Is this true?

I paid deposit for my internet broadband in April 2008. A year and six months later, I am shocked.

The cable TV operator who supplies the net line to us actually responds to my complaints, and a maintenance guy lands up at my door in half an hour!

If the main server supplying bandwidth is down, they actually inform me about it. They even call back to check if the complaint has been addressed! Or if the connection has been set right.

What a difference from those hairsplitting hours and days I lost yelling at them, and lost time on precious work that I could do too!

Is it that my tricks and stunts at getting them to renew my account every month or repair the line paid off? Or reporting non-stop to their bandwidth provider about their callous attitude did the trick?

A hunch tells me it could be a drop in the number of connections. The internet line provider was a monopoly out here till recently. Some friends I know switched to wireless internet because of such bad service.

During the Diwali weekend, this provider spent a fortune on pamphlets advertising his broadband packages. Competition works!

Just in case you wondered why I put up with shoddy service for a whole 18 months, some friends suggested a move to a bigger company's broadband service when they saw me going through torture in the name of broadband internet.

I had a sound reason not to. When we moved in to this home, I called up the big companies for a connection - hoping for that quality stamp on them. Two out of the three I called up said they had no `feasibility' in my colony. With 168 homes in an enclosure and 10 such enclosures on a single road stretch - meaning not less than 50 per cent of them for potential customers, I don't know what they meant by no feasibility.

The third company had only six months and three months package options, which meant I pay lumpsum. I wanted to tell them I was newly married, and had no money left to pay them such huge sums. It would not matter, would it? I would look a fool too. Why would they be concerned about my not having money?

I took heart by deciding not to give them business for as long as I could.

Birds on my window sill

Indoor moments can be fun at times!

A pigeon waits for that opportune moment when you've left the window partly open, and flies into your room only to head for the slab above, even if it meant pushing the curtain away with its beak.

All your pleas to leave fail to get those mercy looks from the bird. What do you do then? Show gestures, to indicate the way out, Air India Maharaja style. It will not budge.

The next thing, play around with the window shutters a little. This time it knows there is some trouble in waiting. So when you make space for the winged guest to leave, it obliges. And hops to the window sill, perches on the grill ahead, and flies away.

Pigeon mornings in this part of my colony no longer begin at forlorn spaces. These days they flock to the inner walls of the storm water drain near my building. With the water turning to just a trickle after rains, they love its cool in the day, when these buildings shade over the drain.
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Pigeons in my colony have grown smart over the months. Yesterday afternoon, they perched themselves outside the curtain to check for any noise from this room. In careful movements, they moved to the window sill just behind the curtain. A pigeon partly pushed the curtain to check for perils if any. What this one and its friend were not aware of, is that I was watching their silhouetted shadows clearly from my room.

When the bird tried to move in, all I said is, `No', like a teacher chides her student! Can you believe the pigeon moved back in as many steps? And came by again to check on the noise! I repeated the `No'. Now it gave up. And flew away. Its fellow pigeon waiting flew after it.

Which language is superior?

In the age of MNS style politics that wreak fear in the name of language, it is with some unease that one reads about `Convent' school teachers punishing children for speaking in their mother tongue.

We know English language gets us that much needed exposure to the world and its politics.

We know too, that in the recent years, it is unthinkable to let our children stay behind in the rat race without the knowledge of English.

We've heard the IT Czars of Bangalore and knowledge advocates of Delhi stress on the language in curriculum many a time.

But punishing children in the name of language! What's the difference between a violent political party bashing up drivers from a particular state or those who speak a particular language, and teachers who beat up children in the name of language at school?

Those in the know will tell you that it was their native knowledge that took them places - on the global map I mean. Where we as Indians should pride ourselves in our local culture, we love to impose an overly Western system in the name of education, and ask our children to become English speaking machines of the future.

For the moment, the incident has grabbed political mileage for the concerned politicians. What happens to the children who suffered humiliation? With the noise dies down, will they still be able to hold their heads up in their classroom?

Will their confusion about what the right language to speak is, clear too? My hunch is, it definitely will not. God save today's children.

Ambiguity

Is when you wonder if the destination means bliss, or the journey toward it.
An aim. The longing. Those perils. And finally...