“Learn from unusual sources”, is what Subroto always says. Subroto Bagchi, the erstwhile Chief Operating Officer and now the Gardener of MindTree Ltd., has been instrumental in shaping my perspective and tuning my sensitivity with which I judge things today. According to him, a man (or a woman for that matter) is born 3 times in his life time. The first is the one when he actually comes to this planet. The second birth happens when he lands up on his first job. And the third time takes place when he becomes a father. All these occasions are marked with adopting hitherto unknown perspectives, dealing with a gush of opportunities, and learning a lot of aspects which directs life to a fuller circle…..only comparable to one’s birth! And during the incubated years of my second birth, I was fortunate enough to get Subroto and his team as my mentors who cared and caressed me and helped me to take the first steps, much alike my mom, dad, grandparents, close aunts and uncles had done during my first birth.
Now this post is not about Subroto’s preaching. Rather, it is about one of the numerous encounters that I had with an unusual learning source, and remembered him.
I was sitting at a window side of my office bus, while returning from office one evening. I like a window seat any day better than the aisle ones, as it gives me an opportunity to gaze at the happenings of my town, pretty regular at times but always with a difference. The bus was stuck in a traffic jam, that too in a market place, thronged with hawkers and buyers and pedestrians and auto rickshaws and two wheelers and bigger vehicles like ours. As a result, my gazing got translated into observing, and I was taking note of the violent bargaining between the buyers and the sellers, and the superficial quarrelling between the two-wheelerists and the pedestrians. The auto rickshaws (referred just as ‘auto’) of Kolkata are always a menace, making life tough for the traffic controllers. They did not like the idea of standing still in a traffic jam, and assuming they had wings, tried to swim through the roaring vehicular river.
Amidst all that pandemonium my eyes fell on an auto, just below my window. It was slightly bigger than a usual auto, and was of the Piaggio make. It had something interesting written on its side in Bengali. It read as, ‘Notun kichhu hok’, which when translated means ‘Lets have something fresh’.
I was awestruck! I was reading a word of such wisdom, that too on an auto! Now these kinds of words are very common in the daily thought of the day mailers. But I couldn’t believe my eyes; such statements can actually adorn an auto rickshaw too!
The auto drivers are believed to be the most illiterate motor drivers of our country. They are daily wage earners, which ranges from Rs120- Rs160 per day, falling only above the daily labourers in the wage scale. Most of them have families and the consequent financial demands, the daily struggle to make all ends meet, and frequent failures in that. Apart from the speed breakers, they constantly remain cautious of the otherwise-harmless-but-overreactive-in-their-case Police, and the opportunist political unions. In their valiant attempts to avoid the troubles of this world, they become more and more involved. And in the process, unconsciously, they themselves become the troubles to many people like me.
So, …..one of them is urging this world to have something fresh, start something new. Normally in other autos, the same place has written testimonials of how the auto-wallah is thankful to his mother, or the name of the particular bank which has given him an auto-loan, and mostly the name of the gods/goddesses for whom the pious auto-wallah is a devotee of. In most of the cases, the person who actually writes the stuff with paint, is illiterate, and draws the letters in different colors treating them as a part of a picture. So a whole bunch of them, reminding us, what we might do to rise above our daily miseries.
It dawned upon me, when a person who has been pushed enough against the wall, comes out with such a graffiti, its time for the enlightened bunch of us, to act. He is not anything less than the NASSCOM chief, who says that innovation and creativity at work will be the future driver for differentiating us in this highly competitive world. They are essentially speaking the language of sustenance, but in their own unique ways.
The Piaggio auto, living up to its character, soon surged ahead of us, leaving me overwhelmed and happy at my self-exploration. As it raced far and far ahead, surprisingly, it slowly became big…..big….. and even bigger for me.
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3 comments:
The write up on Subroto - I second it.
"Lets have something fresh" -> I too like it. Good one, especially on an auto.
"auto drivers are the most illeterate" -> hmmm... I humbly disagree dude. I have seen many and many auto drivers who are multi-lingual (read English :D ) and possess more knowledge than a normal man.
"Let's have something new" -- We can enjoy our day by day life only with freshness and newness, with out that we will be having same "Chal-Dawal"[Rice- Pulses] day after day .I appreciate your observation of the same on the back of an Auto .
But If I try to think from an alternative angle ,just I want to say "An Auto driver is not necessarily an Auto owner " ,So many teachers/Retired Govt employees try to invest their money into a safe and steady business like Auto , from their they can expect a guaranteed amount of money as monthly income .
In that case might be that semi-educated /educated owner has written the tag line or USP .After Retirement they are saying "Nuton kichhu kora jak " ."Let's have something new".
Lastly Karthick's comment has reminded me of Subroto's Article about a "Cucumber Seller in Native Tamilnadu " where the Cucumber seller possess more knowledge on the recent political\economical phenomena than an average SW engineer .
Whenever we read anything we think from our point of view.
Not from the point of view of the writer(unless explained by him).
in this case also,i feel, it has happened the same.
an intellectual mind like yours has interpreted this one liner as a word of wisdom,which otherwise may not be so.
So,it depends on how u interpret.
"Natun kichhu hok" may mean anything not necessarily what you are thinking.
May be he wants something new in his life-to marry,to have kids,to buy a better auto(LPG perhaps),or any kind of change in his life as human beings are never contended with what they have.
To have such a feeling one need not be very literate.
and even the painters nowadays are not that illiterate dear.
they may not have such intelligence to think that deeply but they surely understand the meaning of the words(which is their mothertongue mind it.)
So if someone wants something NEW in his life u need not not be that awestruck!!
the auto drivers may be illiterate(nowadays most of them are NOT so), they may be a trouble for "many people like you", that does not mean they are not human beings,
that does not mean they can't have the desire to want something new in their lives.they do have basic human needs.
another thing,the owner of that auto may also be an educated person..
the intention of the writer may not be to remind us what we might do to rise above our daily miseries.
or necessarily he is writing this out of any revolt.he might not be talking about innovation or creativity.
so chill boss...give ur observation power a rest.and dont jump into conclusions like this.
and moreover i feel really blessed when i am in an auto and infront of me is a vehicular river.because autos can actually swim through them!!!
and lastly,was that auto a 2-STROKE one?or LPG?? if it was a 2stroke one u missed an opportunity to write further about how this poor and illiterate drivers are breaking law and is a mess to our environment!!!
P.S: sorry for such a late comment.
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