Full Size Mirror

It struck me like a big blow,  it was bitter and it still is. Such realization otherwise I would love to call it enlightenment, could happen in such unlikely place?

 Yeah it did, once and for all. It was highly commercial mall, with the name of one of the greatest traveler of all time Ibn Battuta. I have always admired and fascinated by the adventure and the zest to travel that this great traveler have lived through.  Before I read about the Ibn Battuta, I have met one nomadic traveler when I was kid. We called him Kabuli Wala (Man from Kabul, Afghan). He travelled all the way from afghan, crossed Pakistan and India to reach the southernmost state.

I can’t call him a beggar, but he received alms from neighborhood and disappeared for months and came back again with dry fruits and cashew. We all loved Kabuli Wala, he was living representations on nomadic nature of mankind that was overruled by settlement culture. May be I am a border line nomad or settler.

Well, this is what my friends complain about, the trivia is more elaborate that the original story itself J. enough is enough

After a long time I saw myself without shirt in a full size mirror, I belly is really growing out. The waist is 33 now, and I was trying out waist 32 pants and medium slim fist shirt in that dressing room. I have to do something before it’s too late. I am resetting myself to diet mode.. but wait they have ordered pizza, so may be tomorrow.

Kurumbachi

Ever since I have known her she had thick wrinkles on the face and she was lean and very thin. She looked like she is in her 50s that was when I was 5, last time I saw her was during my graduation (almost 10 years back) she looked the same then. She was ever 50. She was dark like any other workers of her class; the unforgiving tropical sun gives such a tan especially for someone who worked outside on the fields or garden. She was cheremathi lower class based on caste system evidently existed one time, and silently prevailing even now. She had a strange name; probably it may not be strange enough for her parents to give her that name. And to this day I don’t know whether it was her real name, everyone called her “Kurumbachi”.



Our rented house was very close to my first school, one minute walk. That makes it easy for me to sneak out from school and hide somewhere at home. The house had a big front courtyard, largely shaded by two cheeni trees. These trees didn’t behave well to make Kurumbachi’s work more difficult. Those trees tormented Kurumbachi every season, the spring with flowers, autumn with leaves, summer with dried fruit, and of course monsoon with everything including the branches. Every morning she cleaned our courtyard religiously, for atomically smaller wage and breakfast.



She lived 2 KMs away, every morning she would start from her house barefooted and with empty stomach, walked all the way to our home. As soon as she reaches, she drinks a black tea and starts working. After the work she eats breakfast, mostly two or three dosas, idly or chapathis dipping in black tea. I haven’t seen her eating any egg, meat or even drinking milk. I often felt very sad when I saw her sitting on kitchen floor eating the rolled dosa. When she sees me watching her, she always gives me sincere smile that would stand out from a million fake ones I had and might have in future. I think she never cursed or complained about her life or else she can’t smile that openly. She had a happy face; maybe she does not realize life can me more comfortable. Comfortable enough so that she done need to walk 2 KMs for couple of grams of sugar and carbohydrates.



I live every moment, every hour, every day, every month, every year in need for more, more peace, more love, more money, more power, more friends and what not. Kurumbachi lived, walked long for food, smiled and she always had very little of everything. I like to believe she lived happily.

Swiss GOTCHA

What was that expression on his face? After a tiring day of apartment shopping I was left with that hard to answer question. Sujith have decided to pay homage to entire builder fraternity by visiting their sales offices and construction site, on search for an apartment. He wanted to buy an apartment!!! may be he needed a company or a support for in his 3000 K shopping, he asked me to go with him. That’s how I ended up spending most of last weekend roaming in and around Wakad and Aundh. Thanks man for spicing up my otherwise sleepy weekend (not really).



