Autorickshaws and Chennai - Part 2

A few years back I wrote a post on the autorickshaws in chennai. With the recent rule of mandatory usage of meters, and after a few interesting experiences, thought would jot them down.

With a lot of fanfare and probably a bit of fear of the court censure, the government revised the autorickshaw fares and made the meters to be mandatory. For about a month, drivers could use the old meters with a rate card giving the equivalent fare and they were supposed to have the calibrated meter by 15th Sep.

Was everything going smooth? I had my own doubts.

My first confirmation that things might not change came from a regular driver that I used to go with. I told him that he cannot bargain anymore and had to use the meter, the reply - " saar meter illama than ottuvom, athu eppadi enga ellarukkum theriyum " (we will ply without meters, and we know how to get around the system).

After about 2 weeks of announcement, I had to take the auto for a coupe of rides. With the first guy, the usual bargaining happened and when I asked about the meter, he said he was yet to get the rate card. :(. He also said, " saar neenga ellam meter ketta, naanga enga saar porathu (if people like you ask for meter, how can guys like us survive).

The second ride also was without meter, and this guy said the battery was down in the meter. I was in a hurry, he said no meter, and I had no other option but to bargain :(

In the meanwhile, my mother had both experiences - the usual bargaining once, and surprisingly the return journey the guy straightaway put the meter and the fare was about 60% of the usual bargained fare. 

Sometime ago, before the fare was announced by government, my brother had the opportunity to go in " Namma Auto ", a privately owned service wherein the auto not only had a proper meter, it was also cheaper than what is announced now. The best thing was that he was given a electronically generated bill at the end of the ride. :)

So, will chennai change.. I guess but it will change slowly. A lot of people have to wake up to using meters.

Being open to surprises during travel

During my recent travels, I encountered a few surprises, some very pleasant and others not so.

After my day's stay at nagapattinam, I moved out of the lodge to go to the bus stand with thoughts of either going to Thiruvarur and from there onto visit divyadesams on the thiruvarur - kumbakonam route or visit Mannargudi Rajagopalaswami temple.

I came out of the lodge and started walking in the direction of the bus stand in the hope of getting a share auto for the trip of about 2 kms. I asked a guy riding a bike if I can get a share auto to bus stand. He seemed to be pretty young (probably was not old enough to get a license), with a big can to get diesel. He replied stating I will not get share autos so early in the day (it was around 6.30 am). After travelling 20 metres or so, the guy turned and came back to me and said, " sir naan bus stand pakkathula than poren, ennado vaanga, anga erakki vittuduren". ( I am going near the bus stand and I will drop you there). I was bit afraid since he looked like a kid, but he insisted. He dropped me safely near the bus stand. 

In kumbakonam, when I checked in a lodge, the manager showed me the tarriff card and said these are the rates. He then added, since we just opened a couple of days ago, some of the facilities are yet to be done and he will give me a discount. I was bit surprised by this as generally these are not told upfront and you have to haggle later, after a few complaints. Later in the evening, when I came down to the reception from the first floor to get some drinking water, the owner, an elderly gentleman was there with his son (about 35 years old). He asked me about the room the stay etc, and they said that I could have just called the reception to get water. He then asked his son to fill water from the filter in my bottle and asked his son to go up to my room and give it there. 

I was fortunate to have an unexpected and lovely visit to Thiru Mandangudi (Thondarapodi azhwa's birthplace). I was traveling to Thiru Pullaboothankudi by auto and saw a board indicating mandangudi. The auto driver to my query responded that the temple is about 1 km out of our way. I went there after bargaining for a total fare of 80 Rs. The big surprise at the temple was the bhattar (priest) gave me a big leaf with curd rice prasadam offered to the Lord and asked me to have it there and then proceed. Lovely prasadam, with no expectation in return.

When i got down at pullaboothankudi and gave the driver 100 note. He simple pocketed and said it covered the fare. Autodrivers, will be the same everywhere i guess...

