GATI Scamsters: Stay away from them!

One fine day, I decided to initiate the long overdue task of getting my bike transported from Delhi to Hyderabad. I (unfortunately) decided to inquire the "Big Player" of the market, i.e. GATI. It all went fine, they stated a few things up front which were:

1. You need to get the bike packed. We do not provide any packing service.
2. Pick up will be scheduled between 12 pm and 4 pm, Monday to Saturday.
3. A few documents such as the RC copy, insurance copy and ID proof copy.
4. Leave the handle lock open and empty the petrol tank.

It all seemed pretty standard to me so I went ahead and booked the pick up for Saturday, 25th October, 2014 and relaxed, hoping that they stick to their commitment of delivering it within 4 days (excluding the pick up date) to Hyderabad.

Till 25th Oct noon, i.e. a few hours earlier, I got absolutely no confirmation from their side and got suspicious so decided to prod them about what the exact status was. That is when I got to know the real story.

12:20 pm: Their executive tells me that the pick up will not happen today (despite it being "confirmed" the previous day) and that it can be done on Monday.

I was OK with that but then decided to make sure everything else was right about the deal so prodded the executive about the details of the person who would come to pick up, etc.

12:35 pm:

My parents (in Delhi, the pick up point) get a call from GATI saying that the pick up cannot be scheduled before Monday and they are provided some Pappinder's number - the person in charge of the pick up.

12:50 pm: A female calls up my parents from the no 8130195141 and tells them that "as your packing is not professional, you need to get it re-packed by "our" packer." And that wasn't enough - they were asked to get the bike delivered to Dwarka Sector 28 (GATI's warehouse). Else, provide the keys to their agent who would ride it all the way to Dwarka, get it packed and loaded.

This really was the tipping point. I decided to call up Ms. Neelam on the mentioned number and find out what really was going on.

Her initial "suggestion" was that she'll send over someone to pick up the bike and the person would drive it all the way to Dwarka (carefully tagging the line that if the keys get misplaced in the transit, Gati would not bear any responsibility). On being asked why wasn't it possible for them to do a normal pick up through a truck (as is so often the case), she said the policemen harass them if they carry bikes in trucks. This seemed bizzare to me, esp when a neighbour of mine had got his bike picked by Gati at his doorsteps last month. On further questioning, she said they do not have the trucks available for pick up every day hence they have to find other ways to get the bike.

My patience gave up at this point and I did not feel like trusting such a company with my bike. There is always a chance of them damaging the bike and then refusing to own up to it. Now I would rather wait for some more time and get my bike here by train, the next time I plan a trip home. I have done this once and it worked perfectly fine!

Marching On...

On a fine evening of 3^rd May, 2012 (exactly 4 months ago), I was leaning back at my 1^st floor located office desk of building no. 4, Infosys Hyderabad STP Campus, where I shared space with 15000 more employees. My eyes were staring exactly opposite to the screen, at the pleasant emptiness created by the clear blue skies which appeared black through the dark glassed window.  For those who have known me in office, it was an uncommon sight on two counts. First, I was almost NEVER found at my desk in the 5 pm – 7 pm interval. Cricket ground, gymnasium and the New Food Court (NFC) used to be the top 3 bets if one of my friends had to place one on finding me in that period. Secondly, those who have worked with me would know that I have never been the person to stop and think like that on work related issues, no matter how critical the problem.

“So, leaving the company?” – came a voice that brought me back from the skies. It came from a senior colleague, whom I shared the floor with. E – separation was probably one of the most frequently used applications of the Infosys intranet in Q1, FY ’13 and I was adding to the usage. For the uninitiated, it is an online, automated application using which Infosys employees who want to part ways with the company initiate their notice period.

“Yes, time to go”. I uttered, punctuating it with one of my most genuinely fake smiles to give the impression of being very casual about it. However, it was not the case and I was still in two minds, which is why, despite having filled out the form, I hadn’t clicked on the “Initiate” button.

In order to avoid further conversation, I rotated my chair 180 degrees to face my workstation, trying my best to look busy.  It all sounds so very fancy, when you go out and announce to your colleagues that you are leaving the company but arriving at the decision is by no means easy. In my case, it was going to be all the more difficult, as I was not going to join a top notch MBA college, for which you don’t have to think twice. I had to choose between two courses, one of which was an MBA in Power Management from NPTI Faridabad, a college generally unheard of, however famous it might be in the Power Sector. Second, and more glamourous, choice would have been to opt for SP Jain’s executive MBA program (PGCIM), which offered a one year course, with six months to be spent in SPJAIN Mumbai and IESEG, France each.

