Call Center Nights Tales

My take on India's best selling English author, Chetan Bhagat:

It was after a long break that I actually got down to read a book and that book had to be ON@TCC(One Night @ The Call Center) by Chetan Bhagat. Spurring me on to read it was Chetan’s worthy credentials as a highly educated person who as one would think might have a really good viewpoint of things in general.
It's all about a night at a call center when God himself makes a call to a call center called "Connexions" where our protagonist works.
Well the book failed horribly in every aspect. Though he does touch a raw nerve on the subject of Call Centers some of the points which he raises I admit are almost as true as if GOD himself might have enlightened poor Bhagat, but it seems Bhagat did not get the message completely correct.
Hence a poorly conceived story line, things happening without any rationale and one event leading to another without any "connexion"(forgive me the pun).
I would rate it as a book fit for kids (around the age range of 10-15) but the story and the language used would hardly suit that.
The only thing that makes one keep on reading is that there must be some treasure at the end of the rainbow (which the blurb so enticingly promises) - turns out to be a mirage.
One fact, the rationale of which I could hardly understand was Chetan voicing Xenophobia or US- bashing through one of his more admirable characters, Vroom.
Could have been a good book.
After the editor edited and rewrote at least two thirds of the book
Any way best of luck Chetan.
You might get better at this stuff someday. Keep trying.

The joy ride after the wild goose chase

Recently several media publications were bold enough to expose the sham that lies behind police interrogations involving narcoanalysis. Injecting suspects with a so-called truth serum, before they have been proved guilty, exposes one of the extremely crass and crude methods that the law condones (in India).
On the lighter side why don't these so-called preservers of the law take their suspects to the nearest bar and make them have their fill of the strongest liquors. Surely some of these "guilty" offenders might just spill the beans for all we know or maybe even "sing" for them. Or how about Cocaine or hashish, and if thats too costly for these guys in mufti, they could try good old marijuana.
The interrogators too could have a sniff at the substance on offer just to test whether it truly works. Once both the parties are "high", they could swap truth stories with each other and perhaps the "real" truth would spill out in the bonhomie.
These are the Dr Deaths' of today in the garb of forensic experts. The description of it being "scientific" just makes everything seem very sophisticated to the lay man.
The basic intention is the age old classic manoeuvre. When things go very wrong, and the law enforcers are clueless as to what went wrong they are under pressure to produce quick results - from the public, the politicians, the higher-ups and in order not to lose their credibility they have to produce results fast. What way other than a quick fix(pun intended) for this? In fact, the situation for them would work the other way round if they solved the entire mystery in a short spell- pats and kudos from everyone.
It's high time the law enforcers and others who condone it, recognize narcoanalysis for what it truly is.

Ahoy Ponmudi!

The rain gods had played truant in much of Kerala, and there were hardly any rains at the beginning of monsoon which is usually marked with heavy downpours day in and day out.

So I decided I would go to meet the rain makers themselves by making a pleasure trip to a picturesque hill station near Trivandrum called Ponmudy. Nobody goes there at this time of the year since the heavy fog and pouring rain makes movement difficult not to say that you miss seeing all the scenic views from the "points" due to the heavy fog. But since the rains had been feeble this year, I thought I would not face many problems.

Another point to note is that though Ponmudy is quite near Trivandrum, very few Trivandrum residents, not to say Malayalees themselves, have actually gone there. They would rather prefer to go to Ooty or Kodaikanal but not to Marine Drive at Kochi, Koavalam beach, Silent valley, Athirampuzha(for its waterfalls), Thattecadu (famed for its bird sanctuary) or a tourist resort nearer home. This is something I still don't understand.

I had once before gone to Ponmudy when I was a teen. But that time it was in a small mini bus that made its way up through 22 or so hairpin bends. I remember that whenever a vehicle came from the other direction the vehicle maneuvering the curve from below would back down making leeway for the oncoming one. But it was risking your life either way. One wrong move by the driver and you would be hurtling down the steep precipice which was always present one or the other side of the road.

This trip proved more memorable and an adrenaline pumping one too!

The roads were still the same size; maybe better tarred, but all the same risky to traverse.

The bus that took us up was a full sized KSRTC Anandapuri transport vehicle. Before boarding it, I remember wondering how these behemoths could manage winding up through those treacherous mountain roads where one moment you are moving in one direction and the next, when the bus makes a 360 degree turn on a hairpin bend, you find yourself moving in the completely opposite direction.

But anyone in Kerala would vouchsafe that for a KSRTC driver such work is a piece of cake.

And it was true.

