Punitjajo's Blog

My blog has a new home

punitjajo — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:59:13 +0000

My blog has found a new home. I’ve moved it to a dedicated domain http://www.punitjajodia.com.np.

You can find all the content of my blog there. I’ll stop posting any articles here from now on. Sorry for the inconvenience.

How to use 2G and 3G GPRS mobile internet on your computer (for India only)

punitjajo — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:42:23 +0000

Imagine a situation where you have to send an important email to your friend or boss and your internet doesn’t work. Imagine the helplessness, the frustration, the anger. I am pretty sure you didn’t imagine it but recalled a moment when something of the sort actually happened to you. Internet connectivity, although becoming better with each passing day is still a luxury in many parts of the world, especially in rural areas. But the advent of smartphones is changing that. Nowadays, you can connect to the internet very easily using your mobile phone.

I hope I am not the only one to feel this but using the internet on the mobile is just not as fun or convenient as using it on a computer. So today, I will teach you how to connect to the internet on your computer using the GPRS internet pack you have on your mobile phone.

The recipe is simple. Here’s the ingredients:
1. A datacable OR a bluetooth enabled mobile phone(your computer should be bluetooth enabled too in this case).
2. The necessary drivers to use your mobile as a modem.

Make sure the internet on your mobile phone is working before actually going through the next steps.

Installing the drivers

First lets install the drivers necessary to use your phone as a modem. To check if they are already installed, go to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Modems

If you can see the modem for your mobile phone, then you can skip the next few paragraphs.
If not, then install the PC suite for your mobile phone on your computer and connect your phone to it and the drivers will be installed automatically. If you don’t have the PC suite, either download it from another PC with an internet connection or if you are a geek, you can download the specific drivers for only the modem from the internet.

Go back to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Modems to double check if the modem is installed.

CONFIGURING YOUR PHONE’S MODEM

I will first explain the connection procedure using a data cable.

Go to Control Panel->Phone and Modem->Dialing Rules.

Click on New and select “India” as the country and write the ZIP code of the place where you are going to use the internet.
Leave the other fields as they are and press OK. Now click on the Modems tab again. Select the modem you are going to use and click properties.

Choose the “Advanced” tab in the dialog box that follows in the space for “Extra Initialization Commands” type the following codes depending on your cable operator:

AIRTEL

AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”airtelgprs.com”

AIRCEL

AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”aircelgprs.com”

IDEA

AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”ideagprs.com”

TATA DOCOMO

AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”TATA.DOCOMO.INTERNET”

VODAFONE

AT+CGDCONT=1,“IP”, “www”

Don’t get freaked out if the only two options in the drop down list below are Japan and Afghanistan(I did), you can leave it as it is and press OK.

Please doublecheck the part after “IP” from your mobile internet’s settings before you continue. It is called APN(Access Point Name) and it allows you to access the internet from your mobile phone e.g. The APN for Airtel is “airtelgprs.com”. They may differ in your state from the ones I have shown here.

CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET

Now go to Control Panel->Network and Sharing Center and click “Set up a new connection or network”.
In the menu that follows, choose Set-up a dial-up connection.

Enter the phone number as “*99#” without the quotes. Leave everything else empty. You can change the name of the connection to whatever you want.

You’re done! Now go to the network icon and double click on the connection you just created. Enjoy the internet.

If an error #734 occurs, it means that either the internet on your mobile is not working right now or that you have entered the wrong APN. Check your APN and reconfigure the settings. Your internet should work fine.

Also, don’t forget to mark “No Proxy” in your browser’s connection settings.

Now lets move on to connection using bluetooth. Activate bluetooth on both your mobile phone and your computer.

Pairing your mobile phone with your computer

If your mobile is already paired, move on to the next section.

If not, Go to Control Panel->Devices and Printers->Bluetooth Devices and click on “Add a device”.
Let the setup find your bluetooth device and click on it to pair with it. Check your mobile phone and match the passkeys. Now, all the processes are the same as the data cable with a few differences.

To set up the modem you can right click on the icon for your phone in the Bluetooth Devices folder and click on “modem” or you can go to “Phone and Modem” as before and select “Standard Modem Over Bluetooth Link” and do everything exactly the same way as I explained before.

