Tribute to a woman

If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful.
What have you given her?
"It is no more than fact and has cost you nothing."
But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful,
You offer her great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.
"To love a woman for her virtue is meaningless; she has earned it."
It's a payment - not a gift.
But – to love her for her vices is a real gift.
Unearned and undeserved.
To love her for her vices is to defile,
All virtue for her sake and that is the real tribute to love.
Because – you sacrifice
your conscience, your reason,
your integrity and your invaluable self esteem.

All About a Women..! By a Man..!

Women.. by nature...!

..If you kiss her, you are not a gentleman; If you don't, you are not a man.

If you praise her, she thinks you are lying; If you don't, you are good for nothing.

If you agree to all her likes, you are a wimp; If you don't, you are not understanding.

If you visit her often,she thinks it is boring; If you don't , she accuses you of double-crossing .

If you are well dressed, she says you are a playboy; If you don't , you are a dull boy.

If you are jealous, she says it's bad; If you don't, she thinks you do not love her.

If you attempt a romance, she says you didn't respect her; If you don't, she thinks you do not like her.

If you are a minute late, she complains it's hard to wait; If she is late, she says that's a girl's way.

If you visit another woman, you're not putting in "quality time"; If she is visited by another man, "Oh it's natural, we are girls..!"

If you kiss her once in a while, she professes you are cold; If you kiss her often, she yells that you are taking advantage.

If you stare at another woman, she accuses you of flirting; If she is stared by other men, she says that they a just admiring.

If you talk, she wants you to listen; If you listen, she wants you to talk.

So simple, yet so complex!

So weak, yet so powerful!

So confusing, yet so desirable!

So damning, yet so wonderful!

It’s an army out there...

The Indian rickshaw is a deadly combination of a two-wheeler and a four-wheeler. Because the three-wheeled monster gives the impression to riders that - hey - I got a wheel more than you, so be careful. And the very monster turns into a sneaky little mouse, as most rickshaw drivers manage to fit one wheel through a miniscule gap in traffic, under the absurd and dangerous assumption that the two wheels behind will follow suit. The end result? Scratches galore, and enough road-fights.

Of course, that is if His-Highness rickshawaala agrees to transport us.
I had a word with a rick-driver who stays close to home, Suresh Gangadharan. The ‘charioteer’ is one of the rare honest ones out there who relies on the meter, allowing that mounted piece of metal to decide his fate and future. I had heard from another ‘rickie’ that were nearly 150,000 rickshaws in Chennai alone, and it surprised me, so I talked to Suresh to find out more. Some figures he revealed include:

"Over 80% of the rickshaws run on LPG (credit goes to the authorities for enforcing this) although not all have taken steps to reduce pollution. Suresh says that previously, with petrol, many drivers mixed it with kerosene and that was the root cause of increased pollution from the ricks. With gas (and authorities having enforced a good, quality distribution of LPG around the city) fewer ricks can forcibly pollute.

Over a 170,000 rickshaws travel in Chennai alone, each generating an average income of 1,000 rupees per day. Suresh points out, that atleast 80,000 rickshaws spend a full day in the city. Do the math: The city of Chennai spends Rs. 80 million on rickshaw fares, every day.

On an average, each driver works a 12-hour shift, and nearly every rickshaw has two drivers nominated against it. That leaves us with atleast 300,000 rickshaw drivers in the city. Considering the stereotype drivers, that’s a lot of alcohol consumption as well.

The ARDU is the single-largest union representing the drivers. This makes them quite powerful: at any given point, they have potentially 300,000 people and the single most popular means of transportation in Chennai under their control.

Each owner makes anything between 170 to 300 rupees per day, per rickshaw. Each driver makes about 150 rupees per day, and an average of 200 on the weekends. Suresh claims that many generous foreigners have left 50 rupees, and sometimes even 100 rupees as tips when they were in a hurry during tennis matches and rock concerts.

The living conditions for the rickshaw drivers are bad but a margin above the poverty line. Most of the average income goes into liquor, leaving the families distraught, the children uneducated and the wives often have to work as maids to feed the family."

The bottom line?

Much as we might hate them for their stubborness, incompatibility and their pride, these guys run the streets of Chennai. So the next time you drive, and you find this rickshaw crossing your way like a metallic piece of manhood in your serene life, try and refrain from picking a fight, because it’s an army out there. It really is. They’ve taken over.

