I had a dream…

I once had a dream that

I lived in a perfect world…A world where there are no pains; there is only love everywhere, smiles all around & absolutely no tears

I lived in the world there are no corruptions. No one ever bothered about being corrupt nor entertained anyone who is trying to be corrupt.

I lived in the world where everyone just bothered & worried about their work & minded their own business, & didn’t interfere in others life, unless the help was asked for.

I lived in the world where there were only people who would help each other & helped unconditionally…

I lived in the world where people had perfect health. No one ever suffered from any disease.

I lived in world where people have a very good habit of reading & more important people implement all the good things that they have read about.

I lived in the world where there are no police men or cops as there are no thieves or murderers

I lived in the world where there are plenty of chocolates & ice-creams & eating them did no harm to your teeth, health or weight!!

I lived in the world where we don’t grow old with time, but we get better with time…

I lived in the world where rich people are not defined by the money they possess rather they are defined by the good heart & the wellness they have got in for others

I lived in the world there is no cruelty and where money means nothing

I lived in the world there is no discrimination on any one for anything. Black & white just remained colors and didn’t mean to cause racism

I lived in the world where everyone ate blackberry and blueberry just like strawberry and not played with it or used it for any kind of communication.

I lived in the world where there would be no religion & all religions were just the same

I lived in the world there were no sufferings & no fights, and so no army required for any country.

I lived in the world of trust where trust meant everything in life.

I lived in the world where people valued people more than anything else.

I lived in the world where one didn’t find fault in another person.

I lived in the idealistic world… I lived in the best world… I lived in the world that I always wanted to live… I loved that world…

But when I got up from my sleep, I realized that it is just a dream & my routine life had to continue with the world we are in. My mind said, stupid, that ideal world can never exist & if it did, it would be boring.!!! While my heart said, may be few generations down the line, may be next birth, may be with a miracle all these dreams WILL come true…!!! Life is all about dream you see!!!

True Teacher

Is it with me or is it with most of the people, I kept wondering since last August. It turned out to be that it is with MOST of the people.

We elders, from whom do we learn the most? Is it from other elders? Is it from our peers? Is it from Internet? From whom do we learn the most? Not from the academics point of view, but from behavioral science & from understanding the life perspective?

I have asked this question myself a thousand of times & always found that we learn a lot from our children. They are our true teachers as they are growing & of course as we are growing too…

Children teach us to cry when we feel like crying & laugh when we are happy. So what the big deal about it? Big deal is that we forget to laugh when we feel like laughing & we don’t cry when we feel like crying. There is social pressure as we grow up to “BEHAVE” & not laugh loud in the crowd or not cry in front of others… But kids do that all the time. They smile & cry when they feel like. They don’t have the fear of social pressure or what others think of them. That’s why they are always happy unlike elders. They cry & they will be done with those tears in few minutes & they are back to their momentum in few minutes of cry. They will be able to get back to their momentum within no time as they did just what they felt like doing at the time that they felt like doing.

They never try to please others. They will always be themselves & talk their heart out. When we start learning from them we realize what a tremendous curve it has been.

Kids enjoy small things in life every day, like playing in water or attending a friend’s birthday party or their own birthday for that matter. Why cannot we enjoy the way they do? Why cannot we go to a friend’s birthday party with the same enthusiasm and energy that they have when they have to attend any of their friend’s birthday party?

