Unfortunately, all this study of the universe is done by just a fraction of humans that have lived on this planet.  An incredible amount of human potential was/is being wasted. As if natural disasters are not enough to destroy us, we managed to find ingenious ways to destroy ourselves with outdated religious beliefs which resulted in certain group exploiting the uninformed, imaginary fears about neighbors mostly fueled by jungle instincts to dominate others etc.  Hence the threats for human species are

1. Natural Disasters (Earth Quakes; Tsunamis;Floods;Supernova explosion in our Sun’s neighborhood; Asteroid Strikes etc)
2. Human-made Disasters (Wars; Terrorism; Famine; Exploitation based on race, nation, religion, caste;  Alien attack etc)

Solution in Federal Government of Earth

A multi-tier federal government of Earth is essential to solve all the problems mentioned. A multi-tier federal government is a type of governing structure where there are different levels of governments taking care of different aspects of human lives. Such distribution of jobs among various government levels have both the advantages of small countries (like preserving local culture, language, tradition; efficient solutions for local problems) and of huge countries (like efficient crisis management, good technical expertise, enough resources to maintain police).

The huge government of Earth would have enough technical expertise and resources to deal with any natural disaster in the world swiftly. As a judicial system would replace wars as the tool to resolve conflicts, more resources will be at the disposal of various scientists to find a solution for natural disasters, even from outer space. (We may have to abandon this planet for a better one or build shields to protect earth from supernova explosions).

In my view the most important reason to form an Earth Government is to tackle the alien threat. If aliens visit our planet at this very moment then there are two possible scenarios. 1) Native American Scenario and 2) Indian Scenario

Native American Scenario: If  human species are primitive by aliens’ standards then they simply would destroy humans and occupy this planet for their home.

Indian Scenario: If aliens find human civilization to be resourceful and not so primitive in weapon technology then they would decide to trade with us and hence set up factories on this planet. Klingon Orion Arm Company or Vulcan Orion Arm Company would be set up to trade with countries on Earth. One company supports US, another company supports China and within no time humans would find themselves under Foreign rule.

Both the aforementioned scenarios can be avoided if a well established decentralized  Earth government exists before arrival of aliens. An Earth government can at least give a good fight before getting annihilated if humans are really primitive. On the other hand, the Earth government can easily avoid the divide and rule policy of aliens if at all we find ourselves in a fortunate situation of aliens being not so advanced a civilization than us.

India’s role in forming Earth Government

Due to various historical reasons a set of humans got this opportunity to experiment with a prototype of a world government . Despite partition, India is still a mini-Earth with various languages, cultures, ethnic groups and even a huge geographical diversity. If we closely observe India, each district deserves to be a separate country by eastern European or west African standards and each state deserves to be a separate country by western European or south American standards (It is unfortunate that India has only two-tier government structure, totally neglecting district/municipal governments). India is essentially a nation of nations. The success of this democratic secular republic is necessary to encourage European Union, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), African Union etc to become national entities by rising above their current national tags. Eventually a Federal Earth Government can be formed which would save human species so that we could better understand this Universe.

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Suppose each person uses a 50W bulb for his/her lighting. Also suppose that person sleeps two hours earlier than his/her regular timings. So he/she saves 50Wx2hrs=100 W.h of electrical energy per day (Computers and other gadgets are not counted because early sleepers rise early and starts their computers early ). In an year, a person can save 365×100 W.h = 36.5 KW.h . The general transmission losses of most power distributions is 10%. So the actual electricity produced to serve 36.5 KW.h is 40.15 KW.h . Emission Factor of Coal 0.963 i.e to generate 1 KW.h of electricity 0.963 Kg of CO₂ is emitted. Similarly E.F of Oil and Natural Gas are 0.881 and 0.569.

Production of energy varies from country to country. India used 53% of coal, 0.9% Oil and 10.5% Natural Gas(NG).
So the final formula to calculate the CO₂ emission cut would be

PowerOfAppliance(in KWatts)*HoursSavedPerYear* 1.1 (transmission loss)*E.F of Fossil Fuels

where E.F of Fossil Fuels= (%of Coal * E.F of Coal + %of Oil * E.F of Oil + %of NG * E.F of NG)/100

So if a person sleeps two hours earlier than their normal time of 12 or 1am, then that person (if in India) can prevent 23.325 Kgs of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere per year. This is just 0.015% of India’s total CO₂ emission assuming there are a crore people in India who can sleep two hours earlier. So it is very very insignificant. But when compared to per capita CO₂ emission of India which is 1310 kgs per year, then 23kgs savings per year per person accounts to 1.7%. Remember the calculations I did are the least possible savings we could do assuming just one 50W bulb. In reality, what we save will be more and varies according to our lifestyle, proximity to a thermal power station or a hydro electric power station, efficiency of the lights used. Also if the trend of whole city sleeping early is observed then most of the brilliant lighting (definitely more than 1000W) of the malls/shopping complexes will be switched off. The 23 kgs figure is the minimum we can definitely prevent from entering the atmosphere by sleeping early.

My point is: Why become responsible even for that insignificant 20 odd kgs of CO₂ emission per year when clearly almost all of the things that we generally do late night (reading books, chatting with friends, watching movies, playing games etc) can be done after sunrise and before 10 PM?

PS: The third widget from the top in the right side panel helps you figure out how much CO₂ emission per year can be prevented by saving electricity. (be it early sleeping, switching off the unnecessary devices or shutting half the lights of the malls/shopping complexes earlier than their normal close time etc ) Indian electricity production distribution is set as default.

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Before we start our discussion, lets take a look at some facts we know about this planet.

A Male Voice Over:

Maya is the third or fourth planet from the sun depending on its position in orbit. It was named after the sanskrit word “maya” which means illusion. Due to its strange position in our night sky, it was not discovered until recently.