Truly, if there was ever a vehicle engineered for the roads of India, here it is. But that’s only until namma metro arrives in this Singaara Chennai-city-turned-chaosville. Which is, of course, a long wait.

One of my pointed out that the word Rickshaw has Japanese origins, from the word "jinirikisha" which means ‘human powered vehicle’. Interesting, considering that it’s us who took it to a new level.

When you love someone..

When you love someone..

You only see the good that evokes your passion, and never the bad that could actually make you see sense. And what a folly that is because that is where your downfall begins.

When you love someone, you strive to become compatible. And because you’ve been told that you can never change your lover, you endeavor to change yourself. Indeed, there is no harm in such a cause, especially if it is for the good of not just your love, but of yourself. And so you find yourself giving up this and sacrificing that, until one day you wake up and you don’t know yourself anymore. You don’t know what you’ve become, how you got there, or even why; all because such a drastic overhaul of your ‘self’, of your ‘being’ was achieved for the wrong reasons – not for yourself, but for the pseudo-god who you so desperately wanted to please, but who, more than likely, would never be.

Still, when you love someone, you try to make it work. So every time there’s a problem – and at this point, you’re already honest with yourself enough to admit that there are indeed problems – you find yourself conceding to keep the peace, to keep the status quo intact. This is because even though in your eyes he is now just a man and no longer a pseudo-god, you still do not love him any less. If anything, you might even love him more in this newfound attainability.

So you concede, and all is peaceful until the next conflict where you will concede again and again and again in a never ending cycle of concession for the sake of love and harmony, regardless of who is in the wrong. But when you really think about it, how long can you concede? How long can you give in? How long can you keep apologizing for wrongs that you did not do? Everything - and everyone - has a limit. Surely your ability to concede is no exception.

On the other hand, you can resist taking the path of least resistance and fight for what you believe is right. You can attempt to make him face his inadequacies, instead of mollycoddling him and pointing out your own to make him feel good about himself. You can endeavor to put your lover in his place when he’s done you wrong, and force him into submission for you to finally receive the apology or the appreciation that you so deserve. This is risky because though there is a slight chance that you will accomplish your objective, it is exactly that – slight - and you may invariably do more harm than good, leading to an even earlier demise of the relationship. Is there even a path that doesn’t lead to the relationship’s demise? I do not believe so, for even those who stay together for the rest of their lives eventually die and become no more.

When you love someone, you give him the power to destroy you. And until you start to accept love as it is – fleeting - you will find yourself constantly destroyed throughout your lifetime. You will only emerge whole when you stop believing in forever and start accepting that nothing lasts forever.

Indeed, when you love someone, make every moment count because that’s all you’re ever really going to get – moments.

Does it make you feel good?

You would have probably received this a hunderd times before on a mail.

But it is funny that everytime I read them I just feel happy. So I am just putting them for the record.

Think about them one at a time before going on to the next one . .

• Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep.
• Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.
• Finding a 2 dollar bill in your coat from last winter.
• No lines at super market
• Hearing your favourite song on radio
• Midnight phone calls that last for hours
• Having someone play with you hair
• Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
• Knowing that somebody misses you.
• Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think.
• Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change.

Adios.... have a good week ahead :D

Can you please write it and give me...

Recently, I have realized the power and effectiveness of the statement "Can you please write it and give me"..

Let me explain...I have registered for the BSNL broad band connection two months back and have not got it yet. So I went to customer care, and asked the lady behind the counter about the status, and she very casually asked me to go to some other exchange and find out.

"Why cant you do it?" I asked..

"Nopes we dont have any person here who is responsible for the internet connections" she said

"Can you please write it and give me?" I said , "Please write that a customer has come to enquire for net connection and I cant help but ask him to go to some other place"

"No I cant do that", She said

"Why not?" I asked

"Because I am not responsible for the net connections" she said.

"Ok in that case, please write and give me that Customer Care is not responsible for net connections, for this kind of things customers are required to go exchange and find out", I persisted, "See, I dont want to complain, but just I want to figure out where I have to go for what"
Thats it, she started calling some numbers, gave my details, retrieved the information and told me.

Never mind what the information was, but I got some answer, and I avoided running to someother place.

This is the third time that I have employed this technique, First at the railway reservation and second at ICICI, and this time here.I guess it works because people are afraid to give in writing, because they know that it is their responsibility and they are just running away from it.

So if you persist, they would solve the problem for you.

