My Profile

In my office, as a way of introduction to rest of the teams, was expected
to give an introduction in the language if my favourite author.

I chose P G Wodehouse and here is the write-up:

Govind – my man, you know – is really a most extraordinary chap. A man of extremely uncertain intelligence, and his general tendency was to think that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. Once or twice, he showed an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you, he needed dynamite. Not quite the run of the mill BAs who are cadaverous looking people with pale melancholy eyes. Not in ANZ. No, Sire.

His principal source of preparing use cases, however, was derived from a principle he learnt when he was a banker – look backwards and go forwards. He’s a bit foggy as to what that means, but it's apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for he had made quite a decent impression on those who are ‘down under’.

He is tolerably full of beans and manages to come up with a use case once in a while. Full of zeal, shimmering into meeting rooms, the chappie is rummy to a degree and invites people for reviews. When he spoke he showed about fifty-seven front teeth but they never convinced anyone.

He moves from alternative to alternative with as little uproar as a jellyfish.

The reviewers do not absolutely effervesce with joy, if you know what I mean. His nerves stick a yard out of his body during those blistering sessions. Especially when a certain devilishly efficient person draws in three lites of oxygen in one breath and when his brows rise two feet above his head like a rocketing pheasant.

Not to be out done, this lady interjects "Something about it makes my aesthetic taste kick like a mule," and settles down to some Petrafaction.

With the use cases shredded to smithereens and pen dripping blood he sidles towards his seat, thinking that reviewers do it out of pure cussedness. It is a grave situation for the blighty Govind chap - silence screaming like Big-Chief-Who-Can-Hear-A-Fly

-Clear-Its-Throat.

With renewed vigour he shows he is a man of few thousand words – most of them written. All great people are like that – Greg, Narell, Nisha, Petra, Sridhar, Raja, Steve, Janine, and myself. But what are words? Action is the thing. That is the cry. Action (Request). If that is Godfrey’s or Trevor’s forte, so much the better, for I fancy that action rather than words is what we may be needing in the space of about a quarter of a minute – until his documents are set right.

He’s bitten his tongue freely ever so often and dashed if he uses extends ever again, but when the business signs off it is occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop.

"Cheers, mate!" he whispers faintly.

Due apologies to the blighter of a chappie – PG Wodehouse

People Profile - photo session at office

Job

Sep 25, 2006 - 1 Photo

Picasa Web Albums - Shruti & Swati present B day Card

Family

Sep 25, 2005 - 2 Photos

Singer - Bob Dylan

Jara

Green Face

Prayer

Face In the Crowd

Life of Death

Gouranga

Little Girl on a Vacation

Callous Call Centers

I belong to the service industry – 19 years for now. I can understand what makes a customer happy.

I live in Bangalore – the capital of all call centers of the world for the past eight years.

If I had a question earlier – I directly used to call the person in charge. I normally get a reply before the telephone receiver changed hands three times. Not a big pain.

Things have changed now. If I go to any service institution – I see notices which say that no enquiries are allowed. For questions – I need to go to the call center. I hear that it is normally 24 hours and for 365 days. My experience is rather bitter.

The first impression is that all call centers are a maze. It has been designed to discourage people from making enquiries. It starts simple enough – press 1 for language and so on. Then it gets complicated. After nine or ten such answers question you will find yourself lost – totally lost. Or you are bound to forget what you wanted to ask and worse scenario is that you will feel the question does not warrant answering this plethora of questions and makes you give up.

If you are really persistent sometimes, after 20 minutes, you may actually reach a human being – a real person who can actually talk (but not answer!). She listens to you patiently and says – “Can you please hold on – I need to transfer you to a different department who can address this issue”. So while you hear out their advertisements and repetitive jingles, intercepted with a message, which says that you should not hang up and that your call is important to them, you get on to another person after 20 minutes, she hears you out and says, “I have presently no information on your query (they never say – “I don’t know”). I shall raise a ticket and you will hear about it within 120 hours”. You cannot go back to them, until then though your query may be critical to get an answer before 120 hours.

