The Sixth Sense

I do have this tendency to name my blogposts after movie titles/TV shows (!) but in most these cases its simply because they happen to be the most apt title. Sixth sense i something i totally believe in and every now and then I can see some proof of this phenomenal power of human mind.
I normally see this phenomenon coming handy when im leaving for office ( its actually rushing to catch the last bus) in the morning. I usually have a huge paraphrenalia which i carry to office with various assorted items like gym clothes , id card , cellphone , tie , wallet et all ..
I have noticed that whenever i miss something , there will be some voice inside me telling me "u have missed something" and during the frantic process of getting ready most often than not it manages to remind me the object i have missed also !

Yesterday i saw this mind thing happening again and boy Im really thankful for all those senses !
We had gone out yesterday on a team outing to Mysore Infy Campus and got back to Bangalore @ 10 at night , some of us had dinner and a couple of ladies had to be dropped at their homes , so after dropping the last person , i was walking to my place.
The street i live which incidentally is good representation of urban India , with big posh houeses and flats at one end of the street and small shops and cluster of shabby houses/huts at the other end. Typical 'two Indias' street . Importantly for this tale it also has a butcher's shop at one end so there are lots of stray dogs in the area. Banglore these days is famous for its street dog menace with growing no:of attacks on human population. In my area i had earlier seen packs roaming around at nights and occassionaly just for the kicks , giving a few bikers a chase! Enough has been said and written about what should be done to 'tackle' this problem and who is to blame for this , since i dont have anything significant to contribute on that note , i limit my comments on another interesting 'phenomenon' i observed during a brief encounter with the canines.

Coming back to my tale ,I was walking from the 'other' end of street and before i turned into my street , i remembered last time i had come through the area so late @ night . It was a month back with my cousin and we were coming back after watching a late night movie , he had suggested picking up a couple of stones with us so that if any dogs chase us, we have some ammo to reply back ! I had scoffed at his idea then , but then while i was walking i thought of that incident and picked up a couple stones without giving it much thought.
As i was walking and reached the 'dreaded' end of my street i got a call on my cellphone and was engrossed in it and didnt notice the fact that right in front of my were 4 stray dogs. After ending the call ( which was for some issues at office , requiring me to work on weekend) and ruing my bad luck and a weekend gone waste , i moved past a pack of dogs and suddenly i was greeted by a series of barks and couple of dogs came running towards me . Though reason dictated that i should not panic and should keep still , I found that reason and logic could not hold against 5 dogs who were very close to my legs.Suddenly in a split second i had thrown the couple of decent sized stones i had collected earlier at my attackers and which kept them at bay and then at the next instant before i knew it i had started running , though something told me it was wrong to run when there are dogs around , i ran for a few seconds at the max speed i could conjure up. Fear gives you wings they say and it was true within no time i was pretty near my house and i realised that there were a few ppl walking in the streets in front of me who were now watching this spectacle ! I slowed down and noticed that dogs were no longer chasing me , i seemed to have moved out of their territory , there were some dogs much further ahead , so concluded that i must moved to no-man's land ... oops no-dog's land ! Then a guy who was walking in opp dir came up to me and told me that you should never run when dogs bark and best thing to do is to move away slowly! But when 4 dogs come towards you barking , i guess logic takes a second seat to panic!!!
Anways i think if not for those stones which repulsed them for a second or two and helped me make my getaway ... i wud have been easy target for those dogs, given that i had comminted the blunder of running when they were barking at me ...
I for sure believe it was some kind of sixth sense which made me pickup those stones given the fact that i have travelled thorough that area a number of times before this late in the night and had never been chased by dogs .

A River Runs through it ...

Its a 100 yr old debate and just like other tussles over sharing of natural resources between states/nations this one also will never get solved. But on monday 5th Feb when Cauvery tribunal was abou to to give its verdict , a lot of people where waiting for the verdict with bated breath ... Among this lot were a lot of my colleagues at office ... now how does water sharing formula of a river which runs through 2 states and primarily affects the farmers would interest the crowd of techies was kinda puzzling to me initially. But then this is city of Bangalore in Karnataka and the waters of Cauvery is deeply linked with politics of the region.

Along with water tussle there is another big fight in the offing a similar yet diff kind of problem ... While flowing through two states the river also seems to dividing ppl from these two states , instead of finding means to solve their problems , ppl seem content to bicker from either side of the river. Everyone has their own share of problems and actions like violence against ppl from the other state will never help in bring a solution. River seems to run through 2 set of people and dividing ppl living in the city , the war has begun with cable operators firing the first salvo; all tamil TV channels have been blocked since the day the verdict came out ! Most of the bus services have been suspended between the states since then ...Stage seems to set for anti-Tamil movement .Though most people know such measures are hardly ever going to help .. things just happen . During such times voices of reason are seldom heard, it is these moments when reason fails that as an individual you feel totally helpless ...

Last time things came to this level was in '91 when after the verdict came things changed and people changed . .. it was a totally harrowing time for the sizeable tamil population in the cosmopolitan city fo B'lore .

Ofcourse I was not there , but knew a lot of close friends and family members who were here @ Bangalore ( city they call their home) . "...it was really a situation of riots brought to ur door...
u won't understand...no one who wasn't there will understand...
being tamils was a huge thing...u could get killed for that... " was what i got when i asked one of them why is there such a huge buildup to the Cauvery tribunal verdict which came out today ...

Now suddenly a lot of us have this slight feeling of insecurity which is suffered by majority of the minority groups all over the world ...

As usual politicians and small time leaders as is their wont , have begun fishing in troubled waters and if last week's riots in some parts after rally to protest execution of Suddam Hussein ( 1 month after the execution) was any indication , there is a huge danger of this issue escalating into another widespread riots. Now the latest news is that Bandh call which was made for Thursday earlier is now postponed to monday so that they can do adequate 'preparations' !