The importance of Rupee 1 in my life

Incident 1:
It was a Saturday. I had visited the nearby temple in the evening and after seeking His blessings, I was getting into my car. That is when a beggar came along and said - "मालिक. भगवान् तुम्हारा भला करेगा. खाने के लिए कुछ दे दे!" I checked my wallet to find some change. And all i could find was Re 1. I gave him the Rupee. He looked at the coin, then looked at me derisively and said - "एक रुपये में क्या आता है? चाय पानी तोह दे दो!" I looked at him and said - "जितना दिया उतना रख, वरना यह भी वापिस कर दे. और अगर चाय पानी चाहिए तोह काम कर. भीख मत मांग!" The thankless and shameless beggar snarled at me in his local language and walked away slipping away the rupee in his pocket.

Many times, I feel sorry at the plight of beggars and I feel that we as a society should do something for them. But after meeting this one, I actually felt - "Bloody Mo-Fo, you deserve to be a beggar all your life."


Incident 2:
Petrol cost Rs 54.50 per liter. I asked the petrol pump attendant to fill 2 liters in my Kinetic. He set the electronic machine to fill 2 liters and after the job was done, the machine read that I owed Rs 109. I gave the attendant Rs 110. He put the money in his bag and said - "Sir I dont have 1 Rupee. Sorry." He then looked away and directed the bike behind to come ahead. I said - "What. You don't have a rupee. No problems." I opened the petrol tank and said - "Fill my tank with Re 1 petrol. Set your machine this time price wise instead of quantity wise and fill it up." The bike guy behind started laughing. The petrol pump guy condescendingly looked at me and said - "Sir, why you doing like this. It's just a question of 1 Rupee!" I said - "It's not a question of 1 Rupee, it's a question of work ethics. I should get what I pay for. Fill it up or give me my rupee!"
Believe it or not, he actually set the electronic machine for 1 Rupee and filled my tank with drops of fuel worth Re 1. My bike surely felt heavier than before.


Incident 3
The cashier at my office canteen is over smart. Whenever he had to return Re 1, he would give people 1 Eclair confectionery sweet each costing Re 1. To return Rs 2, he would give people 2 of those. People were visibly agitated by his 'forceful selling' tactics. I was also a victim of that a couple of times. Despite repeated haggling with him, he continued this practice of his.
One day, I went to buy a cup of tea and the cashier demanded "Rs 3 sir." I handed out 3 Eclairs and gave him. He looked at me bewildered and said "Change please sir. This is not accepted." I was waiting for him to say this. I snapped back saying "You can use this as a substitute for Re 1 and we can't. Bull shit. Better take this or we'll complain to the location manager." The cashier said "This time I am taking, next time, give me change." Sarcastically I replied "Same to you bhai."

Aah! The power of Rupee 1!!

An evening on the race course ...

I frequently jog at the Pune Race Course ground to lose that extra flab ;) Today evening too I went to the race course. But, I was too lazy to jog today, so decided to stroll instead. The weather was just perfect - not too cold, not too hot, a pleasant breeze, a bit cloudy... To complement the setting, my iPod was loaded with soulful Rahman melodies, enchanting Rahul Sharma instrumentals and stirring Bryan Adams compositions. With the wind in my hair, sand under my feet, soul stirring music in my ears and a lot of unanswered questions in my head, I was all set to spend a Saturday evening on the Race Course.

I walked past a pretty plump girl strolling with her poodle, a teen couple muttering sweet nothings in each other's ears, a bunch of school kids playing foot ball, a toddler playfully running behind his dad to catch him, an old couple sitting on the bench, a hot girl jogging in her black spandex suit...

