First rain of this summer…

Usually the summer never used to be so harsh in Bangalore. (Sometimes I felt is it the same Bangalore what it used to be couple of years back or have I shifted back to Hyderabad again).  Though, it used to be sunny but temperature usually used to be some what sustainable. This year summer was not only dry but also the temperature rose to a new level. Sun god (Helios in Greek mythology, Aditya/Ishaan/Mihir in Hindu Mythology, Aodh in scottish, Ciro in Spanish, Samson in Hebrew and so on…)  will be full swing by as early as 7.30 in the morning and one could simply rush to get into office so that a/c could give some respite. And as the day progresses you see the “anger and aggression” sun god. He reaches peak during noon and it almost becomes impossible to go out by then. Even we observe the heat coming from walls exposed to sun directly and even ceiling fans blow away hot air. Most of us who used to consume less or no water, gulp to have some relaxation from scorching heat. Even during the sun set, the heat wave just blows now and then in cab while we return from office.

Slight relaxation during evening and night, and me and Ams were desperately waiting for a good ice cream parlor where we could go after dinner and should be nearby our place. Finally we got one “Polar bear” ice cream center in Chandra Layout road … Though we love “Corner House”, but at least for time being the service and hospitality is fine.

Meantime again another day begins, and we start to feel the temperature might be more than what it was previous day. Somewhere around 2 in the noon, some clouds gather and cover the aggressive sun under them. As if uncomfortable behind the clouds, the sun tries to come out. But after some hide and seek the clouds over power and cover entire sky and with thunder lightning clouds announce they have won, making way to a cold wave followed by number of tiny rain drops. Mother earth happily receives the first drops of rainwater and the entire atmosphere around slowly turns into pleasant cold breeze… Finally respite from heat to Bangalore… A sigh of relief… Most would love to get wet into that rain… With a cup of tea, I recollect few lines of Marathi song from Milind Ingle’s album Garava… and watch that lovely rain outside with my office pals… 

उन जरा जास्त आहे, दर वर्षी वाटत
भर उनात पाउस घेवून आभाळ  मानत दाटत
तरी पाउले चालत रहातात मन चालत नाही
घामा शिवाय शरिरामधे कुणीच बोलत नाही
तितक्यात कुठून एक ढग सूर्य समोर येतो
उन्हा मधील काही भाग पंखा खली घेतो
वारा उनाड मूल सारखा सैरा वैरा पळत राहतो
पाना फुला झाडान वर्ती छपरा वर्ती चढून पाहतो
दुपार तलून संध्याकाळ चा सुरु होतो पुन्हा खेळ
उन्हा मागून चालत येते गार गार कातार्वेल
चक्य डोल्यान समोर रुतु कूस बदलून घेतो
पावसा आधी ढगन मधे कुठून गारवा येतो

As the rain stops, few people who took shelter under a big tree on South end road come out with sharp axe and ropes to cut the same tree. Yeah…The 220th tree is facing axe in the name of “namma metro” and many more are lined up to be sacrificed for giving shadow on every sunny day and providing shelter for number of birds, animals and people on a rainy day. For all the service they had done to mankind this was the end trees deserved.

Please stop cutting the tress in the name of development… Later our children and grand children will suffer for our mistakes..

Curse of a Lecturer

The most joyful and memorable days I (WE) spent are during four years of engineering. It was simply carefree-fun filled-thrilling life. It was like sitting all possible “ADDAS” in the college like canteen, corridor, under any available tree across the campus, library (mind you not to read but for some other purpose), parking lot, and so on (take it as – except classroom – EVERYWHERE).

But the atmosphere in engineering was slightly stricter than PU as the lecturers used to have more power by controlling those “VERY ESSENTIAL” fifteen marks. So we were bound to show respect to our lecturers (All those close-up smiles when we used to see them as if we were very pleased and those “Good morning sir… Good after noon sir … and so on were not sincerely true from our heart all the time.) Its not that we never showed respect to them from heart, but very few were worth getting respected by student community.

In the mean time, for our sixth semester, we got a new lecturer. He was fresh graduate out of REC Surathkal and seemed very brainy and intelligent. He used to wear a thick glass and never bothered about his dress (though there was no dress code as such). He was assigned few units and not the entire subject. So we were sure we don’t have to get scared to him, as he was not controlling those “fifteen” marks. As a result, all of a sudden everyone became charged up to take on Mr. Newbie. It was just like visiting back to those two years in Pre-University College. The frustration of maintaining discipline during previous three years of engineering was clearly visible and all the fellas in the class were all out to take on Mr. Newbie. No one used to other to ask permission before entering the class and also while going out. Desks used to move around in the middle of class. Few of us used to feel hot in the class and put on the fan, and half of the class used to get cold and the process of switching the fan ON-OFF used to be a infinite “DO” loop till Mr. Newbie class used to get over. There used to be endless discussions on useless topics like Hari mandir vada paav, cricket match with Electrical team, hottest chick on Deshmukh road, useless movies to be seen in coming week and so on.

Problem with Mr. Newbie was that he never was sure what he was teaching (Though he was knowledgeable) apart from that he never spoke to anyone of us. This further made us feel that he is scared of us. For us Mr. Newbie was reflection of all those in lecturer community whom we used to hate to core. This was the chance to get “revenge” and everyone took with heart. One day the frustration ion Mr. Newbie reached yield point and he just told one sentence to all of us… “I know why you people are behaving like this in the class. But the real stuff you will come to know once you are out of the college and at that time you realize what is life…”

Mr. Newbie did not complete full year in the college and left as he got some better opportunity outside in non teaching field. We forgot him and passed out of college armed with Bachelor’s degree in hand. Few of the classmates got into GRE preparation and most of us started searching job. Just as if it was waiting for us to come out of college, “RECESSION” stuck due to 9/11 with full blow across all verticals. Right from manufacturing and software suffered alike. Forget about hiring freshers, there were layoffs all around. Seniors who were hired and working as trainees were laid off citing performance. Few of us who were in Bangalore at that time in search of job, used to listen to the stories of how people were “fired” using new innovative techniques by the employers. As most of our senior and batch toppers and creamy layer were struggling, moral was extremely low for all of us (more or less, we were average students in college).

In Bangalore we visited every company in and around electronic city, ITPL to Peenya searching for jobs. And this job search was in group as we used to go in a group of 4-5 people with a target of at least 10 companies per day. Posh companies (for us at that time) never used to entertain us inside the campus and just used to collect the resume in security gate itself.

It was that time my close pal, Shailya (Shailesh Deshpande) recollected the curse of Mr. Newbie during our college days, and told me “Dinya, it’s all due to the curse by that ******* le… We made him suffer and now we are getting it paid back in the same way but by some other means…”

The outside world was not as green as it was on college and it took us very little time to realize… Well, after eight years… again the “RECESSION” is back with bang and looms large over all of us…

“What goes around, comes around…”