Lots of unrelated stuff !

I am just coming in after a really long Saturday evening walk. Nice, pleasant, drizzly weather - a rarity in this part of the world.

The walk lasted from "In Dinon.." to "Last Kiss.." a total of about an hour and a half of music on my iPod shuffle :)

[ A slight ramification from the original post's content - Last Kiss - the Pearl Jam version is one of those songs which really,u know, makes an impact when you listen to it closely - like on personal stereo or something:

" Oh where, oh where can my baby be,
The Lord took her away from me.
She's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see my baby when I leave this world.

We were out on a date, in my daddy's car,
We hadn't driven very far,
There in the road, straight up ahead,
A car was stalled, the engine was dead.

I couldn't stop, so I swerved to the right,
I'll never forget the sound that night.
The screamin' tires, the bustin' glass,
The painful scream that I heard last...

When I woke up, the rain was pouring down,
There were people standin' all around.
Something warm going through my eyes,
But somehow I found my baby that night.

I lifted her head, she looked at me and said
"Hold me darlin' just a little while."
I held her close, I kissed her our last kiss,
I found the love that I knew I had missed.

Well now she's gone, even though I hold her tight,
I lost my love, my life that night."

Its a phenominal example of how a real beautiful song works - simple, wonderful lyrics and sung/delivered with as minimal fuss as possible. ]

One really funny incident that happened and an analysis of a related issue:

Somewhere during the walk (I remember it was during "Yeh Fizayen..(Main hoon naa)") i suddenly felt like i wanted to pee, real bad. I somehow held on till the um,urge, passed and walked on ok. There was always the option of the street corner - where theres always the garbage dump to pee into - which thankfully i did not have to excercise because of my,um, urge being moderate.

I remember in the same context walking one evening Last November along the Left bank of the Siene, trying to walk all the way from the Notre Dame to the Effiel Tower. I saw atleast 2 separate acts of,um, guys peeing on walls along the embankment - it wasnt like late in the night or something and those guys werent exactly tramps - and there wasnt any shortage of Toilets - all one had to do was to climb up back on to the Road from the river bank and walk into a public loo. Still one or two chose to pee,um,on the pavement.

I got into one public loo near the base of the Eiffel tower - sure enough - there were broken toilets, overflowing ones and shocking stench - maybe it was one of those 'bad hair' days ( :) OR maybe it was swampled due to this great horde of Indian tourists milling around yelling in Gujrati, Telugu and what not!)

Now, Proper Paris, the sprawling Metropolis that it is, has a 2 mn population - density roughly equal to any indian metro - maybe slightly lower in density. And in some cases, some rough neighborhoods werent any better than any Indian small down in terms of cleanliness etc.

Its true the infrastructure in superior in every sense - but it isnt the heaven that some people assume & as some of these columists portray it.

Elsewhere outside Proper paris - just 20 miles out - the absence of people came to me as a major shock - there simply isnt anyone visible on the road - there are quaint hamlets every 10/15 miles and roadsigns all around - but the absence of people is HUGELY visible.

France has a TOTAL of 64 mn people of which 61 mn of them live in 'Metros' for eg.ONLY the region designed as paris metro has about 12mn people living (Paris + 75 mile radius or so) inside a Total Sq.Km area of the whole country of roughly 6.50 lacs.

Now INDIA - total area 31 lacs (Less than 5 times France's land mass) BUT a population of 1150 mn (20 times France's population) consequently India is MUCH crowded & there a MUCH bigger stress put on the natural resources, governments & the general peaceful life is THAT much more difficult.

I sometimes wonder how we manage to exist - ruled by some old puppet sardar thousands of miles away - still paying taxes, getting work done etc. I guess theres always an element of self governing, religous/cultural tolerance etc, in-built in the Indian ethic or something :)

And hey ! Back to the old issue in hand - if some wiseass is thinking of mouthing off about building public loos in every street - think of all this too !