Faces from journeys

Oftentimes faces persist like snapshots. Usually happens when I travel alone and care to take in more than just the people I chaperon. Oftentimes I want to know why, what, how, but dare not walk up and ask. I view myself as an intruder. Here's a list from a trip to Chennai yesterday.

- 8:30 PM: Electric Train @St. Thomas Mt.: A little girl, around 8 yrs, in school uniform - white salwar, blue kameez, white dupatta. With school backpack. Seemed to have had a long day, but eyes still shining bright. Boarding the train holding her little sister, 5 year old perhaps. They try various empty seats and finally decide to sit by the entrance. Enjoying the wind. So happy. So 'for-the-moment' life of childhood.

- 10 30PM: Central Station: A man of 30 lying on a bed sheet near the Higginbothams stall, sleeping. Just like hundreds of others lying on bedsheets/card boards/floor. Some alone, some in groups. Some happy to be going to some place, some sad at having left place. This man was well dressed, head cleanshaven. Initially put him down as a Tirupati return. A few moments later I found another man kneeling next to him and fanning him with an tattered towel. It was then that I noticed the two catheters on the sleeping man's hands. Perhaps he is a General Hospital return.

- 11:00PM: Platform 4, Yercaud express preparing to leave the station. Important looking person dressed all in white, standing by the AC compartment. A dozen people jostling around him, giving him what looked like petitions. He gave the impression that he was there to solve all their problems.

Zero Inflation

Twenty years ago, a small match box with wooden match sticks used to cost Re.1. Remember those Cheetah matchboxes, not more that an inch in length and breadth that had a picture of a man holding a sickle fighting a Cheetah?

Today I buy Wimco Matchsticks that come in cartons of 100 matchsticks - still wooden but longer. These costs all of Rs.5 !

Tubelights - When we used to buy it at the Institute SAC it cost Rs.40. And now sixteen years later, as I replaced my kitchen tubelight last evening, I shelled out the same amount of money!

Pure delight!

Light and a Poem

Light - I am obsessed with ensuring its adequate presence. Thick curtains are kept to a bare minimum. We are lucky to be in a home with very little noise. And plenty of natural light. We hardly draw the blinds at night. The beauty of the streetlights and moonlight streaming in is a pleasure.

But, office lighting is all wierd. So many tubelights shining over employees heads even when there is bright sunshine outside. And to position yourself in various angles to avoid the glare and ensure visibility of the stuff the monitor displays. I often dream of an 'open-office' - breeze and sunlight in abundance. Maybe I wouldnt find it in a corporate office. Wonder where I would!

While on those thoughts, stumbled upon this gem. In this poem the poet says this of Sunlight: 'Resting on the page, the word is as beautiful, it touches you as if you had a friend'

The Word
By Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

On Education, Once again.

I read this interesting interview with Oxford Academic, Craig Jeffery here: He makes an interesting observation that education alone is not a passport to social mobility. And class still mattters. While one would think that equal education is one of the surest steps towards social mobility, to erase historical biases etched into the bloodstream of generations, it turns out that not only in India, but across US and UK as well, that a good education is a necessary but insufficient basis for mobility.

I earned a post graduate degree in Patent Law recently. The course equipped me with all the knowledge on the subject but gave me very little to understand what I can do with it. Apart from the adage of Knowledge-For-Knowledge's sake - which I really like, it has given me little else. Jeffery puts this across neatly in another context as "....Education provides a sense of entitlement but not always the problem-solving skills that allow young people to start businesses".

On another note, the newspapers headlines of today indicates that a daughter of a stone quarry worker in Bangalore is headed to the prestigious National Law school to pursue her undergraduate degree. Given her intelligence as well as a capacity for hard work, I am sure she would top the graduating class five years on. But at campus interviews, wouldn't corporate India favour someone else in this field.....someone who perhaps has a lineage of lawyers, an unmatched network of pedigreed contacts etc? If it does not, then I can surely say education is a passport to social mobility. If not then the prestigious education would have taught her to "lower her ambitions. To quote a rather pessimistic note from the interview "....Class is crucial. If you are from the right class, there is always a good “fallback job” available when you leave education. If you are from a poorer background, you are much less likely to be able to turn your university degree into a good job."

Dreams

Amongst the mass of CD's gathering scratches in the Pumpkin's glove compartment are a few that display surprisingly organized names, such as "A thru D" - ABBA, Beatles, Carpenters, Dire Straits. I don't know where the rest of the alphabets are.

Anyhow, on a pleasantly warm Monday morning 'I have a dream..' by ABBA came out of the Pumpkins voice box to greet me. I figured that I still don't understand the implied meaning of "I believe in angels when I know the time is right for me!".

Uh? What am I missing?

Do I believe in the Devil when I know the time is 'wrong' for me? Shouldn't I be believing in angels when the time is NOT right for me? Or may be its to be combined with the line that follows as "When I know the time is right for me, I cross the stream/street (whatever)". And the believing in angels bit is an unedited placeholder used by the poet to keep the flow.

On another note, the answer to today's cryptoquote on my puzzles website is a classic Steinbeck: "People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all."

I need to chew on that one for some time.

First Milestone

Full time school for V;
Into bus at 7:45 AM;
Out of Bus at 4:00 PM;
Long? Yes, by any sane standards.

Short Break; Long Break - Bound to be filled with talk talk talk;
The boxes I broke my head to fill with varitety;
Will come back with the same variety;

Day one has the white uniform;
Day two thru five have the grey one - quite dreary;
White socks on all days - I got to name them;

What else - hah the second language - hindi
And book entitled Puranic Heritage which i am yet to see;
Hope theres no complications like swimming etc;

Thats it for now; Will post back after 4 pm milestone

I stilll own this place

Feels good to login and see that I can be in control of the things out here. The folks hosting this blog had successfully hidden the Sign-In button on my own dear blog and I could not post anything. Such desparately-wanting-to-post moments this past year have been few as anyone may have guessed, but not being able to do so did leave me sad.

Ok, I am back. And will hoepfully post soon.