Revenge of the animal farm

I tell you it’s the curse of all the edible animals or at least they are learning from the inspired chickens! Who would have thought that a lowly clucking hen would invent something that could kill a human, serves us right with all the tandoori and tikka masala. It started with the bird spread SARS, then the very creatively named bird flu, now we have swine flu may be the fish or the goats are next!

I landed a cold then a cough and then fever, which in itself is a rarity with me; considering the high maintenance personality I usually only tend to get the lifestyle diseases. So here I am with a propensity for high end diseases landing something that’s text book flu right at the time of pandemic … I actually never thought I would use the term pandemic in a real world scenario outside of business continuity planning!! But I digress, so I promptly got worried, dreamt up couple of dire scenarios, wonder if I should write a will but was not sure if they accepted a will in an email; as there was no chance even I could read what I wrote after I wrote it.

Then my sanity kicked in, all I have to do is get the guts and go to a govt. hospital for a flu screening, it was a tough call you had a potential blue/grey wheezing death on one hand and the horror of a govt hospital on the other. Then I heard something about the UK protocol and the fact that selected private hospitals were allowed to screen and even treat patients. I personally think the whole logic of govt. control on screening, testing and tablets was something that only an academically brilliant IAS officer would come up with! Anyways I found a friendly neighborhood Apollo and went over, there were about 15 people with masks waiting ahead of me, they even had a foot controlled hand sanitizer I used some and waited for my turn.

The doc looked as if he had walked out of a Hollywood Bio-disaster flick and I was suitably scared, he looked at me top to bottom and then from side to side, which didn’t take much time at all, he then asked me what was my problem duh! Told him, he looked at me in disdain, had he not been seeing hundred patients daily I guess he would had a hearty laugh; this was bad I had to impress the doc and gain some credibility so I pulled out my ace… type 2 diabetes, he perked up and asked me what my last sugar reading was, told him, the disdain came back; finally he wrote me a bunch of cure all tablets anti-biotics and 650mg monster paracetamol and asked me to wear a mask and stay home (I could do that), I brought the meds and a 3M N95 mask for a total of Rs 420 (very ironic!) at the hospital pharmacy.

I came out looking sheepish, walked up to a rikshaw who promptly asked me for 50 bucks (its 20 by the meter) and wouldn’t budge. He knew that I knew that he knew that I deserved to pay him nothing less than 50, here I was all urban with a face mask looking at a bunch of rikshawallas who had no clue what the fuss was all about. Obviously knowing what we both knew I couldn’t get into his rikshaw and decided to walk, halfway through I agreed to be fleeced by another of his kind for Rs.30 for what was by then minimum riksahw fare. Stupid Pig!

Adventures of a Rikshaw Fare

I am sure every one of us well at least the ones with an IQ greater than that of a monkey or those who haven’t fried their grey cells on alcohol have wondered if there is a deeper meaning to life and/or if we have a purpose or a calling. I was wondering if my nomadic wanderings hid a higher calling that I was born to fulfill, and in one of those moments of zen it dawned on me!

I guess the zen masters were right about the shock value of learning by stumbling upon the answers of some seemingly nonsensical koans (that’s zen puzzles for the uninitiated) as I felt the same when I stumbled upon mine. It was this brilliant flash after which I just gaped dumbstruck, then i became seriously pissed; god damn it, it cannot be true!

Think about it, I travelled to and in half the large cities of North America, India, UK, Africa and Asia; if that was not all I have lived in some of these places for extended periods of time but I always seemed to move out of there before I reached anywhere! I have always wondered “what did I learn there?” apart from a smattering of local jargon, making some friends, losing a few of them (I rather like the term baggage), discovering what kind of stuff the locals are sensitive about and makes them go on bandhs (a.k.a. ‘our culture’) and some other random gibberish.

Well of course there’s the other existential stuff too like cuisine, malted and fermented beverages, the coffee and other sundry items like losing socks and having the ironers leave shine marks in damned odd places on the trousers. But if all this was more or less the same thing that I was doing across various cities from different countries then what was my true calling? What was the answer to my personal kaon: ‘why didn’t the chicken cross the road’?

The answer was so simple that I gasped:… in Mumbai rikshaw-walla wouldnt take the chiken to where she wanted him to, in Bangalore he wanted Rs.20 over the meter from her, … in Hyderabad he wanted half return at 12 noon, .. in Chennai he wanted to beat the crap out of her and in Delhi he wanted to run her over….!! So my calling, my sole existential purpose was to sample the different rikshaws, their fares, their design, their engines, the actresses pictures in them, the colors, the super dhak-chick music systems, the rides they offered and even interact/fight with the riskshaw-wallas that each city had to offer?? Unknowingly I had even aided and abetted them by selling my car so that I could get completely dependent on them, how convenient!

I am the rikshaw reviewer or tester!! I am the equivalent of the official Conde Nast reviewer only that my dominion is the ubiquitous rikshaw. Of course I struggled and haggled with them like every other Indian but how many of us got off at a restaurant or just short of last meter count where the change in the pocket runs out just so that you could always give him the exact change and not more, even at the cost of having to buy a coffee? How many of us have been consistently woken up by the nasty drone of a two-stroke tripod doing 90db on the sound pressure meter at 2am in the morning??

In the immortal words of a friend - TA ‘I forgive you god’ (the forgiver is greater than the forgiven right? J ) or maybe unknowingly I was a fallen god of the species necessara evelis myself!