All over a Crap
This story gives more meaning to my recently acquired name ... Crappy. It was in September 2008 during my visit to USA.

A word of caution, if you are a heart patient or can not stand disgusting stories, this one is not for you.

Here I was, standing at the boarding queue at Mumbai International Airport, excited to fly to the US for the first time. In fact it was the first time I was ever gonna be on a flight, so that doubled the excitement. The journey was going to be quite exhausting, 15 hours, and I had two stop overs, one at New York and the other one at Raleigh, before I reached my final destination, Atlanta.

I had already checked-in online and reserved a window seat for myself. I did not expect then that I would be accompanied by a stinky lady (gosh! if you are reading this, please start using a deodarant) and a fat ass man, who would block my way every time I had to go to pee and would make the already uncomfirtable situation even worse. I realized that the window seats are not advisable for frequent fliers who are also frequent 'pee'ers. I had a colleague, who was also flying along with me, but he was seated very far away.

The flight took off! A blood rushing experience. I loved the feel of gravity pulling me down tight on the seat while the plane tried to pull me up and higher. I had to constantly keep gulping air to avoid my ears from shutting down due to air pressure. Soon we were 1500 meters in the air and Mumbai was more visibly clear that from the ground, because from that height you cannot see the clouds of dust you find wherever you go in Mumbai. Moreover, since I was flying during the night, Mumbai seemed to be some kind of jewelry. It was awesome. The unexpected shakes in the plane due to the turbulences made the journey more adventurous.

By the way, did I tell you that Delta airlines have the oldest air hostesses in the world? So when you are traveling on Delta, push aside all your dreams and fantasies of meeting hot, well endowed blondes that ask you if you need any 'services'. Instead, think of all the nightmares where you are surrounded by grannies with loose, wrinkled, weary skin and yellow, chipped dentures. One more thing, if you ever happen to travel to the US, think twice before opting for a Delta flight coz they charge heavy on extra or overweight baggage, flat $150. Also, the food on Delta airlines is substandard. The lady next to me had ordered a veg meal and she was given some boiled vegetables and steamed rice. So I went for the non-veg meal. After all, how bad can you cook a chicken? It was at least eatable. I wanted to call for a glass of wine or whisky but since it was my first time, I didn't know that it is served for free. Damn!

Anyways, the first flight was for 10 hours and I spent around 6 hours watching movies (What happens in Vegas and The Bucket List, a must watch for movie lovers), a couple in a short naps, and another couple looking out of the window. In the mean time I also disturbed the people next to me three times while going for a pee. This one time the fat ass guy took so much time to get off his seat and make some way for me to pass by, had he took a second more I would have wet my pants.

But the story is not about all this crap. It is actually about the 'crap'. I always get a feeling of disgust when it comes to using the public toilets. I advoid using public toilets as much as I can. For peeing it is ok, but when it comes to taking a crap, I would rather prefer it to be a cleaner place. Don't know how many asses sat on this toilet. I don't mean that toilets in planes are not clean, but since it was my first time, I wasn't comfirtable. Also, I tried to fit myself in the 2x2 feet toilet of the plane, but couldn't. So I had to hold on to the pressure.

In the morning, as the flight took the descent for landing, my crappy pressure was on the ascent. It felt like the increasing gravity was actually trying to pull it out of my ass. I had to fight the war of my life to hold it back in and avoid any embarrassment. The flight landed with a thud. While everyone was cursing the pilot for a bad landing, I was thanking him form the bottom of my heart, coz the jerk had pushed the shit a bit inside, buying me some time to clear the security checks and find a toilet. However, I realized that this was a punishment for something I did in the past life (may be I kicked someone's ass so hard that he couldn't shit again). We (me and my colleague) just had 40 minutes stop over time and people who had already been there said that we would definitely miss our next flight. So if I had to crap, it would be after boarding my next flight, to Raleigh.

We cleared the security checks just 5 minutes ahead of time to reach the boarding lane for our flight, where we discovered that some other flight was being boarded and the boarding for our flight would start after 20 mins. Great! So I have time to relax my butt. I gave the custody of my baggage to my colleague and ran to the closest toilet I could find. Thuddddd!!!! Zippppp!!!! Phhhhhrrrrr!!!!! Wuuuuhhooooowwww!!!! I was as relaxed as a mother after giving birth to a baby. Thank you dear god for delaying the flight!

