Best laid plans

For me the last days of every year are perhaps the most memorable days of the year. Last two years, we had spent the Christmas and New Year in the States, with daughter, son-in-law and grandson. That feeling and joy of spending the time together with family and loved ones could not be experienced this year. However, the fact remains that I consider the month of December as one of my favorite time of the year.

While I was working, there were some casual leaves that had to be availed of, as otherwise it would lapse. I used to spend time planning vacations clubbing my casual leave with the national holidays when I would get the new year calender. And when the year comes to a close, I will be explaining to my family why I could not make those short vacations and racking my brains for finding a plausible reasons for not taking the casual leave.

Reasons for not taking the leave came easily to me but the funniest was always the one that I liked to keep the leave to the last minute. There were others in the office who thought exactly like me. They did not take the leave till the last possible minute and announced their plans to take leave at the eleventh hour. While at the beginning of my career, I was at the bottom at the office hierarchy and naturally I was persuaded not to take leave as my immediate higher up wanted to enjoy his leave. But when I got promoted to higher grades, my luck as far as taking leave at the year end, remained more or less same. It was my juniors who wanted to take the leave and as I was afraid of their ire , I was invariably the one who managed the show during the last few days of the year. Later on I found that I need not hunt for reasons for not taking the leave, as office amended the rules of casual leave and one could accumulate the unveiled portion of their casual leave of a particular year, for a maximum period of three years. This arrangement saved my casual leave, but it did not save my face in the family.

I was determined to make good the lost opportunities of vacation after my retirement. Here also, something or the other, always crops up in the way of my taking vacations. The irony is that it is not confined to year end plans, but applicable for the whole year. I am required to find someone to look after my house whenever I plan any vacation and more so persuade my sister to take care of my aged mother who loathes any changes to her routine. Security considerations demand that I keep someone to look after the house in my absence as I had lost valuables, more of sentimental value when we were away the year before last. That time sister had agreed to take care of my mother after some dramatic scenes and moral persuasions.

Now I find a silver lining, as the Government have come out with a bill whereby children are required to look after their aged parents in their hour of need. The Act even provides stiff penalty if children are found wanting in this area. Maybe if the Act also amended to take care of situations where the parents require attention for short time when the regular care giver needs some respite and vacation, I would be merrier.

The Bus Ride

I had a month long trip to my native place in Kerala with a definite purpose behind it. I wanted to get some certificates, and only had a rough idea on how to go about accomplishing it.

My first and foremost thought was about the place to stay as it would decide the travails of our daily commute, as I could not afford individual transport. In the interior places, it is still a trapeze act while traveling in the mini-bus (often referred to as the kutti-bus). While the 'kili' will push you inside as soon as you are able to board the bus, the 'conductor' will urge/implore you to move along the way where there is already a human mass. This exercise is a continuous one and will cease only when you have to get down jostling for space while guarding your valuables lest it is picked up by expert hands. In the privately operated buses there is one more character, who is called checker, who asks you about your destination and ensures that the conductor collects the fare from each passenger.


The drivers of these mini buses are a peculiar lot too. He is a person whose sole responsibility is to see that there is no other moving object in front of his vehicle and he ensures that the bus reaches the places/stops ahead of other buses. And by this, he ensures that his mini bus, picks up the crowd of people at that particular stop. He seems to have no time for a smooth driving experience, nor is he bothered about the hapless commuters who are precariously struggling to balance inside the overcrowded mini bus. He negotiates the sharp curves in such a fashion that the passengers get swayed violently as he has not reduced the speed of the vehicle. And then he looks back at his hapless captives with a inviting smile on his face expecting an applause for his action.

The bus owner in his wisdom has provided seats in which you cannot get in, as the space between each seat is just too little. Instead he has provided more vacant space for passengers to hang on to the overhead steel rod for their dear life. I had a few words with a fellow passenger about the nature of the seats provided in the bus. He blamed lack of supervision from Government authorities who issues the license for the bus. When I pointed out the bus owner could have on his own could ensured comfortable seating arrangements in his bus, my fellow traveler was of the firm opinion that it was the responsibility of the Government authorities. As usual, I lost the interest to continue with my point!

Now there is also reservations made on the seats - some are reserved for ladies, some are reserved for senior citizens and handicapped passengers. In buses which are operated by transport corporation managed by State Government one seat is even reserved for conductor. In one particular bus the seat next to the conductor was reserved for 'andhan' (a sightless person), though how he would locate the seat in an over-crowded bus is beyond me.

The good thing about these 'kutti' (mini) buses are that they connect the interior places in the state with the nearby towns and provide a cheap and fast means of transport. While doing so, the majority of passengers endure the small irritants which only encourages the bus operators to solely look at their profit margin only.

There is another class of passengers in the bus who deserves our sympathy the most -- the students traveling to their schools/collages. As they are required to pay only a fraction of the normal fare, they are not allowed to board the bus, at least at the starting point, till the normal fare paying passengers board the bus and fill it up to its full capacity. These students are never able to get a seat, as at any time a normal fare paying passenger may signal and board the bus. It is a struggle to travel in the crowded buses with a small load of books in the backpack. The only consolation is that backpack allows free movements of both hands to hang on the overhead steel rods. No marks are given for the correct guess on how short, small students could reach the overhead steel rods for an uneventful ride, though.

