Stand Together

Yesterday as I walked back home and was about to enter my galli, I got the biggest horrifying shock of my life. I heard a puppy crying near a drain. Thinking that it has fallen into the drain I thought to take a look and bring it out on the ground lest it should drown. Beside the drain are a cluster of trees and beside the trees there is a small kirana (general) shop. As I looked into the drain I did not find any puppy inside it but rather I found about 4 new born puppies cuddled together, whimpering, to keep themselves warm in the rain. Right next to the puppies sat the mother eating something. A closer look told me that she was eating one of her new born babes. I tried to shoo the mother away but instead of running away she decided to pounce up on me. Thankfully the shop owner saw it in time and threw stones at her, warned me to get back home. After returning home, I saw my own dog. Somehow I couldn't bring myself to pat her and pamper her last night. What I saw on the street pre...

Yesterday evening while I was returning home from work I saw something of extreme interest. Thought I'd share it. I was in a seven seater mini taxi - This is how it looks.  Imagine this with 20 people inside with at least 3 people hanging outside! Anyways it wasn't so bad  yesterday. It was a smooth ride from ECIL Cross Roads to Nagaram (thats where I live). A few Kilometers down on the journey two girls got in and sat next to me. One of them was holding a green hot pack. It looks something like this.  Okie so the girls got in a sat next to me. One right next to me and the other next to her near the door. So now the interesting piece comes. The girl near the door, to my surprise opened the hot pack! Guess what was inside!!  Nothing and whole lot of things ! The hot pack was open and hollow! There weren't any steel food boxes within as you see in the picture above. In fact, there was money, a phone book, safety pins ( etc) , thats as much as I could peep and see. She had e...

On valentine's day while the whole world was celebrating love I was in the waiting room of a hospital waiting for my turn to come. One lady walked in, a very familiar face. She turned out to be my mother's old neigbour's daughter and I remember sleeping in her lap when I was very little. She came in with her one year old daughter. The problem was in the child. She is allergic to her own blood. Her blood is her poison. I can't imagine how difficult it might be for the parents to keep their child alive. They change her blood every week. Its just impossible to imagine how the child suffers. I don't know why I'm writing about her but I thought I'd share it.  All of us worry about so many things. Small things such as missing the train in the morning. Getting late to office again missing the bus in the evening. Such little things that don't really matter or rather things that are of no real consequence. They are so many lives out there that are not as blessed ...

Yesterday during the sermon, Pastor Sandeep flashed a slide which was a news paper article from the Deccan Chronicle with the heading "3 girls are raped every day in Andhra Pradesh". We all know that those are the numbers that the police have. We can't say what the real number is.  As I was going home from church, I was thinking what kind of men would commit such a crime. The answer came to me in the evening when I was returning home from my guitar class. I was in  a fully packed 7 seater auto. This auto has a seating capacity of only 12 people including the driver. But in most cases at all times there are more than 20 people, standing and hanging in these 7 seaters. It so happened that there were all women within the compartment and only one man. This man was drunk and he was breathing down upon me and another girl sitting next to me. We continually asked him to stand straight. He moved a little when we began asking the driver to ask this person the get off.  At the next...

There is something about these old ladies that takes me by surprise. I know one such special lady. She is one of my co-passengers in bus number 572, Secunderabad to Rajapet (Nalgonda), one of the district to district buses. She gets into the bus form the ECIL bus terminus and buys a ticket to Rajapet, the last stop of the bus. She mostly sits next to me and out of curiosity I once  happened to ask her how far Rajapet was. She told me that if she gets a bus at 7 in the evening from ECIL she would reach Rajapet comfortably by 10 pm. Comfortably one long journey! This lady looks uneducated and she is. She looks like any other telugu village woman. An old cotton Sari (unstarched) tied so high that her ankles are clearly visible, a blouse that doesnt match the colour of the Sari, dishevelled white hair, a pair of very heavy gold earrings not taken off for a quarter of a century, no footwear and a walking stick is the best desription I can give of her. One day I asked her about her earrings....