Though the credit for its discovery goes to NASA’s voyager team, there are two noted observations of this planet before. The first one by Sir Arthur Eddington and his team during the solar eclipse which proved the General Theory of Relativity. They observed the star shift as predicted by Albert Einstein. However, they also noticed an uncharted dot. They reported this observation to many astronomers around the world as they couldn’t publish it formally due of lack various independent observations. Ever since many astronomers tried to find the ‘unidentified dot’ during solar eclipses but were not successful.

The other observation was by Dr. Chandrashekar’s team. His team took four observations in Boma (DR Congo), Mbuji-Mayi (DR Congo), Suryapet (AP, India) and Berhampur (Orissa, India) during a solar eclipse. To their surprise they found the dot in both the observations in India but in none of them in Congo. He explained that it was like “maya”, an illusion. Since then this was unofficially named the ‘maya’ phenomenon.

Ten years ago, when the voyager’s team found the radio signals from an unexpected place in this solar system, they turned the cameras to find ‘a pale blue dot’. This was a defining moment in the history of humankind as not only, we found a place that might closely resemble our own planet, we also found evidences that there may be  intelligent life on it.

Observation of this planet is very difficult from our Earth-Moon system. The eyes that could gather some data about this planet were the Voyager Probes. They managed to find out some of the important physical and orbital characteristics like:

Mean radius: 5866 kms
Mass: 5.3298 × 10²⁴ kg
Equatorial surface gravity: 10.33 ms^-2
Sidereal rotation period: 22^h48^m55.398^s
Axial tilt: 5.0684 ^o
Satellites : One with an inclination of 1.04 ^o

The scientific community seized this opportunity to convince all the governments to sign and ratify the outer-space treaty which paved the way for the establishment of the International Space Organisation.

Melissa Alba: We are sorry for that very small introduction for an event that eventually changed the way we look at ourselves in this world. We think we should have more time for our guests here to give the details in their own words. Lets start. Dr Dupont, how do you compare this planet with our Earth?

Dr. Robert Dupont: Let me say a note of caution. The current data is very minimal about this planet. However,it is sufficient enough to have this discussion with some intelligent guesses. About your question, Maya is unequivocally identical to Earth in terms of size, mass, density and age. As you can see the data for yourself, the mean radius, mass, rotation period, surface gravity are within ten percent of the values of our Earth. That is a remarkable match. Yet there are significant differences like the axial tilt which is only five degrees when compared to twenty three and a half degrees of our Planet; its moon’s inclination which is just one degree when compared to five degrees of our moon.

Mellisa: Speaking of these differences. Dr Greenidge, what does these two differences say about that planet?

Dr. Gustav Greenidge: The axial tilt is responsible for the seasons we experience. We have large variations in seasons because of our significant axial tilt. But for Maya, as it is just five degrees, we can expect most of the climate to be very calm due to less variations in seasons.  They most likely do not have monsoons or hurricanes. Even if they have, their intensity wont be much when compared to us. Polar ice caps may probably be stronger and  definitely cover a small area than ours. Continent placement is direct result of tectonic activity so we cant comment on that, but the images indicate that land coverage is forty percent of the planet’s surface, almost double the land area on Earth. We still have to verify this piece of data though.

Moon’s orbit inclination is very fascinating. It is just one degree. So every fortnight there is an eclipse.  Solar and Lunar eclipses occur alternatively. But this is not the reason why the inclination is fascinating. That one degree may result in occasional non-occurrence of an eclipse.

Melissa: That is very interesting. So those people may not consider eclipse as a bad omen I suppose because of the frequent occurrences.

Dr. Greenidge: No, they may not. Anything that happens very frequently is not special. So it may not have any cultural significance.

Melissa: Yeah, about their culture.  It is a known fact that our Earth’s orbital characteristic have a significant affect on our cultures. Dr. Prasad, what kind of culture can we expect to see because of these these two differences?

Dr Aanjaneya Prasad: Axial tilt is very important. As it is just five degrees, duration of day don’t change much throughout the year unlike on Earth. Our festival of lights like Christmas, Diwali etc are celebrated in Northern Hemisphere’s winter due to longer nights and also because most of our civilisations had origins in Northern Hemisphere. If our civilisations had origins in Argentina, South Africa or Australia we would have celebrated  Christmas or Diwali in June or July. However, for Mayanese people …

Mellisa: Wait a second Doctor!  Mayanese is what we call them?

Dr Aanjaneya Prasad: Yes, to distinguish them with Mayans of our planet. To respect Dr. Chandrashekar we named it after his phenomenon. Later, when we realised this possible confusion, IAU decided to name those people Mayanese.

Coming to our point, Mayanese don’t have such huge variations in duration of daytime unless they are really close to the poles.  So festival of lights may not have a place in their culture.  Similarly, given the frequent occurrences of eclipses, a lunar non-eclipse may be as considered the ultimate festival for many cultures on Maya.

Mellisa: Why only Lunar non-eclipse? Why not Solar non-eclipse?

Dr Prasad: It is just my guess. There are less full-moon days than less full-sun days. Everyday we the see the entire sun, but the moon has phases and only once a month we can see it totally and for them on almost all full-moon days there is lunar-eclipse. So we thought a lunar non-eclipse will have more significance than solar non-eclipse.

Mellisa: Looks like just facial similarities are not enough to understand Maya or Mayanese. Lets a take a break and when we come back, we will discuss about ISO’s mission to Planet Maya.

To be continued..

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It was observed that many people are expecting this series to end. I intend to build this series as several stand-alone episodes which contribute to the overall story.  I realise I added “to be continued” tag at the end of two of the episodes. It was a mistake. Only episodes whose title mentions part number requires continuation. This series ends whenever you don’t want to read or whenever I am tired of continuing the story.  As of now the story wont end in near future.

