Mapping the city

I have been to Pune ‘n’ times during the last 15-17 years but I never knew how to reach from Pune railway station to my relatives place scattered all over the Pune city. I used to trust the rickshaw driver and he used to correctly drop me at the place where I wanted to be and I used to get charged according to the meter. Even if we had gone to Pune by our car, my relatives place was so near to the NH4 that I never needed to enter city. Once in my relatives place, they used to take me all over the city. In the comforts of an AC car and chit-chatting with them, I may have toured the whole city but never knew which route they took because I never bothered to remember and note down important landmarks in Pune. I never travelled in ‘Pune Municipal transport’ buses. When these buses used to take a circular round on a traffic island, I used to comment that PMT buses have a very long and dangerous tail. In short, I never mapped Pune in my brain.

And seven months back, a new city, Hyderabad awaited to welcome me. From somewhere, the virtue of alertness came in me. When you want to get dropped at some place in Hyderabad whose name you can’t even pronounce, saying that name to the bus conductor wrongly and getting stared from your co-passengers became a routine thing to me. The transport system was tough to deal at the start but it was the cheapest way to roam the city. Unlike Mumbai, the rickshaws in Hyderabad don’t go by meter even if they have meter installed in them.

I used to remember important landmarks in the whole city, be it an historical building, KFC restaurant or a small tea shop and used to carefully listen what other people are saying to the conductor and where they used to get down. In this way all the stop names became clear and I was able to say them clearly like a native. Once I boarded a bus to go to ‘Punjagutta’, but the conductor said that the bus will go to NIMS and not ‘Punjagutta’. I blatantly said yes to him and took out my age old smartphone, searched what NIMS meant (It’s actually Nizam’s institute of medical sciences), tracked down how far are both of them and got down at the proper stop which was walking distance from where I wanted to actually go. Such quick decisions really helped me. I also tracked down a bungalow in a posh locality in Hyderabad which had a Rolls-Royce and it was my landmark when the bus passed from the front of the bungalow. Plus once I sat beside the conductor when the crowd in the bus was thin, and the good guy explained me all the bus routes in Hyderabad. After that, traveling in Hyderabad was a cake walk for me. If you meet good people in your life, it can make things really simpler.

Last month I covered all the major roads in Hyderabad in the public transport system. I can say that I mapped Hyderabad in less than 6 months flat. The situation is so good that I can direct a new comer in Hyderabad. A sense of achievement and satisfaction of taming a city is immense and one should experience it at least in our own country or a completely a foreign land.   

:D

Canteen blues

The conversation in a canteen of a 10 billion dollar IT company during lunch time between two fat women goes on like this:

1^st fat women: (Seeing the ultra-thin tiffin box of the other woman) Are you on diet?

2^nd fat woman: No. Are you on fast?

1^st fat woman: No.

A tasteless lunch to the tongue complemented by sarcastic words heard to the ear. 

South India:

A place where people eat rice with their hands.

But in a 10 billion dollar IT Company, where mannerism creeps in, two hands are substituted with two spoons. In spite of being written in the hall that please take one spoon, South Indians take two spoons to eat rice. After being constantly mocked for their eating habits, they have progressed a bit further to eating rice with two spoons. What has this caused in our canteen?

Shortage of spoons in lunch hour. People don’t even let the spoons reach the serving table. Spoons have now become a priced commodity.

The office canteen is a place where people went out their anger among their friends which they can’t do it in office cubicle. Back bitching is so common that one person does all the back bitching among the group while the other people listen to that person as if he is giving them enlightenment in life.

The less said about rotis, the more it is better. The extent to which you get rotis made one random guy comment that at least prisoners in jail might be getting a good deal.

One fine day, an employee discovers a hair in the dal. He shouts at the top of voice and the whole canteen stops eating. The catering head guy tries to apologize and tries to make a modest face in front of employee. The same employee had got screwed by a client last night and now the roles have only got reversed.

The big advantage that a catering staff have with them while preparing food for some 10000 odd people is that you don’t require efforts even to chop vegetables like onion and tomatoes. The small tomatoes are just put in the curry water. What if the small tomato has a worm? Wouldn’t it give a distinctive taste to our tongue?

