To Flush or Not to Flush...

Its aching… my knees are aching…
I have been doing lot of thinking over the last one week. While there are some who feel I should write about a sea voyage (which - the sea voyage in itself - anyway I don’t think is a good idea considering my swimming skills… I think the chances of me flying if I flap my hands quick enough are higher than me being able to swim ever… as Neeraj says – I don’t swim, I ‘whale’), there are others who feel I am doing a Salim-Javed by going on and on about travel stories…

It may not be a bad idea to experiment outside the travel zone but it does throw some challenges –
- First and foremost, I will have to change the name of the blog!
- Things happen when one moves around (ask Ms Sudha Murthy)… you cant be sitting at home and expect exciting/interesting thing to happen… Well, things do happen at home and they might be interesting enough, if not gossip material, for others but it would make my life miserable because I am sure one Priti Bhaskarwar would not be too happy about it!

There is another angle to the whole thing – I think the message and medium are getting mixed… Travel is just a 'medium'… the real purpose of the blog is to entertain… Travel is just a medium, the message is ‘entertainment.’

Anyway, I have decided to experiment…

Either way, I have been doing lot of thinking… my knees are aching…

After applying a tubeful of ‘Move’ on my knees to sooth my senses and aid my thinking, here is what I have come up with –

As a company, we believe in collecting all the possible ISO certificates available out there including the ones on environment and safety… While the idea is not bad in itself, the manifestation could be funny at times. Here are some examples –

1. Notice on paper towel dispenser at the corporate block – “Pulling out towels in handful might be good fun but it does not help the environment.”
Hello!! Anyway, I take my male customers to the male toilet whenever a discussion goes out of the hands… we have a laugh and the tension eases up… anyway, why use paper towels at all? Why not use air blowers?

2. Notice in employees' hostel toilet – “Flush only when required”… Oh! I have never seen a flush in my whole life… what is this thing? Where is all that water coming from? Look at the technology man – you push a lever and all this water comes out of nowhere… Look at the way its swirling in there – is it clockwise or anti-clockwise (seriously speaking, the direction of the swirl depends on the hemisphere you are in)? Oh man, I could not sleep the whole night – I just kept flushing, flushing and flushing… it’s so much of fun… I just could not stop…

3. Notice at the stair case – “(Line 1) Do not use mobile. (Line 2) Use handrail”… I tried but Venky could not hear a thing when I spoke into the handrail! (seriously speaking, I had to really explain Vinayak what this notice actually meant!)

Not quite sure how to end this blog... Let me think... Ah! - my knees...

Anyway, here is a survey for all the lazy bums who visit the blog but do not leave any comments... Please vote...
What? Where is it? Scroll down you lazy bum!

In God We Trust

I am agnostic. That’s only because I can’t make up my mind between atheism and godliness. Neither of the estates is convincing enough for me to be on one side or another. Its also a good hedging strategy… I can easily tumble into either of the branches – assuming one of them starts appealing me sometime later in my life. By now, you must be thinking that I don’t have anything against either of the estates… the reality is that I do get put off by rituals.

Anyway, when a believer says “In God We Trust”… the key question is “how much?” What’s the extent to which a believer should/would go for the God to do something for him/her?

This brings me to an interesting, real, Sudha Murty types story… and ahem, it’s related to travel…
Before I get started, a note for my critiques – some people are never happy… some of them could be so whimsical… after a story on air travel and one on rail travel, the assumption was that the third one would be on road and the one after that would be on sea travel. Come on guys… I am not really a traveler types traveler… I don’t travel for the sake of traveling… all my travels are need based…
Anyway, I have managed to get one on road travel which might be interesting enough (?)…
Btw, this was not to discourage you from critiquing… keep it coming… I love all the comments!

Let me get started then… this is what happened –

This was a few years back… I had gone for trekking (yes, yes, it’s true! Honestly!)… this was somewhere close to Bangalore (within 100 km)… We ended our trek in a village – I don’t remember the name of the place now… the village was (and maybe still is unless its gobbled up by one of those numerous dam projects) in sort of a valley… it was the last stop on the bus route.
It was a Sunday and there was a HUGE crowd at the bus stand… I think there was some kind of Sunday market (हाट) in the village… it was evening already and everyone was trying to take a bus out of the village… There were many buses going out of the village but all of them were jam packed… we just could not get on to any one of them…

After multiple unsuccessful attempts, we decided to do a mini version of what I tried in “Dr Ambedkar, why Nagpur?”… we walked some 1 km out of the village and decided to waive down one of the incoming buses… the first one arrived, we smiled and waived and waived but it did not stop… what the hull?! The group was of some 10-15 people and we virtually blocked the road in a bid to stop the next bus… the next one came… it slowed down… hurray – we made it… but no… the driver did not stop, he wavered on to the shoulder (whatever was available there) and went past us… we ran behind the bus – shouting… the guy just refused to stop… anyway, 2 of the studs managed to get onto the now speeding bus… the losers and the remaining stud jogged back to the bus stop. Fortunately the bus was yet to start it’s journey back and the 2 studs had managed to keep a few seats for the losers and the 3rd stud.