Now, we need to set up a dial-up connection. Go back to “Bluetooth Devices” and double-click on the icon for your phone. Click the “Connect” button which is next to “Use your phone to connect to the internet”. If it doesn’t work the first time, select the option to enter the details manually. Now enter the phone number as *99# and enjoy.

The version of windows while writing this tutorial is Windows 7 Premium. The process is similar for other versions. I’ll be write another one for connecting your mobile internet to a computer with a linux-based operating system later.

If you had any problems, please comment below and I will reply with a solution.

How to put memes and other pictures in facebook chat

punitjajo — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 07:13:31 +0000

You can now use memes on facebook chat

There’s a new feature in facebook using which you can put pictures of popular memes like “Me gusta“, “Trollface” etc. on facebook chat. Ever since the rise of memes and the increasing popularity of sites like 9gag, facebook users have wanted to do this and now its possible.

Its very easy. Just copy and paste these codes in the facebook chatbox. Remember, you have to put a space before and after the code for it to work if you’re using it in the middle of a sentence.

Meme	Code
Trollface	[[171108522930776]]
Me Gusta	[[164413893600463]]
Yao Ming	[[218595638164996]]
Are you serious?	[[150789678325119]]
Poker face	[[129627277060203]]
Forever Alone	[[227644903931785]]
OKAY	[[100002752520227]]
Fuck Yeah	[[105387672833401]]
Challenge Accepted	[[100002727365206]]
Are you fucking kidding me?	[[143220739082110]]
Feel like a Sir.	[[168040846586189]]
Not Bad	[[169919399735055]] or [[NotBaad]]
Mother of God	[[142670085793927]]
Cereal Guy	[[170815706323196]]
NO	[[167359756658519]]
Derp	[[224812970902314]]
Derpina	[[192644604154319]]
LOL Face:	[[168456309878025]]
Watch out, we have a badass over here:	[[147534638688365]]
FUUUU	[[FUUUOFFICIAL]] or [[145768898802324]]
Forever alone christmas:	[[125038607580286]]
Nothing To Do Here:	[[214457085240151]]
Y U NO:	[[106043532814443]]
All The Things:	[[243036739054185]]
Fap:	[[FapFapFapFap.B]]
Schlick:	[[133361803408320]]
Chuck Norris:	[[46637413257]]

But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Facebook’s intention wasn’t to allow memes on chat. Here’s how this actually works.

If you put the profile id of any person, page or group inside two pairs of square brackets like the one’s shown above, the profile pic of that person, page or group will appear in chat.

Let’s try this: Here’s the code for my favourite meme Me Gusta: [[164413893600463]]

Now when I copy the code and put it in the form of a link as:www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=164413893600463, I end up in the facebook page for the Me Gusta meme face.The picture I saw in facebook chat was actually the display picture of a facebook page….not an inherent feature in facebook.

Try using your facebook id(the number that appears in the url when you visit your profile) instead. If you have a facebook username like “haveyoumetted” then you can use [[haveyoumetted]] instead. Works like a charm and displays your profile pic in the chatbox.

Some bloggers are trolling people by saying that it also works by typing smileys like (:D)) for the trollface but it doesn’t. But when typed in facebook chat, the text (:D) it does look a lot like a picture of the trollface.

The guys at facebook are just too awesome. You can imagine how elegant this feature is. Although the word around the internet is that facebook is now allowing memes on fb chat, the feature is much more general and can go a long way in allowing better sharing of links. Right now the image that’s displayed doesn’t link to any profile page but don’t be surprised if they add that feature in the near future.

The powerful use of the facebook id in this way reminds me of the ad campaign by “Idea”, a telecom network in India, in which the local leader of a village, in a bid to end discrimination on the basis of surnames, decides that every person’s mobile number should be used as their identity instead of their names.

I can imagine it right now…a world where you can do everything with your facebook ID. The privacy issues are legitimate but who knows what facebook has in mind? Maybe someday your facebook ID will work as your passport, your social security number and your roll number in college, all at the same time. The possibilities are endless, but more on that later.

How ragging in colleges works

punitjajo — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 02:08:42 +0000

Here’s a small experiment that was done to understand human psychology. It shows beautifully how we adhere to dogmas and keep getting beaten down by the consequences without realizing that there is nothing to stop us.

Start with a cage containing five apes.

