Book Reflections : The Shattering of the Soul

How long does a good person remain good ? The true test of the goodness of a person may lie in extreme conditions that test it. They say the strongest of tyres are tested on the toughest of roads. Is your neighbour good, will he remain good to you in times of trouble ? Wait a minute, ask muslim widows who are victims of the Bosnian war. We don't get a very enthusiastic answer that we normally face. Most of us live under "normal" conditions, so it helps to assume an average goodness in the people around us. It's necessary too. However, in times of war, or war-like riots, the same human, acts differently, as if possessed by a war ghost. 

 

The book, "The Shattering of the Soul", which I just completed, captures this aspect of human nature. It captures the stories of war misery of 10 Bosnian muslim women, in a first hand account of their experiences on how the ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs during 1992-95 unfolded, and how their lives were changed overnight. All the accounts have plenty of the events in common, that makes it a little repetitive in detail. They would all say, roughly, “We had a house and a farm, and we grew our food. War broke out, we were invaded and looted. We fled. We want to go back to our roots, but what is left but ruins?”. 

 

But, if you read one story at a time, during train travels as I did, you see the common thread not just of the events, but of both evil and good in man. You see that all grief is similar to the onlooker, yet each grief is different for the victim. The feelings of the common people in a typical village are so different from the ones who might have initiated the wars, but the stories of war travel far and wide to create more wars and more misery. It is as if the ethnic war ghost is a virus that spreads like an epidemic. It spreads, not through touch or food, but through the shreaks in the voices and fiery red eyes of patients infected with hysteric rage. It causes a clouded vision of the world and makes you hate thy neighbour as your enemy. 

 

The Museum of Tolerance provides an online version of the book for free : http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394691

 

The book speaks of how the Bosnian families were protected by the Serbian neighbours of the same village, although it was Serbians who looted them. The Serbian neighbour would stand up for them, they would stop their Serbian soldiers and say, “This one here is a decent family. They don't have weapons. Spare them.” . Yet another would say, “Take my life before you touch that child”. Some others may not stand as upright, but they would smuggle cheese and other food supplies for their Bosnian neighbours. Some would warn them in time so they could go into the woods and stay for days, till the invaders came and looted their houses and went back. After the houses were devastated, some would at least call them for a coffee in the afternoon to their house. How many of us can manifest goodness in the face of threat to our lives ?

 

They also speak of how, in some other cases, the very same Serbian neighbours who were close until the previous day, would participate in the loot of the Bosnian house. Some said they had to point guns at their Bosnian muslim neighbours, because otherwise, their own Serbian clan would kill them. They would make the youth from the Bosnian families work like a slave. The victims mention how they were clueless that the very faces whom they met across the street everyday would land at their door, demanding to chase them out and loot their houses. 

 

Until then, they were neighbours who helped each other build their houses. The houses were built by the neighbours lending a hand to each other, except for the roof, which would be given to the professional. The houses that were self-built and built as a shared labour between Bosnian and Serbian families would be destroyed, looted, the doors and windows or whatever was left just taken away by the invaders. Families with children had to move over to Slovenia, leaving all property back in their village, travelling long distances, even having to bribe for their paperwork to move out. Mosques on the way would arrange some food for the children of the migrating victims. The stories distinctly recall, how it was all fine till one day when the war started and the news of war arrived in the village and neighbours become archenemies. 

 

Which of these two is true human nature ? How does one know which part of Man will manifest when ? I can't help but think of similar stories from the Gujarat Riots of 2002 or the exodus of North-East people from Bangalore in 2012. 

 

As the compiler of the stories admits, the book captures only the view of select Bosnian Muslim victims, there are no stories about Serbian or Croatian victims, which must be equally mentioned. But as the epilogue argues, that is not much relevant. "Human suffering due to mutual hatred is universal, and by presenting the suffering of some we are presenting the suffering of all". 

 

Sri Ramakrishna tells an interesting story about two brothers fighting for land. They were on either side of the disputed border and were quarelling at the top of their voice, about the patchy border. “It's mine”, one said. “No, it's mine”, yelled the other. Voices grew into arms, arms grew into bruises, bruises grew into attacks and soon they both dropped dead at the border. God, who was watching the fight from above, felt funny. “Well, whose land is this now ?” He asked. There were no owners left to answer. 

 

After I read the book, I felt like listening to A R Rahman's song from 1947 Earth : "Ishwar Allah Tere Jahan Pe". It's a beautiful song that captures the questions that would have, surely arisen in the minds of those war victims rendered homeless, with their souls shattered and their hopes killed. From the ruins of their houses and ashes of their families, some seeds of hope must have flown across the Slovenian border. They wanted to come back and they wanted to live. But they had to choose between the two. The ghost of war abandoned their villages, and now went to possess some other race, tribe or religion, elsewhere on earth. But they had to struggle, rebuilding their lives and houses in another distant land. This time, without a neighbour, to lend a helping hand. 

 

Like that song asks: 

 

So many screams, who will hear the voice of love ? 

So many dreams shattered, who will gather the pieces ? 

 

The song is verily a Prayer for Peace. 

The link is here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha2zTxnROJg

 

#NoWar #MusOfTolerance A.R.Rahman

On Success, death and Steve Jobs

A friend's post on Facebook drew my attention to an article about the posthumous tribute-wave for Steve Jobs. For a quickie without following the conversation elsewhere, the article says 'Steve Jobs wasn't great, he wasn't even close' . Among other things, it draws a comparison in terms of greatness, to Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine and gave it free, deciding not to patent it. In other words, who is greater and, mummy, why is Steve Jobs getting all the attention ? I wouldn't have noticed if Ramnath didn't mention it, but after he did, I noticed that it was a 'sad essay, with weak arguments and too many fallacies'.

Great is a generic adjective that spans many fields. For example, a great musician, a great emperor, a great surgeon and so on. You cannot exactly compare greatness in one field with another and often, greatness in certain times, with other times.

In the field of, say, technology business, and in his times he was greater than many of his contemporaries. He did things differently. Many clicked, some didn't, some clicked later. He was thrown out of his company and staged a comeback and then staged a turnaround and rebuilt the fascination full circle. He might have been heavy-headed, but lot of creative/successful people are that. In the field that he chose as his passion, he manifested that passion into results that satisfied him and those he sought to impact. Such success was also acknowledged by others. That, in itself, is what only a small percentage, get to do.

He chose expensive style for his products, and was convinced there was a market for it. In all possibility he could have flopped, thats what the gurus would have got to say. But he defied tradition, the current market gyaan, and clicked, not once, but time and again. To have an intrinsic sense for a niche market, spot it and pursue it, entails the risk of stepping out of your comfort zone and being ready to sink in the process. You need to be grounded in your security with your own self, to be able to confront and conquer the insecurity in the world. It's the stuff true entrepreneurs are made of, or seek to be. We can't think like them and they can't think like us. They better not.

