Ugadi is on March 20. TAJA wishes you and yours a very Happy Ugadi 2007! Did you know that Kannadigas also celebrate Ugadi on the same day. And Maharashtrians also celebrate their new year (Gudi Padva) on the same day as Ugadi. TAJA wishes everybody who is celelbrating their new year this month.

As many of you maybe aware, the TAJA Ugadi 2007 celebrations are now underway. The guys are duelling it out in cricket and volleyball, while kabaddi is due to start soon. Registration is now open for ladies and children games. Ladies games scheduled to be held are: Carroms, Tennicoit, bowling and running. For the children, we will be holding Chess, carroms and running competitions. To register, please email our sports co-ordinators with your name and sports of interest. We will be trying to hold most of the games near a single location and if possible, at around the same time. Only ladies bowling will have to be held at a bowling club.

For details about the competitions, current standings and scores, please visit our website. And yes, a Jaguar has agreed to come over and toss the coin for the cricket finals.

While the more visible sports activites are in full swing, something not so obvious is also taking place behind the scenes. We have had a great response to our call for participants for the Ugadi 2007 cultural events. While we appreciate the great response, all we ask you is to email participant information to our event co-ordinators. This will help us organize the event schedule in an orderly fashion.

Last but not the least, after a lot of deliberations, we have a venue and a date finalized for the Ugadi Bonanza. For the first time, the event will be held in St. Johns County. The event is scheduled for the evening of Saturday, April 21 and will be held at Bartram Trail High School off CR 210.

| Ugadi 2007 Bonanza | 04.21.2007 | 4.00 PM | Bartram Trail High School |

Needless to say, a lot of planning and work goes into bringing each TAJA event into fruition. This is not possible without the relentless dedication and effort of the committee members. While this may result in sacrificing some family time during every event, at the end of it, it may prove worthwhile as you end up getting to know more people as well as having the satisfaction of being able to contribute to the community in some measure.

After each Ugadi event, a new committee takes over the reins of running the organization for the next year. We believe that this would give a chance for new blood and new ideas to be infused so that TAJA can move forward year after year. As Ugadi approaches, we are throwing open the doors so that members can express their intentions of running for a post in the committee. In case there are multiple entries for a post, the issue will be dealt with during the AGM that is scheduled to be held on Monday April 2nd at 6 PM at the Southeast branch of the Jacksonville Library. So, if you are interested in helping run TAJA next year, please specify your name, address and the post that you are interested in and email to TAJA. Also, be sure to be present at the upcoming AGM.

For a list of posts that are open, please go here. All posts except that of President are available.

| TAJA AGM 2007 | 04.02.2007 | 6.00 PM | Southeast Branch Library, Jacksonville |

The three month long International Floral Show is opening on March 17th in neighboring Green Cove Springs.

Mark your calendars to check out the show. TAJA has been able to procure free entry for all it's members on Saturday March 17, the opening day of this show. Food and beverages can be purchased onsite throughout the duration of the show, courtesy of Red Chilies restaurant. For maps and directions, please refer to the official website of the show.

Taking TAJA's partnership with TeluguOne.com to the next higher level, TAJA has partnered with TeluguOne Foundation in Andhra Pradesh to sponsor the construction of two schools and two homes for the needy.

The AP government had asked each beneficiary to come forward with 10,000 rupees to release the matching grant of Rs.25,000/- to complete a house. As many of the beneficiaries don't have the means to arrange such amounts, TeluguOne Foundation stepped in and is acting as a conduit for the transfer of donations towards such houses and schools.

If you are interested in making a contribution or if you would like to learn more about this program, please check this out.

For the first time ever, I had to visit India under rather tragic and gloomy conditions, so I had neither the inclination nor the time to indulge in the usual fun activities. But observe I did, and what a dramatic change it has been since my last visit two years back! During my last visit, I saw an attitude shift in general with people not backing off from spending and patiently lining up in front of ATM machines waiting for their chance to withdraw (spend?) some of their hard earned money. Gone were the days of trying to save for a rainy day! Just when I thought that I have seen it all, this time around, it looked like change was the only real constant. Though change was all-pervasive, it was all the more visible in the suburbia and the smaller two tier centers.