They teach us to tell the truth always no matter what. A recent incidence in the bus took me by surprise & felt pity for the embarrassment that mom had to go through for not telling the truth. I was commuting home from my work place & was sitting and enjoying the weather for a while. In one of the stops a neatly dressed up lady got into the bus with her beautiful, cute daughter, who were probably attending a function. Their dresses & make up they had put on them told me so. When the conductor approached the lady for checking tickets, she took only 1 ticket to her destined stop. Immediately conductor asked how old is her daughter? Mom said 6 years & then realized that she should have found out the age for which the travelling ticket is not required for kids. By then conductor had already taken the money & given the ticket to her. Mom asked the conductor till what age ticket is not required. He said “6”. Immediately she said this Dec 7^th only she will be 6. As soon as her daughter who was next to her heard this, gave her an extremely wired look & told “ah!! This Dec 7^th, I will be 7”. Her mother felt a little embarrassed & wanted to cover up her own mistake. So she said, no, you will be 6 years. Had she kept quite, may be her daughter would not have embarrassed her any further. But she pulled the words from her daughter’s mouth when she said, I know your age. Keep quite. Her daughter said, Amma, I am 2^nd standard, so I will be 7. Appa has told me that I am going to be 7 & so he is getting me 7 candles this year.!!!! Things cannot get any worse than this.

We teach them to be truthful & honest. But we ourselves will not be. Why don’t we follow what we teach them? I don’t think there is any parent who will teach a kid to lie. If we want our kids to be a role model, why can’t we be one ourselves? What is the fear we have of being a role model? Is it the fear of some consequences? Is it only the fear or will some consequence truly be the way we imagine? I don’t know. But I have seen that we don’t do all the things we tell our kids to do. I am no exception. I am trying to constantly learn from all the kids around me. To be myself, to enjoy my own birthday, to smile when I feel like smiling, to laugh loud when I feel like laughing & truly shed those tears when I feel like crying without worrying about where I am crying or what others would think “about me”. Does it make me look like a person with no control on my emotions? Yes, may be to rest of the world. But not for kids!!!! There is no meaning not being kiddish/childish at times as we grow as there is a kid in all of us.

Thanks to all the little kids around me. I am trying to live my life the way all kids do… I am finding a lot of meaning & happiness in this life.

Happy Birthday Sis

You are one of the greatest gifts in my life. Of course, you know who are the other greatest gifts in my lifeJ… There are innumerable things that we have done together as friends, as sisters, as 2 close buddies, name it whatever it hardly makes a difference!!!!!

There are feelings which cannot be put in words probably because my vocabulary is bad, but I bet even those with best vocabulary cannot put all the feelings that I have for you… As you rightly said, I am an extremely emotional person. May be, but I know you have loved me for that… Secretly I have heard what you had to tell about me to my other closets people in my life…

I remember those initial days where you were not close to me at all. I didn’t care much either then. Slowly when we started feeling the need for each other, we have lived our life. Those childhood days, those summer holidays, those beach experience at native, those golden play on the street of Guttahalli, those days where we went window shopping in commercial street, those days when we went to meet your friends in Jayanagar, everything is still afresh in mind… we have truly lived our life. As & when I am writing this, Golden play brings back lots of memory & lots of people flash through my mind. I am sure you remember them too & if they happen to read this blog of mine, I am more than sure, they will re-live those moments too…this is making me nostalgic.

I sit back & think, what is common between us. Except the word “SISTER” between us, there is nothing truly common between us. You love chocolates. I probably did in earlier days, but I gave up my chocolates so that you can eat all of them. I remember the 1^st time you told me, when you were brought home for the 1^st time, only thing that bothered me is that I have to share chocolates with her. Well, I value you more than chocolates, so I gave up chocolates. Now, I cannot eat them even if I want to!!! You like coffee, & I cannot even stand the thought of drinking the kind of coffee you drink. You love sweets, but I love those junks which you don’t like. Thank god, we are this way, else we would probably landed up fighting for food also…Can you even imagine that??

We have fought about various things in life. Starting from dresses, which I used to preserve for some occasion & you would not only use it, wear it, but also tear it. It irritated me, but the smile you had after wearing my dress would make me forgive you. Well, only thing I used consciously is your books which in true term means 2^nd hand books. But I loved them too. There are days which you made me feel rejected in life, but there are equally good number of days in which you made me feel wanted. There are days when we laughed over things non-stop, there are also equal number of days where we have cried non-stop for sometimes silly & sometimes not so silly reasons.