The article questions people's assumptions, success = greatness. But the article also assumes, charity > commerce. Coming from the charity bastion, I should have jumped to agree with the latter, but, sadly, not yet. Even if it were true, I guess we are too far away from that . Those beautiful times are yet to come. It requires our entire civilization, or huge parts of it, to think differently, on complexly intertwined issues: regarding our motivation, our money, our work ethic and our duty as a human on earth. And it will take lots of births for all of us to get there. Call it the critical mass for compassion or the escape velocity for enlightenment. Like in climate change, we have a reputation for refusing to learn until we get whacked thoroughly by Mamma Earth. Inner climate change is not going to be any simpler and Pappa God is going to have a tough time handling us. Hearts, take a lot more time to melt than glaciers. Questions like these are important to contemplate, but the answers need to be well-written.

Finally, think of the praises that arrived as like people attending a e-funeral. A life gone unnoticed or less noticed (say, Salk) is not any different from a life gone well-noticed, after it has gone, that is. In the former case, lives were impacted, sure, but most people may not have related to the individual, so they didn't write. In Steve's case, he too impacted and, it so happens, many people seem to relate to the individual, because the device was such. Interestingly, I noticed a billboard at the Kundarapalli Gate signal in Bangalore, a huge billboard ad by a real estate developer, saying just 'RIP Steve'. It's still an ad, but it shows people who used the devices fell head over heels for the brand. To connect two obituaries and compare their impact, would be like comparing the tears of two funerals, one with 10 people and another with 1000 people. Sorrow is the same for everyone. Death is a great equalizer in that sense.

Of course, great is different from good. To evaluate goodness is a larger call, you need to be able to evaluate the interplay of motives, constraints, values etc and in the light of the operating environment. Goodness is all-inclusive, includes personal life, relationships and even preservation of monuments :) :) , which Steve Jobs wasn't particular about . Greatness, on the other hand, is more explicit, can be segmented into streams, and therefore gets evaluated quickly and easily. You can't evaluate your goodness, because that'll be biased. Others can't, because they have incomplete information. Only God can, but He doesn't publish the papers. What to do ? :) :)

Yes, there was a good Steve and the bad Steve in the same person. Even in judgement, it's sad that someone with such business acumen, had to fall for a fatal over-belief in alternative medicine. People who praise the good Steve may choose to ignore the bad Steve. But, isn't it true that all of us suffer from the good-bad dichotomy ?

That is why the scriptural prayers say : Lead us from darkness to light, falsehood to truth. Lead us from proprietary software to open source. Trap us not into Apple, but deliver us from Microsoft. Give us our daily bread and butter, Facebook and Twitter. But don't lead us to immortality, it gets boring. Life without an end, will be like watching a terrible movie in a dirty theatre, all the time you are wondering, when will the movie end and the mosquitoes stop, and the lead jodi is still dancing around the trees and rolling on the hills , on the screen. Death, disease and dumping are part of the grand game. Sing a kolaveri song to release your stress, and move on to make your life colorful, cheerful and creative. Like a Mac.

Oops, for fair disclosure, like the author, even I don't own an Apple device or share. :) . And probably, that's why I am like this !

21 Brahmachari Eccentricities

I have an untested, home-grown, humorous hypothesis : That is, Brahmacharis develop eccentricities over a long period of time. They exhibit some or other kind of eccentric behaviour or mannerism. This is not true, of course, it’s just a story. This blog post itself is eccentric. Still, I went on to collect some data. I had to use my phone to record notes over a few weeks at all times, because when the Brahmacharis pass by and eccentricities appear, you have to note them down when you spot them. I compiled a few Brahmachari eccentricities that I observed in the Brahmachari world around me, then imagined a few more, mixed some of this and that, so that people don’t make out which is which. Arundhati Roy style.

Before I get into the light-hearted list, here is some serious gyaan.

Why does this happen ? Why might Brahmacharis develop eccentricities ?

See, simply put, this is what happens if you are not steadfast in your Sadhana and not regular at your midnight meditation.

However, the main reason it happens is a misleading interpretation of the word “independence”. When you are unmarried and staying alone, you are free to do whatever you wish and you indeed go about doing just that. If you are married, Ah, this possibility shrinks quite a bit. On every decision, you might have to consult at least one more person, who has equal veto-power and can bring in additional voting candidates like your parents or in-laws. You want to buy Sony or Samsung ? You want to paint Blue or Brown ? You want to wear White or Black and you want me to wear Blue or Green ? It so happens that God puts the opposites together, so that one may complement the other and learn from the other, so every decision is a parliamentary procedure. You can’t do strange eccentric things, you may get whacked, chided or advised by your spouse, depending on what is your acceptable form of instruction. You will be gently requested to live according to the world around you and if you don’t listen, first ‘gently’ will go and then ‘requested’ will go. A person, more cool-headed, balanced and smarter than you, is walking with you and you have to be aware of the presence.You will constantly be called upon to rise up to expectations.

Neways, what do I know of the married world, except for those surmises ? Don’t ask a monk how he knows the things he knows. If you are not married, you think you have none of these boundaries. So you take your independence to the extreme and end up doing all eccentric things, because there is nobody at the peer level to ask.

Then, there is this conviction called : ‘I will do whatever I feel is right’. While this is a good thing, you take it to the very extreme, and you end up doing things that feels good only for you. You think you are following your conscience, which is a very serious matter and a wonderful thing. May be you are. But you may refuse to consider the possibility, that other people around you may be following their respective consciences with as much earnest. May be, two consciences can be in conflict. If that’s not possible, one of you may not be following the conscience after all, you may be following some other buffalo (like your mind). Whatever, taking this to the extreme, causes you to disregard what others think as an acceptable behaviour. It creates a self-centered approach to choices, partly calling it joy of independence, partly calling it conscience and what turns out is an eccentricity that I can blog about.

As the 7 habits book says, interdependence is a greater value than independence. We loosely talk of terms like financial independence, professional independence, creative independence and so on. But, at the end of the day, we are Prema Pipasis, we hanker for love, both of the mundane human kind and of the higher spiritual kind. If everyone were to be independent, there would be no one at the dinner table to share stories. Interdependence creates a better environment of togetherness and promotes love rather than independence.

Oh oh, enough of the analysis paralysis. This post was intended to be an attempt at humour. Let’s get into some lively worldview.

So here, in one of the largest ever research on Brahmachari eccentricities… 21 of them, in no particular order.

1. You put a “STAFF” board on your bicycle, in huge saffron letters. As if it is proactive compliance with RTO and thieves will check out the informative board and then keep away. You know the cycle repair guy tells some story every time and robs you of a lot of money, but you think you are helping the local economic ecosystem by providing him business opportunities and the cascading effect will benefit the whole town. You call it Gullibility with Full Awareness. What a concept !