Our driver took a break and had a hearty breakfast at the foothills of Ponmudy before he started on the nerve-wracking trip navigating the curves and bends that led to Ponmudy as if it was just another drive for him. There were some family people too making their way to Ponmudy or back in cars and vans at this off season time of the year, and the KSRTC bus stopped several times to let them pass, backed off at certain curves to make way for them and at one instance another KSRTC bus came hurtling down the opposite direction, but both of them expertly stepped out of each others way and smartly proceeded.

Once at Ponmudy I realised I had made a mistake. It was still late morning and heavy fog covered the hill station. There was nothing to do, see nor anywhere could I move around. My co-passengers on the bus (hardly 2-3 people) straight away headed to the KTDC sponsored Beer bar, others had a heavy lunch at the restaurant, and that was all for them. After it started drizzling mildly they got restless waiting for the return trip back to Trivandrum.

The tourist lodgings at Ponmudy had an unusually large number of visitors at this odd time of the year. But then I noticed they didn't prefer to venture out of their rooms, preferring to sip beer, brandy and whisky and watching the clouds floating across the hills through the fogged up windows of their stay.

The trip back was uneventful except for the fact that I found that my leg had been punctured by a huge leech up there at Ponmudy and that my leg was soaked in blood though there was no pain.

I checked into a hospital, got my legs bandaged and had a course of antibiotics for the next week.

Lesson learnt: If people don't go to Ponmudy during a certain time of the year there might be a good reason for that. Going against the grain may not always work out well. :)

To do or not to do, that is the Question!

Just something I noticed offhand that seemed rather odd to me.
I have noticed that people in the more secular Kerala have started observing symbolic gestures that I noticed were more commonly performed by North Indians.
FOr example, a perfectly ordinary looking young man travelling on a bus makes a symbolic religious gesture by touching his chest twice and then his upper abdomen when he sights a temple through the window. Older men make more dramatic gestures like folding their hands in reverence and then touching the forehead under similar circumstances. Christians are not far behind in adapting this new trend. They fold their hands and make the symbolic gesture of the holy cross on sighting a church from a moving vehicle.
What if they hadn't happened to notice the abode of God and instead had picked thier nose, or worse, farted?
Would than then amount to blasphemy?
And what about the passengers sitting on the other side of the aisle on the bus? Should they be deprived of performing the same symbolic ritual just because they happened to sight a garbage dump on their side of the bus while the pious fellow on the other side of the aisle crossed his hands in relgious fervour for having the luck to sight a temple/ church at the same time?
These symoblic gestures to sound to me little less than hypocrisy and sycophancy. I hope we imibe the more sensible of symbolisms from other cultures.

Walk a Mile in My Moccasins

This event comes to my mind when I listen to Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colours".
The most interesting time of my life, I feel when I was in Nagpur doing my pre-degree. It happened so that I was in a college which happened to be the place where most of the children of Nagpur's affluent families did their studies. I had a Colonel's son as a friend who used to call me Matz long before anyone else started calling me by the same nickname. In fact he made everybody's name sound to end with a "Z". So Bhopardikar was Bhopz and so on.
Sometimes I felt intimidated by the elite crowd that surrounded me. For instance, the Colonel's son used to boast that he took just four mintutes to shave with his electric razor, boasted about his computer and his plans to go to the USA after TOEFL; and all this was at a time when the television was yet to become a fad in Indian homes.
I used to wear plain white canvas shoes to college. Tired of the plain-Jane attire, I had a wicked idea - I would paint my shoes in myriad colours, just for the fun of it. So off I went and bought a can of fevicol and a set of oil paints.
Once in my room at the hostel, I carefully mixed the fevicol with the oil paint till I decided it was a perfect mix. With a large paintbrush I painted my shoes in shades of five or six colours till I thought it was a job perfectly done.
I wore the shoes next day to class, hoping everybody would admire my bright newly painted canvas shoes and pass it off as some sophisticated imported model.
But the colonel's son, he came to me and in a conspirational tone whispered, "Matz, you have painted your shoes, isn't it? HA HA HE". That got my goat; I had that shrinking feeling and I wished I could just vanish into thin air. ;)
On the day of the pre-degree model exams I decided to get back at those who had made an ass of me that day.
I had a friend from Manipur called Thokchom Gambhir Singh (He was an ardent fan of the Manipur freedom movement and denied being a Hindu and preferred saying he belonged to the Meitei religion, which existed long before the Bengalis and the Hindus overran Manipur, according to him).
Manipuris as a fact are well dressed and like to flaunt the latest smuggled(?) electronic items that they most probably get from China or Burma. I decided that on the day of the prelims, I would dress like a North Eastern would.
So I did one more of those crazy things.
I asked Gambhir whether I could borrow his outfit for a day. He readily agreed, being on good terms with me, not like the other Bengalis in the hostel who had a mutual distrust for him.
So I pulled on a Chinese made T-shirt that clung to my body showcasing my physique, with a leather jacket pulled over it. Then the thick blue stretchable jeans that you get only in the smuggled markets. Then the Adidas shoes over the thick cotton socks. And to cap it all I borrowed Gambhir's flashy wrist watch that had a calculator as an accessory on it. I sprayed myself thorougly With imported deodorant and then I was ready.
I arrived at college with a clear mind having prepared well for the exam and prepared for any eventuality.
The inviligator in charge, a nerd, who knew me well coz most of the time I was top in class, gasped in disbelief. I didn't turn to look at the girls, being too shy to acknowledge any giggles, if they happened to come.
When I returned the stuff back to Gambhir, I felt that I had been a different man for one day. I had been literally walking in Gambhir's shoes!

