My thoughts as they appear

​ It’s 9PM, the train reached Maritz-burg, the capital of Natal. Beddings used to be provided at this station. A railway servant came and asked me if I wanted one. “No,” said I, “I have one with me.” He went away. But a passenger came next, and looked me up and down. He saw that I was a ‘colored’ man. That disturbed him. He went out and came back with one or two officials. They all kept quiet, when another official came to me and said, “Come along, you must go to the van compartment.”   “But I have a first class ticket,” said I. “That doesn’t matter,” rejoined the other. “I tell you, you must go to the van compartment.” “I tell you, I was permitted to travel in this compartment at Durban, and I insist on going on in it.” “No, you won’t,” said the official. “You must leave this compartment, or else I shall have to call a police constable to push you out.” “Yes, you may. I refuse to get out voluntarily.” The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me...

Today, I heard the news Satyam, Wipro and Megasoft has been black listed by WB. I couldn’t stop laughing at myself aloud. I was reminded of a person – Babu (name changed), a house driver in one of the posh localities in Bangalore. He appeared very emotional. As he was sacked by his employer last night. I asked him, why was he sacked? He told me something though very unconvincing to me. And I thought he must be a black-sheep and need to be black-listed. Anyway, this is a black list era, I hummed to myself! After a 15 minutes conversation, we parted ways. The next day, after much eulogizing, he told me about the healthy relationship between the house-maid and owner’s daughter. In effect, daughter was using house-maid to get green signal to wander around in the outskirts of Bangalore in this expensive Honda City, which he was a driver. I still couldn’t get it. But I realized, that house is not in order! It needs some shakeup and there is some Wolfowitz (Ex-President WB) kind of people all...

In reply to “If I can claim that I am a person first, Indian next and then a Hindu, am truly spiritual” http://ibnlive.in.com/conversations/thread/79368-0-1-1.html With due respect for your view, I tend to disagree with your point, serial no.3. I think the sequence is not proper, unless you prove it otherwise. Let me explain, the moment you think of your personality at highest priority, you tend to build a behavior of greed/selfishness. Now, you might say that if the person is good, then he will be good to the society and therefore the country and humanity as a whole, etc. Here the word ‘good’ is a qualifier for the term personality. And therefore ‘Good’ becomes the priority, which means whatever is contained in the word good gains the highest order of priority. Now the question, what’s ‘good’? Here come the religions and scripts attached to it – I mean religious scripts teaches us all ‘good’ things. So to me, it’s the other way around.

Last night I had a dream; it was about the IT down turn and about an IT company called ITX - my ex-employer. When I’m trying to recollect my dream, I’m at my home town in a lush green paddy field, but devoid of any paddy and the surface is filled with lush green grass –an excellent Foot Ball ground. I can see a few village boys playing around, as they graze their buffalos. The ground is vast, around 1 to 2 KM radius and vast grasslands are spotted with buffalos gazing around. And no house is seen in the near vicinity. While, in Bangalore the IT industry had almost shredded everybody and all are on the road hunting for some job or other to make a living. Every company is surviving on the last few employees and they are also under constant scrutiny and under intense pressure from the employer, that they will lose job anytime. I’m one among the last few employees of ITX, breathing and gasping very frequently. As the Leader of the Team calls us for a meeting, our heart abnormally increases...

About Trust, the Dinner Party and Team Building! Around 7.30, after the Isha prayer, I was ready for the Team Dinner. I told my wife that I will be back in an hour or so. When I was about to leave, my 5 year old daughter called me and asked where I’m? I said I’m attending the regular – Tuesday Classes on Quran and Hadith and will be leaving Mangef in another five minutes, Salaam – I tried to keep the phone down. She refused to accept and asked me in contention”Are you joking”? No, I said in affirmative! She refused and questioned me like a lawyer in a court of ‘justice’. Now, I began to decipher, she seems to be building a loss of faith in her mind. So I explained, I just got out of the Quran classes and walking along with one of my colleagues on the road and would be leaving Mangef in another 5 minutes. Immediately after the explanation “what would you bring? She asked”. Oh! I had sigh of relief that I could regain her trust. Infact that moment of truth was the most critical lesson fo...

Difference is about Compliance – Puzzled? When I was a young boy of around 10 Years, playing football was one of the hobbies that I had, and I used to play reasonably well. By the way, that’s was the only thing my mother allowed me to do outside of our home compound. So, as usual, on a summer evening after the school hours I and my neighbor friend Bappu were looking for the ‘ball’ to do the daily maintenance before the play starts. The ball, we are talking about is made up of a bunch of newspaper pieces (which we bought vegetables from nearby shops) filled into polythene sheets and are neatly woven into a smooth football like structure using semi-dry plantain leaves perfectly coiled into a smooth silken thread. On luxury, you may get an old umbrella cloth to cover it up, helping it to last long. Those days, the District players (Read as national players; if you can play for the Malappuram District, you will be able to play for the national team, as per statistics) used an Indian leath...