My CAT 2010 score of 96.98 %ile had ignited hopes of a better score in myself as well as amongst my family members and friends, who were all the more surprised when I managed to underperform to on my way to scoring 89 %ile in CAT 2011. Though my options were limited, a decision had to be made, as I could not have continued in the company. The reasons were many but the most dominant one was that I was not enjoying it any more, all those hours spent in playing Cricket and Chess during office hours notwithstanding. I am a month into my course now and have already been quizzed about 50 times about “Why did you leave Infy?” – a question which probably requires another blog post.

Looking back at things has never been my nature and now that I am a month into the course, I do not dislike it. I have put in conscious efforts of maintaining a low profile and cutting down on the distractions and have been successful to a great extent. Infosys and Hyderabad days are being missed and they will always be. However, this has been a change that I genuinely sought for some time now. This gives me enough spare time in a day to pursue things that I always wanted to. The greatest incentive is that I have my weekends all to myself, in which I can go home and relax, play with my  18 month old nephew, spend time with my family and come back refreshed on Monday morning to take up the challenges of the next five days.

The Flat Disaster

Having been an extremely active non-blogger for the past 6 months has left me with a lot of self-invented,nonsensical ideas and what better place to get rid of them than the blog. Its not that there's been nothing to share about in the past 6 months; in fact, its quite the opposite so I'll try to break down the time period chronologically. Taking a cue from the now-behind-bars-but-still-adored-by-me famous Mr. Julian Assange, I intend to release the cables(read blog posts) one by one over the next few days/weeks/months/years so as to keep my non existent readerbase on their toes.

 Ever since we moved into a real cheap 2 BHK with pathetic surroundings in the month of March (due to lack of options and mostly due to the fact that it was close to my friends' home), we had been on the lookout for a better home and we didn't mind paying that extra bit for that. Then, one fine day while I was on bench and lucky to have got hold of a system here in Infosys Hyderabad kiosk, I read an advertisement which said a certain gentleman was looking for 2 people to share a 3 BHK flat. 8 hours later we were at the flat and beat our nearest competitor by about 5 steps in handing over the advance(It was in 5-figures, in case anyone was curious to  know) to one Saurabh (whom we had met barely 15 mins ago and who, as you would have guessed, was going to be our new flatmate). Thus, we sealed the deal for our new home and were elated. The new flat, despite costing us about 63% more than the current one (blame my hopeless CAT preparation for reporting the figure in percentage... more on how my CAT preparation started and ended well before the actual exam(which, by the way, I eventually took) will follow later), had its benefits:

1. It was closer to the office, which means we saved Rs. 5 per trip and Rs. 10 in total (for my fellow college/office/flat/bench - mate Sagar it meant saving Rs. 20 per day, given his swipe-in -> breakfast -> come home -> sleep whole day at home -> dinner @ office -> swipe-out time table).
2. It was at a walkable distance from the famous and highly unhygienic Kothaguda junction, where we were so used to feast ourselves on probably the filthiest paani puri in Hyderabad which I don't know how still tasted great.
3. My friends' home was still walkable(if you can walk about 1.5 kms without ending up rolling around on the roadside gasping for water and breath, in no particular order)
4. Reason 2 was too tempting.
5. The surroundings were far better and it came across as an excellent strategical outpost from where to lauch the long awaited "mission-girlfriend-hunt", which had been pushed to the backburner during the past week and "mission-flat-hunt" had taken over.

So, the deal was struck some 20 days in advance and we were all set to move in from the 1st of August. Moving into a new city, playing cricket for a month in office, getting a good flat, being put on bench for a seemingly indefinite period, it made me believe that nothing could go wrong in life. There was no communication at all between us and our new flat mate for the next 20 days or so, as he was busy with his Investment Banking work and I was busy.... well... technically I didn't have any work but then, why disclose all your cards up front? I was busy pretending that I was not such a useless person in office and actually it was the office work which kept me from calling/visiting him to pay the remainder of the amount.

Sunday, 1st August, 11:00 am: I was offloading the tempo containing our beloved TV, Refrigerator, tables, chairs, etc from the tempo into the lift of Bhavya Shanti Sadan, our new home. Ten minutes later, I was shaking hands with Saurabh, who was welcoming us into the new house, which, at that instant, also contained 4 other people.

Saurabh: "Man, you sure you people are bachelors? Mast samaan-vamaan lekar aa gaye tum log to!"

