The Ego Surfer

Thayir Sadham, Thachi Mammam, Thasuru Anna, Bagala Bath, Curd Rice...Call it What you will...But the thing is divine. I am a vegetarian and a flexible one at that. You know what I mean? I am not one of those veggie bigots who will keep reminding you of their narrow choices of foods and restaurants when you eat out; and make you feel guilty by ordering home delivery (and reminding you about it the next day) after returning from a "fine diner" where there weren't enough choices to suit their narrow dietary habits. I am also not one of the annoying fretters that would liberally lecture hapless non-vegetarians on the virtues of vegetarianism; how it is an elevated state of existence; and how they are God's "chosen people", a step closer to Moksha, in the vicious cycle of births and rebirths, due to an accidentally picked up food habit. On the other hand, I can be pretty good company for dinner, casually conversing or even cracking a joke as you eat a large-heade

God...give us bijli, sadak, and paani... While we were busy meticulously carving out inch-by-inch of what we call "National Highways" (and the accompanying architectural wonders called speed breakers), as if they were heritage structures for posterity; and showering panegyric on Laloo and his cronies for the ingenuity of introducing chai in train stations and public address system on Shatabdhi trains, China was quietly building, for the last two years, what is now being touted as the world’s fastest conventional train service. The inaugural service, expected to be flagged off on August 1, 2008 will link Beijing and the port city of Tianjin and ferry passengers, in "aircraft-like cabins with spacious interiors" (which aircraft has spacious interiors?), at speeds touching 350 kilometers per hour. Trains will run on the Tianjin line – which was built at a cost of USD 2.93 billion – every 3 minutes, with each train expected to carry close to 600 passengers. China, in sp