Two poor girls smiling at last...

We were on a long walk back home when we found two very young, pale and poor looking girls sitting down with their father on a foot-path, wanting to sell some inexpensive hair clips. As my wife and my sister-in-law were looking at those hair clips, I looked at those two children gazing intently at them with an expression of weariness but with a flashing ray of hope in their eyes. When we decided against buying them, their eyes twitched for the first time suggesting that the flashing ray of hope is shattered and unlit again by the darkness of poverty in their lives. It was the expression suggesting that they can never be relieved from the vicious chains of nothingness.
We were awakened by the expressions in those eyes and we thought of buying atleast something to make those eyes look happy. When we offered them the price money along with a bit more, they smiled for the first time with an immeasurable feeling of joy.

The pleasure and pain of Jalebiwala!

There's a Jalebiwala close to my house who makes the delicious Jalebis in a small room. The determination and the feeling of pleasure in his eyes while he makes the delicacy is worth noticing. He pumps his stove real hard to extract that extra bit of fire from the limited kerosene he possesses, speeds up the whole process making as many Jalebis as possible from the limited resources available, thus increasing the efficiency at work, saves electricity by making sure he switches his light on only if darkness prevents his work and presents happiness in the faces of the customers who taste it. When he gets exhausted with all his resources late in the evening, I observe the feeling of weariness in his eyes, and I think, he's fallen short of making one more Jalebi which could have made him a rich man!!!

Magnanimous old man...

An old man sells vegetables on the street sitting in a very small enclosure that he’s constructed for himself. He lives alone and he manages everything by himself. Many people refrain from buying his vegetables for various reasons.
He does not keep the fresh stock most of the times as his old and weak legs do not allow him to constantly travel for procuring them. His age has made him passive and tired, failing him from competing against the other sellers in the street who are young and energetic, attracting customers by making their presence felt with their heavy shouting slangs and with the copious amounts of fresh stock made readily available for the customers.
The old man still lives on. Although he is now very old and is incapable of competing against the young and energetic ones, he tries his best to keep those few customers who approach him happy. He possesses magnanimous character as he presents the customer always with a bit more quantity of vegetables than what he is supposed to give, and he always yields first in a bargain, losing intentionally to see the smile in the customer’s face.
The strong legs have now become weak, the shout and the energy have now ceased to nothingness, the flair and the adeptness required for a healthy competition have now left him, but there’s not a notable trace of a scar in the noble character of the person.

Please don't cut those lovely trees!

I am tree. I stand up tall on one leg and I am bonded tightly with the Earth. I have many friends and we all live as a family. Some of my friends are extremely tall whereas some are very broad. We all provide shade to all the humans and the animals, protecting them from the Sun by absorbing all the heat of the Sun-rays and covering them with our leaves. We absorb all the air which is harmful and release fresh air for all the living beings to breathe.
One of our great grand fathers is respected by all of us and we treat him as our god. It has been told in the stories that he once dropped an apple and the whole world changed because of that. It seems the apple fell near some human called Newton and he introduced some laws. Since then, there have been repeated attempts made by many trees for getting famous by dropping apples but nothing like that has ever happened. Some of the trees had intentionally dropped other fruits like grapes and oranges for a change, but again in vain.
I love the melodious singing of the birds and I like giving shelter to them by providing places for them to build their nests. I get tired during the summers and I lose my beauty as many of my leaves start turning from green to brown. As autumn begins, I shed my leaves and start feeling shy.
I like winter as I get to feel the cool winds caressing pleasantly on my branches and my leaves. I swing myself in joy, making it more pleasant for myself and all the others around me by intensifying the cool winds. Monkeys irritate me the most though, as they keep jumping in and out of my head.
But I am scared of buildings. It seems they are built by cutting down trees. I have heard from my friends through the sounds of their leaves that the end is coming soon for us too. These days I keep talking a lot of humor and all the happy moments I had, to myself and to all my friends to keep myself and my friends oblivious to the sense of fear.

When capitalism starts dictating...

