Coast to Coast Dash (Part 1 of 2)

What happens when you take two daringbaaz guys (who at times lose their cerebral screw), put them on a 200cc bike, give them smooth (like butter) 4 lane highways, single lane scenic ghat roads and the stamina to ride for 44 hours????

THE GREAT INDIAN EAST COAST TO WEST COAST DASH

Tushar, the bike owner- route planner cum chief driver, and yours truly, the treasurer- navigator – cameraman – and co-driver, decided to clear this to-do item from Tushar’s ‘Things to do in LIFE’. You can read Tushar’s story here. Now let’s here my story…

… It’s 8pm, phone rings (and yeah… am in the office..)

• tushar – when do we leave???
• maheep – tonight…
• tushar – time??
• maheep – by 2am

“Why would you want to DRIVE all the way to Mangalore?”, asks my colleague (and whosoever heard of the plot). “Why not?” i ask. Moreover, having worked madly for the week, one deserves a break. A break where you do not think anything, just drive and drive endlessly.

That pretty much raps up the WHY part for me. Now the details… I left office at 2am and we started from Chennai for Bangalore at 2.30am. After travelling some distance thru halogen lit chennai streets we hit the moon lit national highway. Now let me take this opportunity to thank the Indian Govt for building good roads. The road to Bangalore is simply smooth, with low traffic during night time, so we drove comfortably at >80kmp & <110kmph for the whole stretch and 60kmph for a small patch when the bike ran in reserve. We rode in turns, and stopped whenever we felt that our posteriors couldn’t handle the pain (more on that later). By sunrise, we were greeted by scenic mountains immersed in clouds near krishnagiri. A quick tea and we were off to hosur. Hosur, for the uninitiated is located in Tamilnadu and is known for the mfg facilities and proximity to Bangalore’s famous electronics city. Having said that you can guess how badly our speedometer would have travelled counter clockwise. After Hosur, it was electronics city and then bangalore city, the traffic kept getting worse. We managed our way through the ‘Bangalored Traffic’ and crashed at Santosh’s place. After a day’s long work and 350 kms, 2 hrs of sleep “banta hai yaar”. The recharge was complemented by hot Parotha’s at Santosh’s place. But to my dismay, the recharge was cutoff by Tushar’s plan to leave bangalore ASAP (btw, i’ve started to hate this word). We took a country road to reach hasan form bangalore. The road, as described in Tushar’s own words is ‘Biker’s Paradise’. This was not a commercial route, so was free of heavy vehicle and luckily potholes too. I was sleeping though out the stretch. I woke up at the end only to find that we have reached the highway. This part of the highway is WIP all the way till Mangalore. The roads converted from 4 lane to two lane to single lane (through the ghats) and no lane at all (near mangalore). The roads were bearable till the ghats. After which only the serene environment kept us motivated, coffee plantations and lush green forests in specific. Tushar drove through most of the bad roads like a warrior, but finally had to give in favour of some rest. but to my surprise, when i was in the drivers seat, the roads got better. not just that, when tushar drove next, the roads got as worse as they can get (guess i was lucky with the roads). A smal 20km stretch just before mangalore took us around 1.5 hrs to complete. The road was under construction and had hell lot of potholes. To add over that, it was raining and the vehicles passing by were splashing the muddy water all over us.

The stretch made us rethink about our return journey. We decided that we would drop our bike at mangalore and catch the next train to chennai. Atleast our body would get some rest. So anways, we somehow reached Mangalore by 7pm. Shivaditya had pretty much everything ready. Had some good hot food and medicinal brandy.

will continue the rest of the story in part 2

One Way City

Que-Which is the garden city of India?
Ans – Bangalore

Que-City of Lakes?
Ans – Bangalore

One Way City of India?
No prizes for guessing this one. Bangalore, always admired for its greenery, the number of lakes it has was also known as retirees paradise. But the recent IT boom has transformed it into an IT city. With tech parks coming up at every street and corner, it has now transformed into youngsters paradise. The city was never made to bear the load of this burgeoning population. The city planners could not timely gauge this growth. And the result in the form of traffic problems is in front of us. And to cope up with the traffic the planners have declared many roads fit for one-way traffic only. It was predominantly evident in the city area, near station, near market road, near brigade road, near commercial street and other places in central Bangalore. But the disease has now spread to places like koramangala, electronics city road, hosur road etc…
My recent visit to bangalore (or shall i say Bengaluru??) made me sit and wonder…… what will happen to this beautiful city in years to come. lets just hope that the developers come up with an efficient public transportation system and world class roads which can handle the traffic with ease….

