The importance of Rupee 1 in my life

Incident 1:
It was a Saturday. I had visited the nearby temple in the evening and after seeking His blessings, I was getting into my car. That is when a beggar came along and said - "मालिक. भगवान् तुम्हारा भला करेगा. खाने के लिए कुछ दे दे!" I checked my wallet to find some change. And all i could find was Re 1. I gave him the Rupee. He looked at the coin, then looked at me derisively and said - "एक रुपये में क्या आता है? चाय पानी तोह दे दो!" I looked at him and said - "जितना दिया उतना रख, वरना यह भी वापिस कर दे. और अगर चाय पानी चाहिए तोह काम कर. भीख मत मांग!" The thankless and shameless beggar snarled at me in his local language and walked away slipping away the rupee in his pocket.

Many times, I feel sorry at the plight of beggars and I feel that we as a society should do something for them. But after meeting this one, I actually felt - "Bloody Mo-Fo, you deserve to be a beggar all your life."


Incident 2:
Petrol cost Rs 54.50 per liter. I asked the petrol pump attendant to fill 2 liters in my Kinetic. He set the electronic machine to fill 2 liters and after the job was done, the machine read that I owed Rs 109. I gave the attendant Rs 110. He put the money in his bag and said - "Sir I dont have 1 Rupee. Sorry." He then looked away and directed the bike behind to come ahead. I said - "What. You don't have a rupee. No problems." I opened the petrol tank and said - "Fill my tank with Re 1 petrol. Set your machine this time price wise instead of quantity wise and fill it up." The bike guy behind started laughing. The petrol pump guy condescendingly looked at me and said - "Sir, why you doing like this. It's just a question of 1 Rupee!" I said - "It's not a question of 1 Rupee, it's a question of work ethics. I should get what I pay for. Fill it up or give me my rupee!"
Believe it or not, he actually set the electronic machine for 1 Rupee and filled my tank with drops of fuel worth Re 1. My bike surely felt heavier than before.


Incident 3
The cashier at my office canteen is over smart. Whenever he had to return Re 1, he would give people 1 Eclair confectionery sweet each costing Re 1. To return Rs 2, he would give people 2 of those. People were visibly agitated by his 'forceful selling' tactics. I was also a victim of that a couple of times. Despite repeated haggling with him, he continued this practice of his.
One day, I went to buy a cup of tea and the cashier demanded "Rs 3 sir." I handed out 3 Eclairs and gave him. He looked at me bewildered and said "Change please sir. This is not accepted." I was waiting for him to say this. I snapped back saying "You can use this as a substitute for Re 1 and we can't. Bull shit. Better take this or we'll complain to the location manager." The cashier said "This time I am taking, next time, give me change." Sarcastically I replied "Same to you bhai."

Aah! The power of Rupee 1!!

'Maid'en Resume

One of my friends who's doing his MS at Georgia Tech Univ, USA, shared a hilarious episode about an Indian student in his university looking for a domestic help. This is what the student posted on the Indians' mailing group:
---
Hey all,
i recently moved into atlanta... i am having a really hard time managing my household chores and juggling them with the ridiculously high course load.... i would appreciate it if someone (preferably a girl) could help me out with cooking, cleaning and few other chores. I am offering $12 per hour for the above help (for approximately 15 hours a week). For those who don't find the above offer lucrative can kindly consider the following situation,
Unless the girl has a TA/RA, normally a girl earns around $6-9 working part time on campus. This is an offer you wouldn't like to refuse. Serious applicants may send their resume to the above address within a week (mid sems coming up..!!:-))

Thanking you,
myself (xxx)
---

As expected, in response to his mailer, people humiliated him. Some people sent out resumes like the one below. Girls almost came out of the screen and bashed him.
---
OBJECTIVE:
To secure a challenging and motivating work opportunity in domestic services and other household chores.... See More

SKILLS:
Technologies: Microwave Oven, Gas Oven, Gas Stove, Electric Stove, Toaster, Mixer, Rice Cooker and Refrigerator
Platforms: Granite, Marble and Formaica (I generally use a chopping (board)
Tools: Knives, Spoons, Forks, Pans, 'Kadai', etc.

PROJECTS:

1. Chhole
-Canned Publix Garbanzo beans, diced tomatoes, onions (chopped),
Badshah chhole Masala, other ingredients as per taste
-Employed self made recipe on uncountable occassions and beta tested
the results on sample set of varying sex, background, nationality and
ages

2. Dal
-Capable of preparing moong, tuwar, black and also the Maharaj Special
Dal Palak, Dal Mutter

3. Rice
-Biryani, Pulao, Plain and Jeera
-Prepared using rice cooker, gas stove and electric stove
- If employed, will be able to carry my own rice cooker to work
---

One of the best resumes I've read!

Eavesdropping in an Elevator...

