Monday, October 30, 2006

A Rainy Experience

At a time when its raining so heavily these days.... at a time when our shirts and trousers take days to dry away.... and at a time when we even have to press our underwears with hot iron to dry them up... and also at a time when roads are water logged, one must necessarily be covered from head to toe with the best of raincoats so that you don't get soaked up.

So what happened today was that I was ambling my bike slowly through the traffic at a signal. The place was flooded and I had to move beyond the stop line. The signal fell green... me being pissed off at the very little road space available, accelerated the bike to the full possible speed and ran whooosh!! over the water. People next to me were completely drenched. Most notable was a lady, riding pillion, who had no kind of raincoat on her. She got wet from top to bottom. Her husband got angry on me and what followed was a bike race he he he... !!!

The main problem during rainy seasons is that, water gets logged at some places and driving over them creates some nuisanse. But what if the water doesn't recede from the center of the road? There is no other option but to drive over them. There is no point in shouting at the riders driving over the water. For that point, even I got drenched yesterday and since I was wearing a rain coat, I escaped ;-)

Moral of the Story: Buy a raincoat during rainy seasons.


:D

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Anbalayam

Hmm.. here is a lady, who seems to be in her mid 20s. She is seen wearing a torn green blouse along with a blue saree which is torn at various places. She is looking very dirty. Her hair is stuck in an inseparable mass and her face and hands have a dash of something black. At the outsight, she looks so dirty that you would never go near her. She picks rags with a stick from the neighbourhood dustbin, eats shit and drinks sewage.

Does that description sound familiar? How many of us have noticed such people? Have we ever cared for them? Oh! we never even took enough time to even think about them, leave alone care them. What is the fate of these people?

Fortunately, some of these people have a very good future. How? People at Anbalayam, located in the South Indian district of Tiruchirapalli (Trichy) have a dedicated set of persons whose daily job is to scout the areas in and around Trichy to find these wanderers. What's worse is that most of these wanderers are mentally ill. Anbalayam finds them and brings them to their home, which is located near the Trichy airport. They bath them, cloth them, trim their hair and give them proper treatment for their disability. They even let these people stay with them FOREVER. Until now, they have more than 70 mentally ill people out of which many were found wandering the city. They have even reunited these people with their families after treating them.

This was one small and divine experience I got when I visited Anbalayam during Deepavali festival. The home is being run by Mr. Senthil. Though he is a lawyer by profession, he is taking care of the home he lovingly developed and ran successfully for 16 full years. One astonishing fact is that, one of the caretakers of the home was a mentally retarded man. Did you notice was in the previous line? That man was actually brought back to his good senses by the supportive doctors at Anbalayam and now, he takes care of more than 50 mentally retarded people.

Managing the mentally retarded
... is a damn tough job. Some of them are very violent that they will fight heavily among themselves and settle for a good joke. Managing these violent people is a tough task because they have enormous physical power. They urinate in their own places itself and through their sheer muscle power, they even beat up the cleaners, sometimes. People who do this cleaning job and serving them by bathing them and having lunch with them must be worshipped because of the sacrifice they are doing.

Besides housing mentally ill, Anbalayam also has a home for people affected with HIV positive. They also have an old age home.

Festival of Lights
This Deepavali has been enlightening for me because it showed me another world, with another set of people doing great service to humanity. I know many of us will not be able to dedicate ourselves with such service to humanity. But we can surely contribute what we can, either in cash or in kind, whichever is suitable. If you are interested, please get in touch with Mr.Senthil.

Anbalayam also has a website at http://www.wanderingmentallyill.org. Please take some time to go through the site and have a look at the amazing work they are doing. And if possible, contribute too.

Monday, October 09, 2006

(Senti)mental First Salary

First Salary


Yay!! I got my first salary 2 days ago. Tell you what, after a saree for grandmom, a mobile for my bro, wrist watch for my mom and some more expenses and treats later, all that remains of the first salary is Rs.252/- he he!!! We spent two full days shopping weird things. Ok.. that apart, let me you share with you, a little surprise I gave my mom.

After I got my salary, I never asked my mom what she wanted nor did she ask me anything. So, when I went outside along with my friends, we stopped at a Titan watch showroom. We spotted a watch that had a small oval display with a flower designed silver strap. It was superb. Mom would love it. We paid for it and gift wrapped it. I never told her that I got her a watch.

Night came and we all slept. I got up at about 12.30 AM, took the gift wrapped watch and placed it above the stove in the kitchen. Today morning, she was damn surprised to see a gift for her. She was like, "Oh! my God, this is beautiful". Her eyes were filled with tears. Brushing them aside, she wished me all the best for a good career ahead.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

More Spam?

Yes!! already everybody is getting a lot of spam in our email accounts. Thanks to the spam filters, otherwise our inbox would be rendered useless. I just came across this new thing in yahoo mail, where if you give an invalid username and some password, it takes to a page similar to the one shown below. Remember, an invalid id and invalid password. Look at the text I have blocked in the screenshot. Won't it pave the way for more spam?