Please use this freely, you dont have to be rude and all. Be nice and very straight. Trust me it works....

Cheers..

To all the girls out there... A humble request

Excerpt from a Secret Dairy of a Secret Guy...

Discliamer: Any resembelence to any person living or dead is purely fictitious.

"The one thing which I dread and am really afraid of is when a girl tells me that I am like a sweet brother to her.... God I hate it, fear it and have wild dreams about it... I wonder why girls are always interested in making brothers, even after they grow up, I wonder what faults that they see with their real brothers that makes them go out looking for more brothers, and even more brothers. I do hate more when most of my sisters' friends or friends' sisters start addressing me as "bhaiya", it becomes kind of default thing to use, and it irritates me. I wish they would ask me my name. And imagine if I turn back and start calling them bahenji, would they not take offence. Girls are funny and they are.

The other set of girls who are not going around forming brothers have one other deadly weapon "I cant look at you in that way", wonder what that is supposed to mean. And thats it, next day I keep looking at myself in mirror while shaving, and wondering if that has got to do with the way I look, the way I have my hair or it has got to do with her vision. And in general girls dont want to argue and discuss this subject, while it is so obvious to them, it seems latin-greek to me and leaves me totally perplexed. The only thing that I get out of them is that I dont appear to be that serious. But the problem is that if I start talking serious stuff then I dont even get this far, I mean then girls will never be interested in me. Because girls like fun-loving easy-going guys. So you see it is vicious circle. and I think the key is to identify the point of transition when I have to change myself from easy-going to hard-tuff, from talking about guitaing and the latest Johny Depp movie to talking about future career prospectus and the real estate pricing.

But the most funniest thing that I find is that the same girl (I mean the same girl who tells me that I am not serioius), when she goes out to meet the guy that parents have chosen for her, by default start seeing him as perspective husband, even though most of the times I find him as idiotic as myself.I guess you girls have to understand that life is difficult for guys with the competition so high and you have to be little considerate. I guess on an average a girl might get proposed 5 times in her bachelorhood... (I have no data on how much on married girls), whereas a guy like me might die to get proposed even once. Now when I have got to think about it I dont think any of my boy-friends (somehow calling boy friends looks little shady, I mean my friends who are guys) have ever got proposed, atleast no one has ever told me about it. And trust me guys also have very little threshold of falling in love, and they pratically fall in love with any girl, I think if guy meets a girl for ten times he would surely fall in love. This is especially true if the guy comes from some testosterone intensive college like IIT.

So please all you girls dont take it very seriously if I ask you out for a cup of coffee, I am just looking for a harmless cup of coffee. Dont make any character based assumptions about me. And I have a very nice and cute sister and I love her. I dont think I can handle more than that. And please dont treat me as agony uncle and start talking about the antics of your new boyfriend, about how he does not pay any attention to you or whatsoever, because I hate your boyfriend, I genuinely hate him. I might listen with lot of enthusiasm but inside my heart breaks, and please dont do it especially when I am sponsoring you a cup of coffee. And if possible do let me know when is the transition point, rather when you would want to see me as hard and macho man.

Cheers.

Innovation Begins with Fascination

In my experience, the origin of innovation is fascination -- the state of being intensely interested in something. Enchanted. Captivated. Spellbound. Absorbed.
.

What kids are good at.
Kids and those mavericks at work who make everyone nervous and running for their spreadsheets at the drop of a hat.
.

A person who is fascinated does not need to be motivated... or managed... or "incentivized." All that person needs is time, some resources, meaningful collaboration, and periodic reality checks from someone who understands what fascination is all about.
.

That's why Google gives its workforce 20% of their time to explore projects on their own. That's why 3M and W.L. Gore do something similar. They know that the root of innovation is fascination.
.

If you, or the people who report to you, are not currently in a state of fascination about work it's time to turn things around. That is, IF you want to spark some innovation.
How do you do this?

For starters, here's one simple way, just to get things rolling.

THE SEED OF FASCINATION

1. On a piece of paper, create three parallel headlines -- "What Fascinates Me," "People I Admire," and "What I Would Do If I Had More Time or Knew I Couldn't Fail."
2. Jot down at least TEN responses beneath each headline.
3. Look for intriguing, new connections between your responses. Any insights? New possibilities? Ahas?
4. Now, think about ways you might incorporate these new insights or possibilities into your work life (while staying open to the fact that your company is capable of changing and growing).
5. Jot down your new ideas.
6. Circle your three favorite ideas and brainstorm them with a friend. Then pitch anyone who's influence can help you launch your ideas for how to bring more fascinating projects into your work life.

