Cubbon Park

Few come there for respite, few for livelihood, few lazy bunches for begging, so on..It is a big green umbrella giving shade to many people under it.

I spent 2 hrs this morning there in cool breeze, basking in the sun rays falling through the holes of the umbrella. Those 2 hours, I did nothing except watching people around me.

while I was watching a happy family with mom,dad and their two children, a lady beggar approached me asking for money to feed milk for her baby, I just looked at the baby she is holding under her saree before taking out change from my purse, when I tried to confirm that the baby is really a baby she was just holding a bundle of clothes and food items wrapped up under her saree. These days beggars are playing new strategies to improve their begging skills. There may be few genuine cases but for many it has become fraudy business. I never knew there always existed a beggar community until slumdog millionaire exposed the beggar mafia of India to the whole world. When I was a kid, I remember lazy beggars with a bowl in their hands sitting on platforms,outside temples so called royal begging, now they are evolving with strategies to improve their business. It is really gut wrenching whenever I see wretched amputated kids begging. Few doctors who were involved in this beggar mafia contract had been arrested recently for amputating kids. how pathetic!

After 15min I sent that lady away, Two decently dressed middle aged persons approached and started explaining about their voluntary organisation to create awareness among the people about how earth is getting contaminated, how our natural resources are going vulnerable and concomitant solutions. Their work was quite impressive, they are freely distributing magazines (named AWAKE) every month to as many people as they can. Those magazines are all about what happened, what is happening, what is going to happen, how would they affect us. Every month they write on different topic like "Running out of water","Green Revolution","internet on children" etc. We can register ourselves to get those magazines every month. I thanked and appreciated those two persons for their voluntary work, ensured them that I would surely try to read their magazines.

I passed some time there watching an young lady teaching kids [did not try to find out what actually was happening but sounded to be some other type of voluntary work]

While I was coming out, that lady beggar was sleeping blissfully under the green umbrella throwing her baby but not baby a side.

Few are volunteering for good, Few are fooling for bad, Few are watching, appreciating and criticising.

Bus Conductor

My daily commute to office is by office cab, If not to office I am used to go by autos as I am always confused with buses,bus numbers and routes. But travelling from one end to other end of banglore in an auto eats half of our day's income. So last weekend, I thought I would better go by buses to save money and to be also safe. For time being I'll keep my saving account from buses aside and tell you about dirty saving accounts of bangalore bus conductors. Every one of us must have heard about the illegal earnings of Bill Collector, I think in nearby future our bus conductors would occupy the seats of bill collectors. Its not about their illegal way of earnings but the huge losses to government.

I boarded at Nandidurga road and asked for a ticket to shivajinagar. As I was not aware of bus fares and also nandidurga road is very close by to sivajinagar, I thought minimum fare would be Rs 3 and gave hime 3 rs. He pocketed the coins and kept himself busy in pocketing the coins from other passengers,I was innocently looking at him expecting a ticket. To my surprise he did not issue tickets to none of the passengers sitting infront of me and the most astonishing thing was not even a single female is asking for ticket. I immediately realised that conductor is escaping to Gents section of the bus and asked for a ticket. He gave a bad look and told in kannada "Ticket is of Rs 5, If you want to have ticket pay 2 rs extra". I paid him actual amount 5rs and collected the ticket.

In a conversation with one of my friends I have got a chance to discuss about this fresh way of corruption. I was really shocked when she told me that her actual daily bus fare from her home to office was rs 10 and she had been travelling with just rs 5 with out a ticket. We think ourselves to be intelligent in saving 5 rs for 10 but we are not aware of the bad consequences. Almost everyone is getting trapped thinking they are getting benefited. Who is going to compensate the losses? we are unable to foresee the long term tampering of system thinking of short term little profits. Ultimately we the people are getting taxed heavily. My friend thinks of saving 5rs in bus and pays 15rs extra to buy 1 kg of rice (1 kg of rice was rs 15 one-two years back and rs 37 now).Not only her,everybody getting encouraged by another is committing the same mistake, Good conductor seeing another bad conductor starts earning bad money.

Other friend of mine is a bit kind hearted and says its just matter of 2 or max 10 rs they would get per person, how else we could help the conductors, he argues that it is of no use of taking tickets when all this ransom is anyway going to the banks of tax havens and questions me how would it help people ultimately?? he may be right, but let us hope that atleast little of that money goes in help of needy. When conductor has such cunning brains to earn the money illegally do we have to really help him?

If we really want to help the poor let us ask for the ticket the minimum thing which we can do, atleast we'll be able to help them in letting them live with what they have now, why should we be responsible for poor to get more impoverished?