Heaven On Earth

Thanks a lot for writing about such a wonderful person like Anna. Really there are lot of lessons to be learnt from such people and atleast I feel that I make my home heaven for the people around me and not hurt anybodys feelings.


May God bless him and his wishes get fulfilled.


Good day.

 

Dear Kamalji,

After a long time I signed up and it is wonderful to read your writing about Anadurai. It is like a tonic for our disturbed mood because of the happenings to an innocent girl in that bus in Delhi. May god bless Anna.

ganges

 

Felt really good after reading your snippet kamalji....Chennai is always known for those astronomical auto charges and this Anna is a clear exception Hope he continues his service

 

Kamalji... very nce snippet..... Really very surprised to hear about this person ANNA !!!!

I liked the last joke...

 

Kamalji,
Nice post. It is good to know that there are people like Anna in Chennai - we have had horrible experiences with Chennai auto drivers. They are rude, they fight, they over-charge the passengers, etc, etc, etc .... Having someone like Anna will be a welcome change and we hope more people follow Anna's footsteps.

 

Dear Kamal,


It was wonderful to speak to you over the phone today in the afternoon. I was sitting in a Café Coffee Day restaurant incidentally, which explains the background noise. I have been thinking of getting in touch with you for quite a while now. But out of sheer laziness I think, I put things off. And then today happened at last. I am feeling mighty pleased after our conversation.

Well, this morning, after an aborted attempt to speak to you, I decided to peep into IndusLadies once again. That was an amazing experience. Quite surely, I am getting older than I should. I realized that I had forgotten my password. And that was odd, as Lewis Carroll might have said. I mean as in Carroll’s first stanza in The Walrus and the Carpenter:

“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.”​

Indeed it was odd, because I know my PAN number by heart as well as my bank account number. Not to speak of the year I was born before they invented electricity. Of course, I maintain a file with all my passwords and I checked there to discover two IL passwords. I had obviously changed my password, but couldn’t recall which was the new one. I picked up one at random and was refused entry. So, I chose the second one and found success. However, failure lurked in the corner, ready to leap on me. For I wrote a comment on this post of yours and by the time I pressed the “submit” button, I discovered that I had been logged out. In the process, I lost my comment as well. This time I am being more cautious and writing this on Word, which I shall copy-paste.

Anyway, I am digressing, as all people on the wrong side of 98 do. What I really wanted to tell you was that I enjoyed reading this post. Not merely because it inspired me to begin to hope again, but also because it reminded me of an aged taxi driver I met in Osaka sometime in the year 2000. Or was it 1999? The year doesn’t matter. But what he did does, or did is it? Well you see, Shankari and I used to go out for our weekly shopping to an area called Senri Chuo and when we were done, we used to catch a cab to take us back home. We had a lot of shopping bags to carry and the cab appeared to be the best mode of transport.

Most of the cab drivers eyed us with suspicion, given our foreign faces. Of course, once I gave them directions to our home in Japanese, they felt somewhat relaxed. Japanese commoners feel worried about the prospect of having to converse in English. This aged taxi driver, however, didn’t wear a worried expression at all. Instead, he smiled and invited us in. And then, when we had driven for around 10 minutes or so, he pointed his left forefinger towards a box full of candies sitting right next to him and said, “dozo”, or, “please”, meaning “please help yourself”. Very touching we thought. This old man made friends with his passengers by offering them candies for free!! Lovely, wasn’t it. And then of course we struck up a conversation, about home in India, about home in Japan and so on and so forth.

And since I am speaking about Japan, I might as well share with you a habit I found in some Japanese people. If they have invited you to their homes or to a restaurant or a pub, they often pay the cab driver the fare to take you back home. Some Indians might even feel offended by this, but for the Japanese, this is elementary courtesy!!


You spoke about an auto-wallah in Chennai, not Japan, didn’t you? Now, I came across a bus driver in Kolkata who took great interest in decorating the bus he drove, spending from his salary. I still remember his face, handsome, wearing a well-groomed beard. He decorated his bus with coloured lights and paintings and there was music to please the passengers. This was before the arrival of internet, or else, who knows, he would have installed a wi-fi router in his bus too. When I say “his” bus, I don’t mean the bus belonged to him. He worked for the State Transport Corporation, but the bus he drove did belong to him in a way, since he wouldn’t allow anyone else to even touch it. He cleaned it himself, dressed it up himself and took pride in the happiness he brought to his passengers. He drove a double-decker trolley bus and I don’t think Kolkata has double-deckers anymore. I am sure he is retired now, for the last time I saw him was around 25 years ago, or 30 may be.

There should be others too like your auto-wallah or my bus driver. Not too many, but so what? They prove at least that God did try to create humanity in his own image. Put differently, they represent what humanity might have wished God to look like.

To see you still blogging here brings back the blog thirst in me.

I haven’t written anything here for a long time now. Like Cheeniya,

But my fingers feel parched. I wanna write man, though I don’t have a single idea. Unlike you.

Wish you all the best friend. Till next time then.


oj

 

Kamalji,

you do have magic in your writings - you brought Oj da back even if to give a feed back!

Dear Oj da,

what a pleasure to read you! Thank you for this response to Kamalji's blog...I for one, enjoyed it thoroughly! Can I say welcome back? I sincerely hope to see you more!

regards!

 

Thanks Srama and sorry Kamal for using up your space to run off with your fan. Well Srama, I do want to write again, I miss writing. I have not written anything worthwhile for a long while. And then today, I began to write like a maniac. First here and then at Cheeniya's archive. Kamal mentioned you during our phone conversation this afternoon and I recalled how much I enjoyed reading your pieces. I too wish to be here more and more. The only trouble is that around my age the only thing you can do more and more is snore and snore!!

Love.

oj-da