The loss of a Bottle!

It was late in the evening when I boarded bus to IIIT-RK Valley. I was looking forward to my new job and its novelties with childlike wonder. It was nothing like earlier. Life was changing day by day. I had to be on my own. And being on my own was a beautiful experience- to begin with. If I wanted to eat, I had to earn. Though a frightening fact for a person of my background, it soon turned out to be an easy task with all the divine blessings focused on whatever I was doing. So as I was sitting in the bus, thoughts of fulfilment and eagerness filled me. ‘Hmm… good’ I thought. 

At around 11 pm, the bus started moving out of the hushed din and buzzle of the never-asleep streets of Hyderabad. Slowly, I crept into my tiredness and disappeared from the world of silly chores. The clumsily decorated background of the sleep world welcomed me as usual with open arms of protection and cheer. The dream had deep, open tubewells that I usually fell into, long snakes with dark and bright spots that usually ate me and hundreds of mountains with thousands of cliffs that I usually fell off from. There were also bright spots where white fairies fluttered their wings and flew around singing some strange song in unusually high pitch. There was a tall old man sitting among them with long white beard and a hallow around his head. The woman who sat next to him was nursing a child, and was beautiful like I have never seen. I loved this world of the sleep. It was alluring and repulsive. Honest and deceptive. Trustable and treacherous. Very human indeed!

But soon, I was shaken out of this beautiful but treacherous world. The bus stopped at some lonely place. The driver was yelling something out over the phone. From what I could make out, someone had missed the bus. So we had to wait. I liked it! In fact, I was waiting for an opportunity to get out of the bus. I had taken a couple of extra sips of water. I had to do it. It was high time. See, blessings come in all forms. I ran out of the bus, and did the needful standing behind a bush, away from the bus. Happy! As soon as I sat in the bus, it started again. I returned to my world again. Into the world of paradoxes.

When light broke, I found the bus cruising among arid mountain ranges fringed with numerous bushes and scary rocks posed dangerously close to ‘falling off’. It was warm. The rocky hill ranges were already fighting with the sun in rage. Between my long yawns, small villages rushed past the bus behind a veil of dust. It was 6.30 am. My neighbour alighted at a comparatively bigger village. Now I had two seats, all to myself. So I kept my water bottle on the empty seat and went back to sleep. 

I was awake again after a while when the driver started shouting Vempalli Vempalli… ‘So it it close to the campus’ thought I. Somehow I dozed off again and again.  After a few minutes, I got up and reached for my water bottle. It was gone! My water bottle is gone. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So I checked if my bags and pockets also lost something. But no. everything is its place. Only the bottle is gone.

Out of all things I carried, why this water bottle? I have a costly camera, hard disk, shoe, certificates, books, clothes, … Why the bottle? It was my dear bottle. 750 ml bottle. Cute and small. I loved it. It was Satish who gave me that bottle. I had carried that bottle around for the last three months across three states, and over 4500 kilometres. And now it is gone.

I was upset. I reached the campus at 7.30 am. There nobody knew how to process a new lecturer. So I had to wait upto 10 am to brush my teeth. I had my bath in the office of the Director! I was assigned an apartment, but no one knew where my flat mate was or what his phone number was. I was homeless and BOTTLELESS! 

Then again, god sent me some of my friends. They took care of me. J Life moves on with blessings scattered among ill feelings and disappointments and lost bottles, like the arid mountains fringed by bushes- fighting with the sun’s fury. 

Now it is three days on campus. I have learned that things do not come easily to anyone here. The system stands tall like a capitalist. And the beneficiaries stick around like bonded labourers  masking insecurity and unhappiness. Still there are genuine smiles among IIIT’ians. Still there are hopes woven into the garment of disappointment. Life goes on without a bottle as well… and I have started liking it already- like my treacherously paradoxical world of sleep.

Sky

Sky - Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad, 28/06/2012

At Charminar...

View from Charminar

From top of Charminar

A little secret to share at the foot of Charminar!

Even Looks tasty!

These guard the walls of Charminar

Mango vendor on the street- adds colour and aroma to your Charminar visit

Masjid from Charminar

Heee, I see everything without paying ticket fare!

It's a cool day, therefore we are here at Charminar...

Graffiti at Charminar: Punishable, but who cares!

