Colored Eyes, Golden Buildings And Konkan Railway in India

I have always been intrigued by colored (green / grey / blue) eyes in Indians. I would keep thinking about the origin of such eyes. Had I seen such eyes only in models and actors and women, I would have brushed it aside as just one more instance of artificial stuff (using contacts). But I have come across too many such eyes in small boys or old men or people living in rural areas and the explanation of “contact lenses” doesn’t apply.

Being inquisitive by nature, whenever I talk to a person, I ask what he does, where he is from etc. After a good amount of data collection and analysis, I came to the conclusion that people in India with colored eyes are primarily from the western part (meaning the states in the west: starting from coastal Karnataka to Konkanast people of Maharashtra, all the way to Punjab and Kashmir). Meaning a person with colored eyes is very likely to be from that region as against from the eastern belt (Tamil Nadu to West Bengal, UP or North Eastern States).

Whenever I see a person with colored eyes, I would be itching to verify my findings. Recently when I was travelling by train I came across a person, going to Delhi, with those green colored eyes. After some time the person came and sat next to me to look out of the window. We were not near any station. You would now have guessed that the person was a male. (Women stop looking out of the window in a train for amusement when they reach the age of 3. The reason is that the view does not cost anything and they cannot feel or emote much about a telegraph pole or a river)

Seeing those green eyes, I starting talking to the man. I asked him (in Hindi) where he was from. He replied “Haan” (YES). This weird answer reminded me of another friend of mine but that’s another story. I asked him whether he was from Punjab (a state in north India). This time his eyes gleamed and he replied “Illai illai, Tamil" (No No, Tamil). After a minute, I closed my mouth  which had involuntarily opened. “Tamil? A Tamil guy with green eyes? Since when?”

I asked myself. He seemed an average sort of guy just like me. In the sense it was ridiculous to think of him using contact lenses.

This was a dark blow to my research. This new data was quite in variance with what I had seen in the past. With a heavy heart I continued my journey north. A lady sat next to me in the train going from Delhi to Rajasthan. Her husband and son had come to the station to see her off. Her husband stopped talking to his wife and approached me quietly. I was scared stiff. This was north India. And I was in Delhi – right in the middle of rowdy land. Gentle polite nature is foreign to north Indians. You can’t even trust a small 4 year old north Indian boy to not mess with someone else's woman. So when this 50 year old man approached me, it was with a lot of anxiety that I said “Yes?”. He asked me if he could ask me a favor. 

So when this man approached me and asked me what my destination was, I had all fingers and a couple of toes in my mouth as I mumbled my destination. And he said “Ha, my wife is travelling alone and she has been allotted the upper berth. Can you please let her take your (lower) berth, and can you sleep on the upper berth?”. I thanked my stars that it was such a simple request. I had tears of happiness when I said “Absolutely fine. No problem”. And that’s when he asked me for my mobile number. I was stupefied. And too naive to refuse. I gave him my mobile number. Then the father and son got off the train as the train started moving. I looked at the lady more closely. She had green eyes. And my eyes lit up. But the train was too crowded. About 200 people were traveling in a compartment meant for 72. This was because it was about 6PM; a lot of people working in Delhi stay in the suburbs up to 100km away (for example, Rewadi in Haryana). And  the evening local train going to Rewadi had been cancelled of late (presumably because it was very convenient to passengers) and hence a lot of these suburban travelers climb into reserved compartment. And the train is so packed that you can hardly see where your feet are (and that was not because you had a fat tummy). So I couldn’t speak to the lady with the green eyes much. I came to know that she was from Delhi and travelling to Rajasthan to visit her daughter and son in law. She seemed to be a Rajasthani. I heaved a sigh of relief. At least I could hang on to my theory of colored eyes.