From sisters, we moved on to become very close friends. From love to possessiveness to obsessive, I have had all the feelings for you. I know lot of days you chose someone else over me & you still do, probably you have a good enough reason for that. But there are few days that you chose me too J

You have always broken your promises to me. You have tried lying to me a lot of times. I have hated you for those moments, but when you just smile or have a small droplet of tears I forget all those & the warm hug from you makes me feel at the top of the world.

You have taken my dresses, but you have also got me some precious things. Like you were mentioning even yesterday evening to our neighbors, I should also praise you for those good things that you do & not just blame you for bad things ;) J So here you go… you were the 1^st one to get me “Jeans”, that I always wanted to wear. You were the 1^st one to get me that Kinetic Honda, that I always wanted to ride, you were the 1^st to get me that desktop @ home, that I always wanted to possess (do you remember volume control incidence in the computer shop??? Wink wink ;)) you have done a lot of things to me.

Before kids, whenever in any gathering I had to talk about “MYSELF”, my introduction would go with my name & what I was currently doing then, with the next immediate sentence would be “I have a WONDERFUL sister :)” Yes, there is a stress on Wonderful!!! So now you know why all my school/college & earlier colleagues speak about you & enquire about you as soon as they see me, even before they enquire about me!!!

Well, there were bad days in our life & there were lot of good days too. Distance didn’t matter to us. In fact, both of us have realized that the more we are away from each other, more the love & profoundness. This might come as a surprise to you, when I say, earlier I was secretly hoping that you travel abroad for 3 months & come back, so that I know for sure at least 1 week goes without fight J. While you were physically away, more than 1 hr a day was dedicated in my life just to email you. Biggest email I remember writing to you was about 58KB. Don’t you think it is a little weird? Yeah, may be for rest of the world, but definitely not for me. We spoke our heart in emails while you were away. We sent mails, we made phone calls & yet we chatted for another 2 hrs. Thanks to Yahoo. May be a reason why I still love Yahoo compared to all other chats.

There are a lot of things that we have shared including our passwords to our account at least once. No, I don’t expect your password now & neither do youJ . There were times when we both sat & talked about our past. But very weirdly we never spoke about our future as we probably never knew what our future would be. I have loved every moment I have spent with you.

I can write pages after pages, about what we have done, what we have not done or what we could have done better. But all good things do come to an end, like this blogJ ;) I will preserve rest of the blah blah stuff for another day…

I thought of a greeting card, then an e-card, then those flower bouquets that you love along with “MY IDEA OF GIFT”, for which we spent almost 2 hours yesterday. But nothing seemed as pleasing as this blog idea did. So here is the blog just for you my dearest sis on your birthday.
“Wish you a very Happy Birthday”. May all your dreams come true. May God shower his choosiest blessings on you. May you get everything in life that you aspire for, including those nice dresses & those chappals & slippers you wanted to buy from Bata J. May you have wonderful days ahead.

Wish you a very Happy Birthday Akka. You mean a lot to me.

Love,

Shubha

Our Own Noise

One of the sleepless nights, I started thinking, what are the reasons people would get disturbed sleep? One of the things that I felt amongst lots of others in the list is the sound of Mosquitoes. When you have disturbed sleep, everything is disturbing… Most irritating thing I guess is the sound from Mosquitoes…

Can mosquitoes hear? Would they like the sound that they produce when they fly? If the mosquitoes were able to hear the noise they generate would they still generate the noise that they generate? I have my own doubts about this.

On similar lines, when we analyze, would we like to hear the noise we create? Not really… If we happen to listen to the noise we create, I am sure we would not like it. We all as human beings create & produce noise day in & day out & for everything possible. Others will be able to see the noise, but we will not be able to hear our own. Likewise, we will be able to see all the noise others create & get irritated about it, but we don’t listen to ourselves.

When we do the self analysis, we will realize that the noises we produce most of the times are unnecessary. Probably situations which triggered noise is just a trigger to the noise we were ought to create.

