Strike out

Baseball was my favorite game when I was in school. Getting a strike out was like a big insult to me. I made sure that I at least reach any of the bases even if I am not able to make any run and an occasional home run certainly helped my cause.
But as I grew old the English lessons got tougher and I started learning the other meanings of word “strike” and I also learnt the idiom that “stopping at the third base adds no more runs than striking out”. To strike hands together, Brutus struck a dagger into dying caeser, lightning struck the spire, may god strike you dead, to strike a balance blah blah… I thought I knew everything about the word strike until today when my life’s ship struck a striking rock called “strike” I know I have got you confused and you probably want to ban me from the blogging fraternity so let me make myself clear.
Bangalore is currently facing a strike where private buses and taxis are not allowed to venture the road until their demands are met, which are : to implement a meter on the vehicles which does not allow them to go above the 60 kmph mark and hence will result into less number of accidents. Have you ever been tickled with a peacock feather with your hands and feet tied to a pole? Well nor have I but I know how exactly it feels now (can’t stop laughing at their demands)..God is witness to the truth that it is simply impossible to accelerate a car above 40kmph leave alone 60kmph in Bangalore’s traffic. Ok so I thought that it must be just a passing thought from the grey matter void mind of some babu who impulsively called a strike to attain some much needed attention for his party, and dismissing it as an odd event we went to the company by the public buses yesterday.This morning I woke up expecting the matter to be cleared and to my unfortunate disappointment the strike is still on. Ok I said let us take the public bus again. The main roads were empty but there was a strange phenomena on the footpath. Electronic city where I work is home to some 20,000 employees from all the companies and all of them were on the footpath. I mistakenly polished my shoes the morning to match with the newly ironed shirt and trouser and entered a bus which was overflowing with software engineers. It required a lot of jostling and elbow hitting before I could find a place to stand. Tell me what is your record of standing on one foot? Certainly not more than mine. Suddenly I find a foot and an arm redundant as I was totally balanced on the other foot while one hand was on the railings to balance myself while the bus constantly experimented the newton’s second law of motion. I realized the value of real estate and the importance of Tata’s Nano.
By the time I got down my crisply ironed shirt was in tatters and my shoes did not even remotely resemble when I last polished it.
And now I am dreading how am I going to go back home in the evening.I sincerely hope that it strikes the babus get together to strike out a compromise to strike out this strike culture and strike a balance between playing politics and playing with our time and energy.