In the meantime night came and I went to the upper berth and switched off my mobile to conserve battery and went to sleep. In the morning someone woke me up roughly. And I opened my eyes one at a time. It was this lady who woke me up. And she stared at me accusingly. And asked me, “have you not received any call?”. I asked “What call? My mobile is off”. Then I turned my face away since I couldn’t bear to look at her angry face. She said that her station had come but not her daughter / son-in–law. And she added that sometime at night she had gone to the toilet for not more than 5 minutes. When she came back, her money was gone and so were her glasses. She almost had tears in her eyes. I searched her eyes (as women normally do). Was she accusing me of stealing her money and her glasses? No. She was not. She was just upset. I asked her to give me her daughter's telephone number. I dialed the number and gave my phone to the lady. Mother and daughter spoke. And then the daughter came with her husband to the station in the next few minutes (I guessed that they lived close by), thanked me and left the station with this lady.

Photo of an Indian girl with colored eyes.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v65/melloyello69/indiapushkar5.jpg from http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t8178.html (search specifically for nbndoi in this link.
I was thinking about these colored eyes when I reached my destination, Jaisalmer,  in Rajasthan. And then I was speechless. Just about everyone had brown / green eyes. And most males had ear studs. I had reached the land of green / brown eyes.

This was the land of the desert. The place looked golden. All buildings were made of galbena (yellow) stone and unpainted. It was like a scene out of Mackenna’s Gold in the last few minutes of the movie. Last week, my brother told me that scenes in Satyajit Ray’s movie “Sonar Kella” (“The golden fort”) were filmed in Jaisalmer. The buildings there look gorgeous.

As I took the train from Rajasthan to Karnataka (a journey of about 2400 km to be covered in 40 hours), I was smiling. The journey had so far been good. I had not lost any of my possessions yet. Except for one ugly verbal spat with a cycle rickshaw driver (who was from Madhya Pradesh) in Delhi, the trip had been fairly pleasant so far. I woke up in the morning to see that we had reached Mt Abu, the only hill station in Rajasthan. And an hour or so later we passed Mehsana where I had lived for 2 months about 25 years back. Little did I know then that a person from that district would become the Prime Minister of India later. I had that hazy look in my eyes (just like Sanjeev Kumar in the film Mousam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKnjGbAg5mY) and on we went down Gujrat until we reached Vasai Road in the outskirts of Bombay from where the train took the route towards Panvel. At Panvel, the train halted for almost 2 hours. We heard that there was some problem with rock / mud slides in the Konkan track and that many trains were being diverted via Pune instead of going by the original route via Ratnagiri. Our train was not diverted. We reached a place called Chiplun the next morning, about 8 hours late.

Chiplun is a very picturesque little village in the Western Ghats; the station has only 2 platforms. You can imagine how small the village would be. It was raining constantly. And it was lush green. And there was no question of the train leaving anytime soon. The only tea stall in Chiplun had some delicious vada pav. Words can’t describe that vada pav. Pav Is just bread while vada is a potato dish; crisp and spicy and the vada pav is usually served with fried green chillies spiked with salt. I had my heart’s fill. I burrrrrped and then started walking aimlessly and soon reached the engine cabin. Ever since I was a child I had always wanted to look inside a train engine cabin. I begged the drivers whether I could look (and ride) inside. After a lot of thought they said yes I could. And I got inside and started chatting with them about the engine and about the life of a driver. They explained the various instruments to me. They also expressed dismay that the train had not been diverted from Panvel via Pune. They had been driving the train for about 12 hours now and were very tired. One wonders what the Panvel Station Master was thinking when he made us go by the Konkan route.

Soon two new drivers arrived, the old ones were relieved. The old drivers put in a word for me with me the new drivers and I was allowed to ride in the cabin. They also shared some gutkha (a kind of tobacco) with me. I clicked some pictures from the cabin.

Soon we reached Ratnagiri, I thanked the drivers for the ride in the cabin. Our train would go no further because of the blocked tunnel. Our train's counterpart, going to Rajasthan from Trivandrum, was coming the opposite way and it had stopped at the other end of the tunnel. The railways had arranged with Maharashtra state bus transport to carry the 1000 passengers from one train to the other. And carry another set of 1000 passengers from the other train to our train. It was an interesting experience. About 40-50 passengers in each bus. About 20 trips to carry all the passengers from one train to another. Once we reached the station at the other end of the tunnel some 40 km away (and 1 hour by road) we boarded the other train and occupied the same berth seats that we had earlier in the train from Rajasthan.

