Posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5BeWdODPqo
Vaa thalaivaa. Nee vaa. Thani aazha vaa. un styloda vaa. Why? Because un vazhi thani vazhi.
How to get things done in Bangalore
When you move to a new city, the most common dilemma is how to get things done. You need to change your driver’s license, buy and register a home and car. The list goes on. How easy or difficult is it to do this in Bangalore? And do you need to grease the wheels as it were?
The answer to both is yes, but it is not in the way that you might imagine. When my husband went to register his company, for example, the killer app that he discovered for all negotiations was numerology. He didn’t want to pay a bribe. When the government official senses this, he or she has only one choice: to make life difficult by prolonging the time or posing obstacles. To both, a good answer is numerology.
When the officer behind the desk said that the name of the company had to be changed because it didn’t conform to the rules (a blatant lie), my husband’s response was, “Sir, but my astrologer said that this is numerologically correct.” To his shock, the officer accepted the explanation.
Similarly, when a female officer said that she couldn’t sign the files because she needed more documents. “Return next week,” she ordered. His reply? “Madam, today is a shubha muhurtha (auspicious day). I will ask my colleague to bring the documents now itself and will wait however long for you to sign.” Again, she was stymied and had no response. After a few hours of waiting, she did sign the papers.
The next question is about bribing officials for approvals. In this, there is a fork. Some people are philosophically against bribes, and perhaps we all should be. Some are pragmatic and believe that this is the only way to get things done in India. How about a compromise? How about a gift package containing an educational book, chocolates, and a metre of fabric? A friend does this. The rationale is that this is a donation towards a good cause. The educational book will, well educate a child– specifically the RTO officer’s child. The chocolates? Well, they can be shared by all the peons in the office. As for the fabric? That is a multi-purpose solution to many problems. It could, for example be used to cover the dusty files in the RTO office. In that sense, my friend’s gift is a service to the country. It conforms to American President Kennedy’s famous question: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for you country.” Is it a bribe? Yes and No. Does it get your license re-registered to Karnataka? Yes.
Once you settle down, then you need a steady supply of things which today are easy to find because social media knows more about your likes and dislikes than even your mother does. Its algorithms curate a list of delectable objects and things you can buy, ranging from clothes, makeup and footwear to organic strawberries, composting pots and vegan handbags. All you need to do is click on what you see, order and buy.
There is one area where social media will not help at all and that is tailoring. If you, like me, believe that the pleasure of living in India is access to bespoke tailoring, you need to find a tailor fast and one who will work with you. Find one within your area. That is easiest. But I know women who come all the way to Commercial Street to stitch their clothes because it contains a concentration of talent and fabric material. How to work with these busy folks particular in the festive season, because ladies, you know this. Come Diwali, Christmas or Ramadan, the most important man in your life is not the spouse who stuns you with flowers, or the secret lover who sizzles in bed, or the son who cajoles you with puppy-eyes or the boss who is your card to that promotion. It is the tailor who will stitch a “katori-cut” blouse that will make you look like Tabu. So how to find the right tailor?
First of all, the question is wrong. You don’t need a right tailor. You need ten right tailors because the sad truth is that they will all fail you at some point, and you need an out. The trick with negotiating with tailors is that you need to be able to threaten and follow through. There is no point saying, “Give it a week before Ramadan or I will go elsewhere,” if you have no backup. The second thing to realise is that these are temperamental artisans who you should not threaten. Instead, you should cajole. You should do some drama, tell them stories about how a wedding is happening in the family and you want, no need, to wear the blouse that he has stitched because it is the only thing that works in your life. Shed a few tears and watch the magic happen.
The same thing applies for every repair person who enters your home to fix toilet flushes, curtains or loose doors. Sure, you have to negotiate for the price and try to get them to deliver within a certain time, but at some point, you have to call it. “This does not work for me. Let me find someone else,” you have to say. And mean it.
