Date: 13th August 2011 Place: Bangalore to Davanagere
Being software engineers, bugs form important elements of
our lives.
For SW-developers (bug-creators), bugs can haunt
day-n-night, Monday to Friday and at-times on weekends too. I, being an
electronic SW developer many a times scratch my head to identify if the bug is
a result of my SW code or is a HW circuitry issue. Well, I am used to
bug-haunts and so is my understanding wife who relieves me by serving our
special Davanagere Benne Dosa with extra butter top-ups during weekends (Half-
day sound sleep, thanks to Dosa). However, the just-past weekend I encountered
a unique variant of bug and so does this story begin..
With Best
Wishes and safe-guarding Rakhi from my sister, I set my foot into KSRTC
bus-stop Bangalore, to start my weekend journey (BLR to Davanagere) along with
my brother-in-law (aka BIL). With no
train reservations, I was boarding bus only after about 2 years. Having got a
window seat in the middle of Rajahamsa (special festive bus), I SMSed my sister
for being lucky to get the seats and thanking her for her wishes. SMS
sent-notification on my mobile was the last happiest moment of the day (rather
night). You know Why?? Just as our
off-shore customers send bug-alerts/notifications, my sister SMSed back
alerting me about Rajahamsa BED BUGS (alias., urf THAGANI in Kannada). Well,
the alert was too late since our bus was gushing through Dr Raj road with half
of my fellow passengers afloat in dreams. The SMS was a like a critical
bug-filed on an onfield product which might result in recall of product. But,
do I see chances of rectification at midnight?? Anyways, who cares about bugs
(I am a SW
engineer) is what I patted myself until the first strike
came on me near Yeshwanthapura. Ghosh !!, the size of the bug rattled my
spirits right then, it was a Mammoth bug which carried one valuable drop of my
blood in its tummy. Unaware of the menace, by now 90% of the bus-occupants
including my BIL were in sound sleep. The other 10% except me were busy trying
to push the mobile operator’s profits northwards. Incidentally everyone
scratched their neck, shoulders, feet without paying much attention. Just as we
SW developers pass our unit-test WARN messages.
After a while,
I walked my way to the driver’s cabin enquiring our driver and conductor about
any bugs in the bus holding tight a bug in my fingers. They mocked at me to
claim that the bugs were a past-thing. Just as we undermine a SW bug arguing
to customers for having tested and closed it in a previous release. The KSRTC
crews were only to trust me after I released the struggling bug on conductor’s
palm and took its blood (how dare it took mine!!). The driver was shocked and
parked the bus sideways to call the depot-manager right in the midnight. This
is like an escalation of a SW bug to a project-champion/owner.
Having
reported a major issue, I was relieved only to return back to my seat to test
and report more bugs. I killed about 12-15 of them but atleast 20 feasted on me
and escaped to their safe-dens. My new
Galaxy mobile which most of the time starves for battery, did not help me take
a single picture of these night-crawlers. Bug-attack, my-counter-attack went on
relentlessly until about 1 O’clock when I decided to give-up and vacate my seat
to occupy a place in driver’s cabin. I was greeted by KSRTC crew and offered
the co-driver’s seat. I caught 2 more bugs (I got compliments from driver and
conductor for this as though I was enjoying their medallions of praises) before
the bus entered the streets of Davanagere. I never knew that my desire to see
my 4 month old Ruthvik would take such a toll of mine. I hadn't slept even for
5 minutes properly.
One of my
relatives back in home said that she had found bugs in SRE travels before.
Another complained about Mahesh Travels. I was taken aback by the resilience in
us even after such experiences. Just as
my manager insists on doing a Root-Cause-Analysis of a SW issue, I thought I
should do one for this issue and decided to take a stern action on KSRTC. I and
my BIL (he had developed rashes on his body by
then) met depot-manager at 11:00 the following morning
after a good bath and a relaxing sleep. I submitted a complaint letter for:
1) Complete
revamping of bus-seats.
2) Compensate my
travel expenses.
The manager was quick enough to act on the Item (2) but
was only assuring on Item (1) because of policy issues. However, I changed my terms to:
1) Travelling in
Rajahamsa after 15 days, free-of-cost to assess the
situation. ( The failure-test)
2) If above
‘failure-test’ is not cleared, I would go RTI way to see
that all heads for the cause of these bugs would pay
penalty.
I have got a letter acknowledged by depot-manager with
his sign and seal for the above ‘failure-test’. Dear friends, please report any
such bed-bugging issue in your routes to the concerned authorities.
And for Davanagere route travelers, you can send me a
'picture of bug in seats' with bus details if you notice any hereafter.
