Some Scenarios of Being Cheated - I

The crow cawing outside my window in this lovely weather of Mumbai is a proof of the fact that certain things don't change at all. Thank God! Though, this goes even for the potholes on the city roads. They have a tendency to get worse but alas! not disappear or for that reason reduce in numbers. The chaos of our everyday life and the chaos in which the country is in, also seems unchangeable. While a part of the country is moving ahead, a bigger part is still fighting with trivialities of life. We are busy cheating each other over small things.

The prices have gone up but the packaging has become smaller. Are you even aware of it? You are being robbed of on both ends whiz a whiz paying more for less stuff. 

Go and buy a car. You will be promised by the sales team all sorts of add-ons. The promise that you don't have to pay for the insurance, for the teflon coating and the anti rust coating brings a big smile to your face. So much of expenditure saved, your mind calculates. Your big smile is intact only as long as the car doesn't go for the first service. Then a call from the company workshop knocks off that smile because he wants to know whether with the free service you want to get the coatings done. Your logic to him that while buying the car you were told that you don't  need to worry about the coatings for four years and there is a warranty on that is answered in a very convincing manner, "Oh that they say to sell off the car." You are left shocked. However, you decide to not get the coating done. Are you taking a risk with your car or you are being intelligent by not letting yourself be cheated by the servicing guy is a question only time will answer. 

You want to buy a Vaccum Cleaner. Well the sales guy comes to your home. You don't have to take the trouble to go anywhere. You get a demo and you tell the person that you will look at other available options from other companies and then get back to him if you decide to buy his product. The sales person has to up his performance quotient. So, with the vaccum cleaner he promises you a bag in which you can store all the parts accompanying the machine, a discount of some percent if you order immediately and a home delivery within the next forty eight hours. The piece is so much in demand that by the time you decide to buy it, it might be out of stock. That does it! You place the order, only to discover later that the model sold to you is the one being phased out and the company as it is has a policy to deliver within forty eight hours. OH THE BAG! When the machine is delivered to you, the bag supposedly was out of stock and it remains out of stock and an illusion for you always. The reason being that from now on the sales person will stop taking the phone. If you manage to trace his boss he will promise to get back which he never will, and after making some futile attempts you will give up thinking why are you breaking your head over a minuscule bag.

How many times have you bought a mobile phone plan only to discover later that it's not as profitable as it was made out to be because only when you start using it, do you discover the hidden costs.

How many times have you bought clothes in sales to come home and discover a piece that is torn at a place which you would have not been able to notice then, and now you have to live with your buy because of the no exchange no refund policy during the sale period.

How many times have you bought an expensive electronic item with the tag of two years extended warranty only for it to go kaput exactly at the end of those three years leaving you wondering how did the company know that the product will last only that long? 

Such happenings or coincidences leave me questioning myself again and again whether this is the nature being unjust to a select few or lack of ethics by the companies. But it does pinch. No not for the money going down the drain but the fact that I got cheated by my own fellow human beings. Thanks to the crow outside my window. At least somethings never change.

The Wandering Me

Oh! what a wanderer am I ?

wandering in search of my soul,

though it lies within me

I search for it in other times.

The soul that donned other bodies,

That which could give me answers for now;

I have searched for it forever 

Forever, since I remember.

Why am I here, I would always ask,

As a child, looking at people 

oh so comfortable,

in their human garbs.

Trudging the arduous paths of life

awakening the soul within,

My heart still seeks an answer

Like a child in an overgrown garb

WHO CARES??

A couple of weeks ago I did what every Hindu in Mumbai is proud to do....Yes!!! WALKED ALL THE WAY TO SIDDHI VINAYAK TEMPLE FOR DARSHAN ON A TUESDAY MORNING. I can not explain the exhilarating feeling I had after the darshan. I felt so elated. For the next two days the very thought that I had walked down to Siddhi Vinayak kept bringing back a zestful smile to my face. Every year at least once I visit Siddhi Vinayak, but that day at 3.15 AM when I set sight on the idol of Bappa, it was a different  feeling altogether. This was the  night of 17/18th June.

Today when I look back I remember that on that very day when I had reached out to God, many pilgrims      were struggling to survive in Uttarkhand. No matter how much we pass off the floods of Uttarkhand as a natural calamity, we all know that we have pushed the nature to a point where it has started revolting back. Hinduism, which represents the culture of living life in a simple way has lost its true meaning for all of us. The calmness and serenity of our minds is long gone. We have made competition a part of even the most mundane activities of our lives. Everything is materialistic because money brings in all the happiness.

Hills are being developed to accommodate the influx of tourists. Any piece of  land available, is being constructed upon. The outsiders go and leave behind plastic, litter and marks of  hooliganism. The locals take it quietly without uttering a word because,  these are the people that are bringing in money and with the soaring prices there is nothing else on our minds. Religious places have been modernised  to make life easier for the pilgrims. A couple of years ago I was shocked to see the changes that had been done to Vaishno Devi. Frankly I found the Vaishno Devi which I had visited in 1984 better than the concrete structures that have come up today. Why? Why do we kill the basic character of a place in the name of modernisation? Go to Shirdi. Lost is the beautiful, serene village where Sai Baba once lived. Horrendous, ugly malls stare at you in the face.

On my way while walking to Siddhi Vinayak there was not a single place where the people walking for the darshan could sit and relax for a couple of seconds. Since ages Tuesday after Tuesdays after Tuesdays people have been walking to Siddhi Vinayak on Monday nights, but I didn't find a single footpath on which I could walk. I had to walk on the wrong side of the road to keep an eye and be alert, lest a speeding vehicle bumped me off. I had to sit on the edge of the high footpaths smelling in the stink of the city. Yes, have you ever noticed that in addition to all other problems during rain nowadays the city stinks! There were huge piles of filth pulled out from the drains and left in heaps as it is. Alas! the memories of the deluge are long forgotten.  And by the way, whose idea are those footpaths because I don't see any senior citizen able to use them without the fear of increasing their arthritic problems.

The authorities decide to extract two different kinds of taxes namely Vat and then Property tax for your properties, in one year. They also add up the pending amounts for the last couple of years and you have to pay it. Giving a relaxation of a couple of months is enough they think. Taxes have become more of a kind of the punishments the headmistress Miss Trunchbull  used to vent out to the children in Matilda. Moreover, you pay the taxes and forget about your rights as a citizen. The roads you move on are so bad that I am sure we spend a larger amount of money on getting our cars and bodies repaired.  Yes the living and the non living are in the same boat so they are repaired, The air we breathe is full of pollutants and nothing new in that complaint. The vegetable, pulses and any other thing we eat or drink dumps in loads of chemicals into our body. We have stopped thinking as to how much of chemicals or banned substances they have. We make ourselves happy by looking at the size of the cauliflower, the brinjals and the gloss on the fruits.

If the authorities themselves are so unconcerned what to expect of the common citizens. In Hindi there is a saying 'Jaisa Raja waisi Praja' ( As the King so are the Subjects).What better way to explain the situation today. We don't think twice before fleecing our fellow citizens, before finding ways for breaking the laws or before bribing. Sadly, it's a never ending circle of life during Kaliyuga that's swallowing us in.

As a harrowed citizen my dejected feelings...? Well, I'd say that I don't know the statistics and I don't even want to figure it out but yes it seems, the system and the authorities have only in mind the top percentage of the country which is already affluent and can afford just about anything. The rest can fend for themselves for their survival. Even if they can't Who Cares?