When house hunting in Mumbai

Thoughts arrive like Jericho missiles when one has to look for a house in Mumbai. Several at once and they do a great depth of damage to length and breadth of whatever scenery of your life you've painted in your head.

These are my internal debates on moving. From a suburb not *that* far to a place closer to work (Lots of people handle the commute splendidly but I am less competent than lots of people). Involves a lot of:
Searching. First deciding location, budget, work delegations, allocations (how'll the rooms be split) and acquisitions with roommates, *then* comes the legwork of going and assessing and again, settling on one.

Money. Mostly saying goodbye to it. Desperately counting how much per kilometer or minute of commute cut that you can afford to and are willing to pay without asking Dad (the shame, the shame). The regrets and the promises to save prudently once this current ordeal has been survived (and juuust one housewarming party is done).

Brokers. Sometimes dealing with manipulative ones, almost always dealing with greedy as fuck ones. Some are good but that's after years of getting repeat brokerage which is a scam.

Houses. Meh to good ones - all out of your budget. Some aren't even affordable when you'd have to be blind with no sense of smell to inhabit it.

Owners. Blind and olfactorily disabled owners/brokers of aforementioned dank dumps. You could get both good house and owner/broker too. 

Society regulations. They're the worst.

(All this is just on rent, buying is a different hell altogether)

Misery is best multiplied* so I thought I'd
compile and share as many of these Jericho missile thoughts I can.
(Jk I know its sorrows are best divided.  Don't be pedantic)

I dunno if I should just get an apartment cheaper even if bit further. Makes fiscal sense.

Should just suck it in and commute like a competent adult.

I should go back to my village. Could probably build an empire as a freelancer.

^LOL

But seriously, I'd like my folks to visit more and stay longer. Been working for how many years now? Reminds me, I should call them.

They're probably asleep.

Man, 1BHKs don't come cheap in Bombay!

Just one - two more raises.

AND I'll be moving away from friends damnit 

Why the f, life?

WHAT IF I go through this fresh job opportunity based in frikkin town and it happens then back to same situation as before.
Probably worse considering increase in commute. IF.

What did I just even consider

Will I drink more or less if closer to work

And a lot many more which I may or may not add because my laziness generally trumps my enthusiasm as the frequency of posts on this blog proves.

At what cost for what joy questions questions questions

Kokoro, by Lafcadio Hearn excerpt

At times when I think Delhi's not that bad after all the next thought inevitably is wondering why I didn't do this earlier.

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I decided to download one of the free ebooks available on the  Kindle Store today. While browsing I saw this title called Kokoro, Japanese Inner Life Hints by Lafcadio Hearn.

Hearn was a Westerner observing the Japanese, for 24 years since 1890. This was a superb observation he made and I had to share it.

The good stuff kicks in from the second para.

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The Japanese population represents a medium whose particles are in perpetual circulation. The motion is in itself peculiar. It is larger and more eccentric than the motion of Occidental populations, though feebler between points. It is also much more natural,--so natural that it could not exist in Western civilization. The relative mobility of a European population and the Japanese population might be expressed by a comparison between certain high velocities of vibration and certain low ones. But the high velocities would represent, in such a comparison, the consequence of artificial force applied; the slower vibrations would not. And this difference of kind would mean more than surface indications could announce. In one sense, Americans may be right in thinking themselves great travelers. In another, they are certainly wrong; the man of the people in America cannot compare, as a traveler, with the man of the people in Japan. And of course, in considering relative mobility of populations, one must consider chiefly the great masses, the workers,--not merely the small class of wealth. In their own country, the Japanese are the greatest travelers of any civilized people. They are the greatest travelers because, even in a land composed mainly of mountain chains, they recognize no obstacles to travel. The Japanese who travels most is not the man who needs railways or steamers to carry him.

Now, with us, the common worker is incomparably less free than the common worker in Japan. He is less free because of the more complicated mechanism of Occidental societies, whose forces tend to agglomeration and solid integration. He is less free because the social and industrial machinery on which he must depend reshapes him to its own particular requirements, and always so as to evolve some special and artificial capacity at the cost of other inherent capacity. He is less free because he must live at a standard making it impossible for him to win financial independence by mere thrift. To achieve any such independence, he must possess exceptional character and exceptional faculties greater than those of thousands of exceptional competitors equally eager to escape from the same thralldom.

In brief, then, he is less independent because the special character of his civilization numbs his natural power to live without the help of machinery or large capital. To live thus artificially means to lose, sooner or later, the power of independent movement. Before a Western man can move he has many things to consider. Before a Japanese moves he has nothing to consider. He simply leaves the place he dislikes, and goes to the place he wishes, without any trouble. There is nothing to prevent him. Poverty is not an obstacle, but a stimulus.
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Crownish in Delhi: First observations

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Sat Sri Akal from the national capital.