In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go up the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the apes with cold water.

After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result – all the apes are sprayed with cold water. Turn off the cold water.

If, later, another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them. Now, remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not? “Because that’s the way its always been around here.”

Although the moral of the story can be applied to the origins of entire religions and company policies, I think it best shows how ragging in schools and colleges works.

Students who were ragged by their seniors think they should do it as well because quote “always been done”. The defendors of ragging say that it is a way of increasing interaction of juniors with their seniors. Bullcrap! I was never ragged by my seniors but I know many seniors who have helped me when I needed help. This article is not for the first year student but for the others.

Stop ragging! Not because a huge board in the campus says that you might be expelled if you are caught, but because it is wrong…period!

Is social entrepreneurship different from general entrepreneurship? I don’t think so.

punitjajo — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:57:26 +0000

It is festival time and ALTIUS 2011, a national techno-cultural of my college, NIT Kurukshetra is in full swing. I was really excited about an event called PRAYATTN, which was being organized to promote social entrepreneurship among the students. The prize money was really high so many people worked day in and day out to create social B-plans. But the event turned out to be completely opposite of what it was supposed to be.

The event was scheduled to start at 10 am. When the event didn’t start till 11 am, nobody in the crowd was surprised because it happens in most of the cases as the judges arrive late. When the judges of the event, who were also the sponsors, did finally arrive, they had a different agenda on their minds. They were called on stage to shed some light on social entrepreneurship. But they had come along with their own presentations. The lecture started on a very positive note. The speaker used cliche’s like “Don’t give fish to man, teach him how to fish” but the overall introduction of entrepreneurship was good. He started talking about his program which involves a train which goes all around India carrying students who are willing to learn social entrepreneurship. Apparently, they are taken to places where social entrepreneurs are working to improve the lives of poor and underpriviledged groups so that they can watch and learn how to do the same.

Personally, I find the concept of social entrepreneurship very strange. The only vision I get when I hear the word “Social Entrepreneur” is that of an IIT or IIM graduate going to a village and trying to improve the condition there. I appreciate the idea but sadly, there are more such villages than there are IIT-IIM graduates combined.

Let me get back to the event. Although the speakers were supposed to speak only for 5 minutes each, they decided to have it their own way and spoke at length about their organizations and how they were going to change India and how the youth can be a part of the action. Once the first speaker was done with, it was already 12 noon. I had fears that the event would be cancelled. A student sitting in front of me was biting his nails so hard he could have chewed his whole hand off. I asked him what the problem was and his answer was that he was taking part in the competition and had worked day in and day out to put up a good B-plan. He explained his B-plan to me and it was wonderful. I can’t tell you about his plan because it would be wrong to publish any details of the plan on the public domain.

He feared that the event might be cancelled because the speaker was too busy adverstising his campaign instead of doing what he was asked to do. That’s when it hit me…..they were actually doing exactly the opposite of what they were trying to do. I will explain why I think so later. To a large extent, it was also the fault of the organizers. They should have politely told them to get on with the show. which they didn’t.

The next speaker promised that he would only take 5 minutes of our time and repeated the same promise after 30 minutes. He talked at length about how today’s education system was creating slaves who knew nothing about what the end result of their efforts would be. The best part of his speech was the part where he said that coders at companies at Microsoft and Google don’t know where their code is going to be used and how their efforts are being measured in terms of lines of code per man hour instead of the effectiveness and usefulness of that code. I totally agree. As an aspiring software engineer, I think that coding is just the means to an end. Its not that I don’t like coding, but I will always copy code from the internet or use a GUI based software which supplies the equivalent code for a task whenever I get the opportunity. When the program is too customized, I will willing and happily code my way out of the situation.

One of the key points of his address was when he asked the crowd if they had any innovative ideas that they would like to pursue after their graduation.

No real entrepreneur will tell another aspiring entrepreneur to explain his ideas informally in front of a hall full of people where there is no documentation or proof that it was his idea.

After a group started clapping at a point that was not meant to be funny, the speaker got the message and finally ended the long ordeal. The venue of the event was shifted to a classroom in our electrical department, I repeat, a classroom in our electrical engineering department. Back to the part where I was going to say why I think they are doing opposite of what they are really supposed to do.

