This is the age of the consumer. Businesses center their sales processes & promotional offers around the needs around the consumers. New innovations happen keeping in mind what the consumer wants. Products are released with a lot of thought put into what the market currently really lacks and the consumer really needs. Right? Wrong!
Nearly a month ago I put in a request to cancel an internet broadband connection I had. I am leaving the country for a few years, and paying the rent unnecessarily for so long just didnt make sense.
So I called the Airtel helpline service to ask the procedure...
Airtel: "How may I help you?"
Me: "I have a broadband connection..I would like to cancel it, can you please tell me the process?"
Airtel:"Ma'm, Why do you want to cancel it?"
Me: (okay...obvious question), "I am going abroad.Could you please tell me the process?"
Airtel:"Can you please tell me where are you going?"
Me:(what??!!) "What does that have anything to do with the cancellation process?Can you just tell me the process?"
Airtel:"Sure Ma'm..."
And he told me. Was a bit annoying, but I left it.
Same day, airtel office
Airtel: "Hi.How may I help you?"
Me: "I have a broadband connection, landline no. ------- ..I would like to cancel it, here are the phone and modem instruments and the application."
Airtel:"Sure Ma'm, Can I ask why do you want to cancel it?"
Me: (well he would need a reason to write on the form), "I am going abroad."
Airtel:"Can you please tell me where are you going?"
Me: (okay may be there's some logic to this) "Does that affect the cancellation process somehow?"
Airtel:"No Ma'm, just asking.."
Me: (he has time for idle chat with 10 people standing on his head?!) "I would appreciate if you could just complete the formalities quickly"
Airtel:"Ma'm your permanent residence is in Delhi, why don't you get it shifted?"
Me: (allright, std. customer retention), "No thanks! I don't want to.I'd just like to cancel this account"
Airtel:"Sure...can you please deposit the outstanding bill?"
Me:"Sure, today is 7th, how much does the bill come to?"
Airtel:"Ma'm you will have to pay till the 10th, since the request will take 3 days to process"
Me: (they will charge me for their processing time?! well whatever...)
So I paid for 3 days extra, completed the formalities and left.
Me: (Whew! that's done!)
few days later
Airtel:"Ma'm you have put in a request to cancel the landline number -------?";
Me: (haven't they cancelled it yet?) "Yes..."
Airtel:"Can you please tell me reason?"
Me: (??????) "Isn't it there on my request form?"
Airtel:"Yes ma'm it says you are going abroad"
Me:"that's correct. why are you asking me again?"
Airtel:"Ma'm can you tell me when you are leaving?";
Me: (What crap!! ) "Why? how is that any of airtel's concern?"
Airtel:"Ma'm no you could continue till the date of your leaving"
Me:"I don't want to.Can you just cancel it immediately? And I don't want any further inquiries from Airtel"
Airtel:"Sure ma'm"
I hung up irritated.
few more days later
Airtel:"Ma'm you have put in a request to cancel the landline number -------?";
Me: (what the f***!!!) "Yes I did. I hope its done!"
Airtel:"Ma'm your form says you are going abroad"
Me:(Oh My God!!) "Yes. So?"
Airtel:"Ma'm can you tell me for how long are you going?"
Me: (these bloddy 7&$&^%$#W) "How on earth does that concern?!!! I am going where, when for how long...how the hell is that any of your or airtel's concern? Are you people planning to sponsor my tickets? my stay? what the hell does any of this have to do with cancelling a net connection????????"
Airtel: "No Ma'm if you are going for 3 months i could put this on hold..."
Me:"No I don't want you to put this on hold! I want you to cancel it! Do you understand??"
Airtel:"Sure ma'm"
Me:(*^%$#@^& better do it this time!!!!!!)
but this wasn't to be!! after a few more days, I got yet another call, this time from the Airtel manager..
Airtel:"Ma'm you have put in a request to cancel the landline number -------?";
Me:" Yes I did!! And this request is NOT open to any discussion or offers from Airtel! I want you to cancel it immediately and I would appreciate if you do not call me again!!!!!"
I could not believe how disgusting this could get. But I thought my retort would have put all tries at rest, until today,
Airtel:"Ma'm you have put in a request to cancel the landline number -------?";
Me: "Oh My God!! I cannot believe you people! I put in that request almost a month ago. I even paid extra for your 3 days of processing! I have responded to atleast 5 different calls till now. For one last time this request is NOT open to any discussion! If I get one more call from Airtel I am going to file a PIL against you people. Do you understand!!! Cancel this connection immediately!!!!!!!"
Airtel:"Sure ma'm"....
The connection isn't cancelled yet. Despite my (this time) shouting and screaming, I am not sure when it will be. I am feeling so annoyed that I feel like surrendering all Airtel numbers!!
Everyone, including me, has been plagued with endless telemearketing calls from banks, insurance agencies, mobile companies, and who not. But I had never felt so disgusted with these aggressive sales and retention strategies than this time.
This is not consumerism..this is not even business.. this is intrusion of privacy and plain & simple harassment!!While the USA, where everyone sues everyone else is one extreme, our country is the other. And its about time we started suing these companies for their lousy business practices and consumer harassing sales & retention strategies.
If I get one more call, I know I am not going to swear in my mind only.... Any consumer lawyers out there??????
Monday, July 21, 2008
Movie making in Bollywood...
The shortest route to a hit
A hero, a heroine, a love line (irrespective of the story or theme), 1 candy love song, 1 item number (lyrics can be replaced with screams of gibberish to the tune of blaring saxophones & drums), 1 sizzler ( Moaning & similar sounds can be used in place of lyrics ) are a must. Rest as follows :-
Creating a Love triangle?
Creating an action flick ?
- Copy a hit hollywood flick
- Copy a flop hollywood flick
- Copy a hit Tamil movie
- Dub / Re-make a hit Tamil movie in Hindi
- Remake an old hindi movie
- Convert a Hindu mythological epic, like the Ramayan ( Do not try you can show maginificent sets, less than 100 people in 1 family living under one roof and unless you are Suraj barjatiya :) )
- Get Ramgopal verma to remake an old hindi movie or make anything other than about the underworld ( or the-other-world for that matter ;) )
- Get Suraj barjatiya to make a yet another family drama out of hindu mythology ( or make anything at all really) !
- Give Sanjay Leela Bhansali some blue paint!
A hero, a heroine, a love line (irrespective of the story or theme), 1 candy love song, 1 item number (lyrics can be replaced with screams of gibberish to the tune of blaring saxophones & drums), 1 sizzler ( Moaning & similar sounds can be used in place of lyrics ) are a must. Rest as follows :-
Creating a Love triangle?
- 2 friends/siblings agonizing over the same lover. Not one thinks of actually asking the lover. One ends up dying either fighting the other or the common villan
- The thought-to-be dead lover/spouse returns hale-n-hearty only to find his partner married to some one else; usually an old friend;do kill the returned character for a convenient, hasslefree, clear end.
- Feuding brothers (and/or their wives) over family property, however big or small, is a never failing classic with the Indian cine goers. However, these are not made anymore. Wonder why...maybe people get too much of the Ambani brothers on the news anyway!
- Violence against the daughter-in-law at the hands of dowry hungry in-laws and a liberated hero and/or heroine to fix things. But then, these too are out of fashion these days. Again too much news is killing the movie business
Creating an action flick ?
- Ah!! now with Sunny Deol retired and Akshay Khanna, Suniel Shetty & all the bad men Paresh Rawal, Shati Kapoor etc. turned into full time comedians ( with varying levels of success ) .... action flicks are totally out of production, unless you are thinking of Rajnikanth ofcourse, who still can stop a train with one hand and no super powers! :)
- Yes.That's a genre in itself. Take Sharukh Khan, create a story around him, write every scene to personify his presence, cast Amitabh Bachchan and Saif ali khan to look like a complete idiots, make sure their every dialgoue is just an excuse to give Sharukh more camera focus and dialogues. Create larger-than-life sets and/or shoot overseas and call it a small town in India, go to Oxford and turn it into a 24*7 disc.Get Kajol and Rani to give guest appearances. Use the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai soudntrack as the background score. As long as Sharukh Khan is the messiah (however right or wrong he may be) , and he wins in the end, the movie will pick up a number of Filmfare awards. And you can always get free publicity on Koffee with Karan. The story doesn't matter. No story doesn't matter either.
