Holier than cow – Indian Express.

Lokpal Bill was always about investigating corruption charges, if I am not wrong; thereby it becomes one of the means to bring the  culprits to punishment. Corruption is deep into our organization and hence we needed a strong Lokpal bill. Even Anna and team kept mentioning that this is one step towards controlling corruption. So what next?

As always it has to be started from ME. It was like this, it is like this and it will always be like this. You have to decline bribe, neither should you bribe anyone. I think we can achieve this. From the fact that so many people supported Anna I assume many of us have done it when it seemed the only option. So if we can opt for the difficult option i.e. without paying bribe then we should go with it. Its the only way in controlling the corruption.

With Australia loosing too many tournaments in the past few months they weren’t really the out and out favorites like they were in previous two editions. (In 1999 South Africa were the favorites.)  South Africa had probably the best balanced side on the paper for the second time after 1999 but their choking history was standing against them. India and Sri Lanka had a really strong teams but home pressure was a factor going against them. So there was no clear favorite in this tournament. And that also showed on field as the tournament finally got a final that was interesting to watch.

When the tournament started India were rusty in their bowling and were putting a lot of pressure on the strong batting line-up. A tie to England that lost 6-1 to Australia just prior to the tournament created some doubts in many fans minds. The scraping wins against minnows Ireland and Netherlands didn’t help in clearing those doubts and the loss to South Africa just increased that doubt manifold. But those group stage fears were dusted by the Indian team by some convincing display in the knockout phase. The best thing in these matches was the fielding of the side that was always criticised. The highlight of the final was a 38 year old Tendulkar diving to stop a boundary. Just heartwarming for any Indian cricket fan.

On the other hand Sri-Lanka had entered into the finals with authority. The loss to Pakistan being the only blip on the radar. The washed out match against Australia was also not out of their hands and according to me they were in really good position to end the Australia’s unbeaten run in World Cup before Pakistan did it later in the group stage. But just when the final hurdle was in their sight something started going wrong for them. Murli and Matthews weren’t fit They got cover for them but once the winning combination gets altered it gets tough to get the right combination. But still having said that they had done everything right for almost 45% part of the game.

And finally the celebrations started and the whole nation refuse to go to sleep on the night of the first saturday of April. The roads of Mumbai and its suburbs which were quiet for whole day came alive with youngsters dancing, singing, drinking and shouting out patriotic slogans like ‘Bharat mata ki jai’. Some of the celebration, though, I think was not in the good spirit. Some youngsters tried to do a wild stunts on bikes putting risk to their as well as others life, some shouting obscenities at the Sri Lankan team which had played a nice match giving run for money to their team and also obscenities at some tourists if they spot one.

Watching those celebrations also forced my mind to go back 4 years. At that time India was out of World Cup in the group stage itself and people even carried out the last rites of some players.

The best quote came from a friend, ” I haven’t seen these many Indian flags even on our Independence day or Republic day rallies”. A sport can truly evoke more patriotism than many other occasions.

At about 9:30 am Bhusawal – Surat passenger arrives at Jalgaon station. A group of 5-6 ladies get down at the station. The ticket collector approaches them and ask them for their tickets. They had none. Now what did the ticket collector did, I really didn’t know. But some facts to consider.

Distance between Jalgaon-Bhusawal is 25 km.

Fare of a passenger train is Rs.4.

What a facility it is for the citizens but still people find it really painstaking to buy a ticket to travel in a train. And then keep commenting what kind of political leaders we have……creating one scam after another. But what about us, ourselves? It is really something to ponder…..

Just one encounter to judge this fact. Just after India won 2nd ODI of the just concluded India-South Africa series by just 1 run from a losing position, I was gossiping with my friends about it while we were walking down a road. Suddenly a man stopped me and just said, “mala kay vatata ki te makar sankrant hoti mhanun match aaplyala jinku dili nahitar aapan naste jnklo.” (I think the match was fixed on our favour just because the match was on the eve of Indian festival Makar Sankrant)

My only reaction was LOL

The past week and half has been a little too busy as I finally got a job and am no more berozgaar (unemployed). So now finding time for quite some things is getting difficult but I think I will manage somehow after a couple of weeks when I get used to the current drastic change in my life. Calling it drastic is a little bit awkward as it was desirable change but I also want to find some time for my hobbies and some leisure activities. It seems I want a lot without an compromise but at the moment I think it is more fun to adjust without compromising. Lets see whether I succeed in adjusting………..with my fingers crossed.

