83 - TRAVEL BUDDIES AND MORE GYAN

Every time I travel, from Pune to Mumbai, it is a two hour longer journey than the journey from Mumbai to Pune.  In order to get a sitting place in the general compartment, one has to be their at least two hours in advance, as the train that I travel by, is already on the station.  So the five and a half hour journey, becomes a seven and half hour ordeal.

Sitting in the stationary train, I observed that the water dispensing booth, boasting of rupees five per liter of chilled drinking water, is never in order.  I watch as potential customers come to the booth and are sent off because 'electricity is off'.  The usual vendors keep walking through the bogie and the platform, selling chikki, timepass fryums, shelled groundnuts, boiled whole groundnuts, hot vada pau, adrak walli chai, thanda pani and normal pani, shengdana laadu, garam samosa...     The aroma of the chillies with the vada pau permeates the air and arouses the appetitie.  It is a wonder that these vendors achieve sales by carrying around their heavy wares and manage to survive.  It seems like a lot of hard work for petty earnings.  And they are quite helpful too.  If a fan is not turning, on request anyone of the male vendors will lean up and give the fan a push,  if a drunkard is sitting in the ladies' compartment, on request, the male vendors will shoo him off,  or push open a window that is too stubborn to be pushed up by the lady passengers.  They even dispense currency change, if any passenger requests.  Most of the female vendors, carry a little hanging pouch around their waist for the cash and a mobile appears from time to time from the inners of their upper garment.  They check the time or converse with some family member.

The beggars' mafia and the drunkards that infest the platform and the train are the unwanted elements.  After the train moves on, it is the lack of garbage disposable facilities that bugs me.  Left, right and centre,  all the disposable paper cups, newspapers soiled with oily vadas and random biscuit wrappers, are  blatantly thrown out of the windows of the moving train,  with no qualms about abusing the greenery of the western ghats.  

As the train journey progresses, more and more people enter and crowd the limited space.  A four seat bench soon has six ladies trying to fit in, and the spaces between the seats and the aisle is taken over by desperate travelers, settling down onto the floor.  Young children are offered laps of accommodating lady passengers.  As I  made notes of these observations. the lady seated opposite me asked me what my profession was, and she  confided that she was a teacher too.  In fact, she had been promoted to be the  co-ordinator of the pre-primary section at her school, at the Rajasthani Sabha.   I soon found out that, they take parents and students together, when they go for a picnic or a field trip.  Another lady, travelling with her three year old, was also a teacher for the hearing and verbally disabled children at the 'Save the Children' at BKC.  She confided that the American School which is in their neighborhood, was quite helpful but not the Dirubhai Ambani School, which is also their neighbour. She also commented on the students who are from a lower middle class background, and so many of the students are siblings because there is no one to guide the parents about genetically passed on defects.  She said that most were progeny of close relatives inter marrying, which a particular community was prone to.

As we chatted and shared confidences, tempers were flaring among co-passengers just behind our seat.  This happens routinely.  Abuses  are hurled,  and the scene lends some 'timepass' for the other women.  A senior citizen travelling with her two teenage grand-daughters, told us that she had just visited her maternal village of Khedgao and was returning to her vegetable vending job at Sakinaka.  

She had changed two trains and was travelling since eight a.m.   The girl reading 'The Girl Who Knew Too Much',  was going back to her college on the eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the Stock Exchange building at Fort.    She was studying a two years Masters in Global Finance Marketing.  I was very surprised to know that there is a college in the stock exchange building.  The other lady confided that she had been an HR executive and had been with Atkins in Bangalore for five years, before taking a break to be with her baby in Lonavla.  She said that she had studied at Lonavla at the sprawling Sinhagad college campus there.   She had been to Pune for Ganpati darshan.  The last lady in our group, said that she lived with her husband and son at Talegaon, because the son was pursuing his medical degree at a college here, and she often visited Pune for shopping.

 As the train approached Lonavla, a water park adjacent to the tracks came into view, and was abandoned as always.  A vendor with a tokri full of small packets of sweets got in, and her sales pitch could shame any Television jingle.  She sang quite melodiously, 'adrak chee golee ghyaa,   khaasee khoklah  hoee jhatpath moklaah'.

