Enthralled : on seeing a working auto-meter in Chennai

Landed at Central yesterday morning after the usual weekend at Kerala. It is drizzling lightly which makes me abandon the usual plan to walk over to Park station to catch the electric train to Nungambakkam. The other option is hailing an auto, but knowing the humongous rates they demand, it is going to be a pain haggling with them. But I don't have an umbrella and don't want to get wet. So, hail an auto, tell him the destination and from habit ask "Evlavu ?"    // "How much?" in English.

To my utter surprise, he says, "Saar, as per meter. Please get in" and turns on the meter. Once I am seated, he says, "The RTO guys / cops are nearby and you are asking me "How much?". If they had heard it, would be a big problem for me. As it is the cops are worried that they are not getting enough defaulters to penalise"

Along the way home, I keep checking the meter and it is working like clockwork - Rs25 for the first 1.8kms and then Rs12 for every subsequent km. I reach my place and the meter is showing a few bucks less than Rs.100 for the ~8km distance, which is exactly as per the new fare. Give him another 15 bucks just for the joy of seeing an untampered auto-meter in action in Chennai - I think the last time I saw a meter running in Chennai was sometime in the mid-90s. :-)

And to think that these guys used to charge anything between 120 to 200 for this distance - depending on time-of-day, weather, bus-strike etc.

Thanks to all the folks including the Times of India for their sustained campaign for getting the auto-meters back in action in Chennai !!!

It does help to complain.

Infact while there is nothing to lose other than a few minutes of your time, there could be a lot to gain as a recent incident proved. A longtime friend (from Engg. college days) had come down to India from the US for a few weeks and spent last weekend at my place before boarding his flight back to the US last Sunday.

He is a hardcore Apple fan and ensures to upgrade to the latest iPhone / iPad etc and always travels with both the gizmos. During last weekend, it was Aman who was mostly using the iPad to play games. His flight was on early Sunday morning and since he had to check-in a little after midnight, I book him on a Fastrack taxi to the airport.

The first thing he does on Sunday evening after landing in the US is to call me to tell that he seems to have misplaced the iPad. He remembers arranging his luggage while in the cab and thinks that possibly he left it in the cab. Or maybe he left it in my home, which is quickly ruled out when I do a quick search at home. Another possibility is it being flicked from his luggage either at Chennai or Doha (he flew Qatar airways) or at Dulles (US), because the lock on his check-in baggage is missing.

Anyway I call up the cabbie (had his number on my cellphone since he had called me asking for directions to my place) and while he clearly remembers dropping my friend at the airport, he asserts that no iPad or other item was left behind in the cab. My friend is now slowly reconciling to the possibility that the device is lost, with no chance of seeing it again.

I myself do not see much of a chance of tracing the device again, but reckon that we should atleast file a complaint with Qatar Airways so that this hopefully does not happen to someone else in the future. My friend files an online complaint with Qatar, listing the broken lock on his luggage etc and expressing his disappointment at losing a costly piece of equipment while travelling with them. A few follow-up mails fly back and forth and my friend leaves it at that.

The next day morning, he is woken up by a phone from an employee of Qatar Airways, to be told the happy news that they have traced an iPad and want to confirm if it is indeed the one my friend lost. The device is password-protected and if he could give them the password and it opens the device, it is indeed his and they will ship it to him in the US. He reels off the password which matches the device and that is authentication enough for them to return it to him.

So, for just a few emails and some minutes of time, my friend was reunited with his iPad, saving him many hundred dollars which he would have had to spend to procure a new iPad. Never hesitate to complain if you have been short-changed.

A big shout-out to Qatar Airways for their quick dekho into this and helping my friend. You would not only remain the airline of choice for my friend, but I would also recommend you to others. 

The challenge of keeping kids engaged.

It is tough keeping today's kids engaged in a constructive way. Which means, TV is not an option. Infact there was a study done recently which indicated that too much of TV viewing can potentially impact the behaviour of kids so much that the chances of them turning criminals on growing up was high.

And unlike our generation when TV was the only big deal, today's kids have a plethora of similar options that lead them to be sedentary. Aman for instance has his own laptop (my Dad's hand-me-down) and also a Nabi2 tablet. Am sure most kids today have access to better tablets like the iPad.

Ofcourse it is not like the kids don't want to engage in games or other physical activity. Just that either they don't have companions to play with, like in the case of Aman or the parents themselves are so busy with the demands of life that they don't have time to engage the kids.

To be frank, it is strenuous to engage kids and I know this from experience of playing football / cricket / pittu  and other games that I make up myself (like hitting a bottle with a ball) with Aman, and which lately Ishaan also joins. For one, all the game equipment is kid-size and it is not fun to play cricket with a 1-feet long plastic bat that is almost weightless (for adults) and a plastic ball. Ofcourse this is more than made up for by the satisfaction you seen on the kid's faces.

So, it was another weekend when the kids wanted to do something out in the yard. And there was Amy too in the group. I rack my brains and think of putting a swing on the tamarind tree in the yard. I have the rope, but I need a flat piece of wood for the seat. I am searching on the terrace for one that would be suitable, but without success. And that is when my eyes fell on the just-replaced tyre of our Suzuki Swift. Like any true Indian, we never throw such stuff away thinking it will be needed some time, though usually that time never comes.

