Roads and people

People in Chennai, well, most of them, think that the public roads, right from the ECR or Mount Road to the smallest kurukku sandhu are their family property. Hence, these honourable citizens take them for granted, not unlike the way they would treat their living room or porch. They do everything except maybe sleeping in the middle of the road. As a regular rider on Chennai roads, i have come to experience a whole lot of such people; and instead of just using the choicest of expletives at that time, i decided to blog on it. Just yesterday, there was this old man along with his wife on a Max 100R, stalling himself in the middle of the road, undecided on whether he was going straight or right; well, for about ten seconds. I was around 100 metres away, was not going very fast, believe me, and he just stayed there without making a move. There was a pit as wide as a really huge manhole, and deep enough to swallow half my front tire on the remaining bit of the road, which meant i couldn't go that way either. Someone who didn't notice the old man or the pit would've surely crashed. This brings into prominence not only the lack of road sense of the users, but the conditions some roads are in.

There's this main arterial road where they recently removed the median for reasons perhaps not known to them also; they have not properly levelled the area of the road where the median stood once, the result being a slight elevation, and a whole lot of small stones and sand there. This could catch a motorist unawares, leading to a skid, and a major accident if it's his unlucky day.

Coming to the people. I have encountered umpteen people speaking on cellphones while crossing the road, especially women(of all ages). They do not realise that it is extremely hazardous not only for their own self, but also to every motorist passing by. The motorist may cause injury to himself while trying to avoid these poeple. Forget those on cellphones. What about those jaywalkers who cross the road after the signal turns green, those men enriched by TASMAC, people holding out a stop signal for the purpose of their crossing the road or those who absolutely do not have the slightest judgment of the speed an approaching vehicle is coming at.

There can be no hope of any of the above changing even the slightest bit, they are part of our very own lovable Singara Chennai.

Kalaignar TV??

The just-begun war between the Marans and the DMK has now assumed a new form. All these days it was taken for granted that Sun TV was a part of the various types of access the DMK had to the common man's living room; be it attacking Jayalalitha's government(when it was in power), or broadcasting images of KK being arrested in his lungi and being dragged all the way for one whole day non-stop, or daily updates(?) on the various good things (from the ludicrous TV distribution to the Rs 2 per Kg rice) being done by the DMK government. Jaya is owned by the AIADMK, but unfortunately, Sun TV was only assumed to provide never-ending support to the DMK. Now, with the removal of Dayanidhi Maran from the cabinet and growing animosity between the once 'grandson-grandfather' pair, the DMK seems to have realised that it no longer has Sun TV to promote its ideas in a totally cockeyed manner. What happens next?? KK is in power, man ... he can do anything he likes ... He immediately calls Rajendran, CEO of Raj TV and says ... Dude, i need to start a channel owned purely by the party ... something on which my pictures or videos will be aired 24/7 till i die (and perhaps for 100 years after that, mourning his loss) ... heard you had two transponders left unused on your satellite, how about lending me one?? Either Rajendran agrees, or
1. His office gets bashed up by 'faithfuls' just like the Dinakaran office for allegedly 'disrespectful' behavior killing 2 or 3 more people
2. KK uses his power to somehow block Raj TV from Tamil Nadu.
Maybe he was forced into it, or he was truly a DMK follower, or was just plain-dumb, its now official; Kalaignar TV will come into existence on August 15th. What a disgrace to the very importance of the independence day! On that day will debut a totally biased TV channel that will be even more lavish in its praise of the government than Sun TV ever was, surely influencing the mind of scores of people, I mean the uninformed and illiterate ones.
We are supposed to be living in a democracy offering freedom of just about everything to its citizens, a democracy in which such channels come into being, where a newspaper is vandalised in broad daylight in the presence of scores of smiling policemen and a mayor(seen posing with a burning copy of the newspaper); not to forget the explicit communalist ideas and thoughts woven into the CD given by a prominent party as part of its 'campaign', showing the open slaughter of cows and having potential enough for a riot as vast in magnitude as the Gujarat pogrom of 2002.

UPDATE ::

Kalaignar TV has bought the satellite rights of the yet-to-be released Superstar movie Sivaji. This makes me feel real bad... well, AVM is just doing good business, but i'm sure this is the first time a movie's rights has been sold to a channel that is yet to be formed.