2. You are stationary, but your parts are mobile. You keep twiddling, turning, clasping your fingers, biting your lips, scratching your head, shaking your legs (horizontally and vertically, alternatively). As if all the wood-boring Beetles in the Mummy movie have entered your body through all the holes. Drawing your tongue deep inside as if you are sipping a cool drink and releasing it as if it wasn’t tasty enough. Rubbing the chair’s handle so much that after a while, you have reached the wood after wearing out the cushion. You do all of this at the same time, so seamlessly that you don’t know where one process ends and the next one begins. Your motor nerves have a tough time handling data. You generate so much kinetic energy enough to power a household. When someone mentions this, you give the analogy of the ocean : waves on the surface, but deeep calm within, you say. Aha!

3. You think, the ladies mess up things. Always. Everything. You also think, they are emotional, they are difficult to deal with, they have more politics than the men. And loads of other such MCP opinions. You don’t know what that abbreviation means, You think they are all Maturely Considered Perspectives. You had to click on that link and look it up to know it is Male Chauvinistic Dot-dot-dot. You direct your ire particularly at nuns and spinsters.

4. You are more comfortable working with machines than with men. That’s because machines don’t have perspectives. You don’t have to be courteous to them. They are glad to get booted by you and they don’t complain ‘I got booted by my boss today’. They don’t lie and tell different answers to different people. They don’t mask hypocrisy with diplomacy. Those blue screen error messages are better than some confusing expressions put up by real people. Of course, there may be such things as Windows perspective and Linux perspective, but you can always keep them under dual boot or virtual machines, providing private space differently. A space that people hardly provide for you.

5. Apart from talking to real people, you do other kinds of talking. You talk to yourself. Sometimes, without a mirror. Pouring out, accusing people, that you can’t do for real. You talk in dreams and chase away Greek warriors in battle. You talk to your dog more than you talk to your friends. You even speak to the dog about your bank accounts and mutual fund investments. You blog as a therapy. You say the same thing again and again in conversation.'Did I tell you about my musician aunt in Thanjavur who fell from a tractor ?', you begin, not realizing that the poor listener has gone through the torture already. Some jobless listeners, they hear you out completely and even ask newer questions to elicit additional information. And then, they drop a last line, ‘Yeah, you mentioned this last week’. Huh !!

6. You never get angry. You are Sant No.1. In fact, you spend considerable amount of time sublimating your anger instincts, but you are not sure whether you are sublimating or suppressing. One fine morning, when you do get angry, the ceiling comes down, and even the sublimated impressions re-crystallize, liquefy in the heat and pour out as lava. This is a split personality disorder that manifests once in six months.

7. Nothing is useless to you. You keep collecting every single nut and bolt, pin and paper. Pamphlets and empty diaries are your favorites. You take pride that archaeologists 2000 years down the line will be able to reconstruct lost history of an entire civilization by excavating just the room where you lived. They are going to connect the dots in cuneiform script by matching the pictures in the pamphlets to the dates in the dairies. You have empty diaries, that SBI had gifted to Dadabhai Naoroji , which he passed on to your great grand mother’s servant maid. Every year, you think you will use the diary for “time management”, to keep a log of, when you got up, when you had noodles etc. Personal Growth, you think. You haven’t used the rotting, rusting stuff in years, but you always want to use all of them tomorrow. ‘Just in case I require’, you know. The only good thing out of this unlimited inventory is the polythene bags you keep. At least, they save the environment. Although you are incapable of such a noble intention, it’s just an incidental benefit to mankind, apart from the archaeological ones.

8. When you see a boy and a girl talking to each other in the post office, you think, they are upto something. Upto what ? You wish in all the world, that they broke all the societal shackles and told you what they are upto, but sadly, that doesn’t happen. You don’t want to consider the straightforward naive possibility that a girl might just be borrowing a pen from the boy. Things can’t be that simple, a pen can lead to anything, you know. Curious, you come to post office the next day at the same time, because you watched a Maniratnam movie and you are expecting something to happen. Oh sad, it’s some other boy, some other girl and some other pen this time. You deliberately left your pen at home and came, but you feel shy to ask. You are hoping someone will come and ask you, ‘Do you need a pen ?’ and then compliment you by saying ‘Nice T-shirt there’. But, it doesn’t happen, you buy a new pen and write the address and go home. You spend entire lifetimes in such misplaced wishful thinking and unanswered curiosity at every post office, ATM and bus stand. Phew.

9. You are so desperate for good food that you go to the canteen with ghee (or Amul butter cubes), 2 types of pickle in bottles, Podi(2 types again) and Chips, all of them as side-dishes to your meal. You ask for more chutney and sambar than the total mass of the idlis, maximizing value for money. The board ‘Outside food not allowed’ seems so intimidating to your kind of eating habits. The good part is you share it with everyone around. This food urge can take other forms. You are waiting for your indirect aunty, three levels away in the family tree (or any aunty for that matter) to invite you for a home lunch. As they say in Dil Chahta Hai, ‘we go anywhere for a piece of cake’. On festival days like Deepavali, you even schedule your lunch/dinner offers and space them out at regular intervals, getting choosy at which item is best at which home, putting up a reasonable performance at each location.

10. Someone sends a wedding invitation over email, and you are thinking whether to wish him or not. Where does the question arise? Even for wishing over email, you go through three levels of complicated algorithms to arrive at that dilemma. Finally, you go to the reception. You are talking to people, but you are feeling lonely. You wanted to go for the wedding, but after reaching you wonder why you came. You have been collecting sayings like :

• Marriage is like a besieged fortress where people who are inside, want to get out and people are outside, want to get in.
• Married people have one set of problems and the unmarried ones, well, have another set. Problems still.

You are waiting for the every little opportunity to use these sayings. You want to make married people feel guilty and unmarried people feel confused. You finish your food before the couple arrive on stage. Got to save on time, you see.. Food is good, but you when you reach the couple to wish them, you finally say, Happy Birthday. Hmm. You are uncomfortable being photographed, and more uncomfortable standing on the bride’s side, even though you are standing three people away outside the camera’s range.

11. You carry a great feeling of brotherly oneness, but only when you are using things that belong to someone else. ‘Ah, our brother only na, he wont mind ya’ is your local delivery of Vasudaiva Kudumbakam. Someone has given chocolates to your room-mate for safekeeping in the fridge and you have already nationalized it without the slightest hesitation or ethical dilemma. The thumb rule is : If it can be used by you, it can be used by me.

