Spirituality in an Auto - Mumbai Tidbits

It was just another day, another ride home, and another auto wala. By now, I thought had seem them all. The ones who told me their life story, graduates who had come to live the Mumbai dream, others struggling to make ends meet, and so on.

Little did I know, that these swearing-at-the-drop-of-a-hat guys had an unknown side to them as well. Spirituality.

It was on one of these regular trips, that this guy began his tirade against humanity. He used the choicest mother-sister referenced expletives at each and every man on wheels, and the rampant potholes as well. To shut him up, as he was constantly engaging a non responding me in an attempted conversation, I said 

"Ab kya kare, har kisi ka kuch na kuch problem hai life main." - A very generic statement that works effectively across occasions. 

He kept quite for 5 minutes. I was happy at my success. If I had only known, I would have done this earlier. I went back to my Hunger games - the last chapter, and Katniss Everdeen fighting against a horde of SEC A+ people laden with Make up while struggling with her choice of TWO boyfriends seemed more important than the misery's of the world. 

"Kya Aapne Bhagwan Dhekha hai?" came the question. 

I sat there dumbfounded. 

For a second I wondered. Should I ignore a potential life changing question and see if Katniss kissed Peeta? Or take a risk and listen to him and be given enlightenment, in the back seat of an Auto.

He decided to make it easier for me. Without me saying anything, He continued about how, from the last 8 years he has been a sevak of Nirankari Baba. Of how he goes every week to this place, where all kinds of people including popular actors come, to perform seva. After 8 years, he had the good fortune of seeing God, and he could now see him at will, and that he was there everywhere. (I KID YOU NOT)

For a second, I wanted to know what he was smoking, but he was in his own world. He cared not if I was listening, he kept talking, and his whole demeanor had changed. He was talking much softer, and almost to himself. It was absolutely numbing to see this person talking about the greater good, of not worrying about problems, and having faith. And to think 20 minutes ago, he cursed like the devil himself. Fine balance between reality and spirituality. 

As I got off, he pointed to the poster he put up on the back of his rickshaw. He wasn't bluffing. http://www.nirankari.com/

On another occasion, I got a discourse on how Kalyug has proven true as Krishna had siad it would, an e.g being there will be more liquor in households than God. 

Only in Mumbai, I tell you. Only in Mumbai. 

M

Love in an auto - Mumbai Tidbits

I have been in the city of dreams for about  4 months now. And there are many things that are different, unique and surprising sometimes. 

One of the many things that has given me a unique perspective of things is the concept of sharing Autos with people you hardly know.

Totally Random. Yes.

I usually wait near my house to catch an auto. Now the location I work at, Chakala, is the Mother-of-Traffic-Jams. Its like a free for all rally for vehicles. Imagine being stuck on the peak of a flyover for hours. And having nothing to do except look at other cars. I happened to once see Vinay Pathak in a Hyundai Accent. But most of the other times its just legs in various attires or as far as the eye can see, without. 

Anyways, going by the sheer traffic, getting an auto is next only to getting a meeting with the President. Wait, that's a bong now so rash-gulla should do the trick...err Prime Minister.The ratio of getting an auto to stop is 5/10. Getting a stopped auto to take you to where you want to go is 1/10. So your chance individually is 1 out of 20. Add 5 more people to the equation and you get the picture. There are also the crazies, who will run all around the road, at ALL autos, and cursing loudly. 

So there is always a small gathering on different sides of the road trying to get an auto to the same locale. I can recognize many of them now, by having seen them so often. That's when it started.

The first time was this guy who got an auto and stopped a little ahead and popped his head out to ask me if he could drop me to Andheri Station, which was like mid way to my stop. I politely declined, out of awkwardness. 

The next time it was raining heavily, My shoes was already drenched. Not one single auto was even bothered to look at us. I stopped an auto but he refused, and started talking to the lady behind me. I walked away, and heard her arguing with the auto wala. In a few minutes she called out to me, offering to drop me to some place. I had no idea where that was, and I told her so. She just shrugged and left.

