Thank you Mr President

So today Pranab decided to pay Bangalore a visit. And as is the custom with politicians, VVIPS and top bureaucrats, he landed in the middle of the city, next to our place - the old Bangalore airport. And as is usual when these visits take place, we are cutoff from 80% of the city for a great many hours, thanks to our cowardice as regards Bangalore traffic. So today I was muttering insinuations against the guy and thinking how these political landings should compulsorily be made at Devanahalli, when I realized that this was the reason that nightmare aka road outside Leela was repaired overnight! And I couldn't help but thank Mr President! Because notwithstanding Siddu's promise of a pothole free Bangalore road scene, we continue with life as usual.

I think I will dare Siddu to drive on the Wind Tunnel Road-Yamlur-Kariyammana Agrahara-Kadubeesanahalli stretch, that is what a hardened driver maketh!! It is a literal roller coaster!!

Finally, Aadhar has no Aadhar

Yesterday I read a most welcome news about an SC ruling on Aadhar cards and how they should not be made mandatory for public services. Finally!

The Aadhar card in my opinion is the most polished scam of UPA to date. Giving it the face of one of the honchos of Indian IT, it attempted to pass off an impossible data mining effort with little to no effort made to understand long or short term implications.

My reluctance to apply for yet another form of ID proof (read data selling method) was only strengthened, when the government, in conjuntion with the ceiling imposed on the subsidized LPG cylinders also decided to make everyone pay the non-subsidized amount first and then force them to link bank accounts to Aadhar card so cash transfer for the subsidy amount can be made. So where I used to pay 400 for the first 9 cylinders, I now have to pay 1000, and then give them my Aadhar card and bank details so that they can remit the 600 back to me. This is like the age-old complication of showing your nose, not directly but by winding your hand around your head and trying to touch it. Not for me! I wondered why more people did not protest against this added complication to an already complicated bureaucracy.

Also, when I heard about how data was forcibly being made public even where applicants chose to keep data private - something was fishy, there are any number of people willing to buy personal data and I was not about to hand some more to the UPA government.

So there, I did not apply for it, in spite of massive nudging from my government, drives at office for enrollment, nagging and pestering emails from banks to link accounts etc. Of course it helped that our gas connection was in my father in law's account and he already had an Aadhar card, in case they made it compulsory in Karnataka like they did in AP (thanks to the CONgress government there)!

I am relieved and have renewed faith in our SC now.

Logging back in :)

Today I went to work after five months!! It was weird, and good at the same time.

A big thanks to my mom, she has once again stood by us as a pillar of strength, and without her around, I would not have been able to do it, the younger one is yet to get into the daycare;) Thanks to her assurance I am also now considering delaying his admission into the daycare till he is at least a year old.

The five months came and went, and here we are already! This maternity leave was vastly different from last time. For starters it was much longer, 5 months vs 3 months. Plus because my mom and father in law were around, I was actually able to catch at least one hour of sleep during the day most of the days unlike last time when I was alone with the baby and also inexperienced to boot, so never caught a wink during the day. Caught up on a lot of Bollywood movies too and in general relaxed much more than last time! Plus did many usual chores like picking up Rohan from the daycare in campus every evening, working out from week one and so on and so forth. The highlight though has to be that I actually managed to complete critical work items like budgeting, ordering, appraisals for the team etc by myself :D!

I met with my team today and also boss and his boss. I think the team was happy to see me back - or so I hope at least ;) Met up briefly with lunch gang too.

All in all, good to be back, albeit for a few hours :)