I (the 3rd stud – for the losers who don’t get the obvious hints!) slipped into my seat amidst all the stares of people who did get on to the bus before me but still did not have a seat… the bus was overcrowded just like all the ones before this one…
Soon the bus started the journey back… as I mentioned earlier, the village was in a valley and soon – around 2 kms out – the bus started going uphill… TATA (or Leyland) bus, overcrowded, going uphill – the expected happened… the bus stalled at one of the steep turns.

The driver tried couple of turns of the key in the hole and the engine came back to life… Many of the people shouted "गोविंदा, गोविंदा" (Govinda, Govinda). I was impressed – the bus driver seemed to be a pretty popular character… I said so to one of the losers sitting next to me… He checked with one of the “starers” and soon I was made to realize that Govinda was not the name of the driver… it wasn’t about the actor Govinda as well (who anyway must be unknown in that part of the world)… they were all praying to Lord Govinda (an avatar of Lord Vishnu) – chanting his name so that the bus does not stall again! In God We Trust!!
Well, the bus moved a couple of inches and lo and behold... it stallled again... so much for Mr Govinda.

The driver fiddled with the hole again and the engine came back to life again… the chant of Govinda, Govinda filled up the air again… the bus moved couple of inches and stalled again…

For me the most sensible thing to do was for some people to get down and may be push the bus up the sharp, steep turn, i.e., less weight and extra force… but the believers wont have any of that…
I was in a dilemma – do I get down and push the bus (and hence lose my seat) OR convert to a believer… After a minute or two of thinking I decided that a bus seat (just a bus seat, that too not so comfortable) cant be a strong enough reason for me to get converted. I got down and persuaded some more (am sure agnostics and atheists) to get down and push… all this while the tamasha of Govinda, Govinda and driver fiddling with the keys and peddle was going on…
I guess, finally, some 20% of the people got down and helped push the bus up the slope amongst the chants of Mr Govinda. I lost my seat but managed to keep my “faith!”

Cursing the idiots who took my seat, standing sandwiched between couple of other losers like me, standing towards the end of the bus, braving the lurches, it dawned upon me that there could be another way of looking at the whole thing - The chants of the believers were indeed heard by Lord Govinda (or whichever avatar was free at that point of time)… He help his followers but, of course, wanted to teach the non-believers a lesson… Ah, now all the dots were connected – why we had to push the bus and lose our seats while the people who “Trust” got a better deal…

Ladies and Gentlemen: In God We Trust!

PS – Avinash, sorry Nagpur does not figure in this story

Dr. Ambedkar, why Nagpur?

My last posting has invited quite a few comments – some of them advising me, some criticizing. I think the overall impression most of the people have got is that I don’t know how to travel by train (may be because I wrote I was doing it after some 5-6 years). I have news for the ignorant mortals – I am a veteran of train travel. My father was in Indian Railways and hence I got more than a fair share of train travel… we used to travel even when not required to ensure that all the yearly passes were utilized. On top of that, my father was posted far away from my native place which meant long journeys. And this was not the first time when I got into trouble – I will prove soon… but there is a side story first which you must know…

You might be aware that Dr Ambedkar embraced Buddhism some time in his life. There was a big event in Nagpur where many (or most) of his followers converted to Buddhism. This happened to happen on the day of Dussera (दशहरा ). And going by the glorious Indian tradition, the event is celebrated every year on Dussera at Nagpur… which essentially means millions of people thronging to Nagpur for God know what… and throwing the normal life completely out of gear… and yes, you guessed it right, including the train services…

So much so for the "side story"… incidentally, as it happens, my father planned for my grandparents’ pilgrimage to Dwaraka… and as it happens we were supposed to leave – you got it right – on the day of Dussera. Now, I am not really a pilgrimage type of a person (do I look like one?) but this was a few hundred years back when I was gawky teenager and did not have a voice of my own (I was not born in the United States, was I?) and had no option but to tag my parents for their parents’ pilgrimage (thinking about it, everything apart from 'teenager' remains!)

