A listening ear...

While working in my previous company, I was posted in Chennai for three months. The office was located sixty kilometers south of Chennai city. I was staying in the company’s guest house nearby office forcing my schedule to guest house-office-guest house and nothing else. The day of diwali was approaching and I had got reservation only in a sitting coach in a train departing late afternoon, after all diwali is one such occasion when members of the family get-together.

My journey to the railway station would take little less than two hours and as planned, I left the office at 1pm. I had to postpone my lunch and board a bus to Tambaram. It was hot afternoon and I managed to get a seat in a few minutes next to a man in his late forties. He started talking…the way he grew-up in a family of sculptors, the reasons that forced him to come to Chennai, his two year life in Bangalore, the way he entered the welding practice, the way his college going son was sucking money to pay his mobile-phone expenses, the way everyone in their family rejoices during diwali, the importance of real work and so on. Slowly the conversation was heading towards rail-wagon and steel industry perspectives and opportunities/risks for the SMEs in this industry.

After fifteen-twenty minutes of this talk he became silent. He was looking into my eyes, smiling. A minute of pause and then he sadly expressed the way his pay-hike was hurt by crooked middle management politics and the way the word ‘recession’ has ate their bonus money paid before diwali. I smiled and I said him that this was the case everywhere, be it a big IT company or be it a small foundry and also said some few words that seemed to spread warmth inside his soul. Ten minutes later, his place came and before parting he thanked me for hearing to him and also a special thanks for my smile!

Meeting this man with no name and the conversation left me questioning myself. What people need from relations is a listening ear and a soul, and most of them think different. In the past paced lifestyle people have been drawn into a maze of unknown and fear that causes them to shrug off whatever is not them. Many hide their faces from their personal responsibilities as a friend or brother-sister or spouse or a parent as all these do not pay off in pecuniary terms or does not satisfy their dirty-ego. They consider this act of theirs as correct and thrust them unknowingly into their next generation as well.

Red vented bulbul - My first bird shoot

This Sunday, I woke up to the 8'o'clock sun filling the room. I was at my aunt's place at Trichy. Coming out of the house in a sombre mood, I gazed at the hibiscus blooms in the corner of the garden. Chirp chirp ... and three or four red vented bulbuls perched on the tree opposite to their house. My aunt was swift in fetching my camera and we both started watching them . The drooping bunch of yellow flowers fluttered by the bulbuls hopping between the fragile branches.

Two of them flew and perched on the fence wall. Earlier when I spotted these birds few months ago at Auroville-Pondicherry, I loved their shiny eyes and their colour. Today I consider myself lucky shooting these birds on my new camera.



PS: I got my new dslr camera last week ...canon eos-550d