Playback singer Shreya Ghoshal has become a household name in Malayalam. These days most of the good Malayalam songs are sung by her. Her Malayalam pronunciation is so good that it is very tough to imagine that her mother tongue is not Malayalam. Here is a collection of few of her hit songs in Malayalam. I am sure you will enjoy it.
(This blog post is written by my wife Ms Deepa Madathil about her experience of going to Passport Office to renew (reissue) her passport. Incidentally this is the first time she is writing some thing in my blog:)) Update 14/03/11: Deepa got her passport home 13 days after her visit to passport seva kendra!!
My passport was going to expire in a month. The very thought of going through a government office filling so many papers was itself frightening me. To start the process rolling Brijesh and I went to a travel agency in our school to find out the procedure. They told us that reissue of passport has changed a lot since the time we got our passport 10 years ago and now things are very systematic. Only issue is that we need to go from Vellore to one of the Passport Seva Kendra in Chennai with all the documents. The travel agency promised us help in getting the date for my passport interview (More about the travel agency later in this post.)
So I got an appointment for the passport interview in Saligramam office at 11:45 AM on March 1st. From the previous experiences in Chennai traffic we decided not to take any risk, Brijesh and I reached the passport office around 9.00 AM, only to see a huge crowd waiting on the road. They allowed only applicants to go in and that too 30 minutes before the actual appointment time. Now we have over 2 hours to kill and we didn’t know what to do. We walked around and found a Big Bazaar. We did window shopping for close to an hour and for the next one hour we just sat outside on the stairs of Big Bazaar with me watching all the people coming in and out and Brijesh reading some book.
I went back at 11:15 AM and was allowed in. Initial screening/checking is done by TCS employees and they allow you in, only if you have all the proper documents. They check your address proof, affidavits and old passport (in case of reissue/renewal). I had all the documents but my appointment letter that I took printout of, from the internet had “Normal” at one place and “Tatkal” at the other. The travel agent who helped me book the interview had screwed up big time. I thought I may be asked to come back again as these TCS guys were rejecting entry to almost 1 in 3 applicants because they didn’t have proper documents. I didn’t want to go back to Vellore and come back again another day.
To my surprise the guy said “Madam, Please write a letter addressed to regional passport officer that you actually want your passport to be processed in normal mode”. I was very happy to hear that and I immediately wrote that letter. Now I had cleared the first level of screening and was given a token that read A->B->C->Exit. I needed to go through three more levels before I am sure I will get my passport reissued.
Now the wait began – wait for my token number to be displayed in the big LCD TV. In 20 minutes my token number was displayed and I was in front of another TCS employee who was really very courteous. She looked at my bank statement and marriage affidavit and told me that both the documents were enough proof of our address. She told me that they didn’t accept the letter from our workplace for proof of address as it is a private organization. I had to take the marriage affidavit as we had lost our original marriage certificate. Now this girl took my finger prints and I paid the money, Rs. 1000, for reissue of my passport.
Now again I had to wait – for my number to be called to meet the next officer. The next person I met was not a TCS employee but a “passport verification officer”, a government employee who was scrutinizing all the documents I had submitted. I went to him when my turn came and after going through all the documents asked me,
Passport Officer (PO): Nothing personal, but why don’t you want to change your last name after marriage.
Me: Sir, I am from a community that follows matriarchal system and my last name is my mothers’ family name.
PO: So your mother will also have the same last name?
Me: Yes Sir, You can see that in my old passport.
He looked at my old passport and got it verified. He said “ok” and asked me to wait for the final verification. Now I was called to meet with the “Passport Granting Officer”, another government employee. He also scanned through all the documents and maybe seeing that my old passport was issued in Hyderabad asked me
PO: So you moved from one hot place (Hyderabad) to another hot place (Vellore)
Me: Smiles
He looks at my employee letter skeptically and asks
PO: You a student in VITUniversity?
