Survival Ecosystems!

This piece is dedicated to all those people that impact your lives every day but get away without getting your due attention. These are people that matter to you and very dearly so. For a nanosecond, if you were to consider them to be 'not there' when you need them, then you would realize the profound impact that their presence makes to your life.

I tend to bond with people very naturally. For me, it is as easy to dine with a C-level executive in the swanky ambience of a 5-star restaurant as it is to hobnob with a day wage worker over a stick of unrefined tobacco while he tends to some restoration work at home.

In this part of the world, and to my mind in many similar parts of the world, there are ecosystems of survivors that surround us. These microcosmic ecosystems comprising of men and women are prevalent everywhere - at home, at work, at markets, at local retail stores.

Parking Ecosystem
Mishra-ji, as I fondly call him, is a scrawny, high energy, low momentum person. He is the high priest of the parking lot next to the office. He, to my mind, is the lord of the cartel that comprises of skilled chauffeurs who make a living out of hustling the cars of the employees of organizations that operate in the vicinity.

The demand is pretty simple. Each employee expects his/ her car to be parked in the most best place possible across two crowded narrow streets. The drill seems even simpler. The employees arrive and promptly get off their 'most loved machine on wheels' handing over the keys to the lord or one of his croonies. Then the real game begins. There is a frenzied pace of taking each car to their designated cocoon on the dusty street in the fastest possible time. Rush hour (0900 hrs - 1000 hrs) is privy to the alacrity with which each member of the cartel hurries around the parking area (which is pretty much across the sidewalks that were once there). Engines are revved up, mental notes are made about each car's day cocoon and the service continues to be extended to other people who keep driving in onto the street. All of this happens while the regular traffic is moving across these narrow streets. A temporary reprieve happens when the frenzy dies down. There the respective car keys are slipped into a metallic hoop that is the resting place of other car keys till dusk arrives.

Daily parking fare for each car is 25 cents (American). Now, despite the fact that the owners of these cars demand excellent parking service, the mindset of people is usually quite miserly when it comes to payouts. The lord encashes his cartel's efforts when the cars are ready to be driven home by their owners. The average number of cars that are hustled vary between 50-70 cars a day, give or take about 10 that move out during the day which means that 10 fresh cars can be accomodated. Doing the math brings me to a range of $12.5 - $17.5 per day as income for the cartel. These are for steady cars that come in during the morning and move out only after business hours. Factoring the 10-odd cars that move in and move out during the day adds another $2.5 to the overall income. Net : $15 - $20 each day. During a typical month with 22 working days, the monthly income for the cartel ranges from $330 - $440. Pretty neat deal, one might think. But if you do the math in terms of the number of cars hustled during 2 peak hours each day for 22 days, then the number is quite whopping.

Then there is me to whom Mishra-ji extends a small favor. The deal is that I get to keep the keys of my car to myself and he needs to get me a decent dusty cocoon for my car. The cost of this favor is double the parking fare per day (50 cents). That makes it $11 per month for me while my peers pay $5.5 a month. Each time there is a festival, I contribute about $2.5 for the cartel's celebrations. On days when I don't show up due to business travel or otherwise, I make it up to the lord by offering a token amount which varies based on the period of absence.

For me, it is all about the joy of contributing to the daily strife of these tireless individuals. It doesn't take much out of me to do what I do. What takes me to peace is when I notice the quiet look of Mishra-ji acknowledging my arrival or when he smiles his toothy grin when he receives the extra contribution. He knows the moment I arrive, he needs to pull out a car from its cocoon to get me to get my machine in there. He also admonishes me at times for not speeding up the parking process the way he does it as I park my own car and seldom let him take the wheel. I am not as skilled as him or his croonies are though. It is during those times when the space in the cocoon has only just enough margin for a man his size to wriggle out of that I hand over the keys to him for those few seconds. At the end of the day, he does hustle bigger cars to accomodate my machine and I am eternally grateful to him for that.

It's his affability in the face of palpable indignation of office-goers that makes him taller than some others whom I know in the corporate world. At the epicenter of all this hustling activity, there is a calmness to the execution extending into the serenity of purpose which is to 'Survive at all Odds' while maintaining a standard of excellence. Mishra-ji and his ilk will continue to rock the scene across the multitude of parking lots across the country and beyond while touching our lives in their own subtle way.