From-here-there-everywhere

WHY THIS TINT…..JI ?               So, at last, the D-day to remove the tint from the glass panes of the 4-wheelers had come. Like an obedient (and fine avoiding) citizen, I decided to get it removed. On contacting various authorized service centres, I realised that my purse will be lighter by Rs 300 to Rs 500. Then I remembered myself delivering sermons to the students on “self help’’ “standing on your feet” and so on. Why not, for a change, I start following what I have been preaching. So I decided to do it “Do-it-yourself” way. But to do it, I had to consult my modern guru, the internet.        When I gave search, it kept on directing to me to the websites showing the advantages of having the tint…effective protection from sunlight rays, avoidance from the nuisance of vendors/beggars, safety from the prying eyes of the prospective thieves, protection from the UV rays and hence cancer, incr...

  Published in DECCAN HERALD of 12th June,2012.

Whenever I try to remember my childhood, I find quite a few incidents related to stealing. At the risk of losing my “respectability” (imaginary), I want to narrate a few of them. Bareilly had a sugar factory and naturally a large quantity of sugar cane from the nearby fields found its way to Bareilly in the cane crushing season by the goods trains. These, if I remember correctly, were brought in closed as well as open wagons. Well, an open wagon full of juicy sugarcanes (apparently unprotected) was irresistible bait for the children’s brigade. We would swoop down on them and try to pull out as much sugarcane as we could handle and........ bolt. There was a practical problem though. Our tiny hands were unable to reach the high wagons. But then there were elders ready to lend us a helping hand,”helping” themselves in the process. Eating fresh, juicy and “stolen” sugarcane using bare hands and teeth was an incomparable BLISS!

During the fifties, when I was in the middle school, we were staying in railway quarters in Bareilly in UP. Our house was just next to the railway station with its front door hardly 15 ft from the railway line. Naturally all our extra-curricular activities were centered around anything and everything to do with the railways. We used to observe dozens of different types of trains passing in front of our house. Once a very strong desire arose to test as to what would happen to a coin if we let the train go over it. There it started. One of my playmates got a wild thought- what if the train slips while going over it and crashes?! I did not agree with him , though a doubt persisted in my mind too. As luck would have it, my cousin from Delhi came to spend time with us. With nothing else to do, we were all set to start with our experiments. In those times, all types of coins were in vogue--round ones, square ones and those with a hole, and those made of copper, ni...