Sunday 10 June 2012

7th Grader is not a Five point Someone! : Blog # 31

7th Grader is not a Five point Someone


                After having a sumptuous lunch from Kris’ home, I headed for MCity in a taxi. I have always loved cabs. Have always had this feeling that taxis are so comfortable, with the chauffeur et al. When I was in Bombay, I used to wait for a cab to come along even if autos were there. For one, the local cabs (fiats) were cheap there and it gave that comfy - indulgent feel.
             Stuck in the traffic signal, he told his name is Ibrahim, from palghat in kerala. My mom is from Palghat and hence I have a liking towards people from there. The awareness he had about things that mattered amazed me. The only difference was that he did not use the jargons that we people do.

He was reminiscing about his middle east days. He used to own a taxi service in Saudi. He was employing 4 guys. He said his business did well. The roads there are great, so no maintenance for the cars. The petrol price was very less. He said “ I agree that Saudi has oil in the country and that is why the price is very less. But it is highly over priced in our country. It is all due to the taxes. That is why the price of every damn thing is going up. Politicians should do something about it”.

  Ibrahim ikka loves Kerala beyond anything. He said “Kerala is an amazing place to live, truly God’s own country. But there is minimal employment. That is why our youngsters are moving to middle east. We cannot blame our government completely. We do not have the kind of barren lands that a Karnataka or a Tamil nadu has.”. “But what about the IT sector ikka?” I probed. He said “Yes that can be done. All these companies should come there - Infosys, CTS, Ascendes (I thought he was referring to Accenture. But there is a company called Ascendes!)”.
     
             The music system started singing a beautiful song from the malayalam movie “Ee Puzhyum Kadannu”. He said “There is no one like Yesudas. What a talented singer! In my lonely gulf days, his voice brought me back to Kerala in a second. You know, I did not come back for 20 long years! Can you believe that? First five years, alone and then 15 years with family. If I had stayed on, I would have got Saudi citizen ship. I said no way! I will die in my country”.

            Then the conversation got candid. He said that he has studied only till 7th grade. “My wife is also a graduate. During that time, many people made fun of me and asked my father in law not to go ahead with the marriage. If you ask me, it’s all in the head. It never stopped me from doing anything. I worked very hard and made sure all my children studied". His elder daughter is a graduate and married a software engineer in HCL. His younger daughter is pursuing PG in Chennai. His face lit up when he talked about them.   

            I thoroughly enjoyed the journey (all the while, he was driving above 100km/hr, but eyes firmly on the road) and the conversation. As I got down I gave some extra money rounding off the fare. He got offended “You think I talked to you for this?”. I insisted again. He said “ I will not accept any extra money from you.  Next time when you call our taxi service, ask for me  :)  , or for any help in Chennai for that matter.“
           
             And I thought education widens the horizons of people’s thought process!

                                                                                                                                Arun Babu.

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