Item Girl

Did you ever feel you were an item girl? Well, I am not speaking here of item girls doing a 5 minute song-flick-thing in a Bollywood movie. There is other type of item girls. Here in India if you are white and a westerner - you are an item! If you are blond - you are high value item! Everyone wants to speak to you, take a photo with you, invite you for functions so that they can show you off to their friends and family. Watch out for the wedding season - there is nothing more powerful than having a few white videshis dancing in your bharat (wedding procession)! Everyone will look, whoooohaaaa - you made your statement, and increased your local status by 6 points! White people around you - you must have money, charm, style, and connections! And maybe you can even manage to leave India on their invitation and become and NRI! Wah, wah, wah!

But tell you one thing, guys - as much as I am white and blond (and truly hope that I am not one of those 'thick blondes'!), I have no money, no status, no home in foreign land. I am completely useless. Oh, maybe I should then hook up with some wealthy industrialist over here. What a great idea, wah, wah, wah!

108 - Indian Emergency Call Number

If you are ever in trouble while in India, simply dial 108! India recently launched a new scheme and 108 has become an emergency number for some of some states. Here is an article about it form http://www.india-server.com/news/dial-108-for-emergency-in-india-1805.html:

"You may have often seen in the movies or even read in books about ‘911’ the number the United States denizens dial incase of emergency situations! Now a similar service is being introduced in India by the Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), which is soon about to launch this service in Madhya Pradesh. In a recent statement, Health minister Ambumani Ramadoss was intimated by Union Telecom minister A Raja that 108 is being finalized as the national toll free trauma care number to the institution.

It was further informed that 108 is already being used as the toll free emergency number in Indian states such as Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. On the other hand, even states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have inked MoU with the EMRI Institute for availing this service. Indian states like Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Kerala too are charting plans for fixing the number 108 for all emergency purposes.

Every time a caller dials 108, his or her call will be received by a 24 hour call centre which will take down all important information from the caller. After this, the call centre will locate an ambulance, fire vehicle or the police vehicle depending on the type of emergency through GPRS technology and dispatch it to where the help is needed. The EMRI Institute has received top recognition in the health care category at the 2008 computer world honours programme."