Reservation’s Role

I’m an Aspirant, doesn’t matter an aspirant of what. Nowadays there are so many fields of study one can follow but all of them have more or less the same kind of admission procedure in place. Appearing for a competitive exam is a must to get into any line of study in any college of your choice. But how is it relevant?

I’ve never dropped a year to prepare for such an exam or go to one of those coaching institutes before this. I used to hear my friends and colleagues and the worried parents of such kids always crib and complain about the system in place. I never could relate to what they said or feel their tension when they used to go on and on about the anomalies of the Reservation System in education (which was before) and jobs (too now!)

But now I know after several months of sleepless nights and nail biting sessions and worst-case scenario planning and of course our all-time personal favourite, praying to those gazillions of deities that we have - trying to bribe them into having our wishes fulfilled. The government argues that in a democracy it has to protect the minorities and provide them with equal opportunities, but how?

Surely not by threatening the opportunities of the rest, who are- going by the looks of the present scenario- unlucky enough to be a part of the majority. Recently during the form filling season while I was also on a form-filling spree, I couldn’t come across one college that admitted purely on the basis of merit! There were reservations left, right and centre- 20% for SC/STs, 10% for OBCs, 10% for Christians, 10% for Jains (as if it was a garment wholesale) and blah blah blah!! By the time the whole list ended there was a meagre 5% left for the so-called “superior well-to-dos” by God’s grace!

I do not have anything against any of these sects of people but if the government really wants to help them, shouldn’t reservation be on the basis of economic strength? I mean here we are slogging like maniacs since merit is our only way and even when we get a seat, that’s not all we end up paying through the nose. Stiff drill to go through for wanting to get educated!

Very soon a day will come when someone suggesting “Beta ajkal sirf graduation se kuch nhi hota hai, post-graduation kar lo Ph.D. kar lo then only your career will soar” will get an incredulous stare and a reply, “Neither do I have the means nor the mental strength to go through the whole trauma. Thanks but no thanks”

Latest: This year even Jats and Jains can enjoy reservation!! Way to go Indian Govt. !!

LOVEJ

#FacePalm and #WTF

ADITI

Kolkata - The City of Joy (Ya right!)

Very recently on a trip to the city of joy, I found all joy being sucked out of me. I generally am not the one to pick faults and be negative about anything at the drop of a hat but nonetheless I’m very observant. And here are my observations over the 3 days of my visit.

Picture this, I’m on a local bus beside a huge man and hardly have any space to seat myself on the already tiny seat of the bus. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting, along with me everyone else too but there’s no sign of the driver. After an hour or so he appears, betel chewing and looking like a slumdog hero right out of a hindi movie. So the journey begins. There are more stoppages on a half hour stretch than are overs in a T20 match! Super irritating, yeah but wait that’s not all. Passengers keep filling in. There’s no limit to the intake. People are hanging from everywhere. Some are hanging from the rails above and some are hanging on to the person beside them. Nobody knows where hundreds of pairs of feet are placed. For all they care some might be stamping on them while hanging, but of course they don’t care! I thank my lucky stars for having got a seat at least no matter how small. Everyone around me had a hollow expression about them! Most of them were daily passengers returning from their workplaces in different cities to their homes. I wondered how they did it every day of every year for the rest of their lives. While the driver kept driving like he was part of the NFS videogame, everyone clung to their dear lives and prayed that they should be alive by the end of it. After a 4-hour hanging between discomfort and likely-death, I reached my destination (which should have taken only 2 hours)

Next day picture this again I’m on a local train, with lots of office-goers around me. The person sitting in front of me has food stains and dust marks on his shirt. But it doesn’t matter I guess cause he’s just gonna shrug and say “local train” when his boss yells at him or maybe his boss too reaches office on a local bus or train. A man sitting by the window chews betel and spits out of the window. The man sitting in front him protests “ki holo apnar buddhi nei? Apnar pik ta gie oi dorjae darano lok gulor opore podbena? Jokhon janen felar jaega nei tahale khan keno?” (Translation: don’t you have brains? Can’t you see your spit will fly into those people standing at the train door? When you know there’s no way you can spit out here, then why do you chew betel in the first place!). The assailant didn’t say a word but didn’t seem like he would change his ways either.