After the train passes Khandala, the beautiful hills and valleys are as wonderful as always.  The far off hills have tiny streams of waterfalls leaping down into the deep valleys, they resemble the long white locks of an older Rapunzel.  Closer mountains that had waterfalls when it was raining heavily, are now not visible, but the sculpture that the force of water falling down has formed, due to erosion, is now visible, an intricate pattern where the soft rocks have worn off, leaving the harder rocks, along the vertical rock faces.

As I watch the hills and valleys, the train passes through tunnels, the wheels making screeching protests that are heightened within the confines of each tunnel,  making one break into goose bumps at the unearthly sounds.  Then I watch the rail tracks, undulating gracefully as the train passes over the connecting portions.  It seems as though someone is doodling along the path with the rail tracks.  

The train approaches Ulhasnagar, which is as filthy as ever.  What a shame to see the littered Ulhas river and its plastic and cloth rags, clogging the banks.  But the local MLAs have the audacity to display large posters, wishing the public a 'happy ganeshostav'  with the ganpati picture in a tiny corner and the MLA's face featured larger than life.  Numerous such posters were visible along the next few stations.  Public buses also sported similar advertisements.  As Dadar approached, the vendors were selling headphones, books for children and toys.  As the train stopped at CST, the loud jingle of  'Badshah masala' welcomed all those alighting.

  

  

82 - BEING HUMAN . . .

Salman Khan's  clothes'  line of the 'being human' brand is very popular with a wide range of age groups.  Young school and college students sport the brand and so too middle aged persons.  But it is just for style,  not to support the spirit of it, as is obvious by the attitude of such persons.

I am a teacher and to be insulted by a stranger on Teachers' Day and that too on a public footpath, was a vicious blow to me.  Having been a teacher for the last twenty two years seems to have been so fruitless, because I could not even bring about a single change for the better, in spite of consistent efforts.

The footpath near my school is used like a road by two wheelers.  They ride over it and they park on it.  So many school children use this footpath, but the two wheeler riders are immune from any type of policing.  On this particular day, the footpath was teeming with students returning home and yet motorbikers were riding at high speed on the footpath because there was a traffic jam on the road.  I stopped a biker and told him that he should walk his bike and ride when he is back on the road.  After arguing for two minutes, he realized that I was adamant and that I would not let him pass, so   he complied.  Then another biker, sporting a 'being human' tee shirt,  came onto the footpath and without provocation began abusing me, with his mouth full of red paan spit.  He parked on the footpath and kept shouting against my stand with the previous biker.  I told him that he too was wrong to have ridden his bike onto the pavement, at which his tirade became louder and he started using foul language.  When I protested that he was the wrong doer and didn't deserve to wear a tee shirt saying 'being human', as he was being inhuman by abusing an older lady besides,  he shouted that I should keep my teaching for the school students inside the school premises only.  When I admonished him that hadn't he been taught manners and civic rules at school, during his youth, he mocked me by retaliating that he had been a student of the same school where I was teaching at present.  That was the last straw for me and I just felt so heart broken and could not argue with him anymore.

Just then a traffic policeman was walking on the road, and I approached him, hoping that he would intervene or at least tell off the rude 'being inhuman' person.  But the policeman walked off faster than me and I realized that he wanted to avoid confrontation.  I followed him till the end of the road where the main traffic signals at a cross road of six main roads stalled him.  I requested him as to why he had walked off from the scene of argument, and he said that 'yeh elaakah unkah hai, hum kuch naheeh kar sakteh'.  So I asked to know his name, but he covered his nameplate with his hand and hurried off into the traffic.

This proves that the police are quite incompetent to control thugs in this particular area, mostly because they are backed by political honchos of the same community.  Even the E ward municipal office has not bothered to fix bollards along the footpath, to keep two wheelers off the pavement. In fact the edges of the pavement have slopes for easy access to two wheelers to be able to speed onto the footpath.  Repeated reminders have not rendered effective action from the E ward office.  But they have taken extra precautions to fix a double row of bollards outside the gate of their own office premises, which is just across the corner.

Civics, as a subject, has been side lined in schools.  I think that it should be compulsory upto the tenth and it should involve students into the practical application of its tenets.  That and that only will lead to a better India.  Students should be made aware of how the machinery of a ward office works, so that they can use it to better the situation in their own residential areas.  They must be taught the power that can be wielded by the BMC if they wish to implement it or are prodded into doing so.

