Scribblings

I am searching for my name on this old noticeboard. Finding one’s own name on the board seems a difficult task. A cool breeze passes me to flutter a piece of paper pinned to the board. This paper has lost all but just one pin to support its precarious existence on the board. What would happen to the paper when it is finally uprooted? Who would know that this paper once stayed on this board? Unknown numbers of paper have come, stayed and vanished from this board. Does anyone know exactly how many papers has this board hosted till now? Oh! Finally, I find my name on a piece of paper on another corner of the board. This paper is held strongly by the board now. But what if I am not able to find this paper here on another day? The noticeboard is full of pins. Some of them are so rusted while some are about to fall off the board. Most of them have lost their colours. Yes! There are fresh pins too, but all the pins make their own marks on this board. Some marks seem to be so deep while ...

         “What are these guys learning in a university? They don’t even know how to use the toilets (Sorry...Washroom!),” I have been exclaiming every morning, seeing the ugly state of gents’ toilets here, in J- hostel, University of Hyderabad. But in the evening when I come back, they look so clean. So, here is a man, who has not studied in a university, yet knows how to keep the toilets clean. Sreenivas, 53, lives in Gopanpalli, just outside the campus. Having come from a distant village, he settled in the city several years back. His daily chores start with cleaning the J-hostel, and then he goes to K and L hostels. The job is not as easy as one might imagine. All these hostels have four floors each, with a length of over 100 meters. In addition, each floor has two separate clusters of toilets cum bathrooms. I have seen him cleaning the urinals with a small brush, without even wearing any gloves. Sreenivas talked without any hesitation, smiling qui...