Autorickshaws and toilet bowls

OF AUTORICKSHAWS AND TOILET BOWLS

• You travel to another city.You hop into a taxi. The driver reaches you to your destination .You look at the meter to ascertain the fare and you realize that the meter or for that matter the cab itself has no lights and in the dim street lights—where they exist at all—you squint, you squirm and finally you give up. The driver lights a matchstick, tells you the amount as shown in the meter, then begins the next chore—reading the fare on a chart showing the revised fare. Another match stick or mobile phone light later you are told the amount. Then begins the last frantic effort to take out the money from your purse in pitch darkness—you get the hang of it.

OF AUTORICKSHAWS AND TOILET BOWLS

• The Bermuda triangle however mythical it may be—is rather well known to many of us. Now it seems we have one such triangle in our country. In less than a month two Pawan Hans helicopters have crashed in the mountains in Arunachal Pradesh in one case costing the life of the Chief Minister of the state .Sometime back the CM of Andhra Pradesh too died in similar circumstances .The bodies of these Chief Ministers remained undiscovered for days as we did not have the technology to locate a missing helicopter. In the last tragic incident in which the Arunachal Pradesh CM was killed, much ire was directed at an institution that has otherwise brought many a laurel. But more about this shortly

• Cars have lights in the rear with which –should our motorists care to do so—one can indicate whether one wishes to turn to the right or left . But what about autorickshaws ? I may be wrong but my experience tells me that few if any autos have light indicators at the rear. In almost all cases the best that I have seen is the use of Bharatanatyam by the rickshaw driver. He uses what approximates to a mudra to indicate his intentions. His little finger stretches itself in the appropriate direction deep inside the auto , and the vehicles behind him are expected to understand his intentions .

The point I wish to make is this—despite our undoubted scientific talent we have yet to try and solve elementary problems that need innovative thinking. It is not lack of ability but simple lack of attention to day to day problems .

The Indian Space Research Organisation can place a satellite into orbit and is poised to place an Indian on the moon but cannot locate a crashed helicopter in our own territory. I do not believe that it is simply not capable of doing this. I respect—and the world respects--our scientists’ capabilities. It is , I suspect our refusal to think of simple issues and instead concentrate on esoteric issues not immediately relevant to day to day problems.

I have a hypothesis—as a race most of us have seen our elders talk philosophy with high sounding words that have little practical significance—dwaita, advaita, vishistadvaita, different types of karma. 1008 names for one deity, 64 nayamnmars, 108 Upanishads etc . All this can confuse anyone. At the end of all this esoteric talk we will spit paan on a neighbour’s wall.

I cannot but talk about a famous Supreme Court judge-still in the news.. This judge reveled in extreme verbosity with ornate words, strange phrases ,esoteric concepts etc even when passing judgement on a murder case. I am not sure if this story is true but in one case after this judge had made his customary impassioned and unduly eloquent speech over 4 hours , the lawyer of the accused asked ‘Melord, does the court hold my client guilty or not guilty?”.

It is time we as a nation rolled up our sleeves put our hands into the dirt and tried to solve day to day issues many of which involve basic technology. In doing so let us remember that we may become the laughing stock if people elsewhere in the world came to know what I have on the authority of a reliable source—that a TATA Nano car is less costly than a good bullock cart!

As for practical technology let me recount something that I read as a kid in the cold war years. Russian Chief Krushchev was at the White House for a summit .His few days’ visit took him to some other US cities .At the end of the visit the Americans had a fine assessment of the visitor’s health. They realized that this man did not have many more years to live and as such it was better to cultivate the possible successors. How did they get to know this? The CIA had planted a secret device in the toilet bowls that the Russian leader was to use at all the hotels where he was to stay. This device analysed the leaders’ samples---need I say more?The Americans decided to get to the bottom of things---literally.

It is both amusing and painful to hear some people say that there is a jinx ‘look at this strange aspect. Both Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh are written as A.P’

How profound and also stupid.

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM