A Simple Unostentatious Gesture…

A municipal worker, heads down, cleaning the street, an auto-driver taking you home in the worst evening traffic and not asking a rupee more (of course, only in Mumbai), a security guard standing at his station all day long – all, people serving you or others.

Today it was a small bunch of medical staff seen in my morning walk conducting free medical-check-up for common folks from a few tables and chairs set up outside Diamond Gardens…

Well, how does one express one’s appreciation, beyond a ‘thank you’, appropriate for the occasion (money is not in many cases) and without expending a wad of currency notes?

I have found handing out ice-cold bottled drinking water bought from a nearby stall is well-received universally. Especially in these months. Not a heavy drain on the wallet at ten rupees a bottle. The surprise on their faces, especially with public servants, is a priceless reward for this small act.

Try it! Experience it!!

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Jottings From The US: Anytime Is A Good Time!

 

Though it has to do with our recent the trip to US, strictly speaking, this is more about after our return.

I finished my chores in the market and finally planted myself before her usual busy self in her office.

Despite feeling a little dizzy after a sleepless night on the flight, I had not lost my cool. Making light of it, I said: ‘Out there, I bragged how efficient you guys were and then…you let me down.’

‘Why, why? What happened?’

I knew she knew she had goofed – she had not got me an aisle-side seat for me as expressly requested. Also, she had not acknowledged or apologized for it when I brought it to her notice later by email a couple of days ago.

A few more words exchanged – all polite. She came up with some clumsy explanation about how sometimes airlines on their own alter the seat allocations subsequently – the look on my face would have screamed aloud ‘I’m not buying it’.

Ending the brief conversation – the point was already driven home – I brought out the real reason of my visit to her office: ‘Here’s a small ‘thanks’ for your efforts…our trip went off well.’

Believe me, it was genuinely felt and said without the slightest trace of sarcasm, not letting the goof-up detract from the larger picture.

A look of surprise. She took the bag from me, glanced for a moment at the contents – a packet of 20+ pieces a well-known brand of chocolates, and put it away under her seat, mumbling her ‘thanks’.

Nothing else on the agenda to go with, I took off.

Well, out there you may be wondering what am I doing in the first place with a travel agent in these ‘digital’ days. They are still in business, I suppose, chiefly because of people like us – we never travel on the tickets bought first time. There’s always at least one round, if not more, of cancellation and rebooking. And in this regard I’m not comfortable dealing online with the airlines direct with their maze of ‘this but not that’ in small print I cannot or simply fail to read on the screen – blame it on my faulty vision, impatience or sheer ‘illiteracy’ – causing untold woes, not mentioning those numerous action-packed and cost-loaded little boxes, scattered all around threatening to cause havoc if left (un)ticked. Take what happened this time, for instance: our return travel was – no big surprise here – rescheduled just a few days before the journey, at not an insignificant expense, and that’s when she had goofed on seat allocation while doing right and very right on other counts of budget and dates.

Have I always been doing it?

Well, truth be told, never before. Though, I traveled quite a bit in my long years of employment and less frequently thereafter in retirement. The closest I ever came to: During Diwali, our travel agent, true to the local business custom, always brought me gift-boxes of premium sweets. And my family loved sweets! The boxes were unfailingly turned over to the insiders staffing the travel-desk. Never took one home after some initial learning.

So what if I had never done it before? Anytime is a good time, I think. What do you say?

Would I continue to do so in future? Let’s see.

Why did I write about it here? The purpose would be more than served well if, as a result, at least one more agent somewhere receives grateful acknowledgement of his/her efforts with regard to arranging a good work or pleasure trip for a customer.

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Source: image from travelguideindia.org

 

Hurry Up Before…

Today I read here a post about a teacher who went to great lengths to help out a student of his. Brings me to what I always wanted to write about, but never quite managed it. Won’t hold longer.

The boy was a little sickly, prone to frequent attacks of cold forcing him to stay away from school. And he wasn’t any good in languages that had one too many consonants like four ‘ka’s, four cha’s… (Hindi, Marathi…). He had trouble telling one from the other. To add to his grief, the nouns in these languages had gender they had no business carrying at all. Besides these phonetically sooper-correct languages, drawing also brought him down. His rendering of objects made his teacher wonder if he (teacher) was seeing things right.

Well, suffice to say these subjects often messed up his grade and rank in exams. And there were times he couldn’t muster even pass-marks in these subjects. On those occasions the class teacher would personally plead with the Marathi/Drawing teacher taking the boy along – unbelievable? but that’s what he did. The teachers would oblige passing the boy with minimum marks. At least once it happened even when the boy had not taken the exam at all owing to sickness.

The boy never understood the gestures fully. The incidents receded in his consciousness as he moved on from sixth grade to the seventh and so on, over the many years of education and employment that followed. It wasn’t until he was into his late thirties and gotten quite worldly-wise that the memories surfaced from deep recesses of his mind and their full import struck him.

A class-teacher going out on a limb for him for no personal gain? And there were those teachers chiming in with him in his extraordinary (and irregular, of course) act.

I’ve never stopped kicking myself for not having gotten back in good time to esteemed Shri Manikkavaachakam (my class teacher), Ms Kamath (Marathi teacher), Shri Venkataramana (Drawing teacher who could draw with both hands at the same time)…to tell them what those gestures (though patently in violation of rules) meant then and mean even today, the feelings I’m awash with…While words fail me here, I do know it’s a debt that I’m incapable of ever repaying, a lapse too late to correct and a sin that’s unforgivable.

The only positive fallout – ever since it is my endeavor to express myself sooner than later to those whom I owe in life: parents, spouse and children, relatives, teachers, friends, colleagues… and often perfect strangers too.

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