- Similar to Karan Johar, except that instead of Kajol, Rani & Kuch Kuch hota hai soundtrack, you would need at least one flowing 70's dance sequence, complete with the costumes and the "Eastman Color" print. Make sure Sharukh is down on his knees with arms outstretched in at least half the movie, to hide the fact that he is shorter than yet another heroine. Best choreography guaranteed
- Add Rahul Bose, Ranveer Shauri, (these days) Mallika Sherawat, some old day actors like Sayara (who would invariably be acting better & looking more graceful than the half clad half wit Mallika). Quickly put together a simple, realistic small story, add a lot of double meaning jokes and spice it up with increasingly unrestrained s** scenes. Once you are sure no one can ever watch it with their parents, you are bound to get a hit with the young crowd ;) Centering the story around NRI families and dosing the movie heavily with heavily-accented-english will get huge international returns as well!
- Pick up either one of the above movies, put in one or more of Govinda, Paresh Rawal, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Ritesh Deshmukh, Bipasha basu, Lara Dutta, Katrina Kaif & Rajpal Yadav in any combination with a few others. Randomly jumble the pages of the actual story. Get David Dhawan, Priyadarshan or Boney Kapoor to direct your movie, depending on how much nonsense, confusion or sleaze you want to add in the movie. Use in combination for better results. Replace half the dialogues with sleazy one liners and the other half with meaningless one liners and you are done! :)
- That's just for people who have surplus funds that they offload through flop movies so that they can escape taxes. The Indian audience has a long way to go before it can start appreciating movies with genuine social messages like homosexuality, AIDS, domestic violence, rape,corruption, communalism and gender bias (Yes fellas...we're still stuck with the same social problems even after nearly 60 years of freedom; though I admit homosexuality and AIDS are relatively new )
- Refer to the "Creating a movie for a social cause" section
- Contact Shaad Ali, Farhan Akhtar, Naagesh Kukunoor and the likes
- If you are thinking of Amir Khan, book him in January and book some one else to collect the awards ;) Oh and don't forget to pay for Amir Khan's all new hair style, which will be essential to his character in the movie. Oh I am sorry, did I not say, he has to be the hero!! :)
- Gather as many stories and actors as you can in one place and start shooting. that's it!
- Please contact Ramgopal Verma & Urmila Matondkar for further details. At this, both are "super natural" ;)
It is said that the basic thought process of any age in any society is visible in every aspect of it
Let's take a tiny example...
When I first moved to Noida nearly 4 years ago, it had just 1 major shopping mall to boast of. CentreStage Mall, Sector 18.And 1 decent hotel. Radisson. Even if others did exist, they clearly didn't bear an impression in the peoples' minds, for no one even mentioned their names while introducing Noida to a new comer.In the past 4 years, atleast 5 other major shopping malls have sprung up: from the reasonably priced no variety PVR Spice to the mammoth Great India Place (GIP), where 1 could practice for the marathon if he wanted to, while also enjoying at a display of nearly every international brand that has any presence in India.There are atleast 3 more currently under construction, 1 of which is expected to be the largest in Asia, just as the Shipra mall once boasted and these days the GIP boasts to be.
All shopping malls vary in their price ranges, brand presence & obviously size, but bottomline : they are all malls and give the consumers similar closed, air-conditioned hang out options with the food courts and parking lots invariably making the most money; while most of the shops [with the exception of Big Bazaar and the likes] are used merely for window shopping, most of the time by most of the people
However, the number of significant hotels in Noida is still 1. Radisson.
