Dheeraj Kalgutkar

The bus conductors across India have problem of their own, from chewing pan to indecent language to not-so-warm behavior. But this one was not so cut-out for that definition. Most of my traveling across the stretch of India which I have stayed and moved has been by bus, mostly public and sometimes private. Rarely on train and more scarcely by flight. Most of Indians will relate to this except for those staying in Mumbai for them bus can be replaced with local train! And this is where I have met people from different hues of life, old, young and those not-at-all charming end-of-the-world-loud babies. It’s great experience where you throw yourself to unexpectedness. But there’s one person you have interacted regularly while traveling by bus, ticket collector or bus conductor. Recently, few women have started to apply for the job of conductor and take up the challenging work which otherwise is a man’s world to move from one side of the (most of the times) crowded bus to other si...

A photo taken from distant... "Sir! You don't know with whom you are playing with. You will find yourself in serious problem if you continue what you are doing," said or threatened a construction worker when I went overboard and climbed the vehicle carrying too-loud-and-noisy generator and, turned it off!   Now someone who always argues about non-violence and respecting the law of the land (I consider myself one among them) would term my actions as 'taking law in hand'. I don't disagree. In fact my friend who was witness to all this mayhem expressed the same. What caused me to go overboard around 12 O' clock midnight was no extraordinary cause but mere an occurrence of incident which goes on every other day in India but few of us bother to take note (or notice!).  So let me take you to what happened or was happening all these days in a densely populated residential area. There was this construction which was going on around our place at the...