Well this is about Aditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray. He had forced the Mumbai University to discontinue Rohinton Mistry’s ‘Such A Long Journey‘ from its English literature syllabus just in the middle of term. Okay I won’t say much about it. Just noting down a passage right from a news daily ‘Mumbai Mirror’ (dated October 13, 2010).

Reading the offending passages in ‘Such A long Journey’, he told the Indian Express on Tuesday, “was enough to give (one) goosebumps.”

When Mumbai Mirror reporter Anand Holla had asked him last fortnight whether he’d read the book, Aditya texted him : ” We didn’t have the book, Anandji, so I haven’t read it, but many students tol me about it.” To get goose bumps with such a second-hand account, young Thackeray must have an extraordinarily sensitive epidermis.

Now I am not saying whether the book should be banned or not as I haven’t read the book and honestly I don’t have an idea what the book is about. But my point is why he took such an extreme step without even confirming whether the book is really offending to anyone? Maybe he atleast from next time verify his facts before taking any such action.

Well to start off Epic Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox. Actually if you ignore its features that it is marketing on then you will feel there is no difference between Epic and Mozilla. But you can hardly ignore those features.

So whats are these features?

Firstly the browser is marketed as a browser by Indians for Indians. So most of the features will appeal to the Indians. And one such feature is writing in regional Indian languages (and some foreign too) namely Arabic, Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu. So while chatting with my friend I can write in Hindi or Marathi with great ease and is one of the USP of this browser.

Next how would you like to have a sidebar where you can view updates of your twitter, facebook, orkut and your email account (Google and Yahoo). Sounds good, doesn’t it? For me, it does. Just one click on the apps on the sidebar and you get your updates.

There is also an app called India in this sidebar where you can get all the top news from IBN live, NDTV, Yahoo, Rediff,  Indiatimes, NYTimes, BBC, Sify etc. Now how about having it in the national language Hindi? Sounds good. And regional news from your regional daily? Great. So getting NEWS while you are working won’t just get as easy. Indians are so crazy about cricket. And Cricinfo and Cricbuzz just provide you the all news and live scores you need to follow. There is also stock market and business news, events in your city (of course only select cities are available), Daily Masti (which contains Joke of the day, Quote of the day, Gyaan of the day), some music and videos. And how about watching NEWS channel online (NDTV 24X7, NDTV India, NDTV Profit).

There is also an antivirus scanner which I haven’t activate just because I didn’t want to download it and cause any conflicts with my existing one (just as a precaution) So thats one of the untested feature by me

Dress up your Epic with different skins. The Epic browser has lots of skins(1500+ as their site claims and I have no reason to doubt it). So if you think of getting bored with your current skin you can change it within seconds.

In addition it also has ‘My Computer’ so that you don’t have to open number of windows. Just open a new folder in a new tab Have your To Do list so that you cannot forget anything. Also a Timer, Stopwatch and Alert to help you. But frankly speaking, I suppose,  not many people would be using these features. There is also Maps so that you get instant directions but even this feature will remain hardly used.

Then it has a travel app so that you can book your next flight(for Indians, British, Americans and Australians)/train (train only for Indians) with it. A Jobs app which gives you an easy job search option for the residents of India, Canada, US, Australia and England. Some games are provided so that you don’t get bored.

And there are more that you can add or remove.

In addition you can also add Firefox themes, add-ons, extensions; but I am not sure about compatibility.

Final Verdict : I would say it is good browser with some good features. Firefox users can easily get on with it. For Indians its one of the best browser they can get. For others its a little modification of Firefox (So I suppose they will be good with firefox). All in all its a good and reasonable product for a group of consumers.

My Rating : 4.5/5

If you want to download Epic Browser you can have it from here