I've been here for more than a month now. First observations: It is frikking hot, I totally understood why the amazing B&B I stayed at in my first week here had a fan in the bathroom, you sweat quicker than you can shower.

Aas paas barse, Dilli pari tarse is true to a large extent, there have been two good days of rainfall in my time here while Mumbai has been getting a drenching every other day. The perks of being a capital are plain to see though, between the Metro and the buses, public transport is excellent even if the rickshaw guys keep telling you stories about how the meter readings are all outdated and my ride costs more under a mythical new tariff rate. I keep riling them by telling them about the honest rickshaw guys of Mumbai, they sneer.

There are plenty of places to go, things to do and people to meet and I will be writing on some for DNA of Delhi.

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The booze, oh the booze. Drinking out is so much friendlier on the wallet than it is in Mumbai!

I'll admit seeing 'No firearms' signs can sober you up quick but the rates and especially the happy hours will drown out any objecting brain cells immediately.

Drive down to one of the farmhouses at Chhatarpur where chances are you'll find a good resort with no other customers at the bar, enjoy it all by yourself with two guys playing live music just for you and not curl into a foetal position, crying when the bill comes. You go straight to foetal curling at the wine shop itself in Mumbai.

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If you're only gonna eat out, Paneer will be omnipresent in your meals but that's a complaint only if you don't rate it much like me. Rajma, Chhole and Kadhi chawal are staple food, something I wish could happen in Mumbai too. Disappointingly, Dal-Khichdi, so popular with the Mughal rulers based out of Delhi is not easy to find at most restaurants.

**

I was invited to dinner at the home a friend of my father's in my first week in Delhi, I knew the family from their time in Pune. I politely listened to his cautions about staying outside past 10 pm 'because people are romba aggressive pa' and nodded appropriately in between stuffing mouthfuls. Then he said something that hit me hard. They were going away to visit their relatives in Trichy for a month. No home food, once, twice or at the most, thrice a week for the next month.

Thankfully I found out about the Adyar Ananda Bhavan in Green Park, close enough from Safdarjung Enclave where I was working out of then. About Gunpowder and Naivedyam.

And about the canteens at the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu state bhavans. Both easily reachable by bus. I even met the information officer at the Andhra Pradesh who informed me he works for the CM of Andhra. He kept addressing me as Moorthy but also insisted that I should not pay for lunch at the canteen so hey, free lunch right?

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The best thing is that I can afford to live in a very central part of the city, South Ex. To buy something in a similar area in Mumbai I would have to sell an organ every week for 30 years and hope the builder doesn't run away with my money without so much as digging a hole.

My daily commute here is about 15 minutes. In Mumbai it's a soul and body crushing 90 minutes spanning rickshaws, buses and trains that feels like purgatory.

Plus there's a heritage structure bang opposite my accommodation where I play cricket on weekends and spend quiet time at nights wondering why mosquitoes aren't extinct already.

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About 95% of my friends cracked a rape joke the first time I told them I'll be in Delhi for a while. You muster a smile the first time but you want to strangle a person when you hear it the 97th time. Then you stop telling people you're going to be in Delhi.

I live close to a big shopping locality (could be one of thousands in Delhi) so most of the people I see are well dressed and made up. They look good but here's the fact, Delhi men do lech, more openly than they think, over the rim of their chai glasses, through the hanging smoke of their cigarettes. You'd have to be blind to not notice.

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More Delhi things: Stray dogs chill out on the roof of cars. All day. At night, when you're walking on a decently lit road except for those two cars under the shadows thrown by the trees and get closer and you hear a nasty sustained low growl, coming from a place closer to your neck than your heel, it's not fun. Then your chappal breaks.

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Here is your change, it's torn. If you're lucky, you'll not get frikkin Alpenliebe or Apollo Pharmacy's inhouse rip off of Hajmola candy for change but you'll get actual money. Even then you're lucky if you get coins and not a torn 5 rupee note. I didn't even know there were so many 5 rupee notes still in circulation in India.

Breaking a 500 or a 1000 rupee note is a lengthy process. Shopkeepers will look at notes in so many angles that would make the Gandhi on it feel conscious. Then every other shopkeeper in the area is invited to pass his verdict on it's authenticity. Then they might want to sleep over it and hold a ballot. Hence I kick the ATM whenever it spits out only the big denominations.

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It's a huge city, I've barely seen the start of it. As I do, I'll post more. 

Karōshi or something like it

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Some dude in some newspaper or website wrote:

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.

