Random Observations

Travelled in the rush hour by a local train today and tomorrow and was surprised to see people say Ganpati Bappa Morya just as the train leaves. Though taking Ganesh's name at the beginning of any work is considered auspicious, I guess it was more out of the fear and they took God's name to pray for their safe return back home in the evening.

At Andheri Agarkar chowk, I observed that for boarding the same bus, there were two queues - One for people wishing to sit and the other one for people wishing to stand. This was something unique not seen before by me.

A little patience and tactic can help you get a seat in bus/train even on the week days in the morning.

Saw that people trvelling together everyday who had become train friends celebrating birthday on a local train and distributing sweets to everyone around - Something to cheer for in the packed train compartment.

Vodafone has the worst possible customer care support system in mumbai. The customer care representatives (and gallery people for that matter) do not have access to the call history of numbers from outside mumbai. - wonder why it is gaining market share.

A different life altogether

Long away from the hustle and bustle of cities, in small towns and villages, lie the manufacturing units of most of the product based companies which account for the basic source of revenue for these companies. The lives of people working at these manufacturing units is competely different than that of those working at their respective head offices.
I have been to such factories for quite a lot of times but a recent visit to a chemical plant (& stay there for around 4 days) last week has made me appreciate the contrasting nature of lives of people working - not financially but in other terms. Financially, in fact, plant officials are adequately paid so as to retain them.

A weeks' at the rural location made me appreciate nature and its beauty. With the travelling time from home to office cut down from 2 hrs to 5 minutes, I suddenly had a lot of spare time after working hours. I could now read books, surf the internet, learn stock market investing tricks or think about starting a new business.
I, however, did neither and spent the free time talking to a colleague, watching television and sleeping more than required. The point is that we could get time to think about other things.

Here, life revloves around the shifts at the factory. People have to plan everything w.r.t their shifts in the factory. Odd meal hours, odd sleep hours, etc form part of the routine. Enjoying power naps during the night shift, bitching about work (not) done by previous shift people, delaying work so that work can be transferred to people of the next shift, forming friends who would cover each other during absence, etc are some of the joys while working specially in production.
Here, people get to spend a lot of free time with family, bond with like-minded individuals and develop long-term friendships. Things like respect for elders, respect to seniors, etc automatically fall into the culture because of the discipline there. A lovely world of its own really.

However, this may be true and be good for people in their late 40s, young people taking up jobs at factory locations end up being frustrated - partly because of the isolaion from major cities, partly because of pollution and partly beacause of the same mundane routine life. Also the fact that factory individuals take more time to reach the top as compared to those at offices adds to their discontent. I talked to a couple of newly joined youngsters when I realized that they were quite discontented and wanted to make it to an urban place asap.

As for me, I got a chance to interact with a lot of people, a chance to spend sometime all alone, a chance to see houses at Konkan and a chance to see another chemical plant.
While going to the plant, my senior mentioned "jis chiz ko hume beenchna hain woh kaise banti hain jaao dekh aao" which reminds me of the dialogue from the movie Lakshya "Jis chiz ki hum raksha kaar rahe hain, jaao dekh aao".

P.S. Frankly, as I mentioned that I was from Sangli, people started becoming friendlier and things started becoming less formal from that point onwards. There's certainly a charm about my lovely city :P

first post using mobile

This is my first post using newly bought smartphone. I have now finally started travelling up the technology ladder. Still I am a long way to be called tech-savy. Yet, it feels great multi-tasking on this phone.                                                                       I am currently on a vacation. It is the first time in 8 years that I am at my home at Sangli for such a long time. I had the television all to myself this time and I had all the time to watch the different news channels being aired 24x7.                                              I was taken aback by the common nature of news running across all the general news channels. Even the timings of special shows were the same. So, at any time, one could get similar kind of news across all channels or special shows like maut ka saugadar, katil kaon, etc. There is no differentiation in the product offered. Even the english general news channels were the same. The only exception being the business news channels where each channel recommended different companies to invest depending on the money offered to them.Aaj tak has maintained its uniqueness by the absurd nature of news aired. However, channels like india tv, star news are fast catching up w.r.t absurdness. Aaj tak needs to make up more strange news to maintain its market leadership in the news market.Really the news channels have become more of sensation generation now. DD news being the lone exception where news are really relevant and to the point.                                   As rightly said by prominent people like Pritish Nandy, Aamir Khan, Rajdeepsardesai, etc the I too observed that the life of a particular news has shortened. E.g: the almost uprising on account of the LokPal bill was no longer discussed 2 days after the leader, Hazare, broke his hunger strike.         I do realize that i am not making any sense in this post, but this qwerty keypad is really convenient to use making me type more.̉