On the other end of the aisle, there was a teacher checking exam papers while sitting on the window side with his earphones stuffed comfortably, maybe listening to Rabindra Sangeet. But I didn’t see a single tick on the poor chap’s paper which was being corrected. All I could see was big big circles and crosses and question marks and sentences underlined in a scary red. Soon I reached my stop and had to climb into another local bus to reach my destination. Didn’t get a seat this time and had to hang like most others. The driver again was in a death race. He was applying brakes like a total freak. Never did he stop his bus at 1 proper bus stop and was flying his machine even before passengers had mounted or departed the bus properly. Apparently he was running late and was behaving like a maniac to escape penalty! Wow!! My shoulder joints are sprained (I hope not permanently!) I admit I’m a short person and reaching for those rails overhead felt like reaching for the stars!! Shouldn’t short people have some kind of facility as well? Poor me!

Finally on the Third day I’m in a taxi. A yellow dilapidated ambassador- the king of roads in the ‘70s but now mere junk! The bihari driver is cribbing in his heavily accented tone, “kya korbo babu, police ar bus driver gulo jeena dubhar kore dieche! Kichu ho jaye bas lathi humko ar humare gadi ko pode!” (Translation: what to say sir, these police and bus drivers have made our living hell. Anything that happens in these roads, irrespective of whose fault it’s only me and my poor taxi that gets the cane!). True to his words I noticed all the buses were blocking the roads. All of them were driving on the right and not one of them let the taxis pass no matter how much they honked! To top all limits of dadagiri one of the bus drivers even stopped in the middle of the main road to pick passengers!!(It wasn’t even a bus stop!) And no police said a word in protest.

Once I reached the famous railway station in Howrah, I was kind of relieved to be getting away from the place when I encountered this: A man urinating on the station building wall and another man coming from the opposite direction interrupting him angrily, “ki babu eita motar jayga?” (Translation: “what sir is this place for urinating?”), the creep scampered away tucking away his pants!

Totally disgusted! It is not a city of joy; rather it is a city of mindless, careless zombies! It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, whether you own a car or bike, because the roads are ruled by buses and no one can escape them. So, one is better of complying. I could only look into their eyes and see emptiness, tiredness and surrender. Kolkata is not for those with weak stomachs. It is for the brave, strong and outspoken.

Disclaimer: This was just an observation and I do not have anything against Kolkata or its people. They are the sweetest! \m/

LOVE J

Yummy Fish Fries and Delicious Mishti Doi

ADITI

HORN PLEASE!

Ever since the time I turned 18 (not a long while ago) people around me have time and again ridiculed me on not knowing how to ride a two-wheeler. Apparently the modern independent woman should know how to rule the roads too. Although to me it is trivial, yet I succumbed to the pressures and took driving lessons for both two and four-wheelers.

But all my worst nightmares came true the day I ventured into the roads! Oh My God!! It was like venturing into the Well-of-Death (one of those famous attractions of an Indian Circus a decade ago) literally with sure-shot recipes put in to make sure the motive is achieved. The space of wide roads are more than halved by street vendors and mindless civilians’ parked cars with no sense of any intelligent alignment of parking. You don’t have any clue where to squeeze into in case there is another vehicle demanding space.

Of course there is no footpath because that has been converted to a flea market, so pedestrians are walking on the roads and cars that apply their right to use them too are yelled at time and again! It is the best place to learn the choicest of expletives if you know what I mean ;)

There are buses and autos which would be going at 60-70 kmph and would suddenly come to a halt without any proper notice to pick up passengers even if it isn’t a proper stand or depot they are standing at. And the unfortunate train of vehicles behind these buses and autos are expected to read their minds and forecast their every halt and apply caution accordingly!!

Road rules are obsolete, nobody cares about them nowadays. The most  irritating of all is that often women are criticised and blamed of most accidents because apparently they are naïve and will never get how to properly drive but it is mostly men that I have observed acting like over-smart know-it-alls causing accidents!!! They should know better than to throw stones when they themselves live in glass houses.

Out of the thousand other anomalies and idiosyncrasies that only the Indian driver can pull, the most common and hilarious of all these is people trying to look like Pros blaring their horns and rendering everyone around deaf, while stuck in the middle of the roads. For instance there’s a mile long jam, you are stuck and nowhere to move, neither the one before you nor the one ahead of him yet you would stick your hand right on the horn (with full force that too) somehow thinking inside your weird mind the jam will vanish!

The logic behind the story of the Indian Road escapes me. Cows and dogs have made it their home, beggars have made it their office, kids have decided that that is their stadium, where the hell will vehicles go then? To top it all, people are so lazy that they do not even bother to turn their heads while backing a car or entering into a new road from a cut. They have decided to put traffic rules in the dumpster and the only thing that their miraculous brains have planned to process is ‘HORN PLEASE!’

My my my who wants to be a modern independent woman now, if this is what it takes? Not me for sure.

LOVE :)

Endless honking and Constant blaring!!

ADITI