A rule that lets you litter your neighbor's house??

You suddenly found time & mustered will to clean up your room for the year's quarter. You do a fairly good job out of it. And then pops the big question - "Where do I throw the trash?" You could either walk down the stairs, across the street and use the bin. Or, you could open your window, just enough for your arm to enter, and volley the trash into your neighbor's, and quickly close the window as though it hasn't been opened for years. Naturally, you choose the second option. Time is money, right?! Later, you walk on the road and complain of bad smell, mosquitoes and dirty 'Indian' roads. MightyIndianDream has come up with practices and technologies, that let you continue the culture & tradition of piling up garbage on the road or neighbor's, and still keep the neighborhood clean and hygienic.

A simple method would be for your municipality to twist rules so as to allow you to throw all your garbage to the right side of your house. Every house collects the previous house's garbage, in addition to its own garbage, and passes it on to the next house. This would ensure that the thrill of littering on your neighbor's area remains. Thus, all trash would accumulate on the far end of the street, where it can be picked up easily by the garbage van. The next month, the practice can be done the other way, to the left of your house. Or the Housing Board could make it mandatory for every house to paint a section of the floor like a road. So people would rather litter on a road closer home than one far away.

If a municipality or corporation has enough funds, then it can invest in a latest technology - Intelligent Roads. Intelligent Road identifies plastic and other trash from its carbon content, and incinerates it the very second it is thrown on the road. The CO2 released from combustion would be sucked by the road and deposited deep under your building.

However, prevention is the best cure. Most of the litter on the road is polythene & plastic, which people throw away after using shampoos or biscuits or similar goods. The FMCG companies must NOT package AROUND their products, using plastic or polythene. Rather, they must package ON the product, USING the product, without the use of materials other than the product ingredients itself. Using a few colored additives, they could slice a layer of the product for packaging. Imagine a Perk or Munch, where you have to lick away the bar code, price tag, brand logo, etc, all in a different flavor altogether, before munching your chocolate. Or a shampoo that stays solid till its mixed with water. Or maybe an oil pack that can be rolled inside your pocket and regains its liquid molecularity on application of certain pressure. The possibilities are endless.

Reward thieves, reduce thefts, feel safe.

You no longer have to worry about locking your door or engaging a private security, or shifting your valuables to a bank locker when going out of station. MightyIndianDream has recommended to the Government the best way to make people feel safe: legalize theft and tax thieves.

The process involves the creation of two bodies - Donor Union (DU) and Thieves Union (TU). The job of the police will be to act as a bridge between the two bodies, and ensure their smooth functioning. Any household with a ration card will be made a member of DU. (So this would also encourage citizens to apply for a ration card.) A member of TU will be assured of non-action by police for thefts. So this would encourage thieves to apply for a TU membership.

On the assigned date, a DU member will auction his property for theft, fixing a base price and auctioning backwards. The bidder quoting the lowest price will be chosen as the Official Thief for the member's house. The keys to the house would be handed over to the thief in a grand ceremony. It would be up-to the thief and house owner to arrive upon a mutually agreeable date for theft.

On the day of theft, the thief has to sponsor the family for a movie or any outing that would keep the family engaged while he is busy stealing. In return, the family has to make sure the thief feels at home, and load the fridge with nutritious and tasty eatables. After theft, depending on the facilities enjoyed, the thief would leave behind a tip. However, a minimum tip of 10% would be mandatory, so as to make the owner feel all isn't lost.

For every unannounced or unorganized theft, the Theft Union will have to pay a heavy fine to the government. By rule, a house, once robbed, would be put off auction for the next 5 years. If the plan goes well, then in future there might be premium membership options, wherein the thief would mop your floor, dust your ceiling and wash your car in addition to the theft.

Randiv's Alma mater & his 1st No-Ball

MightyIndianDream takes you to the land of No-balls, Sri Lanka, and finds out what it takes to bowl a century-denying no-ball. My first stop is at The Rangiri Dambulla Cricket Academy. Several young boys are bowling their hearts out in the hot Lankan sun. Oddly, in all the nets, in place of where a batsman should be, hangs a sign-post with 99* written on it. The bowling coach, a friendly man, sees the confusion on my face and offers to explain.

"For decades we have been mastering the century-denial ball. Our foundations are pretty strong and we make sure the boys master the basics well." He shows me white circular markers(which are ideally used for marking bowlers' run up) placed two feet ahead of the bowling crease. "This is the first stage of their training. We make it easier for the boys to understand that a batsman is at 99 by the sign board. Then they have to consciously, carefully skip the bowling crease and land on the markers 2 feet away." Interesting. "Has any bowler been talented enough to go beyond 2 feet?", I ask. "Well at this age it will be difficult for them. But now and then we get some tremendous talent out here. Randiv, when he was a kid, once bowled with his bowling feet on the batsman's crease." No wonder he's performing well in international cricket!

