Mumbai - An Addiction
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Where's The Cheque Number
Information Technology sure has brought some monumental changes in the way we live. And all of it has been so rapid that, on one side, it must be quite difficult for a lot of people to keep up, and on the other hand, people who are accustomed to the contemporary mores don’t even know about how things used to happen even five years back. For one, I have no clue how people worked ten years back when laptops were nowhere as rampant as today. Hell, how did even people finish their studies in the 90’s without Google?
So, one day I went to my bank to deposit a cheque, my first time ever! In 2010 when I am 28! Can you even believe that? Of course I used to go to my mother’s bank as a kid and handover a cheque to the person she’d have told me to. But since I became a banking customer myself, all my transactions, absolutely all of them, have been online. So I was quite out of my element having to visit a bank to deposit a cheque. There, I discovered I had to fill in some details in the deposit slip. Amongst the details was one ‘cheque number’. And when I searched the cheque, there were quite a few numbers which could have been the cheque number. So I asked the teller which of them was the actual cheque number. He did tell me which one it was, but not without an insulting scorn.
Now it’s not my fault that Cheque numbers have been made redundant by internet banking, is it? And really, how long before cheques themselves will completely cease to exist? Think about that. Maybe I will get my chance to return the scorn to the rude teller when he is fumbling with the latest technology.
Labels: bank, technology
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Mistaken Weekend
Weekends are undeniably the source of the greatest joy for entire peer-group and more. It would be unfair to say we live much hassled lives; yet, this little recurring joy is a blessing we look forward to everyday.
One of things about weekend is the freedom to wear casuals at work on Friday which heralds every weekend. Jeans, as long as they are not those tattered denims worn by traditional cowboys while they shepherd yaks and bulls, and T-shirts (no profane slogans on them) is the standard attire. And I donned them and walked into office with a beaming smile one Friday.
Only, it was a Thursday. Oops!
No one made a big deal or asked me to go home and change. Yet, I had to face snickers of colleagues throughout the day for being so over-eager for Friday. But that in no ways diminished the elation that I had left home with.
I felt all the more delighted since I was the only one strutting around in my sneakers and almost felt like pointing and laughing at those tie-wielding suffocated souls around me. And perhaps it was because I was an exception that I realized why one is actually better off wearing formals to work. It got me thinking on how much our clothes affect how we feel. I don’t suppose that offices discourage casuals to work to be a sadistic killjoy. But they’d want their people to feel sharp more than joyous. There is no harm in people feeling happy and relaxed. But if that comes at a cost of becoming casual, that is not acceptable.
So perhaps I would love to wear casuals every day. But after that day, I probably will grumble lesser about wearing formals on regular weekdays.
One of things about weekend is the freedom to wear casuals at work on Friday which heralds every weekend. Jeans, as long as they are not those tattered denims worn by traditional cowboys while they shepherd yaks and bulls, and T-shirts (no profane slogans on them) is the standard attire. And I donned them and walked into office with a beaming smile one Friday.
Only, it was a Thursday. Oops!
No one made a big deal or asked me to go home and change. Yet, I had to face snickers of colleagues throughout the day for being so over-eager for Friday. But that in no ways diminished the elation that I had left home with.
I felt all the more delighted since I was the only one strutting around in my sneakers and almost felt like pointing and laughing at those tie-wielding suffocated souls around me. And perhaps it was because I was an exception that I realized why one is actually better off wearing formals to work. It got me thinking on how much our clothes affect how we feel. I don’t suppose that offices discourage casuals to work to be a sadistic killjoy. But they’d want their people to feel sharp more than joyous. There is no harm in people feeling happy and relaxed. But if that comes at a cost of becoming casual, that is not acceptable.
So perhaps I would love to wear casuals every day. But after that day, I probably will grumble lesser about wearing formals on regular weekdays.
Labels: casuals, weekend, work attire, workplace
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Disaster Recovery
“Disaster Recovery”, for the uninitiated, is basically a back-up plan, so that business as usual continues to run, even in the event of a disaster (like earthquakes, fires, any crippling technological glitch, etc.). It’s a fairly common IT term. The non-IT usage of it was exemplified by, of all people, my mom.
I have just bought a new flat right next to my existing one. It has a lot of strategic advantages, so to speak. Without going into the details, to state the sum-total of all benefits, I effectively have one big house.