Anyway, in this case, the tyre was the perfect fit for my problem and the swing is ready. Ofcourse Aman is hesitant since it is not easy to get on a tyre-swing. Amy being the fearless girl she is, cooly jumps onto it and is having fun swinging.

Now Aman's male ego takes a hit and he is now a little more open to the idea and finally gets the hang of it. Ishaan by nature is fearless and open to any challenge and cooly gets on to it with my help and while Aman is squealing when I push the swing, he is just having fun.

As they would say in the old MasterCard advertisement :
     5 metres of plastic rope : Rs30
     An old tyre : free
     Seing the smile on the kid's faces : Priceless. 

There are somethings that money can't buy. For everything else, there is imagination. 

Finally an investment in realty

Though I would like to think of myself as a balanced investor with a judiciously diversified portfolio, the one  investment that eluded me was real-estate. Not that I did not make an effort. I started looking around for a good plot / flat in Chennai in the early 2000s, but inspite of looking over various options, I never came around to actually buying anything. Colleagues who started the search with me then, today own 2-3 homes at a minimum.

And it was sometime mid-2012 that I decided to lock-in to the 9.5cents plot (with an old home on it) adjacent to our home in Kerala. This plot has been for sale for years, but never got any buyer for 2 reasons. The seller always wanted ridiculously more than what the going rate was. And more importantly, the L-shaped plot (wider part at the rear and narrow part on the road-side) had a temple adjacent to it, which kept buyers of all religions away. 

Understandably, the Muslims and Christians kept away because they would not want to have a temple in front of their home. But what surprised me was that even the Hindus kept away. Primarily because they felt that they might incur the wrath of the diety (Bhima of Pandava fame) if they cooked non-veg in the vicinity of his abode. Which is funny because I don't think Bhima was a vegetarian anyway. And more importantly, in Kerala since the Hindus usually cremate their deceased in their plot itself, there was the fear of how the deity would take to this defiling of his surroundings. 

Anyway, our current home has been sharing a wall with the temple for as long as I can remember and we have no issues with that. So there was nothing stopping us from buying the plot. More importantly, if someone did overcome their fears and ended up buying the property, they would demolish the existing home and the new one would be built too close to our home for comfort. 

Unlike Chennai were homes share walls, we in Kerala are used to living in big plots without having nosey neighbours too close. Our home stands on around an acre of land with our neighbours also having their homes on similar large plots. So for that strategic reason alone, the plot was worth it. And after some hectic bargaining and encashing many FDs, I finally became the owner of a plot of land on 20th September 2012. 

Some snaps of how the plot and the home on it looked like when we bought it. Snaps taken from the terrace of our home. Please note that the home was built sometime in 1962, with one room at the front having a concrete roof (a big deal in those times) and the rest of the home having tiles on the roof. 

You can see the roof of the temple in the snap below at bottom-left corner. The whole place was overrun with shrubs/weeds, which we cleared and the resulting space was promptly taken over by Sheena for starting a kitchen garden - more on that in another post. 

The front view of the home, as seen from the road.

Another frontal snap in which to the right you can see part of the temple. 

The roof being renovated completely. A key thing in Kerala where it rains round the year. 

The initial thought was to demolish the old home, but then we thought it better to give it a new lease of life by doing a complete renovation, which in hindsight turned out to be a big task, both in terms of effort and cost. We started with repairing the leaky roof - changed all the rotten wood on the roof and false-ceiling, replaced the broken tiles, patched up the chipped away concrete, had new doors and windows made by a carpenter, built a wall linking our home and the new plot and cordoning off the temple (Bhima got a compound wall free). And finally applied a few coats of paint (awesome color selection by Sheena). Anyway, the end-result was totally worth the money spent. 

Front-view as it looks today. 

Another view of the front, with the temple also in the picture. 

A view of the home as seen from our backyard. 

So, 4-months after buying it and spending 2lakhs+ on renovation, I now have real-estate also in my portfolio, though quite late in the day. Atleast better late than never. 

An Edison in the making ?

One of the standard chores on my list for every weekend at Kerala is to water the banana-plants and coconut saplings that we are cultivating on a small plot of land that we have. This is one of 2 plots that we have offsite - that is, a little away from the plot where our home is located, the other one being alongside the river. This one is around 400 metres from where our we stay and half of it is high land where we have the coconut and banana plants with tapioca cultivated in between them, while the rest is low-lying field suitable for paddy cultivation.

Usually, Kerala has rains almost round the year and there would be no need to water the plants. But 2012 has been pretty bad as far as rains go and in the last 5-6 months, we have not had any rain except for one or two days. Infact everyone in Kerala is predicting a severe drought due to lack of rains. There is an irrigation canal running alongside our plot which ideally should have helped our cause, but for the fact that no one has ever seen water flowing through it. While it was built years ago to help the farmers, the only folks who benefitted were the contractors, local authorities and the politicians.