My office is on the 7th floor and each floor has close to about 200 employees. So there are about 1400 employees in one building and there are just 3 elevators. So on an average, a trip from the ground floor to the 7th or vice versa takes close to 5 minutes since the elevator practically stops at every floor. It's very interesting to see people of all shapes, sizes and sensibilities for a brief period of time. Sometimes, their talk can form fodder for a blog post like this one :)

So, I was taking the elevator from the 7th floor to the ground and I was joined by a bunch of men who sit in the same wing as I do. One of them being particularly loud forced me to eavesdrop, even though I had absolutely no intentions to do so. So they started talking about the sudden outbreak of malls and foodmarts in Pune - More, Spencer's, Subhikhsa, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Mart, Chaupal Fresh and so on. Then Mr Loud got stuck on Reliance Mart and they started discussing whether it belonged to Mukesh Ambani or Anil Ambani. After considerable discussion, they reached on a consensus that Reliance Mart belongs to Mukesh and that Anil's businesses now begin with BIG. And after Anil acquired Adlabs, Gold Adlabs Pune changed to BIG Cinema or so they were discussing. We all have our own opinions about everything and we get judgmental about any thing quite fast. So Mr Loud rants that 'Mukesh does everything very sensibly. See his business is going to grow like anything. He has inherited the right traits of his dad - the late Dhirubhai. But Dhirubhai's younger son - Anil has absolutely no business sense. He gets into any business for the heck of it. How would one explain him getting into the entertainment business. He just has money and wants to spend it. See one day, he'll fall flat on his face...' and he continued with his analysis on how business empires should be run.

I looked at him with askance thinking how could one make such thoughtless comments without knowing the full details. I am sure when he reads this blog, he would be surprised to know that Anil Ambani is opening up a studio on LA with Steven Spielberg and plans to produce 30-35 films over the next 5 years. (details here) I am sure Anil Ambani, a Wharton graduate and heir of the illustrious Dhirubhai Ambani has a little better business acumen than Mr Loud who interestingly tests defects and shouts JDBC - ODBC across the room with his 'oh-so-loud-irritating-voice'.

But nonetheless, thanks to him - this is my 2nd post in a day - he gave me fodder for thought :)

Sodexho bhi chalta hai ...

In the age of credit cards and a well distributed network of ATMs, it isn't necessary to keep more than 100 -200 bucks in your wallet, or so we thought till this happened. After a great lunch and an awesome dessert, we tanked up the car, bought comfortable Osho chappals and my friend and I were on our way home from KP. Now after spending so much, either by Credit Card or cash, we were left with close to around 80 bucks between us and we didn't bother to withdraw money thinking that this much money was good enough if we landed in an emergency like a car breakdown or something like that. However we did not think of this emergency though.

Pune is a strange city. How much ever I may love the city, I always hate it for its roads (if there are any) or traffic management. An apt example is this very strange signal which turns amber and green both at the same time. Ideally, only one colored light should be ON at any given time for any signal. But this strange signal while changing from green to amber, had both green and amber lights on. How cool, isn't it? Had we known the aberrant nature of this signal, this wouldn't have happened.

So we were in the car, in a gleeful mood, listening to the local radio station, commenting on how hot the actress in the song was and we came across this signal. Now, this signal was showing two colors as per its behavior - amber and green, and we saw vehicles zooming past us, we thought probably its 'GREEN' and as obedient citizens, we followed the traffic rules and crossed the signal. Just as we were on the other side, a traffic policeman asked us to get to the side. Again as obedient citizens, we stopped at the side and believed that this would be regular license / PUC checking types and thought we should co-operate. But the policeman started claiming that we had broken traffic rules and that we should pay a fine of 200 bucks. We argued about the funny signal and how were we supposed to know the right behavior and all, but he wouldn't budge. Now, we didn't think of this incident as a possible emergency!

Now we just had 80 bucks and no ATM around. Surely our police force is still not that advanced to swipe credit cards. We were pleading that we just had 80 bucks and a pair of Osho chappals - that was all the wealth we had at that time. And also we weren't willing to pay 200 bucks for a faulty signal. The policeman finally said - 'I'll leave you if you pay me 100. Not a penny more, not a penny less. I won't even give you an official ticket. Slip in a 100 buck note and I'll let you go.' We kept on showing him our empty wallets - 'Sir, see between the two of us we just have 77 bucks.' He peeped into our wallets and said - 'What is this?' pointing to some paper chits. My friend took them out and said - 'Sir, these are Sodexho passes. You can use them to buy things at food malls, select restaurants, grocery stores and more. Our company gives us these passes as a part of our ....' He stopped him in between and said 'Ok, Ok.. I know. I have used them.' We were surprised that the government has also started giving Sodexho passes to its employees. Not till he said - 'Cash nahi toh Sodexho bhi chalega (If you don't have cash, even Sodexho passes will do)'. We were zapped! We were stunned at the desperation of a traffic officer to make an extra buck at any cost. We hardly used Sodexho passes anywhere and our passes used to always accumulate at the end of every month. We could have very well given him the passes and got rid of them. But we didn't.

Again as responsible citizens, we decided to take the ticket. My friend sat in the car while I walked in search of an ATM. Finally found one around 500m away, withdrew money, came back and gave him the cash. The policeman looked at us with expressions of surprise / anger / disdain or a hybrid of all these. We took the ticket and drove off expecting that this money would go in the government account and probably be used to repair this signal rather than giving Sodexho passes to the policeman who would have bought a shampoo from the supermarket or feasted at a nearby restaurant.

Jaago Re!!!