ReservNation

A Nation Full of Reservations

Ever been to Bangalore? Well I’d been there for my summer training and as a student my saviour in the chaotic traffic was the city bus service –BTS. I had always heard about reservations, seen them in action but had never experienced them. It was in these humble BTS buses where I had first hand experience with reservations. I generally sat in the back rows, a habit from my college, but here it was due to the mad rush. One fine day I was early and was surprised to find the bus sparsely occupied. I occupied the 2^nd row seat. The conductor came and said something in Kannada, which for me was all French & Greek. I paid for the ticket and tuned into Radio City on my walkman. After 15 minutes, when the bus was jam packed, the conductor came towards me and again said something in Kannada. Someone translated it for me in English and said that since I was sitting on a seat reserved for women I had to get up and make way for women to sit. I then realized that around a third to half seats, and those too front seats, of the bus are reserved for women (those marked in red on the back).

I somehow did not like this scheme of reservation, maybe because I was asked to leave my seat and was made to stand for rest of my journey. I’d experienced this scheme in other cities too, but there the % of seats reserved for women was not so high. After few more days, the reason for such a scheme was evident. When men treat men in dingily manner on the bus, just imagine how they will behave with women on it. To make public transport safe and easy for women, it is necessary to have such a scheme.

The ongoing debate on increased reservations in educational institutions is somewhat similar. Those who are asked to make way for people belonging to the deprived classes (and remember the word is Deprived not Backward), feel that their rights have been infringed upon. However, they fail to see the manner in which people from deprived classes are treated in schools, offices, in small-scale private entities, by bureaucrats and in various spheres of life. Majority of those voicing opinion against reservations are from Metros and Big Cities or belong to well to do communities, where discrimination is not so evident. But after having a look at the thousands of towns and villages, where majority of these deprived people live, one can’t deny the need for reservations

Students argue that there is no point in reservations, as the needy don’t get it. And this is why I have used the word ‘Deprived’ and not ‘Backward or Minority or SC ST’, because many well to do people from SC/ST/OBC etc… tend to take advantage of reservations and the system fails. But if the scheme is made limited to only the deprived sections, there won’t be such cases.

Another argument is that of maintaining Quality. It’s argued that students from deprived classes are not that good and would be a compromise on quality ,especially for esteemed institutions like IITs, IIMs etc.. But nowhere has it been proved that students from deprived classes have lower IQ or are less intelligent than others. Take the example of National Innovation Foundation where around 70% of awardees are school dropouts. The only area where they lag behind is English language. IITs and IIMs have been made exclusive preserve of the English-knowing social elites.

Those from Deprived sections need the right kind of support, so that they can climb the social ladder and help make India an egalitarian society.

To prevent anyone from taking advantage of such a scheme again and again, a clause can be added where a student would be allowed only once in his life to enjoy the benefits of reservation. After enjoying that benefit he/she should be placed under General Category. Also the Reservations should be there only for a certain period of time, as they where originally supposed to be, say till 2015 or 2020.

If we feel that only reservation schemes can bring equality in the society, then we are mistaken. Reservations are a part of the bigger scheme. As the Mandal commission had suggested that inaddition to reservations in educational institutions, govt. jobs we need separate coaching facility for students aspiring to enter technical and professional institutions, special vocation-oriented programme for deprived sections, progressive land reforms, creation of chain of financial and technical bodies to assist entrepreneurs from deprived sections , upgradation of skills of village artisans and providing loans for setting up SME’s , and over and above strict imprisonment for anyone discriminating on the basis of caste/religion….

Nevertheless, any of these should not compromise with quality , something for which India is known.

The Flight …..contd…….

………..I asked her whether she was from Mumbai, to which she replied ‘Yes’. She asked the same question and I replied Anand. Like many people, she didn’t knew about Anand, but as soon as I mentioned about AMUL and its Anand connection she said “Oh…the milk city”(You know ,very few really know about Anand, so from the next time I’m going to say that I’m from the Milk City of India. Hope they get it). We then talked about our respective trips to Bangalore, the continental food served (about which none of us had any idea), poor condition of Bangalore Airport and so on… I came to know that she was into Event Management and had recently organised a concert in Bangalore. When she realized that I am an Electrical Engineer, she took out her Walkman and asked me if I can fix it. This is one situation I have faced n number of times in my life. Whenever there is some electrical problem in the house/appliance others expect me to fix it, But when will they realize that I am a god damn Electrical ENGINEER, not TECHNICIAN. However, I couldn’t say NO to a beautiful lady sitting besides me, 30000 ft above sea level. I played with the walkman for few minutes and then gave it back to her telling that there is some trouble with electronics part which required replacement, even when I didn’t knew anything about it. We both finished our food; Airhostess took the plates back. She continued with her reading, and I started peeping…outside… thru’ the window.

