Ephemeral.
MSR had once blogged about this and I draw
inspiration from the word she taught me to bend and twist it to fit into my
present situation. Actually, when you think of it, it needn’t be twisted or
bent all that much, ephemeral is what it is. I met a chap here in Baroda , who of all places to have done his schooling from,
did it in Bahrain , in the Indian School Bombay
This time it was Baroda
It all comes and goes, you never know
where you’ll be tomorrow and what you’ll be doing, that’s the best part of
life, you get thrown in the deep end of the pool and that’s when you realise
what you’re made of. Every single day I crib about being sent to Baroda Bombay Delhi , Madras , Maharashtra,
Calcutta , Rajasthan, Punjab, Bihar, Uttar
Pradesh, Saurashtra, Jabalpur
It’s when you meet all these people that
you start to realise your place in the world. I’ll state an astonishing fact
here, I live with three others in this flat and between the three of them, they
have fewer shirts, and just the same number of trousers as I do. Am I lavish or
extravagant or what? One gets by on two shirts and one pair of trousers for the
entire week; another has a community wardrobe, where all those enrolled share
clothes as per their needs. I’ve heard about people sharing food, shoes, combs,
watches, and even tooth picks, but clothes? Come on!
It’s been almost a year since I travelled by
sleeper class in the trains, and I decided to try it on Sunday, the day I went to
Ahmedabad to meet Babloo. On the journey back, I started talking to this chap who
came from some village in Rajasthan, he’d never seen the bright lights of Bombay
or any large city for that matter so travelling out of the country like I had was
out of the question. He had a family to support and he was probably as old as I
was if not younger. He was a commerce graduate and he was preparing for the civil
services exams, the IAS to be specific. He had a battery of tests to clear, a written
on, followed by a group discussion and an interview. And that wasn’t all, people
have been know to exit the fray during the medical tests for reasons known to the
medical brains behind them. He had a single bag with him, his clothes and necessities.
I was on my way back from making the rounds of some of the most overpriced stores
in the Ahmedabad malls, places whose glass facades he would probably stare into,
wistfully, one day. In my tattered bag I had an iPod Touch, a SONY camera, two cell
phones, two books that I’d bought off the road and a pristine white shirt worth
the better half of a grand. The cost of my ticket in the train didn’t seem an unnecessary
expense but this chap pointed out that taking the bus back to Baroda would have
cost me half the train fare. Point taken. Then he started asking me about where
I worked and on hearing about Lunch & Tea, he had that spell bound look in his
eyes that said “I’d LOVE to work there”. He said that he’d seen their sparkling
offices and was impressed though he had not the faintest idea what was done in them.
This just shows how the better half of India
It makes you think, is it really worth it,
working like a dog just to get an SMS confirmation that your salary has reached
the eager hands of your private bank, ready to swallow you whole by dangling
the promise of a flashy life style funded by their ridiculously expensive
personal loans? Is this how different we are in the same country?
Imagine.
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