Jayant: (trying to act cool and unpertrubed at the sight of 4 unexpected people in the flat) "Yeah, what can we do? We're so addicted to Sports and Beer. Hence the TV and refrigerator respectively"

(laughter all around, even from those 4 unwanted people who were sitting too far to hear the conversation)

After exchanging the usual pleasantaries and enquiring about when exactly did the ex-occupant intended to clear up the mess he had left in the flat, if at all, we were on our way back in the same luggage tempo.

"God, this flat has brought about good omen from the heavens. We've started saving from the first day itself", I murmured to Sagar and Anubhav, who had come up to help with the luggage transportation.
Same day, 08:00 pm: We were at Shilpa Park, home to Sagar,Anubhav,Vinit and Urvi (and also to us on weekends) playing our newly purchased ultra-modern 6-player LUDO when my cell displayed,

Saurabh Flatmate
Calling...

Jayant: "Hello Saurabh, what's up?"

Saurabh: "Yaar, there's a bad news. Owner called me right now and we have to vacate the flat by 1st September."

Jayant: "But... how can he? We've just moved in..."

Saurabh: "Sorry man, we had an agreement of a month's notice from either party and he's sticking to it."

Well, that pretty  much concludes the flat-hunt part of the story. There are more disasters to follow and if I manage to retain the enthusiasm, they will be out shortly.

Settling Down After 100 Days Of Madness!

First of all, let me tell you straightaway that the phrase “settling down” is not intended to mean matrimony in any way.