A few hundred years later when capitalism starts dictating the whole world….Employees carry their identity cards, hung on their foreheads, with a nail drilled on the middle of their foreheads, and sufficiently inside to accommodate for their identity cards. They enter into the office and go straight to their respective computers without raising their heads and commence their work.
Their boss carries a whip called “the whip of torture”. Anybody who fails to complete the task within the given target date would be taken to task with a severe “whip treatment”.  During the appraisal time, the boss carries a more deadlier whip called “the whip of misfortune” which is provided with a sharp glass coating throughout. The over-ambitious employees demanding promotions or higher grades receive a special kind of “whip treatment”.
But the bosses experience their share of brutal pain too. The Big Boss who heads all such bosses takes care of them with his own style of treatment. He takes the bosses who had done mistakes, into a chamber where he heats and cools them up in cycles. The number of cycles and the intensity of heating and cooling depend on the severity of the mistakes committed by them.
A frustrated and a tired employee, resigns the company and joins another one which promised him a much better pay. Happily he enters the new company and suddenly he feels his happiness is reduced into a momentary one as he finds people walking on the corridor hanging their identity cards but with two nails drilled on their foreheads on either side for a better support. He kicks himself saying more salary means more pain. Audiences applaud the play and congratulate the actors for their performance.

A deprived girl from slums...

A girl from the slums gets fascinated watching electronic gadgets whenever she gets the chance of looking at them. Although she has not touched any of them in her life and had never had an opportunity to look at them from very close, she doesn’t miss out on any opportunity of looking at them at least from some distance, by hiding somewhere or by keeping herself un-noticed from the owner, as she admires their beauty.
She sometimes approaches some people, asking them to show their mobile phones so that she can take a closer look at them for sometime but they decline and drive her away in anger. Some mock at her saying that she is so poor that she is not eligible to even look at the equipments of such expensive class.
Every time she hears such comments, she bursts into tears thinking about her poverty and the misery associated with it. Once on her way back home, she overhears two people talking about how rich the nation had become over the years but she feels from deep within herself that the poverty and the immeasurable and unending grief surrounding her and her family and many others like her have never been considered in this rich country.

Drenched in rains?

It was a heavy downpour of rains. It seemed as if the oceans had bid goodbye to the earth for a ride to the skies before they encountered the ominous black clouds that appeared like ghosts, staring down at them with expressions of horror and then out of fear they had returned back crushing down onto the earth.
He looked totally drenched as he was running hard. He was looking at the watch regularly and was calculating the last few minutes left as he was running at a constant speed. Finally he stops and then walks towards the elevator of his building. He gets into the elevator, folds his umbrella and takes a few deep breaths, as he was drenched with sweat after a nice run on a treadmill.

A day in the 80s...

He wakes up all of a sudden early in the morning with the ringing of the telephone. He picks up the receiver and his uncle at the other end congratulates him for the new connection and says that from now on they can now communicate quite frequently. Although he said yes, he felt at the back of his mind that it would be impossible for him to place STD calls regularly considering the charges.
He was happy speaking using his brand new telephone and had a feeling of pride for being one of the few members to have got a telephone connection in his entire locality.
He picks up the newspaper and reads about the Indian cricket team performing extremely well as they were through to the finals of the World Cup 1983 but he felt there were very less chances of winning it considering the formidable West Indian team who could never lose.
As the match started he switched on his transistor to hear the running commentary. Throughout the day he kept the transistor besides him, making sure he did not miss a single second. All he could rely on were the voices coming out from the transistor as there was no coverage on television. He had the habit of carrying the transistor almost everywhere he went, some times even to the bathroom whenever there was an interesting cricket match.
He switches on the television to check whether there was some movie in Doordarshan channel. He always felt television a priced possession. He felt the bigger and the broader the size of the television, the more royal it looked.
With no option left, he starts watching a movie of some regional language he did not know and tries figuring out what was happening only looking at the actions made. He gets distracted by the ringing sound of the bicycle as the post-man shouts “POST”.
He collects two inland letters, both from his relatives. He tears open one of them and starts reading it. While reading he was already thinking of what all he would like to write in his reply. After dinner, he switches on the tape-recorder and plays one of his favourite cassettes.
He starts enjoying the music and when his eyes start betraying him by slowly closing down on one of those days in the 80s, he dozes away as the reel rotates around the cassette.

