After all, who are we?

A couple of weeks back, there was a fire accident in Bahrain. A gas cylinder blew up in a building where more than 40 people are staying. Most of them are from my state, Andhra Pradesh in India. As soon as they heard the blast, they ran for their lives without taking care of their belongings. They lost their passports, money, mobiles and other valuables in the fire(this proves that we are humans and we care for nothing other than our lives).

All the people in the building are poor and all of them are dialy labourers. Most of them are run-away employees or people who came on visit visas and over stayed here. Almost all of them have large fines pending with the ministries.

As soon as we(TKS) got the news about this accident, our people rushed to the place and brought all of them to TKS premises(as they don't have any other shelter). Food was sponsored by some other NGO for them and our people took the responsibility of delivering the food. We collected clothes, blankets etc on war foot and distributed them to these 40 people immediatly. Thanks to many donors, we were able to fulfill the basic needs of those people(this proves that we are humans and we care about others too). It was heartening to see them scrambling for old clothes so that they have something decent to wear for work.



The first day was OK and then we asked them their details so that we can arrange for duplicates of passports, resident permits etc. But not many are willing to reveal these details as they are staying illegally here. Then we informed them of the possible difficulties they are going to face in the future because of their illegal stay and not a single one was interested to listen to those words. We also informed them that if they can leave Bahrain as soon as possible, we can try to nullify their pending fines, but still the response is the same(this proves that we are humans and we tend to take things lightly). They wanted to live like rats but don't want to go back to India. We don't know what problems they have in their home towns, but still it's better to leave than live such a miserly life here.

At first, they are manageable but after one day, they started demanding(kind of) instead of requesting. I was shocked by the following incident: We were distributing them some T-shirts sponsored by some other NGO and a couple of guys adamantly asked me to change the size as L size "may be" loose for them!!!!! Man, this proves that we are humans and always ye dil maange more.

Anyways, it's been two weeks since this happened and no one was ready to leave Bahrain till now. But the good part is they are back in to their normal lives and got into some other new accommodation. Long live, mankind.

A pictorial post

The lonely traveller. On my way to Hyderabad from Visakhapatnam.


A dead jelly fish. Felt bad that it had to die a lonely death. Who knows how our death may come?


A view of a rainy morning through a car window.


The third lady from left is a Raman Megasis award winner. OMG, she's so humble, so adorable. Her name is Mrs Shanta Sinha. She is an anti-child labour activist



I know that some of you like this picture.


Villagio shopping mall in Doha, Qatar. Image courtesy Zenoed. The blue sky you see on top is actually a poster which's pasted throught the mall giving it a street llok.

Titbits

Somebody asked me "Are you really busy?". My answer was "Can you believe that after going home from office yesterday, I removed my shoes n just slept off without even changing my attire. Forget about the dressm I didn't even remove the mobile from my pocket?". Well, this is a fact. I was so stressed at that moment. And thanks to some management changes, my life is going to be f@#$ed up this month end. I want to tell my superiors the story of a donkey which died after it's master put too much load on it.

Anyways, my trip to Qatar was pretty small(just 3 days), but eventful. I visited some shopping malls and I loved the way the Villagio mall was built. It was simple awesome. I'll keep a picture of it in my next post. And almost after an year, I rode a quad bike and that too in real desert. That was one hell of an experience. But, the temperatures were soaring out there. Even though Qatar is just a few kilometers from Bahrain, the climate looked completely different.

Coming to other issues, my life has changed quite a lot:
1. My good old Sony Ericsson K750i moved aside and made way for the Nokia 5800 XPress Music.
2. My long time companion, Casio calculator watch(it was with me for the past 12 years without a complaint) didn't move aside but gave some space to a new Casio Chronograph watch.
3. I was addicted to video games when I was a kid. After all these years, I thought I need a break and bought Play Station 2 last week. OMG, I'm already addicted. Right now, I'm playing Price of Persia(Two Thrones) in it.
4. I am back into enjoying my fav dish of the world, ice creams. Every week, I'm making sure that I have a week's supply of them.

That's all for now. I'll be back pretty soon with a pictorial post. Till then, cheers and Hakuna matata