ChinmayC Blog

The Department of Posts has recently announced changes in its Inland Speed Post services and tariff, adding new features to move ahead with the changing times. The revised tariff will be effective from 1st October 2025. The tariff of Inland Speed Post was last revised in October 2012. Under the rationally revised tariff structure the new rates are not substantially but only marginally higher, taking into account the host of safe, fast and smarter new features added. Additionally, to enhance accessibility of Speed Post services for students, a 10% discount on Speed Post tariff has been introduced.  Besides, a special discount of 5% discount has been introduced for new bulk customers.  In order to further strengthen its position as the preferred delivery service in the country, it has now been upgraded with the following new features aimed at enhancing reliability, security, and customer convenience: ● OTP-based secure delivery ● Online payment facility ● SMS-based deliv...

  The fair bright-faced boy with curly black hair, the sweet smile that never ceases to linger on his face and his eyes, his carefree ways and a great sense of humour, his brutal honesty and equally brutally outspoken, and yet the simplicity of his magnetic personality is overwhelming. These are the images that come to my mind whenever I think of him or his songs; even more now when his sudden untimely tragic accidental demise has shattered millions and millions across Assam , across India and across the world. These images are of the late 90s and early 2000s (unfortunately, I don’t have personal photographs as personal cameras or mobiles were conspicuously absent those days.). He is Zubeen Garg . He has been  a living legend of Assam, second only to Bhupen Hazarika , till destiny took him away just when the people of Assam have started celebrating the birth centenary of Sudhakantha Bhupen Hazarika. Zubeen, possibly the greatest singer-artiste ever produced in Assam, in terms...

I seem to enjoy a special relationship with the trains of the Indian Railways, for most of my train journeys always yield a memorable result—at times very amusing and at times dearly painful. Over the decades I must’ve spent quite a few sleepless nights on various railway station platforms thanks to the delayed schedules or freak/serious mishaps on various tracks or my missing a train or the connecting trains, not to mention other sleepless nights I spent on board looking to get a reservation on the way that never came my way! I meet various interesting people on most of the journeys that make my journeys delightful or rather irritating depending on their quality, and most importantly most of those precious guys end up becoming my characters in my short or mini stories (most of which you can find in my various published collections of short stories. A few remain here too!)! Now, I invite you on board a train for a brief journey I undertook recently which actually doesn’t qualify fo...

The State Bank of India ( SBI ) has always been an active ingredient in our generational bloodstream—like in that of almost all of India’s state and central government employees and their families who have either salary accounts or pension accounts or deposit accounts or investment accounts or all the beneficiary accounts required by the governments to enjoy the benefits of various schemes. No doubt, the pressure on the bank has always been immense across the nooks and corners of the country, impacting the performances of the various branches. But the bank has been marching well with the digital developments over the years and for many of us the branch visits have been reduced to the minimum. Besides, the SBI’s net-banking site which is indeed a very secure and user-friendly, and the YONO App have done their bits to ease the hassles of the accountholders. However, despite the tremendous advancement of banking a few rickety old rules or diktats that we’d refer to as ‘ structural r...

It's really heartbreaking that a powerful character actor should pass away at the age of just 55 while in prime as far the career goes or the huge promise of a lot more to come. Ashish Warang , an actor of Bollywood and the Marathi film industry , had suddenly passed away on Friday, the 5th of September, 2025. There was a total lack of clarity about his demise initially; only today his friends have come out with a statement that he had not been well for some time. First he had jaundice and although he'd recovered from the disease more complications followed in the next few months, finally leading to a cardiac arrest that proved fatal for the sturdy actor.  Ashish Warang acted with most of the leading Bollywood stars in supporting roles--almost always as a cop. I immensely liked his performances; however, those were very brief roles which didn't linger on in my mind enough to enable me to associate his name with the roles. His face has been very familiar to me, but unfort...