12. In the school, in the Indian Pledge, they taught you ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters’. You believed it, took it seriously and now you don’t know how to provide for exceptions. You haven’t grown up since. In fact, you don’t want to grow up, because, there is this sweet feeling of not growing up. After all, grown-ups have problems, don’t they ? You don’t realize that modern young women working in multinational banks hate to be called ‘Akka’ by their male colleagues, because it makes them sound so old. It looks outrageous to you that you can call them by their name and they would prefer that indeed. You still want to add a ‘ji’ to their name, just in case. After all this conservative build-up, you finally end up treating foreigners as exceptions to the Indian pledge and get ready for a cross-cultural revolution.

13. You think fluorescent orange, fluorescent green are good colours. You wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t agree with your aesthetic tastes. . Saree choices: you get confused so much, you give up and buy whatever the sales girl suggests, as if the sales girl thinks exactly like your niece. You don’t know that there are things like male colors and female colours. You also wonder how gender differences can be attributed to non-living things, like gents watches and ladies watches, gents footwear and ladies footwear, gents purse and ladies purse. They are just functional instruments, right ?, why do they complicate choices ? Why not have gents cars and ladies cars, gents keyboard and ladies keyboard, gents mosquito repellent and ladies mosquito repellent ? Thus goes your orrriginal thinking.

14. You are so much established in Vedanta, you have mastered the art of detachment so much that you can right-click and choose attachment or detachment. You come up with complicated phrases, like, attachable detachment and detachable attachment, which only the Brahmachari community understands. At a given point of time, you can be emotionally connected but spiritually disconnected. This can baffle people at times, because they are trying to find out what mode you are operating in, are you interested or not interested ? It’s like the loose contact of the network cable to your laptop. Every time before you press Enter, you have to check whether it is connected or not.

15. You have no clue how to handle kids, particularly infants. If someone gives a baby to you for a few minutes for caretaking, you start sweating. You think they are going to scream anytime. And just when you thought that, it does scream. Their cheeks get red and you think it needs medical attention. You are always wondering whether it is going to do the zing thing on your lap-top, causing you to rinse your clothes. You have strange concepts from nowhere, like, ‘if you spend lot of time with kids, you may convert to making some of your own’. You are waiting for the Mummy or Daddy to come and get the baby back from you.

16. You go to a 5-star hotel with friends and have just curd rice. The waiter looks at you, as if your Mommy never fed you anything else for upbringing. You look at him back, brimming with pride that it’s indeed true. You shoot off into a speech to your friends on the wonderful effects it has. You recall with nostalgia, how, in your school days, you ate previous day’s rice soaked in water with curds and how it was instrumental in acquiring the vast intelligence you have now. Not knowing, that’s precisely, what the waiter will be bringing in a few minutes. And then you crib, ‘How can curd rice be so costly ?’. ‘Exclusive cow for you, Sir’, he explains.

17. When you want to describe a corporate scenario where two parties are fighting, you use the husband-wife analogy. When more parties join the fight, you start extending it by upto third wife, fourth husband and so on. If it’s software projects, it even extends to, my kid and your kid are fighting with our kids. You don’t realize that the project manager on the other end of the conference call, may be married and he may be raising his eye-brows at the way you are making his professional discussion more lively.

18. You do not know the difference between normal jokes and adult jokes. You think they are all the same. You even think, every normal joke has an adult significance. You don’t know which to use, when and where, to whom. Therefore, you draw twitches from people who listen to your jokes, instead of laughter. You wonder why the women in the gathering are not laughing but staring at you with a confused look like “what’s happened to this bloke”. Then you realize that you have told the wrong joke at the wrong place. But you repeat the mistake all over again at the next gathering with a different joke.

19. What is meant to be taken seriously, you take it as a joke.What is meant to be taken as a joke, you take it seriously. Like this post. You are an enigma.

20. You think, you don’t suffer from any eccentricity. It’s the rest of the world that is way off the orbit, particularly the married folks. The world revolves around you and it’s not doing it properly. You also use phrases like ‘Cha, married peepal, they are like that only no?’ or ‘Once you get married na, that’s all raa, gone case, booked forever, Govindaaa only’ and so on. To think you don’t have any eccentricity, may itself be one. Also, even a normal eccentricity found in normal people, you wrongly assume only Brahmacharis suffer from these eccentricities. It could be anyone. This misunderstanding can itself be an eccentricity.

21. And finally, some tidbits, all bunched into one item.

• You are scared to death, of dogs.You feel all the dogs in the world are out to get you and afraid even of sleeping dogs. Let the dogmatic dogs lie as they are.

• You think that a girl’s mind is programmed and re-programmable. By you.

• You think the whole world is there to listen to your bathroom singing and you distort the lyrics of sweet devotional songs with Mexican tribal drum sounds produced by you, because you think tunes transcend the lyrics.

• You carry a wide green sitting mat that looks like a flying magic carpet, occupying area worth three kadapa slabs. And yet you jostle for space.

• You have tea at the middle of the road at midnight, after a drama practice session, and want to call it Brahmachari independence.

• If someone names his book as Jyoti Rupa Sandhya Vandana and Gayatri Mahima, the title doesn’t look spiritual to you.

So, Which one of these, do you think, I suffer from ? Let me know in the comments.

Not that I’ll eliminate them. I’ll even out those eccentricities, get back into orbit and replace them with newer eccentricities, as part of personal growth. Different people have different eccentricities, and there as many eccentricities as there are people. So if yours is not on the list, put that in the comments and let others know.

I have no idea how the Brahmacharinees operate in this terrain. So if you feel this post has a gender bias or a chauvinistic angle, please know that it is not intended. Indeed, both genders are equally capable of going off the orbit. Do a simple find-replace and tweak the context a bit, you will get their side of the story. My guess is, it’s as complicated as it is on this side. But don’t break your rules and go to verify it, in Mohabbatein style.

If you think the eccentricity I am mentioning here refers to someone whom you know, keep quiet. Don’t put that in the comments and get me sued. We can giggle on that over a cup of coffee. I don’t know you, I disown all my readers regularly. Read Ram Gopal Varma’s disclaimer on Raktha Charithra. It’s all fiction and faction blurring into fact, occasionally. The rest is just accidental coincidence.

Your Smile means I am fine...

Similar to the incident where I met the 100-year old man, I happened to meet another elderly person. I was in the hospital to meet a friend and someone mentioned about this person and said he was also admitted in the same hospital for some ailment. I never knew him, I hadn't talked to him anytime before, but I knew he was a resident of the community. A couple of other friends also thought let's go and visit him although none of us knew him well. So we went to his ward. He knew only one among our group but he understood we are a gang. He must have been in his late eighties (or may be in early nineties). As we could see, his ailment had taken a heavy toll. The first thing that happens, I think, to some people who are otherwise healthy, well-built for a long time and suddenly fall sick in their old age is that, they lose their cheeky build and drastically reduce to a thin frame. He had great difficulty having food on his own and his wife was feeding him a semi-liquid from a cup. We thought it wouldn't be good manners to step in but they said its okay and moreover, it was already getting dark and we thought he might wish to take rest later. His wife was also in her eighties and still does voluntary work.

