Queue system in India

Recently there was a mail for collecting Deewali gifts from Mail room in our company. We got mail around 4:45PM and general shuttle service to drop employees across Bangalore starts at 5:30PM that means there was a long queue in front of mail room to collect gift boxes. In fact I was expecting the long queue. I joined queue around 5:05PM because I work in 5th floor and mail room located at 3rd floor. Two of my colleague joined with me as well but one of us has to pick up shuttle hence she thought it might get delayed hence left and decided to collect  gift box on Monday. I stay nearby, and use my own car to come to commute. It was a long queue and some people are getting restless to reach at the counter to collect gifts. But some other people directly goes to the counter and collect the boxes though it was a long queue and still there are people in queue who has to pick up shuttle. I really felt bad and I just asked the people distributing gifts not to entertain these tailgaters and everybody has to be in queue to collect gift boxes. Irrespective of that still some employees directly go to the counter and collect it. This reminded me traffic jam in Bangalore. I can say only private cars and heavy vehicles follow the queue system and autos, two wheelers directly at the front of the traffic. I generally think these auto-drives might not have senses to follow the traffic rules or nobody told them to do that. Unfortunately the incident happened inside my office changed the perception that maybe this is what expected and you should not get surprised to get all tailgaters in front of queue irrespective of whether its a office with highly educated peoples or traffic with all autos and commercial vehicles.

Ganapati Bappa Morya

Yesterday was Ganesh Chaturthi. It is one of the famous Hindu festival. It is celebrated all over world, mostly in India. It was a holiday for us, all most all private and public offices are closed. I was in Bangalore this year, Oriya community organized ganesh puja at Kala Mandir, New thippasandra. The overall arrangement was really good. Some of the members of the Puja Committee are my classmates namely Bibhu, other names I have forgotten. I attended the puja this time @ Kalamandir, I reached there with my family around 11:30AM, the homa was just ing. I sat there till puja got over and by 12:30 the pushpanjali was over. Most importantly the puja committee has organized free lunch, prasad. The food was really good, it was typical oriya cuisine. I loved the food, my wife too. In Bangalore getting Oriya food in really difficult unless some oriya people invite you for lunch. Though I am bengali but my forefathers stayed in Orissa so I am kinda half oriya and half bengali and at home I also speak some mix of oriya and Bengali. But I love Oriya cuisine than Bengali food. My wife loves Bengali sweets. But I love Oriya sweets like RasMalai which is prepared from Paneer and sweet milk. The taste is really awesome. My overall experience was really good. Except, the puja committee members serving the food @ KalaMandir did not serve the second time :). Thats expected as there was huge rush and I assumed the committee was not expecting so many devotees and to serve all, they have stopped second time serving that means whatever you get first time in your lunch, have to be satisfied. I would request Puja Committee to be bit flexible next year. Otherwise overall good.
We were back from Puja around 2:30PM. My father did not join with us because he was taking care of Jackie, the male Labrador. We have to bring some food from hotel.
In the evening, I went to attend AOL(Art Of Living) Satsang @ Leenaji's house. There was lots of people. One of the devotee has brought some sweet. It was quite tasty.
Overall this Ganesh Puja was really good.

King size bureaucrats

Recently there was an article in rediff.com about how the India origin peoples i.e. NRIs face problem getting VISA not US visa rather India visa to visit India. Read this article

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-visa-woes-lead-indian-americans-to-24-hour-fast/20101214.htm

All I can say to these people that at least you are lucky to be away from your home land. Take look the people here India. Each and alternate day, you can see a scam.
I have not remembered a single instance where I have not paid bribe to govt officials for any work.

Indian Railway and Man vs. Wild

Actually there are no similarity between Indian Railway and Man vs. Wild adventure series in discovery network. I recently happened to travel in Indian railway in second class which is called sleeper class too because you have a place to seat and to sleep as well. I was carrying my dog jackie with me to my native place. I booked my dog comfortably at blr railway station, for that I had to come at 5:30AM to book because indian railway allows only one dog per train so if you are late before someone else booked their dog, then you can no way carry your dog in train. Luckily nothing as such happened and I booked my dog. When I first entered the train, I had to bribe to the luggage carrying officers for the well being of my dog during journey as its going to be around 30hrs journey. My wife loves the dog like a baby so paying the bribe is not a big deal at least in countries like India, you should be ready to pay bribe for any work you need to do in govt offices. Let me again put here that I paid almost in all govt offices whenever I go there for any sort of minute work as well. ANyway...I entered train and the dog has to be there in the signal van. There is a small cage in the signal van that would house the dog. That cage was so dirty, stinging that jackie was not ready to enter into it. I had to apply force to push Jackie inside the den. Tears came out of my eyes as well as my wife's, looking at the way Jackie behaved. I placed a some water and food there so that Jackie will take but he did not touch any of these during the journey. I then came back to my berth where I need to spend for another 30hrs to reach the destination. Its better not to talk about the cleanliness. The toiled was stinging and full dirt. I regularly watch Ma. vs. Wild and I just reminded that you should learned and prepared if you are traveling in indian rail. At least you should be learned to take food or urinate when your surrounding is full stinging and dirty. Maybe we should have a TV series with Man vs. Indian rail in journey.

