Can you ever be contented in life? Say that " Hey, I've got everything I wanted. I dont need anything more. Am very happy. I thank god for what he has given me" ? I can't say that. Not always. There are a few occasions when the thought that "I'm blessed" has struck me. One of it is when I heard my maid's story.

She is 23-24 years old. She is married for 8 years - Yep, I also did not believe it in the beginning! Her husband is a drunkard. She has a 3 year old daughter, who she has left with her mom and is working here in Karnataka to earn some money for her. It seems that she has had two deliveries - the first one, a boy, died - in the second, she had twins- one of them, again a boy died. Her marriage was a sudden one. The guy is her relative who was about to elope and then everyone in the family decided that they will get him married to her and stop him from eloping with his love!

I really feel sorry for her and to an extent for her husband. She is like a typical tamil/indian girl. She would not say anything wrong about him and has accepted her life as it is and she goes on...

It was around 10-10:15 in the morning on March 6th. We both were on our way to office. Our new car (read the review at http://re-view-central.blogspot.com/), which is just about a month was due its first service the next day. While we were on Jeevan Bhima Nagar main road, on which you can never think about speeding in any way, one of the drivers in the front hit the brakes. We also stopped and after a split second, we hit a thud at the back. We were not thrown in the front when we stopped, but we did when we were hit. Now, as many of us would have guessed, it was a Accenture call centre vehicle(vehicle number KA-07 1280) which banged on us.











Then it all started.. Iit is a new car - just over a month old and was bought after so much of research, discussions and planning, anything that happens to it gets into you emotionally. My husband was boiling and when the driver asked him a question 'Sir Ji, Aap ne brake kyon lagaye?(Sir, why did you hit the brakes?) he would have almost hit him. Damage was on three panels - the bumper and indicator was gone and the left side panel and boot had dents. We spoke to the vehicle owner and Accenture travel desk. The owner came and said that he will take it to his brothers garage at Ulsoor and get it repaired.. We told him that cannot happen as this is a new car and took him to a garage in Gitanjali layout just to estimate the damage. They estimated around 18K. Owner was still telling us that he will take it to his brothers garage. We took him to Ford service center as we had to enquire about the procedure to claim insurance, there again the damage was estimated as around 22K. After that, we were trying to negotiate with the owner, but that guy, named Saddiq Sharif (attached his photo - does he really look like the owner ?? I wonder!) just was not stating anything. Then we called up Accenture travel desk and spoke to a person named Mohammed, who actually told us that the solution is to just take it

to the garage specified by Saddiq. I was really wild as am sure if it had been his car for which he paid 8.5 lacs and had not run for even 1000Kms, he would not make that statement. Finally we decided that we will go to police and file a case. While we were waiting for a person who worked in traffic police, but now working in a security agency, come and take us to the police station to help us talk to people there as we did not know the local language, Saddiq and his driver suddenly vanished from the scene. When we reached the station, these people were already there negotiating with the police guys.

We spent almost 2-2.5 hours there, trying to get some decent compensation from these guys as we will be spending on the fibre parts and also will be loosing our No Claim Bonus for the coming years if we claim insurance. Saddiq was adamant that he will not pay anything at all, then said that the maximum he can pay is 3500 Rs. His logic was very simple - if we file a case, that is the maximum expense for him and so he was willing to shell out that much of money. If we do file a case, it seems that we will get our money only after a couple of years. And also that we need to go to the court everytime summon comes and spend on a lawyer. He just has to plead guilty appear a couple of times and leave the rest to the insurance company.. Intially we thought that we should file a case, but at the end, agreed to the settlement.

On the whole, loss in several form - we had to spend a whole day out of office, my BIL and brother had to come out of office to do their bit of negotiation, pay for what insurance will not cover, loose the NCB and whole a lot of emotional pain - was for us and just 3.5K for the guys who did the damage :(

Much awaited budget is out today. I've been going through the details on moneycontrol.com and here are some good articles.

