Counter productive ABS

I have an off-campus fresher recruitment drive in a short while from now. Since it is being held in the office closer to my home, I was driving along the ECR an hour ago.

Suddenly, near the "Fruit Shop" and "Dollar Store" area, a big cow started running on my side of the road. The Bolero in front of me was having a tough time in deciding whether to stop or swerve left and finally came to a halt. I too was observing the theatrics of the jumping cow and since the Bolero had come to a halt, I had to go a bit to my left to avoid hitting the van.

Just as I moved to the left side of the road, the cow fell on the road, some 15 feet in front of me. So I braked hard to avoid hitting the cow. Of course, by then I was moving at barely 10 Kph, so it wasn't a difficult task.

There was apparently a Safari also following me and when I braked, he rear-ended me. I was looking in my rear view mirror to see what hit me and saw the Safari. By then, the road users had started honking like mad wanting us to clear the road. I looked at the road ahead and didn't find the cow, only God knows where it went.

I started the car, lowered the window and pointed to the Safari guy to pull over along with me. He duly complied with my request. I got out of the car and inspected the rear of my Baleno. Thankfully, there was practically no damage. Probably the bumper had moved a little bit, but actually it isn't even worth mentioning.

The Safari was an AP registration and was filled with a very big family. By the time the driver (and I presume him to be the owner of the car) got down, I signalled to him that everything was fine and went back to my seat. He waved back to me apologetically.

Just as I started resuming my drive, he pulled up next to me and so I just waved to him once again that all's well. But he insisted that I pull down the window. I did and he too had pulled down his window. He then started telling me that since his car had ABS, he couldn't stop immediately and signalled a sorry once more. I waved back to him with a smile and we both went our separate ways.

But his statement got me thinking. To the best of my knowledge and as confirmed by Raghu, ABS is not going to impact how you brake under normal conditions like what happened this morning. In fact, according to this article stopping distances should only decrease. I only hope that he never has to make that statement under more serious circumstances and that too to a knowledgeable person.

But anyways, since there was no damage and since we weren't in an altercation, I decided to ignore the statement made by Mr.Manavaadu.

Now I am in my office, waiting for the interviews to begin!!!

Grihapravesham on 29-Apr-2007 ::: Part 02

We entered the house, even as one of the shaasthrigall showed up there. The other 3 were en route.

The single dude then started belting out instructions asking for this and that. All of us started running around catering to those commands. Just then, Ramaraajan came there, with the cow, calf and a lady carrying a jug of milk - all part of the rituals.

Then all the priests showed up and as usual chaos set in - "shitha, rendu thaambaallam eduthundu varaella" or "maami, maami, homathukku kolam podungo" or "maamaa, dharbaya ready pannikongo" or "ambi, konjam neiy kondu varaya" etc etc.

We were then asked to produce the pomegranate, sweet lime and apple that was ordered earlier. Sounds of "aahaa" and "achachacho" filled the air. That was because all of us had forgotten to take it out of the fridge and keep it in the bag, when we started from B'Nagar.

I was then "politely" instructed to fetch the aforementioned fruits. The cow-man and also another local guy from the nearby departmental stores, categorically told us that the shops selling fruits would open only at 8.

But me folks would have none of it. So I drove out to the main road and enquired at the two veg shops that were open. One pointed to the other and the other told me that he doesn't have any. And that the shops open at 8 and also that if I needed one immediately, I could go to some juice shop somewhere and ask them for the fruits.

Thanking him for the very original idea, I headed towards the city. But even before I left my panchayat ellai, I called my mother. She asked me to head back saying that other rituals were waiting to begin and that was more important than the presence of those fruits.

While returning, I made a call to Superthumby and asked him to buy these fruits. The great friend that he is, he agreed without even a nanosecond's hesitation.

So all things being set, I came back home. Just in time, coz the cow and calf were being held tightly by the cow-man and all were standing near the first set of steps that lead to my main door. The head shaasthrigall was there and so were my parents.

The "gho" pujai was completed and we then spread out big jamakkaallams for the cow to enter the inside of the house. The j'k'lams were used mainly to prevent the cow from slipping on the new floor.

I think the cow was well trained in doing these things. Whether it was trained in the shed or it picked it up on the job, I will never know. But it came in with an air of "been there done that", looked around and then started walking away. Of course, the cow-man was still holding its reins, but it still seemed to have a nonchalant way of going about its activities.

After we paid our respects to the cow-man and the milk-woman, the priests started doing more rituals. I simply cannot go into each and everything, mainly coz the whole sequence is a bit of a blur for me now.

Then we were all called for the navagraha homam.