Cattle Class

Though I travel in the cattle class, I can easily be distinguished from our four-legged friends. I walk and run on two feet, eat cooked food, use spectacles, understand, speak and write some languages, and am capable of indulging in intelligent behaviour.

Being capable of indulging in intelligent behaviour, and actually behaving intelligently can be two entirely different entities. I learnt it the day before yesterday. By the time you finish reading this blog, you will also learn it.

The flight landed ten minutes behind schedule. The passengers did what they invariably do when a flight lands. As the aircraft comes to a halt and the engines are switched off, passengers get up, open the overhead lockers, grab their belongings, and try to stand. The aisle, designed to accommodate one person, proves too small for six persons’ footprint. As a result, many of the passengers adopt ashtavakra (mutilated) postures to remain on their feet. I am not aware of any plane over-carrying a passenger just because he was not on his feet at the destination. I am also not aware of any hazards faced by passengers who continue to sit. In fact, I mostly remain seated till I must surrender to the wishes of the other travellers. It is easier to do so on a window seat. But, this time I had on the aisle seat.

As the plane stopped and the fasten seatbelt sign was switched off, I got up, opened the overhead locker, and looked for my bag. A number of passengers had stowed their bags after I had settled down in my seat, and, frankly, I expected to really dig for my bag. But, here it was, adorning the front of the locker. I took it, waiting to disembark. I had a meeting lined up at IIT Madras.

The door opened, and I marched out, nodding to the air-hostesses. A short stop at the loo, and here I was, out of the airport in less than three minutes with spring in my stride. Even the bag, which appeared so heavy in the morning with numerous documents and the laptop, was much easier to carry.

Did I forget to collect the laptop after the security, causing the bag to shed weight? My heart skipped a beat. If I had, it would be very difficult to retrieve it. Moreover, my laptop was to play a role in my IIT meeting. I cursed my carelessness, sliding the rider to have a peek inside the bag. The laptop was visible. I was unnecessarily getting panicky!

I waved at my colleague, sat in his car, and by 1130 we had entered the beautiful 600 acre IIT campus. It is not uncommon to find deer and many other animals and birds next to the roads in the campus. As I prepared for the IIT Safari, my cell phone rang.

“Mr Varma?”, asked the caller in an accusing tone. Somehow, even the most educated persons forget to introduce themselves first when calling upon strangers. I receive almost fifteen such calls everyday.

“Could I know who is calling, please?”, I asked calmly.

“Sir, I am calling from Jet Airways. You have carried someone else’s bag!”

“Have I? How can I do that?” I asked the caller.

“Sir, please check the bag. Is it yours?”

I looked the bag. It now looked different. I opened it. It had only a laptop, a small scribbling pad, a pencil and an identity badge. Of course, it was not my bag!

“No! I am awfully sorry, but yes, you are right. This is not my bag!”

“Sir, the passenger who owns that bag is waiting here for half an hour. Will you please return the bag? Where are you?”

“Ah! I am at IIT. It will take me at least half an hour to return to the airport. ... And, where is my bag?”

“Your bag is with us.”

My colleague looked at me. He had overheard the conversation. “What shall we do?”, he asked.

I apologised, explained what had happened, and requested him to drive back to the airport. Half an hour later, I was apologising to the owner of the bag, who, surprisingly, was not disturbed at all. I took my bag, signed a declaration, and started back to the IIT.

I had wasted time, fuel, and caused inconvenience to a fellow passenger! Thankfully, no major damage was done. The cattle had taken the misadventure in its stride.

Lovers of Doom

Our school, sometimes, held unusual assemblies. Such assemblies were called abruptly; usually during the mid of a period. Students used to throw their books in happiness and run to the assembly area to listen to the principal. For, such assemblies were held to announce the demise of some important person and to declare the closure of the school for the rest of the day after observance of silence for two minutes in the memory of the departed soul. The delight at the sudden revelation that one could go back home early and get rid of the boring lectures was too great to be suppressed. Students giggled with happiness while observing the silence; ending the ritual with a dash to the class room to fetch their bags and run towards home.

That happened when I was a child. Death those days bore hardly any significance other than being a harbinger of the welcome news of the sudden termination of the misery of being in the school, albeit only for part of a day.

Matured people are expected to react differently to death. Or, to any failure, for that matter. But we don’t. We rejoice at the failure of others. We take pride in predicting failures. “Take my word -- India will never win this tournament!”, is an oft heard declaration. When a rocket launched by India fails, the ‘Mr Know It Alls’ are fast to comment, “What else did you expect from India?” Near misses of aeroplanes over the Indian sky are reported with great enthusiasm, the agency never forgetting to add how many people would have died in case the collision had not been averted.

Today’s newspaper carries the picture of a young girl sentenced to life imprisonment. Just behind the girl walks a happy man, eager to have his face captured in the frame. We are happy when others fail or perish. We are very reluctant to acknowledge the success of others. For example, the same newspaper which never fails to report incidents of murder and rape, never reported the extraordinary achievement of Dr Tathagat Avatar Tulsi.

Tulsi did his high school at 9, BSc at 10, and MSc at 12. Jealously raised its ugly head, and Tulsi was accused on an international forum of memorising heavy sounding scientific terms and vomiting them out without understanding a single word. The boy went into a shell temporarily. In 2003, the prestigious Time magazine named him among the world's seven most gifted youngsters. Tulsi, when 21, completed his doctorate in Quantum Computing from the Indian Institute of Science. He turned down offers from Waterloo University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER), Bhopal, to become the youngest faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology at Powai in Mumbai at the age of 22. He is set to join as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics from next week.

The story of Tulsi did not appear on the front page. Not on the back page. Nowhere. News of Tulsi does not sell. News of death and failure sells.

Are we the lovers of doom only?