Besant Nagar Beach - my Bodhi Tree

Besant Nagar beach has always and will always be a place that I go, when I want to be alone,  or I need to take a step back from my daily life. 

This is one place where you can view life in full - you can see old couples walking together, young family with the kids playing in the sand with a ball, group of young guys in the water having fun, couples some sitting bravely in the open others crouching in the dark behind an empty stall, groups of college / young office goers with a frisbee / volleyball / foot ball sweating it out and many more such scenes.

But to me, the beach experience is divided into 3 categories - the walks as part of my excercise regime (cutting myself from the outer world with ilayaraja on the earphones), the chat sessions with one of the very few friends with whom I regularly share the beach and every topic under the sun, and finally my long visits at the waterline with Velukudi Krishan (religious / spiritual discourse) and the vast ocean for company.

I have had some strong debates with friends, or silence alone. Sometimes i see a lot of scenes and feel happy or sad or whatever other emotions; at other times my mind is just blank concentrating on what I hear and contemplating on it, especially if it is a devotional discourse. At times, I am completely mesmerized by the beauty of the beach, the sun rise or the full moon. 

But every time I visit the beach, never do i fail to listen to Nizhalgal song especially ' pon maalai pozhuthu '.. and the as the line goes ' vaanam enakkoru bodhi maram, naalum ennakathu sethi tharum.. '

The vast ocean and the skies, never fail to make me happy. the vast emptiness - my bodhi tree.

Innocence Lost...

I spent a couple of hours at the besant nagar beach today, and most of the time near the waterline. During this time, i saw a lot of kids between the age of 3 and 7, liked their antics, their playfulness but most of all their innocence.

There were two father and son duos - the fathers in mid 30s and the sons around 4 years.  I watched this pair who were about 20 feet apart. In one pair, the son was very bold and brave. He kept pushing his father to go deeper into the water whereas the father was cautious in not venturing too far. The other pair, the son was very tentative. He was just getting his feet wet standing at the very edge of the water and whenever there was a big wave, he would rush back a few feet. I kept watching both these pairs and was very fascinated by the kids. The two kids were innocent and one in his innocence of danger wanted to go deeper into the water and the other in his own innocence of the safe hands he was in, did not venture beyond the water edge. After some time, i noticed a small plastic ball which was bobbing up and down in the water. The father of the brave kid also noticed and pointed to his son. In a short while, the ball came closer to the water's edge but a bit farther from where they were standing. The father & son ran to the spot and picked up the ball. At that point in time, the other kid noticed the ball and asked his father to get it for him. By then, the other pair had already picked it up.

The father of the brave kid noticed that the timid kid wanted the ball. He asked his kid if the ball can be given to the other the kid. Without a moment of hesitation, the kid told his father to give the ball. By now, the timid's kid father was saying not to ask and let the brave kid have it. But the brave kid, got the ball from his father and gave it to the other kid and gave a big smile. That was a fantastic moment.. of generosity built on the foundation of innocence.

I started to wonder when and where did we lose that innocence. All of us were like that when we were kids, and some us even until college when our friends were friends and not competitors. Innocence lost, by choice or by design.

Urban Landscapes - Photos of Chennai

On a cloudy evening, with the smell of rain still in the air, i ventured out to the top of my apartment for a photo session. Here is the best of the lot.

'I' to 'i' - an icon - RIP Steve

The man who changed I to i is no more. RIP Steve Jobs.

My first look of an apple product was a screenshot of Macintosh's desktop about 16 years back. I used to work in a windows for workgroup. Then someone told me that Mac had all this and more and also that it was released a few years ago.

Over the next few years, while windows caught the craze of the world, mac restricted to the apple PC could not gain market share but had its own followers. Things changed, Time moved on and Steve was forced to move out of apple.