That is when things will happen. Indians you see, are masters of brinksmanship. You see it in our roads where the truck will come straight at you, expecting you to get out of the way. In such situations, you cannot blink and fall for the threat. You too have to go full blast and straight ahead till either he or you swerves in the last minute and hope that you don’t hit the nearby cyclist who is doing his own version of brinksmanship.
by Shoba Narayan, Hindustan Times, August 2, 2023
Avan, Aval Adhu 434
The four windows of the room they were in were all sealed shut and long curtains hung over them covering their presence. Running a finger over a shelf, Madhu saw that her finger carried no dust and looked up at the two fans that were spinning furiously and said, ' I hear a humming noise, Jaanu ' and Ravi pointed towards the other end of the room, ' Dehumidifier plus an air purifier.'
He looked at her for a second and then slowly walked towards the window and pushing the curtain away, stared at all the armed commando team who were falling over themselves to take the plates that were being offered to them by Rasaathi Ammal, Daksha, and Parthiban.
' My mother is a regular food factory ' Ravi observed fondly and glanced at Madhu who stood leaning against him as she too took in the world outside the window.
' Madhu ' Ravi whispered her name and she responded, ' Jaanu, something is troubling you. Do you want to talk about it?'
' Yes. I do.'
Stepping back, she leaned against the wall with her arms folded across her chest and said, ' Okay.'
Pointing to the men outside the window who were eating as if they had never eaten before, ' Who are they and what are they doing here and why them?'
Madhu who had been expecting him to expand on the subject of their marriage was lost for an answer and her answer reflected her state of mind.
' They are here to provide security for all of us, Ravi.'
' Yes. That is obvious, Madhu, and would be an obvious assumption by someone who has no clue about Government security forces. But...' he looked out and said, ' Those are not your normal security forces. By that I mean those who belong to the elite SPG ( Special Protection Group ) who provide protection for the Prime Minister himself.'
' Jaanu, how do you know that? I mean how can you tell the difference?'
Ravi smiled, ' I have seen with my own eyes, the SPG group that protects Mr. Modi when he visited Madurai a few years ago. I was given the privilege of taking a photo with him, by courtesy of my uncle, Dharmalinga Thevar and I know their logos very well.'
Pointing to the men outside, ' These men, this team is different in so many ways and on so many levels. For example, their logo. It is different just like these men are different. I wonder what their training must be like...'
' Chakravyuh.'
Ravi turned and stared at Madhu who smiled, ' And there ends my knowledge about them. I am not even sure about that name although my heart tells me that it is them.'
' Chakravyuh. A fancy name ' Ravi said and looked at Madhu, ' So, once more, I ask you, what is the reason for the presence of this elite team in my house and in this small village of Kumarapalayam.'
' I have no idea, Jaanu and I doubt if we will be able to get more information about them and their reasons for being here. But, I will try to find out more about them later. After, we have finished talking about our wedding.'
Ravi shook his head and smiled, ' I am ready to get married right now, Madhu. But are you? ' and raising his hands in surrender, ' I mean no offense with them words.'
Sighing tiredly, ' I tried calling her. That is all I can do and have been doing all these years. Trying and trying my best. But to no avail.'
Placing a soft kiss on her mouth, ' Try and keep trying. Your peace, happiness, and your family are more important to me than our getting married.'
Every morning, a man walked his four dogs in the park. Three of them always darted about, barking happily, tails wagging with delight. The fourth seemed happy enough but would only ever run around in tight little circles (albeit covering quite a distance), staying close to the man as he walked. Day after day, the park keeper watched the dog’s strange behavior. After a while, the keeper plucked up the courage to ask the man why his dog was behaving so oddly.
“Ah,” the man replied. “She’s a rescue dog. She was locked up for most of her life. That was the size of her cage.”
How often have you behaved like that dog? Free, but constantly running around in little mental circles. Free to be happy, yet caged by the same dark, repetitive thoughts. Free to be at peace with yourself and the world, while remaining trapped and entangled by anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion.
Free as a dog in a cage
So much of life is needlessly marred by little tragedies such as these. Deep down, we all know that we are capable of living happy and fulfilling lives, and yet something always stops us from doing so. Just as life seems to be within our grasp, it slips through our fingers. Although such periods of distress seem to appear from nowhere, they actually arise from deeply buried psychological forces.
