Remember Kargil?

Well, it has been 10 years since Indian Army recaptured the areas captured by Pakistani intruders and instead of celebrating our victory in Kargil, our politicians are busy downplaying the importance of the 1999 war in which over 500 of our bravest soldiers laid down their lives.

Two Congress leaders expressed to the press that Kargil wasn't something that was worth celebrating. Congress MP Rashid Alvi said he saw no reason to celebrate the Kargil victory. "Kargil isn't a thing to be celebrated. The war was fought within our territory. We didn't even come to know when the Pakistani army crossed over and built bunkers inside our territory."

Former minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal couldn't even remember when the Kargil war was fought and won. Asked about Vijay Diwas, he wanted to know when the day was celebrated.

All this when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took time out to take part in the 220th anniversary of the Bastille Day in Paris. But neither he nor any senior government official has time to participate in the 10th anniversary of the victory over Pakistan in Kargil.

Doesn't this attitude show that it does not matter to the country if our soldiers lay down their lives. Doesn't it demoralize our soldiers that we do not take pride in the sacrifices they make. why would anybody join the defence forces if no body is bothered even if he dies for the country??

I came across these ad's for the Veer Jawan Fund.





The agency which created the campaign wasn’t one of the big agencies in India. It was a small Delhi based agency.The ad was created with true bleary-eyed emotion. Some of the team members come from army backgrounds and understand not only the trauma undergone by the loved ones of war martyrs, but also the callous attitudes of successive governments towards them.

I'll include this poem which was also a part of the campaign.

He loves Hindi songs.
Just like you.
He hates injections.
Just like you
He cried each time Amitabh died.
Just like you.
He’s been in love once or twice.
Just like you.
He’ll bleed if you cut him.
Just like you.
He’s happiest at home.
Just like you.
He loves the smell of rain on sun scorched earth.
Just like you.
He cheered India at old Trafford.
Just like you.
He dreams for his children.
Just like you.
He’s gone to die for a stranger.
And that stranger is you.

Google Baba ki jai

Remember I had blogged about the keywords that people used to come to my blog (which I had found out thanks to Google Analytics).

So now that I have got time to study the Analytics application, I dug in deeper as to how much information does Google get when you use Google search or any other Google service or even arrive on any site that uses the analytics.

And I have to admit…I am amazed by the amount of things that Google knows about you, your network and even your computer.

This is the basic dashboard for the Analytics. It gives you basic information like the entire traffic to your site for the previous month, the number of visits, time on site, location from where traffic has arrived on your site and a pie chart showing what percentage of traffic came directly, came via a search engine or came via a referral site, for e.g. someone else’s blog. And it also gives the pages that people landed on.

Each section also has a ‘View report’ button which allows you to see a detailed report. The first report is for VISITOR OVERVIEW

This is the page that appears when you click the view report.

The page gives details like the number of visits, the absolutely unique visitors, the time on sit, bounce rate etc. It even gives a technical profile and tells one about the browser the visitor was using, what kind of internet connection was he using.

The right hand side shows the visitor segmentation based on the Visitor profile-language, network location or even some user defined parameters. It can even classify traffic based on the browser profile which would include the browser being used, the OS, the screen colour (16bit colour or 32 bit colour), screen resolutions, java support and even whether flash was installed on the browsers or not.

This screenshot for the flash version shows that 507 visits in the last month used 21 different versions of flash. :O

The network location gives the networks that people were using when they came to my blog. 108 different networks for 507 visits.

Next is the TRAFFIC SOURCES tab which opens up a window which list outs the sources via which people came to my blog- the top was direct traffic, while Google was a far second. Other blogs too came in the traffic sources.

For all the visitors who came via any search engine, analytics also lists out the keywords of the search. The keywords include assignments on dsp, disprin cnf, vishrut meaning, google baba, IC 814 hijack, delhi+mussoorie+yamunanagar+route, where does aziz premji live, further study after bits dlpd degree…

So if Google can release this much information to users, then I can very well imagine what they do not release. Just imagine the amount of information they can extract from a single search that one does using Google search…

Na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun..

This is a poem by Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal ruler. I heard the para which I have put in bold, and found the rest of the poem. Quite a soulful poem.

Na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun

na kisi ki aankh ka nuur huun, na kisi ke dil ka qaraar huun.
na kisi ke kaam an aa sake, main vo ek musht-e-ghubaar huun.

( I am not the light of anyone’s eyes,
Not a harbinger of peace to someone’s heart,
Not of any use to any one,
But just a handful of dust.)

main nahin huun naghma-e-jaan fizaa; koi sun ke mujh ko karega kya?
main bare biruug ki huun sada, kisi dil jale ki pukaar huun.

( I am not a life-giving verse,
No use to someone who listens to me.
I am a cry in the wilderness,
A call of a heart gone on flames.)

mera rang rup bigar gayaa, mera yaar mujh se bichar gayaa,
jo chaman khizaan se ujar gayaa, main usi ki fasl-e-bahaar huun.

( My colors of self-image are now gone,
My beloved from me is now stranded away.
The garden which the spring turned into wilderness,
I am the spring harvest of that garden now.)

na to main kisi ka habiib huun, na to main kisi ka raqiib huun, jo bigar gayaa vo nasiib huun, jo ujar gayaa vo dayaar huun.

( I am lover of no one,
I am rival of no one,
I am the fate of my ruins,
I am the river of a wilderness.)

pae faatihaa koi aae kyuun, koi chaar phuul chirhaae kyuun?
zafar, ashk koi bahaae kyun, ke main bekasi ka mazaar huun.

(Why should anyone sing a requiem?
Why should anyone place four flowers on my tomb?
Zafar asks: why should anyone shed tears,
As I’m buried helplessly in a vault underground.)

~ Bahadur Shah Zafar

First rains of Monsoon 2009:Delhi

Here are some pics that I clicked day before when the first rains of this season at Delhi.. (They aren't fantastic like the ones taken by Angad, but they'll do ;) )

(That's how it looked..)

(Small kids enjoying the rain too.)

(Even the plants on our balcony seem to be enjoying the rains :) )