The train that we were supposed to take comes from Howrah… we were supposed to board at Wardha which is AFTER Nagpur on the train’s route… We realized beforehand that this was going to be trouble – the train would get jam-packed at Nagpur… we discussed various options including dropping the trip but the good son that my father is (you see, its all in the genes - this ‘good son’ thing runs in the family), he was determined… So, we decided to board the train BEFORE Nagpur to pre-empt jam-packing… which also meant that the 12 hours journey became some 24+ hours journey…

We took the morning passenger train to Kamptee, a station few kilometers ahead of Nagpur… there were a few hours left for our train to arrive… I took my father’s permission to go and watch a movie in a nearby theatre… The theatre was infested with some kind of bugs which kept biting but in those days wataching a Hindi movie was the greatest thing I could wish for... the bugs were ignorable in the larger scheme of things... soon the movie started and I went into a trance... I was in deep trance watching the movie when the hero shouted at the villain “Uday… …”… I was a little shaken – was I day dreaming? The villain’s name wasn’t Uday till now!! The hero shouted again “Uday… …” … The voice sounded a little different this time… I was out of the trance by now - It was my father’s voice!

There must be something wrong… I rushed out… My father was indeed looking for me.
As it happens, Murphy’s law had kicked in… the daunting task of coming all the way to Kamptee was useless… why?? Because we came to know that, though the train comes from Howrah, our coach gets connected to the train at Nagpur only…

Did we give up? No…
We took an earlier train to Nagpur… The idea was this – Go to the yard and get into the coach there itself… Now that’s not an easy task but then what’s the use being a railways employee, eh?
So, the 3 generations reached Nagpur and went to the yard… guess what? Dr Ambedkar’s followers had beaten us to the yard – the coach was already jam-packed with layers of creatures who I guess must have been human beings before they were all packed into the coach like boxes… we did not dare enter…

So, did we give up? No…
We marched to the railway station… being the good son he is, my father bought (yes, bought… he had to, though he was a railways employee) tickets for 2-AC which was somehow untouched by the followers… That was my first ride in 2-AC…

At the end of it all, the only thing I could think of was “Dr Ambedkar, why Nagpur?”

I take care not to be in the 100km radius of Nagpur during Dussera but it does not matter much… my trips are jinxed anyway…
and my dear friend Manas, I don’t think I am ever going to get used to of train journeys (read misfortune)

Destiny's Child

Have you read Sudha Murty? Her books are generally compendium of short, real stories that bring out different aspect of human behavior… very educative, full of moral stuff. You would wonder how come so many fundu things happen to her. In fact in one of her books, she does mention people asking her this question. It seems she travels a lot and she observes. I travel a lot. I observe. But only weird and funny things seem to happen to me all the time. I think it’s all about destiny. Some are destined for philosophical stuff and some lesser beings like me are destined for funny/weird stuff (well, some of you might argue that it’s not about observing… its about the way you observe and may be you are right but let me just blame it on destiny – it’s sexier that way).

This posting is kind of prequel of my previous one. The last one was about Nagpur to Pune. This one is about Pune to Nagpur around four days before the memorable Indigo flight. I am not trying to do a Star Wars here, I just happen to write it in the reverse order.

This is how it happened –
It was one of those gray Monsoon evenings. We reached the railway station around 30 minutes before the train departure time. It must have been at least 5-6 years since I had boarded a train. The train was not yet on the platform. It was raining, it was humid, hot and the platform was crowded and dirty. My daughter started cribbing about the dirty platform. I was just hoping that she does not look down the tracks.
I guess the railway tracks at a railway station are the dirtiest place in the world. What is it about it? Looks like people find pleasure relieving themselves at a railway station or is it that people find it easier to shoot the target when the train is stationary? Who says Indian trains are not fast enough? May be they are not… but they do sway a lot while moving!

