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October 30, 2009

Sossegado

We took a family vacation to Goa during the last Diwali weekend and were booked to stay in a premier property belonging to one of the major multinational chains.

Even though we go to Goa for a family vacation at least once every three years or so and what happened during this trip is probably the norm each time, I presume I found it difficult initially, simply because it is my perspective and not Goa's that seems to have changed.

Over the last few years, my expectations from hotels and restaurants have risen considerably. Spiffy, quick, polite, courteous, on-the-dot, willing to make amends immediately...these are things that we can get used to so easily that we start expecting the same level of service everywhere...

Including Goa...

Which was probably a huge mistake!

When we reached the hotel, the staff was as friendly and courteous as expected and remained so throughout the stay. But by the evening of the first day, I was angry and upset because of their level of service delivery.

To start. On the first day, during dinner, the wine bottle came pretty much after half the meal was over. On the 2nd day, during breakfast, the tea and coffee came when we had almost finished. In the evening, the 2nd round of naans did not come for at least 15 minutes, by which time the rest of the food had become cold. The next day for breakfast, the toasts came after the omelet had already been eaten and later during dinner, they were unable to locate the half-drunk wine bottle that I had kept back in the hotel's wine cellar.

And then. The hotel, for internal transportation, had provided buggies, which were quite a boon for my in-laws, especially since our rooms were quite a distance away from the restaurants and the swimming pool. Once in a while, a buggy would actually come the moment we called for it, but the majority of times, the wait was at least 15-20 minutes and sometimes the buggy would just not land up, usually because of some logistical screw-up. Invariably therefore, planned schedules would just go completely haywire.

So is this one more rant that perhaps has become a regular feature in this column these days? Well, on the first day, I was almost ready at night to offload all my angst on the hotel manager. Luckily, I was too tired and went to sleep. On the second day, when the toasts came after the omelet, I said, "screw it!" On the third day, I could care less whether the naans came late, or that they couldn't locate the wine bottle.

In reality, by the middle of the 2nd day, I had stopped bothering about any kind of schedule...once you don't really have to get back to something or need to be on time or in time for everything, it doesn't matter if the buggy is late, or the food order is inverted or if the waiter just takes too long.

When in Romans, do as Romans do.

If Goans are laid-back, the hotel chain cannot change the basic attitude of the staff and make it behave like the staff in Mumbai. And though everyone was always nice and courteous and smiling, they were all just marching to a different beat. And, what I had to learn was to march on their beat and not mine, and to leave my multi-tasking, anal-obsessed, time-controlled life behind.

In effect, I had to learn the concept of "sossegado".

Which of course, only lasted till I landed back in Mumbai...but so what!

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Posted by bhavinj at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2009

The Times They Are A-Changing...But Perhaps Not That Much

Aka - Tata Nano or "Nono"

On the 1st of May, early this year, I had written a piece about the Tata Nano being a herald of changing times. I had raved about the great experience that I had had on the website where I was able not only to choose the model and color, but also to book and pay, all in the comfort of my home, without actually needing to go to a dealership or the company.

The first car deliveries eventually happened sometime in July, accompanied by a lot of media buzz and fanfare. There have even been follow-up stories of the Nano creating a buzz wherever it is seen.

I still haven't seen one!

Once the allotments were announced, I thought I was lucky to receive a delivery date that fell between 16 August and 30 September. My office called Concorde Motors, the dealership, around 16 August, only to be told that there was no need to call and that they would let us know as soon as the car was ready for delivery.

And so I waited. And waited. And I am still waiting.

My office finally called Concorde Motors on 01 October, only to be told that the car would be delivered after about 15 days. When my secretary called again on 16 October, she was told that there would be a further delay. When she asked for a firm commitment, she was brushed off. I then personally tried to get more information, but when I called and asked for something more tangible, there was no proper reply. When I then asked to speak to someone who had more authority than the sales executive who I was speaking with, I was given the run-around. One thing led to another and then understandably I lost my temper and regrettably used the “f” word. When I threatened to cancel my booking, I was told that I could very well go ahead and do so!

I now really regret the decision to book the Nano; at that time, I was caught up in the excitement and hype around the car, but today, neither the company nor its dealer is able to even give a delivery schedule, forget being in touch with their customers proactively. I even called the Nano helpline and though the call-centre person was very polite, he had no answers, except to say that deliveries were delayed.

