Tushar Mangl's Blog, page 34

January 3, 2016

New Year New Post

Happy New Year Friends !
Wish you al a very happy and a prosperous new year. Read a lot, love a lot and travel a lot.
I have lot of updates will share later on but stay in touch folks and enjoy this year to its most. We spend too much of our time worrying about whatever we don't have rather than pleasuring the little we have.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 03, 2016 10:33

December 22, 2015

Of Chennai Floods in ShakurBasti

When floods had ravaged Uttarakhand, a few years ago in 2013, the nation acted if it was shocked. The devastation that followed was largely man made with a number of unauthorized, illegal buildings flowing down the river carrying along with them bodies, dead and alive, a huge number of them.

Now Uttarakhand is in North India and Tamil Nadu in South India. Perhaps it was the distance. They  learned little from the Uttarakhand floods. When floods ravaged Chennai in 2015, the water had simply nowhere to go to. Water bodies were encroached by greed of the local population. Urban planning was like a boring essay no one had ever read about. The city is growing without any method or idea. Just on basis of greed and politics as is every other city or town in India is being planned. And this is costing everyone except the rich guys a lot of money and as in this case, lot of lives. So many are dead just because we don't feel like giving up on our dream of encroaching as much public land as possible.
Of course if that causes floods, people will rise up and go about asking donations for flood relief.Much of these will fund more haphazard structures. Just like it happened in Uttarakhand. Like it happens all the time.

At around same time Chennai was flooding, the Railways was removing encroachments from  land t be used to upgrade facilities and equipment. No surprise was the backlash at Railways which decided to get back the public land at Shakur Basti in Delhi from encroachers (to improve the facilities and upgrade track supposedly for common people). The Indian media and Indian society was enraged. How dare, Indian Railways, remove encroachments on land meant for railways? The Hindi News media was especially fuming as their favourites, the Aam Admi Party was fuming. They wanted to show AAP their support. Their support for Shakur Basti. Their support for illegal encroachments and haphazard growth of Indian cities. So what, it can cause disaster. We can ask Central govt for more funds, tax people more. There will always be people like Sri, who worked selflessly during the Chennai floods, helping those in need. Not thinking about taking sides or blaming people, but just helping others out of goodness of her own heart.

But as long as the society encourages the Shakur Bastis in India, it should accept the collateral damage of lives that we will continue to lose over our own greed and lust for power.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on December 22, 2015 06:19

November 30, 2015

Delhi - my favorite city in India

Delhi is and would always be a city close to my heart. It has the energy and heritage to make any city a great one. Established centuries ago, it has been a city held by great importance by rulers of ancient India. In fact it is due to this fact that When the British wanted complete control over India, they chose Delhi to be the capital of British India.
When Qutab bin Aibak established Delhi as capital of his dynasty he built Qutab Minar, an iconic structure that till date is one of the most visited places of architectural importance. When you talk about design, the city has a number of places built since that time. Successive rulers since then raised and built structures, which added to their legacy and reminds us of their time. You can still see the times of the Tughalqs in the ruins of Tughlaqabad and the Red Fort still echoes times of the Mughals who reigned over the entire country from here. This city has seen so many rulers and each ruler has had left a distinct impression on the design of the city.  Still one of the most significant impressions was left by the last foreign ruler, the British who built New Delhi. A sprawling district of government business, it houses the Parliament of India and residences of the most important policy makers of the country. The city has a design of a city rebuilt again and again by sheer grit, determination and drive of people.
Indeed, it was a drive of so many men like Aibak and Lutyens (the architect of New Delhi), which makes this city so great. It has the zeal, the energy that makes it function almost 24 hours of the day. The city is not just the political capital, but also an important business centre. Several national and international businesses have their offices or headquarters based here. Delhi also is home to several educational universities and institutions of research like Delhi University, AIIMS, Indraprastha University, IIT, Jawahar Lal Nehru University etc.  It attracts several thousand young people every year who further enforce the drive of the city, creating a vibe of positivity, of liveliness.
Delhi is also a wonderful place to connect. It has local trains, a robust bus system, and local metro making its transport infrastructure one of the best in India. You have such amazing places to hang out from the Connaught Place which is the traditional business area of New Delhi to the new shopping malls that spot the landscape of the city. From Ansal Plaza near AndrewsGanj to the Promenade and Ambience in Vasant Kunj, the city has witnessed a large number of malls coming up in past couple of decades.  Add to that the old school markets of Chandni Chowk and Chawri Bazar and you feel so in sync with the city.
Truly, it’s the best place to be in India.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on November 30, 2015 09:53

