Deadly love

I have heard a lot about abusive relationships, in-laws killing the daughter in law, husband murdering the wife brutally, but I recently read a shocking piece of news that has me still shaken.

In Anjar (in the state of Gujarat, India) a cameraman named Prakash Parekh took his fiancee on a long drive discreetly, and in the course f the journey he asked her to prove her love to him. The girl Neha Kubadia, in a very filmy way replied that she could die for him. And that is exactly what she had to do. On hearing this he asked her to get down from the car and lie down in front of it. She promptly got down to prove her love and sat on the road in front of his car. He got down from the car and made her lie down, and went back to his car. And believe it or not, he ran the car over her and fled the scene. She was brought to a hospital by a tractor driver, and is now battling for life. She has suffered multiple fractures which may lead to permanent diability, and is right now in a critical condition.

And to think their marriage was to be held on December 5, and their marriage cards printed and distributed. The police are in pursuit of the absconded criminal. Lets pray for Neha's life and also her family.

Gas Gag

Finally!!!! I could see the gas prices fall below the $2 mark. I saw it y-day at $1.99 and today at $1.95.

The last time I saw it below that mark was I guess in june or even earlier. The already rising gas prices had the hurricane's as catalyst's to cross the $3 mark. I hear that when gas prices rise, the whole US economy maybe on the downslide, but the economy for the state of Texas strengthens, and vice versa. This is owing to the fact that Texas or more specifically the gulf coast is the oil hub for the US and higher gas prices means more money for them.

Though Texas is now the oil hub, the first commercial well drilled in the US was in Titusville, Pennsylvania known as the Drake Well, after "Colonel" Edwin Drake, the man responsible for the well. PA became the most oil productive state in the US but that changed in 1901, when in southeast Texas, oil erupted from a hill (formed by a giant underground dome of salt) and brought the oil price per barrel from $2 to $0.03. Other oil strikes followed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Colorado, and Kansas. Oil production in the United States by 1909 more than equaled that of the rest of the world combined.

But increased dependence on oil forced US to become an oil - dependent country and today it continues to consume about two-thirds of the world's population.

A tax specialist once told me that the consumption of oil is stablilized over the years and US has not built a refinery for almost 20 years now. What drives the instability in the oil industry is the increased consumption of developing countries like India and China.

your comments...

Captaining team India

Captaining the Indian cricket team has often been referred to as the second most difficult position to handle behind the post of Prime minister in India. I guess even the prime minister’s actions are not monitored to a degree as the Indian captain’s are on the field.

Ganguly’s place in the side was always in question after the world cup, but it took the new coach Greg Chappell to spill the beans; for which he paid the price. Poor guy, he never knew that popularity and not performance gives a player a berth in the team. There has been a lot of debate on the captaincy issue and here are my views on it.

Ganguly is an aggressive player who goes by his instincts, while Dravid is a very intelligent cricketer, who is very calculative, planned, and plays by the rules. Ganguly’s aggressiveness brought him a lot of success, and people cite his victories as his strong point. What ganguly brought then was a whiff of fresh air after the Azhar era. Azhar was the most successful captain India had, but even then he had to be replaced (even before the match fix scandal), same goes for ganguly, he might have served the country but then it is time to move on. Dravid may not prove to be a better captain than ganguly statistically, but he is the best man at the moment to do the job. Also, statistics show that most of the test victories for ganguly had a major contribution from dravid. And given his mental soudness chances of captaincy burden affecting his performance are low.

Dravid has been the media guy right from the latter part of ganguly’s captaincy and his sound knowledge and belief of what he is doing is always reflected in his words. His luck is shining for him with a series victory to start with, but he always talks about building a team for the world cup rather than winning now. This might be just the team to win it considering that Tendulkar and Dravid might make their last world cup appearance and given their passion for the game would give everything to bring the cup back home. Here’s wishing them the best of luck to realize their dream and ours.

Women abuse

Abuse to women is something which has been prevalent for ages across all cultures and continents. The extreme of which is rape. Rape’s in India is nothing new, but nowadays we find it in the news more than ever. I don’t know whether it is due to an increase of its occurrences or due to an increase of reported cases. Whatever the case maybe it is something we should hang our heads in shame about.

But what take’s the cake is the rising incidents involving policeman as the culprits. The most disgusting which I read was the one which occurred in Mumbai, where a constable harassed a guy and a girl and asked the girl to come with him to the police station; and then raped her in a police post with the public outside hearing her screams.

I read a headline in one of the online papers which went, “In Delhi, Cops rape and people gang rape” , which reminded me of all the ghastly stories which came out of the cupboard in the capital, and rightly termed the capital as one of the most unsafe places for women.

However, reading more about the latest case I cannot help but think that women are in someway responsible for inviting danger. For example, in this case the victim was waiting at a bus stop at 3am to go to someplace all alone; and then accepted a ride from four unknown guys traveling in a van at that time. I also know of a similar case which occurred at 2am in Mumbai.

And I read about such incidents occurring here in US; frequently in our campus newspaper too. We call ourselves a civilized society, but even in this age such un-humanly and uncivilized incidents occur. In this age where we consider women to be equal to men in all respects, is our progress justified? Your comments folks….