We all know that Gurgaon & Noida have been the hub of all software activity after Bangalore, Pune & Hyderabad. Over the past few years, more and more companies have opened their campuses in Noida, while all kinds of big and small software entrepreneurial firms have sprung up in every nook and cranny of Noida. This is a well-known fact. And equally well known is the fact that a majority of these firms have some level foreign collaboration, be it their clientèle or investors ( or more commonly both ), and hence at least some frequency of foreign delegates as well as employees from other parts of the country and/or world visiting. So where do they stay, in case the dear old Radisson has no availability and if the s/w firm in question is not big enough to afford its own guest houses? Nowhere closer than South Delhi or worse, CP and get harangued in the Delhi traffic commuting daily to & from Noida, causing a lot of easily-avoidable loss of time & money to all parties concerned.
There is a clear demand and no supply. One would think that some one would think of investing in more quality places to stay than yet more food courts & parking lots, which are clearly fast approaching their saturation levels and are anyhow in much more supply than profit-making demand. Even if Noida is being dreamed of as the next global shopping destination, the tourists would need more hotels to stay in right?
I am neither a businesswoman nor a market researcher.... I am a common citizen, with some common sense and curiosity. But I don't understand what seems so evident to me is so obviously missing from the incredibly sharp business minds and incredibly detailed market research & analysis. Or is it just that we Indians, as a people, are so afraid to take risks and innovate that we find endless comfort in following the lead of one successful formula, be it educating our children in computer engineering or medicine followed by MBAs, creating & watching saas-bahu soap operas, repeating the same 5-6 all time hit movie story lines for nearly 60 years or opening shopping malls like growing mushrooms?? So much for the country which introduced zero, the decimal, yoga, neem, satyagrah and even kamasutra to the world!!! From when and how did we turn from a daring fearless creative innovative entrepreneurial people to being so cliched and unoriginal followers? Have we really lost our inherent qualities or are we just too lazy to think, let alone create?
Let's take a tiny example...
When I first moved to Noida nearly 4 years ago, it had just 1 major shopping mall to boast of. CentreStage Mall, Sector 18.And 1 decent hotel. Radisson. Even if others did exist, they clearly didn't bear an impression in the peoples' minds, for no one even mentioned their names while introducing Noida to a new comer.In the past 4 years, atleast 5 other major shopping malls have sprung up: from the reasonably priced no variety PVR Spice to the mammoth Great India Place (GIP), where 1 could practice for the marathon if he wanted to, while also enjoying at a display of nearly every international brand that has any presence in India.There are atleast 3 more currently under construction, 1 of which is expected to be the largest in Asia, just as the Shipra mall once boasted and these days the GIP boasts to be.
All shopping malls vary in their price ranges, brand presence & obviously size, but bottomline : they are all malls and give the consumers similar closed, air-conditioned hang out options with the food courts and parking lots invariably making the most money; while most of the shops [with the exception of Big Bazaar and the likes] are used merely for window shopping, most of the time by most of the people
However, the number of significant hotels in Noida is still 1. Radisson.
We all know that Gurgaon & Noida have been the hub of all software activity after Bangalore, Pune & Hyderabad. Over the past few years, more and more companies have opened their campuses in Noida, while all kinds of big and small software entrepreneurial firms have sprung up in every nook and cranny of Noida. This is a well-known fact. And equally well known is the fact that a majority of these firms have some level foreign collaboration, be it their clientèle or investors ( or more commonly both ), and hence at least some frequency of foreign delegates as well as employees from other parts of the country and/or world visiting. So where do they stay, in case the dear old Radisson has no availability and if the s/w firm in question is not big enough to afford its own guest houses? Nowhere closer than South Delhi or worse, CP and get harangued in the Delhi traffic commuting daily to & from Noida, causing a lot of easily-avoidable loss of time & money to all parties concerned.
There is a clear demand and no supply. One would think that some one would think of investing in more quality places to stay than yet more food courts & parking lots, which are clearly fast approaching their saturation levels and are anyhow in much more supply than profit-making demand. Even if Noida is being dreamed of as the next global shopping destination, the tourists would need more hotels to stay in right?
