Uses, abuses

There is certain use of everything. We try to make good use of the same. 

If you find any alternative use of something, that would be fantastic. 

I was waiting this morning at the railway station platform. That one station where very few trains stop, just to remind all that, that piece of building is also a station. My relative decided to select one of those few trains to come down and visit me, so I had to go there to pick him up. 

As I entered the platform I realised there is an alternative use of that neat platform (thanks to cleanliness drive, the platforms look neat and tidy these days) apart from the normal uses of entrain/detrain or wait for hours to pick somebody like me! People are using platform as a jogging track. I can’t blame them, as such hardly any train stops there, so why not use it for this purpose as long as it does not conflict with its intended use. All they have to do is look straight while jogging and never look sideways on those dirty rail tracks!

It can be misuse as well.

Once upon a time I was working for a large corporate, this is not to boast of me or my job. It is to tell you that that organization itself was allowed to manage it’s employee provident fund because of its sheer size. Everyday morning my silent prayer for the day was : today at least nobody from my team vanishes from the customer location at USA. Eat good food - pizza, burger, French fries, coke/pepsi. Use of high-end cars with ample width and breadth on roads that too with an opportunity to drive on the right side of the road. Watch super action movies with a girlfriend on one side and a Kg bucket of popcorns on the other side!  One can’t blame them, it was so tempting. They decided to join some local firm by just vanishing from the current job. Only consolation for my firm was that free money of a few thousands of PF fund accumulated which the vanished employees never bothered to claim! 

One of such ex-employees decided to claim that amount as well, greedy fellow, he didn’t want to lose those peanuts! Our finance manager tried to transfer the money from his PF account, but to his surprise it showed ZERO balance. Further study revealed that the PF money of all the vanished employees had also vanished, all those accounts showed ZERO balances! It didn’t take much time for the manager to realise that the accountant in the firm mis-used whatever those prevalent primitive authorizations/authentications to divert all those thousands to his account. It didn’t take much time for the finance manager to land at the accountant’s house, recover from him whatever possible before sacking him instantly!

It can be over-use or abuse.

Whenever I hear of over-use I think of my last squeeze on the tooth paste tube with all my force until a few millimetres of the last part of the paste emerges out, and to my great disappointment the same thing goes down many millimetres inside the same tube once I try to transfer that on to the toothbrush!

I used to visit my neighbors house quite often. “I will just come in a moment” the old man in the house told me while climbing up to the first floor. All his family members had gone out. He had gone to switch off the tube lights and fans which were still on with nobody to use them! “These people know only to switch on something and never know it can be switched off as well”. The retired man was made to pay the electricity bill apart from paying a good part of daily expenses from his pension money. Obviously he was concerned about the wastage. If you think this burden had made the old man weak, you are mistaken. Every day running around for those errands gave him a bit of exercise which actually helped him to live a bit longer. But being old, he had to die one day and he did. After a few months I visited them and I found all the energy-hogging tube lights were replaced by power saver LCDs, each one was doubly making sure that all the lights were turned off after use! Obviously hefty power bill pinched them.

So one needs to be pinched, needs to be imposed fines to arrest misuse or abuse. For example you have to impose fine on somebody to make him gulp (whatever it is ! ) rather than spitting it out on the road! But, need not be always. This guy found an alternative. He had recently opened a puncture shop. Next to his shop is an open public ground enclosed with a boundary wall. What happens in our country when there is a wall with an open space on the other side? People urinate! This puncture man wanted this habit of others to stop. No fines, no warnings. He lined up a dozen of framed pictures of various gods and goddesses, well decorated with flowers and garlands along the wall. Majority of our people being highly religious, this worked. It may be a good idea for the government to follow this practice at all walls in suspect. It may be cheaper than appointing watch and ward guards to continuously observe round the clock to catch those people red-handed while performing!

Making good use of something is duty. Finding alternative use is talent. Abuse/misuse or over-use is a sin. We are all good people. Good people seldom commit sins knowingly. So best thing to do is to review our usage patterns and avoid any inadvertent sins!