Quo Vadis?

Yesterday when I was waiting at the famous SRP tools junction there was a group of transgenders who were asking for alms. I usually look away as they can be a little pushy and it can be quite uncomfortable in trains but this time I saw one person who approached my car asking for alms. I picked out a 10 rupee note and gave it to the person, the person asked me for a 1 rupee coin. I was confused and said I did not have coins. The person asked the others in the group if they had a rupee to give me. I was confused even more when the person said that the rupee is for me. Thoroughly puzzled I found a coin which I handed over. This person bit the coin almost like athletes bite their medals these days and asked to see my wallet.  Then the person put the coin in my wallet and said do not spend this and walked away with a blessing that I should live well. This short interaction disturbed me: -           These people are outcasts and ...

Train journeys can be very interesting and much has been written about train encounters, movies are made when the lead pair falls in love in the train journey and so much more. I have not been in a train in ages getting used to flying for business trips and when possible taking the car, it was due to a combination of factors that I found myself in the Rock Fort Express in the First Ac compartment yesterday. After the pleasant surprise seeing the new rake that was spic and span with working fittings I settled down to the journey. The compartment was quite busy with a few men in the coloured dhotis which indicated that we had the three major parties of the present Assembly represented. My co-passenger a distinguished gentleman was greeted by a few and I tried to blend into the surroundings and make myself as unobtrusive as possible in the small confines of the coupe. Suddenly a young man in jeans and tee spotted my co-passenger and told his dad who came into our coupe. The visit...

What do you do when the traffic light ahead turns to red? If you are not on foot, I suppose the universal rule of law is that you stop. It is quite plain and simple and usually the above statement is non-negotiable. I say usually because in Chennai and I would like to believe in many other parts of India, the red light is subject to negotiation and even debate. These negotiations are between the driver and his / her conscience and it appears that the winner in most cases is the driver. Stopping at the signal appears to be the most difficult thing to do and for some it can be an annoying distraction when a light turns red. For some others standing behind someone waiting for the light to change can be a life altering moment and usually ends up in exaggerated outburst of road rage. Usually I get bullied by some idiots behind when I wait at a traffic light simply because it appears that there is no traffic from the adjacent lanes, forgetting for a moment that lights also p...

Three accidents on the highways involving Volvo buses and the resulting deaths have left me very worried. These buses are great for travel and ensure comfortable journeys especially when tickets on trains are not available but they are also veritable death traps as each of these accidents indicate. At the cost of sounding extremely monotonous I use the lines of master Oogway “there are no accidents”, these incidents are caused by driver error. When we fly on any airline the crew painstakingly go through the safety procedures and the emergency evacuation process while showing the nearest exists to the passengers. Usually many travellers ignore these demonstrations for various reasons which are an indicator of the indifference of our times. These safety measures are not explained in buses and this I would believe was the difference between people surviving and dying a fiery death. Volvo buses are usually air-conditioned and the engine is at the rear. The fuel tank I believe i...

There was a man who had an ass. If you are wondering what is the big deal with a man having an ass? The donkey was advancing in age. Now stop smiling and read on. Now the man used his ass to carry him to the market to sell firewood, as he was a good man he realized that his ass would not be able to carry much weight so when he rode the ass he kept his bundle of firewood on his head. PAUSE and hold that thought. CUT to another man, he was also a good man and since he did not have an ass, his donkey was replaced by his trusty two-wheeler. Now he did not sell fire wood but he worked on computers so he carried his tool of his trade, his laptop with him to his work place every day in his laptop bag and since his two wheeler was weak he carried it on his back. RESUME. Actually hold that thought again, some of you may take offense that there are only good men around so there was a good lady who also had an ass that went by the cute name of “Scooty” and she carr...

I may have posted on this but this behaviour warrants a repeat post so here goes. There is a saying never wash your dirty linen in public, today people tend to wash their, linen, undies and everything in public though unintentionally. And aiding them in this effort is the ubiquitous mobile phone and their lack of phone etiquette.  Many a time the relative peace of the moment is shattered by a domestic issue, errant client, missing consignment, truant school kid who happens to be on the other end of a loud and unsolicited conversation of which you are a part of no matter that you had no say in it. The loud conversation not withstanding you may also have to endure some furious gesticulation that aids the effect for the unseen other person. I have gently reminded my colleague a few times that if he were any louder his family in Nellore would have heard him without the cell phone and it made no effect to his decibel output except maybe for a brief moment to say sorry to me...

A recent conversation with someone made me realize that when we say two wheeler enthusiasts the usual images that come to mind are the big gangs including the big boys on the Enfield bullets but there exist a set of people who are hard core fanatics of their set of two wheels and constantly upgrade to the same model of TVS mopeds. Do not get me wrong, I do not think that it is a bad vehicle; in fact it merits the same kind of crazy, inexplicable adulation given to a Bullet by its users who swear by it despite its many shortcomings that are called as its USPs. The TVS 50 in its many avatars put many people on to the road and was their first ever motorized personal transport vehicle. People in the villages still swear by it as do the delivery boys in many grocery shops in the cities. I go back to my school days in St. Bede’s AIHS when TVS was something that excited most of us in high school. Those were the days of commuting to school by bus or cycle, days when th...

I had posted on the Chennai Autos earlier . I am delighted that the Auto fare movement has succeeded at least as far as the new fares coming in. The enforcement will be a challenge as the drivers seem to have got used to doing nothing most of the time when not asking for 300% of the fare or thereabouts for every trip which they don’t seem to be keen to make anyway. The question is why must the government fix fares? Going forward why the government must fix the fares of fuel, power and others? Each time the government gets into this, it gets into a political logjam and populism precedes common sense and we end up getting into a trap from which there seems to be no exit. The government does not fix the price of gold or real estate and there seems to be no respite for buyers of either but surprise, surprise no one complains. Water which will become another scare commodity shortly is under-valued and consequently priced at ridiculous levels. To put it into perspective 1 litre ...