No Cellphone please II

  My new experiment has provided me a platform to understand where I am(which I intended) and where people are(an added bonus). Numerous opinions have reached me, baseless arguments have taken place. Some are in general agreement that I am against the usage of cell phones,which I am not and can never be, provided with its enormous use in day to day life. I am unable to recall me professing against cell phone usage ergo you can understand my disbelief at this propaganda. English is a simple language yet few people are unable to differentiate between "reducing" and "stopping". Few presumed this to be just another fad, few termed it to be an act of an attention seeker(which I am .... or Am I??) and few have gone on to label me insanely crazy and my actions silly. Interestingly enough, no one involved has ever asked me the reason behind this, apparently sinful act!! To all those people I have only one thing to say, Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean its meaningless!!

        As the week continued, new problems have arisen, situations without a solution in the absence of a cell phone. Few of which I have made a point to be mentioned here :

--> Unable to participate in Random planning. However, I thought I said goodbye to those for a month when I wanted to bring a structure and organized routine!!

--> Meetups need to be planned more carefully. Unlike before, you need to specify the exact time and place of the meetup(keeping few buffer minutes apart, which I have learned in the past few weeks), and must be sure to mention a specific spot where u would be in that place ensuring u won't get lost in crowded places (like Malls, Cinema halls, Food Court??).

   Co-ordination about a function/party & Emergencies are few things I am yet to fully experiment with and will provide an entry for them in my next post with details. So far, I have found the need to be more punctual and put more trust in people then I used to before. Hoping they would honor their side of the arrangement is essential when without a cellphone!! Thanks for your support till now and kindly ask you to bear with this for few more days. In this quest driven by curiosity, I hope to uncover more mysteries......

No Cellphone please

I woke up late to office wondering why the alarm didn't go off... then I realized I wasn't using the phone any longer. Woke up and got ready in a hurry and went to the bus stop but couldn't text anyone if the bus had already gone or ask them to stop the bus since there was no cellphone. I reached office and did not find anyone to go for cofy, so I wanted to find out where ppl are, then realized I could not do that either because........ so I waited. The whole day my hand was reaching out for my left pocket to check for new messages, any calls that I have missed or to simply check time but it was disappointed every time!! So far, Cell phone renunciation has caused more problems than it solved. I began to wonder if the decision was correct but decided to go through it for another week. At the end of the day - there were no personal loans to be taken, no credit cards to be issued, no flat sale messages to distract you from working.....

  The next day I woke up well before time(with almost 2 hours to spare before the bus arrived), afraid to sleep again risking the shuttle. So I had ample time to finish my morning activities, even shuffle through the paper, eat breakfast(which I usually miss as a routine) and was well early to the bus stop. And at office the mystery continued of absent people yet I had no choice but to wait :) By the end of the week, I was still waking up far too early than I needed to but I was able to sleep early at nights(which I have been unable to achieve for the past 7 years!!). Also, I seem to have developed some patience. The pleasures are yet to be found to the fullest and the pains are yet to be explored in the widest sense but the journey sure is exciting.

Driver Raju!!!

It was 10:15 PM on a monday night and I decided to take an auto after waiting 20 mins for any sign of a BMTC bus!! Auto driver informed me as I stepped into it..”one and half aguthe saar” implying it will cost me one and half, to which I agreed helplessly!! We stopped at the DG bunk signal when another auto zipped past us. Auto driver, who was quiet until then, started explaining to me the perils of jumping a signal. According to him, it not only puts the people in danger, there is the additional threat to the driver’s license!! I was amazed at his knowledge of the latest developments in the traffic division. He informed me that cameras have been newly installed in 150 traffic signals(DG bunk being one of them) in bangalore, with the plan toincrease them to 600 by the end of this year!! However, he was more concerned with the fact that three traffic violations in a single month could lead to the cancellation of the Driver’s License!!He even pointed me to the new seat belt rule, which could also lead to the DL cancellation !! According to him, R. Ashok – Minister for Home and Transport, was the culprit behind these laws which sounded ridiculous to him. Collection of fines was acceptable but he signal jumping was a “necessity” under emergencies(or any justifiable situations) for which DL cancellation sounded disastrous and unjust.

He rambled on for few more minutes on the same topic and I wasn’t sure if he was supporting the new rules or turning against them as he added points equally for both!! Once he had cooled down, I was able to get some details about his personal life. Nagaraju is an auto driver aged 35 who lives with his Wife and 2 kids aged 14 and 12 (yes, he married early ). He answered, rather proudly, that his was a love marriage when I inquired about the reasons for getting married so early. He was born and brought up in bangalore and he drifted on to the topic of the increased cost of living in the city. “shanthi sagar alli naaku vare rupai ondu masala dose thindre hotte thumbogthithu, eega adhe dose 24 rupai.. aadru 10 thindru hotte thumballa” which translates to “few years ago, a single masala dosa in shanti sagar was sufficient to fill ur stomach and costed only 4 and half rupees, but now the same dosa costs 24 rupees and yet you cannot be sure if it can fill ur tummy!!” he complains about the exponential increase in the prices and the degraded quality of products. And he launched a war against the increasing fuel prices and how it affected his life to a larger extent as his daily bread depended on it!! He took a dig at the politicians as well and the current state of karnataka politics which is in shambles saying .. “ee baddi makkalu avr mane katkoLakke nam kaasu odithare sir, naave namge dhudko beku, naanu ivrge vote hakodu niLsbittidini eega eradu varshadinda!!” “these Idiots(or something more abusive) use our money to build their homes, there is no use trusting them, we should only earn money by working hard, I have even stopped voting for these guys from the past 2 years!!” to which I responded with a lengthy speech on the importance of a single vote and how he is not utilizing the power he has to choose the right leader. I had very less time in which to convince him to vote again as we were nearing my home. He then confessed with me that he had wasted most of that day in searchof his friend(who owed him money) which ended unsuccessfully and he had not earned enough for that day. He was feeling a little guilty but it was clear to me that he was scared of his wife(who isn’t??) and her reaction. I reached home, paid him and bid him good night!! I started a little research on few facts that he mentioned and most of them turned out to be true… there indeed has been a steep rise in the fuel prices in the past few years among other things making it even harder for many people like Nagaraju to survive!!