There are lots of things we like about ourselves. In this entire world, we love ourselves 1^st & then others. That’s the reason even when our most loved ones try to touch our ego, we will not like it. Reason is we like ourselves more than anyone else… There is always a ME factor more than WE factor. No doubt, we should like & love ourselves, but if there was another ME, exact another ME, would I like that other ME? Definitely not… I will probably start seeing the –ves also of ME in that other person. Like there are lots of things I love about myself, there is infinite number of things that I don’t like about myself. I will not be able to see it myself when there is only 1 me. But if there is another ME, I will definitely start seeing the –ves also of me in that other person. That’s just being so human. Everyone tends to think I am right all the time & the other person is wrong most of the times when there are clashes. This is what causes noise.

As the most common saying goes, put yourself in my shoes & think, will we be able to put ourselves in others shoes truly. Will the shoe size truly fit? No, definitely not a perfect fit. There is always a size difference in the shoe I wear & others wear. So we will truly never be able to fit ourselves in others shoes & understand what the other person thinks or is going through. I guess not… no matter how much we try to fit ourselves in other shoes & wear the thinking hat of the other person there is always a mismatch in the size, which truly means that definitely, we cannot wear other’s thinking hat nor can we put ourselves in others shoes.

All of us get close to a person who listens to us. In my own personal experience, I have always liked people who just do the listening for me. If I had to listen to myself carefully would I need someone else who could listen to me externally? If I start listening to myself, would I tell only those things to myself which I would choose to tell others when I talk to them??

Of all the sayings from Osho, I loved this one the best “If you are not capable of being alone, your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your loneliness, nothing else". I am not saying we need to be alone. But I am saying, the day we can listen to our own inner sense, then I would be capable of being alone, for I have a very good listener with me all the time. I have the capacity to correct the noises I create… more than anything else I can read myself.

I am trying to listen to myself. But it is not my mistake that there is a frequency mismatch. The noises I create are always below 20Hz or above 20 kHz. When the frequency of the noise I create falls within this range, I will start listening to myself J & not produce the noise that I produce all the time J.

Love

An evening in the far end of March, I got down from an Auto & started walking towards home. I read a quote on some stranger’s T-Shirt. It said, “Loe means nothing in Tennis, but Love means everything in life”.

I immediately wanted to send that quote as text/SMS to one my friend, who loves tennis so much. Then I told to myself, I will meet my friend personally & tell this quote, for it makes a lot more sense to see the expression of a person when you say a quote. I am yet to tell that quote to my friend & will definitely tell that quote before I publish this blog of my mine.

Though I didn’t think about that quote immediately, this quote remained in my memory till now. Since I had few hours today at my spare (for a change!!!) I sat back & started thinking about what all happened in last 1 week. Some good memories, some bad memories, some pleasant surprises, some miseries… Life after all is a roller coaster ride. I happened to recollect this quote also. Yes, how true “Love means nothing in Tennis, but Love means everything in life”.

One of my loved ones once asked me, why do you love me? Hmm, a million dollar question. Why do we love someone? No clear answer. I don’t think I can figure out ONE definite reason and say this is the reason why I love whom I love. I am sure most of us don’t have a reason as to why we love a person the way we love.

Do we love someone because they care for us? Then why is it that we don’t love everyone who cares for us with the same intensity? Or do we love someone because of sharing? A lot of people share lot of things with us, then why don’t we love everyone who shares things with us. I also share lot of my problems & worries with my dear ones J ;)… Do they all love me with same intensity? How do we measure that intensity of love? Do we love someone because they give us priority & attention? What if the priority changes? Do we stop loving them? No, we don’t stop loving people if they don’t give us priority & attention, we will fight for it!!! So for sure, we don’t love a person because we get the priority & attention that we want. Do we love someone because of materialistic benefits? I am sure all of us will vote as NO. So there is no meaning in even thinking about those materialistic things. Do we love someone because the person listens to us? We love to talk to someone who listens to us… But, is that the reason we love someone? No, definitely not. We also love people who just don’t listen to us. We will try to communicate & re-communicate the same thing over and over again to the person who doesn’t listen to us, but we don’t stop loving them. Is it the familiarity which breads love truly? I know with time stranger also becomes a friend, a close friend, a friend for life time. But familiarity alone would not lead to love as well.