October 2, 2015

6 degrees


This time last year, BlogAdda was running the game of blogs competition. I was fortunate enough to be part of team Potliwale Baba, an amazing bunch of people. Our team was amongst the chosen three stories which were incorporated to the book Six Degrees and its out now. Our story Entangled Lives is the second one in the book. The other two stories are by Team By Lines and Team Tete - a -  Ten. I received the book recently, and need I say our story is the best? Of course the other two teams have done an excellent job. Our competition was tough for the writers so brilliant and creative. That's why its a privilege to be part of this book. The book, published by Leadstart is expected to hit the stores soon. 
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 02, 2015 10:43

September 3, 2015

Point of Celebrating Birthdays

Last month I was wondering on this point. Why do people celebrate their birthdays? What’s so happy about happy birthday? You are getting older. Lines under your eyes are only increasing. For obvious reasons your youth is gone or going. They say that you are getting wiser but chances are, you will make same mistakes you did last year.  Now that it is your happy birthday, it seems you are getting close to falling into the allopath rigmarole of medicines and diagnostic tests.
It hardly seems the occasion to count achievements given your carbon footprint and the state of our planet. Seriously, there is hardly any reason to celebrate other than if you are a politician and people just need an excuse to party. Add in the stress of throwing treats and parties (wherein you are always wondering whom to invite whom not to invite).
Communication has advanced and we are flooded with calls, texts, messages for our birthdays. But do those people really mean them or is it just an automated response?
To me, birthdays mean just another year gone by. Unknown numbers yet to come. And of course, the only think happy about happy birthday is the cake. Seriously.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on September 03, 2015 10:03

July 18, 2015

Panditji ka Dhaba - Sadar Bazar Gurgaon

"You can ask anyone in Gurgaon. Everyone knows about me," informs Panditji, the owner and Chef at Pandjitji ka Dhaba.  It is just a small one room eatery divided into two halves, one where food is cooked, other to sit and eat. But it has that old world charm to it that makes it stand out to millions of other small time eateries.

Founded more than 50 years ago, Pandjit ka Dhaba is situated at a corner of the Sadar Bazar in Gurgaon, one of the oldest markets in the city. There is no special hoarding, no headboards to point it out.Till date the food is cooked on fire lit by wood. Cooking food over wood is a gone trend now. No one does that in cities especially. But that is still alive and well at this place. It is one of the things that set them apart. Other than the special flavour it brings on to the food.

I went there on a very hot and humid afternoon for lunch, all alone knowing well, the heat won't be tolerated by my friends. My generation has been air conditioned now. We drive AC cars, work in AC offices come home to AC bedrooms. To sit and eat in small room, where kilos of wood is burning hardly 10 feet from you, they would have killed me. But I like good food. I find it all charming. I feel one should step out of their comfort zone now and then and experience things extraordinary.

I was fortunate enough to get a table all by myself. A boy came up and offered me a glass of water. As my instincts are, every time I go out to eat, I look for source of water. In this case it came from large earthen pots. So old school I liked it. The service is excellent, I finished half glass of water and the guy came back to refill as if he is just fresh from a hotel management institute.

Time to eat. Since I am a snob, I made a show of staring at the menu on the wall. To be honest, it had just 5-6 items, lemon - 5 bucks, dal vegetable - 50 rupees, roti - 5 or 7 bucks. It was not lost on Panditji who informed, "food here is same for anyone and everyone". Simple. So I was spared of choice to choose, as on menu that day was kadi and dal. Did I tell you they use only Desi Ghee at Panditji ka Dhaba? yeah. So it had a tadka like mom does in her kitchen and at first you are not able to see the dal for the layer of ghee over it. Add to it, I had already asked for roti with ghee on it. I haven't eaten so much ghee in a lot of time.

But it was nice. This is one place I would say everyone should try. This is how our ancestors cooked and ate. For all the fancy foods we love eating day in and out, their is something special in simple basic food. Especially with a passionate man like Panditji at helm supervising each and every plate going out of kitchen and aware of every customer at his place.




