Day to Day Roadside Experts

Lost in my thoughts I was walking on my way to office in morning. I reached the bus stop and stood there waiting for my next bus. Traffic jams were at it’s peak, people were rushing for office, one by one roadside shops were opening – in between all this, suddenly my eyes stopped at a sight. I guess it is the everyday sight for all of us, nothing extraordinary. A lady was preparing “gajras” – flower garlands to be tied on hair. I stood near to that lady and started observing her. There is always a special technique for doing everything. I am not aware of the technique in which she was tying those gajras but she was doing it with great speed, accuracy and dedication and all these qualities really impressed me.

Many times I have noticed the “Hot chips” shop where I have observed the person who will be grating the vegetables, put them into hot boiling oil and then fry them. He too does it with great speed and perfection. I have seen the cooks of small restaurants as the masters of cooking and packing foods.

We all go to hypermarts for grocery shopping. During the time period from 29^th of one month to 3^rd of next month, all these marts will be over crowded with so many people standing in queue waiting for their turns. We just pay for our things and leave; but imagine about the person who actually does the billing. They have to read the code and price for each and every item, create the bill, take the money which is most of the time given by cards, swipe them, get the receipt signed or give the proper change, and then repeat the same process for all other customers. We shout at them, if they take more time. But for a second, just think about them, they have to maintain proper records of everything sold, they have to be really alert for if they miss anything, their pay will get reduced.

We see the delivery boys of restaurants and eating joints, driving not those high-end bikes but simple bikes to reach the different areas and deliver the food on time. We can take driving classes from them. The newspaper person who distributes the newspaper early morning to every house, he throws the paper at a perfect single shot at the doorstep; the mineral water guy who carries around 6-10 mineral water cans in his luna and goes from house to house and distributes them.

All these people cannot be considered anything less than experts. We acknowledge many people who excel in their respective fields but there exists people who may not be famous but are nothing less than experts, they are the day to day roadside experts. They also do their jobs with full focus and honesty.

No job can be considered less important. Forget about growth and development; just for the survival, so many things should exist. Every single task by every single person is equally important for the existence of society.

I just remember the quote from Robin Sharma’s book “The Leader who had no title”. I don’t remember the exact words but I remember the message. It was something like this: "Whatever you do, do it in such a way as if you are the one who can do that particular job in the best possible way in the whole world. If you think this way and put all your effort then you are definitely going to succeed."                     

GOOGLE Devta

I want to prepare cake in pressure cooker, what I will do is open my laptop > connect internet > open www.google.com and type “how to prepare cake in a pressure cooker”.

What happens next?

Page is flooded with millions of links; all of them showing me how to prepare cake including recipes of related dishes, different other variations, videos in different languages and etc etc…

My dad or mom don’t have this practice but we people, I guess aged between 15 to 50 or “may be less than 15 to greater than 50” definitely perform a lot of search in Google. It is an integral part of all our lives.

• Ø  I am looking for a java code snippet, type in Google being very specific of your requirement and your queries are answered;
• Ø  I am assigned some new kind of testing, first I will do my homework by checking it in Google;
• Ø  How to drape a sari in some particular style to latest designs, Google shows you all videos;
• Ø  I need to go some faraway place and I don’t know the route, search through Google maps and you will get complete detailed directions.

From people who search for recipes to people who are interested for art and craft; from music to dance; from images to videos; from the weirdest of queries to the best of queries - Google has answers to all. You should never underestimate the search you are doing because Google answers to the precision. The more specific you are, the more accurate your results will be.

Google starts working as soon as you start typing each letter and continues its prediction. Google is not just a search engine; the term has actually transitioned itself into a verb. Have a query, Google it!

It is better to say that “Google is infinity, Google is God”. God might not answer your questions but Google will definitely have lots of replies for you. It will never leave you unanswered. That’s the significance of Google.

Happy Googling…. J

An appeal to my fellow citizens....

Bangalore is a place where buses are the backbone of public transportation. And it is really one of the best ones among the transportation services available in different states. But many a times I have felt that the attitude of some of the conductors/drivers is very disgusting for non-south Indians. Yes “non-south Indian”, any non-south Indian is tagged as “north Indian”.

Let me describe you in detail about the incident:

My friend with her hubby boarded a volvo bus from the bus-stop next to her house. They both got into the bus from the second door which is basically meant for the guys to enter. There were not many people getting from their stop so they got inside together from second door. There was no place to sit, so they stood in the area which has three chairs. They could not move to the standing area which is in between the two sides of seats because already people were standing there (people who travel by these buses will understand). Conductor comes and asks my friend’s hubby to move back; he says that he can’t because there is no place. In reply for this, the conductor pushes him behind. Then my friend’s hubby asks the conductor not to touch, which I think is fair enough. Now what the conductor does?

He starts abusing; yes, he starts abusing with all hindi-words which are ridiculous and offensive for example: “MCBC” again and again. (I hope people can decrypt this for I don’t want my blog to be offensive) My friend got very angry and she told the conductor to control his tongue. Conductor totally ignores what she tells and continues abusing, says something like…“khane ke liye aa jaate hai”and asks them to get down from the bus.

Finally, they get down, take another bus and reach their respective offices. And there in office, my friend informs me about the whole incident.

“khaane k liye aa jaate hai”…means that we the non-south Indians come to Bangalore to eat. Mr. Conductor, you are briefly right. But please remember that we come here to eat not because we don’t have enough in our natives that we can’t survive; we come here for job because unfortunately we are software engineers and Bangalore is the IT hub. If there were IT companies in our respective states or if we were not software professionals - then probably we would not have come here leaving our family and relatives in our respective natives.