The least that I would have expected as a customer, is a call from Concorde / Tata Motors, first on 01 October and then on 16th October, with an apology for the delay and with new timelines and explanations. Schedules in this country can always go haywire, but as long as the customers are kept in the loop, expectations and emotions can be managed. Instead, as far as the Nano is concerned, the onus seems to be entirely on the customer to figure out the status of the deliveries and even then, there are no proper answers.

The current situation reminds me of the frustration of flying Indian Airlines in the past, when it would delay or cancel a flight without any explanation or alternatives. Today, while Indian, as it is now called, has improved considerably, the makers of the Nano and the dealers seem to have regressed to the level of the erstwhile Premier Automobiles.

I am trying to find answers for this attitude; maybe the dealers make small margins or maybe the company thinks that those who buy cheap cars should also be treated cheaply.
 
I don't know, but it's just so sad!

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Posted by bhavinj at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2009

Hardship Allowance for Living in Mumbai? Really?

Sometime back, I met someone from the UK, who had been sent to India by his company, to start a local branch. He was living in a 2500 square feet apartment on Altamount Road, while his office was in Nariman Point. He had an E-class Mercedes, with an English-speaking chauffeur, along with a cook, a cleaning maid and a manservant. He enjoyed a 5-days week and was also eligible for two paid holidays to the UK along with family, all flying business-class. His children had secured admissions to an excellent nearby school. There was a separate chauffeur-driven car for his wife and kids and he also had temporary memberships to two major, upscale clubs in South Mumbai.

And apart from all this, to enable him to make this really troublesome move from London to Mumbai, he received a handsome hardship allowance.

My first reaction was, “Hardship? What hardship!” In London, he had no chauffeur and used to travel to Canary Wharf by tube. He had no cook or manservant and he and his wife used to share dishwashing duties every alternate night. A part-time cleaning lady used to come by just twice a week. His children went to regular schools and used public transport.

Wasn’t his life far better in Mumbai? Where was the hardship!

I can here you sniggering!

And yet!

Twice, I’ve lived in the Western world, for extended periods. On each occasion, we’ve managed very well, without any help, doing our own laundry, washing our own dishes, cleaning the house over the weekends and driving our own cars or using public transport. At no time did we ever feel that we were wasting quality time or that we were deprived. In fact, there would still be time left over for doing a lot of other things, not only on the weekends, but also on weekdays.
 
Here, even after having cooks, maids, chauffeurs and an entire battalion to support our lives, we still land up struggling on a day-to-day basis. Any time that we might save because of the retinue that works for us, is lost in battling the inefficiencies in our systems and our lack of basic infrastructure. But that’s not the only reason for the hardship!

It’s still not easy handling beggars on the road, so imagine the shock an expat feels when someone comes up every day and taps on his car window, asking for money. It’s still difficult to get over the fact that more than half of our city is made up of slums, so think how hard it must be for someone who has just started to live here. On top of that, we shit on the roads, we spit all over, we break traffic rules as if they never existed, we insist on walking on the roads, we are rude, “in-your-face”, we don’t respect other people’s privacy and individuality, we are loud, noisy and most importantly, we are callous and we lack a basis civic sense and respect for other humans.

And as Jehangir has to add, “I don’t think doing without cooks, drivers and maids is a hardship. But having to live in the most overcrowded city with endless noise, pollution, monster traffic jams, and ongoing malaria, dengue and leptospirosis certainly is.”

Are we still sniggering about the hardship allowance?

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Posted by bhavinj at 05:53 AM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2009

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Last weekend was so action-packed! “Someone” said "Bombay", the “other” wanted "Mumbai". The “other” immediately howled, and “someone” promptly blinked; and in the bargain, all of us living in Mumbai/Bombay had our emotions and feelings trampled upon as if we didn’t matter; willing, placid, emotionless recipients of their thrusting shenanigans.

I was livid. And not knowing why just made it worse, until I expressed myself on Facebook and found that I was not alone. The majority of my friends were seething for one reason or the other, the common thread running through all arguments and comments being that both parties had happily screwed us and taken us for a jolly, rocking ride. Apart from a sense of helpless frustration at not being able to doing anything about this situation, was a significant overlay of dense cynicism. Most friends were convinced that the whole issue had been completely stage-managed so as to garner as much front-page publicity as possible, in an attempt to bolster the newly released film's performance. Whether this was actually true or not, it shows how difficult it is for most of us to feel any kind of empathy towards people who lead public, page 3 and A-list lives, especially when they face adversarial situations, now that it is common knowledge that most of what is said and done is completely and carefully PR-managed, cultivated and controlled. We no longer trust what “these people” say or do.

