Mumbai diary: Sunday Shorts

Down with results feverOn the eve of the board exam results this diarist spotted a young boy pacing around the neighbourhood garden anxiously He sighed when asked about why he looked so serious and confided that he cant stand the thought of going home as the pressure was just too much to bear I will do well didi I am confident about thatPic for Representational Purpose OnlyI just hope my friends wont do well so that my parents wont go berserk he laughed Turning serious he explained that every year students like himself are under such stress that they begin to hate going back home Did you know I was not allowed to watch TV for almost two monthsAll I did was stare at my books he said We nodded sympathetically as he ranted and finally asked what he wanted to become in life I have huge plans for myself I want to become a startup CEO he grinnedBEST is great at timesIt was quite late in the evening The bus which only had a few passengers cruised along a nearly empty road when the vehicle suddenly came to a screeching halt followed by a thud and an ouch An elderly gentleman who wanted to alight at the next stop lost his balance and fell his head hitting the seatAfter a short spell of silence there was a cacophony of shouts Cant he drive properly BEST drivers are always like this Passenger safety is not in their minds at all and so on The driver having heard enough of this emerged from his seat at the top of the aisle He must have been around 30 years of age almost 6 feet tall and wellbuilt The passengers fell silent anticipating a slinging matchWaving to the passengers the driver spoke in the gentlest of tones expressing regret that a gentleman the age of his father had been hurt He said that he was a married man and was responsible for his two school going kids wife and parents As the driver of the bus his responsibility was to drive safely and had he not slammed the brakes as he did he would have knocked down a pedestrian who had suddenly come in front of the bus and killed himHe would have lost his job and his family would have been without their sole breadwinner Also at such times the safety of the passengers becomes a secondary issue Finally he wished the gentleman a speedy recovery and added that he will pray for him before returning to his seat The ensuing silence was broken by a person from one of the back seats He shouted that the elderly person would not have fallen had he held on to the strap or back of the seat tightly The driver had certainly done a Mark AnthonyWadekar would have been a pilotNot often do cricketers get asked to write or speak about their desk jobs Former India captain Ajit Wadekar did and came up with an interesting piece in the recentlyreleased Wisden India Almanack 2015 published by Bloomsbury IndiaAjit Wadekar at his State Bank of India office in the 1970s Picmidday archivesWadekar writes about how he got bored of his first job after his post graduation and joined State Bank of India in 1965 He retired in 2001 as executive director of SBI Commerce and Factoring LtdWhen he was first interviewed for the job in 1965 he was gently told by the SBI managing director that his future would depend on his work and not cricket scores And LP Jai a former Mumbai batsman and a State Bank man said to him that while he was happy to learn about his cricketing exploits at Ranji Trophy level he would have to concentrate on bank work tooWadekar served the bank well and several cricket fans recall getting a Wadekarsigned miniature bat for opening an account in State Bank Another revelation in Wadekars piece comes in the form of him coming close to being an Air Force pilot after passing his initial tests at Dehradun But then he entertained the prestigious probationary officer offer from State Bank Indeed Wadekar flew high