Service & Service providers

Have we ever thought when we go to a restaurant and have food, who makes that food and how they make it, what efforts they take in making that food for us.

Have we ever thought when we order for a cab at 5AM in peak winter time, what efforts go into making that cab available for us?

“Call centre open 24 x 7” - means hundreds of people will spend sleepless nights to take our calls and answer them.
“Now, you can book online anytime from anywhere” - means there is a dedicated team to take care of the back-end processes and troubleshoot anytime through the day and night.
“Home delivery in 30 minutes now” - means there are some people who risk their lives to road accidents, who burn themselves in peak summers, and stiffen their hands in peak winters to get us the delivery in 30 minutes.
“Now hotels available in the remotest locations of the country” - means there would be people living away from their families for several days and months together for providing us with the services.

The irony is that we avail the services but often, forget the efforts of the providers. By providers, I don’t mean the companies, the management. The management decides what to do, the operations department decides how to do, but the people who actually do and follow for the management’s promises to be kept and the company’s brand name to be built up are the ones who make a difference and unfortunately they are the ones who are taken least care of. I am extremely unsure and quite confused about why this is the case.

Are we providing a health drink for the person burning in the heat to deliver the order. Are we providing a pair of gloves to the person whose hands stiffen in the winter while traveling to deliver the order. Are we providing extra facilities for the families of the people who stay away just for their job which is to serve us!

Hope companies in hospitality sector make efforts towards these accomplishments!

Bollywood & its colours!

Bollywood has a lot of strange colours. Different people, different roles, people playing roles of extremely different & totally imaginary personalities and so on. They have lives of their own, they are real people after all, different emotions also strike their lives and I wonder how they ‘act’ when they have to portray emotions while facing with entirely opposite emotions in their real lives. But there of course would be times when they would be having great times in their personal lives and probably that shown on screen too in their acting. And this is the time they probably also look their best on screen.

Something like people have photographic memory, I have videographic memory, things get recorded in my brain and I am named PVR (personal video recorder) by a friend of mine. Well I have a good RAM too to be able to pull up these recordings fast when required from my hard disc :-)

Here is what I kind of captured some moments like these with my videographic memory, relevant to the discussion about stars looking their best:

1. Rishi Kapoor in Saagar, 1985
2. Sridevi the best ever in Chandini, 1989 [the music of this movie was amazing especially the songs ‘parbat se kaali ghata takraayi....’ and ‘lagi aaj sawan ki phir wo jhadi hai...’
3. Amitabh Bachchan in Hum, 1991 (well I like in Satte Pe Satta, 1982 too, the polished version of course and mainly in the song ‘Dilbar mere kab tak mujhe aise hi tadpaaoge...’
4. Shahrukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayengey, 1995
5. Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, 1998
6. Sanjay Dutt in Haseena Maan Jaayegi, 1999
7. Ajay Devgan in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, 1999
8. Hrithik Roshan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, 2001
9. Sushmita Sen in Main Hoon Na, 2004
10. John Abraham in New York, 2009

By the way, something else very interesting that I have captured through my videographic memory, Chandini was released in 1989, but it had some background music which was a song in Lamhe which was released in 1991. [Both these movies were directed by Yash Chopra]

Lakshya was released in 2004, but it had some background music which was a song in Rock On which was released in 2008. [Both these movies were directed by Farhan Akhtar]

'Little' people speak!

I went to shop at Spencers hypermarket this weekend. I took all the items that were there in my list (I am so organized you see...:-)), to my surprise onions were selling at Rs. 46 per kg.
I really like the billing counters at Spencers, reminds me of the Star India Bazaar of Ahmedabad - it is probably because of the resemblance to ‘Ahmedabad’ that I like this too :-)

While at the counter, when my turn came after a few others in the queue before me, I observed the guy who was billing, he seemed to be working like a machine following a pre-entered program in his brain. I felt like he is saying:

"I am the guy who stands here for more than 10 hours to just enter the items you have bought, take the right amount from you and give you back what I owe you."

