my search for meaning with my daughter

One of the best things we did on this vacation is the decision of coming back to Mumbai in the Rajdhani train. When we were young train travel was always second class and always non air conditioned. It did not matter where we traveled, this was the mode of transport. I remember going from Mumbai to Kolkata by train in a second class non A/c train. This was the norm. Somehow I also do remember trains being far cleaner than what they are now. We would get down at the stations and fill our jugs with water and buying bottled water was never on the agenda. But eating out for a Gujju family was an anathema. We would have lunch and dinner and breakfast packed along with tea. There was a box my mom once bought from Kolkata. It was called the patharo, I think. It was a mid sized aluminum box which was used to store food for a journey. We would carry theplas, khakras, pickles, tea and everything while travelling. Food was an essential part of the travelling. We liked our food and we kept it with us, everywhere we went.

I think the first time we went in an air-conditioned train was when I was in college (around 1995-95). The demand for air conditioned trains was going up and people then started travelling in the Ac trains. I remember using the Rajdhani for the first time and it was a lovely experience. You get your beddings, a bottle of water, all meals and an ice cream as a desert. Hah! It was heaven. As we (the economy) got richer, we used the AC train for more often. It was definitely the AC and if you are feeling rich then you use the second AC, otherwise the third AC was the minimum norm. The big difference is that the second AC has two beds bunked up on either side and the third AC has three on either side. And the second AC have the horrible unwashed dirty shitty curtains. I hate those curtains. I hate touching those dirty curtains.

For a long while it was the AC trains that we used till we got even richer (here we is economy and family). Also the price of airline tickets also started to fall. We started flying everywhere on vacations. It saved time and time on vacation is money. You want to use the time to enjoy your vacation, not travelling to a place.

This time, while we were planning the vacation, we decided to take the train back from Delhi. I thought that the best time to have a conversation with your daughter is in a train. Rajdhani is the best of them all. No stress while travelling, no random people climbing on and reasonably clean with your food taken care of. We got one upper side bunk. Jispa climbed onto it and made herself at home. I joined in after her in some time. We then started talking. I started explaining to her the US elections. How they are managed and how the President is elected. Of course nothing is that simple when I am explaining anything. I took two hours to explain the whole thing, including the election of Bush and Bill Clinton. It was an awesome conversation. In the middle while I was explaining to her how a friend of mine was in a government job in India, working for a minister, she was quite amazed and she asked me why I did not tell her about it before. I simply said – we don’t have time these days as we are all busy with a lot of other things. I later told Jasmine about this and we both smiled. We both knew that I always have time, but she is too busy these days and too moody and too much of a teenager to listen. She is lost in her phone or in her music or in something else altogether.

The Rajdhani experiment was a success. I look forward to many more such successes. Now that she is growing up and she has a mind, I am finding interesting things that we can share. We also booked trains to Dehradun from delhi. Here I shared my kindle with her and asked her to read another book summary that I had. This book has influenced me a whole lot. It lead bare the marketing of food and how the food giants got us to eat more, much more unhealthy but tasty food. It’s called Salt Sugar Fat. I had read the detailed summary and then recently I had bought the full book. I had the summary on the Kindle and I got Jispa to read it. She read it and enjoyed it. We then could discuss elements of the book and understand how the bliss point is achieved by the manufacturers. It’s quite an interesting book and is easily my top read. But the real fun is when I could discuss it with my kid.

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)movies coming out, another point of mutual fun is getting developed. Jispa and I went for the Doctor Strange movie together. Jasmine is not a great fan is happier sleeping this one out. I enjoyed watching it with Jispa and laughing on all the attitude jokes with her. Then at the end of it, I explained to her the concept of the infinity stones and how the MCU has used it across all their movies to tie it all in together.  Now that was a seriously cool bro moment (we call each other bro and we fist pump. Yes… sigh). I know that because there are enough and more, young MCU fans in my office who are original comic book hero worshippers. Then we sat at home and looked up videos and blogs that explained the concept of the infinity stones and how all the movies in the MCU somehow connect to one or more of the infinity stones coming towards a huge final showdown. This is so bloody serious. The guys at MCU must have be crazy to take such an audacious move wherein they are thinking years in advance where the movies have story lines that are crisscrossing each other towards a grand finale. Every superhero story is to be seen in relation to the other, with Easter eggs in all of them. Discovering this is awesome, telling it to your teenage daughter to see her mouth wide open – priceless.