The train continued on its journey - now about 17 hours late. One of the things I was looking forward to was the trip between Goa and Udupi. I was thinking of those lovely scenes from the movie "Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na" where they show a train as it approaches Goa. As per the original schedule we were supposed to reach Goa at 7AM and Udupi at 11am. Instead we must have reached Goa after 11pm. I had gone to sleep earlier, as it had been a hectic day. I had to alight at Udupi and I was not sure when we would reach Udupi. I estimated that we would reach Udupi at about 5AM. I set three alarms: one for 4AM, one for 4:30AM and one for 5:30AM. Unfortunately I slept soundly and didn’t hear any alarm. I woke up at 5AM to find that the train had stopped at some station. Everyone was asleep, so I got down from the train and asked a couple of people. They told me that we had reached Mangalore (which is beyond Udupi). I hurriedly got out of train, cursing the station master at Panvel because of whom we were 17 hours late and I had missed my station and didn’t get to see the stretch from Goa to Udupi.

I had now travelled more than 5500km. Another 1000km to go before I reached home. I had seen a lot of colored eyes, golden buildings, traveled on the Konkan Railway in the engine cabin and been evacuated from train, fought with a cycle rickshaw fellow in Delhi. Wow, it was lovely. Now I have one more dream left. To ride in the guard compartment of a goods train...

Love, Respect, Trust In Relationships

Recently I have been thinking about Love, Respect and Trust in relationships. What is the difference between the three? For whom do we feel each of the three? Are these independent emotions meaning, for example, can you feel love without respect? If yes, how do we behave with a person for whom we have affection but no respect (or respect only but with no trust)? What causes or is indicative of a decaying relationship? Is it the absence of love or of respect or of trust or all three?

I found a few links which interested me. 

http://www.zedge.net/forum/t/45012/diff-between-love-affection-and-respect/

http://life.familyeducation.com/divorce/divorce-counseling/45517.html
http://talkaboutmarriage.com/ladies-lounge/1195-do-women-really-want-what-they-want.html. 

A few months back I read a book by Malcomlm Gladwell called Blink which outlines how we come to make certain decisions at the blink of an eye. The book explains a research which studies the facial expressions of two spouses by recording their facial expressions (when they are asked to discuss just about anything they feel like) and then analyzing the expressions and "thin slicing" them. The research apparently is 99% accurate in predicting the success or failure of a marriage just by analyzing the 15 minute video of the facial expressions while two spouses are talking. A good description is given in the link below and a sample video.

http://www.youtube.com/v/p4XSUfb0Ito&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1. 

This is another link which is good. http://blarblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/blink-ii.html
Comments welcome (anonymity will be protected). 
A friend did point out that I have not been focused in this blog on relationships. And that I have covered a lot of ground. Well, yes I may have done that. I have to explain one thing here about my blog. An important audience for my blog is me. Sometimes I do provide links to other sources rather than express my opinion about it. This is because I found the link interesting, I may revisit the link again later and perhaps modify my blog or write another entry. 
Another friend pointed out that I had missed out Trust which was an important factor. I subsequently corrected the blog to include trust.

My Cousins

I was invited to attend a family function by my cousin. Since I like her a lot, I made an exception and went to her house. She is a diabetic and has had both her legs amputated (just below the knee). It’s difficult to imagine life when you have both legs amputated. You are totally dependent on someone else for every little thing. She has two sons, the elder son is older than me. The younger is mentally retarded. The last few years her been quite difficult for her. Frequent trips to the hospital. Two bouts of surgery to have her legs amputated. It’s extremely painful to go through a bone surgery, not to mention the emotional trauma of living every moment without both legs. She frequently bursts into tears.

She and my father were very affectionate towards each other. She had lost her mother (my father’s eldest sister) at a very early age. And now she has transferred the affection she had for my father to me. Today, she looked at me kindly and said “you know your father was so much more handsome and had a lot more hair”. It was cute, the way she said it. I smiled at her.

