Kolkata - a city which doesn't like 500 andd 1000 Rs notes

Recently I travelled to the part of India that I have never been to. Hyd -> Vizag -> Ranchi -> Sunderbans > Calcutta -> Hyd

Small takes on some of these cities;
Vizag - The breeze of the sea has still kept the city from going mad. The city enjoys a privilege of taking a break from its life when it wants, and watch the sea wash the shores.

Ranchi - People still talk about kidnapping and all in this capital of Jharkhand, and home town of Indian captain. Saw his bungalow called Shaurya.

Sunderbans - Non greedy & chilled out people - always ready for a hearty chat. Remind me of nice locals from Hampi

Kolkata - The city which doesn't take 500 and 1000 notes. If your taxi bill runs to 340, or you are buying a 20 pack cigarette, your 500 or 1,000 Rs. note will never be accepted. Initially, I thought that the city is too poor, and people seriously don't have enough money to return the change. But with increasing frequency of experience, I was leaning to believe the commonly heard explanation for everything that people are probably lazy to return the change. But on more thinking, the more rational concept seemed to be the probability of fake notes running in a city, which is ripe of traditional trade methods. That was indeed supported by the fact, that each person who took a 500 buck bill from you, will spend good 2 mins investigating it at different angles in the light. The other peculiar thing about the city is that if you are a tourist, you are going to spend most of your day on the streets

On return back, few interesting observations from the train were:
1) Changing chakhna items in train stations as states changed - from moori(WB) to chana(OR) to idlis (AP)
2) A great sight of huge chilka lake
3) Changing etiquettes of people. Folks in Odisha area, though less privileged were way more politer than the 2 sandwiching states,

The Roads, with and w/o sign boards

How often has it happened - that you worked quite hard in your office, happy and sure of that it is the 'right' thing to do, and despising / pitying some others who just did enough to not get fired.  And then how often has this happened - that some of the folks you despised/pitied quit their jobs and went for better options leaving you confused that you did everything right, but still this other guy is getting better fruits even after worse "Karmas".  Should have happened atleast once right? And you can translate it to different aspects in life.

Now obviously such situations are discomforting. But discomfort is a great teacher too.

The simple explanation is that those folks were always aspiring for a different goal than you. They chose to focus their efforts on achieving those different goals (or times find those different goals), and rather face the criticism in their current situation. They denied to take the current situation as a truth, where as you took it as sacrosanct. So what looked as escapism from your viewpoint, was actually a brave and hope filled effort from theirs. And what's boredom from their viewpoint is just optimism and commitment from yours. In essence, its difficult to observe one from other's viewpoint same as its difficult to take pictures of close up objects with a 50-300 mm camera lens.

Now, why am I talking about it. I think we switch boats all the time because of external factors, and a little bit of perspective might be helpful to steer it in the storm vs long boring days.

When we land up in the escapist type of situation, we face lot of peer and social pressure. The pressure amplifies when the goals are abstract and longer term. In such situations, it becomes very important in this long journey to iterate to ourselves the fact that - the goal you are working towards is not visible to others - and their discouragement hence is not rightly positioned. And when you reach that goal - you will suddenly be re-anointed as successful from lost. On the flip side, if you have stuck too long on hard working / conformist side, don't loose heart if you see somebody successful - who has not followed your 'right' path. Just try to understand that he risked quite a bit to get there & try to put yourself in that boat for once. After all life is all about experiencing the extremes and then attenuate.

Respect both perceptions, and follow the one which your heart tells you !!