Me: No Sir, I am a faculty there
PO: Oh, sorry, I am so used to seeing student bonafide certificates from your institute that I mistook this one for that
Me: Again Smiles
PO: So you moved directly from Hyderabad to Vellore
Me: I was in US for over five years before moving to Vellore
He looks at the US visa stamped in my old passport and then signed on the form and said “Passport Approved, You can leave”! I looked at my watch and it was 12:45 PM – exactly 90 minutes since I got in. I was given a feedback form on my way out for which I marked “Very Good” for each question.
Looking back now, only mistake I did in the whole process was going through the travel agent in booking the dates. Later I realized that it was an easy process that could have taken just 5 minutes for me to do it on my own for which I paid Rs 500 to that stupid travel agent. He took his own sweet time to do this registration and also filled it incorrectly. The new process at Passport Seva Kendra is so good and the only thing to take care of is you need to have the correct documents. The required documents for each kind of passport service are given here and if you follow the instructions you get your passport approved without any hassle.
Starting from the academic year 1992 till today, especially when Congress led United Democratic Front (UDF) was ruling Kerala, how many working days were lost in schools and colleges across Kerala due to strikes by SFI, student wing of CPI(M), in protest against starting self financing engineering colleges in Kerala? During my engineering days there was even a relay hunger strike by SFI that lasted more than a month against the new self financing engineering colleges. Hundreds of government cars, buses were damaged by the striking SFI comrades bringing huge loss to the state exchequer. Few youngsters lost life in SFI’s so called struggle against these self financing colleges.
Now can you believe, the same Communist Party and SFI, is starting a self financing college - M Dasan Institute of Technology - in Kozhikode (Calicut)? What an irony! See this news (in Malayalam).
Is this news shocking? If you know the past history of Communist Party that has a record of committing “historical blunders” only to be corrected later, you won’t be shocked at all. The party that was not ready to accept initially that India got independence from British on August 15th, 1947, party that supported China during the Indo-Chinese war in early sixties, the party that opposed the introduction of computers in early eighties (now all party leaders uses the latest electronics gadgets) this is what we can expect from them. At least now let their leaders admit that opposing self financing colleges was another “historic blunder” of communist party and make a vow that from now onwards party will stop making any more historic blunders.
I know lot of my friends who took part in SFI agitation against self financing colleges will be reading this post. Like to know their views now that Communist party itself has decided to start an engineering college in self financing sector.
The media - both print as well as visual has one hot topic - when/why/how should Sachin Tendulkar retire from International Cricket. Every so called expert has view of their own and debates goes on. What do you call think? Join this poll...
Kerala government has given permission to open another 19 new engineering colleges this year. This move comes when over 12,000 engineering seats remained vacant in various engineering colleges in Kerala during last year. With the entry of 19 new engineering colleges, the total number of engineering colleges has increased to 162 colleges. In 1992 the state had 7 engineering colleges including REC, Calicut and in a span of 2 decades another 155 colleges were added.
My house in Trivandrum in 8 kms from TrivandrumCity and in walkable distance there will be two engineering colleges now. Things have reached a stage in Kerala that whoever clears Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in Plus Two with minimum possible marks get to choose the colleges and branch of engineering. I feel if this trend continues we will soon find auto drivers, carpenters, masons and even day laborers having engineering course completion certificates.
Following are the new engineering colleges sanctioned by the government:
AkilaSchool of Engineering, Kozhipara, Palakkad
North Malabar Institute of Technology, Kanjanhad, Kasargord
Vidhya Institute of Science and Technology, Kilimanoor, Trivandrum
Nest Institute of Technology, Karivallur, Kannur
K V M College of Engineering and I.T, Cherthala, Allapuzha
Focus Institute of Science and Technology, M.G. Road, Trissur
Playback singer Shreya Ghoshal has become a household name in Malayalam. These days most of the good Malayalam songs are sung by her. Her Malayalam pronunciation is so good that it is very tough to imagine that her mother tongue is not Malayalam. Here is a collection of few of her hit songs in Malayalam. I am sure you will enjoy it.
Playback singer Shreya Ghoshal has become a household name in Malayalam. These days most of the good Malayalam songs are sung by her. Her Malayalam pronunciation is so good that it is very tough to imagine that her mother tongue is not Malayalam. Here is a collection of few of her hit songs in Malayalam. I am sure you will enjoy it.
