meetdheeraj

Billboards promoting investment in rental properties and urban studios, reflecting the growing real estate market amid rising rents.

Notice in the above image how the billboard targets the investors who will buy and rent this property instead of home owners who will buy and stay in it. It promises assured returns more than what banks offer for your savings. The targets are not home-owners and families who would stay in it, but those who would buy and rent it out as an investment; it is sold as an opportunity to make money. This was not always like this.

In past, renting a house was never a business someone was in. You just ended up with extra property by virtue of your moving due to work or other reasons, and so you rented it out to someone in need. Due to this, the prices were always reasonable. The amount was not enough to make you rich, nor did the owner see it as a money-making enterprise. It was just some extra money they received, and someone made use of what was otherwise going to be an unused property. The one who stayed on rent never felt the looming existential crisis that arbitrary rent increases pose, wherein year after year, rents keep on rising, and you easily anticipate how, in just a couple of years, it would become impossible for you to continue paying this way. The path invariably leads to making you homeless. That appears to be the intent of such a system.

During one of Lucknow’s winter mornings, to be precise, not of Lucknow but kilometres away in a village on the outskirts of Lucknow, we were looking for badminton rackets.

Winter mornings are slow. Nobody knows or cares when the sun comes up, for people take their own sweet time to wake up. And anyway, who would dare to push one’s limb out of one’s blanket and be a victim of unforgiving cold? And what is there outside to attend to anyhow? There’s hardly any activity in the day happening, and so hardly any hunger. However, it is another matter that when you are at the dinner table and food is spread before you, the warmth of the food as it enters your mouth and the feeling of it travelling through your digestive tract is ethereal; you end up eating more than you should. It is precisely because of this that the four of us city-folks who were in the village over a function had decided to give our bodies some exercise and an excuse for us to take our bodies for strolls in the sun. However, Lucknow and its surroundings are renowned for their cuisine, including hot, brewed cups of tea and paan. Where will we find the rackets in the city? All around us were food stalls serving all kinds of food items. But we were adamant, and so we kept roaming on bikes from one end of the market to another, which in Lucknow is like playing hide-and-seek, for each road of shops has cross-roads in between which themselves have their share of crossroads, and so if you are not careful, you can keep on walking or driving endlessly. The chaat-walas know this, and you will find them with their travelling baskets full of food items appearing just when you feel hungry for a bite. Everything in Lucknow is decided upon for your convenience. By magic, whenever you need a cup of chai, you will see a shop selling chai, or a biryani will become available just when you feel like having biryani.

The trail of incidents that are usually termed horrible on other days but have come to be accepted, tolerated, forgiven and forgotten in the name of the Holi tradition every year.

“A 25-year-old Hindu man was allegedly strangled to death in Rajasthan’s Dausa district for trying to stop three men from applying colour on him during Holi celebration”. Every year on Holi, we hear news reports of molestation and non-consensual touches. Year after year these stories have become so widespread and familiar that now we have got subconsciously wired to simply ignore them and move on with our lives. “Holi hai!” (It’s Holi!) is a cry that is shouted, and like clockwork, anyone would come, apply colour to you and proceed further to the next person. Implicit in that cry is, all is well, or all goes on Holi. But in recent years, incidents of communal nature have added themselves to the long list of Holi complaints. Protecting law and order is the job of the police. A murder by a murderer can be stopped in two ways: either you control the situation such that the murderer does not get the opportunity to commit the crime, or you do the murder yourself, leaving the murderer no chance in hell to commit the crime himself. In the first act, the police protect the victim from being murdered and in the second, they protect the murderer. This is not to suggest that police forces are superhumans who can foresee all crimes and prevent them from happening. That is understandable. And precisely why, police are generally not blamed for the crime being committed. They are blamed for what they do once the crime has been committed. And what they do after the crime sets the stage for the next crime. Their actions gesture as to whether such crimes are allowed or not. 