You can read the first three episodes here, under the “The Other World” Series subheading.

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• In 1724, Asaf Jah, governor of Hyderabad, declared his independence from the disintegrating Mughal Empire, claiming the title of Nizam al Mulk of Hyderabad. Salabat Jung, who became Nizam with the help of French, granted the district of Guntur in return for their services. Later British conquered the fortress of masuilipatnam (now machilipatnam). So the French were forced to transfer the areas surrounding Chilaka Lake to British. When the British got a stronghold in India after the Battle of Buxar, the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam granted five circars on the coast to the British in 1765 but was kept as secret from the Nizam of Hyderabad. (These are known as northern circars because they were the northernmost districts in the Hyderabad Province of Mughal Empire.). As Nizam considers Hyderabad as an independent state, British had to offer services initially and annuity later to use these districts. The districts from Guntur (Prakasham was formed in 1970 with backward areas of Guntur, Kurnool and Nellore) to Vizagapatnam (Srikakulam in 1950 and Vijayanagaram in 1979 were formed later) were initially called Circar districts. Finally the outright claims of these districts were bought by the British in 1823. They occupied Nellore in 1792 from Nawab of Arcot.
• In 1796, amidst fears that Napoleon might come for the rescue of Tipu Sultan, the then Nizam of Hyderabad opted to get British help by accepting the doctrine of Subsidiary Alliance. Under this agreement, he ceded Bellary district out of which Kadapa, Anantapuram and Kurnool where carved out. These districts are called Ceded districts. In 1911, Chittoor district was formed out of Nellore, Kadapa and North Arcot. The term “Rayalaseema” was coined by Gadicherla Hari Sarvottama Rao in 1928. Faction-ism was prevalent in this area since Vijayanagara Empire and was said to be the root cause of underdevelopment in this region.
• Thus till early 18th century, Andhras were united under some king or the other. These leasing and ceding of areas by Nizam to British created two regions viz Circar and Ceded districts in British Indian Madras Presidency. The third region under nizam rule is called Telangana (Telugu speaking region). While the ceded districts got themselves a name called Rayalaseema, the circar districts without any special name remained as Kosta Andhra (telugufied version of Coastal Andhra) or simply Andhra.(This explains the film distributors lingo of Nizam, Ceded and Andhra for Telangana, Rayalaseema and Kosta respectively.) While North Kosta is influenced by Oriya; Rayalaseema by Kannada & Tamil and Telangana by Urdu & Marathi, Guntur and Krishna districts remained relatively untouched by neighbouring languages. This isolation helped Guntur and Krishna district people to have relatively refined Telugu. Combination of these two phenomenon is often misinterpreted as Guntur and Krishna people being the actual Andhras with pure Telugu. However, it was the lack of second name for this area coinciding with the lack of exposure to other languages that led to this conclusion by many people. In any case, Telugu or Tenugu is the Dravidian name for the Aryan and Dravidian tribes which lived together mainly near the banks of Godavari, Krishna and their tributaries. As the language was basically of Dravidian origin, they called themselves Telugus. But Sanskrit name for these tribes is Andhras. That is why many epics use the term ‘Andhras’ to describe these tribes. Later when Telugu language started adopting Sanskrit words into its vocabulary, Andhra term was popularized in native Telugu speakers too. My point is, it is juvenile enough to argue that Andhras and Telugus are different and its highly preposterous to use this as an argument to demand for a separate Telangana state. So for all practical purposes, the term Andhra refers to all those whose mother tongue is Telugu.

(...)
Read the rest of A not so brief modern history of Andhra Pradesh (4,363 words)

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The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General:

The Secretary-General praises every member of the United Nations General Assembly for ratifying the Outer-Space Treaty within six months of its revival and commends the leaders for overcoming their minor differences.

The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, since they are the Common heritage of humankind. Also it bars States from militarizing the outer-space and exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.

The Secretary-General compliments the leaders for a mature agreement without the fear of a possible intelligent extra-terestrial life on the newly found planet Maya and is pleased at the establishment of the International Space Organisation (ISO) as a specialized agency of United Nations to lead International efforts to accelerate our progress in space-exploration.

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“Hello Arthur.” Frank Dyson greeted as he entered Arthur Eddington’s office in Cambridge Observatory in Madingley Road.
“Ah! Hello Frank. I am surprised. I thought you said you will be late to work today.”
“Yes I did”
“What changed your mind?” asked Arthur.
“The news about your experiment.”
Arthur smiled and said “Oh that! You heard it right.”

“Excellent! The theory of general relativity, which was understood by only three people in this world is finally proven to be right.” Frank said in jubillation and added “How is that for a press statement tomorrow?”
Arthur was confused and asked “Wait a minute. Who is the third one?”.
Both laughed and went to the sofas in his office.

“At least now the germans have something to be proud of.” Frank spoke as he was about to sit.
“Pardon?”
“That war is everyone’s fault.” Frank said. “That peace treaty in versailles an year ago. It was the worst treaty in the history of mankind. They are simply exploiting the germans just because they lost. I am happy that a german’s contribution to science may be used as a consolation to alleviate their pain and agony. I hope the Allied forces realize their mistake before someone in Germany ignites the revenge on all of Europe. I dont understand what happens to common sense once you become the head of a state.”

“Speaking of common sense. Can you please help me, using your common sense, to solve a problem before I publish the results?” Arthur was waiting for any silly word like this one to change the topic. He realised his mistake immediately after indirectly asking him to ellaborate on the ‘Germans being proud’ remark. Frank would have spoken for hours about the Great War otherwise.

“With pleasure.”
“Come here.” He pointed towards the table on which he was studying the photographic plates when Frank entered the room.

