Wednesday, January 19, 2011
...
You know you have spent too much time abroad when during your visit to India, you enter a restaurant and, for a moment, wonder, "wow, yahaan par to sab desi hain" before you realize, "you are in India, dude" :D
Friday, January 07, 2011
Ashamed. And a little sad.
You grow up in a protected environment with education being the only thing expected from you and then just at the moment you should be finishing college and entering "life", you escape abroad .. and on top of it you do not believe in even reading newspapers.. and yet you tend to think you know as much about the world as you "need" to know... and then there is that moment which makes you realize how unaware you are about things that you "should" know..
I am visiting Microsoft Research Bangalore for a week, and though I have heard it several times that in our country the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer each day, I guess a week in Bangalore showed me the truth of this much more than I had ever known..
As I landed at the guest house today where I have been put up for the week, I realized I didn't have change to pay the autowalla, and he didn't have change either.. I asked the watchman of the guest house, "Bhaiya, aap ke paas paanch sau ka change hai kya?". He begins to fumble with the coins from his wallet which is all he seemed to have. I realized the mistake I had made. He had mistaken me for having asked him for a change of five rupees. I didn't know what to do and wanted to step back, but somehow, out of momentum clarified that I was asking for a change for rupees five hundred. "Humaare paas kahaan se aayenge, sir", he said. And I guess I haven't felt so ashamed in ages. I said sorry. Twice. And then he said, "sorry". I didn't have anything more to say that could make up.
In a city where you see tonnes of people squandering thousands every day, and the prices of everything adjusted according to these people, a lot of people even with a reasonable honorable job must be struggling for mere survival, leave aside the unemployed.
I don't know what can be done. I don't know if we can do something. But I still want to try to contribute towards changing this. At the moment, I don't know how...
I am visiting Microsoft Research Bangalore for a week, and though I have heard it several times that in our country the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer each day, I guess a week in Bangalore showed me the truth of this much more than I had ever known..
As I landed at the guest house today where I have been put up for the week, I realized I didn't have change to pay the autowalla, and he didn't have change either.. I asked the watchman of the guest house, "Bhaiya, aap ke paas paanch sau ka change hai kya?". He begins to fumble with the coins from his wallet which is all he seemed to have. I realized the mistake I had made. He had mistaken me for having asked him for a change of five rupees. I didn't know what to do and wanted to step back, but somehow, out of momentum clarified that I was asking for a change for rupees five hundred. "Humaare paas kahaan se aayenge, sir", he said. And I guess I haven't felt so ashamed in ages. I said sorry. Twice. And then he said, "sorry". I didn't have anything more to say that could make up.
In a city where you see tonnes of people squandering thousands every day, and the prices of everything adjusted according to these people, a lot of people even with a reasonable honorable job must be struggling for mere survival, leave aside the unemployed.
I don't know what can be done. I don't know if we can do something. But I still want to try to contribute towards changing this. At the moment, I don't know how...
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