As I was sitting in the stinky vapors, my colleague ran in to the restroom area and started yelling out my name from outside. I was so embarrassed. Damn! Now everyone would know that it was me who was exploding fire crackers in the toilet. But who else knows me here, other than my colleague? So I yelled back "Kya Hua Be?". He replied, "Abbey, our flight has started boarding, you better be quick". I was done with the main act and was already proceeding towards the concluding act, so I thought I would manage to make it on time and said "Ok. Coming in two minutes".

The concluding act after a crap, for Indians at least, means washing your ass clean with water. But the Americans save water where you actually need it. They just wipe off their asses. It was similar to what Alanis Morisette sung in the song Ironic: "It's thousand spoons when all you need is a knife". In this case for me it was: "It's thousand toilet rolls when all you need is a jet". It was my first experience of cleaning up the mess with a sheet of paper and no water. No matter how well you clean it with a paper, it always gives you a feeling of "something is still there" and that gave me goose bumps throughout my journey till the hotel.

I zipped up my pants, washed my hands and ran towards the boarding queue. We handed our boarding passes to the attendant and he said the three golden words that kept ringing in my ears for the next 5 minutes ... "Flight took off!". Apparently, the flight had finished boarding and taken off. They had started boarding the next flight. That bloody attendant had told me the flight will not board until next 20 minutes and the flight had already finished boarding and taken off in just 15 minutes. I looked at my colleague. He was so pissed off at me as we had missed our flight coz I was in the toilet taking a crap. But he couldn't say a word to me as he was a junior to me and this was our first project together.

I did not know what to do next. Will they put us on some other flight? Do we need to pay for that flight? Or are we stuck at the New York Airport? I imagined myself like Tom Hanks from the Terminal spending the next few months at the airport. I asked the attendant what to do and he guided me to the service desk. Behind the desk was a lady holding her head and cursing the headache. I thought this would be the worst time to speak to her, but I had no choice. "Excuse Me, we have missed our flight to Raleigh. Our luggage is on the flight. What should we do?" I asked. She came back with the million dollar question, "Why did you miss the flight?" It was so embarrasing for me that the next words took ages to come out of my mouth, just like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, "Be...cause ... because I ... I ... was in the ... the restroom". She flared her nose and pushed her eyebrows up to her forehead with surprise ... No, with shock. I am sure I was the first person to miss a flight over a crap. She did not say a word for the next 10 seconds, but then she realized she needs to speak something here, "Ehhh! Ok! Hang on!". Thank god she didn't ask anything further.

She checked the flight schedule and said "There is a flight at 4PM for Atlanta, but you will have to wait in the Airport premises until then." It was 9AM at that time and spending 7 hours at the ariport did not seem viable to us. "Is there any other way?" I asked. She checked again and said, "There is another flight from Laguardia Airport, which will leave at 10.15PM. But for that you need to catch a cab and be there before 9:40AM. It is 40 minutes in a cab from here. That is not possible, plus you have to pay $80 for the cab". So we had to go for the 4PM flight. We both agreed on the 4PM flight and asked the lady to check us in. The next thing was a surprise.

She keyed in our names for the 4PM flight, when she noticed that the attendant at the boarding queue had already checked us in for the flight from Laguardia to Atlanta. This was a mistake from the airport crew, they boarded us in a flight without asking us for our preference. I didn't think of it as a mistake, but the lady herself admitted it. She wrote a traveller's check of $80, gave it to me and said, "There would be a cab named Roskstar waiting for you outside the airport. Give this to the cab driver. He'll take to Laguardia airport for your next flight". This journey was really turning out to be rocking. I was amazed with the quality, speed and the level of services being provided by the airport authorities. God bless America!

We took the cab, reached just in time at the Laguardia airport and boarded on to our flight to Atlanta. it was a 2 hour journey, which passed by smoothly looking at the chick across the aisle; tall, slim, cute looks, mini-skirt, perfect bust ... Man! She was Grrrrrrreeeeeaaaatttt!