How I wish.

I'd love my job a lot more if I didn't have to *go* there everyday. I like work, it's exciting and all I wish getting there wasn't such a soul sucking drain. I hate the commute, it's quite reasonable to hate commute in Mumbai, it sucks, and at times it can be dangerous.

Work is not just 9-5. It's getting up at 6 to be ready at 9, it's reaching home at 9 after leaving from work at 7. Then, at home, checking work mail (Most weekends, I refrain from committing to any activity that will keep me away from a computer for more than 2 hours at a time because like it's brother Crime, Advertising never sleeps).


I'm going nowhere with this post, there is no wise observation, no suggested solution (Though I'd like one optional day when I can work from home every week). This is just a rant, thank you for reading. 

Radiohead caught once again, in first ‘bloom’

I wrote this. For a friend. I wanted to avoid words like 'groovy', 'brooding', 'lilting' and phrases like 'uncharted territories', most of them staples in music reviews and some in descriptions of Radiohead's music.
Also I barely had any ideas of how to describe the package that is TKOL, the effect the whole thing has, the experience each song is, so please pardon the complete n00biness of it.
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 Radiohead caught once again, in first ‘bloom’


When it comes to bands exploring new sounds, no one’s dropped a bigger bomb than Radiohead, when they released their mind-bending album Kid A in 2000. Their persistence and continued experimentation in that direction has led to it becoming the sound that they and only they can be identified by immediately.

In their last release, 2007’s In Rainbows, it seemed they had perfected the foreboding, moody song that brought you down and left you wondering. King of Limbs continues on that trajectory with its loops, samples, hushed whispers and frantic chants. The album opens with Bloom, a personal favourite, with its clashing drums and synthesizer hook that moves just a step behind the drums, trying to catch up and making wonderful music in the process. The groovy sound connects Bloom with Little by Little and Lotus Flower on the album, easily the most pop Radiohead could sound. Lotus Flower especially is a great track; the brooding bass grabs your attention, Thom Yorke’s crooning runs rings around you. All he wants is the moon on a stick he declares, creeping into your head. On Little by Little, the repetitive chants appear with the band shuffling words and drum beats into each other, exhibiting the signature unstable Radiohead energy.

Morning Mr Magpie and Feral try to deviate, jump the tempo with their rushed rhythm and bass. Accusatory lyrics and intimidating noise, they stick out on an otherwise mellow collection. The slower tracks are the gems as I always feel to be the case. Codex with its lilting keyboard bass takes you through space as Yorke’s voice floats around, convincing in his urging for an escape. The slightest hints of a guitar being plucked pepper Give Up the Ghost, with forgiveness and reconciliation being its theme. Separator is a nice, upbeat conclusion to the unusually short album (just eight tracks).

It’s a sign-off track, talking about going back to a familiar place, finding old comforts and being pleased by how liberating it is. But then they warn you, “If you think this is over then you’re wrong”. The message couldn’t be clearer: If you think Radiohead is done charting unknown territories with their music — you’re wrong.
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Hope that weren't corny.
This first appeared in Deccan Chronicle on July 16, 2011 Link

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A letter to Tata Photon Customer Care

Update:  Just got a mail in which I learnt nothing new, again a promise that it'll be resolved by 24th July. Still waiting.

Update:  27th July: I checked my a/c tonight, no refund, this despite receiving a call from a Tata Photon exec on Friday assuring me that they'd definitely resolve the issue by Sunday, 24th July. Great going! 
Will try escalating tomorrow.

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I wrote this mail just a while ago. I love Tata Photon, it's a good product, good plans to select from despite being way better than any of the competition in the market. I used to have an Airtel usb internet stick earlier which gave me a measly 5 Kbps only if a billion planets and trillion galaxies aligned favourably so using a Photon was like jumping back to the present from the middle ages.

But lately it's making me fly off the handle like Prakash Raj in Gilli. Maybe I'm overreacting, maybe it was just love that I kept ignoring the little problems like the abrupt glitches in connecting, the device disconnecting etc. Read, and you tell me

from Crownish noway@gmail.com to  cs.mumbai@tatatel.co.in date  Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at  1:14 PM subject  Photon no: 92218xxxxx Statement mailed-by  gmail.com

hide details 1:14 PM (21 minutes ago)

Hi,

As discussed in our conversation over the phone earlier this morning, please find attached a mini statement of the account from which I had attempted the online recharge of my Tata Photon (no. 92218xxxxx) on July 1st 2011.

