Sorry for the inconvenience

Sorry for the inconvenience ! It's highly regretted !!

Today I decided to jog on the road around the park. I did not want  those elderly walkers create any inconvenience to me while sincerely jogging in the park. Suddenly I heard a noise, but it was actually not a noise. It was a live band performing in the middle of the road on one of the side roads. As usual I decided to jog towards that, as I believe I have every right to know what is happening around me. Young lady was singing on top of her voice, the clean-shaved head was on the drums and bearded and unkempt long hairy fellow was on the keyboard, I presume this attitude is norm of the day to show how much talented one is. There were another three wierd instruments played by equally wierd people of which I don' t have any clue !

I presume it was jazz, rock or Pop or a fusion of all three. Am I not qualified enough to judge that? Atleast I had tried to see the difference between the three types of music by changing the audio output setting of my media player. I could not find any difference, may be because I was trying to play "Chalte chalte", old hindi song by Mukesh, it wouldn't have sounded any different to an expert musician also. I am pretty sure many people in that neighborhood would have been worse than me as far as knowledge of music goes. And this rehearsal act by this live-band early in the morning  would have created a hell of lot of inconvenience to them.

The other day I was waiting at the KFC signal on 100 feet road. KFC, Pizza Hut those shops would clearly make you feel you are on a signal in one of the down towns in the US with one subtle difference. With three cops guarding the signal light to check people not to jump the working signal !

Yes, everybody was in a hurry. Office time, people were eager to reach office not later than they planned. Somebody was ready on honking soon the other side signal turned amber, auto-rickshaw guy was struggling to keep his neck out to check whether the signal was still red. Two wheeler guy was raising his accelerator with all force, not to get his vehicle stopped by any chance. Only fellow who was not in a hurry was the red signal itself !

Then it happened. The BIG 10 BMTC bus came from the moving direction and stopped right in the middle of the junction. For a while I thought it was a break down. But that was not the case. The driver forgot to take the left, and overshot by a few meters. The conductor got down to help him to reverse it and take the bus to the desired direction. He started making noise "right" in a unique way and frequency which can easily be identified by his partner.The car-wala behind the bus got so annoyed, in one swift action he overtook the bus from the right just to meet a pedestrian with a bicycle in his hands. In a fraction of a second the front wheel of the cycle lost all its shape. Nobody moved, nobody bothered, all were still anxious to see when the signal would turn to green. It looked like even cyclist was not bothered by the inconvenience caused to him. He coolly moved to the other side of the road lifting the one wheeled bicycle, as if he was anyway planning to change the front wheel.

It's easy to create inconvenience to people when you are a kid. What ever you do, many of the elders will keep quiet. Some brave ones will give a reason for their silence "After all they are kids no? Even we had done similar things at that age ".

We had done our bit too, during our hey days. We used to play cricket in the street in front of our row houses, that 10 feet wide lane with a dead end was a perfect pitch for us. Yes, we had 3 stump-like sticks of different shapes, sizes and lengths. We would try to keep them erect which would point upwards but in three different directions. Our biggest challenge was offside of the pitch. That jeweller uncle used to sit in his house, in the short-cover position and watch all the fun. Non-sportive fellow, he never used to encourage when a great catch was made by one of us. That part we were fine with, but by chance the ball entered into his house through the window, we had to abandon the match till we could buy a new ball. He would sit pretty on that ball also adding to his ball count by one more!

But the Radhakka was more sportive ! She with her family used to live in her make-shift palm-leave hut right on the boundary of our vast cricket ground. They used to make paappad and sell for their living and her husband would go early in the morning with the paappads even before our toss happened. There was every likelihood of the ball piercing through the wall of her hut and land in the paappad mixture she used to make, when one of the stronger players hit a four or six. When that happened, all players, all spectators would run off and hide in the nearby houses. We would peep through to see the inevitable. First Radhakka will throw the ball on to the pitch. Then she accompanied with her daughters would come out and do a "cheer-girl" dance with any of the paappd-making instruments in their hands. Once the dance got over they would go in to take some rest waiting for the next boundary. Then only we would slowly come out to retrieve the ball and resume play.

If I don't say this then you would think that I am not living in this world. There is going to be a huge inconvenience for a group of people at NewDelhi. The bureaucrats.  They have been used to no work situation for a while and suddenly they have to work over time now. I presume it is a good inconvenience to have.

While you are doing something, be sensitive to others' convenience and inconvenience. Don't be overboard with that though, you may end up doing nothing. Many a times it might be your imagination that your act would make it inconvenient to the other party, he may be least affected by his own standards !  If at all any thing unpleasant happens, you have that magical statement handy "Sorry for the inconvenience, it's highly regretted" which does not mean anything to either party.

 But if you continuously get feelers from others that what ever you do, ends up in inconvenience to others, then it is high time. It is high time you made it convenient to visit a good counselor or doctor !