Month: June 2012

Light.

I suppose that this naturally followed from the LBC topic “Dark” that Will had suggested. This little offering is also a natural flow from the earlier post.

Antarjyoti bahirjyoti pratyagjyoti paratparah
Jyotirjyoti swayamjyoti atmajyoti shivosmyaham

Light is on the inside, light is on the outside,
Light is in myself, beyond the beyond.
The Light of lights, I myself am light,
the Self is light, I am Shiva.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where thirteen of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Will. The twelve other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Anu, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, ocdwriter, Padmum, Paul, Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!

The Latest Obsession.

I weigh 85 Kgs. That makes me clearly way above average Indian weight. On the other hand, I can comfortably be an American, though I am sure Shackman will give me a complex.

Seriously, I can talk about India and the reason for this rather nice piece of statistics. Indian population is still predominantly rural where people have to toil and also walk long distances. Rural Indian cuisine is also by and large frugal and nourishing with emphasis on fresh local produce. There are also millions of Indians who get by on one meal or less a day. So, the average gets skewed.

In the cities, with the well off with motorised two wheelers or cars, there is an obesity epidemic and the fastest growing service business is health centers aka gyms. The less well off use public transport and walk or bicycle and there is no sign of any obesity there!

To conclude, India, at least the better off part of it, has the problem in as large a measure as the West.

Customer Service At Stanchart Bank – II.

Here is why I believe that SCB thinks that I am stupid and ignorant.

While my exchange of mails regarding my May bill was still in progress, rather my reminders were going without any responses, I received a phone alert on the 22nd inst, that my June bill was due for payment. I promptly arranged for the payment even without a bill and took the fresh matter all over again with them.

Finally on Monday, one Customer Care person telephoned me and wanted to know my email id. It finally dawned on them that they had been sending my ebills to another gmail account with a name similar to mine but with a slight difference in spelling. I am amazed! I can’t understand that someone has been receiving my ebills without letting SCB know that he is not the credit card holder! I first wondered if that person had been threatened with dire consequences by the bank, but that is unlikely as I had been paying the bills on time to precisely avoid such harassment! Not being able to open the statement without the correct passwords, the recipient must have simply been treating those mails all this while as spam.

In the meanwhile the hard copy of the bill sent by post by the bank with posting date as 23.05.2012 also was delivered to me on the 25th inst, which can be directly attributed to the postal department. But, the hard copy for June is yet to be received and I doubt that SCB has investigated with the postal department or taken up the matter with them.

In retrospect, I ask myself whether I am the ignorant and stupid person or the data entry operator who made the mistake and / or the four different Customer Care persons who have been writing to me so far, without fully investigating the complaint, are.

British Sense Of Humour.

An Indian sanitary ware company went into collaboration with a British company called Twyfords Ltd to manufacture and market a range of sanitary ware in India.

One can understand the Indian collaborator’s lack of appreciation for some English words. But I bet that people at Twyfords must still be laughing!

For the uninitiated, Hind is short for Hindusthan and is normally pronounced to rhyme with India. My nephew Jai is an out of the box thinker and has given me the idea for this post.