Monday, October 29, 2007

Vij vs Lead India contestant

As promised in the last post, this post is about a guy who volunteered to help me on Saturday. His name is Vij and working as a Sales Engineer with USD 30 bn organization. A localite and a resident of Magarpatta city. Before the incident we really didn’t meet and once hit by the rick wala the crowd gathered and I could see some 20-25 people. And when I decided to take the matter to the police, and was waiting for the police van to arrive and we spoke and exchanged cards and numbers.

Like an average Indian he could have seen the tamasha and learnt his lesson from my experience and left the scene as others did. But he chose not to. He chose to stick around be a witness to what he saw. On one hand we have people like Vij who rise up to the occasion, do what they can do and would like to be counted.

On the other we have this Lead India campaign going on with so much hype being created around it. FYI, they first roped in SRK for the campaign and may be they figured out that they not getting many female contestants and they roped in AB’s baby. Looks like things have not got any better and they had to openly advertise saying they need some 3 more female contestants for the campaign. Anyway, coming back to the original discussion, we have 3 people selected for the campaign from Pune and they will be TALKING and DEBATING with the contestants from other cities and then the states before they win the title.

I personally haven’t read or attended any of these sessions even though I wanted to but if you look at it, with all due respect to these people their thoughts, ideas and TOI, they are discussing about how to make India a better place to stay and what can make difference. Presuming Mr. X wins the grand prize, his photos are all over in TOI and they would have a networking dinner with all the politicos, local counselors will make desperate attempts to convince Mr. X to join their party and local MLA will promise something for him, if he joins the party, and give him a ticket also as a retention strategy (as we call in the corporate world) and he also gets elected. People like this go to state assembly/parliament remind me of Om Puri in Yuva. Tumhara pehle bhi idhar bahut log aaya, duniya badalne ke liye, kintu, Kuch bagh gaya, kuch khud badal gaya”. May be as time goes by they will become someone like the one Om Puri is talking about. I am not being pessimistic but I am focusing on one side of the coin in this case. The other side may be he might go on to become an excellent statesman.

Now X and Vij have two different styles of dealing with situations. Vij is one with courage and guts and believes in action rather than talk or strategize and X likes to write or talk more about the whole thing. X may be at the incident and would think something bad has happened to a fellow citizen and let me use mass media or paper as a tool to change the situation. But Vij thinks the need of the hour is doing what I can do “NOW” to change the situation. Vij may not be think like most of us think, like paper is read by a million people and unless I have some press relations or mass media relations I can’t make an impact. He thinks, this is my time and I will do my bit because everybody knows what impact newspaper and TV have on India and Indians. No one takes them seriously unless it is related to cricket, bollywood and now stock market. Vij, belongs to the group where he thinks like Aamir Khan in “Rang De Basanti” where he tells the listerners/callers
Zindagi Jeene ke do hi tarikke hoti hai, ek jo ho raha hi, hone do, bardasht karte jao, ye phir, jimmedari uthao, use badalneki

Vij took the 2nd route and so am I going to. Now it is time for you to decide

Sunday, October 28, 2007

My new hairstyle

I always wanted to start a blog with something interesting incident in life. Something that is memorable/unforgettable. Well I know this one is neither memorable nor unforgettable. Being hit on the head with a stone by an illiterate auto rickshaw wala for refusing to shell out 8 extra bucks.

Yes, it happened to me over this weekend. I hired a rick from Raheja Gardens to Magarpatta where I was to see a school friend after close to some 10 years and catch up with a bunch others from Synygy who were putting up there.

It happened when I got off the rick by paying him the amount I have to according to the tariff. First, the guy told me I got to pay 50 bucks when I asked him how much I owe and when I saw the meter and calculated (the formula I know is x *6 +2, where X is the number of points on the meter) and it came out to Rs. 42 and I gave him 43 because I had some extra change and refused to give him any more and started walking away.

He took the money and demanded (not asked) more and when it was clear to him I was not going to give him any extra money he started badmouthing me but I kept walking and tried to avoid (didn’t want to get involved in a fight). But the last thing he said was real bad and I couldn’t control myself and asked him to step out of the rick. Don’t know what went through his mind but he tried to start the rick and flee away from the scene and also gave me a hint that he is having some sort of iron rod in the vehicle but I was not ready to give up unless I settled the score. Finally, I got the crook out and was talking to him and that was when he saw a stone near by and hit me once with it. It hit me but somehow didn’t hurt me. And by now people started noticing what is happening and even before I realized what was coming he picked up the same same stone and hit me on the head. I realized that he hit me with a stone only when my head started bleeding. Then the people gathered and over powered him and took him to the police station and lodged a complaint and ensure that he was behind the bars.

By evening I got some first aid done (they had to remove some hair so that the docs could get better view of the injury, and that explains why I had to go bald) and went back to the station, got an FIR lodged and ensured that this guy will never get to drive an auto in his life because he didn’t have a license and his case was passed on to the RTO for the cancellation of the permit (I mean the badge the auto wala’s are given, the bronze one in the shape of a triangle)

After all this I asked myself did I done something wrong? I don’t know but I think I am happy that I could get one of the thousand crooks to realize that asking for more money may cost much more. May be he will start controlling his anger the next time considering he lost Rs. 3000( I got them reimbursed for my ZARA shirt) which he tore during the scuttle and now drenched in blood. For extra 10 bucks he not only lost Rs. 3000 in cash, but also his earnings for the entire day, he has to pay the rent from his pocket for the auto from his pocket if he doesn’t own it and most importantly his time. Now, you may think I took this too far and was harsh on him taking Rs. 3000. I look at it this way, he gets beaten up the whole day he would be all right in a week’s time but the monetary loss would pinch him and would remind him the day throughout his life. Call me a villain, I don’t care but I think I have thought him a lesson. I know it is a costly one for him but he needed it badly. Tomorrow you may be in my place and you may or may not dare to what I did because you might have your family around but these crooks will get away and continue what they are and have been doing. And after a long time I felt I stood for something. I was hurt and I could have got hurt even more badly if the people around hadn’t have stopped him but I stood up for something with out that jaane do yaar attitude.

Throughout this there were friends 4 of my good friends, apparently 3 from Synygy working in the S/w organization and pals from the TT table (Thank you all guyz) and there was one stranger who saw this incident and volunteered to accompany me to the police station and be a witness to the episode. I think this guy showed a lot of courage, that too in a society where people run away from police, court for the pain they have to go through if something goes wrong.

Come back tomorrow for the post on the stranger who volunteered to accompany me to the station and be a witness in the whole case and my views on campaigns like Lead India kick started by TOI