Kathaiyalla Nijam

The normal customer care centre in India gives its best service to the nearby tea stalls and mobile phones and if time permits between these, they attend to a few of the innocent victims who got stuck with their company's products and run for cover both from the product and the customer service. This being the case with private companies, its only understandable not to even think about customer care in government offices.

The fact that I didnt pay the money for the past 3 months was behind me and I was eagerly looking to the future when my mobile's screen-saver smiley smiled wickedly at me. Realisation set in. I have to pay the bill. I prepared for a half day leave from my office when I went to BSNL's customer care in Mandaveli to pay the phone bill for my disconnected mobile.

BSNL's Adyar exchange doesn't have the facility to accept cash as payment (the fact that it had an auto-cheque accepter was more than surprising). I was very understanding with them and so accepted to go to Mandaveli. New realisation seemed to have set in for the Corporation people and they started to build a flyover at the Prayer Tower Junction. They made everybody realise it by blocking most of the road with trenches and tunnels.

With the scorching sun to protect me, I reached the exchange. The cheque deposit counter was at the entrance itself. Though the automatic machine had a touch screen to guide people through, a person was permanently seated near the machine to do your work of depositing the cheque for you. Yes. Customer Service. The one thing to note here is that you need to write down all the details of the phone stuff behind the phone bill and only then will he proceed. So much for automation. I had come for cash payment. And I needed immediate activation. It was 12:45 PM. I had 15 minutes to complete my work. After 1300 hours, come what may, things go to a stand still here. I was racing against time.

I ran to first floor. There was a queue at the cash counter. Cursing my fate, I stood there. To add to my new found happiness, two "influential" persons came, ignored the queue and directly went to the counter and started talking to the cashier. One self-respecting person before me requested them to stand in the queue. They said they were not customers,blah blah blah and turned to talk to the cashier.

Now comes the Anti-climax. The cashier did'nt respond to them at all. He told the self-respecting person to keep calm and that he will take care. And he did take care. Cos, they both were waiting till the queue where I was standing got over. I was dumbfounded. This cannot happen. I must be dreaming. Still with the effect of that incident, I was redirected to the third floor where mobile activations take place.

5 more minutes. I ran to the third floor. The lady sitting there told me that they will activate it by today evening. Then the creativity in my mind sparked off and I told her that this mobile was used for business and I need an immediate activation (now hows that for a story?!!!). So, she showed me the direction to go to a senior officer for immediate activation. I looked in the direction she showed.

There was a door. I went there and started pushing and pulling at it. It did not even budge. I tried my strength for sometime before asking the lady why the door is not opening. She was shocked to see me doing that and asked me to go to another door nearby. Then, I realised why she was shocked. It is not a door. It WAS a door once. It had been locked from the other side and people were sitting nearby and working. My imagination took the better of me for sometime where i was opening that door, things breaking, people running....mmmm. Creativity.

I ran to the senior officer. He was busy talking with someone. That was normal. You are in a government office. You need to talk. If you only work, you will be alienated. You will be a reject. A snob. Then, he became free. I ran in. I told him my "business" urgency. He looked at me and the bill. What followed was totally mind blowing for me. He got my bill, went to a computer nearby and opened the "BSNL Customer Care" application. After clicking through a set of menus, he landed up enterning my mobile's account number. It opened up screen where my mobile number's properties were listed. The first two parameters were "Outgoing barred" and "Incoming barred". He right clicked on the two and deleted it. Then, did a save and a refresh. He then asked me to check if both the outgoing and incoming are working for the mobile phone. I dialled the mobile. It WORKED!!!! It took a total of 2 minutes to activate. I thanked him and came home in a trance.

Customer Service at its best.
Ithu Kathaiyalla, Nijam...

A Culture Visit

I wanted to break away (atleast for a few hours) from the influences of our current "culture" of "hard working" (synonym of money-making) and then showing it off to others in the most worthless of ways, to a period where life was simple, yet happy. when man's requirements were a small but requirement-fulfilled house and happiness to go along. I went to witness life as a culture in south india at the Dhakshin Chitra for a few hours. Being only the end of february, the sun was a little less hot (about 33 C ;-) ). so, I took a 25 minute ride on my 'poor-man's harley davidson', a suzuki, from my house to the culture house, about 4Km from the toll-gate on the ECR. I cheated the toll-gate people by taking a two-wheeler (he he) and dint pay the toll to use the road and reached the culture house when the sun was busy making people run for coconuts and shades.

The entry fee was Rs.50/-. Rs.50/- to see my own culture; In the end, I felt it was worth more than that. The pamphlet was pretty much a miniature route map for the whole place and I must say, it was threateningly accurate in terms of the route.

Tamil Nadu was first. It opened with a Chettinad house of the 19th century. The inlaid description stone (I mean the framed printout-i dont remember the correct term now) told me that the house was literally shifted from its original place to here sans the ground. ( It must have been quite heavy to lift the ground also. Besides, we wont know how deep we need to dig to conclude its enough??? ;-) ). The age old inkpots, the flour-grinder, the wooden beds et al were pretty much the originals taken from the house owners.

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The backyard of the house led to an alley of tamil nadu houses. There were two fortune tellers, one was skillfully utilising the repertoire of a parrot (???) to foretell ur fortunes and the other was using ur palm to foretell. My meal-fortune will wreck havoc if I spend money on this. With a heavy heart of not knowing my future from a parrot, I moved along.