Biryani festivals in the office canteen cause a mad scramble at the serving table. Everyone tries to go early resulting in long line that stretches the whole hall. Friday is the day when everyone tries to imbibe everything is good feeling by eating chicken biryani resulting again in longer queues compared to all other four days.

When you see an empty place in the crowded office canteen hall, it means that is directly below the AC vents. Who wants to eat food stone cold!

The story ends with a sweet. A high calorie sweet satisfies your tongue at the end of a tasteless lunch.

'Paaniwala dena'

The first monsoon rains quenched the thirst of a dry city after a terrible summer. The pre-monsoon rains caused the peacocks to display a colourful dance amid the jungle of concrete glass structures.

The summer passed away and I survived it with the help of coconut water every day. Coconut water is one thing which I rarely used to drink in Mumbai became the source of my life here. I realized that you take things like coconut water granted in your life when they are available bountiful around you. You realize their value when you stay away from them.

The ‘Nariyalwallah’ in this dry city hardly knows any Hindi but I formed a good rapport with him. He heard the word ‘malai’ from my mouth for the first time in his life. His name is ‘Venkat’. The most common name here in South India. He has put up his cart bellow a small ‘Gulmohar’ tree. Being a regular customer, Venkat offers me one rupee discount on every coconut.

He stays away from his family some 350 kms near Andhra coast line. Early morning a truck comes from his hometown, unloads 800 INR worth coconut and drives away. He then stacks them up on his cart and the remaining ones on the ground.  His life revolves around coconuts and his hand cart.  The handcart has been partioned into three parts. The bottom most has been kept for storing his food materials. He cooks near the cart itself on a kerosene stove. The middle one stacks his coconuts while the upper one stacks up his personal items. Venkat sleeps on the cart sometimes with mosquito net. The cart is the hardest place to sleep and he manages to sleep on it besides a road that has cars plying 24 by 7 ferrying IT employees. The tree branches houses the mirror, glass and other cutlery items.

Venkat used to keep two coconuts daily for me from the huge stack of coconut in summers in case the coconuts finish by the end of a hot summer day. His life depends on the coconut truck arrives early morning. No truck, no business and he used to kill his time for the whole day by sharpening his knife. He is loyal to only one supplier and doesn’t trust others even if it means loss of business. He takes water from my building for which he has to give the caretaker of my building some free coconuts. He knows my preferences very well.

The adversities which I face daily are nothing compared to what Venkat faces day to day. The small cart in front my building humbles me about millions of Indians that live this daily life. The infinite labourers who have constructed the building in which I work, the ‘chaiwallah’, all survive on their fate. A small calamity like a medical illness strikes them very hard than a bolt of lightning struck down on earth. They don’t live a dignified life. Life in India is cheap. If few people die due to starvation every day in our country, we don’t care as we have become insensitive to human life. We don’t appreciate dignity of labour here. The labourer who cleans manholes and risks his life by inhaling poisonous gases never gets a pat on his back for preventing the sewer water from flooding our clogged streets.

Indians never clean the street in front of their home but we want our homes to be sparkling clean. We never have taken a broom in our hand and cleaned the filthy and dusty streets. We have never thanked the garbage collector who collects hazardous waste thrown by us because we Indians don’t take pain to segregate our waste or we don’t have the willingness to start it. We lack a social initiative to start it but this initiative exists in every science text book of a school going kid. The rag pickers do the job of segregating our waste. What would happen if those rag pickers don’t separate the metal and plastic out of waste? The role of rag pickers is looked down upon in India. In fact, they are acting as a substitute for a failed system that promises them nothing!

Insensitiveness has crept in our heart that we prefer to keep things as it is and never try to change it. Community feeling is absent in India. We first try to look after ourselves and the community comes at last. The community feeling never existed in India even though we have such a diverse culture.

‘Anna, paaniwala dena aur phir malai wala’……………

Twitter: A social experiment

I signed up on twitter due to buzz created by celebrities way back in mid-2009. I followed only celebrities and let the account lay fallow for two years. Sometimes I visited twitter what some of the dumb celebrities and some very good celebrities were saying all about their life. I got never interested in twitter in spite of being one of the early movers in India.