Now management of a bigger house is definitely more cumbersome than a previous, smaller one. Granted that I am not living in a mansion of any sort. Yet, the day to day things a typical urban family has to keep a track of is not exactly easy. Especially in a dusty, practically on-the-road apartment.
As it turns out, my mom has retained the maid who works for us in our existing house, and the maid who was working for the previous owners in our new home. Her reason: If one of them chooses to take a holiday, then my mom can pay the other one to clean up the house where the maid has taken a leave. Pricing model is per service (sweeping/mopping/dishes), per room, per day.
Now, as an IT consultant, Disaster Recovery services are one of the key components of our portfolio. But this was a whole new level of Disaster Recovery. A lot of hot-shot COO’s would do well to take lessons on business continuity planning from my Mom.
I have just bought a new flat right next to my existing one. It has a lot of strategic advantages, so to speak. Without going into the details, to state the sum-total of all benefits, I effectively have one big house.
Now management of a bigger house is definitely more cumbersome than a previous, smaller one. Granted that I am not living in a mansion of any sort. Yet, the day to day things a typical urban family has to keep a track of is not exactly easy. Especially in a dusty, practically on-the-road apartment.
As it turns out, my mom has retained the maid who works for us in our existing house, and the maid who was working for the previous owners in our new home. Her reason: If one of them chooses to take a holiday, then my mom can pay the other one to clean up the house where the maid has taken a leave. Pricing model is per service (sweeping/mopping/dishes), per room, per day.
Now, as an IT consultant, Disaster Recovery services are one of the key components of our portfolio. But this was a whole new level of Disaster Recovery. A lot of hot-shot COO’s would do well to take lessons on business continuity planning from my Mom.
Labels: Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Recovery, IT
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Ek Packet Samosa
I was watching a movie in the Seven-G multiplex in Bandra, better known by the individual screens: Gaiety, Galaxy, etc. The good part of this theater is that the movie tickets are priced at normal middle-class levels. And you don’t feel swindled the way you do when you watch a movie having paid 250 or 300 bucks for a movie at a swanky Fame Adlabs or Inox Cinemas. The pricing strategy of the modern day mutliplexes is a topic that arouses quite a few volcanoes in me as a consumer. I won’t dwell into them right now.
Anyways, so it was the interval and I had come to buy a samosa packet at the snacks counter. And there was this guy in front of me who had just taken one and wanted to know the price of the samosa packet.
“Twenty Rupees,” the snacks-counter guy replied.
“Twenty Rupees!!” The guy in front of me exclaimed with a growl. “You’re looting people here. This is unacceptable.”
Well, he had a point. Rs. 20 for two samosas is on the higher side. But the premium is not as outrageous as the buyer made it out to be.
“What sir. In other multiplexes you get the same samosa for forty rupees.” The seller said in an apologetic tone.
“Woh multiplex hai. Apne aap ko unse compare mat karo.” The buyer said with condescension.
And that logic made me laugh. As if a place that charges atrocious amounts for anything they sell gives them the right to do so just because everything they sell is expensive.
I just took my samosas, glad that they were only 20 bucks, and went back to enjoy my movie.
Anyways, so it was the interval and I had come to buy a samosa packet at the snacks counter. And there was this guy in front of me who had just taken one and wanted to know the price of the samosa packet.
“Twenty Rupees,” the snacks-counter guy replied.
“Twenty Rupees!!” The guy in front of me exclaimed with a growl. “You’re looting people here. This is unacceptable.”
Well, he had a point. Rs. 20 for two samosas is on the higher side. But the premium is not as outrageous as the buyer made it out to be.
“What sir. In other multiplexes you get the same samosa for forty rupees.” The seller said in an apologetic tone.
“Woh multiplex hai. Apne aap ko unse compare mat karo.” The buyer said with condescension.
And that logic made me laugh. As if a place that charges atrocious amounts for anything they sell gives them the right to do so just because everything they sell is expensive.
I just took my samosas, glad that they were only 20 bucks, and went back to enjoy my movie.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Share Cab
My usual return trip to home involves me taking a share cab from the highway near my office to Borivli. What that means is that taxi drivers who return home (I assume) in the evening and are thus travelling from the South of Mumbai to the North, take passengers at nominal rates along with them. The passengers necessarily have to get down somewhere the taxi driver is headed towards. But that’s a small inconvenience to the alternative mode of transport – chock-a-blocked local trains.