Coming back to the question, what was his expression? On last Sunday, we had already visited two construction sites and we decided to go for the third and last one for the day. “Swiss County” they got a very impressive name and an even more seductive price tag. We have at least seen 100 to 200 bill board ads of the “Swiss County” it read “Get More for less”;

2000 K for a two bed room, hall, and kitchen apartment. Comparing with prices of other apartments “Swiss County” was exceptionally worthy; trust me I am an expert now. No wonder the ads took us to their sales office; we waited for 5 minutes to meet a sales officer. I must tell you their air cooler and ice cold water provided real comfort in the waiting room.



Now I am ready to introduce our hero the sales officer, sadly I don’t know his name. We told him we have seen the advertisement and we are here to enquire. That’s the expression I was talking about, that came to his face when we told him this. Later that night I figured it out, I am calling it a GOTCHA SMILE. He said, that’s the base price and the area is very small compared to other apartments and if we are fortunate enough they will deliver the same earliest by end of next year. Much more than his words, his expression said it all “We Tricked you”. The ready to live apartment costs as much as twice the advertised prices. Our effort to make him explain what base cost meant was futile. It’s high time for bringing more awareness to general public and stringent consumer protection laws. I know blogging this might not solve this issue, however anyone who stumble upon my blog can save petrol expense by avoiding a drive till Swiss County.

Typos

Typos, is it something that gives a sarcastic smile on one’s face. Not always though. Sometimes things can go beyond a smile. Once a student wrote a word “Gramar”; on the first page of his note book. The very first page, line and the heading was a glaring mistake that got aged and overlooked till that day. During the inspection, one of the senior directors of the institution picked some lucky student and asked to submit their English note book; the celebrated mouth-eaten typo was revealed to the whole world. I had a hard time getting over that incident. Oops! Did I say I had a hard time? Ok that’s pretty much it is.

I didn’t learn much from that one though; I made a million typos there after too. Million may be little extravagant exaggeration, anyway enough of the drama.
I saw this billboard on my way to hometown from Bangalore. It said LEMAN TEA… 7.00. I was not director of the shopping complex to punish them for having a typo on the hoarding, so I am just posting it here for everyone. In fact I wasn’t punished for the “Gramar” issue, but the consequence was humiliating.

Living High!!!

Living High!!!

I had fascination about the people who lived their life in skyscraper apartments. Moreover I believed that they are missing scent of the soil. Sometime we are left with no choice and we can’t even think otherwise and hence, now I live in seventh floor. My new job brought me to this city where only millionaire can afford an independent house. The fact is I live far from the downtown, that doesn’t explain the hectic traffic and dust. Well why I should complain about all the odd things that I have chose myself. So let me be nice and be in agreement with this city and thank god letting me live and experience this.

It’s very easy to read date printed in an airline itinerary; there is arrival and departure date. You just follow the rules, and then you can fly to the destination. Provided you should not read your arrival date as your departure date. I learned this in a hard way. Anyway I reached on time for joining to office. There I met one HR lady (young) who reminded me about my first grade teacher. Not that she wore glasses and not that she recited rhymes. It would have been better that way, I was thinking while she was explaining the formalities She presented things as if we are new to corporate environment and she repeated these words over million times “you are not supposed to”. We were fortunate enough, she didn’t shout “silence and sit up straight”.

And I started another phase of my career, so far things are good and I am living HIGH.

Winy Memories

Three of us walked to hostel, I was carrying a bucket. We barely spoke till we entered the hostel then we locked sliding grill door. As we stepped in to the hostel I saw light of relief brightening my friends' fright shadowed face. Haunted by apprehension of getting caught in this lurking business, we were weighing in our minds the damages it can cause. We have successfully completed the second stage of Operation Bloody Wine.

To me wine meant something sweet and tasty, and for that matter I thought entire alcoholic liquors are like wine. I was still a high school boy who has tasted wine in imagination when we commissioned Operation Bloody Wine. Of the many I have invited for dedicating their service to this operation only two responded positively. Others, oh well they just declined my offer saying it's highly unlikely that this project would be successful and a high school boy never made wine. Making wine and drinking were considered to be sins of highest magnitude; most of them didn't approve OBW due to that very reason. They sacrificed the adventure for reasons they thought would save them from troubles. In my hindsight I realized OBW would have been utter failure if we were a large group. For this reason I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who declined my offer. Without your support this operation would not be successful good job guys. Well done!!! Thanks!!!