Chetan Bhagat: The night watchman
Revisiting ‘One Night @ The Call Center’, the story of an entire generation forced into a virtual boot camp to service Americans
By Kaveree Bamzai, India Today, October 31, 2005 (updated, August 3,2023)
In cinema, there have been two notable attempts to chronicle the outsourced Indian -- the yet-to-be released feature film American Daylight, and Toronto Film Festival’s documentary hit, Ashim Ahluwalia’s John & Jane.
Which is what makes Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ The Call Center (or ON@TCC, as he likes to call it) so vital. Unpretentiously written, studded with dialogue worthy of a moderately enjoyable crossover film, the novel will probably find its way into the bookshelves of the very community it ever so often trashes -- the marketeers always in search of youth flush with call-centre cash.
Do not for a moment expect deep character sketches or profound insights into the enormous sociological changes that a generation of bright under-achievers are going through, working in hi-tech versions of Dickensian sweatshops, selling and servicing ovens, dishwashers and refrigerators. It is Bhagat’s sobering snapshots of the reality of India Shining’s IT revolution that has the reader addicted. As in Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, there is a stereotype for everyone—Shyam, the good worker with low self-esteem; Vroom, the angry child of divorced parents; Priyanka, the pretty young thing under pressure to marry well (but one who has no qualms about downing vodka shots and “doing it” in the back seat of a Qualis); Radhika, the dutiful woman who marries beneath her and then gets dumped; Esha, the small-town glam girl with a navel ring who wants to be a model and ends up sleeping for it; and the overaged Military Uncle, who reflects the graying of call centres in a high turnover market.
So how did an investment banker who has worked in Hong Kong and Singapore for the past eight years manage to eavesdrop on the noisy world of text messages, pub crawls, wobbly English, perfect American accents, multiplex/mall dates and serial affairs? Bhagat, a personable and rather bouncy 31-year-old who seems so tireless that it is exhausting, has a gift for tapping into the zeitgeist. Five Point Someone, a novel which was a thinly veiled account of the IIT-IIM graduate’s years at IIT-Delhi, is still selling (apparently 1.35 lakh copies and counting), not surprising given the hunger for anything connected to the engineering institutes. It is a book that has taken Bhagat, who symbolises the hip rebranding of IITs, from talks at IIT-Kanpur to discussions at Step by Step school in Jaipur, where a Class VII student asked him, “Sir, who do you love more? Neha (his heroine in Five Point Someone) or your wife?”
Bhagat researched his second novel for over six months and spent a year writing it. He was helped by his sisters-in-law (both of them work in call centres) as well as an array of cousins. “It is a surreal sort of life, not a career as much as an income-earner, and executing it as a novel was tough, given that every day is almost like the other.” But Bhagat says he was driven by an almost missionary obsession to tell the story of an entire generation being forced into a virtual boot camp to service dumb Americans. As Vroom puts it in the book, “All of us, up all night, providing crutches for the white morons to run their lives â€æ do jobs we hate so that we can buy stuff—junk food, coloured fizzy water, dumbass credit cards and overpriced shoes.” Says Bhagat: “I could have tried to get a huge advance from an international publisher and got into the cocktail circuit, but I genuinely wanted to do something meaningful. We have so many young people and yet a government run by old people cannot provide real jobs for them.”
Such undergraduate zeal finds its way into the book as well, which probably makes the climax—a call from God which shows every protagonist the way forward—a bit difficult to digest. But such is the enthusiasm of Bhagat’s writing (his inspirations are as varied as Joseph Heller and DBC Pierre) and so interesting are the nuggets (from a tour of Delhi’s dating hot spots to New Age gifts like ringtone downloads) that the book is what the writer promises: good entertainment, away from the “done-to-death plot of the immigrant’s tension in a foreign land”.
Like his first novel, it is also somewhat cathartic for Bhagat, who says he turned to writing as a form of therapy because he was constantly undermined by a “mean and stupid boss”. Not much of a writing type in school, he claims he was more the kind who made people laugh by talking and misbehaving nonstop, “the kind of student whose parents get embarrassed when they come for PTA meetings, because there are so many complaints”. Well, no one’s complaining now. Except perhaps the unfortunate Americans.
From the India Today archives (2005)
By Kaveree Bamzai, India Today, October 31, 2005 (updated, August 3,2023)
| topics | author | replies | views | reply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leprechaun | 1023 | 16846 |
comment:
p_commentcount