The first surprise was Bombay (Mumbai) airport. They really turned this one around. What was a murky, dirty, cramped up place on my last encounter has now turned into a spacious, spick and span, well lighted airport on par with the best that India has to offer. The new immigration counters are more spacious and had minimal waiting times. It took us more time to wait for our bags at the expanded and more roomy baggage claim area than in immigration. Though customs also was more streamlined, this is one area where the officers will have to be more courteous. I couldn’t help but observe that there was also a baggage re-check area for domestic connections. It is amazing what a little bit of private enterprise can do.

The once ubiquitous Ambassador seems to have all but been relegated to the history books nowadays. It looks like that tag now belongs to the Marutis and the Tatas, though the Tatas might well get hold of that tag ultimately with their Indicas and their Indigos. The once popular Sumo had already yielded to the Qualis but after Toyota decided to replace the Qualis with the Innova, the Innova may well be on the way to take over that segment. You still do see the odd Camry, Accord or Civic, but they are few and far between. People perceive them to be overpriced, as they know that they are being sold for about half the cost here in the US.

And then, there is fast food. While the McDonalds, Pizza huts, Dominos and Subways are making inroads everywhere, Indian fast food has not lost its appeal. In south India, the idlis, vadas, dosas, indo-chinese and thali still hold sway, though people don’t mind venturing into a subway or a pizza hut now and then. I couldn’t help but notice that while people fret over the price of onions touching 16 rupees a kilo, they don’t care much for the prices when they order a foot long sub for 200 bucks or a plate of (five) fried jumbo shrimp (served by the seashore) for 300 bucks. I suppose it is the experience of dining on the sand with the waves crashing nearby that people are willing to pay for!

Retail is exploding like never before with national chains like Reliance, Subhiksha and Spencers competing with the more regional chains like Trinethra or TruMart for the same customers. Finally, there is more power to the customers, though at the cost of displacing a few smaller hitherto cramped stores. With Walmart and Bharti teaming up, the retail landscape can only get spicier.

It looks like real estate is also going hand in hand with the retail boom. In some places, land that used to go for 20,000 a square yard two years ago is now going for 50,000 a square yard. The immediate suburbs of Vizag, for example, are going for about 2 crores an acre (provided you can find a chunk of land that size). With the stretch of the golden quadrilateral that passes through Vizag completed, distances are no longer an issue and people are willing to go as far as 40 to 50 Kms in search of land. The result? 30 kms from Vizag, land costs near the highway range from 15 to 60 lakhs per acre depending on the distance of the land from the highway. Farmers in the suburbs are benefiting from this uptick in prices as more and more of them are not being able to refuse the offers being doled out for their lands.

Almost everybody in the average family now has a cell phone. Cell phones have become the preferred choice and landlines are very rarely used. So much so that, people are even having their news delivered to their mobiles and are even starting to pay bills using SMS. Some are not backing off from buying the more expensive models. I could not believe my eyes when I saw huge lines in front of an ATM in Guntakal at 7pm. What was more surprising was that the lines didn’t seem to dissipate even at 9pm!

Be it a low profile center like Guntakal or the high profile centers like Pune or Hyderabad, change is certainly in the air. No matter where I have been to in India, there is this positive outlook that permeates all sections giving way to a perception that India’s time has arrived once again. Granted that IT is still the driving force, but other sectors like pharma, tourism, biotech and entertainment are making inroads into this once exclusive club of growth drivers. It sure looks like India is all set to embark upon one more golden period.

And finally, the one bright spot on the way back to the US on Air India was that we were on time and each and every landing (Delhi, Heathrow and JFK) was perfect, without any bumps, jerks or jolts. Should say that those were among the best landings I have ever experienced.

The AP government has entered into an agreement with the AAI to have the Vijayawada and Rajamundry airports upgraded. The main pillars of the agreement include the extension of the current runways and the bulding of brand new terminals at both airports.

Three new IITs will be setup, one each in Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The upgradation of the engineering colleges of Osmania and Andhra Universities to IIT level is also underway. An IIM is also slated to come up near Vizag in Andhra Pradesh.