It is all about travelling in Govt owned A/c buses in tamilnadu

It is my experiment to travel by Govt owned buses in Tamilnadu. The egalitarian approach of the govt is awesome. Whether u want to travel by airconditioned bus or bus like six wheeled vehicle, u need to follow the serpentine queue to book ur ticket as u cannot book tickets online for a/c buses.
I think, two years back, when the govt suddenly woken up from coma to roll out air conditioned buses to add a laurel to its fleet, it was applauded moreover it deserved too! As usual, with much fanfare service started. Thanks to a set of tasteful officers, the buses sported a welcome sky blue and white body (other buses are canary yellow, magenta or tincture coloured). I went to book tickets to Trichy. Being July, the Koyambedu bus terminus wore a deserted look. I booked tickets to Trichy by day bus and to Chennai by night bus in no time. Next day, i boarded the bus. It was an unusual experience. I mean, it was a nice experience!when i travelled back, it was night bus. We were all given woolen shawls. ( May be Ks and Js donated their shawls to the transport department).
In a couple of years, everything went topsy-turvy. This is also not an unusual thing, he he he. I had to travel by night bus. It was scheduled to depart at 10.30 PM. The bus which is supposed to have been in the terminus half an hour before the departure never showed up till 11 Pm. No information was available in the Trichy bus terminus. The polite clerks (!!!!!) available over there said, varum ma.... poi nillunga.... diesel podara edathula queue ma..........Ahem, the bus came at 11.15 PM. Bus was well airconditioned when i boarded it. Alas, knob to adjust a/c was broken. After half an hour i felt like i was sitting inside freezer. We were not given shawls. I had to request for the shawl which conductor gave half minded. I wanted to recline. he he he, the foot rest was not there. Literally i had to kick the fellow sitting infront of me to recline. The seats have now turned soggy. After one hour, bus turned into an inferno. Passengers got to bring around the conductor to restore the a/c. It was such an unpleasant experience.
Now we can compare the private omni buses. We have good attendants. Buses look neat. So, it is the attitude of the govt employees. It is not about expanding the fleet. It is all about maintaining the existing fleet!!!!!!

Election, election duty and irony

As India geared up for new Govt. (more like villu vijay film. analogy between indian coalition govt and vijay film : any vijay film is a sum of few reels from his previous films, similarly indian govt is sum of sundry parties and their parities) there is an irony i would like to underline.
A fortnight back, govt office staff those who did not show up for election duty were suspended. Good! Indeed a welcome move to punish those wash hands off their primary duty. But, who will punish the elected representatives, who never step in the parliament? Who has to punish the netas who hardly raise questions if atall they attend the parliament sessions? Who will hit back the khadis and saffrons who always hinder the proceedings of the parliament?
I can put up x number of questions incessently. But, i do not want to sound like J s and K s and M s and R s and S s and remaining sundry national and regional politicians who keep on slinging mud in the name of election campaigning and expect no answer from the pulic and other cranky alphabets for thier rhetorics!!!!!!!!!!

What day is today?

I woke up this morning by the deafening sound of the compressor that we hired to demolish the old house. Since it is available only on Sunday, we had only one option of availing the service today. The vibrations were unbearable, and we opted to sit in the stone bench that is placed at the entrance of the house. Lazing around in the dog days, we me, my father, contractor were discussing about the new house plans. Breakfast and lunch we got from Balaji Bhavan. In between when the workers relaxed for an hour for lunch and nap, I even browsed for a while.
My father went out to get us jack fruit and melons. I was calling my friends and chatting with them albeit the compressor sound. I made tea. I was on my routine except that I was sitting in the verandah. As usual the maid servant came. Surprisingly, she was in a new saree. I asked her what is special today? She blushed and said, her children, all around 18 years of age, gifted her a saree for mothers day. I was stupefied. I had been devouring the newspaper. I went through the brouhaha of each and sundry on their mother. But, it never occured for me to wish my mom on mothers day. I repented it. Melancholy mood engulfed me. I felt a sudden vacuum as my mom is in Trichy caring my children on their vacation. But then, out of blue I got a call from my mom. She said, my little daughter wanted to wish me on mothers day after seeing an advertisement in the television. Silently my mom gave the phone to my daughter and she wished me. My mom never bothered to ask me why I did not wish her. After all, mothers are always mothers. They deserve a mothers day everyday!!!

