How many pieces??

I recently spent some time in Kanpur and during my stay I commuted by the city transport bus. It is my strong conviction that observing the local transport and the people who use them gives you a more real picture than any other study can. It actually presents you with a diverse cross section of the ‘common man’.

What really caught my eye as I hung in a mass of bodies in the bus (even though each city in India has a very unique mass transit system, the common thread is the overcrowding) was the marking above some seats.
The two front rows were labelled mahila seat. ‘That makes sense’ I said to myself. Female seats are generally reserved in buses and trains for obvious reasons.

The next seat was marked viklang seat. ‘Even that is okay, physically handicapped people cannot keep standing and a reserved seat for them is justified.'

Next came, and now it started getting a bit weird, a seat labelled manyata prapt patrakaar seat. ‘This is funny. why should Reporters have reserved seats? Fine, we live in a country where the media has unparalleled freedom that is ratified by our democratic setup; but still a seat reserved for a reporter in a city bus ?’ it bewildered me. But the final blow was the next label. It said parshad/vidhayak seat. ‘This is right over the top. Why the hell should a member of the legislature have a seat reserved in a city bus? Any of the members of our legislature travelling by a ‘public’ transport bus is a laughable concept in itself. Apart from the one occasion of maybe inaugurating the service, none of them or anyone even remotely related to them, would ever board a bus.’ But still, I’d like to inform them that if they ever consider doing that they have a seat reserved to save them the agony of standing with the people whom they claim to serve.

Hanging there sweating, memories from a class on fractions during my schooling came to me. It was probably in third grade:
“If I want to divide a cake amongst 5 people, what will be the size of each piece?” the teacher asked.
“One-fifth of the cake” the class replied in unison.
“And what if I want to divide it amongst 10 people?”
“One-tenth of the cake” the class chorused. The teacher divided the circle on the board into ten pieces.
“If I have one cake and I want to give a piece to everyone in the class, then how big would a piece be?”
Everyone started counting heads on their tiny fingers and soon children were excitedly shouting answers, “One upon 55”, “One upon 60” and the teacher drew many lines in the circle. At this moment one of the boys , with supreme innocence that is a characteristic of that age said “ I will get a very tiny piece”
“Yes, but still everyone would get an equal share of whatever there is.”

The boy who asked the question was most probably driven by gastronomic desire, and maybe I too, sitting in the class, was thinking of a tasty cake and did not give a dammn about how large a piece everyone got.

It is now, in the bus, that I see the whole event in a new light. I do not know what brought me that memory. I doubt I could have recalled such an event otherwise, but it now makes a lot of sense.

Making a billion pieces of a cake, so that everyone gets an ‘equal’ share, is hardly a solution. Teach everyone, not how to divide the cake into pieces, but to make a cake when they are hungry.