I am neither a businesswoman nor a market researcher.... I am a common citizen, with some common sense and curiosity. But I don't understand what seems so evident to me is so obviously missing from the incredibly sharp business minds and incredibly detailed market research & analysis. Or is it just that we Indians, as a people, are so afraid to take risks and innovate that we find endless comfort in following the lead of one successful formula, be it educating our children in computer engineering or medicine followed by MBAs, creating & watching saas-bahu soap operas, repeating the same 5-6 all time hit movie story lines for nearly 60 years or opening shopping malls like growing mushrooms?? So much for the country which introduced zero, the decimal, yoga, neem, satyagrah and even kamasutra to the world!!! From when and how did we turn from a daring fearless creative innovative entrepreneurial people to being so cliched and unoriginal followers? Have we really lost our inherent qualities or are we just too lazy to think, let alone create?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
No Parking
A few days ago, my car got towed away.
Date & Time: Saturday afternoon
Venue: Sarojini Nagar Market
Challan amount: Rs.300/
Break up- Rs. 200/- fine & Rs.100/- Crane charges
Reason: Unauthorised parking
Number of cars parked there: 20 (Yes I counted on my way back)
Number of cars towed: 1. Just 1. Mine
2 days later:
Date & Time: Sunday Evening
Venue: Major Jam next to the Moti Bagh Gurudwara on the Ring Road.
Reason: Endless rows of cars parked right along the main road, causing endless jam and hours of public inconvenience.
I am pretty sure no part of the Ring Road is an authorised parking.
Number of cars parked there: I lost count pretty quickly
Number of cars towed: ZERO ofcourse!
Real reason of my car towing: Common sense tells me, it had very little to do with parking (authorized or not) and even lesser with maintaining law and order. Almost nothing at all to do with public convenience. I think it had everything to do with completing the numbers in the books. My car just happened to be the first one in the row.
When will the authorities wake up to the shambles our everyday law and order system is in? We never tire of boasting of our military prowess. And yet from these every day display of the obvious omnipresent corruption to high profile cases like the Mumbai molestation case, EVERYTHING fails to make even the slightest impact. The maximum result achieved is the suspension of a few officers, just an excuse for shying away from considering the root causes; an extreme shortage of staff, abysmal emoluments, pathetic living conditions and considering these, impossibly high expectations of commitment and performance. I don't blame the officers. They're are getting exploited by the corrupt system, and their patience, endurance and hope, as a community, has disappeared. Hopefully the 6th pay commission would change things for them and consequently for us. Try being honest and commited sitting inside a tin cubicle on the road side without as much a table fan in the sweltering heat of 40 degrees, with only a walkie talkie to keep you company for 8 hours. Much easier said than done. Even easier to blame the police force for it all!
Oh and did I mention, that the place from where my car was towed, had no "No Parking" ir "Unauthorized Parking" signs. NONE!
Date & Time: Saturday afternoon
Venue: Sarojini Nagar Market
Challan amount: Rs.300/
Break up- Rs. 200/- fine & Rs.100/- Crane charges
Reason: Unauthorised parking
Number of cars parked there: 20 (Yes I counted on my way back)
Number of cars towed: 1. Just 1. Mine
2 days later:
Date & Time: Sunday Evening
Venue: Major Jam next to the Moti Bagh Gurudwara on the Ring Road.
Reason: Endless rows of cars parked right along the main road, causing endless jam and hours of public inconvenience.
I am pretty sure no part of the Ring Road is an authorised parking.
Number of cars parked there: I lost count pretty quickly
Number of cars towed: ZERO ofcourse!
Real reason of my car towing: Common sense tells me, it had very little to do with parking (authorized or not) and even lesser with maintaining law and order. Almost nothing at all to do with public convenience. I think it had everything to do with completing the numbers in the books. My car just happened to be the first one in the row.