 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 18, 2015 01:57

July 13, 2015

Honey up your diet

The hunt for a balanced nutrional diet is a fad these days. Each and everyone of us, want to eat healthy but don’t know how? We can’t resist those ever delicious and oily and unhealthy food snacks. But we still want to somehow inculcate the discipline of healthy eating in ourselves. That’s the paradox in which we live in.Add to this the enviornment we live in. We exhale copious amounts of dirt, smoke, sand, air borne chemicals, which all go inside our body and cause a lot of harm. They effect our immune system and cause harm to us. Then look at the food we eat. Almost all food grown today is heavily loaded with insecticides, fungicides, fertilizer and urea that stick with the crops. We are actually consuming all that chemical load.  It goes into our system and creates an imbalance of chemicals already in our body, which causes so many diseases and problems. How can we remedy this? How can we control all this?It is difficult I agree, but not impossible. A healthy diet can go a long way with improving the nutritional value of our food, which in turn can help us combat these external consumption of chemicals. For you see, those maybe out of your control, but what you choose to eat is definitely under your control. We are consuming so much refined, over processed food that by the tie the food reaches our tummy, there is no nutrition left in it.  Its just an empty food, often laced with preservatives and more chemicals to last it longer.  That is not at all good news for our immune system.  We have to get rid of unhealthy eating habits. A honey diet is one of the ways to get that right dietary balance. A high sugar diet can  be harmful and can cause various ailments in the long run. It also interferes with your digestive system. A diet which has honey in it can help you in a good way.  It has the advantage of being natural. It doesn't require a truckload of fertilizer or chemicals to boost production of honey. It is produced in the most natural way possible. Which in turn is good for us. Also, it has a soothing effect. You take honey as it is,just a spoon full of it, you will realize what a soothing effect it has on you. It has its medicinal effects too. Today, we all are battling one ailment after another, honey is a natural medicine that can cure anything from sore throat and prevent certain illnesses. Top that up with the multitude of creative ways you can use your honey in your day to day cooking. From tea, to smoothies to desserts, you can even use honey in your main course.
So honey up your diet for that nutritional zing in your food.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 13, 2015 01:47

July 12, 2015

WordUp! 2015 Gurgaon - The ultimate blogging event

It was raining heavily Saturday morning and I wondered how would I reach Strikers, the venue for the WordUp! even organized by IndiBlogger, BigRock and ,me. But soon, the rain slowed down and I was able to reach the venue which was packed by the time I reached. I was late but just in time to listen to the first main speaker of the day, KV Sridhar a.k.a. Pops. His session was informative and highly intelligent.
This one was followed by a session by Lakshnipathy Bhat on Blogs&Brands: A Love Hate Story.
 Nandita Iyer, a food blogger from Bangalore came up with the session titled -  Blogging and Beyond
Next was Rachit Hirani - Content is King. Rachit is into writing about automobiles and stuff.  Still the rules of content remain same across

After which snacks and a light lunch was served along with beer and juice. This was a time to chat up and meet with blogger acquaintances new and old.

 Next up was Kiran Manral  with Confessions of a Reformed Blogger. The references to Alice in the Wonderland were quite good.

Google's Vishal Shroff - came up with key content consumption trends+monetization.

Arun Nair  had a bullet presentation with 30 pro tips to promote your blog.
Ashish Chopra's session  on Viral Marketing was real fun with all those simple yet delightful videos. He regaled the audience with his experiences, the
 Lakshmipathy Bhat summarzied the session with a wrap up presentation.

Then the winners for the twitter contest were announced and the winners presented with Prize distribution by Big Rock. Even my blogger friend Tarun, won one flipkart voucher.

Thus the event ended with tea, coffee, sandwiches and memories to share. Looking forward to yet another amazing blogging event by the team.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 12, 2015 10:13

July 11, 2015

WordUp! 2015 - Gurgaon - Creativity discouraged or boosted?

WordUp! 2015 at Gurgaon, on 11 July was a spectacular event. A cool relaxing atmosphere, an array of talented speakers and of course great food made it to an event that will be remembered for long. But all those details in my next post. This one is about that one brief incident, which I wish I would never have witnessed in between a group of creative individuals.

So this stand up comedian comes up on stage to tell us some jokes. His name is Manik Mahna. He sounded okay, maybe some better jokes would come later. But just few minutes into his act this couple gets very upset. You know how these stand up comedians are. Making jokes about women, people, audiences etc. The idea is to chill but this couple heats up. The guy was telling lady jokes like, "I was with my girlfriend, I wanted to tell her best of luck but she was a buxom beauty, so by mistake he said 'breast of luck'. This upset the couple, who were not et all pleased by such jokes. They shouted and everything and the man wanted the mike. The stand up artist denied, saying it was his show, he wanted to do it his style.The man got agitated, so the artist backed up, said okay, he will tell another joke, he will move on.

