After a long long long confinement to the home-bus-work life, yeah I know, life!, imposed on me by my mother, I finally broke the shackles (mainly because she’s left for vacation) and went to all crowded places to get a feel of the big wide space (read: one foot * number of people living) called Mumbai. In other words, I took the Virar local from Bandra and hung to my dear life till Mira Road.Now that feels like life. dear life. While on that, I also proved to myself, my inherent interest in public welfare, by engaging in a verbal assault over a woman who was troubling many others around and over herself and others. When the station finally arrived, I held on to my three bags and to myself tightly and waited to be spat out. Have you seen the movie confessions of a shopaholic yet? The scene where Suze (Krysten Ritter) opens Rebecca’s (Isla Fisher’s) wardrobe? That’s the perfect movie analog of Mumbai locals on the Churchgate Virar line at peak time (from 6.30 AM to 2.00 PM and 2.30 PM to 2.00 AM. PS: Trains don’t run from 2.00 AM to 4.30 AM).

When I was finally thrown out, I immediately ran to a corner before the ejected crowd could carry me in the flow. No sooner had I patted myself at my back for bringing with me all my belongings safely, including the band that was once holding my hair neatly tied, now hanging in the courtesy of one strand than it dawned on me that one big black new umbrella (terrified) that belonged to my mom (more terrified) was no longer with me. My hands instinctly went to the back pocket of my jeans, (instincts are logic defying), as I looked all around me on the ground. Then instantly a series of images – the next morning 7.09 AM when I would run for the 7.10 AM company cab in the rain; the 6.30 PM rain when in the exertion caused by the day long mental agony at work I would choose to prioritize going home and falling on the bed above buying an umbrella and how I would move in this cycle and probably wait for September to come so that I can choose my priorities without paying the price of getting drenched. Then I did the net loss calculation ( cost of my umbrella – cost of travelling in a hired cab instead of a crowded local train ) and realized that by not traveling in the not-so-crowded first class I’d saved enough for a new umbrella. So essentially I’ve lost nothing at all. If so then what about the lost umbrella? This is a high difficulty level logical reasoning question by standards of some IT mass recruiting companies’ campus placement cells. So if you succeeded in answering, rest assured of a back- up job. I think I’d clear CAT, don’t you?

Labels: acomplishments, bitchy bitch, deformed maturity, lifestyle, Mumbailog, opinion, random thoughts, social concern

When Jawaharlal Nehru made his freedom speech 61 years ago, he took an oath to eradicate poverty, disease and inequality. And it made sense. But after 61 long years of globalization and scientific revolution, it doesn’t make much sense for the prime minister of India to pledge the same.

What are 9 GDP growth and IT boom if we can’t make the ends meet for a middle class Indian? And the metaphor holds true in more than one sense. There are 80 domestic airports and about 11 carriers in the country. So technically and ideally Delhi should be 2 hours away from Mumbai. But in reality, for the middle income group it’s still 2 days away.

Despite the wallet burning prices of air tickets, the air traffic went up by 25% between 2003 and 2005 and an overall 19.1% between 2003 and 2008. This could only mean either the average spending capacity of a common Indian has really gone up like we all like to believe, or it’s yet another stunning evidence of that gap between the riches and the rest which we’d choose to stay ignorant of.

Considering that about 97.2 % of the population falls in the middle and low income slabs, it’s blasphemous ignorance to draw conclusions like the former (unless we argue that the income tax records should not be taken so seriously at the face value but that’ll open the door to a series of complex politico-economical revelations that the country can’t handle).

Is the middle income group not able to afford flying or is flying not affordable for the middle income group?

Up until a decade back, flying was considered a privilege reserved for suit clad Tatas and Birlas. But then with the emergence of low cost carriers,(and low cost suits
) air travel moved from unthinkable to far yet reachable for all. Just when the country was beginning to bask in the hopes of India flying, the fate of LCCs ended in mergers and acquisitions. The government seemed to be keener on promoting the aviation sector as a potential source for revenue generation than as upgradation of the transportation service for the common man.

At the same time the concoction of high air-traffic brought in by the LCCs ,the copious financial liquidity due to seemingly accelerating economic growth, the fierce competition and fresh business school educated minds led to sprouting of a number of new airports and modernization of existing airports in line with the international standards. Besides the big Indian players expanded recklessly in a greed to grab as much market share as quickly as possible. But they made the mistake of over estimating the growth pace of the still nascent aviation industry in a country like India whose population is predominantly monetarily conservative (read: constrained) middle class.

