Innocence in 'The Millennium City'

I live in a place called 'The Millennium City'. Some of the many attributes that give the name to the place which actually has a 'gaon' (gaon means village in Hindi) in its name are:
- loads & loads of dirt
- hardly any smooth road
- innumerable power cuts
- extreme pollution due to the diesel emissions mainly from the generators because of power cuts
- tall, taller and tallest buildings with no idea where the water & power supply are to come from
etc. etc. etc.
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In my violin class that I had joined sometime back (of course I could not prioritize continuing with the class among many other things, and I try to practise at home now), it was about my 3rd class when along with me in the class there was a small kid (about 7 years old). He came to the class and sat and after a while he opened the violin case. To my surprise the violin was quite smaller than mine. It was about half the size of my violin and it was very cute, I didn't know till then that a smaller size violin does exist. The class started and he played the violin and I watched him for a while with a pleasant smile on my face, he played at his own pace with the beats going haywire. He was just so cute and there was that innocence which I saw in him and that was the first time I saw it in this city. In another class he barged into the class as he was a bit late. He entered, sat down with his legs folded and opened his violin case and shouted, "arrey!", I bursted out of laughter when he stared at me with the astonishment to see the violin case open and the violin missing from his case :) I simply loved his expression. I felt a relief within to see that such innocence still exists!!! When I inquired about his background I learnt that his parents' origins are from a city not the millennium one, "very much possible", I thought!

We were thankful to get a rented flat in a nice colony with well maintained parks within (I have a complaint that they are for kids to play but dogs aren't allowed even to enter the play areas, I don't mind too much because I do understand changing human mentality is a task for a life time of many :)). We take Bruno for a walk everyday. In the evening, these days being pleasant during the evenings, there are many kids usually playing in the parks, one of which happens to be near our block entrance from where Bruno's walk usually finishes. The moment any of the kids in the group notices Bruno, they all come running towards us and shouting Bruno's name, usually also 2-3 other names to call them telling them that Bruno has come. Every kid is different - some pull Bruno's ears, some of them play with his tail, some are telling the others not to bother him too much, some are afraid to come near him but enjoy seeing him, some want to take him for a walk and snatch the leash from me, some are afraid he would bite and are confirming with me that he would not....etc. How much liveliness Bruno spreads around!

There is a lovely kid in the group who always has random conversations with me while her short play time with Bruno.
"Aunty, Bruno ki age kitni hai? (how old is Bruno?)", she asked me the other day.
"He is 4 and a half years old", I replied. I said '4 and a half' purposely because my education research brain prompted me to.
Then I asked her back, "Tumhaari age kitni hai? (How old are you?)".
She said, "4".
My research brain insisted me to ask, "Toh kaun bada hai, tum ya Bruno? (So, who is older? You or Bruno?)".
She said, "Main badi hoon (I am older than Bruno)."
I said, "Par Bruno toh 4 and a half years ka hai. (But Bruno is 4 and a half years old)."
She said, "Par main toh full 4 ki hoon (But I am full 4 years old)."

I wanted to explain her but didn't try to since I don't have a way to explain her because I know she has not yet come across the concept of fractions :) :) :) That was so cute I felt. She is so attached to Bruno, she calls him Bruns, and she has told everybody in her class about Bruns and how Bruns is her neighbour. I believe she had learnt 'neighbour' newly in her school. She explained me, "Aunty, you stay in 6th floor and we stay in 7th floor in the same building, so we are neighbours". She even made a story "Once upon a time, there was a dog. His name was Bruno.....etc......etc....." - there came a beast in the end of the story as well, I don't recollect how the story ended, my husband heard it better. I am more interested in watching her and the innocence within her :) There is this another kid who told me that he got 10 on 10 in an exam in school and so on. Another kid sees Bruno from his balcony of his home on the 4th floor and shouts, 'Arrey yeh toh Bruno hai...(see this is Bruno)!"

Every kid is innocent at heart. And it is such a pleasant feeling to note that is not completely lost yet in this part of the country which is moving too fast towards losing it though, I feel!

Our Core Competence - Bargaining!

