The Order of the Crutch

I had some nice fun catching up with Reva and Gautham this sunday. We met up at a very upscale coffee place in a book store.

While we were catching up on things and discussing my north india tour et all, i noticed something i’ve noticed shit loads of times before. I thought i would write about it today.

I’ve always had the habit of calling things in straight forward terms, for example what happens in every religious book off all religions, what other people would call culture, i would call sexism.

On a similar note, i noticed something which in my opinion can only be called Treason. I’m of the opinion that i live in india and we indians use the Indian Rupee as our currency for all sorts of trade activities within india for all indian goods of indian origin, made in india. I hope that makes things clear.

Now what i did see was books displayed and one or two of them books had “now at a new reduced price of US $ 45” or something along those lines. This is not the first time i see stuff like this on window displays of shops. While it is acceptable that exclusive items that are not available in india but made available exclusively by an isolated entity like a shop where in a seperate Indian version/edition of the product is not available the quotation of foreign currency might be unavoidable.

However what seems to be happening is people quoting american/european currency for the heck of it to give something a posh “im an imported good” feel to it when you turn to the last page of the book it perfectly quotes a indian version print and the local printing press’s name as well, this practice of quoting dollars on goods as completely ridiculous.

I don’t get it. Do i agree with the fact that almost all indian made products or consumer goods suck in quality? Yes, i certainly think so. I myself use much of foreign made consumer goods for quality and health reasons much but that does not mean that i have to read a US dollar price tag (regardless of the fact i may be paying dollar equivalents in rupees).

Regardless of how much shit i have in my country and how it may suck im an indian and im proud of it. When i buy something sold inside the indian border, i would want to be quoted a price in indian currency.

I just cannot accept blindly giving head to white skinned fanaticism. Its racism at its simplest form and communicating in a foreign currency inside the country, regardless of what country you are in is treason. Retailers please get this fact. I dont care if you bill me twice as much just because you sold it in an a/c showroom with a please and thank you. I will cough it up, in RUPEES.

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Allow me to explain the rather racist title. Aren’t there racists in south india? Of course, yes. Our chief minister is a fantastic example for this. What happened in air India, however is something worth mentioning. This post is in no way intended to take a dig at north Indians or insult any racial community but just named for the sake of calling a spade a spade. I find this attitude of companies that have no context sensitive approach to things completely insulting and pointless.

The story goes like this. I fly to Singapore often. Almost every month for work reasons. I always fly Singapore Airlines. Their service and professionalism is one of the best ive seen in times from any company or service provider. Luck sometimes does not favor you. Its one of those times when a sudden Singapore travel was scheduled i did not get tickets on Singapore Airlines in the last minute and good old Air India came to the rescue. Thanks to recession the 3000 rs. cheaper ticket compared to jet made Air India the default choice.

Never in my life have i seen such “i don’t give a flaming fuck” attitude in a service that it just beats the crap out of me. I’m writing this blog post barely 2 hours after i landed in chennai after my Air India flight. I don’t want the forget the spec of gems i was thrown at in the form of service so let me bring up as many star pointers before i forget them…

1. Chennai is the capital of Tamilnadu. Tamil is the Official Language of Tamilnadu & Chennai. Singapore has close to approx. 1/3rd tamil population, tamil is an official language there as well.

2. The crowd you are serving is all tamil crowd. Not one north indian passenger, not one white/black/asian/hispanic passenger.

Given this context what is the need for an out and out Hindi announcement on the PA system. The facial expressions of half the people in the flight was blank. They were oblivious to your communication as our politicians are oblivious to accusations and shame. Why can’t you use some common sense. Singapore Airlines is not even an indian company. The first thing they do when you get on their flight is a tamil announcement. All their menu cards are tamil too. Actually they’re written in Tamil/Malay/English.

I find it highly irritating when someone tries to coax a language down someone’s throat when its 100% irrelevant to a given context. I agree with the fact that Hindi is our national language and its a responsibility we should carry to know it. Personally i do but it is unfair to expect every tom, dick and harry to do so because you are dealing with india. A country where the number of official languages recognized for communication across states is 14. Its not like you really want to spread hindi an shit. You even switched OFF the safety announcement when the hindi version was playing, bravo!

I have many more wonderful pointers to discuss but all of it will make this post a long and boring one. I will follow this up with another exclusive “Air India” bashing post.

And yes, i will also add. All of the crew in the Air India flight spoke good galeej tamil but preferred to speak hindi and spoke tamil only when responded to in tamil or say a blank response. Seriously WTF?!

Amen..

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