I felt that though his frame had reduced, the shine in his eyes had not. He mentioned about my friend's father and recollected how they went back a long time, though they had branched out into different workplaces. He was happy that we were visiting him although he actually knew only one of us. He said: I am not so sure about the ailment and the pain that has inflicted me, but when I see the (well-wishing) smile on your faces, then I know I am getting well. Your smile is a sign of my wellbeing. I had mentioned in an earlier post, that elderly couples, after a threshold age, go on to become good old buddies, with the bonding turning almost as a spiritual friendship. I felt the same way when I saw the old lady feeding her husband. Seldom do young couples pause to think that the test of true bonding lies far ahead later in life, that the best of fun times are only the beginning part of the wedding promises and keeping them up till the end is the proof of the pudding.

They both probably had come to the plain realisation that the ailment may be terminal. She mentioned, that the God they believed in, whatever He did would be good to them. Wow, I thought. It's easy to debunk or theorise about a belief in God, but it's tough to turn that faith, whatever God you may have, into a positive strength when it matters the most and when all our devices are shutting out in non-co-operation. You know that your most possessive possession so far, your own body, is giving way and you have to use the strength of something that is not made of body stuff. You don't even want to think of trying that, and even tougher to try it at 80+.

His strength was even better. Similar to the earlier incident, his mental strength was amazing. His voice was blurred so I couldn't get it verbatim, words came with breaks, but let me capture the main idea. He said : Suffering is a great test of your spirituality. For a long time, we have been 'knowing' the whats and hows of being spiritual, but in such a situation, it is a test to have the faith that My God is always with me. And I firmly believe He is with me. That the condition of the body is this or that doesn't matter, but in my mind I know, whatever happens we have His Blessings. This is the time to remember, and actually practise what we have always known all these years.

It set me thinking on suffering. Suffering, I agree with him, is really a great test of spirituality. Other times, you probably "apply" your spirituality "on others", to third party situations, but the acid test of your spirituality is when a real suffering touches you directly. Dhoodh kaa dhoodh, Paani kaa paani Ho Jayega. Buddha devoted his entire life in finding the answer for this one question. We live off our lives not bothering about it, as if it were out of syllabus, but dude, thats one sure question thats going to be on exam paper. For, old age and its accompaniments are a certainty and more often, such a certainty that we will most likely be all alone to handle the actual stuff. If at all you want to have an Either-Or choice, now is the time make that choice between becoming a Budda or a Buddha. The others can rally around you in support, speak nice words and may be even help you out, but there is no proxy for living out your pain. You have to do it, yeah scary it is, all by yourself, bit by bit. This requires a lifetime's preparation of your mind, brick by brick, to keep it strong in old age. When the body is strong, the mind may fritter away, but if such a frittering can be streamlined and built to be strong, then such a strength would come in handy when the body is on its withering way.

I and one of my friends are opposites in our lifestyles. There are many unhealthy elements in my lifestyle, I blog after midnight and I sleep late, I have a lot of junk food and less of healthy food, I live like a sin(e) curve, don't keep a standard schedule etc. Whereas he lives his life as if a clock decided to become a human being and bless the earth, and lives in a very simple straight line, while a few others run around in circles. :) . I often joke that he is like The Wall, stay and play, ball by ball and hit a slow century. Another friend of mine jokes that he spends the first 60 years in disciplined suffering so that he may live the next 20 happily, whereas others spend first 60 merrily and suffer the last 20. While I often quip away the flexi lifestyle to be the ultimate exercise of Brahamachari independence, I have to sheepishly agree when well-meaning friends often insist, will rolling eyes, that body will soon show its signs. Come to think of it, the jokes apart, my friend does have a healthier lifestyle than mine, and the compliment is not only about the body. The health of the mind that you acquire across years is going to be a major support when you have crossed most of your years. This recent quote about paradoxes on Prasanna's blog puts it well.

When we moved away from that hospital bed that night, after holding his hand reassuringly for a moment, wishing him the best and praying for his good health, we didn't know he would be no more within two weeks. But those two minutes of interaction with him had set us all thinking on why it is important to live a life in a particular way and not just in any way, anyway.

Spade and the Rose, Buddy and the Boss

Bablu had a lot of buddies at his workplace. He and his friends were a great gang who always used to hang out together. They worked for one of the 30 companies that comprise the Sensex, so life was a poor-fit sine curve of hectic days at the workplace and chilling out at parties and vacations. All of them had been recruited on campus in the same batch and now it was almost three years since. One fine morning, Bablu was called by their boss and asked to "mentor" the others in the gang and review parts of their work from time to time, as part of these leadership grooming exercises they have from time to time, percolating succession planning right upto the grassroots level. He suddenly found there were plenty of issues to be sorted out and needed review. Efficiency needed improvement, he had "discovered". Till recently he had been one of those who needed to be "sorted out" by his boss, but now he had to sort things out. Bablu was what they call the "soft-type" guy and often wondered how to tell the guys about the areas about their work. Hey we all grew up in the same farm, man, we had our meal from the same plate, that kind of feeling. During a riverside walk, He meekly put this question to another friend of his, Munna.

Munna is a one-man university. He always answers questions at any forum he comes across. He jumps with glee to hear the phrase "to anyone who has a point of view", even though he may not have any. When he sees "to whomsoever it may concern" on an invoice envelope meant for the checkpost, he naively thinks it's for him. He uses a customized version of an old adage and believes: Preach today what you want to practise some day. The riverside dust rose to give a hazy halo to Munna as he started doling out advice by the dozen, as if Gabriel had just deliberated with him inside the cave on this very topic and the whole duniya had gathered on the sands to listen to his gyaan. It was the Republic Day, and though the chat had nothing to do with patriotism, he used a red bench on the riverside as a pedestal to get a feeling of addressing the multitudes from Red Fort.
Excerpts:

It's usually tough, but only in the beginning. After a while, the "dog eats dog" world teaches the goodie softie folks the lessons in aggression and they, after having learnt them, have to "moderate" it with the goodness they have learnt before in their "pure" times. First of all, these buddies come in 2 types. One is a set of buddies whom we start out by occasional nice interactions but later graduate to a well-formed friendship. The other is a set of buddies who have come together "just like that", here to stay only for a short while with us and go their way after the temporary phases get over. And you can try the same way of interaction with both types, though the output will be different, I'll come to that later. In these situations, they say, it's better to be the natural YOU, however good or bad that might be. And grow as a person, over a period of time. If you are irritated because others are being unfair to you, there is nothing wrong in letting people know. A certain amount of anger, well-expressed, might actually be good for the body, the mind and even for the profession, the longterm health of the workplace and quality of work. You shouldn't rock the boat, of course, but that doesn't mean you have to suppress all your feelings to the level of indignation and compromise on basic objectives at the workplace. If you are uncomfortable, you should let people know about it. If you are uncomfortable doing even that, then, well, you shouldn't and probably wait for patience to wear out a little more, (not fully tear out), so you are better off expressing it. Others may be worse off by your expressing it, but thats fine, because you would have already decided that you have reached a threshold level. If at that time, still some part of you wants to be nice and not direct, (God help !)then you can try to minimize the embarrassment by hinting or sarcasm or trying to tell in a nice way.

