Witty Scribble

Aaaaaaa-chiiiii.....came another sneeze, fourth on a trot. Sitting alone in the corner of a bed, in my hostel room, I had been sneezing for quite some time now. It was a hot, harsh and dry afternoon (May end) but I was aloof from the sweltering heat. Even with a blanket on, I was shivering from cold. Luckily, the semester had ended and with practicals remaining, we were on the verge of completing the first year of engineering. I was down with fever, viral to be precise. With a sore throat and a running nose, I secluded myself and held a handkerchief to cover my nose for an important reason: 'contain the spread of infection'. Another day, working on the newly installed machine, the computer , in our house, I seem to download an innocuous looking game file from the Internet. Appearances are deceptive and so was the case with 'the file'. No sooner did the computer scan it for virus than it raised an alarm. The safe looking file was infected and the anti-virus gav

It was my birthday earlier this month and I received a lot of phone calls from my well-wishers. The phone flashed the names for most of them, thanks to google contacts that we don’t lose the contacts on switching or losing a phone set. Few of my well-wishers though, called from a new cell number and liked playing the old school game of ‘Pehchaan Kaun’. I succeeded in a few attempts, failed miserably for some people(these people need to call me more often) in attempt to identify them by the only input I had : their voice. voice modulation Human voice is generated by action of three body parts: the lungs, the voice box, and the articulators. Let us take a minute to understand their individual functions. The lungs: There role in voice generation is to generate the right amount of air flow and air pressure required to vibrate the vocal cords(also called vocal folds). The Voice Box:  Also called Larynx or vocal cords or vocal folds, it vibrates using the air flow from th

Yeh jo desh hai tera, swades hai tera, tujhe hai pukara ...The song and the movie are one of my all time favourites. The connection shown between the protagonist and the motherland India is truly very heartwarming. I am overwhelmed and flooded with emotions every time I see the movie (which I do quite often). I can go on writing about it, but I am not a movie critic. Here today, I am writing on a topic that has to do with Swades. It is about the NRIs and the PIOs and the OCIs. What is the difference between NRI, OCI and PIO? It is said that one will find Indians in every country on planet. Almost every middle class family has someone staying abroad, be it Australia, Middle East, the UK or the USA. NRIs are Indians who have been staying abroad for more than 183 days in a financial year or 365 days during a span of 4 consecutive years. NRIs are not subjugated to taxes in India, provided they are taxed in the nation they reside in. NRIs are eligible for voting, can own land a

For people in finance or a normal taxpayer, 1 st of February, that was a normal day until 2016, has become a day of much more importance for a very basic and impactful reason. The union budget of India, which used to be presented on last working day of February until 2016, is now presented on 1 st of February from 2017. This week, our Finance Minister, Mr Arun, Jaitley, presented the union budget, which is the last full term budget for current tenure of government. Important in many aspects like being first budget after GST implementation and last full term budget for the tenure, the budget got all the eyeballs glued to the television screens for the budget speech by our FM. The budget speech, as it was delivered, was scrutinized word by word by the finance pundits, not just in India but globally. But they are called pundits for a reason. They understand all the fancy terms and jargons of finance. But what about us, the common people: the regular salaried employee or a small bu