The Good Thing About Bad Ideas

"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." - John Barrymore
.
One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is something like "there are no bad ideas." Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas. Nazism, for instance. Arena football. Bow ties.
.
What well-meaning "keep hope alive" brainstorming aficionados really mean is this: Even bad ideas can lead to good ideas if the idea originators are committed enough to extract the meaning from the "bad." It happens all the time.

///////
Even diamonds begin as coal.
///////

The key for aspiring innovators? To find the value in what seems to be a "bad idea" and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration. The following technique, shows you how to do this. It's a particularly effective method for naysaying, skeptical groups to use. It's also a hoot and a great way to make boring brainstorming sessions come alive.

HOW IT WORKS:

1. Bring a challenge, question, or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it.
3. Tell another person (or team) about your bad idea.
4. The other person (or team) thinks of something redeemable about your bad idea -- and tells you what it is.
5. Using this redeemable essence as a catalyst, you brainstorm new ideas, solutions, or possibilities that can actually DO something with.

Revolution is very much at hand..

+Five years ago, there was no Orkut, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter, much less any of the myriad tools and applications created to enhance and extend their social networking value.

+Ten years ago, there was no Google or Wikipedia shaping the way the world finds and thinks about information and knowledge.

+Twenty years ago, there was no World Wide Web influencing every aspect of our daily lives.

.

I don’t know about you, but it feels alot like revolution to me, and we’re just scratching the surface of what’s transpiring. So while I understand that association leaders prefer to “manage change” incrementally, there’s a problem: it’s a flawed and failing strategy for the 21st century.
.

The incremental strategy is ineffective because what we’re experiencing today is unlike the tamer forms of change we’ve known before. It is what I have referred to in the past as “profound, intensifying and accelerating disruption and discontinuity,” or paradigm shift. I realize, of course, that the first phrase is a tongue twister and the second phrase has been devalued by years of speaker abuse. But neither of those issues gives us a free pass to ignore what’s going on. For the first time since the early years of the 20th century, paradigm shift actually is happening, and it will continue to unfold in the years ahead whether or not we choose to acknowledge it.
.

The notion of managing paradigm shift incrementally is a proverbial finger-in-the-dike scenario, i.e., it is both dangerous and unsustainable. Associations will find themselves unable to thrive in this century if all they are prepared to do is aim just high enough to survive, or worse, defensively cope with the present while wishing and hoping for an easier future that will never come. Association leaders need to dial back their conservative instincts, soberly assess what is happening in the world around them and then work to rapidly grow their comfort level with radical ideas and revolutionary approaches. The tables have turned, and we can no longer afford the mounting financial and human cost of our community’s risk aversion for risk aversion’s sake.
.

If we’re going to harness the forces of paradigm shift and leverage the revolution to our advantage, we must cultivate strategic imagination. Maddie argues that association leaders use strategic imagination everyday. It saddens me to write that my experience has been very much the opposite, to the point that I am genuinely concerned about the lack of capacity for responsible stewardship in organizations of all sizes throughout our community, and I have heard this same concern expressed by other association leaders as well. So after sixteen years of watching associations not deal with the same issues over and over again, rethinking the assumptions that guide the way our organizations create value from the ground up strikes me as precisely the kind of fundamental reinvention that is urgently needed for the association community to have a fighting chance at thriving and growing in the years ahead.
.

The gale-force winds of paradigm shift are already whipping, and the seeds of future opportunity are being strewn in every direction. Association leaders who claim not to see or understand what’s happening are either in denial or just not paying attention. But make no mistake about it: the revolution is at hand.

Imagination is the Lifeblood of the Revolution

…The capacity to imagine is being squashed by the hierarchy of risk culture, the doom and gloom corporate system that places an ability to mitigate loss above the blue sky creative capacity. Ideas, knowledge and intercultural imagination are just as valuable as powerful as financial capital.

.

Prosperity more and more will depend on creative advantage, a flow of ideas and innovation. The top down corporate structure is giving way to the horizontal open source, peer produced network of ideas. The hierarchical model of organization has been the historically dominant model for our Western institutions such as the Government, Church and military-industrial complex. So pervasive and enduring has this model been that we have assumed there are no alternatives.
.