The only problem might be : If we straightaway mention whatever comes to our mind aggressively and harshly, it's quite possible we get wrong and we are expressing our impulses without thinking like a brakeless bell-less bicycle. Not recommended. But if there is a pattern that is repeatedly happening and if you have thought about it coolly and fair to all parties, true to your basic objective and quality of work, then you should communicate your displeasure. There is nothing wrong with this. ( I have told you this before, but again, because removing guilt requires repeated scrubbing). Don't get "worked up" and "get mean" when you are communicating, although others might react in that way. Remember, if something has started to build up that recurs and haunts you, and if you know you are being fair to both sides, then it has to be expressed. In fact, if you don't express, you might be contributing to the inefficiency in the system and if you express, you will be acting true to your basic objectives although you may not please individuals. It's good that small mistakes have to be corrected immediately, sometimes, even with big punishments so that those small mistakes do not proliferate to become big mistakes one day. Like the robber in prison who blamed his mother because she never chided him for stealing a pencil as a kid in school.

The harsh extreme stance is that, each one is there to move their muscle and do a decent amount of work for the plump pay they receive. Managers who are ruthless are usually more efficient and well-defined but not without demerits. They either get "worked up" with impulsive anger and lose out on the personal touch (care a damn even if someone is sick or mourning). They will actually be a boon in handling "real thugs" or "junk idlers" by whipping them up a bit with their outbursts and threats, but if they try the same with another employee who has average motivation already, they might be harming the existing morale. Why are you always looking over my shoulder and breathing down my neck ?. And more often than not, their ruthlessness usually works only with their subordinates, and when it comes to interacting with their superiors, they will be forced to "moderate" their aggression. Or made to learn !! After all, they can't be ruthless with their boss, they would say ! Also, these are usually good at "technical" areas of work where things are usually well-defined as X or Y. They can, for example, demonstrate and snub their superior, by showing, that other things remaining the same, an X query, written by A runs thrice as fast as a poorly written Y query written by B. And to be fair and promote better quality work, you have to agree with that. But when it comes to people-driven work like team projects and management skills, a balance between how you speak and how you get work done, matters a lot for getting further work done :) !! There may be situations, when you call spade a spade, it might fall on your neck, next time you see it, you will start calling it a rose !! :)

That said, the actual methods may vary based on the circumstances. Assume, you want to mention to your buddies that quality of work is suffering. You can do that over a cup of tea. Or mention it in the office cubicle when all are present. You can even mention it when some are present, anyway it will reach the other intended recipients !! You can mention it to whomever you think is "closest" among the lot and whom you expect to be more understanding. You can say, "Hey, Of late, these things are happening, ya. It's not proper, no?. I mean, we can chill out all the time, but work is suffering.". Or you can make a logical appeal of the consequences of inefficiency. "see folks,if we keep on postponing carelessly then issues will unnecessarily build up, and later we only have to sit and sort out each of them painfully. Suddenly one fine morning, boss will wake up from hibernation :) there will be plenty of pressure and that time not a single soul will help us. So why not, finish off then are there. Not only that, we will also get some satisfaction that some parts of work are already finished, tied up and kept aside, right ?". In higher levels of management, they do this efficiency review talk at team meetings, they have to do the harsh talk at the office and attempt to make it up at parties and get-togethers. :) But it may be, that at your junta level, your office cubicle or the coffee machine is the maximum you can think of !.

Another approach is, to act like a pukka team lead or manager while in office and be a friend or a buddy outside. This is not to say, you should lose out on all the fun in the workplace. But along with all the fun in between, you can also (do some work) make and present the task list, give instructions, review things. In the beginning, your behaviour may be confusing, people wonder are you a buddy or are you a boss. But over a period of time, people know you for "work is work and fun is fun".

Either ways, be prepared for different types of reactions (in the short term) from different kinds of people. Might quite happen, some buddies start buzzing that "you have begun to show off" or "you have started to boss around" or "the power thing has gotten to your head" or "you want to impress your boss about your leadership". It is said, Power corrupts, Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. One can actually add here, "So say the powerless !! ". And probably the anyway corrupt. Hopefully, these should be a smaller segment. "Ignore them" would have been the easier thing to say, but in reality, it's tough to ignore an entire lot of people. Ignore their meanness, is a better way to put it. Be fair to them, whenever possible be kind and fish out their good suggestions from mean behaviour and show them you value those. That day I differed from you, that was different, but today you have a valid point. Even if it's about me. Who knows, they might even graduate upwards, depending on how you handle them and how you react to their mix of meanness and goodness.

The second kind often realise that you have become a boss and therefore, can no more be a buddy, and start interacting formally. They do their work properly and make sure work doesn't suffer but they may not chill out with you anymore and go on to find other buddies. Let go, no silly feelings, dont bid them farewell as buddies but they have a human reason to act in the way they do. Understandable, because it's actually tough to have someone as both buddy and boss. If one can achieve this, it will be great. Thats the third kind, people who know you are fair, you are friendly, but work is important so you might act in a particular unpleasant way for the sake of work and you don't keep things to heart, you don't carry emotional baggage. This produces the maximum team results along with maximum personal relationships, though it's rare to find, takes long time to build and usually involves a continuous personal growth of the manager himself.

When we are fair, and don't mean to be harsh, it's quite possible, people still find us harsh. We are not harsh, but strangely, we sound harsh to them. No one wants to be "told", so if someone "points out", the fairness fades behind and harshness hops in the front.
Remember, when you are straightforward, Good friends usually understand. Or rather, those that understand go on to become good friends. Sometimes, we also have to allow for friends to be "not understanding", if we believe they are good friends anyway, and probably their "not understanding" is one-time or short-term behaviour. Probably he got up on the wrong side of the bed which led to a fight with his wife which led to his driving on the wrong side of the road which led to... and so on.. You think you are straightforward, they might return the favour in the same straightforward currency and as good friends, we will end up being understanding!!.

Along with fairness, allowing traffic from the opposite side helps. When someone points out your inefficiencies, bring the same fairness and "technical" detachment to the table and take it by the merit of the argument. Laugh at yourself. Instead of empty defence, blame game or "you-rub-me-wrong-side-now its-my-turn", you might actually move on with a plain realisation "Oh yeah man, thats a goofup" or "my battery is down today" or "I am a joker" or "I better be careful next time" even if you don't want to "profusely" apologize. You can quip/joke by saying things like "It seems software companies give away t-shirts to people who find the best bugs, in my case, I have to buy an entire showroom". "Do unto others...." , the old adage, still has its value.

