Undelete?? Is the messaging system trying to be too smart or is it too dumb? Why would I need to recover some message I explicitly deleted?

Halloween in San Francisco is a redundant festival.
— Robbin Williams on Tonight Show with Jay Leno

I have had the gym membership for years but only recently I have become serious to visit it at least once a week (once-a-week? I know, it sounds like a joke). I have also decided to eat better – salads in lunch, stir-fry-vegetables for dinner, self-squeezed juices, fruits, nuts, and my occasional healthy Indian cooking. I have also turned nearly a vegetarian except for the rare chicken I still get killed for my gustatory satisfaction. And when I cannot help being on the couch I watch all the comedies and the hopelessly romantic Bollywood escapist shit to keep me jovial.

If you want to eradicate poverty, you don’t do it by redistribution of existing wealth. You have to create more wealth. — Narayana Murthy

There will always be a rich and poor divide. But that does not necessarily mean that the poor are living in poverty. Poverty ends when a country can provide opportunities to everyone to allow them to earn a livelihood capable of supporting the basic human needs and maintaining a minimum standard of living. For a country as populous as India, providing (let alone guarantee) opportunities to everyone is a monumental task further complicated due to the lack of resources, effective governance and vision. This opportunity is difficult to guarantee in a country as populous as India.

Memories are trapped in spaces.

Interviewer: Going back to 1981, how difficult was it to start a new business under the Permit Raj?
Narayana Murthy: It used to take us about 12 to 24 months and about 50 visits to Delhi to import a computer worth $1,500.
Read it here

In Bangalore filing the yearly returns was even simpler. A tax consultant contracted by the Company prepared the returns and filed it with the IT department for a fee of around 4 dollars. The signature on paper replaced the clicks, the cheap human resource substituted for the online.  The actual refund was a different matter and took a lot of time. Evidently, the government sector does not work very efficiently. After all time is money and hence money should be returned on time.

This tax filing season arose out of a bad financial recession and was accentuated with a Tea-Party season. I understand both sides of the debate but still who wouldn’t like lower taxes? Then I discovered that the budget of the city of San Francisco is about $8 billion. Well, I am trying to be understanding about that but come on … $8 billion? Where does all that money go? Is America the biggest economy of the world just because the people are consuming too much? I don’t have enough data on that but courtesy of TaxAct I do have the data about where does all my tax money go. The table below provides a summary of government tax spending percentages applied to the tax I paid in 2009:

How many roads have I wondered?
None, and each my own
Behind me the bridges have crumbled
No question of return

Autumn leaves like discarded dreams
trampled underneath a tide of careless feet
it’s the same song playing
everywhere I go
it’s like an army marching right through me.

Nowhere to go but the horizon
where, then, will I call my home?

Summer spent, in the high grass
or just fragments, ransacked memories
dark river snakes, across this murky hall
boatman sings his downstream melodies.

How many roads have I wondered?
None, and each my own
Behind me the bridges have crumbled
where, then, will I call my home?

You can listen to this song by Susheela Rahman on YouTube.