When will the authorities wake up to the shambles our everyday law and order system is in? We never tire of boasting of our military prowess. And yet from these every day display of the obvious omnipresent corruption to high profile cases like the Mumbai molestation case, EVERYTHING fails to make even the slightest impact. The maximum result achieved is the suspension of a few officers, just an excuse for shying away from considering the root causes; an extreme shortage of staff, abysmal emoluments, pathetic living conditions and considering these, impossibly high expectations of commitment and performance. I don't blame the officers. They're are getting exploited by the corrupt system, and their patience, endurance and hope, as a community, has disappeared. Hopefully the 6th pay commission would change things for them and consequently for us. Try being honest and commited sitting inside a tin cubicle on the road side without as much a table fan in the sweltering heat of 40 degrees, with only a walkie talkie to keep you company for 8 hours. Much easier said than done. Even easier to blame the police force for it all!
Oh and did I mention, that the place from where my car was towed, had no "No Parking" ir "Unauthorized Parking" signs. NONE!
I love my machines. from my books to my car, everything I own, I love it & possessively so. Though that does not nearly translate into anything ever being handled with extreme care..or even remote care for that matter. My phone has a broken slider, keys which work of their own accord and a cracked screen. my camera has a lens that gets stuck and needs a rough manual rotation to fix every now and then. my car...oh well I could go on listing the damage but you get the idea..the point is, that all these things still work and work well. So much so, that I almost feel they respond to my needs :) I have countless memories of times when my phone battery was on the verge of going out but it held fort till I made that one last important call which you always need to make just as your phone is dying out. Countless number of heavy rains when I pleaded the almost-broken lever to stay connected the windscreen wipers till I got home only to promptly forget about getting it fixed yet again.Despite this rough handling, my machines still respond to me until one day I went too far.
It all started when I went to meet a very good friend after a very long time. After years of pleading hectic schedule at work, he had finally cornered me for a birthday treat, making it sound like the final call & quite successfully so!We decided to meet up at one of the dozens of Noida malls and had a great time together; once his anger at my ignoring him for so long had subsided i.e. After 2.5 fabulous hours I went smiling away to work, wondering when was the last time I had laughed so much and why I didn't meet my friends more often, promising myself that I would. A usual day at work ensued, and I promptly forgot about everything else; just as usual. The day turned out to be unusually long and hectic and after 16 hours of madness I finally slumped my way back to the parking lot, already half asleep and pressed the lock.Only; nothing happened. Confused I tried again.Nothing.Alarmed and awake as a lark, I called my boss, who was still working.
"You must have left the lights on and the battery must be exhausted"
"But thats not pos...wen did I..how did thi..I didn...Oh My God!!!"
and then the realisation dawned upon me..I had switched on the headlights while parking in the basement of the mall on my way to meet my friend and never switched them off.
"Just tell the guards to push it, it should start", I could dimly hear my boss's advice
I looked around, but as expected, when most needed, guards were nowhere to be seen. Now I may not be a delicate darling, but I am not exactly Laura Croft either! Pushing the car was beyond my strength & endurance.Suddenly without warning my phone died. This had never happened before.There I was in one of the most unsafe cities with the highest crime rates against women, all alone standing outside my car in the wee hours of the morning, with no phone to call for help & the car door wouldn't even open! In the midst of despair, I saw my boss, with a few of my other colleagues coming down to the lot. I have never been more thankful to the ridiculous working hours of my office than I was at the moment.All tired and sleepy, obviously displeased but too polite to complain, they tried to push my car nevertheless.
Some loving & coaxing (for there is no other explanation) had gotten the door to open somehow and I was able to steer it, as they pushed.My car however, had other plans. After nearly 10 mins of repeated efforts and pushing in practically every direction, it just refused to start.
The emergency help line I had been diligently subscribed to was not responding this one time I tried to call them (from one of my colleague's phone of course).It felt like I was being punished for all the mishandling I had given all my things all this time and I tried to talk my way (to the car of course) out of it, but it refused to listen too. Physics had taken over blind emotions, Science had won over the supernatural and I couldn't stop cursing myself.Exhausted, my colleagues gave up. I love my car too much to have agreed to leave it there n go home. But there seemed to be no other solution, & I couldn't possibly ask my colleagues to keep trying without avail.
Just as I as about to give up hope, lock the car (abandonment is more like the feeling I had) and leave, quite literally as a ray of hope a professional cab driver appeared on the scene, alongside the rising sun. He took the batteries of his cab out, plugged them into mine and started charging them. Soon I heard the musical sound of the engine coming back to life....