If this much bonding wasn’t enough – we are suddenly now reading a book together. This one is deadly serious - Man's Search for Meaning;  a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. He is a Psychologist by profession and was thrown into a concentration camp. He uses the experience to delve deep into the mind of man and comes out to share his experience. He tries to be as objective as possible in explaining his situation and his experience. Then he explains how people who survived probably found more meaning in their life than others. Jispa and me are reading it at the same time. She folds the top of her page to mark her page and I use the bottom. The book is divided into two sections and the second section of the book explains describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. This was in my to-read list sine a long time, We found it in a mall in Dehradun and picked it up immediately as train reading for Jispa and me. The book has been an outstanding revelation. In many ways it resonates with what I think is true in life and have known it to be true for me. It captures beautifully the essence of what I think is purpose and meaning in daily trials. Most importantly – it talks about sufferings as being something in which you find meaning.

I have read Buddha and his various teachings and lessons. There also there is talk of suffering as real and an important part of life. I never did understand that till now. I always used to think that suffering cannot be the motive of life and how can it be the truth of life. Aren’t we all trying not to suffer, then why must we accept suffering as an important meaning of life. Here, reading this book at age 41, I realise what suffering is. To extract meaning and purpose in life we do things. We aim, we achieve, we face degection and sadness and we face trails and tribulations, we strive and we work, we think and plan. The moment we do anything we are expending effort. This effort for me is suffering. Jispa finds meaning in her tough swim schedule. She braves cold waters, tough workouts and sore ness in her body. She suffers but in that suffering she finds meaning and that is why she does it.

This what I explained to Jispa while we were discussing the book and I explained that I never did understand it till I was 41 and I read this book. Was it the book or was it the maturity? Many books are awesome but in many ways you are probably too young or too old to read it or understand it. Many books are awesome but they are not there for you at the right time or the right mental frame of mind.

Who would have known that a book is all about timing and at the right time it finds relevance and meaning?

While reading and buying books on amazon, it’s a fun thing to see the reviews and understand the book before you end up reading it. The negative reviews are also there which enhance the experience of the book. At first, some negative reviews used to discourage me from buying the book. As if I was searching for some holy grail and wanted to use my time (arrogance) only for reading the best of the best. But now, I also understand that it’s only a point of view. The book is a point of view, the reviews are a point of view and you as a reader is only reading and forming a point of view. There is no real truth, as in everything is relative. And in books, there is also the question of timing. Hence it’s nice to read the reviews and nice to understand them, but you still have to make up your mind on your own. And never let anyone stop you from reading your book. Because I have often said that even the worst book in the world will tell you why it’s the worst book in the world. So there is knowledge everywhere.

Freedom

We spend the first year of a child's life teaching him or her to walk and talk "and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down."

I read this somewhere and its really true and so truer than now with respect to Jispa. Jispa is suddenly becoming a big girl. She understands stuff, is able to argue back and is broadly able to resist. So whats wrong. Nothing – just as parents now we have to be all ready to handle a different child than the one we were handling six months ago. The nature of adolescence is now panning out. Neither she nor we know if she is an adult or a child. Should we treat her as if she knows nothing or should we treat her as if she knows everything. We have to get after her to do her stuff and she says she knows what to do. Jasmine is letting her peel and cut cucumbers and I baulk at the approval. That’s not done. I don’t think she is ready yet but then many girls younger to her do this and much more.

She fights and fights aggressively for freedom and responsibility and on giving she promptly screws it all up. She would  then proceed to just not do what is expected of her. Its not that she doesn’t understand. She does but just something happens and …. And it just creates more confusion in our minds. Is she old or is she young. Every phase gets tougher and tougher. Now that she is in the fifth grade the pressure of homework and studies have cranked up dramatically. There is a lot more to study and with her swimming schedule the time that she has is dramatically less. Time seems to have been condensed these days. So much so that we are now constantly on her case. Jasmine gets completely done in by the stress and then it gets to me. I try and understand and allow but then Jispa will simply mess things up and make me wonder whats going on. I allow her leeway in the morning to relax and not rush – the consequence is that when we are to leave she will not be ready and there is a mad rush for the bags. I allow her some time to read  a magazine at night – the consequence is that she remembers in the morning about the home work to be done and there is a mad rush with unfinished home work. We let her see a movie and project will remain unfinished or she will be ill prepared for her reviews.