We reached the Atlanta Airport and started looking for our baggage. We learned from the service desk that the flight from Raleigh to Atlanta had already landed and our baggage would be on aisle number 6. We could not find our baggage on aisle 6 or any other aisle and feared that our baggae was misplaced. We went to the baggage counter and showed them the baggage numbers stuck on our boarding passes. She went into a room and brought out the baggage which was safely placed in a corner after no one claimed for it for half an hour. Again I was very impressed with the organized work.

I was happy that everything ended well. Otherwise I would have had to face a lot of embarrassments from my colleague, the airport authorities and most importantly, my managers, and that too, all over a crap!

4:47 PM | Category: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 0 comments

Process of obtaining a Birth Certificate … The BMC way
This is something I recently discovered and I am happy that I worked it out quite well and got it done.


All the text henceforth in this write-up is with respect to my experiences with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and how you should portray yourself to the BMC guys to get this done as quickly as possible.

When you travel to certain countries on a Work Permit, you are required to furnish a legalized copy of your Birth Certificate (BC) at the time of Visa stamping.

Apart from this what they need is that the BC copy should not be more than 6 months old (Issue date should be less than 6 months from current date).

Note: If you have an old copy of the BC, then check which Ward does your birth place fall in and go to that corresponding BMC office.

Pre-requisites for the visit:

  1. The old copy of your BC.
  2. Duly filled up application for issuing new copies (the form would be available at the BMC office).
  3. A smile on your face (remember smile goes a long way … and a must have while visiting any Government/BMC office).
  4. Speaking Marathi language is a sort of mandate in Mumbai offices. It will help you get the work done 10 times faster, believe me.
  5. Make up a story to show the urgency.

So, I start my journey to give the first visit to the BMC office.
I filled out the application for issuing the new copy of BC and stood in the long queue awaiting my turn. There were around 10 people ahead of me in the queue and each took at least 10 minutes. Thankfully, one of the BMC officials was once struck with a bolt of lightning due to which he was forced to use some part of his minuscule brain and come up with the idea to put two counters to process the applications. So my estimated time in the queue was reduced to half, but still approx. 50 minutes. Meanwhile, there were people trying to jump the queue on which I had to keep a good eye. Some of these are genuine (like they were in the queue before and had gone to get some approvals, blah blah blah) and some are genuine “queue jumpers” (like they were born to do that). A few quarrels here and there over your number in the queue are anticipated. Do not get frustrated with them and remember you have to hold the plastic smile on your face, just like the bride and the groom at the wedding reception).

Finally, after 45 loooooong minutes, I am at the counter. I handed over my application to the officer behind the glass window (the window which has not been cleaned since 1961, and has the remnants of oil and sweat from the faces of millions of people, probably my great grandfather too). The officer looked at the papers and asked me “Is the computer entry done for this?” I was stumped. I thought the BMC must have already got all the entries computerized, but then I realized I had very high expectation from the BMC. The fact is BMC only converts those BC to electronic forms for which they receive an application. The rest are still lying in the gigantic registers that eat up more space than humans in any BMC office. So now, after 45 minutes I come to know that I would have to spend whatever time I spend in this queue again after I get the BC in electronic format. Happy realization!

Note: The new copy of BC can not be printed unless it is available in the electronic format. You can check the same at this link: http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portal/anonymous/qlbirthcertificate. If it is not available there, you need to do what I did next.

The officer directed me to a room two levels upstairs. I got there to find a lady already in a sulking mood and ready to bite into any piece of meat that comes her way. But I kept my composure and also the smile (it had already started shrinking). I told the lady that I need to get my BC computerized. She took a good look at the papers. I already had the intuitions that she would just give me another pointer, and that’s exactly what she did, “This BC is from the year 1982. You need to go to Mr. Dalvi in the next room”. I was surprised. Is BMC actually that organized that they have different people assigned to different ranges of years, or is it just that the lady wanted to shift a little burden off her plate? No time to look for answers, I had to contact Mr. Dalvi.

