A few years ago, Indian cricket was against modern technology that would reduce human error in umpiring decisions!

In other words they preferred human error to continue. Because as a nation, human error is what we can control!

We oppose anything that will make decisions more transparent.

Is there anything that can be done in our country without money being paid? Parents of a two-month-old baby, who applied for a passport for their child, when they refused to pay a bribe to the police were told after two weeks' delay that their child’s passport application had been sent for a criminal investigation.

A two-month-old? Criminal investigation? Every loop in the book is used like this intentional delay for government officials to make money.

And tragically nothing is done about it! Nothing!

Sadly, our patriotism wakes up twice a year, one being the 15th of August and the other the 26th of Jan. Maybe it's the psychological effect of the flag being hoisted or unfurled, the national anthem being sung, or patriotic speeches being said!

But after a few days have passed, we go back to the business of deriding and pulling down our country.

Quite a few of us wait to retire. We long for the days when we have nothing to do, go nowhere and stay put. I do believe too many of such days can be boring and quite disastrous.

My neighbor Mr Kishore retired the other day and since our terraces are joined at the centre he told me not to bring my dog up as he wanted to laze around. I watched him 'lazing around' on the terrace for the first day, again the second day and Mr Kishore found it too troublesome climbing up and decided to laze around at home and in bed:

I pressed the horn, stomped on the accelerator, cursed the driver in the next car and nearly shouted at the traffic policeman. “What’s the matter dad?” my daughter asked.

“I hate being late,” I grumbled.

“D’you know of all the people whose lives were saved because they were late?”