Leppy- the Selfish Elephant

Once, Leppy, the elephant was walking about in the forest searching for food. He was very hungry. It was summer and food was not plenty. While walking, he found a banana on the road side. As he was about to pick it up, he heard someone saying, ‘hey Leppy, I am already eating it. If you want, take half of it’. He looked around and saw no one.

Leppy wanted the whole banana!

But when he was about to pick the banana up, he heard the voice again. He looked closely and saw a little ant on the banana. He laughed and said to her, ‘haha, you tiny creature! What can you do to me? I will kill you in one stamp! The banana is mine. I will eat it.’

The little ant kept quiet. She decided to teach Leppy a lesson. When Leppy picked the banana, she began biting him in his trunk. Leppy jumped up in pain and began running around. He was mad in pain. He tried to throw the ant away, but couldn’t.

Finally he begged the ant to stop biting. Immediately she stopped. The little ant said to Leppy, ‘Leppy, it is not good to be proud.  The food is ours- not yours or mine. It is to be shared. I was ready to give you half of my food, but you wanted all of it. If you are selfish, you will not be happy.’

Leppy said, ‘sorry friend. I was wrong. I will never be selfish again.’ The little ant shared her food with Leppy. From that day, Leppy was not selfish.

BTec Factories

(Sorry if I sound too negative. I couldn't help it!)

I work in an office sandwiched between two manufacturing units. One on the left, the other on the right. Both are multi-storey buildings in the heart of the city. The manufacturing process starts at 8.30 in the morning, and ends at 4 in the evening. Raw materials reach the unit from around 8 am. The one on the left has an evening shift as well. They go on till 11 in the night, sometimes later. The process looks- from my building, laborious and uniform on both sides. Are the products, of good quality?

But what do they produce? Now, that’s a good question. They don’t produce any material. Nothing that can be seen. But they manufacture youngsters with a degree after their names. Yes these are BTec Factories. IIT student factories. Coaching centres cum Intermediate Colleges. Buildings with huge posters of IIT entrance rank holders’ photos and their ‘marks’ obtained, hanging in front. BTec manufacturing units!

In this locality, there must be at least 10 of these institutions- Junior Colleges as they are called. I am proud of the fact that so many of our youngsters are interested in higher education and are actually into it. But I am sad that their interest is mostly in one particular field of study. I wonder what is so much alluring in being an engineer. And why and how does our country need so many engineers? Don’t we need English scholars, fashion designers, primary teachers, merchants? Or should they all be engineering failed candidates?

5 years ago when I was in Chennai, I had learned that there are around 130 engineering colleges in the city of Chennai itself. Each college will have at least 200 students in a batch. Which means, Chennai alone ‘manufactured’ 26,000 engineers 5 years ago! Look at Andhra’s condition. It has 847 (year 2012) engineering colleges with 3.39 lakh seats! Interestingly, no one talks about the pass percentage of these engineering colleges. It is unofficially heard that not more than 40% pass each year! Now, that is an interesting figure. Out of 100 engineering students, 90 buy their engineering seats paying lakhs. And after 3 or 4 years, they gloriously fail in their course. What a national waste!

Therefore, these manufacturing units do not manufacture engineers alone, but loafers and thieves and failures and dropouts and criminals and drug addicts and psychos as well. That’s a great social service they are doing. I appreciate the pain they take.

Coming back to the coaching centres, they do another wonderful service to the nation. That is, they inspire a sort of ‘spirit of competition’ in students, that pulls them down to the abyss of despair if they get one or two marks less than the expected 95+ in the top rated subjects.

Why does this happen? Because it is big business. Having a network of of such coaching centres in the heart of cities is no joke. Assets in terms of land and building are huge in magnitude. If 3 lakh students get into Engineering colleges, at least 10 lakhs do try writing exams. The fee is enormous! And name and fame in terms of IIT ranks they buy, is great. People say, there is a nexus between these ‘factories’ and those who set question papers for top competitive examinations. I don’t know how much of it is true. If it is, our society has a rotten sense of morality.

I am an ordinary man. I don’t understand the rules of this game. But I can say this much. If the cream of our youth goes away into these manufacturing units to become BTec bearers, and majority comes out as BTec failures, we will only have a lopsided society. One that is full of one kind of people. Uniform and boring. With crime levels going up. A society that doesn’t think creatively. One that doesn’t produce/create. A complete consumerist society (we shall fulfill the dream of capitalists).  It might take some time, but surely something of this sort is going to happen. Let us wait to see if parents wake up, to wake their children up from this illusion.