Originally posted on: 5 Jan 2011. This is an incidence from our college times.

We had just finished watching movie and were standing with our bikes outside City-Pride, one of the movie theatres in Pune. We were discussing about further plans when one kid walked to me n started begging. I felt extremely bad.. :( now, I had that inner feeling of not giving him the money just like that n see him getting converted into ‘beggar’ – he looked to bright for it. I had tvs-scooty with me in those days, I rememebered having a piece of cleaning cloth in my scooty’s under-seat storage. I opened it, giving that piece to him n said – “clean the scooty n I will give u 5 bucks !!”. I was expecting him to walk away, as most of the beggars I have observed, dont want to work. But, he agreed !! Now here comes the twist, that piece of cloth was actually my room-mates complete shirt.. my room-mate weighted 45kgs then, 52kgs now :) .. within a second when that kid picked up the cloth, he realized that this shirt can fit him well. He asked me – “dada, can I take this?”, I said yes. In a flash he removed dirty shirt he was wearing and put on my room-mates old, discarded shirt. Just when I thought this interaction is over n he no more wants 5 bucks from me, he started cleaning my scooty with his old,dirty shirt which was then in his hands.. I was pleasantly surprised !! :) He didn’t take 5 bucks I offered him..

Today, pseudo-randomly, question popped up to my mind – what is better? child beggar or child labor?? n I remembered this many years back insidence, wondering where that kid would be now, n what he would be doing.. Hopefully, I helped one kid converting from child beggar into child labor.. :)

Originally posted on: 12-June-2011

30-Sep-2010, Entire India was waiting for one of the crucial court decision in independant India’s history – Ayodhya Verdict. Here in pune, most of the corporate organizations asked their employees to leave early from office and reach home before afternoon for sake of safety. First time in our newly shifted house, me, Saurabh(pittu) and Sujay(sujya), three roomies, were gonna be online at the same time. Problem was we had internet connection modem with only ethernet port and no wireless router. So, I decided to buy wireless router on the way to home.

Dipak is my team lead with whom I discussed about wireless router – prices, brands, models. We narrowed it down to D-link DIR-300 and D-link DIR-600. We checked e-bay India price for D-link DIR-300, it was around 1700 bucks. In the afternoon at 245pm, me n pittu reached one shop called Data Care Corporation (DCC), famous in pune for computer peripherals.

(one of the sellers, after all of them ignoring us for 5 mins)

Continue reading