I will need some background to put the story in context. In my college, the biggest hall is “The Jubilee Hall”. Only the biggest events are conducted in The Jubilee Hall. Needless to say, these events take lots of hard work and the fear of failure and the taste of success is the largest. The event had to be shifted to the classroom because another event was scheduled to start at the Jubilee Hall by the time. Making them work hard enough to get into a Jubilee Hall event and then stripping them of the opportunity of presenting it there (knowingly or unknowingly) was wrong. ~~I don’t think any student who took part in the event will want to become an entrepreneur now.~~ I am so glad I decided to skip it.

Although I was waiting very eagerly for the event today morning, I didn’t have the strength to go to watch the event after what happened. It is an encouraging fact that there are people like these who are trying to do some good work, especially through sustainable entrepreneurial ventures and not through distribution of clothes and food. But what I saw today is proof that we still don’t get it. Although social entrepreneurship is a noble concept, I am still not convinced about its success in the big picture.

A good IIT graduate architect will serve the society more by building a skyscraper than by building a hundred huts.

Every entrepreneur is a social hero, doesn’t matter if he is working in a village or at the heart of New Delhi.

But an extremely healthy discussion with a very worthy competitor in my room has now caused me to put a clause in my definition of entrepreneur to justify my statements:

An entrepreneur is someone who creates value, not wealth. The value may or may not be in the form of material wealth. Value is what a prospective buyer will be willing to pay for the ownership of the enterprise in a free market transaction.
Let me simplify this. Suppose a person cheats people and the earnings of his enterprise go through the roof. Although wealth has been created, value hasn’t because in a free market, an intelligent prospective buyer who does some research will not be willing to buy the enterprise for a high price.
A social entrepreneur is not an entirely different kind of entrepreneur. She is an entrepreneur who chooses, through her free will, to donate the value she creates to the society.

After defining social entrepreneurship as a special case of entrepreneurship in general and by specifying the clause of value-creation, I think the ethical questions I was facing regarding the issue have calmed down. If you have different views, feel free to share them in the comments.
I must admit, what I wrote in the first few paragraphs was very naive, but I still feel an extended definition of entrepreneurship can account for social entrepreneurship too.

Financial IQ: Derivatives

punitjajo — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:19:57 +0000

Everyone in the world wants to be safe. There’s no world war but people are scared for their loved ones who go to work everyday to bring food to the plate. The enemy is not another country, it is a broken financial system which has recessions and booms in its very roots. Due to lack of Financial Education in our schools, we are unable to understand what to do with our money. The books on management and economics are useless because they are filled with too much technical jargon for everyone to understand. So, lets go over these technical terms one by one.

I will discuss Derivatives from a non-commerce student’s perspective and we will soon go to CDOs, Credit Default Swaps, sub-prime loans and money.

Derivatives

Suppose you need to buy orange juice for a party you are throwing at your house. You send your housekeeper to the market and he sees that there are 5 shops lined one after another. You have asked him to buy fresh orange juice so the packaged versions are out of the question.

Because he has no idea about the quality of the orange juice offered by the 5 shops, he comes up with an idea. He buys two glasses of orange juice from each shop and puts it all in a huge container. By doing so, the risk that the orange juice will be sour is minimized because if the juice from one of the shops is sour, then the sweet juice from the other shops will compensate for the taste and your reputation will not be destroyed. This is the whole concept of derivatives. You minimize the risk by buying from different places because a loss in one will be compensated by a profit in the other and it will make you more stable financially.

But here’s the catch:

It is ensured that you will not get the best orange juice.
If someone gets sick, then you have no idea whose orange juice it was that caused the sickness.
Your knowledge of the market doesn’t increase with repeated purchases because you can never know who sells the highest quality product.
If the orange juice from two or three of the shops is sour, then you will be left with a bland mix which will give you no satisfaction(profit).
You have to believe the word of your housekeeper if he says that the oranges this season are bad because he brings you a similar bland mix everytime, not tasty orange juice on one day and bad orange juice on the next.

Don’t trust your housekeeper and tell him to taste the orange juice from each shop and buy the best one.

My list of must-read books

punitjajo — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:58:40 +0000

I was recommending a few books to a friend and came across this idea to post my list of must-read books. Please post your list in the comments to make this article richer. I will keep adding more books as I remember them.

