Up and Down

Today I wanted to check availability of tickets in irctc, railway ticket reservation system. The system came up, went down after I entered userid/password. Tried again, could login but went down once I entered the travel information. “Up and down” kept on happening for a few times at various stages of my interaction with it and finally I gave up. Started writing this instead!

Don’t we see these ups and downs in our day to day life?

Indian Stock markets is a good example! You can see it going up and down quite frequently. If you invest a bit every month from your savings it is a good approach, but if you want an expensive thrilling roller coaster experience then all you need to do is - take a huge loan and invest in stock market.

I wanted to find out in this world, how much max height people have climbed up and how much max depth people have reached down, so I looked in Wikipedia.

“The highest point measured from sea level is the summit of Mount Everest that borders Nepal and China, and has been reached by Tenzing Norgay Sherpa of Nepal and Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand (with speculation that it may have been reached in 1924). While measurements of its height vary slightly, the elevation of its peak is usually given as 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above sea level””, this I had studied in school.

“The lowest known point is Challenger Deep, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench: 10,911 m (35,797 ft) below sea level. Only three humans have reached the bottom of the trench: Jacques Piccard and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh in 1960 aboard Bathyscaphe Trieste and filmmaker James Cameron in 2012 aboard Deep sea Challenger”, honestly I never heard of this, may be due to my lack of interest.

But what it tells me that people don’t like to go down. Lot of them have conquered Everest, but only 3 have reached challenger deep so far. One may argue that, it could be expensive, risky etc etc, but don’t we see many such expensive, risky experiments happening around more often?

The best way to make friends with a 3 year old is to offer him/her lift up and down. 9 out of 10 times, you will be successful. All of them enjoy that going up in the air and free fall. You will see that they never get satisfied with the number of times and you would put a limit on the number at some point of time. And you will end up in doing one or two more extra times than what you have originally promised!

It is risky at times when you go up and down really fast. That is why the captain crew instructs you to fasten the seat belt during takeoff and landing. Once the aircraft reaches the cruise level you may unfasten the belt, in fact you can go around and chat with the pretty hostess, the captain wouldn’t mind you taking that huge risk!

If I ask you what is that goes up and never comes down, you may say - age, prices, tax, garbage in the city etc. I have a peculiar one which I need to fix soon. For me its my wife’s volume level. Being a teacher, she has to talk louder and louder as the class room becomes noisier because of these new gen kids. She continues to follow the same practice at home also, not realizing that she has just one student at home, that too a quiet one!

Last week, I decided to go out to accomplish a few things. Tried to start the bike, no petrol. Pushed it to the petrol station, luckily they had petrol. Went to electricity office to pay the bill, they were closed because state holiday was declared as some eminent personality had passed away in the previous evening, I hadn’t read the newspaper, as it was delivered a bit late. Went to bank to update my passbook, hadn’t done for a long while. Their system was down. How long I should wait, they just didn’t know. Returned home, knowing that nothing would work that day. Thought will watch TV. No power, that’s also ruled out. If I say I felt really low, it would be an understatement. Went to kitchen to see what to eat. Same sambar and rice. Cursed the person who first tasted the sambar and said it was good ! Decided to skip the lunch. Then my cell phone rings. It was my son informing the good news that he got a job. Within a fraction of a second my worry of late payment fee for electricity bill vanished. I didn’t care much about the passbook not getting updated that day; I can get it done next month or even later. If not TV so what, I can read the newspaper. Suddenly sambar also smelt awesome. All I needed was a spark!

A person working with me did not get promotion as he expected in that cycle. He was totally upset. He came and complained to me. I took an hour to explain all those fundas as how promotion system worked and how the eligible candidates were arrived at and why he was not one of them this time. He was not convinced with that. He must have had reasons to think so, as we all know we cannot make that system so fool proof and accurate. He continued to be down with his gloomy face for a few more days. One fine day he comes to me with a happy face “My marriage is fixed “. He seemed to be forgotten his promotion issue. I congratulated him, and I told myself “friend, more ups and downs are in store for you soon in your life”!

I do not attempt here to give tips as what to do when one feels down or low. It would be so stale and counterproductive. So, if you had read this much and felt a bit happier, my mission is then accomplished.

But I don’t want to leave my wife like that, let me try to write a rhyme for her which she can sing “loudly” to herself and to her students:

“Up and Down, Up and Down

Full of them makes you frown

Look around ‘nd see upfront

All of them are no different”