I always remember the quote made by Sushmita Sen when she was crowned Miss Universe in early 90’s when she was asked how is women different from men? A woman is the one who shows a man, what loving, caring & sharing is all about. How true!!! Sharing & caring to some extent constitutes love. So are all women lovable?? Because most women really cares & shares all the time. If all women are lovable, why would there be fights at all at any point in time between 2 women or between a man & a woman?

Why do we love someone more than rest of the crowd? Why do we take people for granted when we love someone? Why do we sometimes fail to understand our loved ones? Why do we love in the 1^st place? I am trying to find answers myself. But I am not able to find one.

Life

Lunch walk? I asked my friend on a summer afternoon. She immediately said, not today, I am heading to Karunashraya…This naturally triggered my curiosity & I asked her, what’s that? She said, Oh… that’s the cancer hospice center. People who are at the last stage of their life, who would not survive for more than 3 months come here, stay here & die here… Being myself, I was pulled by depression as soon as I heard that. But, I pulled all my courage & wanted to find out what she was going to do there… She said, oh nothing for the patients, we are going there to train the nurses. We are going there to teach them how to use computers & its basics.

I then went to another friend of mine, who is also interested in some social activities & told her about everything my other friend had told me. We discussed this over the lunch walk (that’s what we say when we go for a small walk after having lunch). She immediately said, hey why don’t we also volunteer to teach them. I was thrilled by this as I got a company to go there.

So we did some ground work, asked our friend to give more details, registered ourselves as volunteers for training the nurses & we were all set for training them on a Friday afternoon.

As a part of preparation we met & went through the training material, what to teach them etc. We reached Karunashraya by 1.35 as planned. Our other colleagues who had also volunteered for the event were also there. So quickly had a discussion on how to spend next 3 hours there & we went to the administrative office to let them know that we are there to teach them. Since it was the last day of the training, we had multimedia/power point presentation to be taught to them. Our co-ordinator had also informed us that few admins are also interested in learning the power point as they would be using it. When asked, few admins said, yes, we are interested.

At 2, the training started. We had a quick round of introductions & I asked, “Do you want to learn new topic or do you want to brush up everything that was done from day 1”. They immediately said, new topic. Their eagerness to learn new stuff moved me.

One of our colleagues gave a quick talk on the topic & we started the practicals. We divided the team of students & instructors & started the practice work. I got 2 students, rather health assistants & I started with how to navigate & open a power point presentation. Initially, when I opened the power point, they didn’t look very excited as I showed them blank presentation. When I started opening the templates & pre-loaded themes, they caught more interest & they got involved in the learning process. I showed them how to insert a table, animate, how to include a movie, a media, a file, a chart & all the basic stuff of power point presentation. I showed them how to change the font size, how to make it bold & italics… They were thrilled. When I showed them the slide show part of the presentation they were in awe…

I then asked them to try it out themselves. One of them started & she managed to create some stuff. She was finding it really difficult to use the mouse & I helped her through that. Once she was done, she wanted see how her presentation looks in slide show. She was thrilled when she saw her work in slide show again… She was so excited that she said, I know computers now J

Another health assistant who was waiting for her turn now started creating her presentation. She did almost the same stuff that I had done. She 1^st opened a blank presentation, tried to insert a table, a media file & a chart. She then changed the font of the 1^st slide, which just had her name. She chose Comic sans, increased the font size, selected Italics style & changed the color of the text to RED. I guess she got what she wanted. She had such a wonderful smile on her face. She had a sense of achievement. Her smile said, today I have done something that I hadn’t done in my life time. Her smile had a sense of confidence. Her smile showed that she can also achieve something in life. I looked at her eyes & saw a sense of thankfulness in her eyes. I was speechless… I kept looking at her till she told me, chechi (she meant, elder sister, in Malayalam), thanks. I will never forget this afternoon. I told her, I will also not forget this afternoon… I have also learnt a lot from you this afternoon.

