Rick Sick?

It’s a funny condition.
I don’t know if the world has discovered and termed it yet. I go through it painfully almost every day of my life and in my neologism it would be “rick-o-phobia”!
I cannot tell you how much I abhor that clan of licensed looters.
The auto rickshaw industry in Bangalore is a thriving one.
The auto rickshaw is like a monster on wheels with a monster at the wheel!
So every now, and then I find myself at the mercy of the much loved autowallah.
The most popular philosophy among auto drivers in Bangalore is that double meter is their birth right!
Double meter applies at the following times;
Early in the morning,
Late at night,
During the drizzles and rains,
You are more than three unfortunate souls,
Your house is too far,
Your house is too near,
Your house route has a one way,
There is too much traffic in your part of town,
And at other times it’s simply “double meter” because he doesn’t like your face!
(Sigh. How I wish we occasionally had double meters at our work place too!)
So you pretty much end up paying this much just about every time you have the misfortune of taking an auto and if he doesn’t demand double meter you can be well assured that this is the classic case of a faulty meter rick.
As if to make us feel any better, they have a consolation prize in the form of one-and-a-half meter.
I could buy myself a handbag every month with the money I over-pay the autowallah’s above the actual fare. Sigh.
God forbid you are one of those unfortunate souls who crawl to work with a laptop-you can actually go by the concept of a triple meter!
They love IT guys and the assumption is that all laptop clad people are fleece-able members of the IT fraternity.
Come to think of it an auto actually determines how your day goes.
A fight with the auto driver first thing in the morning is not the most ideal way to kick start your day!
Abuses flying your way in a language you barely understand right on the middle of the main road, bang opposite your office.
Aha-Not a pretty sight...ask me…
Through the elevator ride up the seventh floor, I’m thinking of one of those nightmarish forwards about the auto driver attacking some lady who threatened to complain about him!
Paranoia should have been my middle name!
On the contrary if you happen to have the good fortune of meeting a decent auto-wallah (an absolute rarity in our silicon valley) that would pretty much make ones day.
I remember the time an auto driver had come back all the way to return my friends phone that she had forgotten in an auto or even the times an auto driver returns the exact change back to you.
Exceptions do apply to every rule!
Here is some informative info for all you auto goers;
I happened to stumble across this article sometime back which gave numbers where one can lodge complaints against misbehaving auto drivers,
Bangalore Centre:080-25533525
Bangalore West:080-23324388
Bangalore East:080-25253726
Bangalore North:080-23376039
Bangalore South:080-26630989
So the next time you're stranded, cheated or ill treated just buzz one of these numbers and let me know if it actually works :)
And start saving up towards that car/bike that will steer you away from mercy of the ruthless auto drivers of Bangalore!
A few of us get the better of the autowallah’s like one of my friends, Anu. She never gets a rick to Domlur from Airport road as its just 2 kms away (Well! Walking is not her forte.), so this is what she does every single day…
She tells them she wants to go to a destination further away and while they are passing through Domlur she has an unexpected emergency and so she gets off at her real destination paying him the exact fare. So there we go, there are ways to beat the system!
As for me, I moved to a place close to work, I walk to work these days-that’s my short term plan.
And my long term plan-well, I’m getting married in a few months…that should solve the problem. (Wink! Wink!)

In her shoes?