Oh dam me. I always maintained that I will not put pressure on her to study. She is free to enjoy her life and do as she pleases. Studies will not be the main focus of her life like what my parents did. Studies they knew was the only way out of a life of struggle. They were right in their era. Time shave changed. I maintained always but then it lasted only till I became a parent of a 10 year old. So now I have changed to from studies is not it to only studies is not it. You need studies and something else. Or you have your something else and you have studies as well. Earlier when Jispa was born I was a complete ass. I even thought that great it’s a girl, at least the pressure on her to grow up and study and become an engineer is not there. But dam… that’s not the thing. We know she is smart and we know that she can do well. She has a great brain that is able to memorise as well as reason. So what’s my job as a dad? Is it to give her a great and happy childhood that she will remember for life (and not blame me like how I sometimes blame my parents) or teach her to study, make her study for now and then hopefully she takes a call later on what she wants to do in life.

I really don’t want to pressurize her. Yesterday as well I had to take the school magazine from her and get her to study and finish her homework. She obviously did not like it. It showed on her face. Later on I asked her about it and then I spoke to her. I told her I was sorry. She had to finish her stuff, I hate being a  mean dad much more than you hate having one. But I am sorry. She understood. At the end as was sleeping I told her “I am sorry and I promise you that it WILL happen again”. We laughed. It’s a tough one. And it’s not as simple as ‘let Jasmine do the irritating discipline thing and I will do the fun thing’. That’s not on as well. That’s unfair to one parent. So we both have to be mean and sweet. The thing is to alternate. But it’s getting freaking tough on both of us. We are constantly being pulled in by our true nature, our role as parents and our desires to see our child do well.

So what’s the answer to all this? its difficult. The way I see it right now and the way I explained to Jispa is simple. I have no option but ensure that you have a great base. She is around 11 right now. I have another 5-6 years at best to hound her and get her to study. If this base is well constructed then she can build it from there on.in fact she can then even decide to chuck it all and do something else altogether. But to have the freedom to choose you need to be able enough to get the choice in the first place. If you want to reject an admission in a college you need to get the admission to start with. That leave sus with very little room to play with. And that little room is gobbled up with her swimming. If she swims so many hours a day, she is eating into all her time for everything else. Plus we have to ensure she plays a bit and movies and relax and read… wow. I keep explaining to her that if she was a simple fun kid then she would have had time for a lot of simple cute fun. But is choosing to be a champion. Representing Mumbai is no mean feat, there are choices to be made and scarifies to be done. It is up to the athlete to choose. But she will need to.

On this a bit of philosophy that I read might help. It’s quite an interesting story. I have read this story as a kid, but I never did figure that this is an interesting and deeply philosophical construct. Read on. How limiting Jispa’s choices now we are actually giving her the freedom to choose! Sorry Jips, I think you are not going to find this one inspiring. Atleast for now.

http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/odysseus-nudged

Odysseus Nudged: How Limiting Our Choices Can Give Us More Freedom

by DAVE NUSSBAUM

According to legend, the Sirens were beautiful women whose voices were so alluring that when sailors heard their song they could not resist approaching and were drowned on the rocky shores of the island where the Sirens sang. No sailor had heard their song and lived until Odysseus, who, on the counsel of the goddess Circe, had his crew tie him to the mast of his ship. When he heard the Sirens’ song he begged to be released, but his crew, their ears plugged with beeswax, would not unbind him and saved him from his own desires. Odysseus was lucky – he knew that he would be unable to resist the Sirens and had himself bound – but people often have difficulty foreseeing their weakness from a distance. Sometimes they need help.

I love watching my not-quite-two-year-old son learn about the world from his mistakes. I look on with sympathy at his falls and bumps and spills and I try to restrain myself from interceding. But when he’s about to tumble down a flight of stairs I step in. It is difficult to balance preserving his freedom to explore and make his own mistakes with the desire to keep him safe. There’s a lot to be said for giving kids autonomy and letting them learn from experience, but sometimes you have to behave paternalistically and tie them to the mast (or at least install safety gates).

When you start treating grown men and women like you’re their father, though, the charge of paternalism becomes a more serious one. There may be cases in which a heavy-handed approach is necessary (particularly when people’s actions harm others), but we should be careful about using it. A more circumspect approach is libertarian paternalism, described by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge (and re-articulated more recently by Sunstein in his Simpler) as a way of influencing people to make decisions that they themselves would consider beneficial, without restricting their freedom.

