Desert Potraits

Rajasthan trip: How it all began.

For oft, when on my bed I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances in Rajasthan sand and hills.

(Stolen from William Wordsworth; changed according to context)

As I sit now reminiscing about the past week, it all seems like a big jigsaw puzzle of memorable events which somehow has become all jumbled inside my head. As I write this blog I would try to solve the jigsaw puzzle and present a comprehensible picture of the Rajasthan trip to anyone who ventures to read.

It all started one day morning, maybe a week and a half before the trip. I had planned for a 6 days trek from Manali, a hill station in the Himalayas, during this vacation when almost all of my friends gradually dropped out of it. There were various personal reasons for that, which I don’t want to go into the details. I had applied and got leave from office. My trains were booked. Suddenly the trip was cancelled. I had gone to sleep the last night all dejected. As I opened my eyes in the morning, this brilliant idea came to me. I immediately called up Avinash. He did not pick up the phone, later when he called, I could not pick up the phone, but when I did speak to him I told him my idea. I had always wanted to go and explore Rajasthan. And he was based out of Jaipur. I humbly asked him for his time and company for a Rajasthan trip. And he said yes!

Whatever happens is for good.

Jo bhi hota hain acha ke liye hota hain....

'Whatever happens is for good,'said dad.
'Really?' Said I after a little pause.
'Of course not,'said he, with a small giggle. 'These are fundas to fool your mind. All that happens to you is not and cannot be good. But just to keep you from going into permanent depression, you say such things like this. These are all mind games that you play which helps you to move on. Everything are mind games.'

Rains in Kolkata...rains in Bangalore...

Here i am in abhijit, hari, anand's place with no work. Enjoying a leisurely Saturday evening. Abhijit is getting ready to attend his friends reception. Hari went and Anand has left to repair Anand's bike (For the inquisitive, who is asking the obvious question of why Hari had to go with Anand to repair a bike; Anand and Hari are inseparable brothers, Anand does not go any where[other than his office and washroom] without Hari).

And here i am scribbling thoughts. Let me come to the topic. Before I start with the 'bakar', let me say that when Hari was leaving, I asked him for a topic, on which I can write something and this is what he told me. 'Rains in Kolkata...rains in Bangalore...'. And me being the talented guy I am i knew i can write something at least on this, somehow I'll connect this with some gyan and will make a happy ending also.

Time and Commitment

Humans are such that they can solve any problem posed in front of them. The only thing that is needed is time. And to give time to something you need commitment. So it all boils down to how much committed you are to solve the problem or to see to it that the problem at hand reaches a logical conclusion.

And if you cannot commit yourself to this problem then it only means that there are other commitments which are taking precedence. As long as you can pinpoint your commitment and be committed towards it, there is no issue. But more often than not, we remain confused about our commitments.

Blessed be the Lazy, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...

I think being lazy is good. As most of the problems that we face today are because of over enthusiastic active people. Had the Megasthenes’, Vasco Da Gama’s and Columbus’s stayed at home we would have had a much better society today. Watched Helena Norberg’s Ecomomics of Happiness some days back. For the last few days I was thus observing how consumerism has taken over our mind, soul and body. And what I saw and realized out of observation and self-realization was quite alarming.

Helena Norberg-Hodge (hereby referred as HNH) made her case as she demonstrated how globalization is actually disrupting the carefully grafted local communities, cultures and traditions which has developed over some thousands and millions of years. She demonstrates how the so called messiah called ‘Globalization’, who was supposed to be the panacea of society’s ailments has actually increased manifold the problems of poverty, communalism and other social evils. Most of our society’s problems are because of causes which were sown in the last century with the advent of mass production, industrial revolution, globalization and the mad drive to promote consumerism.

Grandmothers....

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!!

Serendipity

The jetty service cutting across the Arabian Sea would save us around 70 kms of drive. The sea has cut in sharply inside the land. The jetty service was meant to ease the pain of the long travel along the water body. Cars, vans, small busses all parked inside the compact steamer as it slowly trudged its way across the sea water.

Visibility was limited to a bend and till the bend all we could only see were cars parked one after the other. We parked our car behind this long line of cars, came out and ourselves trudged along to see how many cars where there before the jetty. There were not many cars. We were the 11^th car. In the morning we had crossed through another similar jetty and we knew that there would be space for 9 cars, maximum 10. We would just not make it. We found out that the steamer was due in another 10 minutes or so. While Abhijit, Mihir and Satyam waited to test their luck, I ventured on the opposite direction to quench the basic need called hunger. It was already late afternoon. Adventurous spirit and late breakfast could only feed me up to a certain limit. After that my stomach behaves in a very rebellious fashion.