Escaped at last!

It was getting dark and I was returning on my bicycle from the book store as usual. The road was narrow and congested either with vehicles, or vegetable vendors or people. I wasn’t able to see properly and everything was becoming invisible. Suddenly a vehicle came in front of me and I lost my balance. I drove to the left and just managed not to fall on the road. But in doing so I collided with an old man on the road. It was not a head on collision but my bicycle's handle rubbed with his left hand and I stumbled. Somehow his wrist watch fell on the road as a result of my sideways clash with him.
Poor and old fellow! His mind and heart both spoke in sync and he shouted:
“Thief”! “Thief”!   “Catch him….He has snatched my watch”.
The next moment I was paddling my bicycle with my utmost efforts so that the mob which was running behind doesn’t catch me up. It was a frightening scene. Scared! I thought if I stop now, these butchers will never leave me.

Butchers?  Because it was the area of meat sellers. I imagined my skinned body hanging in their shop and this frightening imagination raised the speed of my paddling to the maximum limit.

When people usually are in groups and they are confronting someone weak and alone their power is raised exponentially. If the same guy who shows his strength and anger on that lonely fellow is trapped with some other violent mob he will either try to escape or appeal for mercy. At that time he becomes the weakest and the most innocent creature on this earth. A sensible and strong person never relies upon the mob’s collective power.
So, this was a mob driven by some old lady running towards an innocent guy. I don’t know whether that old lady knew what she is running after. At those moments people go on joining the crowd without knowing the reason. They just see something strange and they feel like it’s their obligation to add themselves and make the unruly crowd bigger. Later you go and ask them and they will tell you:
“There were people running and our curiosity drove us with them”.
If I would have stopped to clarify…I don’t know whether today I would have been living a normal life without any external support. The mob mentality is like this only…first they will catch their enemy and without having any words with them they will first bash him up properly. Most of the people in these types of chaotic procession are blind running towards a destination which they themselves don’t know. It’s like the notion of people’s power!! Where people are shown what a small group of thugs want to show them. They follow them but they don’t know where they are heading towards. They are content as they think it’s their power but isn’t that the biggest deception in which they live? 

So where was I?
On my bicycle, trying to escape from the hands of the insensible horde.  But my efforts were not enough to prevent me getting caught by them. At that moment a weird idea flashed my mind and without even giving a second thought I got down from my bicycle and slowly drifted to the side of the road and stood silently. My face was towards the unruly crowd. I was shocked and pleased to see the horde passing me and going straight towards I don’t know where. With a sigh of relief and thanking my Lord I took my way towards a small passage and reached my house at last.

Hyderabadi Autowalas

The auto rickshaw drivers in Hyderabad are strange creatures on this earth. I don’t understand why they have put meters in their auto. Whenever we ask them to go anywhere in the city they will stare at us as if we have committed some mistake by putting our steps on their land. It seems as if we are intruders having our pocket full of more valuable foreign currency than its Indian counterpart. Although we look similar to them but how can a newcomer speak like them. Either we need to speak in a strange Hyderabadi Urdu or know Telugu. Now as we all know, Telugu is not an easy language to even understand a few words. Speaking in Deccan Urdu (I mean Urdu with a Hyderabadi Style) is an impossible task for an outsider. Especially if you are coming from cities like Lucknow or Aligarh then you will be ready to give more money than sacrificing your ancestral language. If someone gets ready to go according to your legal demand of starting the meter then this meter will not forget to fool you on the way. Even these gadgets are so intelligent that they understand where they have to stop or where they have to go faster than the auto itself. The traveler ends up arguing with the driver or silently getting looted at his own consent. You do not have any other choice.
When I got down at Kacheguda station I had my confrontation with auto rickshaw drivers first. How intelligent they are in trying to fool people like us. They don’t know that already we belong to the category of Certified Software Fools. They don’t realize that their further attempts will go in vain. But they go on trying and trying and everyday they manage to fool few clever guys. That’s the reason I try to show people that I am a fool but still I get fooled.
Sorry but this is an unstated claim of my cleverness......
I don’t know whether there is a problem with my look or with my voice. Or is it because I am not alone that I look clever? But generally people think vice versa....................................
On the station when they see passengers coming out from the station, their untrained psychological instinct tells them……Ok! The guy is having a family which makes obvious that he needs to go somewhere in an urgent. The next moment they will attack them and this will continue until people get on some vehicle to reach their destination...............................
The driver I got trapped with was a clever guy and his meter never started after we got on his rickshaw. I wanted to get down but he started requesting he won’t charge much. He told fifty bucks but my continuous attempt to leave him which was just an act created a spell on his mind. I paid him thirty bucks when we reached Arastu lodge and left him quickly................................