But today companies that make their boundaries porous, and accept input from the global creative sector are the ones best poised to create enduring value. Traditional forms of intellectual property create a walled compound of content, where resources are hidden and companies compete with each other to gain access to vital innovation pools. But increasingly companies are finding that the best way to build vital business structures is to harness a shared foundation of technology and knowledge to accelerate growth and innovation.

.

Whether or not we’re ready to accept it, there is a revolution unfolding in our world, and in our association community. No amount of describing what’s happening online as fad changes this current reality, much less the future that is emerging for the next decade and beyond. Paradigm shift isn’t a theoretical construct, but a real-world, life-changing phenomenon, and not all of it is or will be for the better unless we act to make it better. Fortunately, thanks to distributed Web-enabled collaboration, it is now possible to fully capitalize on the near-limitless creative potential of people worldwide to imagine what comes next. Imagination is the lifeblood of this revolution, and it is our imagination that will see us through no matter what challenges we are forced to confront.
.

It’s too easy to think of incrementalism as a style choice, a matter of personal preference for those who fear change and need to made comfortable by being brought along more slowly. Sadly, after decades of failing to act because of leadership denial and myopia, organizations have forfeited this “steady as you go” option on behalf of their stakeholders. Fairly or unfairly, this is where we are, and it is now time to embrace the revolution and imagine the association community of the 21st century!

Thackereys are migrants!

Where did that one come from? The pretenders to the throne have been unmasked. So much for crying out for the Marathi Manoos!

If one were to believe the news doing the rounds right now:
“The Thackerays came to Mumbai two generations ago for jobs and as such have no right to assault those coming to the financial capital in search of livelihood.”


Now since the very credibility of being a pure “Maratha” comes under question, I cannot wait for clarifications from the SS/MNS camp to come forward. Maybe Raj Thackerey will come forward and tell his numerous supporters that one should forget the past and concentrate on the current problem of migrants. Or maybe, he will go back to being a ‘pillar’ under the Tiger!


What does one say about all that noise created under the banner of the “Marathi Manoos”, and all the unnecessary trouble caused to the migrants? If nothing else, i think Raj T owes an unconditional apology to all those who had to suffer directly like the labour classes, as well as those who were affected indirectly, like those whose carpenters, Bais, Milkman, Vegetable vendors, disappeared suddenly, leaving everything and everyone in a fix.


What MNS successfully managed to do was create trouble for its own masses. Losses for Maharashtrian businesses. And a lot of anti MNS sentiments. I hope that this incident drills in some sense into this man and he can put an end to his tireless tirade against outsiders.


He forgets, that there is a “Rashtra” in Maharashtra.


I wonder what the MNS supporters have to say now?


Anyone?

Why Raj Thackrey Sucks more

He sucks more than other leaders of his league because he belongs to our generation. He was born in a liberal country and has seen very little prejudice, especially in the city where he was raised. He was educated with people like us, in schools like ours with people of different religions and regions. He has come of age hearing about the expectations of the whole country from his generation. He took the odd step and came into politics and made our generation proud, only to disappoint in a moment.

I remember a time, not so long back, when we were excited about the political scene sans the Sanghs, the filthy criminal politicians, the goon raj and all the self proclaimed moral policing organizations. I remember watching YUVA and how correct it seemed and how, first time in my life, I wanted to believe in a Bollywood flick. I remember a college debate in which one of the participants talked about how five years from then, most or all of the politicians would be either dead or too old to talk and how a young breed of leaders (not politicians) would skyrocket country’s development. In one blow, all that is a goner.

He has single handedly taken all our misconceptions of seeing an India, led by virtuous young breed of pro-development leaders. He has proved once again that doing away with secularism is a small price that leaders today and prospective leaders of tomorrow are ready to pay to stay in power. He has proudly burst our bubble of the image of an India free from caste, religion and regional politics.

Neenaz Ichaporia of IBN Blogs says it all
“What Mumbaikars prize more than anything else about their city, is the ability to step out at any hour, unmolested, and roam the city unharmed……

..…Thackeray and his MNS goons have chipped away at that confidence.”

In fact I am not sure whether we should burn him at the stake or thank him, for he has indeed opened our eyes to the fact that young or not, politicians are politicians and they will never change. My faith in the next generation leaders is FUBARed and I am not sure if I'll be trusting these young-uns anymore, but is it not a lesson we should have learned long back? The youngest country of the world could so easily be led by world’s youngest imbeciles.