If you are an individual who is interested in how the budget has affected you go to http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/economy/unionbudgetbasicexemption/whatisimplicati/market/stocks/article/269378

Check out the impact on various daily used items at http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/economy/unionbudgetproducts/whatisimpactbud/market/stocks/article/269387

And if you want to know what was expected and what is the actual in various sector - here is the link:
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/economy/budget2007indiainc/indiaincswishli/market/stocks/article/269386

Do you tax planning properly and have a wealthy year ahead!

We all travelled to Trivandrum by air deccan this Saturday. Flight is to take off at 6:45 am from Bangalore. So we all got up at 4:30, reached airport at 5:45 or 5:50. In the entrance of the airport, an air deccan guy saw us and said - Sir, the checkin is almost closed, rush! How can you reach so late??. We panicked, ran without the luggage that was put in baggage check :). The guy at the counter told us to relax and issued our boarding cards. After we went through the securtiy check, we realised that it is delayed and will leave only at 8:30. AFter a long days work at office on Friday, all of us (with an infant and a child ) really had a tough time waking up so early in the morning and here we find that actually we could have slept for some time.. The thought is not so pleasant.
My BIL got irritated because we were hurried so much and moreover, we did not get any message about the delay. As soon as he went and expressed his irritation to one of the air deccan staff, he got the message!!!!!!!! We learnt that the flight is a base flight from Bangalore but there were technical fault in one of the wings and is getting repaired.
We tried to kill time and got an announcement to board at 8:00 am. While we were packing our laptops and another of those air deccan guys came and started - 'Sir, you are still here!! Everyone has boarded and we announced the boarding long back.' and it was just once the announcement was made and we were reaching there just 5 mts after that! All of us got pretty pi**ed off and sort of shouted at that guy.
So, we got to go by a bus where only four+2 were TVM passengers and got dropped. We all felt sadistically happy that the flight take off is delayed because of us (after the treatment we got by air-deccan staff) but that was short-lived as when we reached the air craft we realised that the wing is still getting repaired :)
The story does not end here! After we boarded, just before the take-off people were asked to sit concentrated at the middle and tail end to balance - I was praying to god that we should reach safely and finally at 11:00 we landed safely at TVM.
Oof! What a journey.. will not forget this for sometime!!!

Time - This is something everyone has been cribbing about a lot nowadays - I say that I dont have time to write my blog, do all the work at office, do exercise, etc., etc., - the list is endless.

Every relationship works only if enough time is spent on it. Be it employer-employee, doctor-patient, lovers, husband-wife, parents-children.

Especially when it comes to work relationships - now it is an established fact that employees leave managers and not company. It is very true. Unless you spend the time understanding the needs of the employee and align it with organisations needs to make it working for both - It never works. Similarly the younger ones - time needs to spent on mentoring them to make them a good asset to wherever they work. It is a long process and time should be invested.

When you are not available for your subordinates and expect them to learn everything by themselves, do whatever you say to them and sort their own problems - then you have a dissatisfied person who will attrite soon. Sometimes even a few minutes of listening to their problems will make you a good boss.

The same thing can be repeated for any relation. But that again comes back to the question of having time. Take me for example - I've all the good intention, but currently I'm guilty of not spending enough time at office because of restrictions due to Kimaya. I feel very bad if I extend my office hours due to compulsion and because of which my parents/his parents need to spend longer hours taking care of Kimaya. It is not a great feeling. Then my personal life takes over all the good intentions. Hmmmmm...

My husband and I were discussing about the attitude of Indians and Americans when a requirement is put forth of them.

A typical indian mentality is to say that it can be done - even if there is a remote sign that it can be done. Americans start with that it cannot be done. Only after a detailed analysis do they commit.

Moment you say that it can be done, you commit. Only when you get down to coding, or just before you release, do you realise that there are 100 things that have not been thought about - resulting into not meeting customer commitments / delay in delivery. At the end, everyone is unhappy one way or the other.

"Do you like going to movies?"
"Yes I do"
"Why"
"There are lots of people walking and dancing inside the screen. That's why I like"
===========================
"Do you know what breakfast means?"
"Yes, it is called breakfirst because that is the first thing that you have in the morning"

:) :)

Given above are the conversations that we had with our niece who is four and half years old. Their thought process is so different and interesting most of the times, I enjoy having converstions like this!