The ultimate election campaign promise

Elections are approaching in Tamil Nadu, India. It has been the time honored custom to campaign by making promises of what the candidate would do if elected. These, historically seldom fulfilled, range from free rice to everyone to color television sets and free cable TV.

Not only actors, everyone who contests, seems to get into a theatrical frame of mind - talking about absurd and unfeasible things. But Durai Ramachandran, comedian of little renown and editor of film magazine Roja has decided to stick to his particular brand of theater - comedy. He has promised free cell phones with free connectivity, laptops for computer literates and - get this - ONE LAMB PER HOUSEHOLD.

No - not a lamp, but a LAMB. A lamb, like in a bleating, stinking, eating-anything- not-protected-in-a-concrete-bunker young offspring of a sheep. The plan is that when the lamb grows up and starts reproducing, the litter should be returned to Ramachandran - not for biriyani, but for further distribution to poor people - for biriyani for them I guess.

I have to appreciate the efforts of Mr. Ramachandran - a breath of fresh air in the mundane election race. Read more about this in The Hindu.

49-O

It came to my attention recently that there is a provision for registering the voter’s unwillingness to vote for any of the candidates by the 1961 Amendment to the Conduct of Elections.

49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.—If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form 17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

Whether this will be of any use is a question.

My website

So...
I know it has been a long time since I blogged - almost 50 days. I was a bit busy trying to get one of my papers published. I was also writing up another paper - though that’s another story in itself.

Recently I decided to make my webpage. I have wanted to do this for a long time - maybe for the past 4 years. I have never gotten around to doing it because of the ultimate victory of a physical phenomenon called inertia. I realized that I would not make a webpage unless
a) I had a very important reason compelling me to do it
b) I had lots of spare time
c) My feeling of disgust at my sheer lassitude had increased beyond the critical point

All three happened recently and the result is the webpage of Girish Venkatasubramanian. Starting out, I had such lofty ideas about how the webpage would be a masterpiece - the last word in digital art and content rich information portals - a cross between William and Vincent.

If you have been reading my blogs regularly (and if you have not been - remember - you have seven days to read them all - or you will be turned to pillars of salt), you know that this cross of W and V exists only in my head. Came out with a crappy webpage after a couple of hours. Stuck at the top - the universal excuse - "Under Construction".

Have been spending the last couple of days modifying this and trying to make it better. Only recently did it dawn on me - It Does Not Matter. Nobody will look at it - it is purely an exercise in the shiatsu of the Latin "self". You can forward it to every contact in your address book - nobody will give a damn. Once I realized this I have settled back to my usual level of torpor.

The next thing on the list is getting Google to pick it up - so that it passes the "Google Test". Yeah! Yeah! - The website is only for me - I don’t care if Google doesn’t pick it up - this is just like standardized tests doesn’t mean a thing - I have tried all forms of sour grapes. So I have tried asking all my friends to put up links. I also have another webspace - albeit only 25 MB - on which, till now, I had a txt index.html saying "This is the webpage of Girish Venkatasubramanian - under construction". So I also had a JavaScript redirecting from there to the new site. Surprisingly and frustratingly the simple page with the JavaScript is being picked up while the actual webpage is not being listed. AAGGH!

Anyway, I thought I should have some catharsis before I developed an OCD about this.