Finding Time for everything

As life progresses it is becoming tougher to find time for everything. My memory goes back to Chennai where I had lived my major part of my life. We lived in suburbs and travelling to the City from suburbs like Tambaram itself was very tedious. I have seen ladies combing their hair, arranging the flowers in sequence, and eating their breakfast in Kanchipuram and Chingleput trains. If it was a Friday, we can hear ladies chanting slogas in Ladies compartment. Now the flash back ends. Here in United Kingdom, when I travel, I find most of the ladies concentrating on their make ups and hair do while travelling. It is so nice to see them doing it with their foldable mirrors in their hand bags. Also, there are few who open their sandwich boxes and start having their breakfasts. I was wondering how life and people are all the same, wherever they live.
My wife reminded me of some technician who visited home and was stuck in the kitchen looking at our typical pickles bottle. He raised his eyebrows on seeing the name on the Gongura pickle bottle. I read it once more. It was written as ‘Hibiscus Cannabinus’. I suddenly remembered this during one of my journey and started smiling. I did not bother whether anyone noticed.
During one of the Tram journeys in Manchester, I had a peculiar experience. Trams here, run on rails and stop in the Railway platforms. Suddenly at some point, they get into the town and start running on the roads. It is a great experience. One of these days, I was travelling in Manchester and realised that Old Trafford was on the way. Many times I have seen the station empty or just with one or two passengers. This time, I ensured to have a look at the ground. The cricket ground can be viewed from the Tram for few seconds, when the tram passes the station. If you get down to the station you can see the ground clearly. It was really great to have a glimpse of West Indies – England Test match. Some English bowler was walking towards his bowling end and I could see from the Tram, the crowd roaring and the batsman taking his position.I felt excited. I remember seeing such scenes while passing RKM grounds in TNagar, Marina Grounds in Triplicane. This was totally different. At the Old Trafford station the Tram got filled up. There were few English men near me in traditional hat and formal dresses. I asked them the score and they were equally excited about Panesar’s bowling. I had the same experience when I found 3 old gentlemen in London tubes discussing about Cricket. On that day, there was a friendly match between England and Brazil in the newly built Wembley stadium. These old men were surprised when I enquired them about the match they had witnessed. They were talking about a county match whom they had witnessed between Somerset and someone. When I started talking about Somerset side in those days when Botham and Viv Richards were playing they got excited. They did not expect this from me. They expressed it saying that when people of my age are rushing to Wembley it was surprising that I was not talking about Football and talking about Cricket of their younger days.
Since I spend most of my travelling in drawing and reading newspapers as well, these days it is interesting to get some freaky news. The latest news which was on headlines in the local newspapers was about a Bull with sacred status of a Hindu temple which was slaughtered because it had Bovine TB. It is believed Bovine TB could spread to other cattle in this area. The Bull belonged to a Hindu temple in West Wales and this was the reason for the news to be in headlines. There was a big hue and cry. None of the protesters were of Indian origin and most of them assembled in the Temple were non-Asian ethnicity. My point here is not whether it was right or wrong. While I was studying in school, there was a beef stall which was called as A-1 beef stall. Every day while passing through the beef stall, we used to see hundreds of cattle being brought in Lorries for slaughter. As kids we used to be interested to know what will happen to them. Some of my inquisitive friends used to peep through the coconut leaves thatch to look at those cows. I used to feel pity for them. On reading about this Shambo, I felt for those thousands of cattles, which were slaughtered not because of Bovine TB, but just for the meat.
Could you imagine drinkable water being sold for exorbitant price in a flood area? There were few traders who plunged into timely business of selling drinkable water in a flooded area. This did not happen in Assam or Bangladesh. This happened in UK in certain parts of Gloucestershire county. It was funny to read such thing happening in the western world. One of my colleagues could not reach home because of the breach in the roads and had to stay in a hotel to reach his home on the next day. Certain parts have been very badly affected and water has entered most of the houses and business establishments. All this is happening in summer. It is getting warmer in the winter and floods in summer. Thinking about the disasters it is really scary.
Of all these, the interesting part of last few weeks was a training which I attended. I was sent for training on First Aids by my employer. It was a very useful training for 4 days. The training was conducted by St.John’s Ambulance. Oh... my... what a great training it was. I have gained great confidence now. I can rush towards victims if I am nearby, and do major first aids like resuscitation, and retrieve the heart functioning stuff. There was a test on the last day, and we had live examples (though rubber toys of man size) to be done emergency first aids. I had four victims, one victim was not breathing, one had head injury, one had cut his fingers, and one had broken limb. Now, I am a qualified first aider. If I had known these 15 years before, I would have saved those 5 or 6 lives, which died before my eyes on road accidents and trains.
If possible I shall detail those basic techniques in my future posts.
I shall publish my drawing which brought in surprise from my fellow passengers last week in my next post. It is really exciting! Just wait until then!