She strutted into the room with an aborning sense of anxiety. After all she was here on a self imposed torture to dissect the room of the so called supernal stranger she would love to hate.
“So this is her sanctum”, she mused to herself.
She seemed girly, yet not entirely. The room was done in shades of pink and blue-not quite stereotype and the colors did go surprisingly well together.
I wonder what type she would fall into, it had a strange stasis.
It suggested that she bordered dangerously between being a girl’s girl and a guy’s girl…..maybe little more of a girl’s girl.
The room was strewn with cushions, way too many infact…a side table on one corner of the room by the bed lodged a bedside lamp and a pile of books mostly clichéd best sellers, few books on Indian as well as world history and a bunch of travel journals. Your conventional reader-maybe voracious, maybe not!
A lone figure of Garfield confirmed that she didn’t hate stuffed toys but she sure loved Garfield and the donkey from Shrek. Cliché again!
The inbuilt shelf in the wall housed photo albums and some nonage baggage (teenage scrap books and dog-eared year books!)
Girlie girlie girlie!
She examined the bangle stand disdainfully; it was a mélange of every possible color in the world flirting with each other…not her type definitely!
She was so not like her and that made it maybe easier to dislike her even more!
Maybe...maybe,there just might be the slightest chance that they could be friends in another life in another world.
In the middle of this extensive examination she caught a glance of herself in the mirror across the room,
And admired what she saw, and she knew a lot men would agree. Few vain moments later her eyes ran across the room evasively again.
Finally they eyes rested on the shoe rack…they had a pair of floaters and two sneakers that were lost in an array of neatly arranged varicolored shoes.
Some had large heels, some tiny and few were flat…the wide spectrum of shoes brought about the obvious conclusion that there was a shoe fetish of sorts.
She had seen women who could boast of larger and far better collections but the owner of the room was definitely fond of shoes.
What else was she like? She mulled over that thought as she maundered about the room.
Her large kohl adorned doe eyes swept across the room a last few times and her gaze finally lingered on a photograph.
It was a picture of him and “her”.
Tears stained the floor invisibly and washed everything else out of sight.
“What did she have that I didn’t?” The only question playing on her mind as she ran out of the room sobbing.
She wasn’t sure if she hated her but in a vague moment of clarity she was sure about one thing…she was sure she wanted to be in “her” shoes…only so that she could be with him.

All I want!

I want an antiquarian cottage on a knoll, far from the maddening crowds to call my home,
I want to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting into the room and sunshine on my face,
I want to sit on the porch, stare at the bright blue sky and smell the wild flowers in spring,
I want to run after my pup as he chases a fleeting cloud across our lawn,
I want to go on the longest drive after the rains with the strongest wind against my face,
I want that granddad I’d always wished for, who will tell me stories of our glorious past and the freedom fights,
I want to look at black and white picture of strangers with stranger expressions called ancestors,
I want to laugh so hard that I end up with tears in my eyes for no particular reason,
I want to roll on the grass and have a feather tickle my ear,
I want to eat with my hands and let out a subtle burp,
I want to have a delectable meal not feeling guilty I binged,
I want to travel to strange lands and embrace the differences and similarities,
I want to bust those occasional-turned-frequent pimples on my face and end up with no scars,
I want to splatter in the rain and not catch a cold,
I want a shoulder to lean on and a laced hanky to snort into when a sad movie ends,
I want to dabble in paint and lose myself in my favorite song,
I want to watch a ladybug sun bathe and a rainbow disappear,
I want to hear the leaves rustle and the wind blow,
I want to go on an endless walk holding the hand that’ll never let go,
I want to capture the happiest moments and the loveliest sights and treasure them in a photo,
I want to scribble on recyclable paper with bright blue ink in my father’s fountain pen,
I want to whimper and whine about problems that are not mine,
I want to see the sun go down and the moon come up,
I want to count the stars in the night sky and name the prettiest one after my grand mom,
I want to be hugged and told I’m loved
I want my mommy to kiss my scraped knees and bruises away,
I want to wear my warmest sweater and be tucked into bed
I want to fall asleep with a book in my arm, a pink quilt on my back and the happiest dream over my head.
But most of all I want to be four again.
That’s all I want!

In our times!

Let me begin ab ovo…Adam and Eve cavorting about apple trees, all that fuss and semi clad drama.
It was all fun when it began….we sure have come a long steep winding way.
Someday I’ll look back and wonder what I’d tell my children of my times….That we had it all figured out wrong?
In our times…
Time they said was money, but money was never time…
We signed peace treaties and made bigger bombs,
We married for convenience and not for love,
We worked for money and not passion,
Religion united people from across seven seas but separated brothers of the same land,
We feared to dream yet shied away from reality,
We beautified our body and killed our soul,
We solved the most complex problems yet the real ones still remained,
We used our head and not our heart,
We existed but we didn’t quite live!
Yet hope floated…
For the very best part of my day was when I fell asleep every night….I was transported back to a time when I scampered around the Garden of Eden again….honey bees…apple trees and happy memories.