I believe them, they don’t ;-)

Ok. I had to express my anguish, so the post!

From childhood, I have stayed near the airforce colony. Was educated in Air Force school I which is inside the airforce colony. And have frequented to the temple there. Only in the last visit to home, I had been to my School with a friend of mine. No issues. But this time when I wanted to go with my uncle to the temple inside there they asked me for an ID card!! And they made me go home and fetch one. Made me feel: I believe they don't. Only then I remembered the reason for this paranoid behaviour: Pune had an unfortunate incidence of terror early this year and 'they were not taking any chances.' 

My parents fixed the PC at home!

This was an experience!

For the last one month or so my parents have been complaining that my PC at home some times suddenly refused to start up. This was strange to me as the PC in question is a Dell machine and is about an year and a half old. Though I have opened it up and added a few memory modules and a graphics card to over the time.

Now I have absolutely no physical access to my machine @ home, but I heavily depend on it to talk to my parents. The only rational thing I could figure out most of the time was that the power plug was loose and you just need remove it from UPS and fix it back. Though I was pretty sure that it was not the real problem as I have never seen it to be loose before.

And one fine day, i.e. on a Monday (March 9, a holiday for me and had planned a cycling session to a near by lake for the day), my mom calls me and tells me that my computer is broke!! It is giving strange beeps and there is no power on keyboard! From which I could only make a vague guess that there is some memory problem or some of them have gone loose for some strange reason.

That was pretty good observation by my parents, I must admit, as they are not really used to computers as I am. Though my dad has worked on third-generation computers, but that was quite a while ago.

Ensuing this was a real ordeal from my and my parents side, beginning by telling how to open the machine. Thank god it was a Dell machine, and you can easily open the side cover without using screwdrivers! To make them open the cabinet did not take much of a time it was done with some five minutes of instructions.

The real hard part was telling them where the RAM was installed! I tried giving all sorts of rubbish analogies. First I made sure that they know what board to look into (motherboard). And then finally settled on to this one: there are 3 "ruler-like" strips placed next to each other, which are perpendicular to the motherboard and are placed on "white" strips. Lol, I have never had had to tell any one before how a RAM chip looks like :)

After this, they told that yes, they can see it. Next, it was easy to tell them how to remove one and then test whether the system powered on. My system back home has a 2GB, 1GB and a 512MB chip. One-by-one they removed the chips and checked, but all was in vain. So next, I asked them to put back the chips one-by-one, this was more harder to tell them, as you need to put them back properly (they go only one way in) as also you need to press the chips somewhat hard to place them firmly on the holder. It didn't work for the first two times. So I was almost gonna give up and in between I called up my computer guy back in Pune to ask if he could to be free to drop in at home that same day and fix up the things. He told that he would call me back in 10 mins and let me know! This was pretty surprising reply by any standards!

But in the mean time they could properly figure out how to place the chips and started the PC. Next I was able to remotely connect to it and could figure out that only one module was properly fitted. So I again called them and asked them to properly fit the other two. And viola, the next time I connected remotely, every thing was back to perfect and normal.

All of us were pretty happy for this. But I was pretty amazed, my parents fixed the PC!! and this was the first time ever they had opened it by themselves, though they have seen me doing this countless number of times :)

And to add to all the amusement, the computer guy form Pune called back, I am still recovering from this! Any way so I told him that my parents fixed it, though you might be needed some other time ;)

Ha and on the downside, its was all a 3 hour "fixing time", and cost me 500 INR for all the conversation we had, and well I stayed home for the whole day. But what the heck, it was worth it!

Bharat and India

A few days ago I had to travel by a crowed bus to Viman Nagar. As the bus starts of from Pune station I waited outside till the bus started to get on to it. My mind has already adjusted to the fact that I won't be having a smooth ride back home. And then something really nasty happened. One of the elderly passengers complained to the conductor of the bus that a person sitting on a seat reserved for the senior citizens was adamantly refusing to get up. To my utter surprise this conductor instead shot back to this elderly man and said that he can do nothing about it!! This really angered the elderly fellow and he directed the driver to go to the police station. This action angered the rest of the travellers, instead of expressing solidarity towards his action and his stance (which I rightly feel was 100% correct). Any way I didn't express any great action by the police. By the time the police came the adamant man in question merely got up and walked away from the bus. One of the police officials accompanied the elderly and merely made sure that he got the seat. He had no word of advice to either the conductor, driver or the commuters. And the most terrible part of all this was that I merely remained a mute spectator of the whole incident.