But alas the organizers shut the show down, forcibly so, even though the couple kept up the shouting and the guy agreed to change tracks. This to me was a shame. I was embarrassed to the hilt. The artist asked audience to hoot if they wanted him to continue, we all hooted. but democracy and creativity were so disrespected I felt an urge of anger and sadness filling inside me.

We attend such meets, for they are well organized and Indiblogger works hard to build up a nice event. They have good speakers, responsible sponsors, quality content and decent management. For us bloggers, expression of creativity is important. If we had to suck up to each medieval mindset that comes across our way, we wouldn't be blogging our hearts out here.  It was an underlying theme all through the show as well. Respect and value your creativity. So, what do you do, when at such a platform, an artist is censored and shut up, just because some people are not mature enough to take a joke as a joke?

Can anything be as low as this? I strongly believe they should have let the guy continue. He had offered to change his track. The narrow mindedness of the select audience had made him bow his creativity to their mercy. But no, his talent had to be insulted by shooing him off the stage in an unceremonious manner.  So that means, even amidst creative mindsets we have to rely on bullys and loud mouthed people to decide what is right and what is wrong? What joke is good for me and what is not good for me? I too could have shouted ad hurled good lines, in favor of the artist, but what would have that made me?

I still fail to understand, how the organizers, such wonderful people, you should have seen them labouring so hard, it was so inspiring, how they could disrespect someone like this? An artist amongst artists was humiliated for asserting his creative right. If we can't respect that, can we respect our fellow bloggers? Their blogs?
1 like ·   •  1 comment  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 11, 2015 12:43

WordUp! 2015 - Gurgaon - Creativity encouraged or boosted?

WordUp! 2015 at Gurgaon, on 11 July was a spectacular event. A cool relaxing atmosphere, an array of talented speakers and of course great food made it to an event that will be remembered for long. But all those details in my next post. This one is about that one brief incident, which I wish I would never have witnessed in between a group of creative individuals.

So this stand up comedian comes up on stage to tell us some jokes. His name is Manik Mahna. He sounded okay, maybe some better jokes would come later. But just few minutes into his act this couple gets very upset. You know how these stand up comedians are. Making jokes about women, people, audiences etc. The idea is to chill but this couple heats up. The guy was telling lady jokes like, "I was with my girlfriend, I wanted to tell her best of luck but she was a buxom beauty, so by mistake he said 'breast of luck'. This upset the couple, who were not et all pleased by such jokes. They shouted and everything and the man wanted the mike. The stand up artist denied, saying it was his show, he wanted to do it his style.The man got agitated, so the artist backed up, said okay, he will tell another joke, he will move on.

But alas the organizers shut the show down, forcibly so, even though the couple kept up the shouting and the guy agreed to change tracks. This to me was a shame. I was embarrassed to the hilt. The artist asked audience to hoot if they wanted him to continue, we all hooted. but democracy and creativity were so disrespected I felt an urge of anger and sadness filling inside me.

We attend such meets, for they are well organized and Indiblogger works hard to build up a nice event. They have good speakers, responsible sponsors, quality content and decent management. For us bloggers, expression of creativity is important. If we had to suck up to each medieval mindset that comes across our way, we wouldn't be blogging our hearts out here.  It was an underlying theme all through the show as well. Respect and value your creativity. So, what do you do, when at such a platform, an artist is censored and shut up, just because some people are not mature enough to take a joke as a joke?

Can anything be as low as this? I strongly believe they should have let the guy continue. He had offered to change his track. The narrow mindedness of the select audience had made him bow his creativity to their mercy. But no, his talent had to be insulted by shooing him off the stage in an unceremonious manner.  So that means, even amidst creative mindsets we have to rely on bullys and loud mouthed people to decide what is right and what is wrong? What joke is good for me and what is not good for me? I too could have shouted ad hurled good lines, in favor of the artist, but what would have that made me?

I still fail to understand, how the organizers, such wonderful people, you should have seen them labouring so hard, it was so inspiring, how they could disrespect someone like this? An artist amongst artists was humiliated for asserting his creative right. If we can't respect that, can we respect our fellow bloggers? Their blogs?
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on July 11, 2015 12:43