“Oh. The photographs of the eclipse?” Frank inquired.
“Yes. Look. I compared the normal photograph of the stars in this region with the photograph of the same region of the sky when its behind the sun during this may’s eclipse in Principe. So if Einstein was right, then the stars in the photograph during eclipse should appear slightly out of position when compared to the photograph of the stars of the same region taken any other time.”

“Out of position?” Frank interrupted as he was unsure on how to intepret Einstein’s claim of gravity affecting light rays.

“Yes because the light rays that were initially not coming towards the Earth would be bent inwards as they pass our massive sun. So they should appear a bit out of position than they usually are.” Arthur explained.
Frank nodded.
“All the stars appeared to have shifted by the amount Einstein predicted. But this dot here is a problem.” Arthur pointed to a dot on the photograph.

“That dot is..?” Frank paused to hear the name of the dot rather a star.
“I do not know.” Arthur said.
“A new star may be?”
“I highly doubt it.” Arthur added in reply to Frank’s confused look.”That dot was never there. I took six photographs of the region during other times and did not find this dot in any one of those photographs. In such cases, it should have been one of the seven planets. But it is not any of them.”

“Any idea how far it was?” Frank smiled with a curious look.
“Fortunately yes. You know that we took two observations: one in Principe, off the coast of Africa and another one in Sobral, Brazil. These two are more than four thousand kilometers apart. So with both these observation sites, we can form a triangle with this dot. I triangulated its position and found that its just two Astronomical Units away from us.”

“What!! Two astronomical units in the direction of our sun?” Frank was shocked.
Arthur clarified “That means, on the day of that eclipse, this unidentified dot is diametrically opposite to our Earth in our own orbit.”

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He hurried towards the small conference room where Chief of Staff and Deputy Administrator were already waiting.

“Dr. Dupont! Is there any progress?” asked Brenda Howard, Deputy Administrator. “You guys look excited” she added.
“Excited? or Shocked? We are not really sure” replied without any emotions on his face.
“Miss Howard. Is Mr. Bolden authorized to access the military intelligence?” he asked.
“Even if I am authorized, I am not authorized to tell you that.” quipped Charles Bolden, NASA administrator who just entered the room. “Why do you want to know that fact anyway?”
“Nothing Mr Bolden. Just to verify some facts.”
“What facts?”
“We traced that signal that’s bothering us.” started Dr. Dupont. “The source of the signal….”

“Will you please explain the whole situation. I am just aware that there was a problem in your mission, so I don’t think I quite understood what you just said” interrupted Mr. Bolden.

“OK. Well. Three weeks ago, our Voyager team had some problems with both the probes.” he began his informal presentation. “Sometimes, some of our commands were not understood properly by one of or both the probes. There was no definite pattern of the commands that were neglected nor of the time a command was received by them nor of the position of those probes. They were very random and frequent occurrences. Generally, as you know, we attribute this lack of understanding to significant noise received by the space probes. Our sun is the biggest noise source that can affect such space probes. But the solar storms are at their minimum and really couldn’t have caused the noise that’s bothering us.”

Dupont raised from his seat and started walking toward the white board. “So we stopped all transmission for the last six days in order to let both the Voyager probes record the noise signals and track its possible source. We relayed it to us for analysis. To our surprise, the signal is getting weaker day by day. The signal was stronger in Voyager One’s records than Voyager Two’s. ”

“How are you sure that the space probes are actually doing what you are expecting them to do at this point? you just said they weren’t able to understand some commands.” asked the chief of staff.

“In deep space exploration probes, we generally dont maintain frequent contact with the probe. The probe sleeps most of the time and collects data only when awaken by our commands. This process is done only thrice a week to conserve power. When I used the word ‘frequent’ I was talking relatively and yes, it is more frequent than our scheduled plan of commands. But when we increase our time period of contact with the probe, those random occurrences are insignificant. The situation is critical as we might even lose the probes if these misunderstandings occur ‘frequently’ when compared to our schedule at a later stage of the mission.”

Everyone nodded.

“So, we had two approaches at this point. a) we find the source and hopefully if it is not in the same direction as that of Earth, we reduce the listening capacity of the probe’s antennas in that direction. or b) we try to find a pattern in the signal and predict it to reduce the interference in future samples.”

“Two teams worked on both these approaches. Team B found that those signals are of frequency modulated.”

“What!!” asked both Brenda Howard and Charles Bolden in unison. “Is that one of our FM signals? I thought you guys use GHz signals for deep space operations.” Bolden added.

“Yes Mr. Bolden, but signals can be modulated to any higher frequency. As you know, our terrestrial FM signals are carried in MHz but this particular FM signal is in GHz. After demodulating that very weak signal we heard some sounds. We are not sure about the language. So we sent the samples to Center for Applied Linguistics for identification. All of them confirmed that it is not any of the major languages used in space faring nations.”

“What about India and China? Are you sure they checked all those languages? ” asked the chief of staff.
“Only a few languages of those countries can be understood by the entire nation. So its highly unlikely that they used some of their less spoken languages.” Dupont assured. “Moreover both those countries don’t have the capability to send space crafts to the other side of the sun. …”

“Other side the sun?” interjected Howard. “Do you mean the source is on the other side of sun?”

“Exactly. The mysterious signal is on the other side of our Sun.”

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(I tried my level best to formulate the following procedures which many of you may know so please feel free to correct if you find any mistakes)

The ideal and the most probable situation:

First of all, let me give some background of how voting works. In many places, there will be many polling stations in a polling booth (like several examination halls in an exam center). Each polling station will have a set of voters allotted to them from the total voters allotted to that booth. So most of the political parties voluntarily undertake the task of identifying the station number of a particular voter (with the provisional voters list they have). All of them, most of the times, come to your address of residence and give you a white slip which contains the polling station number twenty four hours before the election day. If nobody gave it to you twenty four hours before, you can find the polling station number from various counters setup by political parties outside polling booth. With this information, you can wait in the correct queue to cast your vote.

