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Back in 2007 I blogged about how banks have turned themselves into killing machines. It seems they have not really learnt. See here. This is what courts have to say.

We deem it appropriate to remind the banks and other financial institutions that we live in a civilised country and are governed by the rule of law,” a bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and Dalveer Bhandari said.

Maybe they really need to be punished before they will learn, just the threats of punishment are not enough.

After a gap of around 5 years I went back to Manohar Dairy restaurant in Bhopal. The place has been spruced up and the food quality is still as impeccable as before.

The restaurant is near Bhopal Railway station and I have always found North Indian snacks really good there. Things like Chole Bhature, Samosa, Alu Tikki etc. are really good. After reaching there after such a long time I realized that one does not really need a thousand rupees to have a decent meal.

तो सुबह सुबह मैं टीवी पर समाचार देख रहा हूं और एक २४ घंटे पर समाचार पेश करने वाले चैनल पर यह मुख्य समाचार पेश होता है

अमिषेक और एश्वर्या बॉलीवुड के सबसे हॉट कपल बन गये हैं।

अब मेरी समझ में यह नहीं आत है कि यह टीवी समाचार वाले क्या थर्मामीटर ले कर घूम रहे थे क्या।

So I am watching the television and one of the 24hrs news channel announces

Abhishek and aishwarya have become bollywood’s hottest couple

No I don’t understand who measured the temperature of this couple?

So china is doing cyber attacks on Indian sites. Now a days almost every country is doing that. That seems to be part of their geo political strategy.

According to senior government officials, these attacks are not isolated incidents of something so generic or basic as “hacking” — they are far more sophisticated and complete — and there is a method behind the madness.

Publicly, senior government officials, when questioned, take refuge under the argument that “hacking” is a routine activity and happens from many areas around the world. But privately, they acknowledge that the cyber warfare threat from China is more real than from other countries.

The core of the assault is that the Chinese are constantly scanning and mapping India’s official networks. This gives them a very good idea of not only the content but also of how to disable the networks or distract them during a conflict.

This, officials say, is China’s way of gaining “an asymmetrical advantage” over a potential adversary.

Now It is very hard to stop hacking but it is not difficult to make sure that no damage is done and at the same time it is also not hard to mis-guide hackers into believing that they have been successful. I am sure there is enough skill within India to be able to do that. I only hope that government is leveraging every tool and resource at its option to achieve that.

I think Sachin can rest easy, in India, Impossible is nothing. See this interesting news. Apparently under pressure from local don, police booked a 4 year old kid under Goonda Act.

The angry don, Gyanendra Yadav, decided to teach Chandrika a lesson and called the police to book Chandrika and his four-year-old son Mukesh. The cops, more than willing to oblige the don, charged the father-son duo under Section 110 of the CrPC of Anti-Goonda Act and even forwarded the file for notification to the additional city magistrate on April 24.

It was only after the boy appeared before a local court and the magistrate took note of his age that the record was set straight on Monday.

Well-versed in legalese, the cops still didn’t relent. Since the don had ordered harassment for Chandrika, the police, instead of admitting mistake, tried to get a “rectified” application submitted with the ACM

May be Adidas should signup UP politicians as their brand ambassadors.

So finally Mr. Bachchan has a blog. The blog seems to be up for a while and if he is really blogging, it is really cool. But I believe that it may be an flunky of him writing for him.

He talks about his involvement in politics in his blog and why he got out of it.

For the Assembly Elections in that state I was sent to canvass for the party. An error of judgment forced my helicopter to land at the wrong destination. It belonged to the opposition. There was instant physical reaction and the pilot advised we make a hurried exit. As i sat back in the plane, a young student broke the cordon, ran up to me, thrust his fist through the glass window and handed me a piece of paper. It read - “Mr Bachchan, I am a big fan of yours, but I am with the opposite party. Please leave this State, you are making life very difficult for me for I am torn between two desires”.