"I expose the barcode to the machine to scan, or you have a tough time analyzing whether you paid the right amount for what all you bought."

"I may not know how much to give you back when you pay me Rs. 1000 for your bill of Rs. 873, of course my machine doesn’t let me make a mistake, I know how to count the amount that I pay you, I can add, I can’t subtract!"

"I may now know what the keys on my keyboard mean, apart from the numeric keys, the enter key and sometimes a few more like space."

“But I am the king of this place, I run the show.”

“The more you buy, the tougher it is for me, the more boring it is for me.”

“The more customers come in, the more taxing it becomes for me, the less rest I get to take, the less relaxing time I have.”

“The different kinds of payment methods you use for your ease, the more complex it becomes for me."

“They encourage you to buy more, they encourage more customers to come in, they introduce various payment methods for your own ease - all of these are problematic for me.”

“But, if I don’t stand on the counter to bill your goods, would you ever come in again? The more comfort I create for you at this last stage of your buying cycle, the more you are motivated to come back in the store and buy more from the store.”

“What would you do without me!!! Ha ha ha...”

Visit Thank God for little people too, inspiring.

Zangooraaaaaah! WHAT...A...SHOW!

I saw sign boards of ‘Kingdom of Dreams’ a few months ago on the roads and wondered what it was! As always, I thought it was just a hype for some ordinary set-up. I never bothered to know what it was. When I joined Google, I heard my colleague discuss about the same while discussing an offsite visit. I heard such discussions a couple of more times over the breakfast and lunch too and now I was inquisitive to know what this ‘Kingdom of Dreams’ was. I asked this colleague of mine and she didn’t seem to be so excited about the entire experience she had over there, and the description of the place didn’t sensitize me much too for a visit to the place.

It so happened one day that we passed by the place, and saw this HUGE structure towards our left on our way. We discussed among ourselves what it was, within no time, our quest had its own answer - it was ‘Kingdom of Dreams’. That was it, our curiosity of what it was and what would be there inside that HUGE structure grew manifold. Guess what! The next day my friend called up and said his company was organizing a visit to the ‘Kingdom of Dreams’ and he invited us for that. We readily agreed since we were longing to go and see the place by now! Well, to be very frank, we enjoyed the visit because of the entertainment activities that my friend’s company organized, but were not so impressed by the place as such, though we appreciated the idea and more than that, the effort that went into making such a place. While just roaming around the campus, we saw another unit which was looking like some theatre inside or so. When asked, the security guards said, ‘it is a theatre and there is a live play which is shown everyday’. Oh! That was totally not interesting enough for us, especially when the guards told us that the ticket amounts range between Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 6,000.

Thanks to this company that I work with, we had the holiday party organized to this place, which included the visit to the eating joints called Culture Gully (the place where my friend’s office visit was organized), and this theatre play also - it is called ‘Zangoora!’.

Okay, it took a while after we got seated in the gallery in the auditorium, exclusively booked for our company. I didn’t have many expectations about this play. As I heard all over, it was called the India’s biggest bollywood musical. I thought it would be boring, and something like a bollywood movie story and so on. It started finally, and the first instance of the music along with the scene with all the decor and the props that came up in the first glance, were TRULY AMAZING! I had not seen such a ‘live’ animation ever! The story was of course bollywood and not much we could not predict. But the way it was done was just OUTSTANDING! The timing of each of the settings, the music and the songs, the old songs played were significantly high as a % of the songs played which reminds me that Old is Gold indeed! Songs like ‘mehbooba’ (Sholay, 1975), ‘laila main laila’ (Qurbaani, 1980), ‘chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko’ (Yaadon ki Baarat, 1973), and much more. The live dance which had unbelievable immense energy, the number of times and scenes changed and the timing with which the sets changed, was amazing! The animations, the synchronization of the live acts with the pictures and the effects that were created hence, were extremely spectacular!!! It had many things without which the play could have been done. Putting unusual genuine perfect efforts to do things without which the task can be done, I understand, is what is called strategy and this is what makes the task “extra”ordinary and shows a long term impact, normally not immediate, I believe wholeheartedly. Acting in movies which are shot & edited, having a lot of takes and re-takes is quite easy. Doing such an act which is an entire movie, live on the stage, with no editing, no retakes, with amazing perfection in all respects, definitely needs immense preparation & Zangoora is a collection of all this.