How I named my blog

May be my first blog is not a disastrous one. I used to scribble something as comment in my friends blogs. So, they asked me to start a blog of mine to pour my thoughts(!?). Though I created this a very long back, I never had time(!?) to write. Actually, I had been pondering over the subject that I would write about. As usual starting trouble. Though my comments on others blog were witty and spontaneous, I had to contrive for my blog. So, those who read this blog, hopefully do not curse me!

By the way, the content got derailed from the title. Coming back to title, being a passionate fan of Burkha Dutt of NDTV, I got to know the word resilience for the first time when Mumbai witnessed the bomb blast. I ran to the online dictionary to know what it actually meant. God, I came to knew the fact that how powerful the language English is! Already, as a student from rural background I used to drop my jaw when people use heavy jargons in English. At times self sympathy would pop up cursing my fate to study in regional language medium. But, the moment I heard of word resilience, I thought I was destined to hear that word to shed of my fear for the omnipotent language. That is how, I started to scribble in English(!?)

But, the fact is that without even knowing the meaning of the word resilience, I had been practising the essence of the word, right from my higher secondary education. I sailed to "English Medium" from regional language medium not knowing that I would get swept away by the tsunamis Physics, Chemistry and the clubbed monsters Botany and Zoology. A person who had never seen any other rank other than first right from class 1 to class 10, it was a heavy shock to get a double digit rank in a class of strength ninety and odd. The subjects where I scored more marks were Maths (which needs little English) and Tamil (needs no English at all, he he he). That dragged me up to 37th rank in the class (not to mention, my other friends from the regional language medium were bundled to the last places in descending order of rank). Gradually, I ascended to 3rd rank at the end of my 12th standard ( that too because of the villain Sanskrit. Sanskrit students can get a centum whereas Tamil students can get a maximum of 90-95%).

With all dreams to go to engineering, the second blow came in the form of leaving me in hostel for doing engineering. My parents wanted to keep me close to them, so, I had to join B.Sc. Physics instead of BE the great! I cried for few days, and as usual yielded to my parents decisions. Nevertheless to mention I saw most of friends parents doing so. So, most of my friends parents put their daughters in the most prestigious Science branch, Physics. The course became a heaven and we all enjoyed. By then, we all knew the nitty gritty of writing Physics in English. Our English medium friends helped us to understand the sentences and we intern helped them with all those mathematical part of physics. At the end of B.Sc, thanks to my friends from angloindian board, I learnt to speak in English (not so fluently of course). I deem it as a pleasure to thank my friends Anita, Annapoorni, Nandita, Anupama, Sindu who patiently taught me how to talk in English. Me getting the first rank and gold medal in my B.Sc is a different story altogether.

From there I got M.Sc. Physics admission both in University and a reputed city college. Stating the distance as a reason, my parents distanced me from University and put me in the city college for my post graduation. Being a practitioner of resilience, I went to college. Seven of my B.Sc. classmates were there. So, it was a heaven again. By then, we started receiving marriage invitations from B.Sc. friends and we enjoyed attending marriages of our friends. By the by, I reserved my first rank and gold medal in mind and got them home too!

I got married soon after my PG. I thought my marriage with Physics got divorced. But, to my surprise, my father in law sent me to M.Phil as a full timer. After that, accidentally a college hired me as a lecturer and still continuing with the college since 1999. In between I finished my doctorate too! I survived against all the odds. There were instances which drove me to a corner. There were times that took me to square one. There were moments that made me to start from scratch. I cried, cursed fate, got depressed, and what not. But, never forgot being resilient!