The Recharge:

My initial attempt to recharge it failed when the gateway page did not load. I waited to see if I get a sms notification about money having been debited before I tried to recharge it again. I didn't get any message, money was not debited. This is reflected in the debit charge of -1250 you see dated on 1st July on the slip. I also clarified this with my bank, the first charge was cancelled. The second time I completed the transaction but there was no confirmation page, I received a notification sms confirming the debit charge.

Again, I confirmed this with my bank  

Interactions with Photon Customer Care:

I first registered this complaint on 2nd July. The executive acknowledged the problem and informed me that this process would take between 7-10 working days and by 11th July 2011 they would make sure that I would be refunded the same amount.

I require internet for work so I asked a friend to recharge my account online for Rs 300 on July 3rd, that transaction too failed after his money was debited, even he has registered a complaint, I have no idea whether he has been refunded yet. Eventually I got a recharge for Rs 1250 from the Indicom outlet in Borivali East on 6th July.

I next checked my account on 15th July and discovered that no refund had been made till then.

Customer Care cutting calls

On Saturday, 16th July, I called up the customer care helpline again. The first time, after explaining the lengthy details, the executive I spoke to said he couldn't hear me properly so I should just call again and cut the call.

 The second executive I spoke to heard out the entire story again, this time I also told her that her colleague had just cut my call. She made no sound for about a minute, no responses, nothing, before cutting the call.

I even tried contacting your twitter account @tataphotonplus who took one more day to reply. 

The third executive I spoke to heard out everything and very solidly assured me that my problem would be fixed by 24th July 1:47 pm.

Heartfelt request

This may seem a nice story of a misadventure but it really isn't when you're in my position. I have barely had problems with Tata Photon before this, one of the reasons I bought it was because a friend who uses it had assured me that customer care is excellent and they solve problems in no time. I'm aware that a problem of this nature requires time to solve but 20 days is already a lot. 

I request you to please live up to the standards expected of a Tata enterprise, fix this situation asap. I'm tired of contacting you, through the customer care helpline, through email, through twitter, through facebook even but I'm ready for any other input required if it helps you work this out easier. 

Regards,
Crownish
Tata Photon Customer

Also, I heard about @customerpain today. It revolves around bringing customer grievances to the fore, ensuring brands follow up on complaints etc on twitter, a good initiative if you ask me. Brands for companies who offer services have learnt that twitter is a hard place if you don't follow up on your promises and Customerpain is actually helping them survive and thrive.

The mail is sent and I'm waiting for word from Tata Photon, I'll post updates as they come in.

Update:  Just got a mail in which I learnt nothing new, again a promise that it'll be resolved by 24th July. Still waiting.
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Bringing you up to speed with March and April 2011

Interesting, post worthy things have happened since the last post happened.

I got to see India qualify for the semi final of the World Cup live, they won that a few days later. I have managed to overcome my fear of being obliterated in a road accident for now to ride a bike occasionally. It doesn't go above 50 so that's like a circuit breaker to cover my ass. My laptop is fucked, don't know if the data can still be recovered, if it's gone then I'll have lost the last ever videos I had of my Pune house. Just had three 2 minute videos made from a poor 1.3mp camera to remember 20 years by. That and the somewhat ridiculous mix of music and youtube videos downloaded over two years is what I'll miss the most. Along with the screenshots of my CS and Solitaire high scores. Plus I'll have to download the fucken iTunes package again.

My attempts to go for an IPL game this year have so far been a failure. Mainly because of my lack of effort to  get up and go buy tickets, the financial implications (might as well tear the bottom of my pockets and let money fall through it) and misinformation on their sites regarding outlets where tickets can be bought. It's a long story on it's own which I can make into a whole new post so that's what I'll do.

Osama was killed, will anything good come out of it (for India wrt Pak being held accountable for sheltering him and other perps) remains to be seen.

 Also, making it to recommended reading is this article which makes a few uncomfortable observations about Tamilians. Like,

We have no sense of knowing how to express our feelings; just as damagingly, we aren’t consciously trained to build a verbally sophisticated argument.

and

As a general rule, we Tamil Brahmins are nerdy, non-confrontational, and, when pushed to the wall, exceptionally passive-aggressive. None of this should be confused with an internalised humility: we want praise alright, but we want others to blow our trumpets. When we find people disinclined to do that, we mutter under our breaths that the world doesn’t value our talents, and then go back to repeating the same mistakes. 

Heavy no?

 This site meanwhile is about something almost anyone brought up in India can identify with. The specifics aren't the same but anyone will remember the experiences which mostly were disappointments. Is it mocking in it's nature? I didn't think so. But that's because I don't have to do a lot of this stuff any more. For people who still do it may appear more condescending. All it did for me was get me nostalgic but then so can a lot of stuff if you're convinced life's never gonna be better than it was in childhood.

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