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These Amazing People

These Amazing People.

A couple of weeks back I read in Vikatan a story (by Mr Ramakrishnan ?) in which an IIT-ian, MS-educated in US and employed in US, comes to his small town where his old father is employed as a kanakku pillai. The son does not have any high respect for his father's job - "after all a small kannakku pillai".

One day, the son's mobile phone goes haywire, he can't switch it on or use it. All of a sudden, the son's world goes berserk - he does not remember a single telephone number, a bank a/c number, or any number for that matter. All blank. Every single digit is stored in his mobile !

Then, he overhears his father talking to a group of customers - the old man is reeling out figures after figures to each man. The son is astounded - how could this "small kanakku pillai" remember so many different numbers for so many people ? He is brought down to the earth with a thud, and he seeks forgiveness mentally from his father.

There are many such people, outwardly simple and "uneducated" who amaze you. We have our milk-maid (paalkaari), a frail looking woman of about 60 years giving us our daily milk in the morning. I think I have written about this wonderful woman earlier also - during the DELUGE in Chennai (Oct - Dec 2005) when we had non-stop downpour and knee-deep water in all the roads, she NEVER missed a single day giving us our morning milk. Not even a single day ! The milk will be there in our doorstep exactly at 5 or 5-15AM, God bless her.

Secondly, as we four are "always on the move", the quantity of milk taken by us will vary on different days in a month. Some days the normal quota of 1 1/2 litres, some days 1 litre, some days 'no milk' at all, and on a few days 2 litres. It will be a task for us to keep track of this wildly fluctuating quantity, and we have to jot it down in the calendar.

When the pay-time comes, this "uneducated" woman, our paalkaari, will reel out figures from her memory - no jottings for her - and multiply, add and finally come out with the total amount - all within a minute. Every single month we are amazed. To be frank with you, I cant add or multiply without my Casio.

Another genre of people who have amazed me are the vegetable sellers - in Kanchanbagh where we lived earlier, there is a veg shop whose 'master' is a 17 - 18 year old boy. From his looks you will know that he wouldn't have entered a school (mazhaikku kooda othungi irukka maattaan).

This shop, serving the Govt employees like me will become hugely crowded from 5-30 to 7-30PM daily. Many people will be simultaneously taking 1/4 kg of this, 1/2 kg of that, or 1 kg of that. After taking four or five varieties of veg, when they ask for the "bill", this boy will come out with some jottings and then the final figure ! He will be a veritable "Ashtavadhani" - doing eight jobs at the same time and coming out with exact figure each time.

I am amazed. How does he remember what veg I have taken, what quantity? Simply astounding. He is not alone - you must have come across many such vegetable sellers in your locality, haven't you?

"Ayyanar" was our grocery shop while in Kilpauk, This shop is a "supermarket" in all senses except for that glitzy neon lightings, air conditioners, and PCs. It has all the things you need, grocery, cosmetics, etc etc. We all know each category of item (eg toothpaste) has 4 to 5 makes (colgate, closeup, pepsodent etc). Each make has 3-4 variants (colgate dental cream, total, Gel, etc) and each variant comes in 4-5 sizes.

This holds true for all the categories. Imagine then how many "items" will be there in all. The bill writer of this shop - there is no self-service here - sits with a paper and as you spell out your requirement, he goes on writing the item name and its price, without batting an eyelid ! How does he remember the price of each and every item ? Quite amazing.

During our fathers and grandfathers' days there was no decimal system and for each type of measurement - length, volume, weight etc there were many units and sub-units, that too in fractions (1/8. 1/16. 1/32 etc). Inches, feet, yards, furlongs, miles for length, aazakku, maagaani, ser, chinna padi,periya padi, marakkaal for volume, palam, ser, veesai, manangu for weight, thambadi, anna, roobaai for money etc.

Not satisfied with just quarter (1/4) or half (1/2), there was veesam (1/16) araikkaal (1/8). There were Tamil words for 1/32, 1/64, 1/80, 1/128. 1/192 and so on. (POTHIGAI channel was giving all this info and more last week). Bharathiyar sang "Kaani nilam vendum ...", do you know how much is one kaani? It is 1/80th of an acre).

Our forefathers were extremely adept in converting the small sub-units into fractions of larger unit and then adding/subtracting/ multiplying/dividing ! I guess the 40-45 age-group would have done this 124 1/8 * 63 1/32 but I don't know about younger age groups. But, if you ask me to do this today, I will seek my Casio (with fraction arithmetic).

With "sophistication" perhaps we have abandoned such skills, but the paalkaaris and vegetable-chaps still have it in their blood, I feel.

Another set of amazing people I find are those who were involved in the recent Assembly Elections. How many thousands of booths, how many EVMs (and spare batteries for each EVM), the correct set of Electoral rolls, the correct EVM for each booth, so many bottles of indelible inks, the list goes on ... Who does all these jobs without any errors? Who marks the "100 metres" distance? Stop for a minute whatever you are doing, and think about the logistics and the amount of organisation involved.

Even our Army Commanders will be proud - and most of these stated and unstated jobs were done by simple, "uneducated" and much-maligned State Govt Staff ! Hats off to these unsung heroes.

Finally this write-up will not be complete without mentioning those amazing people - the dabbawalahs of Bombay. Their clock-work precision and time-management skills have been well chronicled by many including foreign Management Institutes, I am sure you would have read all about them. Daily transporting over 200,000 lunches with an one-in-six-million error probability, these simple Maharashtrian folks astound and AMAZE me.

Rajappa
21.20 on 10th May 2006

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