After my experience on the bus on my way to Mysore, I did some soul-searching to figure out why I was getting exasperated while others are going on their own ways to lead their life. The question of life occupied my mind for sometime soon to realize that it is nothing but full of experiences that one goes through. So I thought of sharing some of that life experiences with all those who read these blogs rather than getting worked up by what life is getting filled up with.
The other thing I decided was to put my QTIME learning framework to use whenever my life was put to test under these undesirable experiences. I thought this is one way validating the framework not just for the skill development, but also for learning lessons of life. And that opportunity came on my second trip to Mysore.
To help me with understanding of India as I see, I had gotten hold the book ‘Better India Better World’ by Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys. May be I thought if I start seeing India through a different set of lenses, I may understand the life forces that are at work in a different way and may in turn get the help I need to fine tune my QTIME learning framework. I was busy reading that first few pages of that book, quite oblivious of the fact that the train has started filling up and slowly getting hotter too, until a young man cut through my reading with a question: why I have not opened the window to let the fresh air in.
I did not hesitate with that request disguised as a question to open the window, but closed it immediately to stop the blast of smelly air coming in. Everyone in the rail car gasped and closed their noses and the young man started to get up from his seat only to be stopped by me with a counter question. My simple question was: why is he running away when that smell was not caused by cats or dogs but by us who were neither aware of the fact that the toilets should not be used when the train has stopped nor cared for that awareness to do anything but to run away from it.
The concept of better India, better world through education got more meaningful and provided the necessary ammunition to put my QTIME learning framework to test.
I innocently asked my next question in an effort to connect: why no one has complained about this to the station master. The reply was nothing but muffled laughs with one loud reply of ‘why don’t you do it?’. I thought this is the best time to connect with everyone around me to discover what that connection will bring. The QTIME learning framework advocates the sequence of learning steps to be as simple as ABCD (Acquire, Benchmark, Connect, Discover) in an everlasting cyclical steps till such time the necessary goal is achieved.
I told everyone around that I can do it on one condition that the young man next to me also joins me in calling the station master. Someone around joked ‘ why only him, everyone will’. This started the hustling of cell phones and I was surprised to see how a simple thing like this can help people to take necessary actions.
Just to cut the long story short, we could not get hold of the station master, but discovered that the necessary alerts are needed to be announced inside the train to help them to find the toilets on the platform and give the actual time left for departure to help them decide -be comfortable about the fact that they can get back to the train in time or wait just a few more minutes to use the toilets when the train moves.
However, this step of acquiring the new knowledge and putting that to test by benchmark-ing the improved conditions at the platforms could not done on this trip to Mysore. I suppose my next trip to Mysore may open me up for this new-found awareness and to the standards that are needed to be set to achieve it and once achieved, the connections need to be re-established to continue the improvement cycle.
For once, I was happy that the QTIME learning framework steps came handy to get the things moving in the right direction not only for me, but also for those who use the trains daily. My life accumulated this new experience as a satisfaction of doing something useful when facing the adversary rather than getting scared to run away from it.