A 'Serif' existence!

Thought of sharing three real life stories from the world of bureaucracy. Story 1 : July 26, 2013: Today I read an interesting story in the Times of India fontpage. "Jawans on loo break still on national duty". The story is about a jawan- Sepoy Lakshman Kumar, who was on his way to a toilet while on duty when he suffered a fall along the Indo-China border in Ladakh on August 15, 2009. He died four days later. His wife was denied all compensations by PCDA - Principal controller of defence accounts, saying the soldier was not on duty when he got injured. His widow challenged the decision to deny compensation. Yesterday, the Armed Forces Tribunal in Chandigarh said that 'A soldier taking a loo break during working hours should be deemed on duty for the nation" and ordered Rs 10 Lakh compensation with an additional 10% interest. The widow asked in her review petition:  "It seems strange that the office of the PCDA is suggesting that a person should not eve...

I have a humble request to people who call me on my cellphone: Ask these simple questions to yourself before calling. 1. Is this call really important? Can my questions be answered through text (SMS or Email) ? 2. Is this call so urgent and important that I cannot wait for a few hours to get a reply? 3. is there a possibility that the receiver of the call may find it inconvenient to answer the call? 4. Are the topics of discussion of a specific nature that we cannot leave any record in text form ? I was experiencing a reduction in hearing ability on my left ear for a few years. Meanwhile, my wife happened to mention about Prof Girish Kumar from IIT Bombay who is doing a lot of research on health hazards of mobile phones and mobile towers. The most important conclusion was that mobile phones have an impact on our health! As the hearing problems increased, my awareness about mobile phones also improved a little bit. I started observing the calls I make and the calls I ge...

Making sense of Common Sense! A humble request to job seekers. In this world of internet and high speed communication, job seekers communicate a lot through email with potential employers as well as others who help out with finding a job. On an average, I get about ten requests from people who seek jobs and who are looking out for employees.  Of course, this is a great business opportunity for me, i know! but time doesn't allow me to take this into another venture like "facebook"! I am noticing this common mistake people do for a long time. An alarming majority of job seekers send their resumes with the file named as "resume' or "bio". If you look at a prospective employer's email inbox and a folder he uses to store these resumes, it is a disaster to handle 100 word files with the same file name!! This is not rocket science. Please name the file with your name on it! Second problem: There are people who dont have the latest...

Subscribe and Win! I came across this ad in a newsmagazine: Subscribe for 5 years get a chance to win a Honda City. I have seen these ads in several magazines for more than 10 years now. But never thought about the reality till I saw this email about "reality" shows and SMS income. Did any magazine ever showed any proof about the winner of this "Subscribe and win a car" offer ever? Have you ever come across a "real" subscriber who won a car by subscribing (for FIVE years) to a magazine? Why is this kept a secret? Is there any Govt machinery which monitors this kind of offers with luck dips? What is the frequency of these lucky dips by magazines? Why don't they publish the results? How many "Honda City" cars do they gift per year? From how many entries do they select the winner? Who witnesses the "lucky" dip? Absolute Zero!!!! If you send an SMS to "save" a contestant in a reality show from "unsafe" zone, you...

116 smiling faces :-) 24 th Dec. 5.30am: Nokia 73 hollers it’s time to wake up. I am breathing Zzzzzz…. into my wife’s unwilling ear. After a ten minute struggle to freeze time, I give up. The Art of Living Advanced course starts today and the reporting time is 6.30 am. Half-asleep, I rustle up my favourite cup of tea and try to read the newspapers. There is yet another rape somewhere, yet another corruption case and yawn, yet another box item on Mahendra Singh Dhoni. What will happen to the world if Dhoni is out of the team for two matches? Will the heavens fall? Will ESPN and NEO Cricket shut shop? What will Dhoni eat for breakfast when he is not in the team? Wow. Dhoni matters even if he is not in the team. I braved all hurdles to the venue: which was primarily crossing the indomitable main road in front of IIT main gate in one piece. After the registration formalities, I entered the hall. It was just what I had seen the last time I had been to Shet...

A headache in the pocket: Why i love my gmail ! First of all, the disclaimer: Any Resemblance to Actual Events or Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental. A few months back, my doctor shared one 'experience' with me. He started having chest pain and went for a check up. In an era, when even a patient with a running nose is also asked to go for full body MRI, my doctor (in his unfamiliar position on the other side of the fence) was also asked to some tests. A week later, doctors couldn't find out what is causing the chest pain. Then he met a smart cookie, who asked him what is kept in the shirt pocket. Then the bulb lit up like we see in Tintin comics....Eureka!!! He was keeping his mobile in his shirt pocket! My Doctor stopped keeping his mobile phone anywhere near his chest and the pain vanished like "select-all-delete" in Photoshop! And everyone lived happily ever after! Cut to: Yours truly, an avid nokia user and mobile phone lover, experienced a bit of ...

Recently I learned a very valuable lesson on the value of time. I happened to read a letter written by Dr. Sunil, an NRI, a classmate and friend of my brother. Dear Dr. ......, I would like to document some of the ayurvedic recipes developed by my grandmother for common medical problems. She has done a considerable amount of work in the area of natural medicine and handed over all the data to my mother. I would like you to discuss this with my mother in detail and work on a project to make a documentary film on this topic. Please give me the details of time required, total cost etc. I am enclosing a demand draft of $ .............. for your valuable time needed at this initial stage of the project. Please let me know the time required there to encash this so that I can plan all future payments according to that. This letter, dated some time in 2003, showed a very serious acknowledgment of the time taken by a person to finish a task. Dr. Sunil later told me that it is a way of life in...