The Crazy Period:The mentioned period has been important to me in a lot of ways. I don’t like it, I don’t dislike it but most certainly I will never forget it. It has transformed me from a trainee to a professional and now I’m starting to get the real picture of how challenging my job will get with time. I have seen the best and the worst parts of friendship. Have been in troubled waters and then come up trumps the next day. There have been fights with friends and there have been conditions imposed on friendships(which, I still can’t believe I accepted!). Have had my trust broken and have broken it myself. And, if all these things are not bizzare enough, I’ve been through four cities, i.e. Mysore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune during that period over issues that aren’t completely unrelated to those mentioned earlier. Anyways, let me get to the point straightaway instead of continuing with my gibberish phrases.
What I thought I've always been:I have taken great pride in believing that I’ve never been much of an emotional person. Not that I don’t care for family/friends, but there is always a practical angle to my thoughts/actions. I would like to believe that I never let me heart dominate my head in making decisions and that has kept me going all these years. When it comes to expressing emotions, I’ve always followed the mantra:
“I will never show, and you will never know!”
What I have actually been: And now comes the twist to it. I have hardly been the above mentioned person during this phase which ended recently. The misadventure is rooted in Mysore so let me handle the events chronologically. I used to be the first person to get out of office during the training days in Mysore but I have sat on my PC uselessly for hours and HOURS(most of the times till midnight, after which you’re kicked out of office, as it’s got to be locked by the security people), doing absolutely nothing! I have delayed my lunch and dinner purposelessly, I’ve lied left, right and centre, for anything and everything.I have flunked a paper for the FIRST TIME EVER in my life and that too, a paper which was supposedly “too easy”. I’ve gone to a re-test full of over confidence(and, given the fact that there was about 40% of the course which I had not even touched, the origin of the over confidence is still mysterious!).
For those who are not aware at all of the marking pattern during the Infosys Mysore training here’s a quick introduction to it, without understanding which you will not fully comprehend my stupidity! You have to write a 30 marks Hands-On(Practical) exam, followed by 70 marks of theory.The Hands-On is an open book exam and, as is the case in all the colleges the practical marks are supposed to help oneself “sail through” the paper, as you’ll hardly get below 25 out of 30 if you attempt all that is there to be attempted, in the right or wrong way. Well, at least this was what I felt about it until… well, read on.
So, as you might have guessed by now, I DID manage to comprehensively flunk the Hands-On exam, with a grand score of 13.75 out of 30! Infosys requires you to score 65/100 to pass a paper and there I was, looking down a tunnel with no light at the other end, requiring another 51.25 out of 70, i.e. 73%. However, given that in the Hands On exam there is open book system and, needless to say, there’s no such system in the theory paper, there were ominous signs for the things to come in the paper.To make matters worse just one night stood between me and the paper. The final result was assuring enough, as I scored 89% the next day but then, talking about crazy things, this much score from me can easily be counted as one of them!
Enter the partner in crime:The rest of the deeds also feature a partner named Ashish, who has played the lead role in most of our acts I’m going to mention here. Just a quick intro to my engineering college batchmate, Ashish. For a batch of 800+ people, its not easy to know everyone so there's no surprise that there were people in Manipal who didn't know Ashish, despite being from the same batch. However, I found out recently that almost everyone knows him as "the guy who used to abuse Bansal on basketball court during cricket matches!" Now let the story continue.I have got in arguments with auto drivers, trying to defend Ashish(who, in turn, was on the wrong side of the argument so in this case, “defend” implies talking endlessly and disappearing from the scene asap). Following Ashish’s lead, I’ve ridden bicycles on the footpaths in the Infosys Mysore campus without being whistled at by the security guards(and mind you, its no mean feat, given that there are at least 3000 security guards monitoring the campus at any given time!) and parked them at the exact places where they’re not intended to be parked. Walking casually through the corridors of our hostels in Mysore, Ashish would all of a sudden ring someone’s bell and then we were left with no option but to get out of sight. And then, how can I forget Ashish’s favourite game, i.e. getting into the life on the ground floor and then pressing 1,2,3,4,5 buttons just as the lift passed each of the floors, without causing the lift to stop on that particular floor!Another popular lift-game was to rush into the lift and take it up, when we knew that there’s some poor soul a few metres behind us who’s also headed for the same lift and hence, causing him discomfort, which was our idea of happiness! Just to add to the list, I once bought a whistle used by the security guards and tried to confuse the people in the campus by blowing it off everywhere and trust me, someone like Ashish too stopped me from doing it as he found it “embarrassing”!!!
And to add icing on the cake, I recently went to a salon and stole a comb, which, in turn, I lost!
So, there have been enough acts of stupidity and now there’s neither time nor the company to continue with them. I cannot thank The Almighty enough for not getting me posted to Pune, something that I was willing to kill for two months ago!Getting posted to Hyderabad seems to have released the previous, more stable, sane version of myself, who is quiet most of the time, sincerely goes about his job and has a thousand thoughts going through his mind all the time, jostling for attention. The past week has given me the chance to get my head down and think about the direction I am headed/want to be headed to. Getting paid for sitting idle in the company a.c. for the months of March and April seemed to be a dream come true but now the realization has sunk in as to how much time has been lost in that. All of a sudden, ambitions which were buried deep inside have erupted and suddenly I want to do a lot of things and, for a change I am willing to put in the effort as well. Felt good to find a few readers for my blog and recently I was over the moon when I took my first step towards becoming a published author. 24 hours in a day are no longer sufficient, being at home no longer means either watching t.v. or surfing the internet, the IPL games are no longer a must-watch and time spent on the internet is no longer synonymous to gtalk,orkut and facebook!
Office: The best part about office these days is that I do not have to keep looking at my watch repeatedly during office hours to kill time. Got to meet the top brass of my department yesterday and had a sneek peak into the kind of work I am expected to do in the future. Thanked The Almighty again, as I didn’t get posted to some testing unit. Got to know that we are into delivery and the kind of work that we’re going to do is purely developmental. The only thing I was concerned about when I got into the I.T. sector was ending up into support/testing job and now that has been taken care of. Thus, office no longer means having to stay in the campus for 9 hours 15 minutes before you go back, watch TV, chat and then doze off.I do have things to keep me engaged through the entire day.
There are times when I sit back and think about the time that sped by and then questions such as ,”Could I have done something differently?”, “What could have happened had I….?”, “Why did I have to ….”, etc mushroom up. There cannot be any clear cut answer to those and with time I have started to stop losing sleep over it. Being a spontaneous, impulse driven person, self-examination has never been my forte but this time it has yielded a positive result, for a change. It tells me that once again I’m lying at a highway where there are only two possibilities. The first one is to go back to where I came from and get stuck in the same circle I had so desperately wanted to get out of. The second, and more realistic one is to look ahead, pick up the pieces, gather myself, dust myself down and carry on into a little known territory, carrying with me nobody’s support but HOPE. The last week has made me realize that the possibilities that lie ahead of me over the next 18 months are immense and even though it’s a long shot now, I am up for it in a BIG WAY! After all,
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

No More Hyderabad Blues!

I’ve had 45 days of Hyderabad and it has been a fitting experience. Although I’m so much used to living out of home, this one has been different.

The 7 semesters of hostel life in Manipal provided various types of shared and single accomodation. But at no point of time was I required to worry about laundry, arranging drinking water, paying out bills, finding a house to live in, finding someone to clean up the house once a while,etc,etc.