---

Picture taken from KSRTC website.

Movie Nights

It nearly four years since we went to see a movie in a theater. Looking back I cannot find any reason for this lull as I am an avid moviegoer. Perhaps, the main reason was that there were not many theaters nearby that were screening movies in Tamil/Malayalam, and even if they screened the movies in these languages, it was at odd hours causing much inconvenience. More over, their charges for the show were exorbitant.


Thinking about the charges,I could still remember vividly the excitement when one of my cousins offered to take us to a movie way back in 1962. He had come on vacation and the theater had newly come up. The pricey tickets were at Rs.1 and he took us all by bus for the movie. But after seeing the movie we had to walk down more than 7 kms in semi darkness as there were no street lights worth mentioning. However, it was pleasant to walk during the night amongst a group of people listening to their discussions on everything under the sun (that time the moon) on the earth. This was my second movie experience, the first being a Hindi movie which I had seen along with my classmates when we were taken to a show by the school authorities. As I did not understand anything in that movie and I returned home cursing the moment that I decided to join the group for I had to pay a hefty contribution of 25 paise to join the excursion.

After these two movies, I did not watch any till I started earning. My friend & I used to go for the last show in the theater and we cycled down the distance without worrying much about traffic rules. We had no light on our cycles and it was sheer luck we reached home safely every night. I remember we did this exercise thrice in a week, as by that time, three theaters had come up in our village and they would change the movie every week.

Later I shifted my base to Bombay & on getting the job there we patronized the late night shows once again, so as to accommodate my friend who worked in shifts. We did not leave a single movie which came to the theater for a number of years. The movie going madness finally ended with my marriage and there was some lull in my movie seeing mania that I again resumed with a vengeance in an unexpected manner. This time around we bought a vcd cassette player and our living room turned into a tiny theater during successive nights. The number of movies we saw during this time was so huge, as we saw movies in three languages. The surprise was that we still found time to see some good English movies in the theater as well.

Coming back to the present, after my retirement, we restricted our movies to the ones we came across on TVs and thanks to power cut and black out of cable, we either saw the first half or the second half of movies. I am waiting for the day when the channels, instead of repeating the movie, would just continuously run the same movie on the same day - something similar to the "All day runs of Law and Order" that we have seen in US televisions. We then just might be able to see the movie in full until of course the power situation improves.

Today's movie which we saw in the theater was 'dashavataram' and in spite of my eagerness, I reached the hall 10 minutes late.The culprit was the advertisement for the movie. In it, it was mentioned that the matinee will begin at 10.30, but the theater people started the movie at 10.00 for reasons known to them. The movie turned out to be a good enjoyment with some good action scenes and excellent photography. For a change there was no separate comedy track in the movie but the characterization of the heroine turned out to be irritating at times. While returning from the movie, traffic was light and there was a dip in the air& the ride was pleasant.

I may resume my movie madness yet again!

The journey back

We had a beautiful and pleasant stay with our daughter, son-in-law and our grandson in the States. The climate was great, and with no power failures, no non-working telephone and above all no traffic jams we completely forgot about home. We counted the days we were there as we knew good things never last forever. Soon it was time for us to return & what an eventful return it was!

Reaching home, we decided to hail a taxi (cab) to get ourselves home. The first taxi we hailed quoted a price for which we could have traveled 4+ times to our house and back! Even before we could react to this demand, he looked at our luggage and said he had made a mistake and revised his quote. At this time an auto driver came along and quoted his price. But we knew our luggage won't be safe in an auto as we had 4 large suitcases that will not fit inside an auto. Looking at the luggage, he started to suggest that one of us travel with the luggage and the second engage another auto to travel. With a quick calculation (even without calculating the fare for the second auto) I realized that the fare quoted by him would have been half the price of the taxi, which we had originally thought of hiring.

In the meantime, I called my friend who came with his car, and after loading the luggage in the car, it was obvious that only one person could travel with him. I sent my wife and waited a few meters away from the airport for that elusive autowalla to take me home.

This time, it was a little different story, as I was waiting for the auto away from the airport. More over, I was alone and without any luggage. Many passing autos did quote a smaller amount, but I was hoping to get an auto within the amount I was willing to pay. Finally an autowalla told me that he would charge me by the meter and as is the norm and approved by Government for the night travel, I will have to pay 50 per cent over and above the amount shown by the meter. I agreed to it, as it was not a number the autowalla thought of at the moment which he might change once reaching the destination but by the meter which with some good faith I assumed had not been rigged.

He brought the auto into life with a blast of noise and continued making noise by blowing the horn, seemingly at the insects flying around as there was no one else on the road at that hour. The street dogs welcomed us home with their load barks, waking up the neighbors’ in the process as well. Next day we were told by our neighbors’ that whenever the street dogs bark continuously at night they check because with so many burglaries taking place at night, the noise made by the dogs have turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

After entering the house, I checked on the telephone to tell my daughter about our arrival, but the telephone was dead. There was a thick layer of dust that had settled all around the house and it was next to impossible to get any sleep. Instead we sat down, reliving the days that we had spent at the States sitting amidst the noise of the street dogs and the smell of dusty surroundings.

You could say we had finally arrived at home!