Her elder son is the only earning member of the family. He is married to an absolutely sweet girl who takes care of aged in laws (one of whom, my cousin, can’t walk) and a middle aged retarded brother-in-law while taking care of housework as well as of her daughter who is in high school. I don’t think they have a maid to help with the washing and cleaning. The girl does all this unflinchingly. The girl’s husband (my nephew) is a person with a lot of patience. He had to sell his only apartment to pay for his mother's medical expenses, he has gone through a lot of trouble looking after his long ailing mother almost singlehandedly.

My cousin is the younger of two daughters. She has an elder sister who is about 70 years old whose life has been no less difficult. Her (the elder sister’s) husband had just about every vice one could imagine. She has two sons and a daughter. Neither of the sons went to work for any length of time. The elder son had taken after his father. Both the younger son as well as her daughter got married and divorced. Her husband is now blind and having no money, has finally come to live with his wife. The elder son has also come back to live with his mother.

Her daughter (my niece) in the meanwhile has married a man who doesn't live with her but visits her often. He has provided her a place to live and gives her living allowance. The entire family (the girl’s brothers, parents) lives with her.

I wonder sometimes how and why life has been so difficult for these two cousins of mine. Amidst all these troubles in their lives, I see a daughter-in-law who belongs to a species which is almost extinct today. Rarely have I seen her express pain and never a harsh word.

And then I reflect on the life of some of my other family members and friends who live in opulence. They live in huge houses, have several maids/servants, expensive cars. I look from one side to another. I get lost sometimes.

Incidentally the elder of the cousins passed away around May 6th, 2021 after a few days in the hospital (not Covid). A couple of years back, her husband and elder son had passed away. I heard her elder son committed suicide. Her younger son's whereabouts are unknown. Her only daughter is married with a child.

An Enterprising Model

Recently I came across a very interesting business model. I am talking about the call taxi business. First let me explain the call taxi model.

There are 4 different stake holders in a call taxi model.

• 1.    The customer who wants to hire a taxi
• 2.    The Driver
• 3.    The Taxi Owner
• 4.    The Call Taxi Company: The organization that a customer calls to make a taxi booking.

The Structure:

The call taxi company itself does not own any taxis. The owner of a car gets himself registered with the call taxi company by paying Rs22,000 of which Rs 10,000 is refundable. The call taxi registers the owner and fits the tax with the Call Taxi insignia and a meter which reads out the cost of the trip. Once a car is registered, it is available in the system for the call taxi to be assigned to customers The process of registering and meter fitting takes a few hours. If the owner wants a reliable driver for his car, the call taxi company helps find a driver. Alternatively, the car owner himself may choose to become the driver of his own car (part time or full time).

The Process:

The customer calls the call taxi’s call center to make a booking mentioning where he wants to be picked up and where he wants to be dropped. There is a standard rate depending on the type of vehicle (4/6 seater or AC etc) he requires. About an hour before the time of the pickup, the operator finds out which taxis (in the neighborhood of the place where the customer requested a pick up) are free and calls one taxi driver and informs him of the time and place to pick the customer from. Since many taxis may be free at the said time, a first in first out algorithm is used. The driver assigned picks up the customer at the assigned place & time, drops the customer at the destination and then informs the call taxi company (calling the call taxi company on the 2 way radio) that he is now free. The driver now waits for the call center agent to assign him a new pickup.

Call Center (of the Call Taxi Company):

The city is divided into many regions and operators are assigned to a region. They handle calls from customers. They assign customer pickups of their region to drivers. The call center works 24/7. Each taxi attends to about 7 customers per day.

Financial Model

Let’s take a leading call taxi company as an example. They have about 2000 taxis registered with them. Around 1800 taxis may be operational on a given day. Each taxi pays a onetime amount to the call taxi company during registration as explained above. Each taxi also makes a monthly payment of Rs 4000 to the call taxi company to avail the services (of being assigned for a pickup).

Each taxi makes about Rs 2000 per day. Fuel and maintenance expenses would be about Rs 700 per day. The driver hands over the balance Rs 1300 for the day to the owner. The owner and the driver split this money (say Rs 1300) in the ratio 2:1. The driver makes about Rs 430 per day while the owner makes about Rs 870 per day. This is about Rs 13000, Rs 26,000 per month for the driver and car owner, respectively. The owner makes about Rs300,000 per year while the cost of a car is about the same (or a little more)..

