Saturday, September 1, 2012

The God's voice


"Can you go and collect the tickets at the Kiosk Sada? We are just entering the parking lot. Will be there in 2 mins."

"Only 3 minutes for the movie to start Anu. Come quick. I will collect the tickets and get in. You guys come near the entrance and give me a missed call. Will come out and give you the tickets".

I am not ready to miss even the Vicco turmeric Ayurvedic cream advertisement. This is the movie that I have been waiting for so long - "The Dark knight rises".

I ran up to fourth floor, went up to the kiosk, still trying hard to catch some breath. I punched in a bunch of numbers and pressed the proceed button.. damn.. Why the hell can't I get what I want from these kiosks at the first shot? ah.. Never happens. At least with me it never does.. Now this so called software engineer is waiting for the security to help printing out the tickets from the kiosk. huh!..

At this point I can literally feel my shirt sticking to my body, I am still gasping hard and I know my brain has given up processing any incoming information. I just want to pass through these ticket counters and get to the city of Gotham as quick as possible.

Well, anyway.. here I am waiting for the security to get my tickets from the kiosk. Finally... here it is.. thank god the tickets are out... I quickly grabbed the tickets and turned around to go back and get my bag which I had kept at a corner a little farther away....banggg... I just collided with a little boy who was standing behind me with his father..

Apparently I did not notice the queue building up behind me while I was desparately waiting for the security to get my tickets.. I felt so bad for the kid and I went "Sorry.. sorry.. sorry.. sorry... ".. I bent down and looked at the kid in his eyes asking him if he was hurt. Luckily the kid was perfectly fine...may be I just stepped on one of his shoes or something.. but nothing happened.. he did not even feel anything,...

I am so releaved that it was not as bad as I thought.. The boy must have surely thought I am some crazy person or something, saying so many sorries for nothing..  He smiled at me and said "Sorry uncle.. I am so sorry to come in your way"..

I was totally taken aback by the way this kid reacted to the situation.. Think about it.. He is apologizing for a mistake that he did not even commit.. Obviously he would have had no chance knowing that I will make a sudden turn as he was standing behind me expecting me to move forward rather than turning around.. Not only that he was ready to let my mistake just go, he was ready to apologize to me.. that was a piece of divinity right in front of my eyes.. I smiled at him and made sure he is alright before I left the place.. While I was walking away from that spot I couldnt stop thinking how good and innocent this little boy's heart is.. I was just hoping that this divinity will stay with him even after he grows up.. This is the kind of people today's impatient world is badly in need of..

A second later before I entered the theater, I heard the god's voice from behind, going "Why are YOU saying sorry Mannu?.. He should have been careful.. He should be sorry for what he did.. U dont have to say sorry.."..

I turned around and looked at the poor kid and his agitated father. A sad smile just flashed over my face while my hope for the kid was being shattered down..

Thursday, June 14, 2012

a WOW moment

Couple of days back when Siva pitched this idea of going to a Dosa place for dinner that KD mentioned a while back, I wasn’t quite sure if I will like their food or not. Well, whats the big deal, we decided to go there finally, anyway. It is this crammed up, greasy looking dungy place where they toss some mean dosas for a mean price, I don't even remember the name of it. I didn’t feel like having anything after I had that White-thing-on-a-Green-thing-on-a-Brown-thing Dosa so I washed my hands and got out for some fresh air. Still feeling hungry, I was standing outside waiting for my roommates to finish savoring the second or third dosas they ordered. They were on a roll and I couldn’t stand there doing nothing. All of a sudden I remembered I saw some Jodhpur sweet shop on my way so I thought, well.. nothing could make my night any worse so why not take another chance? So I went up to this small shop with a big yellow name board that read “Jodhpur sweets & corner shop” ( there is something strange in that name- for some reason I think there is some mistake or a typo somewhere , but I just couldn’t figure out what it is and where it is. This is one of those things that I leave for my readers and language pundits :) )


Anyway, I am standing there looking at a pile of sweet Kachoris lying on a big plate with sugar syrup still dripping down from it and at that moment I knew that is THE only thing that can make me happy and nothing else can. There is this lady, may be 28, lean, tall, clumsy hair, with a rimless specs serving the customers busily. I was about to order a kachori but I just realized that I had only one single 500 rupee note. You know, carrying a 500 rupee note in Bangalore today is as good as carrying no money at all. You can’t get anything that costs less than 500 with a 500 rupee note because every place you go, they ask for THE EXACT CHANGE. If you don’t have any change and you badly need something, don’t be surprised when you are handed back some 200 mentos or 150 cloro-mints or a piece of paper with some amount written on it or some shit like that – the street currencies, so to speak. I don’t like them all. I don’t exchange money for goods I don’t like and I don’t need. So I wanted to tell her upfront that all I got was one 500 rupee note and I will buy something only if she has change to return. From the looks of her, she seemed to know English, at least a little bit, so I said, pointing my fingers to that pile of Kachoris, “One from this. And you have change for 500 right?”. She took a Kachori and put it on a paper plate and gave it to me and said “Yeah. No problem. You first eat”. I was thinking, Man.. these small shops are making some good money these days.. moreover it is already night and she must have had a good business today and she must be having a lot of change for sure.. So I stood there and enjoyed every bite of that Kachori and gave her the 500 rupees I had. She looked at me and said, “ It is 12 rupees sir.”. I said, still holding that 500 rupee note in my hand, “ yeah, but I told you I don’t have any change”. Well, at this moment I am furious – I really don’t want to carry a bag full of jilebis or pakodas just because I do not have the exact change. To my surprise, she quietly turned backed, picked up some money from a box and gave it to me. I looked at it and there were 5 hundred rupees notes. I looked at her baffled and she smiled at me and said, “Come back next time sir”.

I never felt really happy and satisfied after doing any business of any scale in any place in India, until that point... I ran back to the restaurant where my folks were still munching on those dosas, got 12 bucks from them, came back running and gave it to her. She took the money, looked at me while I was about to walk away and said, “Thank you so much sir”.

I am not an MBA and I do not know anything about 'customer satisfaction' so much as I hear that term, but at that moment when I stepped out of that shop, I felt, “WOW!”.