[PLUG] Zoyd, we will miss you. R I P

[Rajeev Karajgikar]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Shailesh Khandekar <
shailesh.khandekar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Saddened to hear that. Deepest condolence to his family. May his soul rest
> in peace.
>
> -- Shailesh
>
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
> <sudhanwa.com at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Dear friends,
> >
> > One of our senior members, Vinay Pawar (usually known as ZOYD),
> > expired on Saturday (9th) evening.
> > While he was coming to the PLUG meeting, he met with a traffic
> > accident near RTO.
> > He was taken to Sasoon hospital immediately, but treatment was not of
> much
> > use.
> >
> > Zoyd was an active member of PLUG since 1999-2000. He actively
> > participated in all the PLUG events, especially the CMDA expo and
> > GNUnify.  He was instrumental in creating the name "GNUnify" and the
> > logo for the first GNUnify conference.
> >
> > He actively participated in all the PLUG meetings. During the
> > meetings, he also appeared to think several steps ahead in the
> > technical matter under discussion, rather than dwelling on the
> > obvious.
> > We will always remember him for his “courteous, un-assuming,
> > non-pushy, matter-of-fact, positive, helpful comments and suggestions
> > for improvement ”
> >
> > He was very good in graphics and did a lot of work in Inkscape and
> > GIMP. The current PLUG logo (Tux with Puneri pagdi) was created by
> > him ( after
> > the initial work by Somesh ).
> >
> > He was working on blender these days. He did mention in his blog,
> > about doing couple of models for the recently released short film
> > "Sintel", but not
> > confirmed if that got included. He had said he was to be working more
> > actively in next project.
> >
> > He was quite active in LFS too. Some years back, he had started a
> > project called Antomic (http://antomic.sourceforge.net/). In this, he
> > had created a complete LFS distro called Antomic GNU/Linux. The name
> > was inspired by "ants".
> >
> > Apart from his interest and participation in FOSS activities, he was
> > also active in BMX/mountainbiking with other riders from group
> > www.ride2026.com
> >
> > His blog: http://www.vinaypawar.com/blog/
> > His photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinaypawar/
> >
> > His lean, trim, atheletic figure on a bike is hard to forget...
> > He was just about 30 and his untimely death is a great loss to PLUG.
> > May god rest his soul in peace.
> >
> > Zoyd, we will miss you.
> >
> > --Sudhanwa
> >
> > _______________________________________
> > Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
> _______________________________________
> Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
>


Guys:

I attended PLUG meeting only couple of times but I do remember Zoyd. It is
unfortunate that this tragic accident took his life.

Just three weeks back, another school friend of mine met with a fatal
accident in another part of Maharashtra.

On a larger perspective, with over 130,000 deaths/year ( at rate of 14 per
hour in 2009), India now leads the dubious list of highest number road
fatalities in the world. (
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5519345,00.html,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/14-people-die-every-hour-in-road-accidents/articleshow/5609733.cms,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Road-accidents-India-tops-world-list/Article1-261009.aspx
)

If one ponders to think about it the underlying reasons why India has this
distinction today - one may deduce that one of the important underlying
factor is - the highly aggressive TV commercial ads of the 4-wheeler
companies (TATA Motors Safari, Mahindra Scorpio), two-wheeler companies
(Bajaj, TVS)  and consumer products (Dew). These TV commercials strongly
provoke and promote the reckless use of automobiles. The subtle underlying
messages that these clever ad makers perpetrate is: it is perfectly OK and
it is perfectly "macho" thing to drive your vehicle rough.

With 40% of all drivers in India in impressionable age of under-26, it is no
wonder that we all see the young drivers really stepping on or squeezing to
full - the petrol pedal on roads everyday.

In the developed countries if such TV commercials were aired, then by now,
there would have been class action law-suits on (a) the automobile companies
showing these ads (b) the ad agencies making these ads (c) the networks
airing these ads. The three entities together have to own up to the
ill-effects caused to the society by their commercials. In US, besides
immediately stopping the airing of such TV commercials, the trio would have
been collectively ordered by some county court Judge to set aside millions
of dollars to setup "responsible driving" educational training programs that
young drivers are forced to undergo before they get a license.

We are not a developed country - yet. But we sure aspire to be on the fast
track to becoming one. Right now, since we have no accountability norms -
the corporate India can get away with all this in India. If Tata Motors and
Mahindra aspire to sell their wares in US and other developed countries,
they need to get a taste of the accountability norms of those countries.
Should we not also aspire that such accountability norms of the developed
countries be implemented in India as well?

We have large auto industry in Pune - every auto major has presence in  Pune
now. Can we not prevail on them to stop faning the testosterone levels in
their TV commercials but to abide by the norms used by auto companies in the
developed countries?

Can the techies in this forum start this initiative in the memory of Zoyd
and 130,000 other victims of 2009? We can get started by creating a web site
that gathers all the relevant information and giving a concrete voice to the
friends and family of the victims?

-- Rajeev
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Rajeev Karajgikar