At the time of sunset, I stood at one side to marvel at nature's beauty when I saw the sky changing its hues. I have captured the pics below in my Nokia XpressMusic Phone with a 2.0 MP camera (so please excuse me for not-so-good quality pics)



















While walking along the race course, one cannot miss the beautiful St Patrick's cathedral :















The entire stretch of Race Course is about 2.4 kms.. it is roughly a circular ground. The outermost ring is for the horse races and there are two inner rings... the middle ring is an undulating ground suitable for walking and the innermost ring is covered with black sand and is suitable for jogging..




















While walking along the long, circular roads, the following thoughts came to my mind -
"Seems like I've been here before, can't remember when,
I get this funny feeling, we'll be together again!
No straight lines make up my life, all my roads have bends;
No clearcut beginnings; but thankfully, so far, no dead ends!"
















Well, I think, today evening, I just had a perfect date with myself!

Eavesdropping in an Elevator...

My office is on the 7th floor and each floor has close to about 200 employees. So there are about 1400 employees in one building and there are just 3 elevators. So on an average, a trip from the ground floor to the 7th or vice versa takes close to 5 minutes since the elevator practically stops at every floor. It's very interesting to see people of all shapes, sizes and sensibilities for a brief period of time. Sometimes, their talk can form fodder for a blog post like this one :)

So, I was taking the elevator from the 7th floor to the ground and I was joined by a bunch of men who sit in the same wing as I do. One of them being particularly loud forced me to eavesdrop, even though I had absolutely no intentions to do so. So they started talking about the sudden outbreak of malls and foodmarts in Pune - More, Spencer's, Subhikhsa, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Mart, Chaupal Fresh and so on. Then Mr Loud got stuck on Reliance Mart and they started discussing whether it belonged to Mukesh Ambani or Anil Ambani. After considerable discussion, they reached on a consensus that Reliance Mart belongs to Mukesh and that Anil's businesses now begin with BIG. And after Anil acquired Adlabs, Gold Adlabs Pune changed to BIG Cinema or so they were discussing. We all have our own opinions about everything and we get judgmental about any thing quite fast. So Mr Loud rants that 'Mukesh does everything very sensibly. See his business is going to grow like anything. He has inherited the right traits of his dad - the late Dhirubhai. But Dhirubhai's younger son - Anil has absolutely no business sense. He gets into any business for the heck of it. How would one explain him getting into the entertainment business. He just has money and wants to spend it. See one day, he'll fall flat on his face...' and he continued with his analysis on how business empires should be run.

I looked at him with askance thinking how could one make such thoughtless comments without knowing the full details. I am sure when he reads this blog, he would be surprised to know that Anil Ambani is opening up a studio on LA with Steven Spielberg and plans to produce 30-35 films over the next 5 years. (details here) I am sure Anil Ambani, a Wharton graduate and heir of the illustrious Dhirubhai Ambani has a little better business acumen than Mr Loud who interestingly tests defects and shouts JDBC - ODBC across the room with his 'oh-so-loud-irritating-voice'.

But nonetheless, thanks to him - this is my 2nd post in a day - he gave me fodder for thought :)

Sodexho bhi chalta hai ...

In the age of credit cards and a well distributed network of ATMs, it isn't necessary to keep more than 100 -200 bucks in your wallet, or so we thought till this happened. After a great lunch and an awesome dessert, we tanked up the car, bought comfortable Osho chappals and my friend and I were on our way home from KP. Now after spending so much, either by Credit Card or cash, we were left with close to around 80 bucks between us and we didn't bother to withdraw money thinking that this much money was good enough if we landed in an emergency like a car breakdown or something like that. However we did not think of this emergency though.

Pune is a strange city. How much ever I may love the city, I always hate it for its roads (if there are any) or traffic management. An apt example is this very strange signal which turns amber and green both at the same time. Ideally, only one colored light should be ON at any given time for any signal. But this strange signal while changing from green to amber, had both green and amber lights on. How cool, isn't it? Had we known the aberrant nature of this signal, this wouldn't have happened.