Later when the bus neared Viman Nagar and most of the in between passengers got down, by mere chance I got a seat next to this elderly man. I was just about to speak to him when I saw his trembling hand and could hear his bitter murmuring (surely about what all happened). This observation was so strong to me that I completely forgot as to what should I talk to this guy... was completely clueless and didn't open my mouth till we bot got down at the same stop. He joined his wife back to home. And I still kept wondering about the whole incident made my walk towards my home.

In retrospect, I felt so bad about this incident not because someone didn't get up to give a seat to an elderly person. But because we seem to have forgotten that to be a Bharateeya is to respect and elder. Because we do not seems to have inculcated this bharateeyaness in our new generation and because we are only worried about the economic growth of India and not maintaining Bharat's values and spirituality. And because we seem to be unaffected by suffering of fellow humans and often make fun or criticize those in trouble. And because I seem to have become a more Indian than a Bharateeya. 

a conversation with rikshawala

This post is based on a real life incident that happened to me a few days ago.. well you would better like to call it a real life conversation than an "incident".

A few days after I came back from my Australian adventure to amchi Pune, I decided to go a bit earlier than usual to the lab. Unfortunately the time I choose was really bad, it was the peek hour in Pune traffic and PMTs and the six seater rikshwas simply didn't stop because all of them were overcrowded. Finally bored at the plight of traffic, I started looking out for the 3 seater rikshwas (tum tum), or the poor man's taxi. After ignoring a couple of "old" ones, I spotted a not so old but one with a large green diamond shaped label sticked to the left upper corner of front glass shield. It read LPG. The rikshawala apparently spotting my curiosity somehow managed to get an eye contact with me and asked me if I want to board it. "Can you take me next to Sasson?", I asked (Sasson is the City general hospital in Pune). He said, "But it will be on meter". I said that would be fine and just pushed my self inside the comfort of this rikshwa, sill somehow wondering about LPG. Liquid Petroleum Gas based vehicles were made mandatory for new as well as some old vehicles a few year ago in India. But I didn't know that they had started enforcing this in Pune about 1-1/2 years ago. Unable to curtail my curiosity, I asked my driver (the rikshawala) as to when did he convert his vehicle to use LPG. "It has been almost a year now", came a prompt reply. And then without a word from me, he stared talking with me! He continued on to tell me the economics of using LPG instead of Petrol. He had bought his Bajaj 3 wheeler Rikshaw in 1985, which was quite contrary to what I had guessed when I saw that "not too old" taxi. For 1 liter of LPG, he had to shell out some 25 Rs while a liter of petrol almost cost double this amount. However, the mileage that he gets out from using the LPG powered was less that what he got when he used to run on petrol. But using LPG was still economical, as he didn't have to buy a new vehicle which according to him are poor in quality and break down in 5-6 years of service; priding himself that he has a 20 year old model which never had given him any major problem to date!

So how was his experience with the Regional Transport Office [RTO] when he went on to do the conversion of LPG? At this point he really started opening up and expressed his views rather openly. On the backdrop of the violence that happened in Maharashtra, just the day before he remarked that the situation here would be worst than in Kashmir today if we can't control our emotions, build good people and a strong society. I was just starting to wonder that probably every Indian thinks that way.. Then came a twist, he began to tell me why the continuing reservation policy is affecting the overall progress of the society. Of incompetent officers being promoted over more competent and experienced peers. Of the reservation policy not benefiting the poor people who really need it. Of providing the benefit of reservation to a person only once in his life time, preferentially only at the early schooling days, because he said once you are given an equal opportunity, every one should prove their competence to go ahead. Providing reservation at each stage for even the well off people serves no means and it just widens the gap in the society. And of corruption and vote bank politics effecting this whole scenario that needs rationalization for a better and all involving India. Of every Indian cherishing the value and the tradition of being an Indian and contributing to her prosperity.

I just couldn't imagine that a talk was just getting deeper. He asked me if I was learning medicine (in BJ), probably for the second time. With a negative answer from me, he asked "then where?". I said I am at Pune University. He continued with his talk, voicing his support for the recent strike by resident doctors all over India against the recently passed bill on extending reservation policy. Its a question of life and death, best people should be the only once that go to medicine, by not having merit as the only basis he said we are sure to get below par medical service.

The journey to my destined place for that day was coming to an end, but probably a few things that my rikshwala said were really troublesome to me and still rang in my ears. Thats why probably I decided to just jot down about it. The last time I had a similar encounter was in Hyderabad, just before the assembly elections there. When I tried to understand if the hyped "Cyberabad" had any impact on the lives of locals (probably i think, a rikshwala is a best person to voice the general view). To my surprise I was to find an interesting and affirmative answer... probably reserved for another post (of course if i get time ;))

Disclaimer: This is my jotting of a real conversation that happend between me an unknown rikshwala. By no means this should be considered a public viewpoint on any of the issues mentioned in the post.