Mean and Meaningful

Life's complexities are much more weird than humans can comprehend, and sometime things that you dread are the best for you.
The fact life moves on, is the hope that people grab on to like a red and white cane yet, the satiation some where remains incomplete.
To the most mean and meaningful person it said. A letter that he found in the old pile of his college life, a life that was on the verge of being forgotten, in the corner were he seldom visited in his room. He needed his notes that day a simple micro economics paper he had written that an acquaintance required, some body he hardly knew. She worked at his mom's office, part-time and a student of Economics as well.
He happily had granted her wish. Who would have thought this would lead to a butterfly effect.
It was in his drawer, in a stale brown image that spoke of its age. It was not meant to be there though. He had forgotten about it over these years.
It was his mother who had left it hoping Abhishek would give it a look.

It was written for the most Mean and Meaningful person in her life, along four page examination paper, with neat hand writing. It was written to him four years back, funnily she was not known for her writing ever.
It was her hand writing that caught his eye, and he some how had this tremendous urge of taking the trip that he so did not want to. The trip down the memory lane via the letter route.
The letter was subtle, meant to be read between lines, a letter that was meant to be deciphered like a womens heart.
Some things are not meant by what they mean. It was these subtle innuendos that had kept his hopes alive that he should not have then.
The letter was spoke of the ups and downs of their interaction over time, and what it meant.Was Abhishek 's egotistic attitude really mean, or had she crossed the line between ego and self esteem. This letter was the defense lawyer to her idiosyncrasies but some how the prosecution was spell bound in the mysticism of the arguments put forth.
He started reading ,and for a while had this churning feeling in his stomach, a flash back to the hunky dory days, when every thing in life had this honeymoon effect painted on . But the honey moon effects are not meant to last, and the faster it ends its better,.
it gives the clear picture of what lies ahead.
Then his eyes were blur, today they were wide open and knew some how what happened was best at least for him, but why were they feeling moist today. Did she require the fourth chance, that he did not give her. or was it just a rush of emotion that rushed up like the dormant volcano errupting before it goes dead for another era.
Was she married today? he thought, or was her engagement called off.. was he the reason why it was called off in the first place, was he really the mean guy, or just another person whose self esteem was ravaged.
"Are those you notes in your hand can i have a look , noted the young girl "
No just piece of examination paper for which had not taken good notes he replied,hence i flunked, but the beauty is , is made me take good notes and hence today you can use them.
He gave her his economics notes, while his live's class test was flying in shreds near the dust bin. It had made him aware that the semesters are there to be taken, and the test was important but just another wake up call before , that prepare you for the big thing, Life,
Life's complexities are much more weird than humans can comprehend, and sometime things that you dread are the best for you.

Manual Override

Few days back, a friend of mine and me were travelling in his expensive sports bike, manufactured in India, and after a stoppage, his electronic start would not work. The electronics had a short circuit. He then used his kick start to make the bike work. And Suddenly it Dawned on me that's the beauty of India, if electronics fail we always have a Manual Override in any form and any circle of the country.
I was watching Die Hard 4.0 , and was thinking in India such an incident would have been a huge failure, as most times the traffic signals do not work here, and its the cops who clear the jam. Even today stock brokers along with huge electronic support have the back up paper work ready. While boarding the flight even if the systems are down the list is out where your name just needs to be ticked, and may be uploaded later. One of my colleague was travelling in a reputed European air carrier few days back, and could not check in early, as the system was not ready to check him in. In India, you just have the manual Over Ride.

Today while coming to office , i was caught in this horrifying traffic congestion due to a bottleneck situation.
Suddenly 2 police personnel non-traffic though, came from no where, and cleared the traffic in 2 mins.
Even Indian Army today one of the strongest in the world in their conventional weapons prefer mechanic over electronics.
The whole question is why?
The whole manual over ride comes from 2 things, Indians have this great Human skills. For example when driving we always know, whats the other guy going to do. A guy is honking loud from behind and suddenly i realise its no point moving to left to give him space, rather move right ( India is right hand drive mind you), and there you go he overtakes from the wrong side. If there was a system in place that would not allow me to move to the right and him to overtake from the left, this could have been a an accident. We though have the traffic rules in place, but out here they more like guidelines, as long there is a smooth traffic, and accident free, to make both the travellers life easy you can manually relax the rules.
Secondly India has the human power, abundance of labour, and that to cheap. The broking firms can employ people who will manually type out entire data, and take a print of it and file it in the racks. If the comp is down out comes the type writer. If printers is down comes the stylo machine.
Thirdly and very importantly, the rate of technical change is very slow in India, and that to an extent is good as it gives us the flexibility. Its not that new Technology is not available in India, it is but the adoption is very slow, and while it is being adopted, it is being Indianised, for the welfare of the masses. The options are laid out to Indians .. which one you want . if you are tech savvy go ahead use the electronic option, or if you are scientifically challenged like me.. use the manual option.
Its like a a car, where u have an auto transmission ,EPS and ABS.. if they all fail the hydraulic takes over. For an entire country to do that in one go if very difficult. But India is a country which works with Hydraulic Power Steering and auto transmission. So when they fail the changes is not much and hence people are already adapted to it . So in a diverse country like India, Manual Over Ride is essential and will always remain.