Remembering the days when I had just passed out of the primary school, I was staying at my grand mother's place. Looking back, they were amazing days of life but had it been a fulfillment of just about the daily needs it would  have been a lot better. Anyway, it was a small town, the district headquarters named Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh where my grand parents used to stay. It was very small a place that everyone staying in the colony would know one another well & have time to ask about the whereabouts while passing by one another's homes. I saw the development in & around the colony in terms of numerous apartments coming up & the lanes in between not even spacious enough to let even a Maruti 800 to pass by, let alone bigger vehicles. I hate this part! Otherwise the houses were so spread out that we could see the television in the drawing room of a house at 50 mts distance from ours. The game then between we all kids was to guess the movie being played on that television. I was pretty good at that I must say! (Especially when it was like Akshay Kumar's song 'churaake dil mera, goriya chali' from Main Khiladi Tu Anari :-))

Like in the smaller towns now, there used to be men & women selling different types of vegetables holding that typical basket (actually टोकरी)on their heads usually. Every such woman would stop by our home, just wanting to chat with my grand mother & forcing her to buy something even if she said she didn't want to buy, don't know what pleasure they got when talking to my grand mother. One such woman came & she had about 2.5 kgs of mangoes (it was peak summer & mango season) in her टोकरी. My grand mother called her & asked her for the price. The woman replied about Rs. 35 per kg or so. My grand mother said, 'give me the entire basket for Rs. 30'. The woman started cribbing & yelling saying, 'what amma, blah blah blah blah, do you know how many kgs are there in this basket? You are asking all this for a meaningless price blah blah blah'. My grand mother refused to listen to anything. The woman kept cribbing for a while & finally, helplessly went away when my grand mother didn't accept anything other than the Rs. 30 figure that she arrived at, God only knows what was in that figure! The woman went away, only to come back after 30 minutes. Don't know what guilt they had if they were unable to give anything to my grand mother. She came back & offered a price of Rs. 40 for whatever was there in the entire basket, the quantity was the same as it was earlier. My grand mother still was stuck at Rs. 30. Finally, after 30 minutes of cribbing & so on, she gave everything for Rs. 30 & went away. I didn't see any guilt on my grand mother's face & that woman was having mixed feelings which were very evident :-) I couldn't help!

Bargaining, is our core competence. I always thought it existing in older generation, that of my grand mother's, especially in the lower middle class people. But I see almost everybody around me wanting to bargain, could be for any minimal amount. We feel as if it is a point to put up on our resume? When we go out on vacation with our friends & head for shopping, I see people wanting to bargain for just about any amount they can. Somehow, my father never had this quality & we could never inherit it, but it can be very contagious at times. Apparently, we have to give the shopkeeper lesser than what he quotes as price, for sure. If we give what he asks for, we start feeling that the shopkeeper made a fool out of us! What if he actually has made a fool too? Say for a suit-piece, he quotes Rs. 2000, we don't bargain & give him Rs. 2000. Fine, what's wrong? Are we feeling bad that he has made some money? Don't we make enough money for our living? And it that Rs. 2000 was not affordable, could we have even bought it? Now, we bargain a bit & he gives it for Rs. 1800. If he feels comfortable giving it for Rs. 1800, we still feel guilty that since he has comfortably given it for Rs. 1800, he definitely has made some money & the entire trip, we keep thinking 'had we only bargained a bit more!'. We further bargain, & bargain, & bargain to get the price down to Rs. 1400 where he himself is forced to reveal that he is not making any money. We feel so good at this point when he further reveals that at less than Rs. 1600, he wouldn't make any money. We are then fine with giving Rs. 1400 (mind you, not more than this), knowing that he isn't making any money, he feels depressed, he is probably thinking of the sweets that he had planned to take for his kids in the evening, or the gift that he thought would buy for his daughter! What fun do we have creating such unhappy moments in someone's lives, I don't know! And this gesture is not only in middle class families, where it is still understood. People who earn enough to waste at least 1 kg food everyday, people who earn enough to be able to buy at least 5 things worth Rs. 2000 each day, people whose daily income with no uncertainty is more than that shopkeeper's monthly income which is filled with uncertainties & seasonalities.

I agree, once in a while we are fooled by such shopkeepers & others, but in most cases, we are just trying to show our superiority & being cheap in the process of anticipating cheapness. God help us become wiser, don't know how but wisdom is in a big scarcity in our country!