After some time the plane descended, and I could see the lights of Mumbai. I had to catch a train to Anand from Central Station at 9.30pm and it already was 8. I knew that after getting down, I would have to catch local train to Central Station as Taxi and Bus would take lot of time in the busy evening traffic. To double-check my calculations I asked her and she agreed to it. I tried to act as if I was new to Mumbai and didn’t knew much about Local trains here. She asked me not to worry. As she also had to catch a train, she would accompany me till Santacruz station. I tried to act a bit and said that I am not very sure about this whole local train affair and that I’m suffering from Slip Disk and can’t stand for long time or lift weights/luggage (which was true),to which she replied that she would accompany in the local train till Central Station ,as she had nothing else to do that evening. I was delighted, but thought she was kidding. After circling around the airport for 15 minutes, the plane finally landed at Mumbai Domestic Airport. We got down and went to take our luggage. She was also standing besides me, maybe for her luggage. I took my bag and started moving and to my surprise, she too was coming with me. I realized that she had no bags apart from her handbag and was waiting there only for me. I was surprised, I didn’t expect her to accompany me to the station, I thought it was a joke but she was serious.. We got out and hired a taxi to SantaCruz station. Now I got suspicious. Why would a girl, and that a pretty good-looking Mumbaikar, who most probably had a boyfriend, would come with me to station.

We reached the station. I paid for the taxi and she went straight to the ticket counter. She had bought 3 tickets. She said that as I didn’t know much about local trains and had Slip Disk, she would come with me till Central and would then return to her home, which was in the opposite direction. I got more suspicious. Our train arrived at around 8.40. We got in. Surprisingly there weren’t many people inside. We got two adjacent window seats. I couldn’t understand why she was coming with me. I started putting the things together-here I am with a 20-23 yrs Female, from Mumbai, who earns and earns enough to afford Designer clothes/accessories and jewel studded cell phone, flying alone from Bangalore that too without any luggage except a small hand bag and who is beautiful enough to be a model. Then this strange thought occurred to me, Is she a…you know, into that business ….’No it cannot be’ I said to myself, but then anything is possible these days. I stayed quite and acted as if I was enjoying the cool breeze. She too was looking outside, thinking something, and only god knows what.

At around 9.15 we reached Central Station. We got down and started moving. Anyone who has been to Central Station knows that there are two sections, one for Local Trains and the other for Express/Mails and other long distance trains. Both the sections are separated. She said that since she had to catch a local train to get back she couldn’t come with till my train. Suddenly she started laughing. I was surprised. She said that we were together since the evening and still didn’t knew each others name. She said her name was Alps D’souza. I gave her my name. I was still suspicious. She looked at puzzled face and asked me what the problem was. I explained her that I couldn’t digest the fact that she had come all the way from SantaCruz to central just for me, even when her destination was in the opposite direction. She took out her ID and showed it to me. It was some Event management company’s ID with her photo on it, and had a Bangalore address on it. She told me the whole story.

She had arrived Bangalore 4 days ago for organising a concert. The airline guys had lost her luggage. All her money/clothes/addresses were in the bag. The ID had an address but since she was new to Bangalore, she didn’t knew how to reach that place. One of her co-passenger, who too had lost her luggage, helped her out. On reaching that place Alps offered her money for the help but was turned down. In return of her help, that lady asked Alps to help someone else, Only then will she be content. Therefore, she helped me out. Her train arrived and she got on to it. She wished me a happy journey and said goodbye. We bid farewell to each other and her train started moving. At this moment, I was shocked. Actually not shocked, but ashamed. I wanted to stop her but could not. Bloody Mumbai local trains are fast and won’t stop for me or at my will

It was 9.20, I had to move towards my train. I somehow dragged myself to the train. Even though I’m Six ft tall, I somehow felt small. Small as a human being. Here there is a lady who helps me out and I act as a stupid, thinking all bad things about her. Because of my suspicion, I didn’t even ask her contact number or mail id or address. With No contact how could I repay her for what she had done for me. Nevertheless, I knew the answer. “An Eye for an Eye – A Help for Help”.

And If any one of you meets Alps D’souza please Let me know. I have got Two Words for Her: “Sorry” and “Thankyou”.