Never quite understood why helpers in malls , high class shops and restaurants try to speak in English even when the customers start conversing with them in Hindi. They sometimes make absolutely no sense, garbling up words and pronouncing words in a way that make you cringe for the English that you learned in school.
It also makes customers who don't understand English look like fools. Shouldn't it be changed?

It's been a year since I graduated, and one of the worst and least productive ones that I have had. Moments of happiness have been few and far between. Mostly disappointments, total lack of activity,  and a complete lack of ambition have filled this year. There is a huge void that has been created after leaving Lucknow, a void that cannot be filled. I wish I could go back in time.
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There is too much hate and negativity surrounding AAP and Arvind Kejriwal. I was in Delhi for a day where I interacted with few people asking them about Kejriwal and they were all praises for him. Now he didn't do anything extraordinary in his 49 days but government offices actually started functioning, the police officers stopped taking bribes and there was an atmosphere of hope. My father's (who is a government official Rajasthan)  department was instructed by the MLAs to pull up its socks because the government wanted to look good in the eyes of public and avoid the fate of Sheila Dikshit. Is this not a welcome change?  Too many people have been complaining about the unconstitutional means adopted by AAP. I wonder how many of them ever went to the polling booths in their life time.
There are some pressing questions that need to be confronted. Suddenly BJP is the new saviour of India. How easily the people forget the corrupt practices of these leaders. It would do a great deal of good if people started using their brains and questioning everything, every fact that is thrown at them.
Same people who used to lament the degrading quality of Times Of India and India TV are now posting links and Youtube videos that condemn AAP. I am tired of this hypocrisy.

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Quora has been a discovery. It's a great site to learn a lot of good stuff. I realized that I feel extremely happy when some people 'upvote' my answer on Quora. More so, when a lot of time was spent researching for the answer and the 'upvote' comes from a person you respect on Quora because of his/her great answers.

Lost Love, Maybe

I watch a lot of old cricket videos these days, lots of them. Modern Cricket fails to impress me. But now, the desire to understand the game and its nuances has taken the precedence over watching the usual hit and run show the game has become of late. There are no great players around, except maybe Dale Steyn who evoke admiration and awe at the same time. There are close finishes no doubt, but the joy of watching the game is amiss. (Hashim Amla is an exception though).
So I try to turn back the clock. Read about some game of cricket, some player, some innings, some piece of bowling on Cricinfo and then watch its video. And try to understand what made Shane Warne the master of Leg Spin, why Sachin is such a great player that he is, what made Lara such a delight to watch, where do the technical faults of Graeme Smith lie and so on.
Until recently I used to pride myself in saying that I understand the game. Hardly. I still don't understand why Shane Warne is rated higher than Muralitharan when statistically the records of Murali far outweigh those of others. Why Glenn McGrath evoked fear in batsmen with his consistent bowling in the "corridor of uncertainty". Yes, I can repeat what commentators and news articles say but that is not the understanding of the game. That is just plain repetition. However, there is a desire to develop that insight in the sport now, much beyond the statistics. It's like a poem recitation of William Wordsworth in class 3. The poetry doesn't change, but over the years the feeling and understanding does.  I crave for the "Ahh! That's why David Gower was such a treat to watch."
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Bill Lawry is a commentator for Channel 9 in Australia. He is not as popular as Geoffrey Boycott, or Tony Greig, or even Harsha Bhogle. But it is such a delight to listen to him purely because of the passion of the game that he has. Earlier I used to hate Hindi commentators. These days I have started hating listening to most of the English commentary as well. There is so much mediocrity around. Even after almost 20 years Ravi Shastri hasn't grown up as a commentator or added new words to his woefully limited vocabulary. His platitudes are as predictable as the continual losses of West Indies team in test cricket.
On pure aesthetics, I would rate the team of Bill Lawry, Richie Benaud and Tony Greig much higher than any other commentary team. These people made Cricket much more interesting than it actually is. And on the other end of spectrum you have jerks like Ramiz Raja, Laxman Sivaramakrisnan, Arun Lal, Danny Morrison and so on. The list is endless.
IPL and T20 is killing not only the beauty of the game, it is also killing the art of commentary.