Problem during the election day:

Even though you have a voter id card, sometimes  your name might not appear in the provisional list the political parties have. Hence they cant provide you the polling station information.  This need not necessarily mean that your name is not present in the official voter’s list inside the polling booth. It is because the provisional list is released one month before the elections and the final list might have some additions/deletions. In this case, you have to wait in a random queue (preferably queue with less number of people) till you get your chance and find out polling station information from the the polling officer.

If your vote is still missing, I am afraid it is.

If you have a voter id card with wrongly spelled name, please use the same to search in the list. Please dont try to tell them your correct name as sometimes the wrong spelling will not at all be similar to your original name and polling officer might challenge your vote.

Problems before election day:

The most comon problem will be: you still didnt get your voter id card. As you may know, you can still cast your vote by producing any of the government approved id cards like passport, PAN card, driving license, ration card to confirm your identity provided your name appears in “The Final List” they have. Most of the times, it will be. So find out the polling booth address from yours neighbours and check your name in the provisional list outside the booth in the “voluntary” counters as well as in the final list inside the booth.

The second problem is if you didnt receive your voter id card AND your name was actually misspelled in “The List”. In this case, you may sometimes think that your name isn’t really in the list. So try to keep an eye on the pages they are searching and identify your photo as the polling officer or the volunteers outside will not even look at you when trying to search the list. If you find your photo, show the relevant identification documents and dont hesitate to prove that the picture with a wrong spelling of your name is actually you with the ids you have.

Also please check the Voters’ guidelines for more detailed information. Also read about Electronic Voting Machines a.k.a EVMs to decrease the burden of the polling agent a bit and quicken the election process.

One final suggestion, go as early as possible.

Happy Voting

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For most of us, it was the first time. It was dirty near the foot of the hills, where we parked our vehicles. But soon the shining white snow started to appear beneath our feet once we started the ascent up the hills. Many groups started from various points and gave up the adventure at different heights. After nearly two to three hours of climbing with occasional snowball fights, around twenty to thirty of us reached a road.

Of course there was more to climb, but everyone was exhausted. It was precisely the moment where even a staunch supporter of atheism would say “Oh God! I love you” for we saw a middle aged man cooking maggi. It was a win-win situation for both the cook and us. Our numbers coupled with our eating habits, made that fellow more happy.

After this eating spree, the determined souls continued to climb up, the lazy ones slid down the same way they came up and finally the curious ones decided to explore another route down.

We spotted a place to get down. But it was not entirely visible. There were several trees and a big rock obscuring our view. Hence, decided to climb down to check the place before starting a slide. While Revanth, Prafulla, Ravi Teja and Shashank were trying to find another decent place to climb down, Rahul and I started our descent. Thanks to those boots we wore, we could be able to gradually dig steps as we went down (to come back to that maggi place without much effort if we dont find a place to slide down). May be because of all those Discovery and NGC shows I watched, I realised too much time in open snow is dangerous. So, while going down we moved towards trees to take some rest and plan the next course of action.

I always thought that those guys were making too much fuss when they say “These stunts are performed by professionals. Do not try this at home” in ads, action series etc. The next twenty five minutes from that tree changed that entirely. Thinking “This will just be a walk in the park” I marked a concave-parabolic path in my mind from this tree to the tree at around 100 meters away.

Halfway through, my foot slipped while digging the steps. Its 3′o clock in the afternoon and there was enough energy from the sun the whole day, to start the melting of ice at our altitude. Panic struck. Suddenly, I felt like I was in the middle of the bridge of Khazadum and Balrog (the Sun) was trying to push me into the abyss (yeah it was actually a closer-to-90-degree drop and god-knows-how-deep). I told Rahul to not come in this route and saw Prafulla and Revanth almost making it to the other tree I was going to.

Meanwhile, Ravi Teja was stuck near a tree after realising its dangerous to go down further and losing the stick, which was essential near that place of his to climb, disabling him to come up. And immediately, a cry from Shashank. But he was not there on the road, like he said he would be to monitor the whole situation. He was, instead, on a rock 50 feet below the road. When I asked what happened, Revanth replied “He slid by accident”.

This increased panic in me. There were not even rocks in the least resistance path the earth would pull me. I increased my pace, ditched digging as we decided not to take my route back and almost reached my destination tree when I slipped. Fortunately, Prafulla was already there to catch me as I was not that far from the tree.

After some time, some locals came to rescue Shashank. The rest somehow regained our courage to climb up and Samba waited for us near the vehicles to scold us. Poor fellow was waiting near the vehicles for that past hour, as the scheduled time for our cabs was running out. The determined ones who joined the curious ones after each’s adventure, came down to see all mud with no snow.

(Next post: The trek which never seemed to end)

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The story, screenplay and the production values are really amazing.

A brief intro for the ones who haven’t heard about this show: Human civilizations occupied 12 worlds in a star system. When war broke among these 12 worlds, they started research on making centurions a.k.a cylons to help each world fight battles. But like most of machines in other shows, they rebelled and the 12 colonies of Humans united to fight against the Cylons. After having a unified Colonial government, they manufactured Battlestars.

Story/Screenplay/Direction:

Thankfully, except for season 2, the production company didnt involve in the making of the series. The writers/directors were left to do whatever they wanted and we all know how such a move succeeds in many cases. Combining two of the famous sci-fi concepts: Man vs Machine and Space wars, they hit the target in the begining of the show itself. Though some episodes seem boring, they managed to justify the boredom they imparted upon the viewers by cleverly using them as back stories for later episodes.