Now, I would like to believe him in what he is saying if he was not behaving almost like a spokesman of Samajvadi Party. I think everybody remembers the advertisement that he featured in which was “sponsored” by SP.

Also his wife;s involvement and his active interest in his wife’s political career suggests that he has not really moved away from politics, he has just taken a role akin to RSS while his family and friends are BJP.

Not that anything is really wrong with that. It is just portfolio management.

I finally took this trip to Kanha National Park and Tiger reserve. I avoided this for so long because I am one of those characters who wants everything to be really well planned before I embark on any adventure. I really can not bring myself to start any travel unless everything is planned to the last detail and everything is reserved in advance.

After doing the usual googling, I narrowed down on this resort called “The Baagh” which is in the village called Guduma near Kanha National Park. The resort is located around 5 kilometers from the mukki gate of the Kanha National Park.

I had not so high hopes from the resort since this was the first time I was visiting this place and I had not heard of the promoters but contrary to my hopes, this turned out to be a really luxurious and comfortable experience. Since we reached on the fringes of off-season, we were the only people in the resort and that helped.

The resort offers a right combination of luxury with remote location. The rooms are air conditioned but television is not provided, which I believe is a plus point. Nobody wants to go to a jungle and still watch TV. If one wants to watch TV, might as well stay in city.
Here is the website of the resort and one can find out what they offer in the resort.

We reached Jabalpur and from there we were picked up in an Toyota Innova which we had booked in Advance through one Capt Golchha from Shreya Travels. One could contact them on mobile no: +919823035666 directly on E-Mail. I just called him once and he confirmed me the pricing and availability of vehicles and everything was well organized and on time.

We reached The Baagh around 12 noon and Mr. Vishnu Sinsinwar, who is the director of the company that runs these resorts was waiting for us right on the gate and welcomed us. We were checked in to a room within 2 minutes and everything was hassle free.

The package that we had bought included one jungle safari per day of the booking and safari was organized in a custom built Maruti Safari 4×4. Keeping in mind the fact that we were going into jungle and jungles do not have roads, the safaris were well conducted by Mr. Ramesh who accompanied us on all three days of our stay. He had very good knowledge of Jungle. Each day we drove approximately 50 kms in jungle lasting 4-6 hours for each trip.

We did see rare most animals like Leopard and a pack of Wild Dogs apart from biggest success story of Kanha i.e. Barahsingha (बारहसिंगा). Unfortunately for us, we ran out of time before we could see a tiger, I am sure if we stayed may be one more day, we might have gotten lucky.

On my way to Kanha Tiger Reserve, I ended up staying at this hotel called Narmada Jackson. It was listed at yatra.com as a welcome heritage hotel, so I chose it. After two, one night stays, I can safely say that this place is best avoided. Here are some of the issues that I found.

• The hotel charges for A/C rooms but the air-conditioning never really works.
• The hotel restaurants provide really un-edible food
• The hotel staff never knocks before entering the room, in one incident somebody opened the room at a time after midnight.
• They can’t provide wake-up call service

May be because of the fact that Jabalpur does not have many hotels but I don’t think this is a hotel that anybody should choose.

If one visits the restaurant in The Forum mall called “Sahib Sindh Sultan, it is themed like a railway coach. Themed restaurants are always interesting concepts.

But while on my visits to Bhopal, I ended up in this restaurant called Shaan-e-Bhopal (शान-ए-भोपाल). The restaurant was inaugurated on 17th March, 2007.

These guys have actually used a real train coach with regular seats replaced with nice comfortable seating for train.


The ambiance and decor of the restaurant was good. The food quality was worth the money but the service was pathetic. The fact that it is operated by MP Tourism seem to be in some way responsible for the really pathetic service that the restaurant.
Now if one is interested to visit a interesting restaurant with decent food at not so heavy price and can be patient with the really bad service, this one seems to be the place to visit.