Cattle Corridors

One frequently hears of wild elephants straying into human habitations in search of food and often tranquilized by the Forest department and relocated far away from human habitation. This has become so frequent that in the last few years either due to encroachment of human habitation in forest lands or thoughtless development projects like roads etc along the path of elephant corridors.

However another interesting parallel is taking place in urban areas that are otherwise has little to do with forests. Most of us in this country are familiar with cattle that generally are given liberty to frequent and feast on poster ridden busy thoroughfares and highways by their loving owners. However these gallivanting bovines unintentionally cause serious accidents resulting in loss of limbs and sometime lives of drivers of vehicles especially two wheelers. The hitherto Administration in deep hibernation after much debate and deliberations finally seized the issue with both the hands and has begun to implement, operation to clean up bovine encroachments that otherwise somehow defied a solution so far. In fact the Corporation of Chennai was so serious about the project that the first seizure was led by the Honourable Commissioner, who in a true style of a matador or to use a more highly emotional native expression, a jallikattu hero, secured a reluctant mount road bull and with an expert skill lured it into a truck and carted it away to the nearest pound. It was truly a heroic deed much applauded by terrified road uses.

The rather shocked owners soon made a beeline to release their dear wards and after paying a paltry fine got them back to their familiar terrain, roads, as they claimed that they do not have sufficient space to house their chellams. Now we are back to square one. Soon the owners, ably assisted by friends of bovine(NGOs), may put forth the argument a la the elephants that the Town and Country Planning Act has been enacted thoughtlessly without taking into consideration the cattle corridors that was existing from time immemorial. And who knows they may even succeed in the Courts in case our Honourabe judges happen to seize the issue and after good quarter of  a century of deliberations may proceed to deliver a long winded discourse on the rights of the four legged holy cattle vis a vis two legged homo sapiens. Jai hind!

 

From Ayodhya Ram to N.Ram.

One more hectic day ends. Really as I received roughly fifty forwards, audio, video n  short thesis on  history, geography, archaeology so on about the origin of the term Bharat vis a vis India and a few PhD thesis on the term Sanatana Dharma vis a vis Hinduism from roughly 5000 BCE to 2023 AD in three days flat. Mind you not in one language but in four languages, Tamil, Telugu, English n Hindi. Thank God I didn't know more languages. Not even in three years of my graduation I came across so much literature on India sorry Bharat that by the end of the third day my head was loaded so much excess of knowledge that I took a few pain killers n to repent, sorry relax from the excess, I decided to watch Tom n Jerry. To be honest I can't for the life of me remember a single damn thing. That's all folks. bye.

 

A Postmaster, Milan Kundera and Nietzsche

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air.

The caption is as the cliché goes is like chalk and cheese. Not so really as I realised. It was those strange times when one comes across people almost from forgotten little towns that many a time never ceases to amaze one. It was a professional trip I was taking to a southern town in a day time train. The chair car compartment looked pretty cramped filled to capacity. The afternoon was humid and to my misfortune I had the middle seat.  I was cursing myself for not getting a more comfortable a/c chair car. To divert myself from acute discomfort with frequent sips of water I fished out some dailies I was carrying and started to read and do crosswords. A little later my eyes fell on an eldery man sitting next to my seat neatly dressed was holding a book ‘Immortality’ by Milan Kundera. He broke the ice by asking me if I was a Professor of English. As I replied in the negative. Now it was my turn to ask him if he was one. And his reply took me by surprise. He said that he was a retired postmaster from a small town called Ammapettai where there was no railway line and only half a dozen buses pass through it during the day. I became curious about his background. He then told me that he was from poor agriculturist family and after finishing tenth standard in the local government his education ended and he was helping his father. Then he came to know that his village one man post office was vacant and on the advice of his uncle he applied and got the job. For the rest of his life till his retirement for about three decades he worked in the post office as a clerk, postman and delivery man all rolled into one. I was surprised about his familiarity with the likes of, not just Kundera, but with numerous others from Bacon to Tolstoy to Gandhi to Nehru to Khalil Gibran. He even began to quote some interesting passages. His knowledge of Tamiz literature too was astounding. Right form sangam poetry to the great epics to bhakti poems, all self-taught.  By now I was completely bowled over then to cap it all he fished out from his bag a book on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. By now I was feeling totally inadequate to continue the conversation with the old postmaster.

The most interesting was that the postmaster makes it a point to read The Hindu that one or two people bought in his village every day and notes down author’s name that he was not familiar with. And whenever he visited nearby town or Chennai he would try and buy those books. By now he appeared to have collected a fair amount of books. He also said that he would read “know your English” column assiduously and improved his language skills. Most of his pension went to augmenting his library with books and as a policy he also donates everyday a particular sum to some needy person. His only lament was that his children don’t read any of the books. I hardly could interrupt the torrent of thoughts that was pouring out of him. As his station approached we exchanged the phone numbers and the retired post master profusely thanked me for having spared my valuable time and apologized if he had disturbed me.  After he got down he came near the window of my seat and bid goodbye in chaste Tamiz and wished my journey be a safe and happy one. I just mumbled a thank you as the train picked up speed and pierced into the growing night that I may not soon forget as Thomas Gray lines came to my mind and in fact I cannot think of any one more deserving than the retired Postman of Ammapett to grace the yearly Lit fest that is held in fancies locations.

A little Humanity please!

 

A tragedy and two reactions  Humanity & Commerce

The tragic train accident that took place on the early hours of 2^nd  June near Balasore, Odisha was the most horrendous in the recent times. The death toll alone it is reported to have climbed to near two hundred and seventy five or more and more than six hundred injured as on date is something shocking especially with all technical advances we have made in many sectors including in transportation. The rescue efforts was no doubt  swift and the disaster relief team is doing commendable job without taking break in the rescue operations and so are the medical team in the local hospital in attending to the injured passengers. There are many reasons ascribed to the disaster right from negligence to mechanical error etc. A detailed enquiry alone would bring the real cause for this humongous tragedy.   It is only hoped that the Government would take immediate remedial steps so that such disasters are averted in the future.

My observation is more on the human aspect of the entire disaster. As soon as the accident took place it is reported that many people living in nearby villages came rushing to the spot and started to pull the victims out of the wreckage. Some took the injured in their own vehicles or taxis to the nearest hospital. Meanwhile within an hour hundreds of people reported to have lined up in the hospital to donate blood and the hospital had to turn away many due to the donours exceeding the requirement of the hospital. News also came that many helped injured to communicate their near and dear ones by phone and send information about their safety. This was not the first time when one comes across commendable sense of humanity exhibited by simple village folks without second thoughts in times of disaster be it the aftermath of Tsunami or the air crash that claimed the former Army General Bipin Rawat.  

Now the most distressing news comes from the air sector. Almost all the airlines quietly increased their fares on all these sectors to more than double right from the day of the accident and many passengers who came out alive of the accident had to make haste to reach to their near and dear ones at the earliest. Many in fact were under trauma and not in perfect mental state even to decide their immediate needs.  I do not have enough words to describe this insensitive commerce that went on at a time such as this. No doubt motive of business by private enterprises is for profit but to practice it at extreme levels especially during disasters is nothing but inhuman. These Airlines, manned by highly skilled and educated professional may learn a few lessons from the simple village folks to become better human beings than merely being meritorious professionals. As our father of the nation said that among the seven deadly sins one of them was commerce without morality.  Is it too much to expect the Airlines to wake to a little more humanity and return the excess fare collected from the relatives and other travelers who used their carriers to reach home safely.