Thursday 30 August 2012

Weird encounters with strangers

Memory Loss:
This happened when I was in college. From the place we stayed the nearest town was an hour's ride, there was a gap of 3 km to the state highway from where I could get regular bus.
When a Lorry passed near by I waved my hands,hopped on happily as that gave me the extra pocket money savings.
As we drove on to state highways, the roads had these huge sections of gravel and rocks dumped alongside for road repair.
The cleaner ,driver were having small talks ,from their discussion I could make out the cleaner was bit challenged on his mental faculties,not dementia but something amiss.The talk was in Tamil, at one point as we drove the Sky was getting beautiful, I was admiring that through the large windows from the Lorry cabin. And suddenly cleaner expressed his admiration aloud with 'Wow Beautiful', his pronounciation was top notch,a complete contrasting vocabulary skills from a Man who was just talking aloof with his colleague a minute ago.
And after admiring for few minutes he went back to the mode that I was familiar with.

Later at one point the gravel had got messy and instead of being in a group it had spread over few metres onto the main road. The driver asked this cleaner to get it squared up as the Lorry was loaded up and he wasn't too comfy to ride over sharp rocks that might puncture his tyres.

As we saw the cleaner square up the rocks; the driver told me briefly that that man was once a well educated son of a wealthy family; his current condition is a well repeated story in history of squandering his wealth with people who called themselves friends just for his money and left him in the street after his use was over.

This was my first introduction to a character that we usually are introduced in stories to bring up our moral values.I would always remember that Man and that knocks my head down whenever something gets over me say stupid gadgets for which  I have a week knee for.

Drunk on books:
Many years ago I was on a train ride, think it was on Chennai -Mangalore mail. I had taken a short
open ticket and was returning home to Kozhikode after few days stay at my Sister's place.

It was a Sleeper ticket, so found a family which was pretty much awake and had a free slot in their section.After few minutes opened up a book, immediately the man who was beside me in a grabbing action took a look at my cover page. It was a non fiction , he then himself talked about his interesting books he read ;Showed me bunch of books and discussed on them with no input from me, he was literally drunk on the need to read. Out of few books he showed I could see some were from a Library.

And after he had finished his long, fast talk on his books and on his discover I don't share his same interest in the category of books he just discussed he abruptly became quiet.

Strange Lady:
This happened 2 months back, me and my colleague were on a walk in Singapore Orchard street.We were savouring our walk as in the present industry we are in; there is no such thing as shore leave granted for us during our 1 month's stay on the Drill Ship.
This off time that we got only happened because some one screwed up in handling an operational issue in Logistics and we had broken AC in our Ship. And with no AC even QueenMary 2 will be Oven box in a day.
First few minutes were spent drooling over Leica camera when Leica was having an Open platform outside a Mall. I was a bit hungry and was taking my colleague to a eating outlet to have some Vegie or  Seafood for Dinner.
As we walked suddenly a Lady literally thrusted herself between us with a question/ Rapport style that a person would have in a long standing friends.
In next 10minutes she had discussed valid points of Belgium flag with my Belgium colleague after she guess his origin from his accent. With me, it turned to CASTE ! issues of India, her hatred towards
higher castes etc.,
and when we came close to a bus stop she just left off saying a bye i got to go.
She was well dressed ,aged in 30s.

Well these are the ones that I remember now..


Wednesday 23 May 2012

New age bankers


About three years back a new branch of HDFC opened in my town. I already had an account with HDFC at a Branch further away from my home. So I shifted my bank account to the near by one.Last 4 years or so I have come in touch with many personal bankers that I can conclude relationship that forms at these locations ( Read private is purely selfish). Only one soul out of many really seemed to have meant when she smiled and discussed issues with me. Others ( Both men and women) usually talked nice to me to meet their last minute target deadlines.It is a private bank so I don't codone it blindly,however what upset me with many such men and women was for them it was only that i.e a investment catch. Over many Hi's and short chit chats spread across months I had hoped there would be some sort of friendship that would come into play.It is true I was looking out for friends at a new town . I can describe two events with two genders. Lets start with a lady :)On two occasions I had helped this lady and her fiance to meet up their target deadlines with two different products. When Mr.X told me about their wedding I had initially thought it was 'telling a friend' part only later it transpired on me he did that to inform me that the lady staff who I was talking to for about 15mins til a minute ago ( As I waited for a forex DD) is his girl.It was more of a 'Don't talk to her too much' There was this another Gentleman who despite me repeating many times I would like to meet him at branch rather at home;drops by my home with another colleague ( who is from insurance section of his parent company) for heavy canvassing of a product and the eagerness this man showed vapourised when I had a problem with credit card. Just when I had almost convinced all new age banking staff are wearing a dirty smile a lady showed that there are people like her who do look out for customers. This female despite leaving in few days for another Private bank worked hard to get a issue solved for me; thought she didn't succeed I was impressed at her efforts . I hope she keeps her positive attitude at work and succeed in todays private banking environment which fosters manipulation.

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