The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.

There was this giant who had a big garden. Many children came to the garden to play. The giant was very selfish and wanted to keep all the beauty of the garden to himself, so he shooed the children away. Till then the garden which was always filled with children’s laughter and joy became empty. All the plants started dying off. In all other gardens there was blossom but in the giant’s garden there was winter always. The giant wondered what had happened to his garden. One day through a hole in the garden some children came in and seeing them and their joy and laughter all the plants and trees also came back to life and started blossoming. The giant saw all this from his window and understood how selfish he has been and from then on he also started playing with the kids.

“What is wrong with her,” whispered Rajib in my ear, “why is she telling us these cute stories all of a sudden?”

“Class. We are going to enact this play for our annual function this year. And all of you are in the play. I want you all to participate and we’ll all have a lot of fun! Right boys?” said our Bengali teacher with a lot of enthusiasm. We did not share the enthusiasm. I looked at Rajib with bored eyes and returned me back the same look.

The curious case of Forgetfulness

I keep forgetting. I have always had this habit of forgetting very obvious things about life. On the other hand I also had this uncanny and surely weird habit of remembering some genuinely minute detail of some objects/events/persons. People usually attribute these eccentricities of people to their genes. And I can proudly say that this is one thing that I have inherited ditto from my parents. And I have already beaten them hands down in the game of forgetfulness. Because I took it to levels which they can never imagine.

In early childhood, I had a story in Bengali literature book of mine, which had mention of a very forgetful person. According to the story, this person had once gone out with an umbrella in the monsoon. He came back and instead of putting the umbrella in the corner of the room, he himself stood at the corner of the room and put the umbrella on the bed to rest.

Well the story sounded very stupidly funny at that point of time but it feels like a genuine possibility some time in my life. You must be wondering by now why I am being so hyper about forgetfulness and what disaster i have been through recently and stuff. For all of you just one request, please read on and all your questions would be answered.

The beautiful business of the Auto.

From Infosys campus, Hyderabad, to a place called Kondapur is Rs 32 by meter. The autowallah stuffs in 5 people in his shack of a vehicle and charges Rs 15 per head for the distance. That is a profit of 134% over and above the stipulated profit included in the meter fare.

Let’s delve down a bit deeper.

Typical mileage for an Indian-made auto rickshaw is around 35 kilometers per liter of petrol.

Kondapur is a distance of 3km from Infosys.

Therefore in 1 litre, the auto makes around 5 up down trips to kondapur.

Thus, for 5 trips,

Cost: Rs 70.

Revenue: 75*10=750.

Profit: Rs 680.

Assumptions: 1) auto driver enjoys life and does not make more that 5 up down trips.

                            2) His vehicle needs a maintenance of Rs 30 everyday.

                            3) He does not work for more than 20 days in a month.

His monthly take home is Rs. 13000. Considering that he did not go to engineering college he has saved some 2-3 lac Rupees with which he can buy another 2 autos and rent it out to a driver. If he keeps 50% of earning for himself then he earns Rs 13000 for the 2 autos. Considering he did not also go to MBA college, he had saved another 7-8 lacs, with which he can buy another 5 autos which gives him another Rs. 37500.

Thus at the age of 23-24, he can easily earn Rs. 63500 per month.

I am 28 and an MBA, and I am feeling like an utter fool. This calculation cannot be true. Where did I go wrong in the logic? Wait till I find it and come back.

Shit, this cannot be true!!