I was so happy that I forgave all the cab drivers in the world for their reckless driving & thanked all the heavens in that split second. The driver asked me to keep the engine running for at least half an hour and diligently, vowing never to let it happen again, I drove back home, parked the car. Suddenly there was a knock on the window
"Ma'm are you okay?"
I had fallen asleep, foot on the pedal, head on the wheel. I looked at my watch, 35 minutes."Good!", I thought, I quickly thanked the man, stepped out of the car, locked it and went inside.
Dimly in the background I could hear a voice calling behind me....
"Ma'm you have left the headlights on..."
It all started when I went to meet a very good friend after a very long time. After years of pleading hectic schedule at work, he had finally cornered me for a birthday treat, making it sound like the final call & quite successfully so!We decided to meet up at one of the dozens of Noida malls and had a great time together; once his anger at my ignoring him for so long had subsided i.e. After 2.5 fabulous hours I went smiling away to work, wondering when was the last time I had laughed so much and why I didn't meet my friends more often, promising myself that I would. A usual day at work ensued, and I promptly forgot about everything else; just as usual. The day turned out to be unusually long and hectic and after 16 hours of madness I finally slumped my way back to the parking lot, already half asleep and pressed the lock.Only; nothing happened. Confused I tried again.Nothing.Alarmed and awake as a lark, I called my boss, who was still working.
"You must have left the lights on and the battery must be exhausted"
"But thats not pos...wen did I..how did thi..I didn...Oh My God!!!"
and then the realisation dawned upon me..I had switched on the headlights while parking in the basement of the mall on my way to meet my friend and never switched them off.
"Just tell the guards to push it, it should start", I could dimly hear my boss's advice
I looked around, but as expected, when most needed, guards were nowhere to be seen. Now I may not be a delicate darling, but I am not exactly Laura Croft either! Pushing the car was beyond my strength & endurance.Suddenly without warning my phone died. This had never happened before.There I was in one of the most unsafe cities with the highest crime rates against women, all alone standing outside my car in the wee hours of the morning, with no phone to call for help & the car door wouldn't even open! In the midst of despair, I saw my boss, with a few of my other colleagues coming down to the lot. I have never been more thankful to the ridiculous working hours of my office than I was at the moment.All tired and sleepy, obviously displeased but too polite to complain, they tried to push my car nevertheless.
Some loving & coaxing (for there is no other explanation) had gotten the door to open somehow and I was able to steer it, as they pushed.My car however, had other plans. After nearly 10 mins of repeated efforts and pushing in practically every direction, it just refused to start.
The emergency help line I had been diligently subscribed to was not responding this one time I tried to call them (from one of my colleague's phone of course).It felt like I was being punished for all the mishandling I had given all my things all this time and I tried to talk my way (to the car of course) out of it, but it refused to listen too. Physics had taken over blind emotions, Science had won over the supernatural and I couldn't stop cursing myself.Exhausted, my colleagues gave up. I love my car too much to have agreed to leave it there n go home. But there seemed to be no other solution, & I couldn't possibly ask my colleagues to keep trying without avail.
Just as I as about to give up hope, lock the car (abandonment is more like the feeling I had) and leave, quite literally as a ray of hope a professional cab driver appeared on the scene, alongside the rising sun. He took the batteries of his cab out, plugged them into mine and started charging them. Soon I heard the musical sound of the engine coming back to life....
I was so happy that I forgave all the cab drivers in the world for their reckless driving & thanked all the heavens in that split second. The driver asked me to keep the engine running for at least half an hour and diligently, vowing never to let it happen again, I drove back home, parked the car. Suddenly there was a knock on the window
"Ma'm are you okay?"
I had fallen asleep, foot on the pedal, head on the wheel. I looked at my watch, 35 minutes."Good!", I thought, I quickly thanked the man, stepped out of the car, locked it and went inside.
Dimly in the background I could hear a voice calling behind me....
"Ma'm you have left the headlights on..."
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