There were a few cashew trees in our campus; those were leased to local farmers. Farmers never cared for fruits they plucked the nut out of fruit and piled the fruit under the tress; THERE!!! We found our raw material. Under cover juicing, bottling and fermenting that’s our first task. We gathered at vegetables garden behind our hostel, that’s the best place to bury bottled juice for fermentation so we decided to carry out juicing in same place. We three split our tasks and consecrated ourselves to perform it with perfection. Watch man, squeezer man and those were the roles. I can’t remember if the squeezer guys washed their hands before they started extracting the blood out of poor cashews fruits. Fortunate enough, no one passed by tricking my eagle eyes.

Juice was mixed with sugar and we bottled the same and buried deep under.

We stood in front of the hostel for a while for preparing of executing the very final stage OBW. Third one is more critical than all stages, consumption. This is a rare situation where in production was easier than consumption like an atom bomb. We have successfully smuggled the bottle from the depths of our garden to hostel, we have everything we wanted. One last time we invited some friends again to join the party, thinking their dislike would have abated. The response was more intense and furious. In that hostile environment we tasted wine, and then we acted like we are drunk. In fact anticipation of intoxication blocked its own way, eagerness brought only awakens.

Drink once and earn title drunkard, it happened to us. We became drunkards in hostel mate's eyes. None ever spoke of jubilant team of OBW or OBW as such so now it remain as my obligation to dig a hole on earth and yell out that we broke one of the ten commandments of high school hostel law. Now I am pretty relieved.

Nut/s

There are not many street vendors in this small city. Most of the evenings I have been to this place, I have seen this peanut seller. He carries a small bag of roasted peanuts. What make him special is his pestering ways of selling his merchandise. He importunes everyone to buy at least one small packet of peanut. I feel, he thinks everyone on the street have only one intention for coming here, that’s his peanuts. He is very lean and hungry look. Sympathy I have for his state often overshadowed by his manners.

Last night I bought a packet of peanut from him, it didn’t taste good. I think it was roasted a week ago or so. Fact that he still has an old stock of peanut is disturbing; he did not sell much last week. A small packet of fried peanut costs 2 rupee, that’s the only size he sells. His bag is very small; it can hardly contain 50 small packets. If he usually sells entire stock in a day then I would not have this old stock. He can’t sell 50 packets a day, that’s what it’s coming to.

Let me try to guess how much he earns by selling peanut. “Have you ever heard about success story of millionaire MR. Peanut”, mother asked her kids. She started narrating MR. Peanut’s story. She explained to kids how I got myself to peanut business and made my fortune. May be I would conclude roasted peanut business is profitable after I find how much the peanut seller makes, this could really inspire me to start new business. Years later this fictitious mother and kids would become real.

One kg of ground nut would cost around Rs 20, fuel for processing ground nut to roasted peanuts would cost around Rs 10 and packaging would cost around Rs 2. He can make 50 packets of peanuts from one kg, this is just my speculation in fact I am unaware how much a packet of roasted peanut weigh. He invested Rs 32 for producing 50 packets. Now comes the difficult part calculating operating and marketing costs. Business is not just math or peanut it’s a vision; if you have it you can sell anything, not necessarily you would make profit though. Labors nowadays are paid Rs 150 for 8 hours of work (minimum wages). Every hour peanut seller work on his peanut can be rated same as labor wage. Say he spend one hour to prepare peanuts and 8 hours to sell it then total human effort has a value of Rs 168.75. He runs his business in loss; loss percentage is increasing with every other word he said to customers. May be it’s his frustration that is transferred to his customers when he compels them. There should be someway to help these two groups, buyer and seller. Yes, Eat More Peanuts! That is how we can resolve this. I have decided to buy peanut every single time I see him. At sight of this guy, I will walk to him get one packet at least and won’t let him utter a word.