Another dramatic trip!

I was waiting close to Pune bus stand for a cab to go to Navi Mumbai. After a few minutes I got into the cab along with three more people. One of them was a lean young man in his thirties whereas the other two were older ladies, may be in their mid 50s.
The two ladies seem to belong to the same family as they never seemed to stop talking to each other. They were like two loud speakers completing the music system of the car. The driver was a lean and short man with a look of innocence and kindness.
The car was moving along intermittently thanks to the heavy traffic during the evening hours. The driver also took a longer route through the city to enter into the expressway which separates Pune and Mumbai. As soon as the man with the beard recognized that, he started slamming him with words of fury, shouting at him for wasting time.
The driver was answering in a frightened voice that he was familiar with only that route. I was sitting in the co-driver’s seat and was frightened whether he would get up, take me by my collar and bang my head against the windshield for not guiding the driver through the shorter route.
After a while of shouting he finally calmed down as if the storm had subsided. The driver entered the expressway finally and started gaining speed. He throttled hard and the car was rocketing along. He was clearly venting his anger out by not taking his foot off the accelerator pedal and he was well assisted by the powerful Fiat Engine.
It was a pleasurable drive in Tata Manza and for the first time I felt Tata cars aren’t really as bad as many people think. We stopped at a hotel for a few minutes to freshen up and the two ladies bought some vada pav to eat.
After a few minutes of drive, one of those ladies started vomiting inside the car and the driver took the car sideways and stopped. I was thinking funnily, how delighted she was when she was having vada pav, encouraging others to have them by telling that the hotel is famous for its vada pav.
The driving resumed and as there were no more events on store as the car cruised through the roads of Navi Mumbai.

Routines and more routines...

Routine becomes a significant part of his life. He lives routines, sometimes striving for a change and all the other time being happy with it. He gets up early in the morning and at the same time everyday. He hears the same alarm bell in his cell phone ringing day after day.
Sometimes he changes the tune of the alarm but after a while he realizes that he has exhausted almost all the tunes that he has got and the tunes start repeating again every day.
He leaves from home at the same time every day for his work and catches the same bus which goes to his office.He likes occupying the same seat everyday and on some days if he sees it being occupied by somebody else, he gets restless and with a furious look on his face, occupies another vacant seat.
At his office, he uses the same computer everyday using which he keeps doing the same work for most of the days. He lives through the routines as he completes one task after the other, every task resembling every other task in some way or the other. He goes for lunch to his canteen and takes almost equal amounts of food every day in his plate.
He ends the last routine of his day by sleeping at the same time in the night only to catch up with the routine waiting for him the next morning.

Mother Nature's ruthless winter!

Winter is back and it is getting colder by the day. The cold waves cut through the body as if a carpenter at the peak of his work is cutting down a log of wood using the hack-saw blade.
Those who act brave and step out without wearing sweaters in the early morning cold trying to encounter the cold waves, start to shiver as if Mother Nature has ruthlessly subjected them with some shock treatment for showing disrespect.
People traveling by buses make sure their windows are closed. If you are amongst those unlucky ones, you will be seated close to a window which can be almost closed using all your efforts but for a tiny opening left to allow the jet of cold waves freeze you on your seat.
The misery of traveling by bike without wearing the hand gloves would be as if Mother Nature is mercilessly scratching the biker’s hands using ice blocks containing sharp edges on them.

The joy of rains!