So we were in the car, in a gleeful mood, listening to the local radio station, commenting on how hot the actress in the song was and we came across this signal. Now, this signal was showing two colors as per its behavior - amber and green, and we saw vehicles zooming past us, we thought probably its 'GREEN' and as obedient citizens, we followed the traffic rules and crossed the signal. Just as we were on the other side, a traffic policeman asked us to get to the side. Again as obedient citizens, we stopped at the side and believed that this would be regular license / PUC checking types and thought we should co-operate. But the policeman started claiming that we had broken traffic rules and that we should pay a fine of 200 bucks. We argued about the funny signal and how were we supposed to know the right behavior and all, but he wouldn't budge. Now, we didn't think of this incident as a possible emergency!

Now we just had 80 bucks and no ATM around. Surely our police force is still not that advanced to swipe credit cards. We were pleading that we just had 80 bucks and a pair of Osho chappals - that was all the wealth we had at that time. And also we weren't willing to pay 200 bucks for a faulty signal. The policeman finally said - 'I'll leave you if you pay me 100. Not a penny more, not a penny less. I won't even give you an official ticket. Slip in a 100 buck note and I'll let you go.' We kept on showing him our empty wallets - 'Sir, see between the two of us we just have 77 bucks.' He peeped into our wallets and said - 'What is this?' pointing to some paper chits. My friend took them out and said - 'Sir, these are Sodexho passes. You can use them to buy things at food malls, select restaurants, grocery stores and more. Our company gives us these passes as a part of our ....' He stopped him in between and said 'Ok, Ok.. I know. I have used them.' We were surprised that the government has also started giving Sodexho passes to its employees. Not till he said - 'Cash nahi toh Sodexho bhi chalega (If you don't have cash, even Sodexho passes will do)'. We were zapped! We were stunned at the desperation of a traffic officer to make an extra buck at any cost. We hardly used Sodexho passes anywhere and our passes used to always accumulate at the end of every month. We could have very well given him the passes and got rid of them. But we didn't.

Again as responsible citizens, we decided to take the ticket. My friend sat in the car while I walked in search of an ATM. Finally found one around 500m away, withdrew money, came back and gave him the cash. The policeman looked at us with expressions of surprise / anger / disdain or a hybrid of all these. We took the ticket and drove off expecting that this money would go in the government account and probably be used to repair this signal rather than giving Sodexho passes to the policeman who would have bought a shampoo from the supermarket or feasted at a nearby restaurant.

Jaago Re!!!

It's all in the Mind....

23rd January 2006, Ravi Sharma and his wife Geeta are now married for 5 years. Their sprawling bungalow "Jannat" is filled with the clutter of high society people who have come to congratulate the couple for half a decade of togetherness. Champagne is flowing in abundance, wine and cheese have been specially ordered, each cocktail is made according to the guest's taste. Food stalls in the background boast of the finest and richest meals some of us have ever seen. The dholaks and the women singing in the background make the celebrations melodious.

Looking into Geeta's eyes, Ravi tries to find the lost innocence she possessed when they were married 5 years back. Their wedding was a very humble affair with not more than 50 people attending the rituals. The simple chiffon red saree and the long flowing hair of Geeta were complimented by her golden earings and a small necklace. All this coupled with a spark in her eyes was Ravi's most precious possession. Since then, he has never been able to find that simplicity in her. Although Geeta is dressed today in designer sarees, with diamond earings that pull her earlobes to the maximum, he has lost the Geeta that Ravi was married to.