Next was my turn. I was in an auto stuck in the traffic, reading a book. An old lady approached us and asked where I was going. She asked me for a drop to someplace in between which I obliged. I felt good I must say. And Not a word from the auto wala. It was welcome change after the Thugs of Bangalore.

One the very same day, on my way back, there was a long wait. Just as I got an auto, a pretty young thing asked me where I was going, and said if she could join me. As laddoo's phooted in my head, I enthusiastically  agreed with my best smile and faster-than-Usain-Bolt head nodding. 

Just as she was going to get into the auto, And as the violins were getting into the flow of things, the autowala decided he didn't like me. Or my future plans. He refused plainly to take on additional passenger (Bah!) and demanded money from her. Outraged, I started going Karate on him when, she smiled sweetly and said it's ok. I was crest fallen.

Needless to say, I fought like hell with him over the meter, more so for him spoiling my potential marriage plans. I still mourn the opportunity of the kids we could've had together. *Sigh*

(For the record, my modus operandi for picking women is not offering rides in autos. Actually, I don't even have one, I think.)

The last, was recently, when the station were closed. This guy just asks me, "Dude where you going" So I told him and he said lets share an auto. I agreed. Over chasing autos all over the road (Yes, he was a mumbaikar, also equipped with the latest in cursing technology) and after finally badgering one to take us, we spoke. Of random things, where we worked an all that. He happened to stay two blocks next to my place, and he let me in on Auto catching technology.  

And so it has been, waiting and sharing, sharing and dropping and all that. Next time, maybe, the auto wala will be kind to not mess with my future.

Cheers

M

100 Must Read Books

I suddenly awoke to my long time wish of reading. So some surfing later I arrived at three different sets of must read books. Namely

1. The BBC List 100
2. From the Affiliate Marketing Blog
3. D J McAdam's list

Some of the books are common, while the BBC List has more uncommon options. I don't suggest or recommend any of them particularly, but I liked the ones on the Affiliate Marketing Blog. So am re producing the same below

1. Plato, The Republic
2. Homer, The Odyssey
3. William Shakespeare - One really must read all of Shakespeare
4. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
5. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
6. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
7. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
8. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
9. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. 
10. Owen Wister, The Virginian  
11. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
12. Franz Kafka, The Trial
13. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
14. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
15. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
16. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
17. Egar Allan Poe, Complete Short Stories
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Essays
19. Henry David Thoreau, Walden. In my mind, Thoreau and Emerson should be read regularly by all Americans, but that's just one man's opinion.
20. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
21. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
22. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
23. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
24. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
25. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
26. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
27. Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
28. Bram Stoker, Dracula
29. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
30. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
31. Jack London, The Call of the Wild
32. Henry James, The American
33. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
34. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
35. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
36. George Orwell, Animal Farm
37. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
38. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
39. P. G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves
40. Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth
41. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
42. Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
43. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
44. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
45. Henry James, Daisy Miller
46. E. W. Hornung, Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman
47. Henry James, Washington Square
48. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
49. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. This is the book you must read, but you might want to read The Fountainhead first.
50. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
51. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
52. Hermann Hesse, Demian
53. Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
54. Albert Camus, The Stranger
55. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
56. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
57. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
58. George Orwell, 1984
59. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
60. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
61. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
62. Thomas Paine, Common Sense and Other Essays
63. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
64. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
65. St. Augustine, Confessions
66. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
67. W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
68. H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
69. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
70. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
71. Anne Rice, The Witching Hour  
72. Lee Child, Die Trying

Some more from the other lists...

  73.    Harper Lee, To Kill a Mocking Bird

  74.    Joseph Heller, Catch 22

  75.    Audrey Niffenegger,The Time Traveller’s Wife 

  76.    Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

  77.    CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia
  78.    Jane Austen, Emma
  79.    Jane Austenm Persuasion
  80.    Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary
  81.    Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
  82.    Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

I hope to read these books in a manner that makes sense to me, and that I learn something from them. Not a wild chase to complete a list, actually.

Meanwhile, you might want to check out www.goodreads.com Nice stuff for book lovers. Arrange, review, find friends and all that.

Cheers
M