Summers came and the problem of mosquitoes becomes unbearable. No matter how much mosquito repellent products you use, mosquitoes are going to irritate you. The bad drainage system of this city is responsible for this. Almost everywhere you can see open sewage lines, water flowing on the roadsides and people throwing waste outside their home instead of proper dustbin. The whole municipal system is responsible for this, but who is going to complain. Life goes on; people forget things very fast here. Just see in the photo that I took while returning from my classes, it’s a resident area and just few meters away from here is medical college, university and markets as well.

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I went to head post office yesterday to speed post a letter and there was a bid queue. When my chance came I got the reason of queue, there was only one man there was doing the job of taking letters, feeding info on computer, sticking bar codes on letters and then giving receipt to people after printing it. It was amazing to see his typing speed; it was like flash of lightening. I think if there is any typing speed contest, this man will surely win. The other people you see in the photo are doing some other work. When Inside any post office, there is a peculiar smell which reminds me of my school office where books were kept. It’s the smell of paper most probably. Every year we have to go there and a clerk would give us the bundle of books and copies, even covers were provided and I used to spend hours putting those covers on copies and books. What a waste of time I think now as it’s just ok if we don’t put any cover on copies and books; after all they are going to be used just for a year and not whole life.

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Why some children’s are called street children’s? One reason behind the name is that they spend most of their time roaming here and there in streets and play whole day with other street children’s. These children’s are not going to have a bright future and this fact is well known by their parents but they don’t do anything. These children’s are happy in photo as they don’t know how hard life is going to be in future when they grow up but for now they are happy because I took their photograph. I was in part taking photographs when this group of children’s approached to me and asked if I can take their photograph. It’s not to blame govt. here as there are many schools for such students whose parents can’t afford to pay school fee. I know those schools may not offer a quality education but still it’s enough to make a big difference in their later life.

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I have seen this many times that a man with one char, a mirror and some tools is sitting on the road side and people getting a hair cut there. The poor barber cannot afford to have a proper shop and is running his business from the mere basics. I doubt how many people will want to get a hair cut on road side with garbage lying all around and people looking at you and you look at them in the mirror! But I whenever I sport these ‘open air’ barber shops, I have never seen the chair empty, someone is always getting a hair cut of shaved. You can see that even one person is waiting for his turn. These barbers do the haircut job at very cheap rates like 5 or 10 rupees (~ 0.2 USD).

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Rickshaw pullers can be found every where in Aligarh and it’s the most preferred means of transport for ladies. They go on work, shopping or just for anything, rickshaw is always available. It’s also used to take children’s to school and when I was small, I used to go by one of these rickshaws only and trust me, it offers a most bone breaking ride. It’s slow and therefore you have to step out of home earlier so that you can reach your destination on time. However it’s quite cheap to travel on this, you can go up to 6 KM for Rs.10 (0.2 USD) but rates vary and depend on the mood of rickshaw puller, weather and your bargaining ability.

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February is the month of Aligarh exhibition and on one of the route to this exhibition have railway crossing in between. People are in so much hurry that they neglect the red light and cross the barrier. There seems to be zero patience in these people and results in bad train accidents. I wrote on this topic before also but when I see even educated people with family and small children crossing the railway line in this way, I feel how poor is our system that allows the people to do so. I can wait for the train to pass and then go, it takes few minutes only and in that time I can enjoy watching the train too (I like big engines) and every one does have a small kid inside so its time to take out that kid and enjoy the train passing by rather than crossing the line at red signal and risking your life.

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