The Ant & The Grasshopper

I usually hate forwards, but this one was special:

Nice story...read it....u are sure to find it really interesting and funny......but it teaches us something!

OLD VERSION.......
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION ........
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'. Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later...

The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...

As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country......

Can any one dare to bring India out of this clutches...

போக்கிரி

சனி இரவு போக்கிரி, ஞாயிரு காலை தலைவலி.

சன் டீவி டாப் டென் ஸ்டயிலில்
போக்கிரி: இன்னிக்கு செத்தா, நாளைக்கு பால்..

Patel Snaps

My parents have been pestering me for photos for a while now. I have somehow managed to steer clear of that question for a long time. I guess one can do that only for so long. They constantly intimidated that they will use the picture they had, which I had know idea where they got from. When inquired, I learnt that it was the passport photo that I had taken for my visa interview a couple of years ago. "Grrrr...". I finally had to succumb to the pressure when my siblings joined the bandwagon.

I sat down to surf through my four year digital archive trying to recall all the places I had gone to and all the solo pictures I had my friends and family take of me. As I looked through the pictures, the fond memories of the trips I had with my family and friends kept me from focusing on my job at hand. All those fun multiple trips to Grand Canyon, Sea World and the Bay Area, those quick weekend visits to the theme park, National Parks and ski resorts and the best of them all, the trips to home. I realized my passion to travel and kept drifting away from the assignment. After all the memories breezed past, I realized that I had involuntarily (or so I like to believe) picked up a dozen or so “Patel snaps”. I wondered why the name?

Impulsively, I googled the phrase and found that the entry was “proposed for a speedy deletion” from Wikipedia due to copyright infringements!!! "hmmmm…". Before I started to digress further, with quick “desi” instincts, started searching for sites that provided “free prints”. Like any resourceful “desi”, I recalled one of the sites that printed and shipped the first twenty prints for free and so signed up for a new account (though I already had an account with them and misused up the offer earlier). Then again, as any computer savvy “desi”, I decided to “fix” some pictures using Picasa2 before I uploaded and printed them.

Some pictures needed more lighting, some needed more contrast and some even needed “paintbrush” skills. It was at that moment that a thought struck to me. “Poor girl, whoever she is, has to deal with me”. Amazing how people tend to believe in what they see on paper. I was a bit worried that it could happen to me as well with people like me let loose. After a quick dose of reality, I got back to paintbrush and erased the blemishes. After I was thoroughly satisfied with the final version of the “Patel snaps”, I uploaded the pictures and ordered the prints. Now, it was time to wait.

After four days, I received my 4”x6” matte finish prints. I started going through it and realized that I was wearing sunglasses in more than half of them (at least four or five different types in three years – man it feels like I buy more sunglasses than anyone in this world) . What if they think I was blind or even worse if they thought I had eyes like a “bush baby”? Then I thought to myself – “who cares… it's just like my blog postings, who cares...”

Who's your daddy?

Now, who is the culprit?

Video

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