The customer gets decent value for money since the call taxi is not much more expensive than an auto..

Now let’s see the financials for the call taxi company.

They get Rs 4000/taxi *2000 taxis = Rs 8,000,000 per month

They also have a one-time security deposit of Rs 10,000/taxi *2000 taxis = Rs 20,000,000. At 6% interest per annum, the monthly interest they get =(6/12)/100*20,000,000 = Rs 100,000.

Total income for call taxi company = Rs81,000,000.

Their expenses:

Total Salary: Assuming 100 employees being paid Rs 8000 per month = Rs 800,000.

All other expenses (Rent, Electricity etc): say Rs 1,700,000

Total monthly expenses = Rs 2,500,000

Net monthly income = Rs 81,000,000 - Rs2,500,000 = Rs 5,600,000 = $115,000

Yearly net is greater than $1m. Not bad, isn’t it?

There isn’t much competition in this sector, which is rather surprising.

But this isn’t the end of the story.. All this was explained to me by a person who himself is a call taxi driver.. I am awed.

Some Thoughts After Studying Canine Behavior

In an earlier blog http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2009/10/lost-puppy.html, I had mentioned my dogs. They are not exactly my dogs. They are street dogs which live in my shed and to whom my mom/I give a few slices of bread every day. The last few days have been quite eventful in their lives.

I will try to chronicle the events of these last few days as faithfully as i can (and try to do as good a job as Shirer did in “Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich”).

It started a few days back around the 15^th of August with the female dog starting to howl continuously and rather inconsolably. I went out to investigate and I found nothing that would irritate her. There were no new stray dogs, she had eaten the bread as usual.. I put down her behavior to possibly a headache or a stomach pain (you know, the way little babies howl because they have an ear pain or a stomachache).. Usually she howls when a plane flies overhead creating a huge noise. Both my dog and I hate the noise of the planes. While I am more restrained, my dog throws a tantrum each time. On the day in question and on subsequent days when she howled, there was no plane flying. I kept thinking about it but I couldn’t find the reason for this.

On the 18^th of August, I learned from a reliable source that the male dog was absconding and THAT was the reason for her display of emotion. I was shocked. Earlier when she had lost her puppies (4 of her puppies were never found and the last one died right in front of her), there was no such display of emotion. When the male dog was gone, I found her reaction totally strange and out of character.

This incident made me look at female (dogs) in a new light. On August 19^th, I found the male dog. He was hanging around with two other dogs. One was a female and I think the other was a male. This made me blush deeply. And I was upset that the male dog had absconded leaving his wife all alone. It didn’t bring out the sterling character that males are known for. I thought this DOG had let the males down by this single rather insensitive act.

On the 20^th of August, I found that my dogs had kissed and made up. They were snuggling against each other behaving like they usually did. I thought that dogs had more horse sense than we give them credit for. They had let bygones be bygones. Or so I thought.

On the 22^nd of August as I was leaving my house I saw in my shed two dogs sleeping next to each other. The female had a pleasant smile on her face. I thought all eeez well. As I was walking, I had a frown on my face. Something was nagging in my mind. Something wasn’t quite right. I went back to take another look at the dogs. The male was some other dog. Not the one which was the female’s “husband”. Aaaaaahhhh.

And then I started thinking...

Events of the last few days had left a very negative opinion about the male dog. And most of my friends with whom I discussed said that the male dog’s behaviour was not quite that would have made people stand up and clap. 
I wondered. What if the female dog had gotten sick of the male and wanted a “change”? What if she had made life kinda miserable for the male? What if the male took the hint and left home in the search for browner pastures? What if he had felt guilty or had pangs of love and came back to his “wife”? What if the wife had one more fling with the husband and kicked him out again? And settled down with a new guy? All this while earning my sympathy and those of my friends.  

Jesus...

-- Perry Mason often instructs the jury in a murder case that if an alternate theory (that absolves the accused) can be propounded which is consistent with the facts, then the defendant should be found "not guilty".