The Bin

The sight of garbage is not always the alluring one. But one fine morning it did make me smile. For, it was in the right place, in The Bin. One would wonder what's so great about garbage in a bin? Well it is a wonder, when that fine morning you wake up during your train journey and The Bin is located under the basin at the end of the boogie. Its good to see that an effort is being made to keep our public spaces clean. Proudly I looked at it and smiled. 

Being an RAC passenger, I had to be on a constant lookout for the TC to try and get hold of a seat. And not always the TC presents himself. So I went to hunt him down hoping to make a successful prey of a berth. As luck has it, I am yet again disappointed. The TC declined any chances of getting a berth. I sigh and turn back towards my assigned boogie. As I pass a door, something catches my attention and I stop dead in my tracks. I say to myself(wide eyed), "did I just see that?" 

I remember the smile that crossed my face this morning. The wonderful feeling that things are changing for good. And here I am watching in disbelief the same smile being smudged, the same feeling being murdered right in front of my eyes. Never did I think of what happens to the accumulated garbage. Does it get collected in a separate compartment and then sorted for recycling? I guess it does. That's what I saw. A housekeeping guy emptying The Bin, carefully and with much precision, out of the door. There he stood inverting The Bin dispersing the garbage along the railway tracks. May be he gets a sense of satisfaction of helping the rag pickers with so much of material to collect. But wait a min, rag pickers 100kms away from the nearest village/town/city/any human settlement? Intriguing if that ever happens or may be soon we will get to see mountains of human garbage towering between the tracks.  

It took only a matter of few minutes for the delight to turn into disgust, pride turn into disappointment and the feel good external to flutter enough to show that the dust is still being swept off under the carpet. Sad indeed.

This day that year....!

A year after the terror attacks on Bombay, I wonder how things have changed for the betterment. Or to be precise has there been any change for that matter?
The anger, the anguish that mobilized the young generation to come ahead and make their voice heard has diminished in a short time span. May be, just may be, had we been persistent on the govt and the judiciary taking up immediate action, there might have been faster course of action taken. The judicial procedures have always been slow and drag. A terrorist who has killed so many innocent people is given special protection, spent huge amount on keeping him alive in a bid to get more information about the sources of terrorism. But isn't the chain so long that in the process he will be rewarded with a considerable amount of life and enjoy the previledge of being alive. Now that he knows that he will be protected and made to live, he must have relaxed and hence changed his initial statement.
On the other hand policemen still carry the old guns that many will never use them ever during their tenure. the security forces are still not doing the best they can otherwise. People who were shouting slogans, slowly forgot those words. now, after a year, all the emotions might come up again only to fade out in a day or two. Not just others, but I too, am sitting in front if the computer writing this blogpost, which I know will not be read by many. Yet trying to convince myself that I m doing my bit by writing about it. but deep down I know that this is of no use.Action speaks more than words. i may not be able to change the system completely but i can atleast be a responsible citizen and fulfill my duties. This will be that BIT which will actually make a difference.
Once again i feel that the "never say die" spirit of Bombay is making us shameless enough to get over an incident like that and move on.

may all the victims R.I.P.
and
Salute to the martyrs.

Fuss Class...

This week I happened to travel in the First class boogie for the first time. Fascinated as any Second class traveler might be, I was very enthusiastic about this particular journey. I found it quiet amusing to get the ticket without standing in a queue and looking at the smirking faces of those in the queue, while i proudly asked for a First class ticket. I felt like dancing on my way to train from the ticket counter .... I was performing a free style dance in my mind. Within moments the train arrived and I got into the dream boogie with red stripes across on the outside. Wow! There i was in the First class boogie, how exciting...

I looked around and found people rushing in and taking seats, reading news paper, talking on mobile phones. Hmmmm, something is missing, I thought! The train started and with passing stations it became clear what was missing.

Just before the train left, an old fellow got down and changed the boogie...the guys sitting across him laughed mockingly signing that they knew he wasn't a First class material.

A guy entered while the train was leaving the platforms...poor chap, he was panting so badly... he rushed to find a seat so that he can breath in some air. Unfortunately all the seats were taken. He tried accommodating his bag on one of the baggage carriers, but he was so exhausted that he couldn't even think of what he needs to do and looked confused. He paced across the cramped boogie twice before settling for a small space to keep his bag. Sweating profusely and still trying to catch a breath, he asked a passenger to make some place for him to sit. "No fourth seat?" the guy looked disappointed. With no other option left, he came and stood in the passage. The cool breeze relaxed him a bit.

Crowd started to increase with passing stations. Everyone was struggling to get some space to stand. And then the typical fight between passengers took place. Nothing new I told myself. The man standing in front of me was some 6 ft and quiet healthy. Within five mins of alighting the train he started to dose off and with no inhibition he was leaning against my small frail frame. The crowd wasn't as much as it is in Second class, but this man made me experience the rib crushing pressure one gets in Second class.
Somehow I managed to get down at my destination, and mind you the "getting down" felt no different from the Second class. Gosh! I thought, I don't feel any pride in traveling by First class anymore. Yes the crowd was a bit less than otherwise. But the passengers had so much of attitude, and not just the executive types but the regular passengers (probably some govt. employees who can now afford First class) too. Everyone had an air above themselves. They were no less rowdy. They displayed equally foul mouth as that of their Second class counterparts.
And above all, the thing that was missing ..............Humanity!

