahead and I saw status that the tickets are "NOT AVAILABLE". I lost the opportunity to book Rajdhani Express tickets on desired day. This is not the first time I had seen this happening.

All the services provided by Indian Railways are pathetic. Whether it’s catering, seating, security or even ticket booking. Indian Railways NOW claims they are in profit. They should utilize people's money to improve the services instead of going to all business schools to showcase there skills to convert a loss budget in profit budget and patting their own back.

Anyway I have changed my planned departure date and postponed my journey by one day and will be trying my luck at long quesues at Railway reservation counters at 5 or 6 AM tomorrow. Hopefully I will get a ticket.


I (and tens of thousands of railways passengers) usually remember these four lines and try thier luck every day with Indian Railways:

MAN MEIN HAI VISHWAS
PURA HAI VISHWAS
HUM HONGE KAMYAB EK DIN............. !