IndianMaze

It was a pleasant surprise experience after moving to Mumbai when on a couple of occassions public transport (regular black/yellow or silver/blue taxi and auto rickshaws) returned me the precise amounts due to the nearest rupee. I had tweeted about the same experience and the overwhelming response to me was that it was an odd experience and I must have been extremely lucky to have met such people. I was warned that I should not get carried away with this experience. Bottomline - lack of trust between commuters and public transport. Now in the last 3 months or so, I have used public transport almost about 100 times and nearly 95+ times I have been returned the change nearest to the rupee. The repeated experience that I have in the last 3 months is completely contrary to what others have told me. The sample size is not small enough for me to classify this as a coincidence. I think this is a case of either a blind spot or a fixated mind. Going through this, I recall many instanc...

There are enough doubting Joneses everywhere and India is no exception. My co passenger on a nearly 50% occupancy flight said " Kuch hobe na " in chaste Bengali accent when we got talking about the citizen journalism and consumer pressure groups. It is three weeks to the tragedy of Mumbai and I am glad that "short lived memory" is not so short in this case. Churchil had IInd World War, Gandhi had satyagraha , Indira Gandhi "Bangladesh creation", Manmohan Singh "Nuclear treaty". Is there a new chapter being written in India where the hero is going to be the consumer. I was glad to know that NBA has formed a code of conduct for disaster reporting. Even better was a channel that showed more fire, both actual and verbal, than better sense prevailing; moving to conducting an sms and web based poll if media crossed its line in coverage of Mumbai tragedy. What pained me was the same show of fire when covering news bit on Pakistan. My appeal to ...

Worst ever attack on Indian soil. Touching the soul of ordinary citizens. With bomb blasts, train blasts and now this attack I think not a single family is untouched by the tragedy for there is someone known who has suffered at the hand of terrorists in these cases. Panic is hitting the streets. One of the junior of a friend lost life today, two cops known to a close friend lost their lives. A freind's wife was in complete hysteria last night when she heard Taj attack and her husband being in Taj for a function. She could not even hear when he called to say that he was in Taj Land's End in Bandra and not in Colaba. She kept on yelling "come back, come back". There has been non stop coverage in all TV channels across the country. What was happening at one of the leading newspaper in the capital whose editor decided that this news is good for a byline and anchor story has to be on Delhi elections? Citizens - both directly and through media should start pushing the syste...

After a trip to the financial capital of India, Mumbai, I landed in the flashy city of Delhi. Of many people that I met and talked to in Mumbai, the discussion hovered around the difficulty faced by people in stock market, economic issues, tough times, tightening the belt, lay offs (declared and not declared), sectoral impact etc etc. In a nutshell "get into the shell for safety". Then I met Rajan S, a dear friend. I knew that he has lost a good more than 50% of his investments in stock market and was expecting a similar response that I witnessed in Mumbai. I was all set to ensure that I remain as balanced as possible. "Hi, welcome to my newly decorated home" he exclaimed. "I went and bought two easy chairs, 5 decorative pieces, 5 pairs of trousers for myself along with 5 shirts, kids wardrobe has been replenished, wifey has bought some sarees and suits and not to talk of new curtains; all in the last fortnight" he went non stop "there are such great ...