"The Three Mistakes of my Life"

I wish I could chronicle my life's three biggest mistakes, but I am unable to....Is it because the mistakes outnumber "three"???? Not really...The mistakes I am talking about are decisions I made at various junctures in my life. But somehow, deeply ingrained in me in this thought that these are not really mistakes, but experiences that happen for a reason. Every experience increases the slope of your learning curve and the curvier it is, better for u...(pun totally INTENDED).Well this post is definitely not going to be a self introspection voyage.
The title has actually been plagiarized from Chetan Bhagat's third book entitled the same. I agree he is no Booker or Pulitzer material.His books are just a literary (prolly too strong a word) adaptation of a 70 mm commercial masala caper exemplifying boyfriend-girlfriend relationship and friendship with a good measure of "titillation" (ain't being explicit coz I don't want the censor board to jump at me)...Having said that, I have enjoyed his previous two attempts at writing, coz they kept me entertained for 3 hours and and at the end of 3 hours I could say paisa vasool. Like every movie does not have to be path-breaking, every book needn't be written for a booker. So after some frantic "Amazonic" search, I managed to lay my hands on this book and Boy!!!! was I disappointed!!!!!!!!!
The primary reason being, in all likelihood after writing 90% of the book, the author suddenly thought..."Can I win a Booker by scrambling in 10 pages of Godhra massacre and make my mark as a writer trying to address a socially relevant cause. How I wish that this dramatic enlightenment had dawned upon the author a few pages earlier. I wish he had handled this issue with a lot more sensitivity, poignancy and detail. This is one incident that has perhaps left an indelible impression in the minds of every Indian, to the extent that this is still a stumbling block in the way of a certain man vying for the "PM's Kursi" in the ongoing general election. Coming back to the book, it does have its endearing moments, but falls miles short of what could have been a perfect amalgam of entertainment conveying a powerful message.
Having made a passing remark on the ongoing General elections,(I know some of you are more familiar with the same being called as the Great Indian Circus) I would probably wanna pen down my thoughts on the same. Firstly, what struck me the most about this election was this celebrity bandwagon high on glamor quotient motored by the man himself Karan Johar, endorsing the General Elections and asking the youth to step out and vote.These celebrities who seem completely out of sync with the country's political scenario are just reading their lines straight off a tele-prompter which says" Go Vote, your vote counts in bringing the change we need". If you were to ask them, what kind of governance will bring in that change, the answer would be "I don't know" or perhaps "A govt. that will resist another 26/11 episode. The reason is, this whole celebrity campaign was generated with a myopic agenda centered around 26/11 attack on Mumbai. The campaign seems completely blind to other pertinent issues plaguing the nation like economic reforms and its implications on the industrial sector and "Aam taxpaying Junta", rural and agricultural empowerment, inflation, recession, red tapism et al. I am not being apathetic to the 26/11 incident..Hurt I am and do appreciate the efforts that are going into nailing the brains behind this operation...But I also realize that what we need at this point is not just a leader but a VISIONARY who will look beyond myopic agenda. The day such a leader addresses a campaign, we will surely see the polling rate surge beyond the 50% mark where it remains stagnated at over the last two decades despite the attempts by these "unaware" celebrities trying to spread "voting awareness".
Until then, May 16th 2009 will just remain a day that just paves way for a certain politician occuyping 7 racecourse road and the day all the numerous election promises start biting the dust.