After I completed my engineering, my free time increased by leaps and bounds. Slowly I started to visit twitter more often. Trends following on twitter hooked me and I used to randomly follow people whose tweets I used to like and it mostly contained the twitter crowd from Mumbai or Delhi.


Slowly I started to follow bloggers and people who tweeted random and funny stuffs. I un-followed dumb celebrities who promoted their carp movies and tried to keep a tab on people who tweeted good links about any aspects of life.


I started to tweet naturally. My total tweets in two years were around 77 to be precise and suddenly I was tweeting around 10 tweets a day and it was increasing daily. I began to interact with random people having crazy twitter handles and insanely awesome people. Some people were kind enough to follow me back. Some celebs and prominent journalists even replied to my tweets which I had never expected in my life. Some tweets were meaningful while others were usual chatting about random stuffs happening in neighbourhood.


The timeline is a fun place every time I logged in. Sometimes a fight crops up between two random people, someone’s account gets hacked and then all hell comes down to earth. Blog posts directed at someone are countered back to the same user. The topics trending on twitter are the most funny ones. The one that I vividly remember is #YoAdvaniSoOld.


Twitter is used actively for promoting a brand or any festival. All the big brands have presence on twitter. The makers of blackberry, RIM took a very bad beating during the BBM outrage so did Airtel. RIM and Airtel, both had to provide compensation to their customers in this competitive environment. It was the effect of twitter users forcing big companies to give in to demands of customers. I got free Airtel mobile internet for 3 months, that too on 3G network. Many brands take a very bad beating if large number of people are not satisfied with your service. If you are in service industry, buckle up!


Twitter played a very important role in the Arab spring uprising so did it play a bad part in London riots. Twitter is carving a very own place among the social networks.The 140 characters make you apprehensive about the formation of a sweet and short tweet that can be broadcasted to the world.
Being a tech addict, I got behind the scenes to actually know how twitter actually works. Twitter bases its application programming interface(API) off the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture. REST architecture refers to a collection of network design principles that define resources and ways to address and access data. The architecture is a design philosophy, not a set of blueprints -- there's no single prescribed arrangement of computers, servers and cables. For Twitter, a REST architecture in part means that the service works with most Web syndication formats.Web syndication is a pretty simple concept: An application gathers information from one source and sends it out to various destinations. There are a few syndication formats used on the Web. Twitter is compatible with two of them -- Really Simple Syndication(RSS) and Atom Syndication Format (Atom). How does twitter store so many tweets? Go out and find out the answer yourself! 


Twitter sometimes waste your time. The more the time you spend on twitter, your productivity gets reduced(Not always) Some users are on twitter day and night. No limitation at all. People updating on twitter via FourSquare are the most irritable tweets you don’t want to read. Does the user want to get stalked by people by updating their own position every now and then! Twitter addiction is bad for health and sex life!


Twitter has carved itself a special position among the crowd of social networking sites that are jostling for publicity. Twitter has along way to go.


PS: Facebook gets a very bad beating via tweets. My twitter handle: @rohittalekar Follow me!

Half ticket

Yesterday, I was traveling in a state transport bus.

I was enjoying the cold morning wind and a pleasant ride.

A couple along with a child was sitting behind me. The child was on the lap of her mother.

The state transport bus was commanded by a fiery woman conductor for a good 400 kilometres run.

After taking a ticket from me, she suddenly went to the next seat and asked the innocent child- In which standard (grade) are you studying?

The child seated comfortably in the lap of his mother said-First Standard (1^st Std.)

Lady conductor- Two full and a half ticket will be issued since his age is greater than five years.

Mother- Madam, he goes in kindergarten. His age is less than 5 years, so no ticket.

Lady conductor- Don’t try to argue with me. Your child said his correct age and you will be issued a half ticket.

Hence, a long argument started between the mother and lady conductor. The lady conductor argued that if the flying squad comes for checking in the bus, you will be fined double the amount of the ticket. It’s a better option that you buy a half ticket or else it will prove a costly affair to your family. The mother was adamant that he goes to kindergarten. The fiery lady conductor pulled out two and a half ticket from the vending machine and the family had to pay for two and a half ticket.

