Voice message

I seldom change my greeting in my voice mail box. I think its a lot of work. But even after months I got my new cellphone, I kept getting calls for Bloomingdale. And all the wrong calls were eating up my day-time minutes. So I decided to change my voice message. It said "hi, this is Deepa not Bloomingdale. Please leave a message". But many people probably thought I was related to Allan Knot or something. I guess they heard "Hi, Deepa Knot, Bloomingdale". English demands, I say "Deepa's cellphone" but I didn't care much and paid the price when people still left messages for me in my answering machine. So I reverted to my old message, the default one.

More than a year ago, I called a person and the message was "Hi, you have reached XYZ. I am currently busy on the other line or I am away from my phone. In any case, your call is very important to me and I don't want to miss it. So please go ahead and leave a brief message, your name and your phone number after you hear the beep and I promise I would get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you very much for your call and I hope you have a nice day". Have a nice day? By the time one gets to hear the beep, the day is over. Somehow after hearing that message, I decided to change mine. Now mine says "This is Deepa's cellphone. You know what to do after the beep". Incidentally, nobody seemed or seems to mind this greeting of mine. Not even the people I have to deal with "officially". As Karma would have it, that person with the longest greeting on cellphone called me and left a message asking me to change my greeting so as not to annoy people. This is life!

Verdict

I never thought this day would come but I am actually sad that the ADMK Govt. is down and out. I am not a fan of Jayalalithaa. Last time when she was the CM, she did everything wrong, starting from the great dip at Mahaamaham, to the extravagant wedding and the we-are-not-lesbians-though relationship she had with Sasikala. This time even though she started on a wrong foot by making the loser of losers Panneerselvam as the CM, she didn't do anything real bad. She handled the tsunami disaster well, laid good roads (at least in Chennai), brought in some MNCs, handled last year's flood reief realy well. I can't believe laying-off those arrogant state government employees would have this much effect. Now Karunanidhi, the racist, is going to assume that the people love him and hate Jayalalithaa. Ever since MGR's death, TN has always been an anti-incumbent state. So the verdict shouldn't be a big surprise. Lets hope the new CM does good things.
As an aside, I think all women politicians have to be arrogant. After all, in a male-dominated "profession" like politics, one has to be arrogant and its impossible to have a "nice lady" image but arrogance becomes the standing-out quality in most of them, at least in India. Think of Indra Gandhi, Jayalalithaa, Uma Bharti. I can't think of Rabri Devi as a politician though.

Dear Departed

The death of Pramod Mahajan is shocking. He remained a would-have-been-good-leader till the end. I wish he had a chance to prove that before this whole drama happened. I thought, he, along with Arun Jaitley and company, made a good team of future BJP. Alas! This had to happen. May his soul rest in peace.
But, when I read this report on The Hindu that said, he was "critical & stable", I hoped and thought he was fine. The Hindu actually made a joke out of this episode with that great headline. Didn't they?