Story 1 - The Begining

Finally I reach home after a heavy load of work at office. My wife and others were ready and having their dinner and they were with full of enthu about going to our native place after a long time. As soon as I entered home, my best half hurried me to get ready soon as only one hour is left for catching the train.
Understanding the situation, I also got ready soon, having a quick bath and quick dinner. We all set out carrying the lugguages, two each, came down the stairs and as usual we came to the main road and started waiting for getting an auto. Now 40 minutes are left for us to catch the train. It takes roughly about 20 minutes to reach the railway station.
Two empty autos fled past us, I just left them, since it is customary for me to leave an initial set of autos. The idea behind this is, if we get an auto immediately upon coming out of the home or out to the main road, the auto fellow will think that we are in a hurry and charge high rates. With this idea I left the first 2 autos. At this point my wife threw a different look at me, for which I normally used to pretend as if nothing happened.
A third empty auto also fled by. Now I am waiting for an auto which will come near us and ask whether we need an auto. The logic behind this is that, an auto without any business for a long time will be in search of business and naturally we can negotiate for a resonable(if possible for a lower) amount.
Yes it happened, and an auto came near us and its driver looked at me keenly. I was happy at the way he looked me, since it showed that he had rightly identified that I am the responsible person who can take my family safely to our destination.
I started the negotiation process
"We need to go to Egmore railway station, four of us"
"Ok Sir" came his reply.
"How much"
"Fifty rupees Sir"
"We normally give forty only. We regularly travel in this route"
"Normally it is forty, but you are four people. Only three people are allowed to travel in auto at a time and if caught by those traffice police, I will be in trouble."
"You auto men always come up with some stories. Once even five of us have travelled to Egmore at this time for forty"
"Forty-five Sir"
"No only forty".
At this point my wife whisperd into my ears "Its ok. we shall take this auto. Its getting late and only 30 minutes are left".
I was not ready to compromise on my offer of forty rupees. Its high time that I need to learn the negotiation skills. This experiences will also help in my work to negotiate for promotions.
So, I told her "Wait, forty is the correct amount. This man is greedy. He wants to earn a lot in a few trips. Anyway all these money will be going to the TASMAC only".
"Only forty. If not, we will another auto" I told him.
He just left the place murmuring something. I was shocked. Because even I was ready to pay forty-five if he didnt agree this time, as it was getting late.
My wife and this time my mother too threw their different look at me. My father was just watching all these happenings, as he normally doesnt put himself into any trouble.
Luckily another auto came.
Again I started repeating the process.
"How much to Egmore".
"Sixty Sir"
"What??? Sixty??? Upto Egmore only".
"Yes Sir. Now it is night time rate. Ten rupees extra."
At this point my wife interupted and whispered into my ears that "Its better that we take up this auto or we are going to miss the train".
I turned around to see the reaction from my parents. I found my father missing from the scene. My mother was eager to get into the auto. This can be attributed to her eagerness to go to her native place.
Anyway I was not ready for this amount.
I tried to negotiate with the auto fellow, at which point my wife was screaming "Appa got a taxi. Since only twenty minutes are left, we can go faster in this and get the train. Come on, get in". I saw my mother already seated comfortably in the taxi and my father was just holding its door open for me to enter.
I was not ready for that. Taxi will be too costly than an auto and now I am ready to pay sixty for this auto. But still I had in mind that I can talk to this auto man and bring it down to fifty atleast. So, I asked my family to come out of the taxi and come here.
Since my family knew about me, they partly hesitated, but I insisted.
Suddenly I heard something from my wife, totally unrelated to this situation -
"Ennanga(roughly translates to 'Dear' in English), its already six-thirty. Get up you need to get ready and catch the 7:20 bus to reach office on time".
Oh no... Even I couldnt find out whether we went by auto or taxi and how much we paid for it and whether we caught the train. She could have allowed me to sleep atleast for ten minutes more. But I cant ask this to her and I was happy that atleast in my dreams I was able to take decisions on my own.

My training days - 1

After a long time I am back here with an idea to describing some interesing happenings that happened when I trained to become an AS Engineer (nothing great, just a computer programmer) at Trivandrum.

I started from Trichy by Trinvandrum Express in the afternoon in the first week of September 2003. The same day I reached Trivandrum around 1:30 in the mid-night. On the way train passed through several cities of Tamil Nadu that I have not visited before. Some of them were Tirunelveli, Nagerkoil, Thakkalai. Out of these Nagerkoil attracted my special attention, may be because of the huge fans that generated electricity through wind energy.

On reaching trivandrum railway station, took rest in the waiting hall and early in the morning, went outside the station. One auto driver, a pakka chetan with a beard approached me and asked me where I have to go. I told that I need to go to "Aruvi Hotel". He replied "aruvio", which made me understood that he is quite familiar in taking trainees from station to that hotel, where the company has arranged our stay. On getting down the meter in the auto showed "7", and I asked how much. He told, it shows the kilometers travelled for each kilometer its 7, so I have to pay him Rs. 49. I was a bit doubtful, but since I was new I just paid that amount. Later I came to know that the distance is walkable and we need to pay only the minimum amount which is "7". Long live that chetan. This incident also created a sort of fear about the city in me.



But as things progressed found that Trivandrum is indeed a very good place stuffed with nice people around. The city also had some strange characteristics. I will write about them in my later posts. A few years down, I became closely tied with a famous city near Trivandrum, but this city is in Tamil Nadu about 47 kilometers from Trivandrum. But I may not get chance to write about how I came to be related with that city, as I may not get permission from the authorities(it is actually authority, but have to use plural here, due to the massive power the authority posseses :-) ...).
see you all back soon (as if lot of people are browsing my blogspot all the time)... so i will change it, see me back soon (now its apt)...
- spgr