Visual Effects/Action:

Here are the sample videos. You will love the space fights. Battling in open spaces, fighting around planets, fighting on planets whose star will go supernova and as a fitting finale for the series, they even fight in the gravity well of a black hole.

My Favourite Scenes/Acts

(SPOILER ALERT! please select the text to view)

• Battlestar Galactica Jumping into the atmosphere of New Caprica to release the vipers in order to provide air support for the rebel ground troops.
• Assassination plans of Admiral Helena Cain of Battlestar Pegasus and Commander William Adama of Battlestar Galactica when Colonial forces successfully destroy the resurrection ship of the Cylons.
• The strategy of Colonials in order to occupy a tylium rich moon from the Cylons who already have a permanent and secured outposts on that moon.
• Trail of Gauis Baltar who was accused of treason for collaborating with the Cylons on New Caprica.
• Mutiny attempt on Admiral William Adama by Tactical Officer Felix Gaeta.
• Final battle scene near a black hole to rescue Hera Agathon, first Human-Cylon hybrid.

More about the miniseries and TV series in the accompanied links.

If you call yourself a sci-fi fan, you really should watch this show.

So say we all.

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On sixth day, a natural phenomenon that could easily jeopardize the mission posed a threat. But to his surprise, this was his fastest journey, with no traffic signals or congestions. He parked his bike in office, took out the helmet and screamed “I am never doing these kind of stupid experiments again!” while scratching his head violently.

PS: As 55 fiction is too hard for me, thought of starting 99 fiction. Because I wanted to write something than do nothing.

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UG3 (The batch that takes the responsibility of organising it) : Felicity 20xx rocks. Best Felicity ever. Awesome organising, wonderful coordination. కేక, తురుము మరియు కత్తి.

UG4 (The batch which organised the felicity before the one we are reviewing) : What the heck is happening? Where are the crowd? This definitely is not a better felicity than ours.

UG2 and UG1: Why are UG3 even boasting about their organisational capabilities? No proper planning. How can they not even think about such a trivial detail about this/that event? Let our time come. We will rock it.

Alumni: What is happening in the campus? Felicity has changed. This, definitely, is not what we expected.

Footnote:

• based on the reviews of Felicity 05, 06, 07, 08, 09.

• Dual Degree students’ reviews are not considered because of lack of statistically satisfying or acceptable data.

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Orion Observer 70mm Ataz Refractor

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PS: Assembling it is not such a PIA as I thought it would be.

PS1: Tonight, I dine in heavens

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9:37AM

He reaches Jubilee Hills check post and is wondering how come those two mini trucks, which are 10 to 12 cars ahead of him, are allowed in to the city in office hours.

9:39AM

Green signal and everyone started.

9:40AM

The ride on Banjara Hills road no.2 is always a smooth one. Every vehicle maintains a steady speed of about 40-50kmph (except when BMWs and Audis enter the picture). He is in front of the Maruti Showroom when he felt the sudden change of wind which is now blowing against his direction of motion. And within seconds, one of the plastic rooftops that are placed on top of one of the aforementioned mini trucks (which is about 4 car lengths ahead but with no cars in between) flies into the air.

It lands on its shorter edge and stands like a big wall in front of him while his brakes are working hard to slow down his bike in order to give him some time to think. In these situations, simply staying where you are is also not a good option.

Rohith and some fellow bikers change lanes swiftly, missing the sheet by a couple of feet,  just to realize that they have successfully escaped the first one. Still, the truck driver is unaware that he is launching plastic missiles on to those poor souls behind him. The second sheet is more furious than the first one but lands at a safer distance from Rohith.

9:41AM

The truck stopped, not because of the realization of the driver about the littering he has done till now, but because of the traffic signal near the entrance of KBR Park.

9:45AM

He reached his office. Safe and Sound

PS: My first post from Office

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Now imagine what it would be like, to the author of this post, when the transition was from a second hand L6i to this..

The features are awesome. Never seen a qwerty phone whose dimensions are just a cm wider, a mm lengthier and a mm thinner (yeah thinner) than L6i. I was in desperation to buy a phone, because my L6i needs to be properly positioned in the space-time continuem in order to maximise the signal strength. Moreover, 10MB of RAM cum harddisk is too much for me to handle.

Rahul, who was also vexed with his phone, wanted to buy a phone. Both of us went to Reliance Digital in banjara hills. Varun once suggested me to buy wifi enabled phone if at all I buy a new one. If at all you buy a wifi phone, go for qwerty, and if we are going for qwerty there is no other option but E71. It took both of us some time to make up our minds to empty 20K. Eighteenth October 2008 was decided as the muhurtha, just because it was a saturday and I can have the whole sunday to explore the phone and show off about it.

We thought we would go to the air show in begumpet and decided to find the rate of E71 in every mobile store in the way. In Big C madhapur, he quoted 20.8K for a special offer piece which contains Bluetooth headset. Sounded fair enough and we asked for two pieces. Apparently it was big PIA for the mobile stores to get E71, because of high demand to supply ratio. He said he would arrange for two pieces by afternoon. So we left for begumpet.

On our way, we thought to check in RPG cellcom outlet in Shopper’s Stop. As the publicity for the upcoming film ‘Fashion’, RPG cellcom, the official blah sponsor of that film, quoted the bata rate of 20K. (Rs 19,999). He promised the same set, the diwali offer from Nokia: E71 with Bluetooth headset free of cost. So we said we would take two and started for air show. Because of huge rush, police were not allowing anyone inside. The ripple effect of that jam in begumpet is felt in somajiguda, punjagutta, khairatabad and to my shock necklace road.