The call center executives are trained to answer people with sand in their mouths. They are trained not to understand that there are actual people who need something and need it badly.

There were days when I entered the bank, the officer used to greet me and say, “Sir, your credit has arrived and you can enjoy it”. Now when I log into my account – it says,
”There has been a technical error and we shall let you know when you can access your account within 72 hours”.

The unknown loss to the industry is that there is loss of people knowledge. Service Industry people are no longer expected to know their clients; know them and greet them when they come into their lives for a very short time.

That’s an irreversible change and we need to accept the change and move ahead.

Outsourcing Blues

I am from Bangalore – Hub of the outsourcing industry of the world. Outsourcing has irreversibly changed the city. It has changed the way people work and the way they live.
I’ve been in this city for a while now and I was not aware how much it has changed until I experienced it a few days ago.

I need to give a little bit of a background about before proceeding. Bangalore was a quiet sleepy town full of greenery and government employees. People were content with lives – took life as it comes and it comes slowly, very slowly. People lived a placid life and treated others with respect and honor. People worked mostly for government institutions and held one job for their entire careers.

Returning to the subject, connected with the outsourcing is the infrastructure of the city. This has been lampooned across the country and elsewhere and has been the most sought after subject of ridicule.

In order to improve the infrastructure, the city planned to pave the sidewalks (plat forms as it is called in India). Lo and behold – one fine morning, I find people busy working in our humble street – a quiet lane in the outer parts of the city (now much inside the city).

First day we have a group of people wearing helmets (as per outsourcing standards set by some western country) land in our street. They take precise measurements of the street, meticulously document it (for the umpteenth time) and they are on the way to the next street for repeating the “process”. People now influenced with the city’s hi-tech image talk of “task” and “procedure” instead of work. People are now referred as “resources”.
However, still I have not understood why “resources” need helmets in order to take measurements (nowadays referred as “metrics”).

Midway we had rains. It clogged the drains and we had sludge and dirt all over the street. Next, the group for cleaning came – I do not know (in their parlance – “I have no information”). They lifted the garbage off the places where the sidewalks needed to be paved.

I was being a bit altruist – I requested the ‘resource’ to clean the ditch running alongside. The ‘resource’ was a truly rural Indian – betel nut chewing old woman wearing a worn out pink chiffon sarree and a pair of Hawaii slippers. What she answered shook me to my senses. Then I understood how and why India became a software outsourcing giant within such a short period of time. She said, “That’s not my job. There is a separate group responsible for cleaning the ditch. I clean only the sidewalks”. That was a stunning reply. I asked her – who then is going to clean the ditch. She said with
nonchalance – “Please enquire with the call center (centre)”.

India has learnt the lessons of the west – the days of passion in ones work are gone. Now what I need are the “competency” and “skills” to accomplish my “task”. And it is the employer who has to make sure that I have them. After a few days of “handling the process” I don’t get experienced; I don’t pass on the knowledge – I “document”.

As I said this incident brought me back to me senses. I started to my office a bit dumbfounded. But then when I reached office – I realized – I was going to give the same reply she gave to me to my clients sitting in Germany.

Out of the Window

I take around 3 – 4 breaks a day at work. During breaks, I take coffee or sometimes tea. However, my best refreshment during the breaks is to watch out of the window at our neighbours. Not much to see – the house wasn’t occupied. After a few days, I started noticing a couple of humming birds in their garden. And two squirrels.

The humming birds and the squirrels lived in a mango tree. The birds and the squirrels seemed to live harmoniously. They always seemed to be doing something. Don’t they take breaks like us? Don’t they have weekends? Why are they eternally so agile and appear to be doing something or the other all the time? Once they’ve had their fill – what else do they have to do? I wonder at them and when I go back to work I am totally refreshed and ready to tackle the business at hand with greater vigour. Without their knowledge they enthused me in my work. I shared their lives and they made me happy every time I needed to have a break from work.