The Lantern Age

Electricity was invented long back but still there are places on this earth where people don’t have access to this wonder. And people live happily there. When people don’t know about something they don’t feel the need, and sometimes if they feel they just take it as a figment of their own imagination. After giving some thoughts to it they just ignore it. But these needs somehow are felt and some great men convert these imaginations into reality. Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday and a lot of geniuses gave us this boon and it is like bread and butter for us today. We feel its need and if it isn’t there we get upset to the core. When it wasn’t, people lived with candles, lantern, lamp, chiragh, mashaal etc. But once it penetrated into our life it became a necessity without which we cannot live at all.
My town got electricity long before my father was born. But we feel its absence more than its presence. In twenty four hours of the day we get it for not more than ten hours. Sometimes I think what if electricity wouldn’t have been invented? Wouldn’t we have been happy with lamp and lantern?
In summer, fan is needed the most. Without light one can survive but without fan? Life becomes so difficult. But then again I think, didn’t people live a century back without these amenities of life? One answer people always give is, there was less population, mud houses, buildings were not so dense, and there were spaces all around. But see today, even the villages are crowded. But was life so easy, that people never felt the need? Then why people invented electricity, fans, refrigerators, air-conditioners?
I remember, in the evening we use to clean our lanterns and lamps with a piece of cloth and light it with a matchstick before it gets dark. There was always the danger of power going away leaving all in dark. And it used to be so dark that the children will get scared and start making noise. The teenagers will scare people out and the elders as usual will either do something to see the world again or scold the younger.
There use to be torches in everyone’s hand finding their way on the road. Till today there is no light on the road and people use torches with a good focusing lens. In the past the biggest concern before buying a torch was the focusing ability of the lenses.
People also use to go on changing the brand of their batteries as not a single brand use to last long. And once the battery gets finished they used to put them in their radios. People always try to conserve energy in whatever ways they can. But was that an energy concern or was it just to save money?

Thank God I was not a Romeo

In Bihar there is a famous region called Mithalanchal. It gets its historical significance from Sita the wife of Rama. Once it was the kingdom of Raja Janak, Sita's father. Situated in the northern Bihar a notoriously famous state of India, it reminds me about its rich cultural heritage when we go back to the history. I feel mentioning this because there are not much at present in Mithalanchal to boast about. It’s my native land so my love for my soil keeps me reminding something great about it every now and then.
Darbhanga a small town of Mithalanchal. Who knows? One day it may become the capital of Mithalanchal, if the process of state demand goes on in our country at the same pace as it is now. I was born and brought up there and I remember my school days very well, as they are something which is difficult to forget for anyone in his life. They are the best period of one’s life.
They were the days when I with my friends use to go to my school in dresses we liked to wear and with one notebook. First period we use to attend and then our classes continued to be outside the classrooms, but inside the compound and without any teacher. Mathematics we were forced to attend as Mr. Theorem our Maths teacher, was very strict. And it was the first period with attendance. How can we afford to miss the school even for one day? Then we won’t be able to appear for the exams. So this motivated us to attend the classes on theorems and quadratic equations. The medium was Hindi and I use to crack my head on the tough Hindi terms “dwighatiya samikaran”, “ek char wale samikaran” etc etc. I was a victim of this language attack as I was directly coming from an English school to a pure Hindi school. It still haunts me sometimes but now I have the ability to show my scholarly Hindi.
One special feature about my school were the Romeos all around. To vent out their frustrations they use to write strange things about the Juliets who always rejected their proposals. The teachers ignored those writings but if someone was caught red handed then it use to be the day of our Principal. A long and heavy wooden rod, my Principal’s one and the only weapon, was hard enough for the Romeo’s backs or legs. And these wooden sticks were especially trained to give the ancient experience of torture to the poor Romeos.
And the next day all those brave friends of mine will come with their guardians to the School. Seeing them, I use to thank God for not giving me those Romeo instincts. I was always a passive observer sitting with all my "good for nothing" friends and criticizing either the administration of the school, or the Indian Education System.