On his return, he changed apple from just being a computer company to a new age computer-consumer-communication giant. He changed the way people used to work at their computers. The way people listened to music. It was a revolution. Jogging became a pleasure with iPod. playlists, albums, rotarty controls became the norm. The once popular walkman was forgotten. Watching videos was changed.. videos became podcasts, to be downloaded and viewed. There were thousands of developers creating hundreds of new apps for iPod. Apple became an industry by itself. While industry and people were settling into iMac and iPod, Steve rewrote history. Enter the iPhone. Another revolution in communication. iPhone raised the bar on the mobile industry. While we were still in awe of the iPhone, apple introduced iPad. The tablet has had several starts and stops and could not create any impact. But iPad changed it all. These were the times that i used to wonder if apple was bringing in the right products at the right time or was Steve an inspirational leader able to sell more products to people. But then I realised it was a combination of several things but the main reason was the inspirational genius behind this.

The man changed the way we live.. from iMac, iPod, iPhone, IPad to iCloud. An iNSPIRATION to an entire industry.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. RIP Steve. the world will miss your inspiration.

Mobile Phones and ...

The explosion mobile phone usage has brought in a lot of convenience. But there are people (including yours truly) who subscribe to the view that a lot of times it is more of a nuisance rather than a convenience.

People who have been disturbed rudely during their saturday afternoon nap by the ringing of the mobiles, then jumping up to attend to the call only to find it is a sales call for a credit card or insurance policy will more than agree to the nuisance value (wow.. what an oxymoron) the mobile has turned out to be. Almost every saturday afternoon (when i leave my phone on ringing mode, expecting a call), the call definitely comes, except for the one that i was expecting. I tell the caller that i am not interested and not to disturb me, and what happens, i promptly get called in 15 minutes when I am just dozing back from the same caller and I explain that I just told no to the credit card. These are the times i have abused the invention of the mobile telephone and have cursed all the technology gurus who followed a different paths and put us in trouble several years later.

The other impact of the mobile phone is more in terms of a personal behavioural pattern in people. Several times when i travel by public transport, i have found people talking loudly on the phone. The entire bus will hear the conversation starting from something simple as they are already on the way to something complex as discussing a piece of java code or a real estate transaction. The entire crowd will know of the conversation while the person on the phone is oblivious to the surroundings.

I happened to overhear or rather hear a lot of such private conversations on the mobile in a public transport. During one of the journeys, a guy a couple of seats in front of me started by asking some simple questions and in a short while i understood that he was trying to a fix a bug in java code. As the time went, he was exasperated that the person on the other end was not able to debug a simple issue, make a small change and compile the code. The tempers were rising and thankfully for everyone in the bus, he got down at the next stop.

These are the times i used to think if the mobile phone makes people think that they will go invisible and cannot be heard or transported to another world or a shell the moment they pick up an incoming call.

The other behavioural change is the increase in white lies. While all of us are habitual offenders when it comes to telling white lies, the mobile has made it a profession.

As recently as last week, I was travelling in a bus from Guindy to Tambaram. While we were in Meenambakkam, one of the guy received a call and instantly responded that he is in Chrompet and will be in tambaram soon. Some time later, when we were nearing chrompet, the same person received a call and responded saying that he is caught in traffic near MEPZ and will soon come to Tambaram. This type of conversations happen atleast 2 to 3 times in my journey of about 45 minutes, and it happens almost everytime i travel by bus.

[ For people who are not familiar of chennai topography, Tambaram is a suburb in chennai and about 20 kms from Guindy, with Meenambakkam, Chrompet and MEPZ being intermediate stops].

The third change is that mobile is making "Man the social animal and a conversationlist" to 'Man the secluded but connected and a shrt txtng prsn'. During the days before the mobile, the train or bus journey is one place where you will find a lot of discusison happening. It can be sports, politics, movies or general affairs. There used to be a lot of heated debates with known or unknown people on Gavaskar vs Kapil Dev or a Kamal vs Rajini. Now, unfortunately, that has gone into the oblivion. People get onto the bus, and start listeining to music or start texting or get onto a call.

These behavioural pattern change can make a vast change in the generations to come and we may lose the habit of making a conversation. The same way when email changed the way of writing letters or sending greeting cards....