Cogitations of Vishwas Jain

Great start of a perfect day out So ultimate objective for next day was to explore desert safari. But the first stop was War museum. The Museum displays war exhibits which include vehicles and equipment captured during the course of operations in 1965 and 1971 war. Also, it has an Honour Wall engraved with the names of the Param Vir Chakra and Maha Vir Chakra gallantry award winners. Before watching a documentary on 1965 war we happen to talk with a soldier of BSF. He was aggrieved of the fact that youth of the country is going abroad and not joining army. However, he was hopeful that one day youth will chose army as a career option rather than a measure of last resort.We left the place feeling more patriotic as if it was 26th Jan or 15th August. Well that's when we have to feel patriotic. Isn't it? Nevertheless, next in line was Kuldhara, an abandoned and so called haunted village.  It was abandoned by the early 19th century for unknown reasons, possibly because of dwindl

'Jane Kya Dikh Jaye' tagline of Rajasthan Tourism echoed my mind before I planned my next excursion or rather I should say assignment. After crossing several items on the list like reaching half the height of Mt. Everest, diving in the middle of the ocean, winning a race on camel back in the desert was the next nail in the coffin. This nail prompted me to visit the Golden City of Jaisalmer. The start-Valentine helps It all started with 4-5 people nodding for the trip enthusiastically and a day before the trip you are left alone. It took high level of emotional blackmail , humiliation of lonely valentine week and a wish to escape from Delhi life to finally board the train. My journey started with reaching Gandhinagar Railway station of Jaipur(Country's first all women railway station) to board the same train. Trains and wait are synonym of each other Indian Railways never surprises you. Train was delayed by an hour. Typical Indian family adds to this trauma of waiting

" It's a belief that I can achieve such heights in life. If you have belief you can go really far in your life. I kept on believing and dreaming and I am here today. " -Roger Federer on winning Wimbledon 2017. At the age of 36, when most of the athletes sit back and relax, one name which is celebrated all over the world regardless of nationality is Roger. Nobody wants him to loose even if he is playing against the player of their own nationality. His one handed cross court backhand, serve and volley, ability to move and slide across one side of the net is still unparalleled. Alexander Zverev, who is the currently the youngest guy in ATP top 30 players (finished the 2017 season ranked world No. 4), rightly put his feelings into words in post match presentation after loosing to Roger Federer in the final of Hopman Cup, 2018 " Roger, relax a little bit, we want to win something as well. It makes us young guy look bad ". When he landed in Australia this year, h

Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India - data.gov.in - is a platform for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. The portal is part of Digital India initiative intended to be used by Government of India Ministries/ Departments their organizations to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications collected by them for public use. It aims to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative uses of Government Data to give different perspective. The National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4), the fourth in the NFHS series, provides information on population, health and nutrition for India and each State / Union territory. NFHS-4, for the first time, provides district-level estimates for many important indicators. Some pieces of this data is also available on OGD platform in public domain. I have used NFHS-4 district-level data of Rajasthan from OGD Platform to find out the performance of vario

Before you start reading the book review, my favourite lines from the book: " Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces-forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I'm still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of ever-lasting gods are not changed suddenly ." " I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Points becomes games becomes sets becomes tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds of me the way seconds becomes minutes becomes hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's your choice. " I still remember the my first match of tennis that I watched on Television. The only thing that I remember from that match was the magic chant 'An-dre An-dre'. Andre Agass

Our cab got cancelled. This left us dependent on the vagaries of local taxi dealers. It became a trade off between peace and money as they were charging higher rates but in the end peace prevailed which rarely does these days. However, for us it was not a zero-sum game as the final objective was peace at whatever cost. So, we decided to hire the taxi. But the peace plan got dismantled when taxi driver warned us that there is huge traffic jam on the road to Dhanaulti. Also, it is impossible to reach Dhanaulti and return on the same day. After seeing the brooding expression on our face he told us that we can at best go to Mussoorie and return the same day. He also added that he can't guarantee that we will be able to return on time and catch the overnight train to Delhi as the road is severely jammed. He had several stories of getting stuck in the traffic jam for 6 hours while returning from Mussoorie in the past. As some of my friends had to join the qualitative work force that d