The absence of LCCs resulted in considerable reduction in domestic air traffic. Further unfortunately the global economic crisis followed, melting big and small companies down on its way. Not surprisingly the corporate world freaked out and adhered to the only handy back up solution known namely cost cutting thereby drastically cutting down on air travel expenses. India, traveling by air for pleasure is not yet popular among the general public. The corporate population and the international travelers constituted a major chunk of the flight passengers. As a result the air traffic dropped further down to a new low. The number of flights in the Mumbai-Delhi route, the busiest in the country, was reduced by half.

Pessimism set in when the largest private airline giant Jet airways (over) reacted by impulsively pink slipping employees overnight. Then the government stepped in and deferred the oil company debts. This followed by the fall in fuel prices gave a new hope. Although the fuel prices were slashed by 55%, the airlines were quite rigid in letting the impact reflect on the air fare. The fuel surcharge alone constitutes more than 45% of the taxes levied on the basic airfare. But the airline giants in their desperation to gobble up every bit, hardly relaxed the stiff prices. On the contrary the budget carriers stepped up and brought down the fares once again posing an undesired competition to the greedy giants. (No I'm not an ardent supporter of LCCs I'm just anti-Giants)

But then within a few days, the offers were withdrawn and prices hiked (abruptly) further more. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that once a seed is sown it takes some time to sprout results and longer to bear any fruits. But surprisingly and suspiciously all the airlines quickly withdrew their offers and returned to the original price simultaneously. When the credit crunch crushed the economy hard, we fell short of money to meet the estimated cost for modernizing the numerous airports and ended up collecting additional user development charge for meeting the shortfall.(rightful begging) Then they complain of the load factor not increasing despite slashing prices.

Mistake number 2 is elimination of the LCCs which is the result of the aviation sector’s misunderstanding of the needs of the Indian Market.

Any industry should have a strong domestic base for long term sustainability. Ours is still a developing economy that values worth and utility of any product over luxury. LCCs basically aim at providing a little more than the indispensable at affordable costs, which is a good business model for attracting the domestic market. Business class lounges and world class services are accessories that only the elite could relate to but increase the operating costs. When the economy slowed down, the international market on which the Indian aviation sector was built let them down and naturally meeting these high operating costs became a burden and they are resorting to desperate measures which are not helping. In short, the operational model of the Indian airline carriers lacked sustainability and that’s what failed them today.

So ultimately the carriers are flying at the same revenue for a reduced cost and for once, not at the expense of working class tax payers but at the expense of the haves and the less haves in indispensable emergency. The working class has returned to railways with no hard feelings and the prime minister is still pledging to remove disparity, poverty and disease.

Labels: econolog, lifestyle, opinion, social concern

him: KNOW WHAT??

her: what?

him: IT REALLY DOES TAKE TWO TO... you know... TANGO

her: i know.

him: IT IS THE BLOODY LAW OF NATURE

her: it is???

him: yeah, think about it.i can't... you know... tango you without being... you know... tangoed first and viceversa. also it takes EXACTLY as much you as me

her: ..er...ok i will... think about it

him: and that is why all the un-natural laws of raping don't and can't hold naturally and logically. see?

her: you'll make a good human rights lawyer.

Labels: bitchy bitch, conversations, deformed maturity, fuckery, relationships, social concern

The survival kit for a typical 21^st century human being includes air water food sex and cellphone. But these are also the major source of problems in every developing nation with an exception of India where every problem is major as required by the sacred principle of democracy. Well not to divert, Airtel and Reliance, two premier class Indian service providers tried using this phenomenon for their advertising and got officially enlisted in the list of unsolved problems of existence. And as for the other big player, the dog ad is so honest only you have to read between the lines to understand who is the dog and who follows who everywhere. And believe me their hideaways are by far the best in the world.And those of u who cant forsee the potential for a s(l)im secretary didn’t graduate from BITS,Pilani