Madness of mankind...

Of recent I have heard the stupidest thing that mankind can assume. Now human beings are deciding about what is natural and what is not. Since when did a species is given the right to do that? Especially the one species that had done almost all unnatural things that one cannot even think about.

Since when did it become natural to:
...destroy natural habitat to create an artificial one to live in.
...tame individuals of other species for ones own benefit.
...mess around with the order of nature to create new species or cause mutation in the existing one.
...breed among the siblings of a particular species.

Nature has its own ways to say "it's unnatural!"
like to :
...discard abnormal foetus in form of miscarriage.
...shorten life span of deformed newborns.
...wipe out of species that cause harm to the earth.

These are a few things that I could think of as examples. So in short I want to say that let nature decide what is unnatural, for human beings still have not attained the position above nature. For god's sake get over the false idea of us being the decision-maker.

And now a few examples where some things that are a part of nature yet are considered unnatural by mankind (how idiotic!):
...patterns and discolouration in plants is accepted as variegated while the same condition in human beings (vitiligo) is considered ugly and still socially unacceptable.
...some male penguins are seen to form a couple with another male, adopt a stone as egg, reject any advances from the female counterparts and even raise an orphan offspring as its own. Yet homosexuality is considered criminal act and looked down upon by the society.

We don't have much time...we have done enough damage to the nature for it to take a toll. So lets have a peaceful life for as much time as we have and let nature decide its course. It's time when human beings understand their role on the earth and not try to over-rule it.

When a Swine flew over my city!

It started as a pandemic in Mexico and soon made it big in the media circles all over the world. The origin seem so far that one would hardly imagine it to land in India. Special care was taken so that the fliers don't carry the virus across the nations. Inspite of the safety measures (wonder if there were any taken in India) some of the travelers were found positive and soon Pune became a hot spot for H1N1.....

And then started a circus. Media fed on the rumors and fear of the common man. Reports of freshly detected patients bombarded day in day out on all the news channels. This was followed by the crazy ideas of how the masks protect people against the virus, which is in fact not clinically proven. Adding to the lack of knowledge, people were made to believe that even the doctor masks that were nothing but just a plain piece of cloth with stings can provide some relief. Pictures of masked people from various countries wasn't a new sight. Even Pune was, till recent, know for its scarf covered two-wheeler riders. But seeing a people use mask in Bombay came as a surprise. Aren't they supposed to atleast evaluate whether the masks provide any safety? The worst part was that the educated class especially the students category too was following the media reports blindly and using the suffocating masks. While traveling in train i once overheard a student saying, "arre yaar i don't know if i will die with swine flu but i m sure i will choke to death if i used this silly mask." ...and still he was using it just like many others. It is really surprising how media can influence people on some petty issues but fail to do so in the much more crucial issues. Now some people will say that you cant blame media completely. Ofcourse I cant, media is smart enough. They first make a big deal out of nothing and when they know that they have achieved their target then they slid in interviews from experts about the reality that H1N1 is no worse than the common flu pandemic and that most of the deaths caused were not due to the swine flu but due to underlying medical conditions.....so what was the fuss about? Well to me its all about money making baby ...its all about money. The mask manufacturers must have made profit of lifetime and news channels had food to munch on for weeks.

Well I would like to end this post with a funny incident. When I witnessed thousands of masked bombayites i couldn't stop laughing and with the funniest sight being a bunch of girls in all whites wearing bright yellow masks remind me of ducks. Little did I knew then that I would encounter one at my home the next morning. My eyes popped out, jaw dropped to the floor and split my sides when dad pulled over a bright yellow mask and proudly marched away for his office.

Bad Bad Blogger...

Being inactive for more than a few days is considered to be a bad blogger in the blogger's world.
Well I don't actually mind being a bad blogger since there is virtually no one who is keeping track of my blog and the most importantly the reason for me starting this blog was to express myself....for more of a selfish reason.

And now i am thinking of being more selfish....more often!

Unusual inspiration...

I have always been a movie buff. Movies not just entertain me, but at times take me in a trance. There is something more that attracts me to movies. And I face unusual situations after watching some movies.

One such situation happens to be today after watching a movie "Namesake". A topic so regularly explored by so many directors, but what differentiates this movie from any other movie on similar topic is the treatment given to it. There is no persuation from either side, there is no advocacy of western or Indian lifestyle. The movie is plain reflection of a family settled abroad and about a name Gogol. Throughout the movie I became more and more eager to read that book of Nickoli Gogol. My fascination of the book was at peak when finally Kal Penn starts to read it towards the end of the movie. He read a line from the tale ... and ... it struck to me that i know the story, I have read it.

Few years back I had bought a book called "The Russian Short-stories". It had this tale, "The Cloak" by N.V.Gogol that i read very unintrestingly. Back then, I found most of the russian stories more difficult to understand. But today a movie has compelled me to pull out that book from my shelf and read it again.....but with much more intent and conviction!