An Year ended & Another Started...

8.23 am , 26th May,2014 : This moment should be recorded as I have pledged not to have junk food anymore. People, generally, have such kind of promises, pledges, aims etc on an new year eve and as soon as the day ended, so their promises. So i am not interested in fooling myself. It's not about the occasion, it's about the moment when your heart says the same. For me, this is the moment.

But why? Why i decided to have such promise? Why I needed to cut on my food habits? All the questions will get answered by the end, hopefully. In the last year i had lived my life like never before. Almost every day party, movie a week sometimes twice a week, sleeping on weekends etc had become a part of my routine resulting which i gained 15kg of weights from 65 to 80kg. A boy who used to go for daily running, who was very conscious about his looks suddenly turned into a lethargic, fat guy. I had never imagined myself in 36" jeans. What i had been upto? I am still confused.

On 23rd May, 2014, I celebrated my 27th birthday. I distributed sweets in office, threw a party to my PG mates at room, went out for a dinner with my friends. I received many gifts along with best wishes. Everything was going great until i visited my hometown on the very next day as it was a saturday. My parents were happy as usual. While talking they commented about my obscenity (to put in a harsh way). I was chocked, could not utter a word and decided to control my weight. My colleagues, my college friends have been saying the same for couple of months, but i ignored them all. I used to console myself saying these days would never come back so enjoy it to the fullest. Keeping this backdrop in mind, i was galloping the food like a hungry child for many years. It became a disease which used to compel me to indulge into junk food eveyday.

Two days passed away in retrospection, analyzing the cause and cure for the disease. Finally the moment came, I decided to control my food habits and live a better & healthy life. In coming year, i will try to gain my original physique by working out. Though cutting on junk food does not mean that a person is not enjoying its life, yet to keep myself awake, I decided to write it down. Next time i shall meet you all as a lighter person.

Regards

Parul Goyal

Lok Sabha Elections 2014

India is the biggest democracy in the world. It is time when the people of India form the government by casting their respective vote. As a government official I was shortlisted to be a part of the election process of Lok Sabha Election 2014. I was appointed as a Presiding Officer for a particular booth. After three- four randomizations of the staff, i was given Janta Nagar polling booth in Bathinda Itself.

As per dates released by Election commission of India, 30th April 2014 was the casting day for Punjab state and 16th may the counting day for whole India. All the candidates were campaigning for their luck for last few months. In Bathinda parliamentary constituency, a big fight was slated to happen between sitting MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal from the ruling Badal clan and Manpreet singh Badal also from Badal clan but the estranged one. Despite the Namo Wave in whole india, AAP was trying to establish itself as a national party after a smashing performance by its leader Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi Elections. Despite these two parties, congress was struggling to remain in power and hoping to form UPA-III.

Though entire Punjab was waiting for the final show on 30th april, but we were given our respective appointment letters for election duty almost one month in advance. Four rehearsals were conducted before the big day so that we should become familiar with all logistics of the election process. I have given duties earlier also but this time it was different for EVM's were being used for casting votes. So i took training sessions seriously to avoid any kind of difficulty at a later stage. To conduct polling at a booth requires three other persons viz 1 APRO, 2 Polling staff. Whole of the staff was cordial and cooperative which ultimately helped our polling party to conduct polling successfully on the big day.

Without getting into the technicalities of the polling process, lets directly go for the results day and see if SAD would be able to showcase its majority in Punjab once again or Congress and AAP will change the equations this time.

As soon as Polling ended successfully in Punjab and then in India, exit polls were ready with their predictions of the results which were clearly showing the Modi wave scoring high. In between, i was assigned another duty of counting supervisor to count the votes for the Maur Constituency falling in the jurisdiction of Bathinda Parliamentary Constituency. I was to sit down on table along with a Counting assistant and a micro observer in front of the counting agents by different parties. One by one i declared the results of 12 booths by counting the votes in the respective EVMs separately in 12 different rounds which ultimately were added to the results of other tables. Hence results of all assembly constituencies falling in Bathinda Constituency were known by 4 PM of 16th May, 2014 and Biba ji as people call her, won by marginal victory of 19595 votes.

In India, BJP itself without any coalition swept away 282 seats out of 545 Lok Sabha Seats. India witnessed such results in its democracy for the first time that any democratic party is eligible for constituting the next government without any allies. "Ab ki Baar, Modi Sarkar" , " Har har Modi, Ghar ghar Modi" etc slogans were doing all around. A common man from Gujarat, a tea vendor is ready to take the Prime Minister's Oath for the largest democracy in coming few days. After Congress worst performance since independence, it would be interesting to see if BJP would be successful in keeping its head high and would free India from scams to form a Corruption free India.

Regards

Parul Goyal