Some say, "Stop worrying about what others think of you. It's impossible to please everyone all the time". True, but it's better to keep this on the back of your mind and "moderate" it in practice to allow for team work and feedback. Because it allows you to correct yourself in case you are wrong. If you entirely stop worrying about what others think, then you never know when things "get onto your head" and will be the proverbial emperor in new clothes. You might spend crores to shoot a movie entirely on brilliant sets, have a great music score, but seriously believe the audience would surely appreciate the hero's new towel, only to lose the audience out in the first 15 minutes.

It's important to differentiate between long-term response to your leadership style and short-term response from smaller segments. Also to differentiate between responses from mature minds and responses from mean minds. And to allow the possibility for someone who is mean today to grow up and become mature tomorrow and hence the label is not for the person but for the response. That will train you to give value to a valid point from a mature mind and not fret too much about the outpourings of a mean mind. Long-term responses are a result of your effort to practise whatever you think are long-term values and your continuous effort to grow as a person and as a manager . By the time you grow up, you may not have the same team that sulked earlier to appreciate your growth now, but you would now make better teams and thereby, a better world. Amen !!

The Life Carnival

It's not often that you get to meet and greet someone on his 100th Birthday. So when the opportunity came by recently, I gladly did. We were going for a walk, when one of my friends said, "Hey, it is Sri.Gopal Rao garu's 100th birthday, shall we drop in to greet him ?". I hadn't interacted with the person before, though I roughly knew he had been the Chairman of Andhra Bank many decades ago and was now approaching 100. Nevertheless, I thought let's just drop in to have a quick word. Or, to put it formally, to seek his blessings and mention our prayers to the Lord for his good health and long(er) life.

Two things I liked about him: his liveliness and his sense of humour. He didn't know who I am, so he asked, "where do you work ?", and when I mentioned, he quickly recollected a couple of related incidents. "An old man like me lives by his memories, and fortunately in my case, they are all sweet memories", he said. He had a free-flowing chatty style and always had a quip, a remark or a slight touch of sarcasm that brought a giggle in you every once in a while. He had problems of the body but he wasn't sulking about them. "I sometimes recollect my memories aloud in the night", he said, "but then I realize that there is someone sleeping in the next room, then I become quiet. Poor fellow, his sleep must be getting disturbed". It seemed to me that he had learnt to live with the body's problems, put the mind in charge and also to divert his attention to other lively things like interacting with people, listening to the radio and so on. The experience and wisdom of 100 years is definitely something to celebrate. There was a felicitation function and he gave a talk the next day and his sharp wit created waves of laughter in the audience. Wow, what humour at this age man, was the talk of the town.

It set me thinking on aging. I think, after an age, lively old people become more like kids. Both like storytelling. Both feel good when someone talks to them and feel terribly bored if there is no one to talk to. Both don't want to stay in one place, if they are able enough to move around. Both are attached to their toys, albeit different ones. Both hum to themselves when they are alone. Both speak the truth, the kids until the world corrupts them and the elderly since they have seen it all, the futility of falsehood. Both remember the gifts they have received from others almost with date and time.

Ironically, the same instructions and caring advice that a parent gives to his kid, returns to him/her in his old age in a slightly different flavour. Some of these instructions, you can slightly flip and see that it can apply both in a father-young-kid conversation and in a son-old-father conversation.

1. Look at either side of the road before you cross. Be careful not to bump into old people / Be careful kids don't bump into you.
2. Don't move around too much and tire yourself.
3. Not too many chocolates, not too many ice creams. Eat healthy.
4. If you are not well, don't hesitate, let me know early so we could take early action.
5. Follow doctor's instructions verbatim.
6. Go for walks in the morning/evening (Don't miss your games).
7. Plan your travel well in advance.
8. Don't try to lift weights that are heavier than you can, you are going to hurt your back.
9. Don't read in poor light, it harms your eyes.
10. Wear your sweater and monkey cap when you go out in the winter.
11. Don't climb the stairs too fast, you might slip and fall.
12. And remember, I am telling all this for your own good.

The other day, someone asked me to frame a greeting message, for writing on a greeting card to give to his uncle and aunt on their 50th wedding anniversary. I knew nothing about how one might feel on such an occasion, but I tried to write up something in general about Life as a celebration. Because it takes a lot to hit a century or to partner for a 50 each together. These folks acquire a kind of learning from life that can be acquired only by living life. Having seen so many ups and downs, they acquire a certain balanced, yet positive, approach to life that is tinted with the equanimity that rests in the understanding of "even this will pass away". They raise above petty fights, jealousy and hatred that people engage in, in their middle years. Which is why, the ripening of the fruit should as much be a cause for celebration as is the blooming of a flower or the germination of the seed.

Customer Service - Tonty Pour By Cheven

After my younger brother passed away last summer, I had to deal with the financials of his estate. If you think I haven't seen much of the world in 30 years, I had to see quite a specimen of it in those 30 days. Among the names I had to deal with, mostly in the BFSI segment: Citi Cards, ABN Amro Cards, Kotak Mutual Fund, LIC, New India Assurance, Medi Assist, ICICI Lombard, TTK Healthcare, United India Insurance, Central Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank (including Cards, Loans and ICICI Direct), Royal Sundaram Insurance, TVS, Airtel etc. Add to this, a suite of government / PSU institutions, like RTO, BSNL, Government Medical College Hospital, BharatGas, BPCL Office, Income Tax Office, Office of the Superintendent of Police etc. The list is somewhat like that of a diversified equity fund and it was interesting to handle all kinds of customer service responses and to meet the procedural abracadabra face to face.

Years ago, I had done a project work on the role of front-line employees in customer service, but travelling to all the four directions of the city almost everyday is no match to a spiral-bound booklet you write after some literature survey and a stretch of imagination. I can't write about the frustrations here, because, my blogging guidelines prohibit ranting. (I did make a list of my own blogging guidelines before I started the blog which I want to post only if the blog survives 25 posts). Perhaps, I should convert some of those experiences into more generic issues and present them in a non-rant fashion some day.

I was mentioning to my friend about the variety of service personnel I had to interact with, in this array of companies and offices and he asked, "Hey, why don't you blog about the good part of the show ?". I thought, yeah, it's a good idea, I had always thought the media often under-reports the good news and doesn't give the beauty of the world its due. Needless to say, it's a very subjective opinion and wouldn't mean much in terms of organized research and the rating I give in the end are entirely the riverside walker's indigenous service ratings, so please read this post sitting next to a salt godown so you can pinch it whenever you want.

