Lifeline of mumbai...

The city of dreams is what mumbai is..where lives are made and destroyed...

from filmstars who don't know what there bank balance is to those who don't even have a bank account..all are able to survive in the city that is said to neversleep...

even though the lifeline of the city,"mumbai local" takes a break of around 3 to 4 hours a day...the rickshaws are the ones which never go to sleep..24X7is the service they provide..

i don't know the official count of the numbers but there are enough in number that you never have to wait for more than 5 minutessearching for one..

Don't know how many of you have chatted with the rickshawalas while travelling in them.. i travel alone a lot and hence chat with them once in a while forspending time..the topic could vary from traffic in mumbai to politics in UP.... to your surprise the rickshaw puller seems to have all the latest updates aboutpolitics... is the Literacy and unemployment to be blamed for that..

The number of colleges have gone up by leaps and bounds but at the same the educationprovided are not able to match the skill set required by today's industries...you would never realise but the person in the driver's seat might be a graduate with a B.A. degree...

the dearth of jobs in India or the hunger to earn that extra bit might have given him the will power to overwork...after all its just not about survival allthe time.. it could be about going that extra mile to provide few extra bucks to his family..

Well coming back to my session... It was around 9 in the night when a colleague dropped me at Juhu chowk..the day was busy at office and i was tired todeath...i took a rickshaw to way back to my college...I was too lazy to say anything..was just dropping with my head down..half asleep.

Suddenly heard a voice.."why are you so serious?"..
the first reaction was whether I was still in the car or dreaming in the rickshaw!! those words were inEnglish.. but I realised they were coming from the rickshaw puller(RP)..
Me : " Office mein kaam jayda tha".
RP : "where are you working?"
Me : "working for a consultancy"
RP : "where are you from?"
Me : "mein delhi se hoon"..

By now I was thinking.. is this not happening the other way around.. shouldn't I be the one talking in English and he in Hindi.. After all I am an MBA now...but the rickshaw puller was talking in almost fluent English..

did a complete background check on me...Now it was my turn..On questioning about his education and work.. came to know that he was a B.Com in Eco and has also done courses in House keeping..
The rickshaw was owned by him.. in the morning he works for a software company as a data entry operator and at night pulls rickshaw for 4 hours.. in the morning the rickshaw is pulled by another guy who gives him some money to use the rickshaw..

The total money he makes is close to 30,000 a month... It was really surprising to see a guy slogging so much but then I realised the person is just going an extra mile to provide his family the happiness and things which may be his parents were not able to give him.. that is human nature.
We all tend to do that. We need our family to get every benefit in life that we were not able to.Continuing the chat I asked him about his job profile.
He told me fluently in English, "My boss is very happy with my performance as i have always delivered ontime.In his absence I am responsible for taking care of the business."

His will power and interest in the work has got him promotions and now his manager is getting him trained in communication skills and planning to move him to a call centre where he'll be getting better opportunities...

This was a bit surprising to me since the boss was taking so much of interest in the career growth ofthe person..Haven't seen many superiors like those but then wasn't that the reason I joined my firm.
By now I was convinced that the will power of an individual combined with his interest can get him to places where he wants to go.
Even though his education may not give him the opportunity but it is up to the individual to make or break his life. Its all about finding the right way out of those thousands available..

The blog is not structured properly. Guess there are too many thoughts in my mind which I am trying to put in here.