1. The Fountainhead -Ayn Rand
2. The Devil’s Alternative -Friedrick Forsyth

3. The White Tiger -Aravinda Adiga
4. The Day Of The Jackal -Friedrick Forsyth
5. Angels and Demons -Dan Brown
6. Freakonomics -Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
7. SuperFreakonomics -Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
8. Wings of Fire – A biography of APJ Abdul Kalam

A weekend in the summer capital of the British(Part 1)

punitjajo — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 06:47:16 +0000

Sidhave sheikh Ka’abe ko, hum to Englishtan jayenge;
Wo dekhe ghar khuda ka, hum khuda ki shaan dekhenge.

(Let the devout sheikh go to Ka’aba, I will go to England;
Let him watch God’s home, I will watch God’s glory.)

This couplet from Akbar Ilahabadi pretty much sums up the mood of three friends on a hot friday night in Kurukhetra when they decided that the next weekend was going to be spend in Shimla- the summer capital of the British while they were in India. Although I had already visited many more far off places in Himachal, Shimla, the most accesible one somehow always seemed to evade me. It was not going to be that way anymore. I, Aadhaar and Soumyaroop set out on the next friday night to a magical trip to the place.

Day 0

The route was uneventful; just the way I like it. The view after we reached Shimla was literally heaven on earth- as if the stars had come down to the earth to greet us.
We reached the Shimla Bus Stand at 5 a.m in the morning. The Modern Bus Stand in Shimla is nothing short of a work of art. To account for the lack of space in the hilly region for a bus stand, it was built on multiple levels. Built to accomodate a large number of buses, the oval-shaped bus stop was busy as a bee and very efficient too. It lacked a good cafeteria though; we had to settle for a cup of coffee each served of-course on a paper glass. (Coffee is not coffee if not served in a cup.)

Then we asked around to find out how we could reach the heart of the city. Apparently, we had two options:

Take a cab.
Take the more adventurous route by climbing the steps that went through the forest.

You must have already guessed the path we took. It was pitch dark and the steps were pretty creepy. It seemed we were the only ones on the path. A dog was barking continuously, but the environment made it a wolf. The scarier parts were not the stairs, it was those small parts where the path was horizontal, because we could no longer concentrate on putting our feet on the steps and the consciousness of the environment was greater. It gradually became lesser and lesser dark. There was a small hut-like resting place with a few benches up ahead and we immediately pounced on the opportunity. The view from there was nothing short of magical. It was twilight and the sight of the trees and the scattered houses on the other hill was just awesome. But we had to move on. We got on the main road and the long walk uphill started.

After an hour-long walk, we finally reached ‘The Mall’.

Day 1

6:30am
A cool morning breeze was blowing and we were already feeling a bit chilly. We were immediately hounded by ‘Dalals’ who promised us good hotels and a cheap ride to Kufri. We ignored them and moved on. All the shops were closed. We kept walking through the closed shops and came across what was seemingly the city’s administrative building. It was a huge building made entirely of stone and looked very old. The city firestation was exactly opposite to it. A couple of firetrucks stood proudly in front of it; as if promising to kill every fire that might try to even touch this piece of heaven. Further walking too us to an intersection popularly known as Scandal Point.

We could already appreciate the beauty of the place from this point. The small figure of a yellow church was visible. The signboard said the path towards the church was called “The Ridge”. We walked towards it and came across a huge space where children were playing football. A few seconds of watching their game made it pretty clear that they were good players.

Suddenly, we realized we had a problem. It was 8 am. If we immediately checked into a hotel, we might be charged for two days because the checkout time is 12 noon. So we decided to pass some time by reading newspapers. One of the most wonderful things about Shimla is the abundancy of public chairs to sit on. We found a comfortable spot and started reading. We were done in less than half an hour and decided to take a walk around the place. It was schooltime in Shimla and the sight of little children running to school brought back sweet memories of my school days. A girl was shouting to her friends “Mere toh ZERO aaenge!”(I will get a zero). Exams!

While we were wandering, we were again confronted by the same dalaal who we had met before. We told him about our predicament and he assured us that we would have to pay only for a day’s stay if we moved in now. The “Ridge View Hotel” didn’t look very impressive from the outside. The manager showed us a stinky room with no windows. We didn’t like it. Then he took us upstairs to another room. This one was huge with a large bed and huge windows. In fact, it was the “Honeymoon Suite”. We liked and finalized it immediately, not knowing there were a few surprises to come.