While the others continued to do some practice work, myself & my friend went to meet the manager to find out if we can contribute something to the patients. The General Manager, said, you can get anything to the patients. But more helpful would be if you can get something for these health assistants. Their life is really miserable. They come from a very rural are with no exposure to anything. They live all their life here in this place. For us, when we go back home, we have a change; we can forget this world for some time. For them, even when they go back to their room, they discuss only about the patients… this patient had this problem, that patient might die today etc. For them, any change is a welcome change. So anything that you can do for these health assistants would be helpful. This totally made sense to me. We again asked the manager, can we get fruits for the patients, she said, you can get them fruits, sweets which are soft etc. they will eat that. We don’t have dietary restrictions for them. For a person who is going to die in few weeks, what is the meaning of having the dietary restrictions? Yup, she is right….for a person who is dying in next few weeks, is there any meaning in putting a restriction on saying, don’t eat this & that? Life here has a totally different dimension... With so much of stress there for all the nurses, health assistants, manager there, I could still see the genuine smile in their face. May be they have a sense of achievement & that’s why they can have a genuine smile. Manager was very sweet to explain their part of life at Karunashraya. Starting from patients, to nurses, to the sale that carry out to the way they get money to the auto driver who stays there just to do all the work & to pick up patients… She has an amazing sense of satisfaction when she spoke all this. Here is their website http://www.karunashraya.org/NewSite/Index.html

After talking to the general manager, we came back to the training room and have a mini quiz to the students… This quiz was more to give away the prizes then to test their knowledge, just so as to give them a kind of motivation. We took feedback from them on the training we conducted & then had a photo session with them & finally a time had come where we had to say bye to them.

We call ourselves as computer savvy & may be creating a power point is left hand game for us. We have seen good part of life. The health assistants have also seen a part of life, which we have not seen. They see dying patient everyday in their life. Their world is just with the dying patient who comes there & there are absolutely no hopes of surviving for any of the patients who come there. Unlike, all other hospitals, where patients actually get well & go back home, here when a patient enters, they know for sure the patient is going to die in next few weeks. But this doesn’t stop them from doing they work with dedication. They continue to help the people in need. They have dedicated their life for the need. This brings me a thought, have we seen life or have they seen life? Who has seen the real meaning of life?? Definition of life for me is kind of redefined after this visit. I am sure; it would be the same feeling for others who had come with me. Afternoon of Friday, the 25^th of March 2011 is an afternoon to remember.

Map

12 Kms, 16 people guiding us through the route, earlier guidance on phone by 2 people with all the marks that we need to look for… Still we struggled to get to the destiny… 12 Kms which we could have covered in 45 mins max probably took us more than 1.5 hrs & in the car were all ladies…Not even a single lady in the car could read the map totally right till the end… Why does this happen? Why we, most women cannot understand the map? Why don’t we understand the geography as well as guys can?

There are lots of articles out there in internet & lots of book available. But I liked & totally accept 1 particular line that I read about this. Unable to read the map does not affect their intellectual performance or overall intelligence. It doesn’t mean guys are more intelligent than ladies…It is just that guys are good at certain things & girls are good at lot of other things… Did I say lot of other things? Yes, I did…After all I am a girl you see… Nope, but I am not a feminist. I am saying girls are good at lot of other things because they really are J

Every human being has white matter & a gray matter which constitutes the 2 components of Central Nervous System. White matter is the tissue through which the messages pass between different areas of gray matter with in the nervous system. I liked the comparison that is particularly used in Wikipedia on this. If we have use the analogy of a computer, Gray matter is the computer itself & the white matter is the network cables connecting the computers together.