Are you in Kerala? Ask "Got Milk?"

If you ever come across any communist in my home state of Kerala (trust me, there are a lot of them around!) and if he/she paints for you a romantic image of communism - please ask him - “Got Milk?”

Communism is flawed. All the means of production can’t be controlled by the government. Not even the politburo can control or manage that. It hasn’t worked anywhere in the world. Why is that our comrades in Kerala get it? Now, don’t get me wrong, I do agree with some of the leftist ideology and I am particularly found of socialism if it is social - but communism is a totally different ball game.

Sure, the comrades will sing praises for Castro, Saddam, Zimbabwe, Iran and Sudan (why? don’t ask) - spite venom on the US and they think is imperialist but they do know how to beg. Last month, the God’s Own Country’s Food and Civil Supplies Minister C. Divakaran started his South Indian Grand Begging Tour - first to Tamil Nadu, Karanataka (for milk!) and now to Maharashtra. Why don’t you ask Castro or Kim in North Korea or the dude in Zimbabwe? What did you say? - Same problem? Hmm… I wonder why?

“Banking” on banks! Whew!

I wonder what has become of public sector banks. I was actually astonished by the number of people opting for private banks these days; banks like HDFC, ICICI etc. spring to mind. There were a few reasons which made me tear my hair as to why this was happening. Firstly these private banks have very complicated rules and regulations governing your transactions and bank accounts. Some even have limits one the number of ATM withdrawals you can do per month before you actually end up paying for them. I don’t think its reasonable for a common man to grasp all these rules and not risk losing his hard earned money inadvertently to the bank. Secondly, the kind of minimum balances required by some of these banks border on the ridiculous. I mean, honestly, minimum balances are the amounts that you never take out of a bank account. So you would want it to be as minimum as possible. The bank is meant to keep your money tenporarily and you’d be better of not donating money at rates of about 2% for this cause. Thirdly, and most importantly, have our public sector banks- nationalized government regulated supposedly “safe” banks- become just not good enough? One visit to one of the public sector banks confirmed the reason to me in striking clarity.

At this stage I have to be honest and tell you that I’m no expert in banking. On the contrary, I’m what they call a “noob” to banking. But it is to the noobs that the fallacies of a system are most obvious. Especially systems which are as old as the banking system. So when I stepped into the bank* with the simple task of obtaining a DD to pay my college fees, I thought it was just a simple task. Note that I had got DDs from banks before and I have a fair idea on the procedure and the amount of time it normally takes. As I moved to where the forms were “supposed to” be kept, there evidently was none. It was kept somewhere hidden behind a pillar on the main desk. Is wastage of couple of small sheets of paper so great a consideration for banks that they keep it well hidden? I had to ask a couple of people before finally finding its location.

The form was simple. The task of filling it not so complex. I had the money with me. I had the filled in form. What next? Here is where being a noob gives you new insights. A regular visitor to the bank would have known exacty what to do. Go to the cash counter, pay up and get a receipt. But then how am I supposed to know that? I was made to ask another of those bank officers who seemed too busy(impolite?) to answer my query. So then I paid up and got my receipt. To my shock I was made to wait more than 1 hour before that simple DD was delivered to me. The reason being the lady who was supposed to give it was chatting with a friend who had come to the bank. If that was half hour, another half hour was taken up in her going for lunch right at the appointed time totally unresponsive to a DD waiting there before her to be signed and despatched. I had paid extra in commission for this, damn it! After all this unnecessary wasting of time, my patience was at an end as I demanded my DD. Can’t they understand I was in a hurry? So finally as I got my DD, my threat of a complaint to high officers brought only the slightest of smirks on her face.

So now I get it. People just don’t come to banks anymore just to safeguard their hard earned money. They have learned that they are the masters and it is their money which earns the bank its profits. So above all they expect a level of SERVICE. Service not as in “servant” but service as in politeness and user friendly. This is what is appealing to the common man. And it is exactly what the private banks specialize at. Be it personalized phone calls to let you know about your recent big transactions or to inform you about their most recent schemes(or to home deliver those DDs that I talked about!) these banks are adept and efficient. Frankly I think most people nowadays know that they are losing a bit of money but as a trade off for the service they’re getting, it might just seem worth it sometimes.

* Just for the record, the bank I went to was a branch of the Indian Overseas Bank.