The coach then takes me to the other end of the ground, where there are batsmen instead of the sign-posts. Maybe this part of the ground is for serious cricket? But as I move closer, I realize that some of those batsmen actually play for Ranji teams! Coach, seeing my baffled expression calls over one of the batsmen. Shyly, the batsmen walks towards us. "Tell him about our excellent coaching here, Parthiv." Parthiv Patel!!

"I was playing for Gujarat against Railways. The match was going really well for us. We needed just 1 run to win and I was playing at 99*. Suddenly a helicopter came over our heads and I was airlifted. Within hours, I was dropped into Rangiri Dambulla with a parachute on my back. The helicopter went back to Feroz Shah Kotla for the next assignment!" Coach continued - "Once the boys pass their initial training, they move over to these nets where we simulate the game situation as close to real as possible. Notice that there aren't any markers here." Wanting to get out of the place quickly, I move over. Before leaving, I get Randiv's address from the coach.

Getting to Randiv's house was easy. He's well known in this part of the country. I ring the bell and wait. While I wait, I notice that a white line runs just beneath the gate, just like Lakshman Rekha. An evil laughter startles me. Randiv's mother. "People always ask us why we have that white line. Young Randiv drew that when he was a kid. Every time he walked into or out of the house, he liked to feel he'd bowled a no ball." She asks me to no-ball myself into the house, but I politely refuse and move on.

My last stop is the Sri Lanka Cricket Administrative Block. I was told to wait in a corner of a crowded auditorium inside. A co-coordinator was running a slide show with pictures of Indian cricketers. "B for... Ball Boy,.... W for ... Water Boy". And the crowd repeated respectfully after him. A peon came over and took me to the SLC President's office. On the way he said - "A complete professional, isn't he? The Crowd Behavior Expert."

The President wasn't too willing to talk. "We have nothing to say except that we have asked the ICC to mute the stump mikes when batsmen are at 99. Thank you!" Glad that my Lankan safari was over, I came back home.

Suraj Randiv and Queens Batons Relay!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken over as the Organizing Committee Head for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games. His appointment to the post has brought with it a slurry of changes. To begin with, the PM has appointed now & then India pacer S. Sreesanth as the Chief Appeals Commissioner. "Sreesanth has whole heartedly appealed (with passion) to the umpire when the ball has gone wide outside the leg stump. We see no reason why he can't appeal to the Indian public when we've missed the deadlines by a few months. Winning the hearts of the Indian people remains our first priority." , PM Office quoted.

Pranab Mukherjee has been appointed Chief Finance Officer. No surprises there! Mr. Mukherjee, who proposed the twin growth formula of inflation-inflation, has used all this experience to come up with a sure shot idea for boosting revenue. "The government plans to copyright words like corruption, black money and Suresh Kalmadi. The huge revenue generated from royalty would not only be sufficient to run the CWG, but the extra money could be deposited in the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, which in turn would be distributed to poverty struck, famine embracing MPs, who have been demanding a 300% rise in salary.

Interestingly, the Athletes Housing Directorate top post is being shared by two people - the directors of the Income Tax department & CBI. The department seems a relaxed lot. An AHD spokesperson said: "Ours is one of the easiest jobs. All we need to do is call up every MP & MLA in India and tell them we have a search warrant. We believe they won't be seen in any of their houses for at-least 3 months. All athletes will have the opportunity to live in their bungalows. "

The Food Committee is being handled by the Principal Secretary, Government of Tamilnadu. TN CM Kalaignar has graciously accepted to extend the Free Meals scheme for school children to participating atheletes also. The logistics for transporting meals everyday from Tamilnadu to New Delhi will be handled by Kalanidhi Maran acquired Spice Jet. Tamilnadu has another reason to be happy. The State, which has been consistently winning the Greenpeace Awards for maintaining 2 Earth hours everyday (thanks to Electricity Minister Arcot N. Veerasamy), has been chosen as the Training Center for the athletes.

Meanwhile, publicity for the Queen's Baton Relay might hit a low. Suraj Randiv has expressed his inability to participate in the QBR owing to Involuntary Elongation of his feet (popularly known in Sri Lankan medical circles as IEOF), after Sehwag reached 99. Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksha, who takes a keen interest on Randiv, has recommended treatment by Buddhist monks to solve his problem. The good news is that Malinga has confirmed his participation in the javelin throw event.

TIMES NOW continues to search for A.R. Rahman's CWG theme song. The Chief Editor alleges that the murky trial links the theme song to Andrew Symonds' event management company(in which Harbhajan Singh's nephew has majority stake) and extends upto Kilimanjaro.

Beleaguered but shameless Lalit Modi, unaware of these latest developments, has offered to shift the whole tournament to South Africa within 10 days. The BCCI has rightly ordered all its players, umpires, pitch curators and fans to stay away from Lalit Modi.