There is uproar on social media right now over the Beer biceps joke at Samay Raina's popular show India's Got Latent. Ranveer asked the guy on stage “If he had to choose between watching his parents have coitus the rest of his life or to join one time and end it, which one would he choose?”. The episode of the show is now pulled down by youtube after notice from the I&B ministry of the Indian government.

One, he has said far more objectionable things on his podcast and elsewhere that did not tip the scale for social media patrons to object. I'll revisit this point. Two, why do you think is his latest joke objectionable? And yes, I'll still call it a joke because he meant and

While AAP lost to BJP, Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia were also defeated in their respective constituencies

Many, especially people in Delhi, saw this coming. In a way, it is good. Or as someone mentioned, it was inevitable. Just like how it was important to defeat UPA at the height of their powers and ego trip in 2014, equally, it had become important and necessary to defeat the politics of Arvind Kejriwal. He was thinking that a mini-version of BJP's politics was the strategy to go by. He repeatedly projected himself as the better version of BJP's divisive politics – as if he could hate Muslims but continue to also provide free public services. At every step of the way in recent times, he projected himself as more religious and narrowminded than the BJP. He even avoided supporting his own Muslim legislator and rallied against admitting children of migrants in schools. Forget about his actions concerning Shaheen Bagh and CAA. And of course, he had grown hubris that he could not be defeated in Delhi and had gotten too comfortable which politicians should never be made to feel for the public's own good.

I'm completely in with Modi's plan of largely discounting 30 deaths in Kumbh or 1000 plus deaths under railway 'accidents' in his tenure. Modi knows all too well, more than any of us could ever grasp it, that the population of India is its largest problem. And it needs to be controlled. And since people are not taking care of it by themselves, he has taken it upon himself to prevent it by any and all means. Modi is a pakka Gujarati who knows his economics rather too well. He understands how to maximize capital. Mr Modi comprehends unlike too many of us that marriage and taking care of a wife is not just mentally exhausting but makes little sense economically as well; wife and kids are accountabilities that end up creating large holes in one's pockets. That is why he stranded his wife before it made him a pauper.

Vijay Sthamb (victory pillar) – The pillar was erected by the East India Company in memory of those who fought the battle and includes the names of the Mahar soldiers who unknowingly brought an end to the Peshwa rule in 1818.

The battle on January 1, 1818, where the British, with just 834 infantrymen — about 500 of them from the Mahar community — and 12 officers defeated the 28,000-strong army of Peshwa Bajirao II – was one of the last battles of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, which ended the Peshwa domination.

While this would tempt many to suggest Mahars/Dalits always sided with the British – absolutely nothing wrong if they did give the conditions they were forced to live in – in truth, they were before this battle part of the Maratha army.

Nine Hindu pilgrims dead in India's Jammu after militant attack, police say – By Reuters

There was a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir (what is the new name after dividing the state into three parts?). I can see some of you who don't otherwise post “political” opinions about it. Honestly, I'm happy to see all of you sticking your neck out. I'm not suggesting I know better but do you know what terrorism or terrorists mean? Forget dictionary meaning or legal definition. In your head, what does it mean? Is it terrorism when a section of people in Manipur are mercilessly killed, their houses are burnt, women approach police and police hand them to a mob from the majority community and later videos of them being paraded go viral; Is that terrorism? There's murder, burning, rapes and still, it doesn't sound like terrorism. Why is it? Is it because the media is not calling it so? Or because so many of you are not posting “I condemn terrorists rampaging havoc in Manipur”?

Okay. Okay. Manipur is too much stressful. Probably it'll harm your mental health if you start knowing about Manipur. Forget it then.

Or How Hindusim Came Into Being; Brief History Of Hindu Religion For Zoomers-n-Boomers Who Refuse To Pick Books

Ayodhya Temple As Of Today. Courtesy: Newslaundry.com

I was just on a call with my distant neighbour who after the regular round of questions asked me if I had received the Ram-Mandir-Rice (akshata). For those who haven’t and don’t know about what’s going on, people associated with BJP-RSS have been going door-to-door and distributing some posters related to the new temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh along with some colourful uncooked-unbroken-rice in tiny plastic pack (hardly 20 gram).