I also found that receptionists and women employees in Mumbai railways ticket counter are not the only ones with paranormal ability. Add the ones in the Reliance shops to the list. You wonder if it’s a customer service center or a store house of models subjected to the experiments of a makeup man in the pre-beginner stage. Apparently the training module for women in the customer service centers focuses on wearing inappropriate makeup to ward off customers. They also display their adroitness at work by constantly typing on the keyboard while ceaselessly laughing away at nothing in particular uttered by the colleague next seat who’s also vehemently doing the same. Lost in all the laughter challenge is the customer whose fury goes unnoticed in all the merriment. One woman in a particular reliance branch gets the maximum number of complaints all of which she brushes away with a raised eyebrow and a smirk on the lips (all the while displaying her adroitness )

You see Mr.Muah and I have this compulsive need to stay in touch constantly if not physically atleast over phone. As fate would have it I fell into the evil hands of miss do-you-think-I-care-a-damn. After taking up a mobile and a recharge I went home only to realize that things were not quite right. Naturally she didn’t have any idea whatsoever. I called customer care to find that I had lost 600 bucks because of her incapability to retain any useful technical information in her infested brain. So I called her back to make her aware of her miserably ignorant condition. She went “I’ll see what the problem is madam” (recorded sentence no-3) Duh! Like anyone would fall for it. WOMAN,ATLEAST BE MORE CONVINCING. So I went in person to the shop only to find that she’d had a memory lapse which she was refusing to recover from even after seeing me. Well the blame game went on for another hour between herself and some information center and after 3 whole hours of pacing restlessly around the desk and making numerous calls to get things into her stubborn-from-ignorance head she asked me to come back tomorrow. LIKE HELL I WOULD. I asked her to either refund my money or give in writing that she’d take responsibility in the scariest of my voice after which she gave my money back to me. In those 3 hours there were three complaints in person about lack of professionalism. What we really should note here is that complaints come and go but the great ignorant laughter show goes on forever.

I’m a hard core feminist and hence I’m not going to waste time by talking about the male species. It’s an established truth that if your brain is capable of storing a maximum of four predefined sentences designed with sufficient ambiguity of appropriateness and delivering them in random order for any queries to your customer then boy, you are in. I’ve lost around 500 bucks trying to recharge two numbers taken in Rajasthan and Tamilnadu respectively from Mumbai. The male ego never likes to admit that there might be things that you can’t know when only four different transmissions are possible to and from your brain. So when I asked if I recharge a number in tamilnadu for Rs.50 from here how much talktime I’d get, he could simply have said, “I’m not sure” or if he’s shy to admit then he could call and verify with the customer care service. But no, he has to suggest that 60 is the recharge amount available uniformly all over India which ofcourse isn’t the case. So you question him afterwards and he shrugs as if that isn’t a shame as long as you don’t admit. Customer care executives are even worse. They are like these pulmonologists who think they are degrading themselves if they made any attempt to know anything that’s the job of a general physician. If yours is a pilani number call the respective customer care we are not expected to know.

Damn it, there have to be a few basic rules regarding recharge that every customer care executive and every dealer ought to know, after all their objective is to help customers. Also recharging shouldn’t be an irreversible process once done, if it hasn’t been used then it should be reversible within a certain time period. I think our management schools must stop focusing too much on pompous innovations and creativity and instead cast their blissful glance on the bare essentials first.

Labels: lifestyle, opinion, random thoughts, social concern

..and also kicking. i almost gave up on my blog,thanks to the enormousness of nothings that kept me busy all day.I'm in Mumbai,the slum city.I'm now a grown up (read:senile) working in Larsen and Toubro which is why i should cut down on my obscenities a little according to some people. So i was considering reengineering my happening enrgetic careless obscene life to soemthing grave and monotonous which implied abandoning my blog since it is the pulsing proof my not-so-sophisticated views on morality and the like. I was even forced to read a few lines of articles on how people were rejected despite their "brilliant" performance in interviews because the interviewer came to know of the display of their "liberal" self on their respective blogs. But according to me if it was just a rare coincidence that the interviewer "came across" the exact same blog considering the number of blogs floating in the space then it doesn't matter if you lost the job because for such a rare coincidence to happen, the whole world of angels should've been conspiring against you which means the job is just not meant for you. or if you've displayed such a brilliance of putting down the link to your personal blog of no relevance whatsoever to the job concerned in theresume then you don't deserve the job. so either way it isn't meant for you then why such ado over somehting as trivial as this?

Labels: opinion, random thoughts