In the whole situation, her husband was a mute spectator. Typical thinking of men-why to leap in a fight going on between two ladies? Better keep quiet. May be he knew that his son was indeed in first standard.

Imagine the boy beaten black and blue by his mother on reaching home for causing loss to their family and straining the finances of the home that the mother manages in today’s era of high inflation. After a bad beating, he would have finally understood what to say when the next time a bus conductor asks his age?

The fact is that we are being taught from childhood that being dishonest is indeed beneficial to the family. There goes in drain the moral of a story that you were taught in childhood- Honesty is the best policy. A family looks at the narrower picture that the money saved by not buying the half ticket and imbibes dishonesty in their own child. The bigger picture lies here is that they are spoiling their own child by imbibing wrong values in his mind. By saving a half ticket, they are causing loss to already cheap public transport that benefits them daily and saves lot of money for the whole family. A private bus operator charges double the amount for the same distance compared to state transport operator. A family first looks into their own need before looking into needs of the whole nation. The child dishonesty in early years of life will ultimately harm him in future even if he escapes next time without ticket traveling in the bus.

The problems with Indians are that we are dishonest. That leads to all vices in our society including corruption. A wallet dropped in the middle of road will never reach you and you will spend many days trying to get duplicate license and blocking your credit/debit card. This leads to loss of productivity which in general caused loss to the whole nation if you look at the bigger picture.

We Indians act like greedy people in general because sometimes the whole system causes us to behave in that way. The system will change if we start to think about our nation first. Someone has rightly said that passing Jan-Lokpal bill will not completely stem out corruption in our country. Changing our mind set will help root out corruption more than passing the Jan-Lokpal bill.

Remember what John Kennedy said to his countrymen-‘ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country’

I wish some of our dumb politicians make some sensible statements in public.

Lack of Ad sense shown by Air*el

1. A Close up of the Advertisement

The iPhone 4S which was launched in USA on 14^th October, 2011 finally made the Indian debut on 9^th December, 2011. Ironically, this was the last product that was given the final touches by Steve Jobs. Though his sense of touch will be seen in all future apple products, this was the last product that Steve Jobs reviewed.


Let’s get to the core point. IPhone 4S is sold in India through two Indian mobile carriers, Airtel and Aircel. Let’s denote them as Air*el. Going with the tradition of previous launches, Air*el published page full advertisements in leading Indian newspapers. Let’s keep aside the pricing of these phones as they cost a bomb and an Indian will think twice before purchasing it.


The 9^th December ad in my paper made me think that Air*el can’t print local content in the ad. In short, they needed to do localization of ad before spending huge money on the ad. What does localization of Ad refer to?


If you refer to the first picture from the top, the one that appeared in the newspaper, I have noted some points which the company could have rectified so that it can appeal to local audience. Let’s start from the predominant phone screen displayed it the ad:


1. The area around the network signal strength bar: Air*el could have displayed their carrier name around the top corner left area instead of leaving it as only 3G. By displaying their carrier name in the ad, they would have added credibility that iPhone 4S works in India after that famous #4Snwglitch that trended in India.


2. Local weather: Instead of displaying the weather of the distant Cupertino, it would have been better if they would have displayed the weather of any damn city in India. Again the issue of localization of content for people leaving in India.


3. The market indices status: Instead of displaying whether the share market is up or down in Dow Jones, they would have displayed our very own Sensex or Nifty. Again, why would an Indian be interested in seeing whether the market is up or down in USA when he has invested money in Indian share market. Though global markets affect Indian markets, he would primarily have Sensex displayed on his home screen rather than Dow Jones.


4. Foreign names: It would have been better if Sachin Tendulkar would have given you a missed call instead of Jack Symon. Again Indian names appeal more than foreign names which some Indians can hardly pronounce.


I am comfortable with application displayed on the screen and the reminders stuff. Thank God!


If the Indian mobile carriers can spend huge money on printing these ads, can’t they localize content for Indian people? Air*el officials and PR people had the iPhone 4S in their stores for at least one week prior to their launch. Can’t they insert a micro SIM card in the phone, activate it and show the local content instead of global content? This takes hardly any time and a good photographer will enhance the beauty of the phone and appeal to Indians.


