PEP TALK - iBall 4G tablet

PEP TALK

For weeks, I wandered the streets. I had allowed myself to fall to such a lowly place in society with no sense of shame.

Ruined and broken, I begged for coins.

'My God, what happened to you?' The voice was as if from a dream, but looking up I realized it was someone standing in front of me. 'What on earth could make someone fall this low?' [Ans: Satan and his gang of male and female aliens. - G]

I know that voice.

He was someone important. A symbol of my success, somehow. But who?

Somehow, my inebriated mind managed to grasp his identity. The man outside the building ... the man I swore I would have lunch with when I was successful and we worked in the same skyscraper.

I was mortified. One minute, I was bragging about my ambitions; the next, I was begging the very same man for loose change to help me live.

'Parents dead, my own company abandoned me, and now I drink away the last of my sorry life.'

He grimaced as my laughter changed to coughing. 'Go home. Find yourself again.'

I froze, a moment of sobriety shook through me. 'Find ... myself?'

'You had dreams.' He shoved money in my palm and we locked eyes. 'Go home and find them [find your dreams] again.'

'No!' I heard my own voice shout. 'My dreams are gone. This ... story of my life ** ... it is gone.'

The man shook his head. 'You're letting life write your story. But you can control how that story is written; rather than allow it [your story] to be created for you [by late Satan's very scared gang of human-looking male and female aliens].'

I took one of the hundred-rupee notes he had given me and held it up. 'I am the other side of this note now. You see the same me you met outside this building. I look the same, but I am changed.'

He smiled sadly. 'No matter how you flip that money around,' he said, nodding to the note in my hand, 'it is still worth something. You can crumple it up, rip it in half. But once it's smoothed out or taped up again, it is the same. It can still buy sustenance.'

'I don't know,' I muttered. Exhausted with life.

The stranger continued. 'It will be hard, but at some point you will uderstand that your story is your own. Then you can move forward and keep creating it [your story]. I don't know what happened to you, but you have the strength to change your circumstances.'

He closed my hand around the money. 'This should be enough to get you home.'

Looking down at the money, tears dropped from my eyes and fell against it. I looked up to thank the stranger, but he was gone, vanished, as if some sort of guardian angel.

(Excerpts from the inspiring novel THIS IS NOT YOUR STORY, by Savi Sharma, Westland; ₹ 175.)

** Black (2005), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali & featuring Amitabh Bachchan [latest reincarnation of the angel "Gabriel", messenger of "God"?] in the role of Anne Sullivan, was based on blind, deaf, mute Helen Keller's autobiography THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

Kishalay Sinha [G]

iBall 4G tablet

I have been using Jio 4G since last year. Now I have started using Airtel 4G and Vodafone 4G ALSO - to energize Airtel 4G and Vodafone 4G and ensure fierce (healthy) competition and hence steady low cost and easy availability of 4G (and 3G) Internet service for the vast number of (often poor but tech-savvy) male and female Indians. (Why do I specifically refer to FEMALES so often? To encourage and inspire females but hopefully not along unethical lines! Why do I use the word "females" which sounds rather derogatory? Coz "females" is a very convenient short word for "girls and women"!)

Two days ago, I purchased a reasonably priced iBall 4G tablet (which I am using now to type the words in this Blogger post). I am pleasantly surprised to learn that this iBall 4G tablet has been MADE IN INDIA because I thought it was made in China! (iBall is a top Chinese tech company that manufactures electronic products, I think.) I have been told by local iBall staff that iBall 4G tablets have become very popular in India and are selling very well in India. There are two types of iBall 4G tablets - the lower-priced iBall 4G tablet has 1 GB RAM; the higher-priced iBall 4G tablet which is the one I purchased and am now using has 2GB RAM, its price is about Rs. 9000 (less discount), it is a dual sim tablet that can also be used to make phone calls, I have been told; its first slot supports a 4G sim but its second slot supports a 2G sim, not a 4G sim, I think.

Kishalay Sinha [G]