Without going for the airshow, we had lunch in nanking and came back to shopper’s stop to buy that. There we waited three and half an hours, for the guy to get the pieces: one from A.S. Rao Nagar and another from S. R. Nagar. . After the wait, we felt that we have done it. Got the best rate for that awesome phone. yipeeeee.  Like any other tale, there is a ‘but’ here too.

The E71 pieces they brought were not Diwali offer pieces. At this point of time, I should tell what we have done in those three and half an hours we waited.

The person who was behind the glass showcase of mobilephones in shopper’s stop seriously know what he was/will-be-selling. Explained to us, the current market trend of phones, the technological aspects of different phones etc etc and all that. And he clearly mentioned in this conversation we had with him, that the bluetooth headset costs around Rs 1500 to Rs 2000 and is an inaugural offer as that headset was not release in Indian markets yet. So, after getting these pieces from other RPG cellcom stores because of the lack of the diwali offer pieces there, we called Big C and confirmed that they have two Diwali offered pieces which were brought there from other Big C stores in the city. The original guy who explained the specs of the phone kept quiet and following is the conversation with the other two.

Rahul: we called our friend in madhapur and he confirmed us that he saw two diwali pieces of E71 in Big C and they are giving it for 20.8K

Guy 1 (the dumbest of the two who talked to us): Sir, they tell you that the box has bluetooth set inside it but actually there won’t be any.

We: wtf?

me: Actually, the other person told us that bluetooth is worth nearly 1.5K to 2K. Obv for 800 that (Big C) offer is tempting. So we are thinking if you could give us some more discount on this, it would be profitable for us. (Seriously we dont want bluetooth, we are just taking it because its free )

Guy 2: No no no. That headset wont cost you more than 800.

Rahul: But the other person told us so its around 1.5K.

G2: No sir! it wont be more than 800. Trust me

We: yeah right!

me: So can you give us some more discount or not?

G2: No sir. This is our fixed price.

G1: Actually, the data should be entried into the computer… ( I think he actually told us how they enter the values in their computer, didn’t pay attention to him)

Rahul: We will go there once and check it otherwise we will come back and take this.

G1: That bluetooth is not that worth sir!!

me: Anyways, till what time will you be open?

G2: 9:30PM sir.

me: we will come here again if we don’t get it there. Thank You

We didn’t buy it there because we didn’t trust them. Came to BigC as soon as we could, thanks to punjagutta flyover. There they are, the diwali offer of E71.

yours truly
The Proud Owner of Nokia E71

Upcoming Posts: The Adventures in Manali, Timeplane 2: Timepaths

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This trip is, indeed, entertaining right from the word go. As I said, I didn’t want to take the initiative for this one and was waiting for Sundeep to take it. He, as always, eventually took and started discussions on where to go. There were so many (casual) arguments in our batch. And for the first time after 3rd sem(Monsoon 2005), we had elections: to decide where to go .

‘Shimla, Kulu and Manali’ was the choice. From this point onwards, I had no idea what was happening except monetary matters . Because of tiny staff force of the institute, any additional work like railway concession forms for the batchtrips etc will be seen as burden. So Sundeep and I took turns in filling the concession forms and getting them signed by the concerned authorities . The bigger problem of all: finding ‘two’ staff/faculty members to escort us. With great difficulty I could manage to find them.

Day -1: April 3^rd 2008

Less than 24hrs for departure. Last minute brain storming on what we might have forgotten, final checks with tourism department, final warnings to those who are coming and reminders to the escorts. With one escort out of the equation because of work load the day before, the shocking message from the another that “he can’t come” left me trembling. I immediately called Dr. Mitra (SLC chair), to find out what to do. First words from the other side were expected, “How can we allow this?”. I didn’t speak a word after that because I know that he understood the situation and waited for the silence, over the phone, to break. “Let me talk to those escorts and will let you know.” After a few minutes he called and gave permission to go.

For most of us, this will be the last day on campus which resulted in a sleepless night

Day 0: April 4^th 2008

As most of us didn’t sleep, it became easy for us to catch the early morning AP Express. Seats/Berths allocation was done quickly to my surprise and the long journey north began. Train journeys are always awesome if you are with friends and this one wass no different.

Day 1: April 5^th 2008

Its us!

Arrived at New Delhi Railway Station at around 9AM. The plan was to freshen up and visit local places and an overnight journey to Shimla. Everyone were ready by 1PM. There we saw one of the most ridiculous traffic jams: because of parked vehicles kabjaaing more than half the road and acting as if it was their right to park there. So we have to get into buses quickly in order to relieve the congestion near that junction. Our gang quickly boarded the third bus to get good seats .

Later that evening, we went to Aksharadam temple. The architecture is magnificent. Finally!! I went to a temple where there was some silence. There was still a problem for us to solve: rearranging people into buses so that none of the groups are separated. As the discussions failed, we started again with more or less the same seating arrangements .

My picture of what a daabha was was based on the daabhas shown in ‘telugu’ movies with characters of sikh drivers who speak ‘naaki neeki’ telugu. And they(daabhas) sucked big time. Contrary to that picture, the daabhas we dined that night were really good. They were hygienic, parathas were delicious and curries great. No wonder those drivers have such huge bellies .

Day 2: April 6^th 2008

At 3AM. We stopped at around a km from kalka station. Its damn cold outside and it started to rain. That experience was awesome. The drivers took a break till 7AM because of poor visibility due to rain. It was amazing how they built a town on the slopes of a valley. By noon, we checked into our hotel rooms in Shimla and relaxed. Our room(being in the top floor) overlooked the entire valley . Early that evening, some of us started our toy train ride to the “famous” Taradevi temple station.

