I generally find myself more busy on weekends as
every alternate weekend I travel to either Mumbai or my hometown. This weekend
it’s my hometown.
Though I consider myself as an exception to
typical IT professionals who spend half of their weekend in Bed and rest in Shopping
Mall, I couldn’t get up at 6am and travel in this cold winter. J So I decided to travel
Friday evening itself. There is one more reason for going home on Friday. I get
two whole days to stay at home. J
I was hoping that the bus won’t be much crowded as
my assumption was we found them full only on weekends…rather I was assuming that
only IT people travel on weekends to make them full :P But I was wrong. The bus was almost full. I
was lucky enough to get one empty seat beside an old uncle mostly in his 70s.
Uncle sitting beside me asked me one question
while I was planning to sleep for some time to give some rest to my eyes as I was
coming directly from office.
Uncle:
“Hi Dear, where are you going?”
Me: “Shirur.”
Uncle:
“Oh!! That’s not so far. What do you do? Do you travel every day?”
Me: “I
am a software engineer. I work at Pune. I generally travel on weekends.”
Uncle:
“Hmm!! That’s good. Where are you from? What your parents do?”
Me: [OMG!! So many questions L
considering his age, I couldn’t disrespect any of his question.] I am from
Ralegan. (It didn’t take much time for me
to tell him about my village as I gave reference of Mr. Anna Hazare.) My Father is a farmer.
Uncle:
Farming. Great!! Was he working somewhere or doing farming from the beginning?
Me: [Please Uncle, Let me sleep. I am too tired
to have any discussion at this point in timeL] No, he is doing farming from the beginning.(It took 5 minutes for me to explain him
that my father is a B.A. English Graduate and doing farming by choice.)
Pause for 15 minutes. I was happy thinking that
Uncle is not asking any more questions and I could sleep now, but his silence
broke very soon.
Uncle:
“When did you get these spectacles?”
Me: “When
I was in college.”
Uncle:
“Do you think working on computer whole day will harm your eyes more?”
Me: “[I smiled. I couldn’t avoid it. It’s my
profession. I am doing it for my Bread and Butter. J] Yes,
I have to take care of them”
Uncle:
“I can tell you one exercise for eyes. Do it every morning. Wash your eyes with
cold water. Each morning upon waking fill your mouth with water and hold for a
few seconds with your eyes closed. Spit it out and repeat 2-3 times.
I was working with Philips India 35years back.
When I was young, the time when I used to stay in Mumbai, I used to go for run,
everyday 10 km. We were a team of around 25 people. Nowadays I have relocated
to my village and go for a walk around 5km every day.
I feel your generation is very lazy. For most of
the time you keep yourself busy with gadgets. There are very few who would like
to spend time with nature. “
“Do you feel Computer causes memory loss?”
Me: [What? For a moment I was startled with his
question. Then realized what he actually meant to say. ] “Ummm!! Not
actually. ”
Uncle:
“I will say yes. If I give you my phone number now, you will save it in your
mobile and lock your phone. You will not even try to memorize it once as you know;
you can get it whenever you need. And here is the trap. I still remember, we
used to memorize the whole math chart. There were no calculators allowed. Today
everything has a shortcut. So you have stopped memorizing multiple things. All
you need to remember is where you have kept your mobile. (and then he smiled)”
“Do you keep interest in philosophy?”
Me: “[I was in a dilemma weather to say yes. But
he didn’t give me much time and asked his next question]”
Uncle:
“Do you know the difference between Philosophy, Applied Philosophy and
Application of applied Philosophy?”
Me: “[OMG!! I can tell you similarity. All have
Philosophy. I do keep some interest in Philosophy but this was something beyond
my understanding.]”
Uncle:
“I will explain it for you.
You got a Thought that is Philosophy.
You got a Situation that is Applied Philosophy
Applying your thought to that situation is an
Application of Applied Philosophy.”
Me: “OK!!
J [Frankly speaking, I could relate his sentence but was not in a mood to
discuss it further.]”
Uncle didn’t ask me any more questions after this
one and I slept. I got up when I reached Shirur. By saying final good bye to
him I got down the bus.