81 - BANKS AND MORE BANKS

If one changes jobs, then the salary account of the new establishment is opened in a different bank every time.  So you end up visiting different banks to keep the accounts updated.  It is better to have a passbook and to update that, so that you can keep track of all transactions, especially the random fines levied from time to time, GST, minimum balance fine, there is even a fine if your account is reduced from a 'lakhpati status' to a 'less than that status' without the client's sanction for either the promotion or the demotion.  Very often the banks treat the clients like dirt, and make us feel that they are doing a big personal favor whenever they process any incoming, outgoing, or updating of our money.

The first and third Saturdays of the month are just 'bank' days.  Overheard someone say that all Saturdays will be off days for banks soon, one of the conditions to be put forward during the strike next week.  My suggestion is that let banks close on all Saturdays and Wednesdays, and have working hours on Sundays.  I am sure that lots of people would support the decision.  On working days, it is quite impossible to visit a bank, as all are working in their own offices etc., maybe business persons can do bank transactions at all times, but office workers cannot.

Most of the banks that I have visited have a very constricted entrance.  It is almost as though we have to squeeze through.  The Bank of India at many branches, has a very constricted entrance.  The Central Bank at Fountain is the most beautiful and 'spacy' bank, if only the plastic flower pots would disappear.  Citibank is unwelcoming and cold-shoulders all visitors.  Clients are treated like low mortals by the high and mighty bankers here.

 So  often,  banks decorate the premises during divali, and the decorations are left on till August, with a very friendly Santa claus poster declaring merry Christmas among the mini divali lanterns, all dusty and forlorn.  But I suppose, the officers are too busy to remove the old decorations, as observed, the security guards are also involved in helping clients update passbooks in the vendor machines and generally guiding all and sundry, as to which  transaction will be done where and by whom within the bank.  One security guard made it his 'duty' to take the passbooks of every customer and put it into the passbook printer, even those who did not want him to do so.  And then he was giving advice to each person, to put the extra cash in FD or mediclaim etc.  So it seems that the security guard has an insider's information to the bank balance of each visitor.

The Bank of India is very tardy in resolving issues of customers.  Very often I have been witness to someone flaring up and abusing the bank personnel loudly.  Today, a senior citizen with her adult son lost their tempers because it was the umpteenth time that they had been asked to visit the branch and the needful had not been done, some transfer of the late husband of the party.  It seems that the son had to accompany the mother each time and be absent from his job during those times, and yet the transfer was deferred on and on since 3 months.  Listening to the expletives exploding from the young man, I could only side with him, as I have been in his shoes so often and not have had the guts to explode.  Banks can frustrate us and make tempers flare so so easily and  justifiably.

At the Axis bank branch that I visited, another customer was angry too and rightly so,  it seems.  Very often the bank will absolve itself of a particular  unsolved problem,  by pointing out that the person in charge is on leave,  or that the KYC  details have to be renewed, etc etc and all this is done in whispered tones, which is so so irritating too.  Here the client had been promised that some foreign transfer of eight thousand dollars would be completed and even after paying rupees eight thousand for the service, the transfer was not done and the gentleman was very very angry, as it had prevented the admission etc etc of some institute abroad for his family member.  The person was quizzed about 'who was the officer?'  'can you tell us the time and the number of the request.'   It is always the same story, banks do not complete the request and then behave like quiz masters or question the client as though they are sleuths of some sort and we are at their mercy.

'Signatures are not matching',     
'KYC has to be renewed',   
'All signatories must be present and sign  in front of us',
'Come back after a week, internet is not working',
'Who did you speak with on the phone?  What is the name of the person and which department?'
'Come back after a month, the person in charge is on leave',
'The Aadhar card name and the pan card has discrepancies of the father's name etc',
'The printer is out of order',
'The ATM is out of order',
'The statement cannot be issued,  you must visit the other branch'.
'Even if you do not use the card, the account will be deducted, or give an application to the section in charge.'
'You have been assigned a financial assistant automatically, the charges for that are deducted automatically.'
'Your account has been classified as dormant, you cannot do transactions unless it is activated, give an application.'
'You must not only put in money, you must withdraw too, or the account will become dormant'.
'The instructions for the deductions have come from the head office, we cannot do anything here.'
'A magnifying glass is available on request.'  And this is pinned on a notice board that is eight feet high!  Perhaps binoculars should be made available too.

All these petty excuses to avoid processing simple requests like updating a passbook or to withdraw a teeny tiny amount, makes us go 'out of order'  too.