‘Glocalization’, giving global things a local feel would have greatly benefited the two mobile carriers. Glocalization is relatively new term borrowed by me from one of my friend and local names appeal more than any other thing to a local person.


I wish the two mobile carriers had some Ad sense after spending huge money on ad campaign.

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Driving in the fast lane

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia

Driving habits of Indians don’t wean out easily, even on a state of art Mumbai-Pune six lane expressway. This state of art highway was built to showcase driving skills of Indians and not to lessen time of travel. After driving on this expressway for six times, my observations about Indian drivers keep on increasing like a series of numbers in Geometric progression.

1. No one follows the 80 Km/hr. limit displayed at regular intervals. I followed it as my dad sat beside me on all the six occasions. :P

2. The first lane is dedicated to cars and SUV’s who want to cruise at an excess of 120 km/hr. Even state transport buses cruise in first lane at a very high speed. Government was mooting of installing speed limit breakers on the buses but it is still not implemented putting the lives of passengers at risk. If you move to first lane at a speed of 80 Km/hr. you will be honked to death.

3. If you are plying at a speed of 80 Km/hr. on the second lane, cars and SUV’s will overtake you from first and third lane, from both sides scaring the shit out of you.

4. Lane cutting: This is the favourite pastime of Indian divers. This quality is possessed by instinct and young people like me learn it and try to implement it if they are in a hurry to reach the destination.

5. Queue: The toll centre on expressway has around 10 booths collecting a hefty toll. Cars in the first lane make it a point to cut the lane and go to the toll booth which has minimum queue. A car in first lane, at very high speed has the will to go to the extreme left toll booth to avoid queue. Law of queues: ‘If you are standing in a queue , the other queue always moves faster than the one in which you are standing’ . Indians lack patience. They try to leave their own queue and try to penetrate the other queue prompting heavy honking and abuses by the other driver.

6. Ghat section: Truck drivers make a mess here. When the old highway joins the new one after crossing half the ghat, the problems start compounding. Heavy trucks move at a speed of 10 Km/hr. and when illiterate Indian truck drivers move their truck in the first lane trying to overtake other truck, it creates a trail of cars behind truck. While climbing uphill, there is an S shaped curve under a bridge which comes after climbing 3/4^th of the ghat. Before the S shaped curve, you will always see a car or truck in broken (failed) state. This stops the traffic completely in one lane and a bottle neck gets formed. You will always find a towing vehicle and a mechanic before the S shapes begins. The mechanic is always waiting for a truck or car to fail and on all three times while climbing uphill; I have seen a mechanic repairing a car with harried passengers standing by the car. The mechanic might me making good money daily. This fact of many cars getting stalled before the S curve was verified by my relatives, who also have observed the same phenomenon. My relative explained me that cars having poor maintenance have their clutch get jammed while climbing uphill and continuous pressing them going uphill aggravates the problem and hence the car gets stalled mid-way.

7. Cars coming at high price have a roof top mounted on the top. I have seen people coming out of the roof top to enjoy quick breeze. Newly married couples take advantage of this roof top to enjoy cool breeze and distracting drivers like me.

8. If you are driving at a high speed, it requires immense concentration. The expressway is banked for cars plying only at 80 km/hr. Try to increase your speed on a curve and experience the force that pulls your car. This increases the risk of accident with a car coming in other lane.

9. While driving downhill, don’t increase your speed beyond 50 km/hr. Gravity takes care even if you are not accelerating and a few 100 meters of path covered can increase your speed by 20 km/hr. The dividers are risky at some places and it requires hard barking if you over speed. A high speeding car can swirl from first lane to third lane while coming downhill! Be careful to look on both the sides of the lane while coming down. Newbies find downhill tough than uphill as the speed increases without even pressing accelerator. This scares the shit out of anyone who is driving the vehicle. I too have experienced it first time when I was coming downhill.

Be ready for sudden change in climate while going downhill or uphill. Khopoli area is heavily polluted at night. And lastly always engage in safe driving. The older driving license had a message on the back, ‘Driving is privilege given by Government and not a right’.