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.

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.

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!

Of proximity and pain

Life is so precious that no amount of money can buy it nor can it pay for the loss of it. There is no compensation for it, no replacement either. But no individual can live for eternity. Each one of us will have to face the ultimate fate, death. This inevitable fact of our life is know to us for millions of years and yet we feel a pain when a life is lost, weather its of a close one or a stranger, an animal or a plant. The loss leaves an impact on the individuals around. This impact depends on various factors(or i believed so). the foremost being the closeness of the individual to the life lost. the further one goes the less the impact is. I am one of those who dont believe in tagging names to relations and hence the closeness i m talking here about is not restrected to friends and relatives only but it also encompasses the individuals around the world that i feel connected to. This can be seen in case of celebrities. Fans feel the pain of losing their beloved star. To some they are friends they would never meet in lifeime while to others they are at par with god whom they even worship. Loss of such a life has a wider and stronger impact. whereas the death of a stranger do stir the inside of me, but I can cope with it in a relatively shorter time.

I used to believe that size, or better said the species, of the individual also determines impact. My beliefe was that human beings are most affected with the loss of another human life and that this impact is lesser in case of the lost life being from another species. The smaller the individual the lesser the pain of losing it. I have never seen anyone crying over a dead ant, honeybee or snail. But this was changed completely when I had the first pet of my life. lt was last year when a special friend of my gifted me with 2 fishes(red-cap orandas) for my b'day. They were more special because they came from a special friend. I had them for hardly a month before one of them died. When I came to know that it wasn't acting normal I rushed home early from my office hoping it will make it through and wont die only to find it dead at the base of the fishbowl. Losing it felt like losing a family member. I couldn't have my dinner that night. I stopped talking to anyone and for over a week I kept to myself. During this time I lost the other fish too.I was glad for the other. It was so painful to see it lonely in that bowl. But I also noticed tht my family members seemed to come over it in much less time. Their routine was untouched. They watched the regular tv programs and enjoyed it equally on the dau the fish died. Was it so insignifiacnt for them? no, they too would talk to them, enjoy feeding them, appreciate their funny performances. Then how come i was so deeply affected while the other werent? or atleast they seems not to be effected? to this i realised tht it all depends on only one factor as to wot place the life hold in one's heart. The closer the one is, the more the pain, no matter what species or size the individual is of.

Human beings are blessed with emotions and ways to express them. Its this emotion that makes the impact more deeper. And so, no matter how much I convince myself tht death is inevitable it still leaves an impact on me ....... and every impact make me think over the value of each individual I have in my life.