I am asked to get down from the bus. Am I travelling for free? We are working and earning and spending our money. You are not doing anything for us for free. Then who the hell are you to ask me to get down from the bus? These buses are meant for public transport and are government property and not your personal property.

If any passenger asks anything in hindi, they will stare you and prefer not to reply. Why? You watch hindi movies, you know hindi abusive words but you can’t reply to a genuine question asked in hindi. I am settled here from years, I work here, I know that it will be helpful if I know the local language but I can’t speak it so is it a criminal offence for which I should be publicly harassed and insulted in front of so many people who were nothing else but the silent spectators.

End of the day, everyone should stop discriminating and dividing the people based on their caste and region and remember that we are all Indians and being an Indian citizen, our constitution gives us the right to stay anywhere in India and for that we don’t need anyone’s permission.

It is not just my friend or me who have come across such situations; the situation may not be this severe but it happens with many of us. Why is it so? Why this step attitude towards us? I am not generalizing all the conductors but there are few who have this attitude towards us. It is my humble request to you all that please don’t behave like this with us, we get hurt. We are not taking anything from you and we don’t expect anything too but atleast we don’t deserve such attitude.

This is not a story, this is a true incident that has happened..After this incident took place, my friend's husband has already filed a complaint to the bmtc department taking the details from their website. 
This blog is not a personal attack to anyone. Even I have south-indian friends, colleagues and neighbours. I am not against south indians, i am against this biased attitude, wherever it exists. This may happen to any north-indian who stays in south or to any south-indian who stays in north; basically it can happen to anyone who is a migrant in that particular region. My intention is neither to create any controversies nor to hurt anyone's sentiments. 

People have started attacking me personally. It is my humble request to everyone not to be judgemental without reading the complete blog, please read it completely and don't just pick a few words and start blaming me.

I am staying in bangalore since last 3.5 years and ofcourse I love this place. I respect it's culture and language. I have a job, a family, a life that I lead here by my own wish and I don't regret for that. I love my life here. Please don't interpret me in a wrong way. Don't project me as a racist.   But like all of you, I am also a human being. I also get hurt by someone's harsh words. My question is just that don't I have a right to speak up if something intolerable has happened. It has not happened to me but it has happened to someone very near to me. 

Many of us are from IT and we travel day in and day out in buses to commute to work. What I want to appeal is not to entertain such incidents wherever it may be and anywhere in India. Let us voice out our concerns and make Bangalore a beautiful and most desired place to be.

21st Century Domestic Violence

Does this heading sound weird? Even I used to feel the same. But still this phrase “DOMESTIC VIOLENCE” is applicable to the society, atleast for the Indian society which till date, follows a male dominating culture.

We are basically confused ladies. We don’t know what the terms: domestic violence or dowry or verbal abuse actually refers. We consider all these not to be a part of civilized society and look down to those who have gone through these; we talk about these and very proudly say that we will never tolerate such things; we feel that these are a part of so called “chawls” or of those people who are below poverty line. We feel that such things cannot happen to us even if is happening. But is this the fact? Have none of the modern day “independent” women experienced this trauma.

We might be tortured at home but we hide our tears behind eyeliners and kajal; we hide our cries behind the sweet smile of lips, lips having lipstick on it so that people see the lipstick colour but not recognize the fake smile; we hide the bruises by covering them behind sophisticated clothes and accessories. In short we hide the truth from society and from our own self. If we go through this kind of torture, we feel shame; we don’t want others to know about this. My question is why? Just because we feel that others will form a bad impression for us but honestly by doing this we are creating an impression of ourselves that what happened to us is somehow our mistake, we are ourselves taking the blame for a mistake which we have not done.

I read an article in internet and came to this conclusion of 5 points:

ü  There is no better or worse of domestic violence. Remember, attempt to murder is also a crime. Don’t think that physical assault has to be tolerated until you are murdered. A slap or somebody trying to slap is equivalent.

ü  If something can happen once, it can happen twice or thrice as well. Don’t keep forgiving and forgetting.

ü  No torture, in demand for you to become passive, is acceptable. Making financially dependent, unable to meet and talk to friends and family, cannot decide anything for yourself… are all a kind of torture. If someone takes away your hands and then says that they won’t torture you in return of this…. Is all crap.

ü  Staying alive is better than staying married.

ü  Tolerate the torture just because it is not physical, it is only verbal… is not done. Whatever it is, verbally abusing and insulting is not acceptable. No one has any rights to harm you physically, mentally or emotionally. Verbal abuses hurt you emotionally and destroy your inner self. It takes away your self confidence.

Domestic violence has nothing to do with social status; it is based upon an individual’s mindset. This kind of torture can happen to anyone from a maid to a software engineer to wife of a CEO. You have to draw a line between what is considered torture and what is normal, you have to set a limit for your patience; you have to take a stand and not backseat for yourself.

At the end of the day, just remember

ü  You deserve to be happy, you have all rights to live the life in your own way

ü  You don’t have to sacrifice your life at the cost of continuing in a loveless marriage.

ü  All relationships in this world are based on a give and take policy except from the mother and child relationship.

ü  Don’t let anyone take you for granted and by default.

ü  Love can be selfless but respect is mutual.

Please read this article and call for help in case of need from your family, friends and neighbour. Take the charge and control of your life and fight back.

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm