Shocked !!

Today I recieved the shock of my life !! A Governement Organization(BSNL) treating me like a real customer !!!! Now this is something that you dont get to see and experience very often in your lives.
Normally one can see people running from pillar to post in such offices for even small issues like getting the name changed on records ! I myself was a victim of such ignorance and lax attitude when I went for my DataOne BroadBand connection.

Thus my viewpoint of Government Bodies was like "Avoid Them as long as you can".

Today , however , was an emergency !! My ADSL Modem started to play truant ! So , I called up the BSNL HQs here in Ghaziabad and ask for help.And true to my expectations , nobody picked up ! And even when one person did (I dunno if he was alive cos he sounded like he was speaking from his grave!) , he did not know what DataOne was ! Man , that was hieghts ! I was so pissed off that all the anger had to be faced by the "bechaara modem".

Anyways , I decided to face the problem today instead of running from it.I know it sounds like a piddly issue but for me entering a Government Building is akin to entering a "machchi bazaar" in the philosophical sense ! It literally reeks of Inefficiency and Aggresive Attitude ! These people work as if they are doing some favour to us by doing what they should normally do ! And on top of that , they ask for "Under The Table" moolah !!

Anyways , I picked up my car and rushed off to my local exchange here in the locality where I live.And I asked the guard where I could find a person incharge of Broadband.I was half expecting the normal answer - "Pata nahi jee.Khud dhoond Lo"

But I was surprised when the guard gave me the exact location , so to say , of the person incharge ! I thanked him profusely and rushed up to the office lest the person concerned might run off somewhere !!

Thankfully I found him in his place.My mindset was that I will leave by registering my complain and then the regular call backs to the exchange would start when the linemen dont show up.Anyhow , whatever my mindset was , I had decided that I would atleast take this up to the SDO if my complain was not heeded immediately (Wishful Thinking)

Mr Shailendra was his name.I told him the problem.And then I was really surprised !! The guy was speaking perfect english !! And to top it , he asked me to give him ten minutes so he can wind up something and he would send a lineman with me !!!

The pessimist in me still said that 'He's saying 10 minutes.See how much time he takes".But today was a day when the pessimist me was losing round after round.Even before the ten minutes were up , here was a "taau" type character.He was the lineman.And he looked at me as if I was their only Broadband user !! (which by the way I am not because DataOne is quite famous here).

"Kahan chalna hai Saab??" , Taau asked.
"G 495 mein.Mere paas car hai.Mein aapko drop bhi kar dunga exchange par" (poor akash)
"Nahi Saab.Hamnein dekha hai aapka ghar.Aap chalo , hum peechay peechay aaye"

The pessimist in me again said that he would ditch you and would take a detour enroute ! I had to find someway to stay either with him or behind him so that I could "herd" him towards my home.
So I said "Aap chalo.Mein Shailendra jee se baat karke aata hun".
"Jaisa aap kaho"

So off he went.I was sure he would take most of two hours to get to my home because these people do that normally.(My house is ten minutes from the exchange)
To negate the wait , I decided to talk to Mr Shailendra.And as he was telling me what plans he had for this exchange , the pessimist in me was dying slowly.The guy was doing his parttime MBA from IMT Ghaziabad and had taken upon himself to improve the prevailing conditions and more importantly the Attitude at the exchange.And the optimist in me was born again !!
We started to chat about things related to technology and general stuff and time passed like anything.It was about an hour or more.

When I left him , I told him that it will take a lot of time to change the prevailing attitude of your work force - the corruption , the carelessness , the aggressiveness.He smiled.

And when I reached home I saw that Taau - the lineman, was waiting for me outside my home , standing in the scorching sun and sweating like hell.Even then he was smiling towards me and beckoning me to show him the cables !!
The pessimist died then and the optimist is now wide awake !!
Seems like Mr Shailendra had done his homework and implemented the most of it !!

PS : For those of you wondering how I published this article when my modem is not working , Taau replaced my modem.Even though he had to cycle back to the exchange and come back again to my house.