Well, there was no advertising about the actors, and the act too. But there are topshots involved, including some renowned music directors, singers, some good actors and so on. I would leave it to you to find out the details.

Really, A MUST WATCH SHOW!!!

It is a race...and all run!

I was traveling in this metro train to the railway station to catch a train for trip sometime during early November this year, the trip didn’t happen because of the train delays that day, well...that is a different story.
I was so tired and had all the plans to take a quick 30 minute long nap while my metro train travel. I got to sit from the time I boarded the train and after I set up my luggage and all, I was all set for my nap. It felt really good when I closed my eyes for a while. Soon after 3 or 4 stations , about 10 minutes into the journey, I heard some words ‘IIT Rourkee’, ‘civil engineering’, ‘tuition’, ‘board exams’, ‘physics’, ‘p-block elements’, ‘periodic table’ etc. which interrupted my sleep. I saw in a little haze in front of me, two school-going boys standing and chatting all this. They were not very well dressed, but the uniform showed they were from a good school, one of the boys had a batch which read ‘School Captain’. And while I overheard their conversation, I came to know that he was a topper in the Chemistry subject. The world for them seemed to revolving around preparation for the engineering entrance exams and seemed to be ending on becoming an engineer. “Oh GOD! Not again”, I thought. But this is the reality, it was because it had been a while since I heard or saw such things around that I was shocked more.

I met this boy a few years back who was preparing for engineering, and this conversation reminded me of him too. I went to their place during Diwali time and this boy came from his IIT coaching weekly exam. I am very much fascinated with the subject called Mathematics and I love solving sums related to integration especially, there is something in it! So, I took his question paper and started seeing it and it seemed quite familiar and nice to me. I wanted to talk to this boy, and wanted to ask him about how he answered the questions and about his aspirations and so on, this boy was just not speaking, I saw a strange kind of a fear in his eyes which looked up from the floor just once during the 1 hour I sat in their home. Talking to his parents, it felt like their world is just the boy, and his engineering and absolutely nothing else. They had extreme dreams around him joining one of prestigious engineering colleges in India, and it felt like life would end if he didn’t get into one such college in one such course!!!

I thought of myself, ‘What are we doing to this boy! Does he really want to do all this? Is he capable of doing this? What if he doesn’t clear the entrance? I was afraid to even think of that option, and I prayed that he clears it somehow (seriously!). What if he clears the entrance but is not able to cope up with the actual course! Why is he pushed into this shell and refusing to come out of it now and see the world without the IIT or the engineering!”

I felt like asking him to just try giving up all this once, and ask him what he wants to do. The thing about becoming an engineer had been totally ingrained into him so much for probably many years now that he probably never got time to think of his own interests and what he actually wants to become! He doesn’t know himself! He is very much away from his own self . It feels like just because everybody is running, we run too. The entire education system seems to have become a routine machine, the course content is practically not possible to be covered in the time frame given, in any grade of our system. Many of us adults would fail in a proper conceptual test for basic concepts, I bet! I am forced to recollect movies like ‘3 idiots’ and ‘taare zameen par’ when I see such things.

I feel like saying to all, ‘please stop, stop, stop running the race, and pause for a while, and think, take time to talk to yourself, and recognize your own self.’ But to whom should I tell, to how many can I tell! The winners are not the ones who run the race of the masses, they are the others :-)