Here, we are not tying Odysseus to the mast – the more appropriate analogy would be to the beeswax that Odysseus had his sailors put in their ears. The wax prevented the sailors from hearing the Sirens’ song and saved them from being lured to their deaths, but it also left them free to remove the wax if that is what they wanted to do. This sort of intervention is an acknowledgment that the sailors’ freedom is important, but also that people are not always perfectly rational. As Carnegie Mellon economist (and psychologist) George Loewenstein recently explained to me, “When people have problems exercising self-control, restricting their choices can, in some cases, leave them more freedom to choose.”

On its face, Loewenstein’s claim may seem paradoxical – isn’t a person most free when presented with all her options and allowed to choose among them? But as the mythical Sirens make clear, there are some options that we are not truly free to resist. Without beeswax in their ears Odysseus’ crew would have been doomed; the wax gave them the freedom to choose.

how much?

What’s the cost of time in Mumbai? If one completely ignores the convenience and the hassle angle but solely focuses on the cost versus time angle, then yesterday and today morning was one such experiment.
I have shifted to a new division within the broad conglomerate that I work in. the excitement on working on new stuff and a broader canvass is amazing. The amount of work that there is over here … sigh… I don’t think I would have the time to really write as much I would want to. The pressure will be relentless. Which makes me think on the tone of the blog from here on. If I want this blog as a legacy for my daughter, then I don’t think she would be too bothered with what my day to day life would have been. Leave her, I wouldn’t be too bothered with what I do day on day. I would rather focus this blog on issues that I believe I want to talk to her on. Some gyan and some interesting titbits on her growing up. That is what will matter in long run, or so I think. I would like this to be a place where I can clarify my thoughts and my actions and leave something for her to ponder about.
Ever since we moved to Bhakti Park four years ago, we had no option but to go in for two cars. The dam place is in the middle of nowhere. All my life I have travelled to work in public transport and I resisted having to use the car. So while my office was in town I used my second car to get to the nearest rail head and then travel onwards. When it moved to kalina, I had no option but to use the c or risk a really lengthy, painful commute. My car has gone in for servicing which forced me to use alternate transport since yesterday.
Yesterday I came in a cab. I left at 8 am and reached my office at 8.15 am. 15 minutes dot and it cost me 102 ruppes. Today I decided to take the public transport. I left at 8 am again. I took one bus from under the house. That took me to Dadar plaza. That cost me 8 bucks. At Dadar I alighted to take another bus to my office. That cost me another 7 bucks. Totally 15 rupees. The time taken this around was totally 45 minutes. That’s 30 minutes more than the taxi. I got to sit in the first bus and I had to stand but comfortably ok with no real squeeze hour massage. So as I said if I look at a time versus cost alone, 30 minutes for a Mumbai dweller would cost 87 rupees. That’s about 174 bucks an hour. How expensive or cheap is that?
Lets take the case of the maid who comes home everyday. She works for around two hours everyday. That’s about 60 hours. And she takes home around 900 rupees. Of course there are hidden costs as well, such as a Diwali bonus and the fact that she gets interest free loans when ever she wants to home and build a house or attend a marriage. These loans are not so small an amount. And the interest arbitrage on that is large. The money lender who would lent her money would have charged a princely 30 percent at the minimum. That too if she is lucky. Otherwise they can get into debt traps that would never get repaid with the principal always outstanding. But forget that for a minute. So she gets on an average 15 to 20 rupees an hour. Hmmm. Obviously all the maids use the public transport.
What about the lowly paid clerk. He gets around 10,000 rupees a month. For eight hours a day and 24 day month. That’s about 52 bucks an hour. No can take taxi.
So the break even point for a taxi for a single passenger is if the poor fellow earns around 33,000 rupees a month, or around 4 lakhs per annum. So if you see any one travelling via taxi to office everyday he should be earning at least that much. That’s of course the mathematics of it all. The economics would differ. The cost of reaching on time. The mental peace, the pride of finally chucking the public transport… etc etc. also this is a Wadala to Worli experiment. In many instances in Mumbai, if you don’t use the public transport such as trains and travel via taxi to your office it would take you twice as much time and ten times as expensive. There the cost implication is not time but the opportunity to not get massaged all around by the rush hour jam in a train.
So how is this all important from Jispa’s point of view when she grows up. I don’t know but I had fun thinking about it.

the times, they are a ...runnning?