Darwin and the Dodo

A colleague at work once happened to touch the topic of "Survival of the fittest". He said the same principles apply in the work place too. According to him it was not for the meek to inherit the earth. The earth belonged to the fittest.
I begged to differ.
What about the Quit India movement, I asked him. Were not the whites who ruled India at that time much more fitter than the natives who had nothing with them except for a weapon called "Satyagraha" devised by a man who was much ridiculed by the rulers at that time? The whites had fire power, they had money power, they were definitely on top of the survival pyramid than most civilizations. What could explain their downfall and subsequent expulsion from the Indian sub-continent?
To this, my friend did not have a ready answer. And I felt I had made a point.
Let us look at Darwin's principle of "Survival of the fittest" in another light.
Man is now the fittest living creature to inhabit the earth.
But what had he done to consolidate his position.
Right, he had made life easy for himself with his countless inventions and discoveries. He has made most of nature to his advantage.
But at what cost?
Factories spewing smoke into the virgin air, water bodies polluted with filth which would take ages to clean, non bio-degradable plastic dumped with the least caution all over the place, as remote as the top of the Himalayas!
True there are a lot of organizations who have woken upto this fact and are actively working to prevent such a disaster from happening. But what are governments doing? Most developed countries give a damn for the Kyoto protocol which is responsible for keeping in check climate change. The US in fact has not even ratified the treaty.
Is this how man is consolidating his position as the fittest on planet earth; as his own destructor?

Conductors or Semi-Conductors?

Kerala State Road Transport Coporation was again in the news this time. No, not for breaking the loss-making record again. KSRTC now is paying more money as pension to its employees than the salary it is paying its regular employees.
KSRTC is just another State government tool to ensure employment to a few more people in a state where literacy rates are the highest but the available jobs are among the lowest. Or, was supposed to.
I know a good friend of mine who was a computer instructor at a mediocre computer training institute. The outsorucing boom had just started and software companies were inducting candidates in hordes. Suddenly one fine day my friend said that he had been selected by KSRTC as a bus conductor. And he was accepting the offer.
I was aghast. He was a promising computer engineer who could write reasonable good software and could manage steep learning curves. I tried to change his mind. I told him that with his strong logic and reasonably good exposure to the hot technologies of the time, he would make an excellent software engineer with some real time exposure to software projects. Would not all that talent go to waste?
But he would not budge. He said, his parents considered a goverment job a secure one, with minimal risk and well-paying too. He too agreed with his parents and that was that.
I didn't see him after that.
But whenever I catch the night bus home at 9 pm on Fridays to my native place, I sometimes think of my friend. Where is he? Was he enjoying his work? Or did he turn back to computers again?
My journey lasts 4 hours(half an hour less than in day time due to the empty roads) as it courses most of MC road to my destination. The first one hour the bus is packed with commuters, most of them standing. By the end of the first hour most of the remaining people are seated, the others having gotten down at nearby destinations. The next half hour the bus rumbles on and at the midpoint of the journey where the driver and conductor take a break for a cup of tea and a smoke, the bus empties with only a few dozen Tamil Ayyappa devotees clad in black bound for Sabarimala, the famous religious destination in Pathanamthitta district. They too get down in another half an hour. The remaining one and a half hour the bus rumbles on carrying me and just one or two other odd passengers. When the bus finally reaches its destination there is usually only me and sometimes an odd co-towner.
No wonder KSRTC runs at a loss. All that matters is that the buses be running and the drivers and conductors do their job, passengers or not!