Accepting congratulations with a heavy heart, he thinks - "what an irony it is to be congratulated on losing your most precious belonging!!" But such is life, he says trying to console himself. While he sees his wife exchanging flying kisses and fake wishes with the high profile people of Delhi, he sits in a corner and recollects back those days when he had "nothing but everything." Today he has "everything but nothing." He ridicules at the thought of how material pleasures exchange hands with immortal possessions. He curses that day when his wife and he decided to move from a small town Gorakhpur to a big city Delhi in fulfillment of their dreams. They had promised to hold the same respect for each other, but now why the sudden change? Is it because Ravi was not able to fulfill Geeta's materialistic desires and Geeta managed to outdo her husband that has caused the rift, or is it because Ravi is now jealous of his wife's achievements that he cannot talk to her looking in the eye? It is in the search of these answers that Ravi always drowns himself when his wife is busy looking after the ready-to-eat business empire built by her or when she is busy socialising with the who's who of the society.

He looks back at those days when he used to come back from office in the evening and take his wife with him for a kulfi when he had saved some extra money that month. Geeta being ambitious used to always ask her husband to help her start a small scale business where she could give tiffins to college students and help the house get some extra income. Reluctance on his side made Geeta start the business in his absence in the morning when Ravi was in the office. Her mess services became extremely popular and when Ravi got to know about it, it was too late for Geeta to give up. Soon she started selling packets of ready-to-eat foods in nearby kirana stores made by her with the help of 3 other women. This led to the construction of one of the most successful food products in Delhi and the neighbouring areas. Reluctance and lack of appreciation on Ravi's side made the drift widen. Geeta asked Ravi many times to give up his job and assist her with the growing business, but Ravi could never digest the fact that he would be working under his wife. Today Ravi still goes to his office where he earns a paltry sum, but the irony is that the lunch packets in his canteen are those made by Geeta's company!!!!

Ravi is woken up from his dreams when he is introduced to Geeta's special clients Mr and Mrs Jaiswal.
Mr Rakesh Jaiswal is well known for his "go-getter" attitude and one of the most successful examples of who an opportunist is. Probably, that is the reason that his wife Neerja Jaiswal is 25 years younger to him. Neerja, one of the most successful models in Delhi was known to have the attitude of making it big in her life at an early age irrespective of what price she would have to pay. She wanted social status, financial security for a life time and freedom from her husband so she could do all that she wanted. People ridiculed her by saying that it is impossible to get all this. But she proved them wrong when she married Mr Jaiswal, a business tycoon and a hotelier. It's been three and a half years when she married him. Then Mr. Jaiswal was
53 and Neerja just 28. Mr. Jaiswal divorced his wife Naina of 27 years for Neerja. So is the magic of beauty!!

Ravi was surprised looking at the odd couple, but he thought anything is possible for a man who has money that is not counted but weighed instead! But something about Neerja attracted him, not her beauty but probably a spark in her eye that made him feel that there is some connection between the two. Probably even Neerja must have felt the same and the two hit off well and were seen conversing for a long time. Ravi even made a drink for Neerja and made sure that she felt at home with him. Neerja too was having a good time. The two of them exchanged numbers and when Neerja left the party, Ravi thought that after a long time he had spoken his heart out with a charming lady.

Weeks passed by and Geeta as usual was busy in her routine. Ravi too followed his mundane activities of going to the office and then back. Neerja's eyes had taken a backseat, just a backseat, but were not wiped off from his memories. One fine Sunday when Ravi was taking an afternoon nap, his sleep was broken by the harsh sound of his phone. It was Neerja on the other end. She asked Ravi if he could meet her for a cup of coffee in the evening. Since Geeta was not in town, he thought what better way to spend a boring Sunday evening. The two met up at Cafe Coffee Day in the upmarket locale of Greater Kailash. The camaraderie was blossoming and the two had a great evening. They felt that they understood each other better and deicided to do this quite often.

Weekends were thus spent over endless cups of coffees, then dinners and desserts. The two spoke to each other on any topic. They felt a sense of similarity with their lives and their demands. Many times Neerja confessed to Ravi that she married Rakesh for financial security but she lost out on emotional security. She felt like an accessory that adores Mr Jaiswal's shoulders for his high profile parties. That was just her status in his life. She was feeling emotionally insecure as there was no one to understand her and she now repented her decision. Ravi too was looking for that emotional security in his life. So now they were too individuals who fulfilled each other's emotional needs by discussing every issue close to their hearts and they felt that their relationship had matured into something more beautiful than friendship.