Meet Jispa’s nemesis. The deceptive looking hater of liberty, destroyer of creativity, sucker of imagination, the slave of time and the master of stress. It comes cloaked in a cute hard outer shell. It pretends to lie there fairly innocuous, but turns its sinister head to reveal a tell tale ticker. Akin to a 1980’s time bomb, it ticks ever so steadily, audible enough to create an aura of inevitability, and soft enough not to be threatened by it. Meet arch enemy number one – the kitchen timer.
I have always loved to have a bath. My bath times vary from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. I remember having long baths ever since I was a kid. Must be some fascination with water. I probably need to check if at the time of my birth if India was in the middle of a drought or something. Or possibly the reverse. Whatever. I love my bath now and I remember loving them as a kid. Every time I would on the shower and be permanently lost in the world of make believe. Sometimes I would be a singer, sometimes a scientist or sometimes a gun slinger. Whatever. But I remember that my thoughts would flow as rapidly as the water. I would always be the brunt of the mom’s ire, JAIMIT GET OUT. GET OUT NOW. With three kids in the house, there would always be someone wanting to get in. But it was mom and dad who would get really pissed with me in the shower forever. I would only get out when I would hear knocking. The softer knocking followed by the harsh screaming of mom or the hard knocking but no screaming of dad. It was clear that the latter was more scary and immediate. Mom would say – I want you out in 15 minutes. My sister and brother would poke fun at me – they would count and show me the time. 25 minutes, 45 minutes, etc. but if you thought that was a nightmare. You are mistaken. I couldn’t care less. I was enjoying my shower. A beautiful world where every other worry ceased to exist. Even today my shower is my last refuge. After a hot day’s cricket, a lot of exercise or even a long day, it is the wonderful world of shower that saves me and helps me retain my sanity. I think I have gone overboard here and been unnecessarily flowery, but I do enjoy it a whole lot.
Even today my best ideas come when I am in the shower. I feel like Archimedes, solving a vexing puzzle. My mind is relaxed and the water seems to perk up my brains into a creative stupor.
My poor kid has inherited some of my genetic make up. She is the shower girl as well. She too takes forever in the shower. Playing, dreaming, imagining god knows what. The other day jasmine was really pissed. How did you get the water onto the ceiling? I sniggered quietly. Spraying water on the walls and the ceilings was my speciality. It is fun to have bath with your shower faced up. The water comes down on you as a fountain. Hehehe. To put things in perspective Jasmine gets out of the bath in the time it takes for father and daughter to get wet. So its always a hard thing for others to see our side of the view. But that is being harsh on her. The enemy of imagination is time. Time to get up, time to have bath, time to get ready time to go to school, time for the bus, the next class, sleep, whatever. Jasmine has to manage her schedule and coordinate her time to ensure that Jispa gets to do all that Jispa wants to. it would be impossible for Jispa to do anything if she lets her imagination get hold of her. It was getting difficult for me too to manage this. I know the fun and the imagination that a bath brings, but I also know that necessity of finishing on time. How do I manage the expectations of both mother and daughter. Getting Jispa out was my role as a dad, but I so hated it. So one day in the middle of one of these outburst in popped the solution. The humble kitchen timer. I told jasmine to get one and use it everytime Jispa went for bath. We give her an adequate ten / twelve minutes, before we expect her to be out. The timer ticks on and gives a short ring at the end. Jispa sometimes has to run out or sometimes like today it is a smooth process. While Jispa obviously wants to throw that thing from the window and watch it fall in slow motion, it seems to have resolved some of the stress that time puts on the family. Jasmine also uses it while Jispa is eating. Jisap can dream on wven while eating. Again here I am theguy who hates telling Jispa to speed up. I rather tell her a story or something, while feeding her. Jasmine would get pissed as Jispa is old enough not to be fed by us. Jasmine is right, but I cant bring myself to shout at Jispa for something I think is perfectly right. Dreaming is good. Imagination is good. I am a fast eater and I gulp down my food, but I guess I have become like this after working. FAST FAST FAST. I think we need to slowdown. Relax, smell the …. GET OUT FAST, the bus will leave. Oh gaaawwdddd.
Somebody wisely said that nature invested time to stop all everything from happening all at once. Screw you. True story - Jispa’s read this quote on a Landmark paper bag attributed to John Lennon. It seems Jispa pointed to the bag and told this to Jasmine once when Jasmine found her wasting time “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted”. Bah! Jasmine did not find it funny. I am still laughing.