Why I dont like ICICI Bank

I am using ICIC bank from last four years but somehow I dont feel comfortable to using ICICI as my main bank for day to day transaction. They are a good bank but somehow I feel they consider too much about thelselves than customer. In fact most of my friends dont like ICICI bank and they always suggest me to change to my earlier banking system i.e. HSBC as my main bank. Some of the incidents happened with ICICI lead to me such conclusion.
- Recently I made a DD in ICICI and surprisingly I had to pay charge for making the same where as I get a DD from HSBC free of cost.
- Faced problem for Bill pay as I had problem on my electricity bill. They claimed that biller has not sent the details to ICICI that why the same was not uploaded. But how can I believe that as I got the bill from BESCOM delivered to my doorstep much earlier.
- I really had problem in fund transfer as the branch is not available in the list for fund transfer.
- Recharge mobile service does not seem to work.

These are not the only issue which forced to change my thinking about ICICI. I have a demat a/c with ICICI and their service is the poorest among all brokers. Many times their website is down and brokerage fee charged by ICICI is more among all providers.

Hence now I am deciding to change to other bank.

The Menace called Water Tanker service in Vignan Nagar, Bangalore

Some parts of Bangalore does not have BBMP water supply facility and hence public generally depends upon bore well water. Some areas also ground water is too scarce and hence they have to depend upon tankers to get water. I stay in Vignan nagar area and its just 5 kms from Baghmane Tech park, one of the prominent IT park in Bangalore. Everyday I usually face couple of water tankers in my way to office and vice versa. Some of the water tankers does not have registration number available and they drive so rash and negligently I usually get late to office becuase of these tankers. I am not sure whether the owner of these tankers i.e. water suppliers have the necessary permit to supply waters. In my area, there are at least two suppliers and they supply waters 24/7. Because of these tankers the road condition is really very bad. One of my neighbour ground water supply is very less because because the his bore well was not too deep and he is going to buy the water from a supplier who is just couple of flat away. Yesterday, my father told me that there were two more bore well drilling is going on, that means because they sell waters 24/7, the ground water level will be slowly slowly depleting. Not sure, what can I do. My neighbour told me that these water suppliers are powerful peoples and if you complain about them, you will be sufferer. The problem is they keep on selling water and the general public is suffering because of these activities. Most of the areas in Kagdaspura have the same problem. Why cannt govt stop these suppliers from incessantly using ground water and instead BBMP should supply water to these areas.
I would request govt to look into this matter

GOA to Bangalore Bus service

I decided to go by Bus from GOA to Bangalore. I choose sea Bird Bus service, its a sleeper coach. We started around 5:45 from Panaji and everything looks good, till the time I realized that Bus is running without dynamo. That means electrical system in the Bus is not working, hence head lights, all lights are simply not working. This is really terrible, but what to do, I have to reach Bangalore and have to go to Office. I was not alone and my wife was with me. Though I have heard lots of stuff about Bus service between GOA to Bangalore, I mean all difficulties people have faced but still thought to try Bus service as air fare has alerady gone up and train schedule is not as per our convenience. This time, i really have problem. How can you go by a bus without headlights in a high way. On top of that there are some NCC students from some Chugly college, madgaon travelling to Bangalore and making all noises and blowing the whole bus into a sound valley without a music director :D. The story did not end there. Anyway after 70kms, our bus was following another Bus, I mean friendly Bus to get direction at night as other Bus's headlight was working. After following the Bus about 30 mins, it stopped in a Gas station. There were some mechanics sent by owner of the Bus to fix the dynamo issue. After another 1 hour or so, finally all electrical system in the Bus started working. Thank GOD, finally we started moving to Bangalore.