At Taradevi Temple Station, Shimla

After burger lunch, we(our gang) started our unplanned trek to the Taradevi temple which was supposed to be ‘just’ a 20 min walk from the station according to yaso (who found this information from a local guy in hindi). This trek showed how frustrating can kirthi, samba and especially ling get. The unplanned trek took us 90 mins through jungles of that mountain. Pondy wept, literally. But the view from the top was excellent (though the above mentioned names deny this ) Most of the peaks were below our line of sight parallel to the ground

Later that night, visited mall road but didn’t pay much attention.

Day 3: April 7^th 2008

Need to vacate the rooms by noon and go to kufri. So had a quick visit to mall road again. Had some good time pass and reached hotel to check out. By the time I came to the bus, sundeep told me “Daka, as the girls in your bus came early and your bus was not ready. I asked them to get in the other bus so make sure that everyone in your bus get into this other bus.” Immediately, I screamed (in mind) “Shit!!” and looked at the ‘other’ bus. As expected, the girls have occupied the good seats. x(  I gave a warning to them (not that they care but still we tend to give such warning right?) and went to put my luggage in the boot of the bus. The cleaner told me “sir! you have to get down from the bus because it is very risky to reverse the bus with people inside as it was on very steep inclined road.” (I don’t know why it was risky so don’t ask me) As everyone have to get down anyway, I decided to have a little verbal fight with them to while away my time in the hope that more will join me in eliminating this kabjaism. But none joined Everyone left the dirty work to me. But by the time every bus was ready, fight became serious and everyone kept quiet in order not to prolong that stupid discussion.

To reach kufri, we need to go on mules as the route was treacherous. First experience of riding was good. Unlike some people, I didn’t fall and ruin myself . As it was early summer, there was no snow up there. Later that night, started our journey to Manali.

Riding

Day 4: April 8^th 2008

Early in the morning, we found ourselves on the banks of River Beas. The buses were halted so that the drivers could get some rest. Playing there next to the river in those chilly early hours was really awesome. As the road was in the valley, we found ourselves a hill onto which some of us including our physically handicapped rasagna went for a trek. By noon, we settled in manali hotels and the entire group were give two choices: adventure sports or manali shopping. But fourteen members of us chose something different: Rafting. The experience was indescribable.

Rafting

Day 5: April 9^th 2008

As rohtang pass was closed due to extreme conditions, we went to a snow point near manali (the name of which most of us seem to forgot and yaso is not available ). Everyone did their own adventure. We had a special adventure about which a separate post is required . Later that night, most of the manali market was filled with our batch

Day 6: April 10^th 2008

Because of lack of time, we decided to just visit kulu market which was supposed to be famous. Some of us went to a gurudwara nearby and joined us in kulu by noon. And for the first time Rahul, Yaso and Ravi feared me because of a stupid thing they did in kulu. Yaso with his great knowledge of surrounding areas, asked the autowala to go to market expecting to land in kulu market but was off the target by 13kms in a market of a neighbouring town. He even boarded Himachal Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation’s Bus to get to Kulu Market

Later that night we had a pit stop in chandigarh. No sight seeing. The gridded city looked good

Day 7: April 11^th 2008

Nothing much this day. After breakfast and farewell among ourselves (for some of which I became a villain by hurrying them ), the entire convoy started towards New Delhi Railway Station. That evening some of us boarded the AP Express back to Hyderabad. Some went home from that place and the rest started their scheduled trip to Agra.

Day 8: April 12^th 2008

Fully battered by a week’s adventure, most of the day was spent sleeping and playing UNO. (blah!!!) The interesting part of the day was the so-called ‘interaction’ session of some of our class girls with me. They called it ragging, I called it boring. They finally got vexed with my apathetic behaviour and “decided” to let me go .

Back to campus to stay there for a few more day

Memorable Moments

• Rafting
• Trekking to Taradevi
• Adventure on Snow
• Fight in Shimla
• DumbCharads (several times in the entire journey)

Lessons learned

• Never work alone.
• Never ever follow Yaso
• Never start a verbal dual with a group of girls.

Good friends became better ones and acquaintances became good friends. The main purpose of batchtrips was served at least in my case.

Picture Perfect

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Incident 2: Traffic jam near Srinagar Colony’s entrance near Brand Factory, Banjara Hills.

Incident 3:Traffic jam in Srinagar colony main road. (its the road joining punjagutta-ameerpet stretch near bigbazaar)

Reason for all these and countless other Blockades: People forgetting the fact that one half of the road is for traffic from opposite direction.

Consequence: We blame Hyderabad Traffic Police for assuming  motorists to be responsible.

I really owe a lot to these traffic cops for working their asses off to clean up the mess that we create. So providing transport for a traffic constable every morning for the past three days. First two were completely unexpected. And today’s was an intentional search for one .

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Dear Kimi,

All these years you blamed McLaren for all those stupid car problems and most of us have believed you because we know that McLaren, in a way, sucks. But even when given a Ferrari, how on earth can you not drive it properly? I was hurt at the way you acted at Nouvelle Chicane in Monaco Grand Prix. I agree that a Force India car before Ferrari was a blasphemy but knocking Sutil and denying them championship points is definitely not the way to repair the situation. So, I will no longer be supporting you to win the championship. This is FYI.

yours truly

D. N. Rohith

Go Ferrari!!

PS: Tell your team-mate that I still support him. And beware of Kubica. I hope he kicks your @$$.

Update: after Canadian Grand Prix

Dear Kimi,

Please accept my deepest condolences for getting kicked in the @$$. Even we had no idea that Hamilton had so much grudge on you for ruining his best friend’s race in Monaco. Don’t worry about your constructor. Luck will always favour the best and Ferrari proved it last season. So no matter how stupidly you drive, Ferrari will eventually win the constructors’ championship. By the way, Kubica tasted a grand prix win so be extra careful with that fellow.

yours truly

D. N. Rohith

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