Wolf

On Sunday we went to meet Jasmine’s Grand ma. She is possibly a nonagenarian. They didn’t really track birthdays that long back. She stays at Jogeshwari. Because it’s far off, we don’t get to go too often. She was unwell recently and Jasmine wanted to go and meet her. I was ok and planned to club it with a visit to the Landmark book store near by at Andheri. While I came I must admit I wasn’t exactly super enthusiastic. After I saw granny I realized my mistake. She clearly was unwell. Ninety years and she was tired. It takes a toll on you I guess. If someone you love is not doing too well, you must go visiting right away. You may well regret it later. My attitude sucked. I learnt a lesson that I hope I don’t forget.
We don’t really understand the significance of the ultimate reality as we are younger. But as we grow older one realizes the irreversibility of time and reality. We form bonds, dependence and support. These are hard to work against once they grow stronger. I feel a lot more than I used to.

On an other note:- I love the line that Jack Nicholson muttered to himself in ‘The Bucket List’. He was suffering from cancer and more so from its treatment ‘some lucky guy is dying of a heart attack’

We did go to Landmark later. It’s got quite a nice collection of books. Merchandising is so dam important in a book store. With a world of possibilities at your doorstep a bookstore makes critical decisions on their stocking and displaying that affect both sales and the type of customers they attract. Crosswords comes a distant second and Oxford brings up the rear. Their graphic novel collection is the best I have seen. Pretty decent.

Right now as I type there is a fire alarm that has gone off. No one knows what to do. We are just sitting and ignoring assuming that irritating thing does not exist. Funny, we don’t really expect the fire alarm to actually tell us about a fire. We just assume its not working. Must be some malfunction somewhere. It’s just the boy who cried wolf. The deviation is that we don’t believe it even if it’s the first time he cried. There is no wolf. There is no cry. Sure enough the alarm is now off. With no one panicking and no one caring too much. Next time when there is a wolf….

run buddy run, then eat

They all run... they allways do..

Jaagte rahooooooo….. all the old independence era movies would show the ubiquitous watchman trying to do his duty with his nightly calls. I guess today there is a slight variation. It has to be bhaagte rahoooo…. Only for a mega metro like mumbai will a obscure number like 738 make a significant amount of impact, in fact this number is not prayed to will ensure a late entry to office, a missed movie starting climax, a late date, and a possible firing. Many have their own numbers which they live by 642, 827, 956. some of us even have made the code more complex by making it alpha numerical, such as 926 BO, 745 C or 648 P. hmmm. The plot thickens. Because many times the 743 CST is followed by the 1 SPL or is preceded by the 142 or of course the alpha numerical 6 LTD. So the entire sequence is 730 5 LTD 755 CST 1 SPL. A complex piece of action orchestrated with clock work precision.

For the dim witted or the plain sleepy towners who haven’t caught it yet the code (730 5 LTD 755 CST 1 SPL) is broken as:- leave home at 7.30 am to catch the 5 limited bus to get down at the train station to catch the 7.55 Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus local to catch the 1 Special that takes them to Nariman Point. As I said Bhaagte Rahooooooooooooooo.
This two decimal point precision is further fine tuned if you catch the bloody train at CST station. Since the trains start there they have installed huge digital clocks that even show the seconds, so as you enter the station you know that you have exactly 36 seconds left to catch you train, or exactly 48 seconds to run to your compartment and find a place to rest your butt (not park it – seating is not that easy with 48 seconds left). You also know that you have potentially 55 seconds left if you want a plastic vacuum packed bag of peanuts. How? Well 48 seconds for the train to leave and another 7 seconds the boy take borrow as he can jump while the train is just about to leave the platform. Ooohhh. We live the razor’s edge… cool nah! Now all that I want to see is the train timetable showing the train leaving at 6.46.38 am.

While on the peanuts I have always wondered on the way the vendors pack the peanuts that are sold at the station. The nuts are naked and packed in plastic packets that seem to have air sucked out of them. Since we assume that this is not a multi million rupee investment on the plant and that the Nehruvian dream of small scale sector is at full play the only option is….. the guy rubs the dry peanuts with his palm, blows the husk away with the air from his mouth. Then blows inside the plastic to open it, puts the nuts inside and then seals it with the heating element. Now how does he achieve the vacuum? Hmm, the only way is by sucking the air manually before sealing it completely. We are not even on the topic of does the bloody thing gets dry in the first place. Also while on the topic it is interesting to note that thanks to the advent of AIDS, we have a lot of cases of TB among the lower strata of society. This TB is getting worse and s getting increasingly resistant to treatment. So much for a blow by blow account! Pretty cool, nah, how the promise of a 2 rupee peanut snack is so beautifully played out. YA.. Anybody hungry for a snack?