Communicating generation................!!

In today's commercial world, Mobile phone is the most important tool that one has to have. At least for me the world will stop without the cell phone and Internet connectivity. I do most of my work over the mobile and lot of business happens over it. I normally share my work with a friend of mine. Today we had to call a very important guy to explain to him certain things. Me and my friend were sitting just after lunch and we remembered that we have to call this important guy. I said that i am not interested and he must make the call. He was also not very interested and finally i ended up making the call and striking the deal too!!!!

A few minutes back, my cell phone rang again may be the 100th call today and i picked it up cursing the inventor of the phone. Well, i really don't have a choice but i must say the cell phone has made the work so easy.

For a moment today evening, this stuff about phone receiving and calling took me to my childhood. I remember clearly that i was in fifth standard when we got the phone to our house. We were a large family in a big house in Basavanagudi. We were 11 people in the house with many people visiting us often. If i remember right, we had to wait for 4 years to get the connection after applying for it (A month back i got a second land line to my house just 3 days after applying for it). I was so excited with the phone that i used to stand next to it to receive the phone call. I was not going out of the house because i would miss lifting the phone. I had memorized all the relatives' phone number and whenever anybody in the house wanted to call anyone, i used to run to the phone and dial for them. I used to get tips from cousins and relatives on how to receive the phone. The phone was something very exciting. Whenever there was no phone call for a while, i used to call 161 and the phone used to ring after disconnecting. Sometimes i used to make the phone ring, lift it, pretend that it was my friend, disconnect and give missed call to my school the number for which was on my progress report and i had memorized it. Now all these sounds stupid but 16 years back that was so exciting and so much fun.

The cell phone is a exciting stuff today as well. I started with a borrowed black and white cell phone in 2004 and just six months later my cousin gifted me the latest phone with polyphonic ring-tones. A year later he bought me an expensive phone with camera, blue tooth and what not and just as i write this, my phone is ringing which now has wi-fi, Internet, multimedia and what not.

Only the cell phone is exciting but using the phone is not exciting. On the phone,People crib at me , i crib at others, people shout at me, i shout at others. Of course women don't call me.
Most times, i end up checking mail for no good reason and only addiction. For no good reason, i tweet saying that i am tweeting . I have a lot of information, but don't know what to do with the information.

I enjoy my work, i enjoy meeting and talking to people. I do lot of my work over the phone. All the coordination can be done with least effort.Project deals are done over phone. Payments are made and received over it.The phone and my outspokenness over it has taken me to people in power, earned some appreciation somewhere, have made my voice heard somewhere and at the same time on many occasions has got me into a lot of trouble.

All in all, the cell phone has made certain things really easy. But i feel somewhere something is missing. My father was a better engineer and even better manager than i am without any of these tools. With 3 mobiles, 2 landlines and two computers at home, i don't even know how much money i spent last week or last month.

Cought in Contradiction

A construction is going on in my neighbourhood from the last 4 months. Being immediate neighbours, we have to put up with all the noise and the dust from the place. Thankfully i am not at home most of the day. But my mother has to face all the music almost the entire day.

There is a father-son duo working there as unskilled labourers and sometimes they act as watchmen to the property. Both are descent and relatively clean for unskilled labourers in India.

I have been observing the duo for about four months now. They are very silent and whenever they dirty our roof or our premises, they promptly come and clean up the place even without we telling them. They are good people.

About couple of weeks back, i asked the son if he had ever been to school and his answer was "NO". He had never been there. I asked his father why his son was never sent to school. His father just kept quite. The son is not more than 12 or 13 years old. He does a lot of physical labour all day. He has been thought to tell his age as "17". He insisted that he was 17 on my repeated questioning. One can easily make out that he is not more than 12 or at max 13.

In India, Child labour is banned. Also primary education is every child's right. But this poor kid is denied of basic education and also has to put up with hard physical labour everyday. He spends his entire day with dust.

Having been involved in some sort of active citizenry, i know most of the local officials here very well. Thanks to my repeated petitions and complaints to the corporation and the CMO, the corporation authorities know me by name and face. I meet some of them almost every week. So i decided to take the issue of the boy to the corporation this week and get him enrolled in a school. Last week, i requested the executive engineer to help me and he put me in touch with the concerned eduction official. All this happened without the knowledge of the boy.

Today the story is different. The boy comes to my house at 8:30 PM and asks my mother for "Saaru"(ಸಾರು) (It is eaten with rice). Their normal practice is to cook/bring rice from home and buy saaru in a local restaurant(a cart like thing on the road) here. The boy tells my mother that " ಇವತ್ತು ಹೋಟೆಲ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಹತ್ತು ರೂಪಾಯೆ ಕೊಟ್ಟರು ಸಾರು ಕೊಡಲ್ಲ ಅಂತಾರೆ " (They are refusing to give saaru (sambar) even if i give ten rupees ). He did not have money to buy it and so he had come to our house.

My mother gave him something and i followed this boy to his place. He and his father had one big box of rice and thats all. I simply said that the boy must go to school and he will get free afternoon meal.His father in a soft voice said, put together he and his son earn 300 per day (more than 1 dollar) . Out of which 64 rupees goes in commuting. So they are left with 236 rupees. Apart from these two they have the boy's mother and boy's younger sister at home. So they are a family of four. The mother cannot work because of some trouble she had during the delivery of second baby. So here is a family of four with daily earnings of 236 rupees; out of which they have to pay for their house, fuel, clothing and food. Remember that there is no guarantee that they will be employed 365 days in a year. The father says, if his son does not work, then atleast one person in the house will have to sleep hungry everyday. I tried to convince him saying that the son going to school and having a free lunch there would compensate for this. But his immediate reaction was that, the schools are closed for 3 months in a year and if the son gets into a habit of not working, he would not work during the 3 months when the schools are closed. I had no answer to him. He asked me if i could atleast guarantee work for both of them during these 3 months. I again had no answer.

The second point is, this is a family which is struggling for 10 rupees. The boy says that he is not getting saaru EVEN FOR 10 RUPEES. One can make out from his tone what 10 rupees really means to him. At time when food prices are sky rocketing, its really difficult for the poor to afford certain basic needs.

Given this scenario, i am not sure if i will be doing any good by forcing the kid into the school. I am not sure if this would do any good to him and his family. This is a serious contradiction for which i am not sure if i can get an answer.

All this makes me feel how lucky i am to have been born and brought up in a well to do family, to have got education and many other luxuries in life. But at the same time i feel this world is cruel and totally unfair.

There are millions of such families in our country. There are many more who are worse than the this family. India probably has most number of dollar billionaires in the world but also has 830 million people earning less than 20 rupees per day. We, the educated young blood of the country must come out with innovative economic solution to these problems. NGO kind of activity or charity or romanticizing with these issues, in my view will take us nowhere.