There were huge trees in the garden – tamarind, mango, jack fruit and some others which I wouldn’t know. The house was very small and very beautiful. It must have been quite old. It definitely looked over 70-80 years old, perhaps built during British days.

One day I saw huge trucks coming in. After three days, the vintage house was razed to the ground. Someone must have bought the land and the house and the garden and my pets. Inspite of the presence of such huge machinery, I could still see the birds carrying on with their usual business – hopping from branch to branch. A couple of days later, I saw earth movers – within a day the small elegant house gave way to a huge and ugly excavation. It appeared as though sharp claws of a witch were gnawing away at the innards of Cinderella.

The worst was yet to come. They cut the trees – all of them. The big one and old ones, the wise and samritan souls – all were chopped down. Man knows no mercy.

Until the first tree was cut I could see my birds and squirrels. Then they disappeared. I wonder where they would have gone – or are they dead – like the trees. I mourned for them. I even had a hope – maybe they will be back. The mango tree was spared the axe – the birds should be knowing; and the squirrels. The tree must have escaped just because it was very close to the fence. It is spring now and instead of the tree flowering and fresh green swaying leaves in the fast growing branches – I see the old and haggard mango tree covered with reddish dust. It looked tired. The leaves were still and so were the flowers. Maybe, the tree is mourning too.

After a few months – maybe there will be a huge office complex. Maybe one day some one will be sipping coffee and looking at me from the window and wondering – what happened to this Garden City. And he would go back to work – just like me.

But the trees are not going to be back. Not the birds; not the squirrels; and not my enthusiasm for work. Life goes on – but where?

bike

Fall Out Boy

Funny Cats

Octopus eats shark

Fire

Jump

Soccer Goal

Finger Breakdance

MJ MOVES

MJ

Amsterdam Dribble

Ingenuity

I’ve often heard that the people of Mumbai are resourceful. I’ve heard several rags to riches stories of people who have risen due to their ingenuity.

I can recollect two such instances and both with taxi drivers.

The first one was very courteous and dropped us where we wanted and when getting down he told us that he wouldn’t mind waiting for us for an hour to take us back. That was very pleasing. Of course, he wasn’t there when I returned. That was plan B for him – just in case he was not able to get other customers while he waited. I was a bit peeved he wasn’t there but I appreciate him for thinking up of such things. Only Mumbaikars can do this.

The other one was from a taxi driver too. I completed my work and wanted to get home fast. It was just before nightfall.

Since the first driver wasn’t there I had to take another. This one was an old sardarji – a very genial looking person. When I told him the destination, he was hesitating. He had a benign look. He did not want to say no but then he did not want to come either. While he squirmed to take a decision, an equally old man tried to convince him. On the one hand, his friend was trying to convince him to go and on the other hand, here I was putting up a sad looking face cajoling him with my eyes. How can he say ‘No’.

Well, after a minute’s dilemma, he agreed.

I was overjoyed. He would take me after all. Without losing a second, I got into the car. He came around turned on the meter and got into the driver’s seat. He closed the door and started the engine. He shifted gears and we were on the road. A few swishes with the steering and we were leaving other vehicles behind in the highway.

A few minutes on and he started the conversation. He said, ‘I am extremely sorry about the initial response. I would never refuse a bada (customer). The fact is its almost end of daylight now and I can’t see in the night. You see – I have this cataract’.

My heart popped out! It’s a two hour drive. I’ve done some wild things in my life but have never dared drive with a blind driver. With my knees weakening and something happening in the pit of my stomach, I told him, ‘Are you sure. Do you want me to get down’. He just guffawed and carried on.

PS: Of course, I reached my destination. He took me in his car as far as the daylight allowed. Then he waved down another taxi – gave him the directions, took what was due to him and I was on my way again. Thanks to Mumbai’s ingenuity.