It was another bright summer afternoon with the sun showing its mighty presence. We had a long walk back to the office after our lunch from the canteen and one of our colleagues was ecstatic after reading the weather forecast in his mobile phone which predicted heavy rains in the evening.
I found it hard to believe and thought to myself that it would be another one of those predictions going terribly wrong.
After the day's work, I boarded the office bus for my way back home.The cool winds were sneaking through the windows and caressing the skin, presenting a pleasant touch. After the bus reached half the distance, around 6:00pm in the evening, the sky was getting dark.
Within another few moments it almost turned black with dense clouds spreading all over as if a monster showing its ominous presence is getting ready for a feast. Another ten minutes and the rain started pouring down as if the seas are falling down from the skies. Within few minutes of rain, the streets were flooded. Driver stopped the bus, as if a sense of blindness had hit him. Nothing was visible through the windshield.
I opened the window and looked outside to check the intensity of rain and I felt the whole city is flowing away to some other location. After some wait, the bus started moving and I was getting ready to get down at the bus stop. I got down in the heavy rain and soon figured out there was no point waiting as it seemed there was no reason for the rain to stop. I ran home, stepping on the flowing waters which filled my shoes completely and fighting against the winds.
I was quite frustrated in the beginning and when I kept running, I was feeling the joy of the rains, a new change and a reason to celebrate.

Yes the boss has cracked a joke!

Suddenly laughter erupts like volcano at the work place as if silence is crushed by a mad wave of happiness. Everbody laughs in unison, some even falling out of their chairs. It has got to be an event. Yes the boss has just cracked a joke.
Some laugh aimlessly and when the boss is not around they ask their colleagues and understand what that joke actually was. You just have to forget about everything at work and concentrate on the laughter whenever the boss cracks a joke. Laughing is mandatory.
It may not come under the category called jokes but you still have to laugh treating it as a joke.This whole thing may not apply for a selected few who don't care a damn about what boss says.

Corporate Prison!

Although most of the organizations in the corporate world run successfully fulfilling the needs of both the employees working and the customers associated with them, in terms of high levels of satisfaction, in turn giving rise to high growth rates, some are like prisons where the employees work like prisoners for 8 hours a day.
While the employees in the client team represent the prisoners who had committed a crime of a smaller magnitude by joining their company, those working as their outsourcing teams represent another set of prisoners who had committed the most heinous crimes, much larger in magnitude, by being part.
So the prisoners working for the outsourcing teams are controlled by the prisoners of the client team. It is like a more ominous jail within another jail where the jailers are the prisoners themselves. In very rare cases, some of the prisoners from the client team get transferred to the outsourcing teams unfortunately, as if they have committed an unintentional murder and suffer their way through.
Similarly, again very rarely, a few prisoners get transferred from the outsourcing teams to the client team, as if they are released from the shackles of death, ready to get trained for hunting the prisoners of the teams they themselves once belonged to.

Better be an animal on Indian roads!

If you are one of the bikers driving on the Indian roads, you are better of possessing some of the animal instincts than trying to be a disciplined fool.
If you find too many vehicles ahead, you drive like a snake crawling through the gaps between the vehicles.
If you find a biker approaching in the opposite direction, you intensionally keep yourself head on as if you are a bull about to lock horns with another one, before he sways away at the last moment.
You have to violate rules at traffic signal and rush along even if the red signal is on. If the traffic policeman comes behind you like a tiger ready to hunt, you have to speed away like a deer managing to escape itself from falling prey.

Another dream of horror...

He prepares to leave home after the day's work at the office. To his surprise he finds it already getting very dark outside although it was only evening time.
He rechecks his watch just to confirm the time once again and starts walking hurriedly towards the bus stop. Darkness was ominously covering the place like a ghostly presence.
The unusual cries of the nocturnal birds were giving signals that they were looking at something fast approaching. He boards the bus and takes the window seat.
Rows of buses carrying the employees depart towards different destinations but he knows that soon they would all meet at a place which would lead them all to one destination "the sea of darkness" and would never return again.
He feels the winds gushing through the window and striking him, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. His fear intensifies and he shuts the window impulsively. He could barely listen to the striking sound as his mind was getting peppered by the beats of fear far more intense.
Spasmodic thunder sounds and lightening were all making him feel that the end is soon coming. Only when somebody from the back seat shouts close to his ears "oh it is raining very heavily",  he wakes up and realises he had been watching a lot of horror movies off late.

Mr.Sharma is a happy man after all...