The "conservation lab"(whatever that means) lay ahead near the alley. The inside presented the f-tv of our past. Dhotis, lungis, turbans, thundus, madras kerchiefs (what a history this one has. Check it out there directly). Another room inside dawned to a person creating real art. He was weaving a kancheepuram silk saree. It was the first time in my history I saw a silk saree being made (as if I wud have gone any other day). More than the whole saree being made, It was the forming of the border of the saree that amazed, or rather shocked me the most. I was watching him work like a sculptor bring his creation to life slowly, strand by strand. Soon, curiostiy overtook my shyness and I stopped him.

What followed was a National Geographic program on weaving. He took a paper full of light and dark dots, which viewed from a distance (or a blurred eye) will show a design. The design on the border of the saree. It took a total of 2 days for 5 people and 36 separate lines of gold strands in a complicated pattern to acutally set it in the right position. To move it properly as and when the saree was being woven was way beyond me. A single saree had more than 3 lakh strands of intricately woven silk strands and 2 weeks labour of a dedicated and skilled person.

An adivce to people who want to enjoy this trip. If you happen to see a group of school uniforms in the vicinity, never even try to go near. It will be one mayhem you will want to miss. I got two sets like that today. Obviously, they were schools with students of influential parents. Most of those yet-to-be-grown-ups were clicking away merrily at virtually anything they dint encounter in their lifetime. That included anything the guy near you clicks at. Fortunately, it was lunch time and they headed to a nearby gathering area where they showcased their voice prowess.

After the enlightment at the "lab", and escaping from the two typhoons, I then went on to the glass blowing section. There was a demo going on. I sneaked in to see the glass blower morph a normal glass rod into a peocock and a horse right in front of our eyes. He did that like he was gnawing carelessly at a unroasted set of peanuts. After the pretty transparent demo, he went to become a marketing person and was trying to woo some foreign visitors to buy his wares. Escaping, I moved on to "God's Own Country"'s mini mock-up area.

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It started with a traditional wooden house of a Cyrian catholic family. The inlaid stone description here (remember the term;-) ), told that the house was wholly made of pineapple wood and was two floor high. The outside was pretty deceptive that way. It didnt seem to enclose two floors until you went to the first floor. In a small passage way, there was another wooden staircase. It opened up to an attic the size of the house itself. Compact and cosy - they knew how to live. The first floor even had ravi varma's beauties to adorn the wooden walls. Enjoying God's own country in my hometown, I moved along to another house nearby, pretty similar to the first,but bigger. Palm toys were being made on-location.

My eyes were starting to get a bit dark now. I looked at the sky. It was clear. Then, it dawned. I hadnt taken anything for the last 2 hours. Getting a small 'noisy' toy for my niece, I moved on to the Andhra and Karnataka section in a hurry. Fortunately for my hunger, they both were under construction. It was nearly 2.5 hours since I reached this place and hunger was doing a salsa inside me. Pleasing it with a tetrapack juice, I started my journey back, enlightened and Happy.

Is it a tragedy or . . .

Is it a tragedy or another platform for political showcasing.?

On the day of the tragedy which shook the whole of Asia and World, a premier cable channel in tamil was showing people standing on the beach. the first thing that stuck my mind was "Why are they standing there?". Is it to see if the water level is raising ( talk about caution ) again. Were they planning to die? Or were they expecting to be a "part" of the tsunami if it occurs again so that they can reminisce (???) to the "best" weekly magazine and get a paragraph in that "heart rendering" cover story? I do really appreciate the way that channel was able to cover ONLY but all the areas where dead bodies were lying, be it in chennai, or nagai or cuddalore. You name it, they have the scene of the halls turned mortuaries with wailing to fill the remaining. Once or twice, it evokes sadness and pain in the heart, but a whole day of this causes more irritation than sympathy. This was their only major coverage for the first day and most of second day. Popular english news channels were trying to cover/telecast the cause of this disaster, the science behind it, the probability of recurrence and similar things. I came to know of the TN's CM visit to Nagapattinam only after i saw an article in rediff.com Whose Tragedy is it anyway?

Using the media for political benefit is understandable, but at a time of calamity , its only humane for different people and parties to shove off their differences to get together to bring the distressed back to normal life. Trying to use a calamity for political growth only shows the standard of the people who run the state/country. One another incident which is noteworthy is this. This media person was interviewing people affected by Tsunami . Now the fisherman selected by this channel aptly blames "Government has done nothing for us so far....." and ."Who wants food and water here. Give us boat and nets so that we can fish and survive" Somebody should have told the fisherman (or the press person??? ) that all Sea Food has been banned totally due to the poisining of the sea by bloated corpses all through the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Another news was that all used clothes are being rejected by the survived people because "CM has told that she will give us new dress. so dont give us used clothes. we want new clothes". I do not know the legitimacy of this (CM's statement). If the reason for the rejection of old clothes is this, this just mocks at all those forthcoming hearts which gave all those costly clothes. I helped in collecting clothes and segregating them in trichy and chennai. Of all the clothes which had come for the victims, only about 15% were not usable. Most others were in fully usable condition. I sincerely hope the media does a better job in bringing about proper news to the people and helping the victims in a proper way rather than trying to create a political advantage alone under such a circumstance.