One thing I found common in every place is, unless you follow up, nothing, nothing ever happens. I used to have a bengali boss, an operations guy, who did nothing but make a list and follow up all the time at regular intervals. Many times, he won't even know the specific detail of what exactly he is following up, he just knows it's a follow up issue for him. For example, someone says to him "Sir, we need an Exchange Server to be set up so people can send emails to each other". He would sometimes get only half the words and would often say, "Did you set up the Exchange ? I want to have email." He would put it in his organizer as "Exchange" with a particular deadline and priority. Someone used to jovially mention, "for all you know, he must be thinking it's a piece of equipment like Telephone Exchange". But he would indeed follow it up and get it done because you can't escape his follow-up claws.

Among the private players, Kotak Mutual Fund stands out. There was an investment with Kotak MF that had to be transmitted to the legal heir and this one also had attached accident insurance cover. There were other companies with whom I had to interact under a similar scenario with heavy follow-up, but Kotak was different. They would follow it up with you, actually. Isn't that nice ? I had been to the Kotak MF office in Coimbatore. Their ambience was good, their notice board was full of internal team contests, performance targets, winner of the month and so on. Hey cool, looks good, I thought, let's see if they are worth their display. Ironicaly, the officer didn't know the exact procedure to be followed in the case, although he had a hazy idea that there is a procedure somewhere regarding this. In fact, I knew what is likely to be the procedure, so I said, we are ready to present an application from the legal heir, along with whatever documents you may require, so you let me know the list of what you want. And we also wanted to send it by courier since we were moving out of Coimbatore shortly. He offered me a seat and a glass of water since I was sweating in the May heat. He made a series of phone calls, probably to his head office, made notes, asked the officer, to send an email immediately detailing the requirements. As he was explaining it to me, the email arrived, he fired the print and gave it to me, took my email address and also forwarded a copy. And yes, you can send the bunch to the specified address by courier, he said. He gladly gave his contact information and asked me to inform him after I send the application so he can follow it up. I told him we are moving out of Coimbatore, he said he would make a note and facilitate any follow-up accordingly. We sent the application and someone from the head office called to acknowledge it. Later they called to say, while the insurance documents were in order, one more document was required for the transmission of the investment and he would e-mail the format. We sent that too, and within 10 days, we received the insurance claim as well as transfer of the investment. With a nice letter saying, we are sad to know about this, we can't help you in any other way, your documents are in order and we are admitting your claim. We replied acknowledging receipt and thanking their quick service.

Among the banks, Bank of Baroda stands out, No, Citi or ICICI bank don't even come a close second. We had to close the PPF account at BoB. As usual, we had all the docs ready on day one and we were worried that, since the amount was high, there will be much delay because of a series of signatures. We submitted the docs. Here too there was a little training issue. The officer said, he is not exactly clear about how to input this kind of transaction in the Core Banking software to which he was only introduced recently. He said he will find out the next day from the manager and try to get it processed. Nowadays, it doesn't take much time, he assured us all the docs were in order. We mentioned that since my dad had undergone surgery recently, he has authorized me to collect the payment on his behalf and we also had the attested authorizations and the IDs ready. He said, that shouldn't be a problem since they will be issuing an a/c payee cheque, asked us for our alternate bank account details and gave me a specific date and time by when it will be available. I went at the stipulated time and he was ready with the cheque. He apologized for the bit of delay on the first day and quipped, "now that I have learnt it, I will be able to serve someone else better next time.". Frankly, I never had experienced or expected such a nice response from a nationalised bank, which was probably cynical of me, but I guess the running around wears down your positive thinking capacity. They didn't have the leadership contests on the notice boards or neck ties for the officers but they had a kind of simple devotion and sincere interest in the work they do.

More than the frustrations, I learnt, from people who served me well, how to do so carefully and courteously and from those who made me suffer, how not to do it myself in a similar situation. It was humbling when people yelled at you and soothing in contrast soon after when someone else spoke better in the office you climbed next. In both cases, it's not that they had all the required skills. But they took pains to find out. It's not that they flouted accounting controls to give premium customer service, but they communicated the procedure firmly and gently, gave an exhaustive list of requirements in one go, not requiring the customer to come up and down a hundred times and releasing the documents one by one in stages as if it were some assembly line, understood specific situations that needed attention, gave a date and kept it. And were courteous all throughout. Both offices were so different in externalities, but had the same kind of impact on the customer. Both had technology to help in efficiency but retained the value addition of human interaction. One spoke in posh English and the other didn't, but you can study in tamil medium and be equally good at trignometry. One was 10 years old and another was 100 years but both knew what really matters at the end of the day. That it is as much important to make a goodwill impact on someone who stepped into your premises as it is to spend millions in advertising to get someone there.

A third experience was even more interesting. And that had to come from the "unorganized" sector. The day before we left, I spotted a household scrap dealer in the colony nearby. Hey, I said, we are vacating and we might have something to sell away as scrap, would you come to my house sometime ? The young lad was a real excited fundoo guy, he immediately gave his cell number and said, call up any time, and he added: Tonty Pour By Cheven, Anna. I was surprised and complimented him for his attempt in English and found that he had discontinued education after the fourth class, many years ago. We didn't have much time, I said, and I will reach home only by 7.pm. after work in the city. He took driving directions and later he was there at 7 sharp. He made a quick assessment, called up his assistant to bring an appropriate cart, weighed it then and there, gave a category-wise quotation and made an offer. He also gave insights into how the industry works and the various levels of scrap retailing, which understandably, was to talk us into the rates he was offering. After the deal was struck, he made his assistant load the stuff and reached, you know what!, to the nearest ICICI Bank ATM and withdrew money to pay us. Quite filmy, I thought, and now I knew where he picks up these cute English phrases on customer service. My prediction is the guy will go places, what say ? Glory to the great indian middle-class entrepreneur!

Till the blogging guidelines are relaxed, here is a quantitative rating of the various servicewallahs, to avoid verbose ranting. It's not fair to compare private and public institutions so I will give a percentage ranking keeping Kotak MF and BoB as benchmarks.

Kotak Mutual Fund 100%
ICICI Direct 95%
ABN Amro Cards 90%
Standard Chartered Bank 90%
Airtel 90%
ICICI Bank 85%
ICICI Cards 80%
TVS Dealer Lotus 75%
United India Insurance 65%
ICICI Loans 65%
Citi Cards 60%
Royal Sundaram Insurance 60%
TTK Healthcare 60%
New India Assurance 60%
ICICI Lombard 55%
Medi Assist 50%


Bank of Baroda 100%
Indian Overseas Bank 95%
Office of the Superintendent of Police 90%
LIC 90%
Central Bank of India 85%
Bharat Gas Agency 80%
BPCL Office 75%
Income Tax Office 60%
RTO 50%
BSNL 50%
Police station 35%
Government Medical College Hospital 5%

The 24 x 7 Scrap Dealer 100%