Rest of the story in the next post.

Facebook’s latest privacy disaster!

punitjajo — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:36:18 +0000

Facebook wants to help parents spy on their kids. With a few clicks you can watch everything that two people share with each other by using the “See Friendship” option. Before, you could only see the friendship between you and a facebook friend. But now you can see the friendship between any two people.

Here’s how it works.

Click on any “See Friendship” button at the end of posts on your homepage. It doesn’t matter whose profile you end up in.
Now look at the right side of the page. By filling the two text boxes with any of your two friends, you can now see their friendship.

Out of the many features that facebook offers to its users, this one is perhaps one of the most difficult to understand for me. Maybe to some people, it might be fun to see how they and a friend have been interacting with each other, just to relive old memories, but allowing users to watch the friendship between two friends is a major privacy disaster. It will promote unnecessay meddling in other people’s private matters. Facebook is being very careless with its privacy issues these days and if this goes on, facebook users might look to google+ for a more exclusive social networking experience.

No rewards

punitjajo — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:54:15 +0000

The incident I am going to narrate happened when I was returning to college from my home after my summer vacations. I was on a bus and as usually happens in the city of Kathmandu, a guy with a disability entered the bus and begged for money. It is a common practice nowadays among such people to keep a certificate of their disability issued by the city with them and show it to people before asking for money.

But this guy(let’s call him Peter) had not one but 20 or so laminated certificates stacked in what looked like a hook on his belt-buckle. He very efficiently handed the certificates to every person on the bus and waited for everyone to read it. Apparently, Peter had lost his right arm because it had to be cut because of cancer. Then came the collection part. To my surprise, everyone donated very generously, in fact so generously that I can say for sure that Peter earned at least Rs 200, which is an average labourers daily wage in a span of five minutes.

I fully understand that Peter’s use of innovative methods to display his ailment and his call for help should enable him to earn more than anyone else in a similar position, but why did people feel an impulse to donate so much that Peter earned more than a labourer’s daily wage in 5 minutes. Was his innovation worth that much? Did he earn so much everyday? What must be the maximum amount he must have earned in a day?

All these questions were revolving in my head when two men with a traditional Nepalese instruments called “Sarangis” entered the bus.
They quickly started with their act and sang some really beautiful songs in tune with the Sarangi’s music. Now came the collection part. By impulse, I looked at the guys collecting the money just to see how much they would earn. Surprise Surprise….Nobody seemed to be willing to give them any money at all! They had to literally beg the people to give them any money at all. They hard hardly collected Rs. 70 or so from the entire bus. As I had enjoyed their performance, I promptly took out a 10 rupee note from my wallet and handed it to one of them when my turn came.

Keeping in mind that Peter beat them to the bus, it is understandable that people would naturally be inclined to pay them less than expected but these were not beggars, these were performers. And they were two of them. Does Peter deserve the extra money he got. Let’s look at the hard facts:

Peter spent less than five minutes on the bus while the performers spent more than fifteen and performed throughout the time period.
The only virtue Peter has is his disability (if it is a virtue at all) while the performers have perfected the art of singing and playing the instrument through what may have been years of practice.
The fact that he got there first gives Peter a huge advantage because people don’t like having to open their wallets every time someone comes to ask for money.But the difference we see here is too huge for this explanation to be justified.

Although the whole event might have seemed trivial to everyone else on the bus, it shook me to the point that I sometimes think about it, even when its been over a week. It was a win of charity over virtue, emotion over thought. I don’t mean to be harsh on disabled people but the equivalent of a labourer’s daily wage is too much to give. No matter how much we give to Peter, he will always return to the same bus with the same laminated sheets and he will get his share of money because people do not think too much about these things. Peter operates only in long-route buses because maybe he knows that he can expect a new group of people everyday. I think Peter is so smart, he can try his “hand” at management, hand or no hand.

But the fact is he doesn’t need to, because people will always keep showering lots of money on him because they act solely on emotion. This attitude has to change. There was a very nice line in “Broadwalk Empire”, which goes like this

Charity hardens those who give it and degrades those who receive it.

What do you think?? Do the sarangi players deserve more than Peter or not?