In order to kill the time, I decided to go and check the reservation board… it was all chaos there… the pages were all torn, some were lying on the platform, wet… someone was nice enough to make a ball of fallen papers and keep it on top of the board! Anyway, I could find the relevant chart but I was least worried… after all, I had done the reservation from internet…

Anyway, the train that was supposed to leave Pune at 5:30PM was not there even at 6:00PM. Our porter came and said he had to leave as it was 6:00PM already. I thought the work-life balance was an issue in the IT industry only… anyway, he was quick to explain that his shift was over and they are not allowed to work beyond a given time… he was nice enough not to take the full money and also got us another porter…

The new porter said that we will have to wait for a while once the train arrives because he had another passenger to take care of… I did not think of it as an issue since Pune is the first station of this train and generally it takes at least 30 minutes for the train to leave…

Indian railways have improved a lot… they have small displays on the platform which tell you the location of each coach… it’s just that when the train finally arrived, every coach was shifted by 2 – I could feel the whole mass of some 1000 people moving in one direction… Standing there was like swimming against a strong current…

Anyway, my porter came after 5 minutes and we got onto the train. I was very happy that we had birth numbers 33, 34 & 35 which was equidistant from both the toilets. I had 1 wife, 2 small kids and 3 big bags… I don’t know what kick Priti gets carrying stones from Pune to wherever we go… she claims there is useful stuff inside and not stones but I don’t believe her… Also, I realized that the space under the seats has shrunk over the years (or was it our bags?)… We had to literally kick and shove the bags inside… Anyway, now, I was not too worried about not bringing the chain and lock… who would touch these bags?

Some 5 minutes after we settled down, 2 people came and asked me my seat number… then they showed a ticket for seat number 33 & 34. Priti said she did not see our names on the chart while boarding… someone said they have another 3 Tier AC coach and may be we are sitting in the wrong one… It was almost 25-30 minutes since the train had arrived – about time to leave… I got down quickly and checked the other coach – I could not find my name… suddenly I realized and shouted ‘जय Lalu’. I was upgraded to 2-AC… I jogged towards 2-AC with stars in my eyes but they quickly turned into dirty specks… the names were missing there as well… I quickly took out the print out of my “internet” reservation and checked again… My eyes popped… my jaw dropped and hit the platform very hard… I had a reservation for August 26th rather than June 26th… Damn it…
Being equidistant from both the toilets became a curse… The train was about to leave… Fortunately, I found a porter… somehow pulled out the “well stuck” bags, got through the sea of people and luggage in the corridor and got down from the train…

I know what you guys are thinking… this guy cant even book a simple ticket on net… But excuse me, I would like to blame it on the bloody IRCTC web-site… I book all my personal travel on internet and have never made this kind of mistake before or after… the web-site really sucks… all those who have tried using this web-site would empathize with me… ‘जय Lalu’ quickly became ‘हाय Lalu’….

Anyway, I found a TTE and asked him if I could get a berth… he said we should have tickets before boarding the train… The train was on platform 3 and there was no point going all the way to platform 1 and getting the tickets… then someone said another train (which also goes to Nagpur) was on platform 1 (incidentally, that train was also about to leave)… One confident looking porter, a sheepish looking pair, 2 smalls kids and 3 big bags ran to platform 1… As usual, Murphy’s law kicked in… we had to cover the whole length of the platform twice because of the way they had placed the coaches…

Met the TTE of the other train… He was nice enough to tell us that we could board the train if we were willing to pay the fine for boarding without ticket… I loudly cursed the other TTE… Anyway, this guy offered us seats in 2-AC and quickly calculated the damage… we quickly peeked into our wallets – luckily we had enough money… Then the TTE said we should get onto 3-Tier sleeper… I thought he was playing around and asked the porter to get a taxi… the TTE relented and allowed us to board 2-AC directly…
The whole ritual of boarding the train and shoving the bags under the seats was repeated. The porter took a fat sum from me because there was no time to negotiate earlier… He argued that it was still less than the taxi bill we would have incurred… Wow!

The train left after a while and we took a sigh of relief. The TTE entered after a while and my jaw hit the floor for the 2nd time that evening… this was some other guy… He said – “Ticket please” and I mumbled something… anyway, he was briefed by the other guy…
He prepared a ticket, including fine etc, for Rs 4,987. He said we would get only 2 berths and not 3. I gave him Rs 5,000 and waited. He opened his wallet, I waited. He put the 10 crisp 500 rupee notes in his wallet, I waited. He looked into his wallet, I waited. Then he looked up – I put my hand in my wallet but still waited… Then he said – “Can you give me 2 rupees? I need to return you 13 but I have a 10er and a fiver”… My jaw hit the floor for the 3rd time that evening…
He left… I was half expecting him to come back and ask for money for the favor done to me… He did came back… Well after we had all fallen asleep (we did manage on 2 berths)… Smart move, isn’t it?
He woke me up and said – “Sir, your third berth is ready”…

Before, you guys feel I am also sounding like Sudha Murty…
I was telling this story to my relative and friend Rajesh. His theory was that this guy must have been "पहुची हुई चीज़" … He was sure that the TTE had printed fake receipts and must have pocketed all the 5000 rupees… I don’t agree with Rajesh.