Weekends were now spent over endless cups of coffees, dinners, desserts and beautiful nights in hotel rooms. Within 2 months of their first meeting, they were already in love! aBusy as their respective spouses were, they were completely oblivious to the latest developments. But this were the most beautiful moments in Ravi and Neerja's lives. It was blissful to share physical oneness with the person who gives you a feeling of emotional security. They felt that marriage is not the only way to be emotionally stable but one can experience that even outside marriage. It's all in the mind. After all what is marriage, just an official permit to have sex, but relationships are much more than that, and all marriages do not guarantee that. Here were two rebellious individuals whose thoughts were completely contradictory to what they were a few months ago. One married to remain blissfully happy all his life and the other married for social and financial status. So this is what love can do, can change your thoughts and that is why it is said - "It is all in the mind!". It's just that what perspective you use to view any situation.

Their weekend routine remained colorful as before until few months later, Neerja learnt she was pregnant with Ravi's child. The joy of being new parents engulfed Neerja and Ravi to the extent that they no longer bothered about how their respective spouses would react on knowing about Ravi and Neerja. After all each of them was being a parent for the first time. But somehow the courage had to be gathered, it had to be gathered to face their spouses and tell them they wanted freedom from them.

The next day, Ravi and Neerja finally decided to let their hearts out. That morning, Geeta as usual was busy in the kitchen supervising the breakfast menu. Ravi held Geeta’s hand, walked with her to the dining table, pulled a chair for her and sat beside her. Geeta felt that something was wrong. He kept looking at the empty plate. She kept looking at Ravi waiting to hear the dreaded news. There was silence. Silence that was horrifying. Silence that was certainly not golden. Silence. Finally Ravi looked at Geeta and said “I am sorry. This is really hard, but you must know.” Geeta was listening. Listening. “When I married you, I thought, here is the lady I shall love forever. I promised to be with you till my last breath. But, things change, situations change, priorities change, PEOPLE change…PEOPLE in OUR LIVES change….”. There was silence once again. A silence that deafened Geeta. Geeta understood what Ravi was trying to convey. She just whispered in a trembling voice : “Who is she?”

“Neerja”

“…Jaiswal?”

“Yes….It all happened so….”

“I dint ask for any explanations. I don’t even want to ask. But tomorrow when our child asks for an explanation….”

“Our child?”

“Yes, I am 3 months pregnant with your child…”

“What…you never told me…”

“Yeah….didn’t…was about to tell you but work….”

“Work, Work, Work…look at what your work has done…”

“My work?? How can you be so insensitive….?”

There was silence once again. A silence that deafened Ravi.

Geeta broke the silence saying “You may leave with Neerja if you want. I can raise our child….MY child….”

Geeta’s was interrupted when Ravi’s cell rang. He picked up the phone. It was Neerja on the other end. She sounded excited “Hey Ravi, Mr. Jaiswal has been unaffected by the news. He told me that I may do what I want. You hear that….I hope things are fine at your end…”

“No things are not fine….”

“I guess we’ll have to think about our decision once again. I love you but I’ve loved her and she loves me. Give me some more time….”

Neerja disconnected the phone.

Geeta went to work. The decision had to be Ravi’s. He sat on the swing overlooking their garden. All through the day he was lost in his thoughts. It is difficult to make a decision. He realized for the first time that making decisions would be so difficult……”

He finally made a decision. He picked up the phone and called Neerja. He wanted to tell her what his final decision was. Some strange voice answered the phone. When asked about Neerja, the voice said “Neerja memsaab has gifted her mobile to me and said she is going forever for good.”

Ravi understood the reason. She didn’t want him to go through the pain of making a decision. She wanted it all to be in his mind…..