Last Class Trip. Missed!

I am going to miss my class-trip.

I can’t believe my timing…Neither can my friends

When I told some of my close friends that I wouldn’t be making it coz I was going out-station the same day as the trip, many of them just laughed.

And when I assured them that I wasn’t kidding, they laughed even more. They think I’m joking.
They’re like: “Who will miss the trip- You? Hah-hah, we know you’re coming.”

You see, I’m always counted-in - by default. Any head-count and I get counted-in automatically, and THEN asked later.

So if/when I have to refuse, this is what happens- I get disbelief.

Which makes the "saying-“-sorry-I’m-not-coming-”-experience even more bitter for me. This is what happened today.

I already felt like crap for not being able to make it to the trip, but when I finally told people I wasn’t going, I got incredulity and doubt…It was assumed I was coming anyway. Slit skin, insert salt, rub…

But this class-trip is a bit more significant than the others- It JUST MIGHT be my batch’s last trip together. Sure, the guys will go to Goa once, but it isn’t the same as having the entire class along.

Once the results are out, I can already see people rushing headlong into Internship. The studious ones will start their PG-entrance-exam preparations, many will join practitioners as assistants, a few will arse about…. a few won’t even make it into Internship! But Interns are Interns…(and Repeaters are Repeaters) and those left out of Internship for 6months will get no sympathy- life will just rolllll on.

There’s another reason why I so badly longed…YEARNED…to go on this trip. You see, I don’t really see myself passing all my papers this time... (something I have no problem admitting as such). And once the results are out, most of my batch is going to carry straight on, with a ho-hum, into Internship, while I get left behind till March.

…and “Before-Results” is going to be the only time that I will be seen as an equal amongst classmates. “After-Results”, well…it’s the reason I want to go on this trip with my entire batch, before the results come.

(PS: Arrrgh! Life is going to be unforgiving- It’s frustrating at times to know this and still be helpless…..Shit, this is kind of ‘negative’ blogging that a missed class-trip brings on! Hope my bad mojo doesn’t stick!)

(PS2: There's a song which comes to mind now...a Kenny Rogers number: "You Picked a fine time to leave me Lucille..." hehe)

B'lore- boom/bust?

Bangalore today is on this upward spiral largely because of IT.
The cosmopolitan flavor is largely due the massive influx of techies into the city…hundreds upon hundreds of Software Engineers descend on the city every month.
And Bangalore absorbs them all…

”2BHK, Running Water, Tiled flooring, Exorbitant Rent included”…sure, it’ll get lapped right up; the company’s paying for it!

One need only drive along Sarjapur Road, or Airport Road, or Whitefield, or whatever-halli to realize that a there is a new Bangalore coming up in the hinterland of Bangalore. Apartment complexes soar skyward, clustered like concrete warriors on either side of the road. They are occupied by the hyper-nuclear families of Bangalore: Single child, Double-income, Multi-lingual, Poly-cultural households, who pay upwards of 25lakhs for their humble abodes.

If Bangalore was once a svelte woman, it has now assumed the features of double-chinned, blubbery biped. Instead of maintaining a core city-area, with a central-business-district, the city balloons outward rapidly, reportedly at the rate of a Kilometer-A-Day! What was once a compact city-district, is now urban-sprawl. The cities planners have failed hopelessly to bring a semblance of order to the city’s growth, and thus unchecked construction continues, with a peripheral bearing, rather than central city.

Why people continue to use the byname “Garden City” perplexes me... Greenery exists, I do acknowledge, within the old city-limits, and that too is gradually getting replaced by concrete-jungle. While in the outskirts of the city, there is no greenery to speak of. Manicured lawns within apartment complexes do not constitute leafage. The outskirts of the city are dusty, treeless places. Only the overgrown shrubs in the odd empty-plot of land remain.

That the city is bursting at it seams is all too evident from a drive along the cities roads. Disposable salaries fuel automotive spending, and the frequent traffic jams are a testament to this. The roads are bad, and narrow, and the constricted fly-over’s that are offered as the solution hardly suffice. The Traffic Police too is chronically understaffed - Bangalore has the worst ratio of Police-personnel per 1000 of population, and is consequently hopelessly ineffective.

The Standard-of-Living in the city has reached stratospheric proportions…what was once considered a ‘pensioners-paradise’ is now a high-priced city. Loose purse-strings go hand-in-hand with good time and “Well-heeled is Wel-come” seems to be the message every shop shouts out.

Its turning ugly fast, and to arrest mutation of Bangalore something needs to be done…and quick.

BSNL - Aggro is just a call away.

(Ok...I decided that the next best thing to do when your internet connection is down is to spend the bore-time getting up to speed with your blog material.)

A couple of days back my telephone-line went dead....BSNL, naturally. So no broadband.

Now you all know that the Dataone-service has a separate Data-line that accompanies the Voice-line...a 'line pair' (that’s what I was told). Naturally I didn’t know that; I’m a Dentist after all. Within 48hours my voice-line was restored and all I thought all was fine...until I turned my modem on and stared stupidly at it for 5mins wondering why the correct lights weren't coming on.

It turns out, the BSNL guys these days don’t actually fix a broken wire and shit, when a phone conks out....they just assign a new wire to the line and the phone is brought back to life (that’s what I was told). Now, if your have a broadband connection, your data-line should accompany your voice-line when it gets reassigned...that is, if the BSNL linemen actually realize that you have a Dataone connection. They didn’t. (That’s what I was told). So I had a new voice-line and the old (and still dead) data-line arriving at my home. So while my landline was functional, my internet connection remained dead.

Naturally I didn’t know this; I’m a dentist after all. So for the next 3-4 days I kept turning on my PC and staring stupidly at my modem for around 5mins each time, till I finally had the sense to call up BSNL and lodge a complaint. My complaint was duly noted, I was given a docket number, promised repair within 36 hours, made to feel (a) generally pleased, and (b) to answer a prompt "YES….NO" when asked if I was "satisfied with the interaction, and was there anything else I could be assisted with?"

Time travel 3 days forward and my response to the same question has now changed to

“NO! …YES!”, since I am NOT satisfied with the interaction and YESS I can be assisted with something else. This is because, INSPITE of duly noting my complaint, giving me a docket number, promising me repair within 36 hours, and even making me feel generally pleased…my Dataone connection is still flat lining. Aaaarrrrgh!!!