The entire brain is enveloped in three protective sheets known as the meninges, continuations of the membranes that wrap the spinal cord. The two inner sheets enclose a shock-absorbing cushion of cerebrospinal fluid. Nerve fibers in the brain are covered in a near-white substance called myelin and form the white matter of the brain. Nerve cell bodies, which are not covered by myelin sheaths, form the gray matter. So both gray matter & white matter are both the brain cells. It is the covering which differs for white cells & gray cells.

All of us have 40 percent gray matter & 60 percent white matter. When given any tests, men use 6.5 times more gray matter than women, while women use nine times as much white matter.

White matter connects the brain's processing centers and is central to emotional thinking, use of language, and the ability to do more than one thing at once. Gray is central to processing information and plays a vital role in aiding skills such as map-reading and intellectual thought.

This explains why men excel in tasks requiring more local processing like map-reading, while women excels at integrated information from various brain regions, such as is required for language skills. It is just the use of the white or gray matter that makes men good at reading maps…

But, honestly, one thing I have to admit… Thank God, we have men in our lives!!! Else it would probably be 12Kms, 60 people guiding us, time taken unknown & destiny took more than the time imaginable to reach the place.

An Hour of Travel in Bus

A chill morning I decided to travel in bus. Headed to bus station & I made sure I sit in a comfortable seat. As soon as I settled down, I bought tickets from the conductor and started watching and observing people. As the number of people was less in the initial stop of the bus, after the conductor gave the tickets to all the passengers in the bus, he went to his close friend in the bus, the driver & started talking. He spoke to the driver till the next passenger got into the bus. Not sure if the conductor was happy for the fact that the passenger got into the bus or if he was cursing the passenger as he was disturbed with his talk with the driver. I was not able to make out anything from his facial expression. But anyways, he went towards the passenger to give the tickets to him. Conductor asked for exact change from the passenger, but passenger didn’t have the exact change. So conductor gave the ticket & wrote the change he needs to give back to the passenger at the back of the ticket. He went back to the driver & started talking again.

In the next stop more passengers got into the bus and the conductor was busy giving the tickets to everyone & he made sure he asked for exact change with everyone J I wondered what he would do with so many changes!!! I guess, conductor has realized that change is the only constant in the world. J

As soon as people got into the bus, they were eagerly deciding on which seat to sit in, some people were even shifting between seats. After making sure they are seated comfortably, more than couple of them started calling their friends & SMS. As the bus started preceding further, at a traffic signal, the driver of the bus I was travelling started talking to the driver of the other bus also waiting at the traffic signal. Cross communication defined at its best!!!!

A lady sat next to me. Initially, I thought she was a student as she was busy reading some text book & she was reading about RDBMS. She read that book and probably the same page for 30mins. Another lady sat right opposite to me & she started listening to music. I saw another passenger who sat comfortably in the bus & slept happily. Some people are blessed!!! They can sleep anywhere & everywhere they want to sleep. Or was the person deprived of sleep that he could sleep in the bus with all the noises/music in the bus. Whatever is the case, I still tend to think that the person is just too blessed that he can sleep any where & everywhere.

As time progressed and bus proceeded further, bus got more crowded. I see that people are searching for empty seats… both the eyes are synchronous in finding the seat. A girl and a boy got into the bus at one of the stops. One of the passengers got down the bus & both of them had only that seat to occupy in the entire bus. I realized that they must be very good friends when I see them adjust & share the same seat throughout their journey. We human beings are good at adjusting… What do you think?

As I look through the window, I see few familiar faces outside. Festivals being round the corner, I see sugar canes, lumps of them, & people busy buying it. Looks like some of them also are bargaining with the vendor. I cannot hear what they are conversing as I am sitting in the A/C bus & I am cut off from external noises. But by all probability I think it is the bargaining which is happening outside there.