The shopkeeper of a nearby kirana store who looks short and lean like a kid, named Dharmendra, although having no resemblance of his physique with the famous bollywood star doesn't seem to add even one gram to his weight.
He delivers provisions at door steps of many flats in the housing society and Sharma's is one of them. He rides an Atlas bicycle which looks easily over 20 years old producing metallic sound of rubbing parts with increasing intensity in proportion with the pedalling speed.
Although short, he easily climbs onto its seat and pedals tirelessly to manage all deliveries on time. Soon after
Dharmendra leaves after dropping items at Sharma's house, the car cleaner comes and collects the car keys for cleaning. Unlike Dharmendra he is healthy looking chap in his mid 30s. He cleans the car by rubbing it ceaselessy with all his might to provide a glossy and a brand new look. Although satisfied, sometimes Sharma gets worried looking at him rub and feels one day he would end up removing all the paint.
In case of any electrical issues Sharma contacts his electrician who is an expert in doing any kind of electrical work. He is a very generous guy who feels work is more important for him than money.
He dresses in a clumsy fashion with dirt all over his shirt and pant and wears same clothes almost all the time. He is extremely dedicated towards work and completes the task no matter how many hours it takes. He seldom demands money for it saying he will take whatever is given to him. Sharma is a happy man surrounded by the men he can rely on for getting things done at any point of time.

Electronic world is where life is!

It seems the electronic world has become the only place of survival for human species with its life supporting mechanisms...it seems ear phones are becoming integral part of ears and we have started hearing more through ear phones than through our ears, it seems like the speed of heart beat is connected to the speed of downloading through internet, it seems like our brains only work if the network signal strength is adequate, it seems love and friendship flow like the seas of text messages, it seems the hands work only to operate the electronic mouse and keypads, it seems the eyes are connected to electronic screens and we look through them more than through our eyes and it seems we breathe the vastly present virtual air in order to keep our lungs functioning...

My first experience of airport

It was half past ten in the night when we reached the airport to pick up one of my cousins who flew down from the US. Mumbai international airport is a massive structure with around 13 floors reserved only for parking.
It presents an exquisite view during night time with yellow lights looking like jewel stones glowing resplendently all around the structure. Inside the airport were scores of people waiting anxiously for their loved ones and their friends to arrive.
There were people carrying bouquets to present and placards to pick up their guests. As the passengers were coming out one after the other, everybody was engrossed in searching out for their loved ones and their friends. There were passengers of varied age groups, from the young professionals who had fulfilled the dreams of their parents by toiling ceaselessy to earn their livelihoods in the US although it seems very comfortable from down here, to a granny on her wheel chair excited to meet her grand children after years of wait.
I rushed to bring some tea and returned in a flash to  not miss the excitement of waiting. On my way back I accidentally saw a man adjusting his pants openly, confident perhaps that nobody would bother to turn around and look at him.
Finally our anxious wait was over and it was all cheers as we found our cousin coming out. We left the airport and were on our way home as the gleaming yellow lights faded away and were rendered invisible.

This police man is a food freak!

A thief drives fast after having stolen a handsome amount of money and jewellery from a house, as the police inspector notices him and chases him down along with his constable.
He urges the constable to drive as fast as he can in order to catch him. Watching the thief going out of reach, the police man starts thinking about masala dosa where the missing masala always seems like a suspense before one discovers it hiding somewhere inside.
This police inspector loves eating food and gets distracted often during his working hours thinking about food.
During his appraisal discussions, whenever he demanded promotions, his boss used to refuse him by saying "you reduce your belly and i will promote you". He gets rid of that thought of missing masala and concentrates on catching the thief.
He finds the thief's car and commands the driver to head towards that direction. The car speeds along and they get into striking distance when suddenly the smell of street side "pav bhaji" distracts him and makes him feel irresistable and speechless as he almost puts his hand on constable's shoulder to stop the car.
He starts dreaming about a paradise filled with millions of pavs and bhaji stored in massive containers and him being the lone survivor destined to devour them for eternity, when suddenly he regains attention as the driver asks him in a loud voice about the next move as  the thief was well within reach. He instructs the constable and makes quick moves and they both manage to catch the thief easily.
After having jailed the thief he wastes no time in rushing to a nearby biryani store to pounce onto the massive rice mountain that would soon be resting on his plate.