Archives: Experiences

Shortly after I landed in Agartala towards the end of 1988, some seemingly philosophical questions confronted me. All for the wrong reasons, you know. Not because I was a Bong who loved squandering time on theoretical balderdash. This was, after all, my first job and I intended to retain it. Come hell or high water. The issue of a philosophical dilemma was posed by this hell-water thingy. I was a simpleton, and hadn’t still lost my innocence. There was reason for me to be upset over the question of what was right, and what wasn’t.

In the last week of June, when a young Naga woman in New Delhi was denied entry into the pretentiously titled club called Urban Pind, the talk of the town became all about racial profiling. The issue was still raging fire when animal rights activist Ambika Shukla scribbled an obnoxious canine caper in some newspaper about what she derisively thought about Nagas and “other Northeasterners” relishing dog meat. And all this after the Times of India, in March, apologised for carrying a piece underlined by a reprehensibly racist remark about women from the Northeast in an article on spas. For some reason, perhaps for all good reason, all the incidents were related to the Northeast. Now, that’s one kind of racial profiling that will always leave you seething in anger. Yet, there are other kinds (i.e profiling of people from other parts of the country) that amuse you as well. Irritate you too. Like that of Bengalis like me.

I am a brand loyalist – I loathe changing brands. I smoked Gold Flake Kings for eight years till I switched over to India Kings because I discovered a discrepancy both in the tobacco quality and the filter itself between the packs of 10s and 20s. I have puffed on the India Kings brand for the last 10 years. I stick to Old Monk when drinking rum and Black Label when guzzling beer. Unless the bar offers no other choice. I have worn Lees and Levis since I-don’t-remember-when. Latter-day brands have not been able to wrap me over. Brand strategists could well look at me as an extreme case study, for all I care. But then I wonder why I am such a brand loyalist? It works, firstly, for me if the brand keeps me satisfied. Secondly, I might have no other choice which would be a better alternative. Lastly, it might be a question of compulsion. It is rarely a combination of all three.

My experiences with the grievance redressal mechanisms of various services and service providers over the years has quite often left me with a bad taste in the mouth. So when I was faced with the choice of a DTH service provider last year, I thought there is perhaps little to choose between Dish TV and Tata Sky. After a brief weighing of the scales, I saw my preference tilting more towards the latter, mainly because I thought their prefix curried more reliability and credibility than that of the Goyals, who didn’t come across as anything more than brazen moneymakers to me. The Tata brand only held out a promise, based more on name than on anything else – one which I thought would take only a day more to belie than that of Dish TV.

I had been restlessly waiting for my credit card to be delivered. I always become a bit uneasy when the expiry date of a card draws near and the new one is yet to find itself in my hands. So I was. I mean, my being uneasy. When the doorbell rang the other scorching afternoon and I peered over the parapet to see a man who could only be a courier deliveryman, I was more than relieved. Phew! There comes my Standard Chartered Bank card. But it didn’t. Not that noon at least. With an air of superciliousness, the smartly-dressed man from Blue Dart asked for an identification. That was fine by me, for some protocol has to be followed when it comes to delivery of credit cards. I fished out an identification card that did not go down well with him. It does not have an employee number, he pointed out in sheer disgust. Ok, so what do I do? You don’t have anything like a driver’s licence? Oh yes, I do.