And it is not just the traditional taxis which ferry passengers in this share-cab business model, even the tourist cars, company buses and as on one occasion, an official BMC Sumo sort of a vehicle.
Only problem was that when the driver of the BMC car picked up the passengers at Garware signal, the car was not on official duty. However to escape potential questioning by the traffic police, he put up a sign of “On BMC duty” nonetheless. Obviously he wasn’t aware of the share-cab model niceties. No traffic police in the two years that I have been using share-cabs has ever stopped one. Putting up a “On BMC Duty” signboard achieved exactly the thing that the driver had set out to avoid. A traffic police who obviously realized that the car was carrying out public service under the guise of BMC duty pulled over the car. He peeked inside and saw a varied assortment of people – two IT salesmen (including myself), a couple of college students, two bricks and mortar laborers, a guy and his coy, obedient wife obviously returning from some kind of a marriage or a similar family function.
The cop then looked at the driver questioningly. And the driver committed his second blunder in the space of ten minutes. He told the cop that everyone in the car was on election duty?! The cop inspected the diverse crowd again. And said with a mocking tone: “Is mein se ek bhi election duty pe hai to main tere ko jaane doonga.” And asked for the driver’s license, took it and walked away.
Someone in the car berated the driver: “Abey jhooth to bheja laga ke bol”
Some wisdom in that. The driver probably thought that driving a BMC car made him above the law; a law which anyways didn’t bother about taxis carrying people to their destinations. And then, when the law apprehended him, he thought he was smart enough to lie through it. Any self respecting traffic policeman would have taken offense.
Anyways, I and my other IT sales colleague left the car and took another share cab. Maybe we should have stuck around and seen the hapless driver through his troubles. He was after all rendering a service to us. But the driver did not inspire a lot of loyalty in his customers. Everyone branched out and he was left to deal with his problems himself.
And it is not just the traditional taxis which ferry passengers in this share-cab business model, even the tourist cars, company buses and as on one occasion, an official BMC Sumo sort of a vehicle.
Only problem was that when the driver of the BMC car picked up the passengers at Garware signal, the car was not on official duty. However to escape potential questioning by the traffic police, he put up a sign of “On BMC duty” nonetheless. Obviously he wasn’t aware of the share-cab model niceties. No traffic police in the two years that I have been using share-cabs has ever stopped one. Putting up a “On BMC Duty” signboard achieved exactly the thing that the driver had set out to avoid. A traffic police who obviously realized that the car was carrying out public service under the guise of BMC duty pulled over the car. He peeked inside and saw a varied assortment of people – two IT salesmen (including myself), a couple of college students, two bricks and mortar laborers, a guy and his coy, obedient wife obviously returning from some kind of a marriage or a similar family function.
The cop then looked at the driver questioningly. And the driver committed his second blunder in the space of ten minutes. He told the cop that everyone in the car was on election duty?! The cop inspected the diverse crowd again. And said with a mocking tone: “Is mein se ek bhi election duty pe hai to main tere ko jaane doonga.” And asked for the driver’s license, took it and walked away.
Someone in the car berated the driver: “Abey jhooth to bheja laga ke bol”
Some wisdom in that. The driver probably thought that driving a BMC car made him above the law; a law which anyways didn’t bother about taxis carrying people to their destinations. And then, when the law apprehended him, he thought he was smart enough to lie through it. Any self respecting traffic policeman would have taken offense.
Anyways, I and my other IT sales colleague left the car and took another share cab. Maybe we should have stuck around and seen the hapless driver through his troubles. He was after all rendering a service to us. But the driver did not inspire a lot of loyalty in his customers. Everyone branched out and he was left to deal with his problems himself.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Not-so-romantic Autowallah
I had taken an auto to my gym and the autowallah turned out to be one of those chatty kinds. And his types are never short of an anecdote to entertain their passengers. So he told me, unasked, the story of the passengers before me.
There was a couple before me who was coming from Thakur Complex to Saibaba Nagar. And the autowallah told me that he got them to Saibaba Nagar from Dahisar Flyover, which unless you are from around the area means nothing to you. Suffice to say that the route was at least 5 times longer than the normal road that the autowallah should have taken.