I was thinking I should have taken a flight… but that was before I returned on the Indigo flight!

Anyway, I plan to frame the ticket and proudly display it… It says PWT – “Passenger Without Ticket”

Global Warming

They said Rita and Katrina were so furious because of the global warming. My first reaction was that women don’t need so much of a reason to get furious… why blame it on global warming if Rita and Katrina were angry… I was told by a sensible person that these are actually storms which hit the central America/Caribbean region every year… I dug in further and realized that alternate systems are named male/female respectively… My question is – why take the risk??

Anyway, the global warming is effecting the weather all over the world, they say. We have just entered July and Pune has already received 70% of the normal Monsoon rains. The fact is that the definition of normal needs to be changed. The weather in general has changed so much since 2005 that normal is much more than the normal.

Well, there must be a reason why suddenly I have become so worried about larger issues like global warming and writing about the same… there indeed is! It’s because I felt the brunt of global warming yesterday…

Here is what happened –
I took a flight from Nagpur to Pune. It’s the new Indigo flight… Indigo is a budget airline and they refused to provide everything including newspaper, ear plugs and even the infant belt! As it happens, my daughter got hungry and I ended up buying the most expensive sandwich ever… I always wonder why we feel like eating and drinking in a one hr flight, irrespective of the time of the day…

Fortunately (well, I thought I was at that time!), the flight took off on time – 11:10AM and was going to land ahead of time – 12:25PM. About 30 seconds before landing, the pilot aborted the landing and shot up in the sky… people were looking at each other… After 5 minutes, captain informed that there was a stray dog on the tarmac and hence he had to abort at the last moment!!!

We came back after 15 mts… about to land… and the plane shot up again… people were scared now… my daughter started crying… the plane started jumping up and down… some people started puking… after 5 minutes, captain informed us that he had to abort landing because of bad weather and now we were going to Mumbai! I wondered if he really knows how to land… may be he only knows how to take off! May be we got .NET resource instead of J2EE because of resource crunch (quote thanks to my friend Vinayak)!

We reach Mumbai and the .NET resource proved that he could land. The weather was still bad in Pune and we had to wait in Mumbai for hours. They would not let us out of the plane due to ‘security issues’ – guys, I learnt that all Puneiites become dangerous criminals once they reach Mumbai or was it a tact by Indigo to save some money. It was well past 2pm and some people were hungry… unbelievably, they were charged by the airline for the shady food…

After a while, the captain says his flying hours are over… we wait for the new crew to arrive… May be they finally found the J2EE resource!
People turned angry and started fighting with the crew… they finally got some food for passengers and started distributing at around 4pm… as it happens, the Murphy’s law kicked in - the Captain announced that he is taking off and the attendants stopped the food distribution… it’s a minor detail that the flight did not take off for another 30 minutes… was this another ploy by the budget airline to save some money?

Well finally we take off and reach Pune but the weather was bad… the Spicejet plane (yes, there were more like us!) had already tried landing for the 3rd time without success… Captain informed us that we had fuel to be airborne for another 1 hr (I concluded that we would crash land after that!)… anyway, we landed at 5pm…

The luggage came all soaked and I realized they had tied the luggage on top (just like in a bus) because the cargo space was full… I got a taxi which was the last one available (and I felt fortunate for the 2nd time in the day… was I?)…

We hopped in to the taxi at 5:30pm and reached home at 8:15 pm… thanks to all the water logging, traffic jams, lost ways, wrong route decisions and a taxi driver (another first in my life) who refused to drive above 30 kmph… once I urged him to drive faster and he snapped back asking if I would pay if he hits someone!

The only bright spot was that the taxiwallah did not ask for a single paisa extra though he took a detour of 15-20 kms and had to drive for close to 3 hrs…

Having gone through this with 2 small kids, now you can imagine why I am worried about the global warming suddenly!

The journey from Pune to Nagpur was equally interesting but I will save it for some other time because that one can’t be blamed on global warming… technology is to be blamed in that case! The only thing you need to know right now is that my ticket says – “PWT” – which means “passenger without ticket”!

Btw, are dogs (or rather bitches) breeding more because of global warming? The whole trouble started because of the bloody dog on the tarmac else I would have been home by 2pm.

Parting note – Stock yourself well if and when you take a low budget airline… you never know!