Some of this anger was also directed at the posers who insist on sticking to "Bombay", and at the slightest nudge, start lamenting about the loss of some golden pre-Mumbai era that apparently has permanently vanished after the name change. It is amazing how people can delude themselves into believing that there was actually a better Bombay in the past than Mumbai is today. I can perhaps understand if this comes from people who migrated from the city when it was still called Bombay and who now see it only through sepia-tinged glasses of nostalgia. However, when thse who still live here, say that Mumbai is no longer the Bombay they knew, it just comes across as a form of pseudo-intellectual posturing, in an attempt to cling on to an elitist "English" name that perhaps is easier for a SoBo tongue to roll out, as against the more vernacular "Mumbai" that perhaps requires a SoMu conversion, before its usage becomes intuitive.

An equal part of the anger was also aimed at those who insist on thrusting the usage of the name "Mumbai" down everyone's throat, not missing a single opportunity to polarize the city with a combination of “lathis” and brains, while whipping up emotions among those who probably don't understand that they are just pawns being used to further some or the other political chess move.

And through of all of this, the majority of us, who don’t care what the city is called, as long as it becomes a better place to live in, land up being sitting ducks, unwittingly caught in the crossfire. In fact, if it were to improve our infrastructure, they could as well call our city, “Timbuctoo”. Hell, they could call it "Jhumri Talaiya", for all I care, if it also meant that we would get a city where people wouldn't shit, piss and spit on the roads and where there would be pavements to walk on and traffic rules being observed.

As Push put it succinctly! "A bombil (I dont care if it is Bombay duck or Mumbai duck) by any other name is just as crunchy!"

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Posted by bhavinj at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2009

Made by Man

Earlier this week, most newspapers ran a story about an article in the current issue of Nature, which discussed genetic similarities and variations in Indians, The general thread of the “lay” coverage was that there are no pure “North Indians” or  “South Indians” and that all Indians share common genes from the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) pools.

Which, as often happens with the lay press and scientific papers, was actually what the paper was not about. What David Reich and his colleagues actually found in the 19 groups that they included, was that though there was 39-71% ANI ancestry in all of them, the groups themselves didn’t show much variation internally, for over at least 30 generations and in the case of the Vysya group, for over 100 generations.

What does this mean? It means that virtually across the board, the caste system has been well and alive for a long period of time, without much change in the gene pool, essentially due to endogamy (inbreeding).

Why is this important? Because endogamy leads to an increased incidence of inherited diseases, for e.g. inherited heart disease, which is due to a gene mutation, found in 4% of all Indians and only in Indians. (It would also be fascinating to trace the way skin color has passed along groups and generations, given our completely illogical fetish for fairness).

Who created all these rigid hierarchies? God? Yeah, right!

When bad things happen to us humans, we seek answers. When there are none, we turn to non-rational sources. The hunter-gatherer tribes in the misty past used to blame the fire-spirit or the water-demon, while the agrarian societies would try and appease “beings”, who controlled the success of their crops. As humans however advanced and formed more complex groups, these pagan spirits and “Gods” eventually merged into monotheist religions with strict codes of conduct, rules and the “One” God.

Let’s face it! If there is nothing better to look forward to after death (heaven, hell, universal soul, rebirth), most humans will descend into a terrible spiral of questioning depression. Mencken, a philosopher, while defining religion, said it best, "It's single function is to give man access to the powers that seem to control his destiny, and its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly with him...nothing else is essential."

This is what Mr. Robert Wright attempts to answer in his fascinating new book, "The Evolution of God". Starting from the pagan spirits of the hunter-gatherers, Mr. Wright traces a path to the monotheist religions of today (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), working on the basic premise that no religion or God is static and that all these concepts have evolved over time, depending on the prevailing social, economic and technological circumstances.

This is balm for the soul of all us atheists who believe that man has always shaped his own destiny. A friend (thanks Shimpa), has this to say "The only powers that control your destiny are the ones you allow to do so. Hence each has a different term for the powers. And each wants a different boon from the powers. I believe that is why religion, even within a religion is so personal and open to misunderstandings."

We create illusions and rituals and structures and patterns based on what is most convenient to us given the prevailing conditions; those who are more charismatic and convincing land up being more powerful and influential. In short, whether it be religion or God or caste systems, eventually they are all just “Made by Man”.

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Posted by bhavinj at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)