Taxi Drivers

Taxi Drivers:

I met a gentleman yesterday, he was an Auto driver in Indore. He had picked me up from my home to drop me to office. As I have had the habit to conversing with Auto and Taxi drivers he started to chat with me. I found him to be very knowledgeable. He started to talk to me on all kinds of issues. He spoke about MBA and MCAs. Then suddenly he became very nostalgic about his past. How he had to leave studies and become a truck driver when he was 19. He missed studying. He said that all his energies went into creating a future for his children. He had two daughters and one son. All of them were post graduates and they all were well placed. Last of the daughter was even working in an IT firm.
Talking to him reminded me of another gentleman of almost the same age that I had encountered in Australia. The day I was about to leave for India, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel where we had spent the night. Waiting for this cab was frustrating because this guy was late by almost half an hour. Everyone would feel the pain of that half an hour. Another funny incident had happened just before this when Aneela accidentally dragged of my bag instead of hers. I didn't even realise. Fortunately she realized and came back in time. It would have been real frustrating if she wouldn't have realized in time.
Coming back to the Taxi driver. He was quite a dilapidated fragile character. One of those who become creeps in scary movies. He looked odd and it was hard to converse with him. However, as I started to chat with him he became friendly.
When he found about me going to India, he was very happy. He told me that his brother used to travel a lot to Pakistan and India on business. He told me a story that once his brother was getting late to reach the airport in India and how a cab driver even with a flat tire drove with full speed to get him there. When they got of the tire was totally in shreds. The txi driver's brother was totally shocked to see that commitment. However, he said that only living in India and Pakistan made you appreciate the life in Australia from his perspective. As we became involved in conversation he told me his life story.
His father was a Jewish migrant from before the war. Around mid 1930s as the persecution of Jews started he was one the first to realise that he needs to get out. His family objected to it but he insisted and ran to Italy. After living here for sometime he boarded a boat not even know where it would take him. On the deck he found two things which would change him forever, One, his destination which was Australia and second the girl who would be with him forever. Like him that girl was also running away and migrating to Australia. They fell in love. Just after landing in Australia, they got married. The guy was 19 and the girl was 16. He was a diligent hard worker and started to work at a grocery shop. Life flourished and with in few years they had two sons. The elder one was the gentleman I was talking to.
Both of them never looked back, never tried to find people back in Germany even in the worst years of Nazi era. I found this a little odd.
How can you forget where you come from, where your past lies. What I have relaised that people with abused childhood try not to look back. Maybe the reason could lie in the pains that are in the past, when someone tries to dig into their heritage or ancestory at some levels they also bring in their recent past to associate with it.
As life would unfold for the couple, they both were very happy, however their elder son was a little learning disabled and second one a little smarter.
Life went on, the elder one became a driver and the second one left Australia for Indonesia, where he lives alone and never married.
My friend got married and had one son very late in life. When I had met him his son was 17 years old. He was given the best possible education and the proudest moment came when he was selected by an English club for their 3rd tier team to play Soccer. Amazing isn't it, playing Football in England for a Austrlasian Poor Jewish boy.
By this time we were at the airport, I knew one day I would write this story and hence I paid him $10 extra to share it with me. Here he did something which made me cringe. He gave me a card which had a list websites of a few religious cults.
I am not sure why I dislike cults however I am a firm believer of following religion in its truest form. I am afraid of any religious organization. Specially once which hide in the form of improving your life. I believe like Osho (now he himself was a cult creator, which I would never join) that anyone who gives you belief system is your biggest enemy and people who join even if they are most learned have one major issue in life and that is their self esteem.
Here I lost interest and threw away the card.

Both stories have two common threads, one they both had given me a ride from one place to another and life's long journey they were story tellers for that blip in time. Second, they both had worked very hard to provide for their families and were so proud of their children.

This made me think, Is it that however hard we try to improve our own lives we end up working for our children. I guess I would only know when I am a father.

Entrepreneurship

Last few months have been very interesting, first I decided to take up a job sadly due to global slow down it did not work out. Now I have been offered a job which was beyond my expectations. The biggest telecom firm in India and world's 3rd largest telecom firm offered me Vice President position to head their Sub-Saharan Africa. They offered me money which I couldn't even imagine. However, I have spent last 7 years learning the traits of being an entrepreneur. It's a totally different thing than working for someone else.
I have spent last few days thinking about my future and contemplating on which is a better decision for me.
On one hand I have an opportunity to lead a major world brand into an almost virgin territory. Earn a lot of money. Make a brand for myself in the corporate world. Providing opportunity to millions to connect and give them better communication.
On the other, I have my own dreams, the feeling of contributing to India's economy, feeling of my 40 employees having a sense of pride in me and the pleasure that you get when you feel that you have made a family better by your work. My own dreams about my own company.
Being an entrepreneur has taught me a lot more than any education or any job could have ever taught me.
The struggles to make money, to learn to cope up with the debts, to learn how to deal with bad news day in and day out.
I had lived alone from the very begining and hence I am not averse to lonliness, being a
To learn to loose is something that I could have never learnt if I hadn't been running my own firm. The struggle for money to pay your employees has its own high. To loose and still keep your head high is a very tough thing.
I am proud of myself to have done it twice.
So now I am totally confused, should I choose money (a job of almost $500K in this market is not a small thing) and simpler life over the more complicated life of starting a successful firm on my own. Should I just leave everything behind that I have built in last seven years.
Lets say where life takes me.
Yesterday a girl who works at my office gave me a compliment which made me feel elated, looking at her smiling face I thought that I should sing :
aaj kaho to mod dun badhkarrr, waqt ke dhaareeee

I am leaning towards entrepreneurship just to feel that elation.

India

I hate the infrastructure in India.
I dislike our philandering politicians.
I am annoyed at the level of corruption.
I have an aversion to suspended dust and haze in our air.
I hate selfish, ignorant and illiterates who roam our streets.
I feel claustrophobic about our over indulgent media which gets into people's lives.
I can't stand narrow-mindedness based on religion, language, caste and sex is still rampant.

There are a lot of reason to be proud of India, however, the most important one is:
I have freedom to say all these without any fear.

Yesterday, we had guests at our home from China. They were extremely parochial. They even hated the idea that someone can criticize their own country. Our neighbour who got married to this Chinese girl went to China and was very impressed that amongst 200 channel 199 were in Mandarin or Cantonese and 1 was in English. He was telling me that no channel ever reports anything bad about anything in China. He said everything seems to be so perfect. He thought that Indian media is so stupid to keep showing what is wrong with the country.

Me and his sister, who lives in England, had a hard time understanding that how can you praise media which is not telling the truth.

Then the Chinese girl started to criticize US for no reason, she says that freedom in the US has brought guns on the street and a lot of people kill others. By this time I didn't have any courage to argue with her.

At the end I love freedom that my country provides a little too much to give it away for even my own security. I would accept terrorists who use our freedom to kill a few of us but how can we stifle our own people with stringent laws.

I will never accept any law which curtails my thought or my speech and neither can I live country where people do not respect that freedom.

Myths, Folks and Legends

I have started a new blog where I would contribute some of the stories that I have grown up with. These are not my own and hence I thought I would keep them in a different blog.

Myths, Folks and Legends

http://mythfolklegends.blogspot.com/

Enjoy