In the next stop a girl gets into this bus… She also managed to find a seat in the bus. Since I had got into this mode of observing people, I observed that she works for my previous company. Yeah, she had her ID card in the side pouch of her bag, which had my previous company’s logo. This took me back to the initial days of my career, my learnings, my friends, my last project there…many more thoughts like this. When I give it a thought, which travels faster, I am sure it is our mind which travels faster than light. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but mind can travel at infinite speed. Traffic signal & people trying to get down the bus brought me back to the current date and time. Bus stop is less than 300 meters from the traffic signal. Every single person who aims to get down in the next stop is trying to get down in the traffic signal. This made me wonder if everyone has the same attitude of not walking that extra 300 meters or is it the convenience. I tried to convince myself that it is indeed convenience…

As we pass through the signal & get near the bus stop, people are struggling hard to find out which bus is approaching the stop. I watch through the window again & see the chaos in people to get into the bus. As if the crowd wasn’t enough in the bus, driver started screaming at the top of his voice, calling out the last stop of the bus. More & more people got into the bus. Ticket, exact change, some writing @ the back of the ticket etc continues. One of the person bought the ticket, but got down without paying the money to conductor. Conductor realized this after sometime & started checking the tickets of every person whom he suspected. I noticed that one lady was trying to help conductor. She says “bus door was not opened at all, so he must be in the bus only. Do you remember the shirt he was wearing”? Wow, yes, definitely yes, MEN ARE FROM MARS & WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. Ladies try to give suggestions & help others even without asking them. But she was genuinely trying to help the conductor. Yes, I could make out that. Conductor suddenly changed his attitude & started showing his irritation & anger on other passengersJ. After seeing this, today I can appreciate if conductors & drivers lose their temper with passengers.

Lady who sat right opposite to me, started yawning & looks like she could not listen to those songs any more. She could not control her yawn. So she takes out a POLO- A mint with a Hole & she chews it slowly. It pepped her up. Looking at her, lady, who sat next to me, whom I thought was student initially started searching her bag & took out VICKS tablet – Vicks Ki goli lo, kich kich door karo!!!

Music continues in the bus, I see people tapping their feet, moving their body slowly to the music, some of them nodding their head to the music. Irritated conductor asks the driver to switch off the music & the driver does it to please his friend in the bus, as he is the only one who will travel with him throughout the day. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

I glance through the other end of the bus & find out that there was a lady whom I missed looking at the earlier time I spent in bus. She had her hands decorated with mehandi. Did she attend some function & come? Or has she applied mehandi for the festival round the corner? Or did she get engaged? Or is she going out for a marriage? No clue… But I must admit, her mehandi designs were definitely good J. She was busy reading some holy book. None of the disturbances in the bus seemed to affect her. What a concentration. Wow!!

World is small. Indeed very small. A man who was sitting behind my seat recognized a lady & they both started conversing with each other. Started with hi, how are you? It then turned into some relative getting discharged in the hospital to work to their spouses… they spoke quite a bit.

Lady who sat next to me got down in her stop. Lady who was trying to help the conductor comes & sits next to me…Picks up her cell phone & calls someone. Then she calls her husband who is also in the bus & starts talking something to him again. In the next stop, girl with her batch ID of my previous company gets down. I realize that I need to get down too in the next stop as all others did. As I get ready to get off the bus, lady who helped the conductor few mins back & sat next to me, calls her husband & tells him, “come here, she will get down. You can sit here, right next to meJ”.

Like all others did, I also got off/ got down the bus at my stop. But before getting down, I made sure I looked back at all them once & smile at all of them to thank them for helping me try to observe them. Not sure even if one single person recognized that smile, the most beautiful curve one can ever have, as one of my close friends says, but it definitely made me feel good that I could smile at all those strangers. If one hour of travel in bus can give me such an awesome experience, imagine the amount of experience & thrill I would gain, if I travel the world…!!! I am sure I will sit & write a blog on the world travel experience too sometime sooner or laterJ.