Then followed a heaven called Mysore, which took the definition of “hostel” to an entirely different level.One cannot complain when you’re provided with LCD TV, intercom, lamps for various purposes(one on the supposed study table and other on the side of the bed, either of which were hardly used by me), no roommate to have differences with and when someone’s there to arrange your bed, dust and sweep your room, replace the used tea and sugar bags with fresh ones. However, the cribber that I am, it didn’t take me even 24 hrs to find faults with the housekeeping people. When I entered the room for the first time, it was all spick and span, cleaniness to such a degree which was(and will be) alien to me. So, I decided to mess it up a bit and give it a familiar look, the kind of look I was so used to during my hostel days in Manipal, in which there was a bunch of clothes which would be lying either on the chair or the bed( I was in a habit of shifting them from chair to bed when I needed to study(come on, whom am I kidding?... when I needed to use my laptop placed on the table as a desktop) and then back on the chair when I needed to get some sleep). To my surprise, the moment I came back, I found the bed to be as it was before, as if no one had used it, ever!My shoes and socks were in place and I was about to lodge a complain with the reception people, alleging that the housekeeping guys had stolen my belt, when 3 days later I found it out in the drawer of my study table!!

I must confess that throughout my stay in Infosys Mysore, I was wondering what right have I done all my life that I managed to find my way to Infosys campus interviews by fooling the HR people ‘n’ number of times(Yes, unlike others, I was interviewed more than once..thrice to be precise.. before joining Infosys but then that’s another story in itself!). And, to be honest, I’m still quietly smillng at these god-sent Infosys people, who have been paying me for about 7 months now for doing practically nothing.

Anyways, cut to the present scenario. When you’re determined not to go to a particular city but are left with no other option, the first aim is to start finding faults with the city the moment you enter it. My entry to the city didn’t give me much opportunity to do that, as I entered it via the RGI Airport at 11pm, HUNGRY! And, trust me, Hyderabad airport is clearly the best managed airport I’ve seen till now, which includes Mumbai, Mangalore, Goa, Bangalore and of course, New Delhi. The moment I step out, I found McDonald’s, which was something I had missed too much in Mysore and Manipal. That was another thing to be happy about. Moments later, I was in an aero-express bus, which saves you from getting into arguments with auto/taxi drivers, despite which you end up paying an astronomical figure, just because you’re new to the city and have no idea about the rates. 40 minutes later I was with half of my college group(half, because only 2 out of the 4 were there) and from there onwards, things never looked back. From finding flats to stay in to celebrating birthdays to night outs, everything has been fun. The best part about staying in Hyderabad is that it takes me barely 20 mintues to reach office and I have the flexibility of timings, as I don’t even need to take office transport!Bangalore and Pune are notorious in this regard, where you need to spend at least an hour and a half in traffic on a daily basis.I have my friends staying very close by for any kind of need(varying from work to party to getting me something from the market when I'm not in a mood to,etc,etc).

It’s strange how people adjust to different things. When I went to Mysore and I came to know that I’ll no longer have 24 hour access to internet, I thought I couldn’t survive there and wanted to get out of it asap.Then I started liking the place and started spending time with my friends doing everything apart from studies. Then,during the last month, just when Mysore started getting boring,god sent one more person who, strangely enough, found our company interesting!The days that followed were exciting, challenging and memorable and Mysore rounded off with the best 20 days of my life!Then came the postings and I got posted to Hyderabad. I so very much wanted to go to Pune and didn't leave any stone unturned to find a swap for the same.I got a feeling as if I'll not survive in Hyderabad and imagining life here was becoming difficult. However, it has turned out to be a college reunion of sorts and I do find myself very much settled here, despite three out of station trips in a short while. Not for a moment am I trying to suggest that those days have been replaced by the ones in Hyderabad, but then, this is the way the world goes!

Lance Armstrong, the 5 time Tour de France Champion has an interesting way to share his idea of happiness in his book, “It’s Not About The Bike”. In the mid 1990s, when he was a challenging cyclist who had not been able to clinch the world championship crown, his idea of happiness was to “Win the Tour de France(Considered the world’s most physically demanding athletic event)”. A few years later, some time during 1998, he was being diagnosed against cancer when the doctors didn’t give him more than 10 percent chance of survival. Chaemotherapy virtually killed him for three weeks, one loses his strength, can barely walk, leave alone cycling. Then, his idea of happiness was “Waking Up and being able to crawl”, as it gave him the assurance that he had lived through another day of Cancer(Which, however, was no assurance that he’ll live on to see the next day!)

That gives us a reason to think and redefine our idea of Happiness, doesn’t it?

More to come...