Mallya's hackers, oil spills & more

The Pakistan Cyber Army(PCA), which recently hacked Dr.Vijay Mallya's website, has decided to diversify & go one step further: lay underground pipelines from Islamabad to Bangalore, and suck 1 crore barrels worth of Kingfisher rum from United Breweries plants. This was brought to light by a TIMES NOW expose, with a special correspondent swimming through the yet to be constructed pipeline with a hidden camera. Dr. Mallya, when contacted, said he wants to take things one at a time, and that his first priority is reviving his website from the hackers.

Meanwhile, the cyber police haven't begun looking for the hackers yet, as they are busy searching for Shashi Tharoor's long lost Twitter account. Down south, Kalaignar Karunanidhi passed a law in the State Legislature to rename all websites in Tamil. Kalaignar cited the unfamiliarity of Pakistani extremists with Tamil as the reason. TIMES NOW informers inside PCA revealed startling informations though: The Pak Cyber Army is working closely with Pakistan based, Tamil fluent Vijaykanth-movie villains to recognize and hack Tamil websites. M.K. Azhagiri is on top of the hit-list. Hearing this, a furious Captain Vijaykanth has stationed his DMDK cadres equipped with machine guns at all major browsing centers.

Petroleum Minister Murli Deora has surprisingly requested InterPol not to bust the pipelines, as they can be used to form a Pan India petroleum grid, thus reducing the transportation charges on petroleum. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has his own plans though. He says the pipeline can be routed to the Mumbai coast, so that the oil spill can be re-directed to Islamabad. British Petrouleum CEO, hearing of this latest development, has requested participation of BP in this project, to clear spill off the Gulf coast.

The Indian Government wants to pursue this matter tactically and diplomatically. New Delhi is pushing hard on Pakistan to award the pipeline contract to Suresh Kalmadi. This has two advantages, sources close to the matter say. There would be a steady revenue from the contracts, but at the same time the pipeline won't cross the borders of Islamabad. Very clever indeed!

Indian skipper M.S. Dhoni meanwhile has said that Dr. Mallya's web hack has deeply affected the morale of the team and that the boys are mentally tired. This, he says was the reason the team got 88 all out. (When confronted with the question that the match happened before the hack, a miffed Dhoni said: "Well if it had happened after the hack, the team would have been 8 all out". None understood the logic, of course! )

After a lot of goading, Dr. Mallya chose to speak on this matter. But what he spoke remains unclear because Arnob Goswarmi "Mr Mallya I'm asking a direct question I want a direct answer"ed even before Mallya opened his mouth. A frustrated Mallya shouted Oo La La Le Lo before splashing Whyte & Mackay on the camera.

Greetings to all on our 64th Independence Day. While so many articles have been written about our proud history, here is my attempt at giving you a glimpse of our near future.

Very soon, all keyboards in the world will have the ` symbol. Every apparel shop across the globe will have I ♥ ND (I love New Delhi) T-shirts. The filthy rich American kid will pester his parents for Siyaram's Jeans and Manish Malhotra jerseys, and will wear his jean low & bend down at every opportunity to show off his original, imported-from-Tiruppur Anand underwear.

Very soon, HPS© (Hindi Prachar Sabha) will be conducting Test of Hindi as Foreign Language exams worldwide. The Washington Post will have a full page ad, a testimonial from James Bloom (rank 456, IIT-JEE), thanking Brilliant Tutorials for its part in his success. The brightest minds will get into ISB or IIMs. (and the ones content with just an India MBA shall join IIPMs)

Not far from today, a mother will be withdrawing cash from Manappuram Money Transfer, Melbourne, sent by her son, working as a specialty chef in Muniyandi Vilas Group of Hotels, Kumbakonam.

There might be uproars in our Parliament, to limit the number of work permits to Europeans & Americans. And you won't realize that the Airtel customer care executive you are talking to is actually from a call center in Buffallo! (They speak so fluently, its difficult to differentiate between Indian Hindi & American Hindi!)

Will Smith and Pamela Anderson won't mind dancing for an item number to promote their latest movie to their Non Resident American fans in Mumbai. (Of course, we won't stop by to watch, we won't have time to bother about petty issues.)

Soon, Canada might ban its CEOs from using Micromax smart phones, owing to security reasons. And SUN mobiles (yes, of the Sun TV Network family) will make the most out of this opportunity and shall make customized sets for Canadians.

Vikatan Naanayam will publish the list of world's top earning sportsmen. Tiger Woods will be ranked a distant 156 and Kobe Byrant 92, just 2 ranks away from Ravindra Jadeja's rank 90. French and German football fans might get into a brawl in one of our TASMAC outlets and their embassies will plead with the Indian government to let them off without charges.

Those days aren't far off. No country is perfect. It has to be made perfect. Proud to be born an Indian =)

[P.S.: This is my first attempt at writing. Feedbacks will be greatly appreciated]