Thus the need to draw water from a small pit I dug in the low-lying field to irrigate the plants. With each passing week, the water-table level goes down and I need to dig the pit a little more deeper to get water. So the usual routine is for me, Sheena, Aman and Ishaan to ride out their in the Scooty with a spade, couple of buckets and some snacks/water for the kids. When they are in town, Divya / Dany / Amy also join us - a snap below of them playing in our field when they had come home for the X'mas vacation and had joined us. 

A snap of the plot, with the grassy patch in the foreground being the low-lying part and in the background you can see the higher-land with banana-plants, coconut saplings and older coconut trees. If you look closely to the right-edge of the snap, you can see Aman walking on the canal.

Aman usually loves coming to the "canal land" as he calls it (the other one being "river land") since he can walk/run along on the canal or in the fields. But last week when we are getting ready to go there, he says he can't join as he has a "meeting". Since I have been working from home atleast once a week since the time he was born, meetings and calls are part of his vocabulary. 

"Aman, why don't you come with us to the canal-land ? We need you to engage Ishaan."

"I am not coming, since I have a meeting now."

"Meeting ? What meeting do you have and with whom ?"

"It is an "Invention meeting". So I am not coming with you."

"Invention" is another term that has got into his vocabulary and he is trying hard to "invent" something. He draws some fancy sketches and tries to explain the hi-tech functionality to us who are not as intellectually blessed as him. He mentions engines and power and what not. Anyway, we don't want to be obstacles in what could potentially be the next path-breaking innovation and move on. Because, he could be the next Edison, for all we know. 

Political doublespeak and hike in fares (long-pending)

So, finally the Indian Railways hiked passenger fares in all classes / segments. Though this is going to hurt me the most (due to spending 2 nights every week on trains), I should say this was long overdue. I guess the fares in lower classes have remained the same for years now and with input costs rising over the years, it would be bad financial sense to not hike the fares.

New fares came into effect from 22-Jan-2013 and the journey to Kerala that I make today would be the first one with the new fares. Instead of the Rs.316 (+10 for Netbooking) that I have been paying for years, I will now have to shell out Rs.365 (+10) which is a 15% increase. The suburban train fares also have been increased and instead of the Rs4 I used to pay for a Nungambakkam - Park ticket, it is now Rs5.   Fair enough.

However, it was hilarious to see the front page of the newspaper, the day after the hike was announced.

It was hilarious to see the Tamilnadu CM (Ms.Jayalalitha) protesting the hike saying it is not fair. More so because after having come to power in the state a year or so ago, she had herself raised the prices of anything that was in state control - be it milk or electricity or bus fares.  So now to crib about hike in rail fares that have remained stagnant for almost a decade would be illogical. Ofcourse again she did not have much of a choice in those decisions since allround inflation meant that production costs went up and the only way to stay afloat would be to hike prices.

I would not mind paying double or even more, if they could do something about speeding up the trains. Currently the 800kms takes me 13 hours to cover. The Shinkansen (Bullet train) that we took in Japan to visit a customer covered the same distance in 3 odd hours. OK, I am not asking that kind of speed. But atleast if they could do the distance in 7-8 hours it would have been great. If so, the train could leave Chennai at 11PM or so and reach my place by 6 in the morning. Same for the return leg. This would give me enough time to wind up work on Fridays, get on the train, have a nice sleep and be able to spend the 2 full days of the weekend with fmaily. Ah, if wishes were horses, software engineers would fly !!!

Living the experience again. And loving it.

With Ishaan growing up, the whole experience is akin to re-living Aman's early childhood. Only difference is that while Aman was a docile kid (still is), Ishaan is more adventurous, keeping all of us on our toes as he goes about climbing chairs/tables/ladders and running all over the place. Other than that, the similarities are very evident. And looks like in some cases, we need to again find a solution to a problem that we had fixed earlier with Aman. 

Last Monday I am returning from Kerala to Chennai after spending the weekend there as has been the norm for almost all weekends for the past 5 years since Aman was born. My parents, Sheena and the kids are in the car to drop me at the railway station. I take my bags from the car and as I wave my goodbye, I hear wailing inside the car. Ishaan is crying his lungs out repeating "Ba-ba", which is how he says "Papa". 

It was the same with Aman too. He would cry when seeing me off and then as I posted here, when my Mom explained the whole situation to him, he understood and never cried again. Being the first kid and the accompanying novelty of being a father for the first time, I was very close to Aman and thus I could understand his dismay when I vanished for 4-5 days after spending the weekend with him. 

Ishaan, on the other hand is more of a Mama's boy and I also got less time to spend with him since I needed to spend time with Aman. It was only recently during the 11-day long year-end vacation that me and Ishaan got a chance to bond and since then "Ba-ba" has been on his lips quite often. Often enough to even make Sheena slightly jealous that he craves my attention more than hers. :-) 

So, guess it is time to sit down Ishaan and make him understand that the farewell is temporary and that I will be back in a few days. Ofcourse, this is easier said than done, since he is very different from how Aman was at that age, I really doubt he will understand. Anyway, no harm in trying, I guess !!!