The Indian Broad Gauge Dream

LocalTrain
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

All over the world many cities have intra-city trains or metro trains running. You can cite many examples such as Chennai, Calcutta , Delhi, Tokyo etc.

But since I havent visited all these places I cannot tell you about them all.
Let me tell about the experiences I have in my home city , Chennai , in the trains that traverse thru it .

Why Should you read about Trains in Chennai ?

Bcos Chennai was the one of the first city in India to catch on the Metro train concept ( I have no evidence for this , its only empirical ) and was the last city to give up on it.

Chennai was the last city in the whole World to still have Metre Gauge train running in it. The world did not like having Chennai this distinction and hence the Metre gauge train was Converted to Broad Gauge train in the year of 2004 .

Thus Chennai bade farewell to the transport which was responsible for the growth it had seen .

The last day the Metre gauge Train ran was an emotional experience for people who travel daily by it and was news for others. I made sure that I came to Office by train on that day. I know of a friend who travelled from Nungambakkam to Tambaram and came back , just to register the memory of the last experience.

What you see in the right is the new , shining , polished Broad Gauge train that runs now .

Hmmm ....

Ivan Thaan Bala

ivan-thaan-bala
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

Its difficult to find a person in tamilnadu who does not like the works of Bala. He is the director of hit Tamil movies such as Sethu , Nanda and Pithamagan .

Though only 3 films old he has made a big mark in the highly competitive and highly creative tamil film industry.

Book Review :

In this book , Bala tells about his life , the path he came thru , the experiences he had, the mistakes he made . Everything is told in a bold , non-aggressive manner , which is very much likeable.

He puts forth his quest for understanding life and reason for doing things which otherwise a normal person would not like to do .

Some of the things he did include doping (ganja) among many other things.

But finally he found out what was in him and came to balu Mahendra to work as an assistant director.

From this point I lost interest as it was more of the workings of the film industry .

1. Must read for any person who wants to understand about creative persons.
2. Must read for any aspiring director .
3. Must read for any person who wants to succeed in life.

Ultimately his life proves that its not the mistakes that matter , but what you learn from them .

Anbudan
Megarajan

Saigopal Marriage

Saigopal Marriage
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

Hi Friends ,

Saigopal was a dayscholar in my college. A typical telugu-hero product , he got married on Feb 20 , 2005 .

I was able to see my other friends jeeva , arivoli, felix , vadipatti , sai , satish babu etc ..

Then I attended Sasi's sister marriage also and was able to see a whole lot of other friends there .


Cheers
Megarajan

25 Million downloads of Firefox

25 Million downloads of Firefox
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

Dudes ,

Though Firefox is NOT my most favourite browser ( Opera is . I use Opera 8.0 beta now to post this )

I was happy at the progress Firefox has made in the short time .

I have a Firefox 0.93 installed in my PC and use it rarely to check my gmail account.

Hence I would like to let know all of you that Fire fox has crossed 25 Million downloads on Feb 15 and has made Nasty Bill to update his old IE .

Cheers
Megarajan

RAS Award - CISCO

RAS-Mega
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

This is the RAS - Reliability , Serviceability , Availability award .

This was the award given to me from CISCO. This was accompanied with our photos in front page of Cisco's website.


Cheers
Megarajan

The Black Sun

06-02-05_1638
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

Hey

I remember seeing the sun as a black specimen during the "grahanams" or eclipses .

This photo was clicked near the salty waters on way to mahabalipuram .

But this black one was due to my Motorola c650 .

Cheers
Megarajan

The Madras Cycle

02-02-05_1229
Originally uploaded by megarajan.

The cycle you see in this picture was taken on Nelson Manickam Road just opposite my Office.

I dont know whether the "thing" this person rides will qualify for a cycle , but somehow this "thing" seems to look like a cycle :-) .

It has 2 wheels , 1 chain and pedals and apart from these things there are a number of things fitted onto this mean machine , the purpose of which I am not aware.

Anyway this looked like a interesting thing , hence cliked it right away .

Another view of this mean machine can be viewed at

http://flickr.com/photos/65689272@N00/4243952/

Cheers
Megarajan