Pun Fun…
Tweet of the day: "NamMo should invite Virat Kohli to play in Gujarat. J've heard the wholestate has a boos ban!"
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Tongue very much in chee.
Not all who wander are lost..
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Line Maro
Smoking is hazardous to your health… and baby, you're killing me!
(Me: Nope, smoking you out isn't…)
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Health tip..
Culturing of yogurt increases the absorption of calcium and B-vitamins in the body.
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Weird world…
Letter to post man 'leads to Rs.4.5 lakh burglary'
A Bhandup – a Mumbai suburb – apartment was burgled and valuables worth Rs.4.5 lakhs were stolen after its resident left a note at the door that he won't be home for some days.
On April 8, computer programmer Ashish A, 36, had taken his family for a brief vacation to their native village in Vasai. While leaving, he left a note for the postman stating that he won't be in the city and his letters should be delivered to his neighbours at the first floor of his building. The cops say, "we received a call at 7.30 a.m. regarding the theft on Sunday. We believe that the letter may have acted as an open invitation to burglars on a lookout for apartments whose residents are out on vacation."
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"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business" – Henry Ford
(Me: hmmmm maybe, but a business that makes no money is no business, either, coz. money is another name for business, according to those in business).
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News my male friends can use with profit…
10-day beard a hit with ladies…
Researchers took photos of men when they were shaven, at 5 and 10 days without shaving, and then showed it to women and men, and the result…
Women chose men with a heavy 10-day beard as the most attractive…
(Me: So you now know what to do to patao a loss of your dreams when everything else fails…)
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The news that has been grabbing the newspaper headlines in Mumbai for over 10 days now..
140 flats/apartments, worth over Rs.300 crores (60 million US dollars), in illegally constructed floors in the buildings in Campa Cola compound, set for demolition this week…
Some background information.
Pure Drinks Pvt Ltd. originally owned the landed property in Worli near the state government-owned milk diary. The company, I think, then owned by Charanjit Singh), were the bottlers of Coca Cola in India. When Coca Cola was driven out of the country by George Fernandes, the Industry Minister then in the Janata Party Government in 1977, the company introduced Campa Cola, an ersatz cola, in the market. The company in an effort to unlock the value of its property gave a part of the land to three developers for constructing residential apartments. The original plan approved by the local civic administration, allowed 5 buildings each of 5 floors. But the builders raised extra 7 to 15 floors adding 140 flats and sold them to unwary buyers at bumper profit. The 140 flats were of course illegally constructed but wouldn't have been possible without the active involvement of the civic officials and local politicians.
The richest business community in India is that of the builders, especially those in Mumbai – city being surrounded on the south, east and west by the Arabian sea, land is always at a premium, and the builders all resort to all kinds of subterfuge to increase the FSI (or Floor Space Index that determines the total area that can be built in a given land) and he salable area in flats to squeeze out maximum money from buyers and a large portion of it is collected in black. The builders, happily of course, share a percentage of the booty spoils arising out of such massive illegalities with the politicians, civic officials and law enforcement agencies. A typical, very modest 2-bedroom apartment, shoddily constructed and without even occupation certificates (that allow people to occupy the building) even in the far suburbs in the city costs upwards of 1.5 crore rupees (US dollars 300,000), which is very much higher than for far superior apartments in Western countries…
Besides the builder-politician-civic official nexus, the law courts also, ironically, give rise to such illegal constructions: when the civic body serves a stop-work notice to any building, the builder gets a stay from the courts and starts litigation in our vexatious multi-tier judicial system and before the civic body gets to vacate these stay orders, the builder constructions at super speed and also let the buyers occupy the flats and the apex court finally orders the demolition of the illegally constructed flats, the residents raise a high decibel campaign via our obliging media that they will be rendered homeless, that they have lost all their lifetime savings on buying the flats, that there are seriously ill senior citizens (of course there weren't so senior in the early 1980s, for example as in the present case!) and small school going kids and hold the civic/police authorities responsible for allowing illegal constructions.
In all these fracas, the super-rich and affluent people in South Mumbai employ a double-standard: while on the hand they want all the illegal constructions and encroachments in the poorer areas in the city proper, suburbs and extended suburbs to be demolished, while on the other they want their own illegalities to be condoned. And because they are executives or chief executives in and have connections with the electronic and print media, their protests are given wide coverage…
The inescapable conclusion one comes to here is, you can get away with anything and everything if you have the wherewithal/resources/clout in terms of right connection/influence and/or money.
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