I was about to censure the autowallah for his unethical behavior with a speech of how autos and the honesty and dedication of autowallahs is the pride of Mumbai. Well, at least compared to the slimy, rude, greedy, and basically ass-hole autowallahs from places like Bangalore and Chennai and the likes. Not to say that all autowallahs are bad in these places, but most of them are.
But before I could heap my curses on my autowallah, he told me that it was the couple who wanted to take the longer route. This is how the conversation progressed:
Me: Itne lambe raaste se kyun laye unko?
Autowallah: Unhone hi bola. Unka kissing chalu tha peeche.
Me: Oh. Tab theek hai.
Autowallah: mere ko kya problem hai. Mera to meter chal raha tha. Unko jo karna hai woh kare. Bas gaadi nahi hilaana mangta hai.
Me: Gadi bhi hilaate hai kya log?
Autowallah: Arrey kya bharosa couple ka. Koi apne ko paas kare to apun ki gaadi mein dekhna nahin chahiye. Warna kya sochenge log. Mere ko bhi disturb hota hai na.
Me: Sahi hai.
Well. What do I say? For a lot of people who live in sparrow nest sized houses in joint families, don’t have cars, and can’t get a public place to canoodle with their lovers, autos have become the private space for the purpse. It’s not that these couples are not aware that the autowallah would know what they are doing in the back seats. But in the crowded place that Mumbai is, knowing that only one person is aware of their tender moments is a better devil than every passer by witnessing their romantic actions. And the autowallahs don’t really make an issue of it. God bless their souls! And the couples don’t even mind the occasional over-taker on the road peeking and catching a glimpse of a quick kiss. Or a hearty smooch. How would those couples love autos with doors!
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Romantic Autowallah
In the cynical world we live in it’s all too commonplace to treat people who display affection publicly with anything from a snicker to contempt. While autowallahs are more dismissive and indifferent to couples who snuggle up, in the most platonic sense of the term, in the back seats during a trip through the by-lanes or highways of the city, they (autowallahs) run out of patience when one half of the couple has to be left somewhere and the couple takes forever to finish it’s good byes. And I can’t say that I blame them really. It’s one of those things you can’t help dishing out if you are a part of a couple.
But then there was this one time, quite, quite some time back, when I had to drop my girlfriend someplace and continue with the auto. And the autowallah behaved completely out-of-script. As I asked him to stop the auto at my girlfriend’s destination, (I had told the autowallah that one of us would leave there and I would continue the auto) and as soon as he pulled over his auto, he left and went about twenty feet away for no apparent reason. He was just standing there, gazing at stars and passing cars and trees and appreciating the beauty of the world, it seemed. It was clear he wanted to give me and my girlfriend some privacy for our farewell ritual. And when she left, he promptly came back and drove me away.
And that’s it. I never really thanked him. And he didn’t start of on a rant of how romantic a guy he was. He just silently drove and I paid the fare when I got off and that’s the last I ever saw of him. I can’t put in words what exactly I felt then. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling of gratitude or anything of that sort. I guess it was just… hope… that there are some people who genuinely believe, and practice, the philosophy of “live and let live”. May his tribe increase! And world could be so much better a place to live in!
But then there was this one time, quite, quite some time back, when I had to drop my girlfriend someplace and continue with the auto. And the autowallah behaved completely out-of-script. As I asked him to stop the auto at my girlfriend’s destination, (I had told the autowallah that one of us would leave there and I would continue the auto) and as soon as he pulled over his auto, he left and went about twenty feet away for no apparent reason. He was just standing there, gazing at stars and passing cars and trees and appreciating the beauty of the world, it seemed. It was clear he wanted to give me and my girlfriend some privacy for our farewell ritual. And when she left, he promptly came back and drove me away.
And that’s it. I never really thanked him. And he didn’t start of on a rant of how romantic a guy he was. He just silently drove and I paid the fare when I got off and that’s the last I ever saw of him. I can’t put in words what exactly I felt then. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling of gratitude or anything of that sort. I guess it was just… hope… that there are some people who genuinely believe, and practice, the philosophy of “live and let live”. May his tribe increase! And world could be so much better a place to live in!