Mr. Dalvi, a typical Marathi Manus, put in the typical Marathi Manus job, Clerical work at the BMC office. He was surrounded by 5-6 people, all with requests similar to mine and Mr. Dalvi was more than happy to spend his office hours like he would spend them at home on any other day, roaming around, speaking to his friends, what’s up with IPL and how he banged his wife the other day. That’s just too much exaggeration. The last topic is never discussed in Marathi Manus life.

After everyone got a date of later than two months from now, I got my chance to put my request forward. I handed over my papers to Mr. Dalvi and told him I need to get this computerized. Mr. Dalvi, as relaxed and lazy as he could be, took the biggest effort in his life of picking up the paper from my side and kept it on the other side under a paper-weight. He then put his hands behind his head and let out a big yawn, looked at me with dozing eyes and said “Come after two months”. I stood there in a shock for more than 5 minutes without speaking a word. Actually I did not know what to say to this guy. He was just creeping on to my nerves. Right then he re-iterated, “Bola na! Come after two months”. Slightly pissed off I decided to ask him about how much pain in his ass it would be that he is asking for two month’s time. But, since I had to keep my cool it came out this way, “Do you mind letting me know what is the process involved behind getting this done?” It worked. Mr. Dalvi could not get back at me with an angry tone. He said, “Need to find register, need to find entry, need to get it fed into the computer, too much work”. That’s it? That’s the only process behind it? I am sure Mr. Dalvi must be spending more time picking his nose than finding a BC entry. I asked, “Could I help you out with finding the entry?” and he goes “If I let you I have to let everyone find their own entries. Aisa thode na chalta hai?” Now I didn’t have a comeback. I knew that it was just a couple of minutes’ task, but I couldn’t find a way to get this done before two months. Slipping a 100 rupees note into his pocket would be a very orthodox thing to do and is out of fashion these days due to numerous sting operation scams. So I decided to do a little Emosanal Atyachaar!

I changed my smiling face to a bit sunken. I said (in marathi), “Saheb, I need to fly next month for which I need the BC done at the earliest. Please re-consider. I would be thankful to you”. Saheb (formerly Mr. Dalvi) glanced at my face and then his emotions, from one Marathi Manus to another Marathi Manus, started to take over. He asked me to leave my contact number and he will get in touch in a couple of days. Hurray! A bit of emotions and marathi had done the trick for me. I went home happily thinking it would all be sorted out now. Little did I consider the Marathi Manus talent of “How fast can you forget?”.

Two days passed and yet I didn’t get a call back from Mr. Dalvi. I was anyways not expecting a call back and had already decided to visit him again anyways. And so I did. Mr. Dalvi was not at his desk, but a pile of applications was lying on his desk. I searched through the pile and found my application, Mr. Dalvi had hand-written some number on it. I was happy to know that he had processed the application as promised. I folded one corner of the application, to allow quick search when Mr. Dalvi is back at his desk, and stood there waiting for him. After around 15 minutes, the Saheb was back. “Hello Saheb, I had come that day to get my BC done. I think it’s done and it is in that pile of papers” I said. Mr. Dalvi replied, “This pile, this is not done yet”. I closed my fist so tight I almost broke a bone. I told him again that I have to get this done within this week or else I might lose the opportunity of going abroad. He asked for another couple of days time. I went back home, this time without any hopes. I was expecting the same old story to be repeated after a couple of days.

Two days later, I am back at Dalvi’s desk (forget Saheb and the title of Mr.). I had made up my mind that this time it would be it. I said, “Hello. I had come the other day … (ditto from previous para)”. Dalvi looks up at me and goes “Who are you?” That was it! I got so furious that I was about to throw up a shit load of abusive puke on to him. But I held myself back.

Me: “I am Chandan. You had called me back after two days”.

Dalvi: ”You are Thorat right?”

Me: “No, I am Chandan Malvankar.”

Dalvi: “You said Thorat that day.”

Me: “I said Chandan Malvankar.”

Dalvi: “I thought you said Thorat.”

Me: [Cut this shit out] “So what did you do.”

Dalvi: “I processed some Thorat’s application.”

Me: [Hell No] “Let me see that pile” (I grabbed the pile and started looking for my paper. Found it. Handed it to Dalvi).

Me: “Is this application done?”

Dalvi: [No] “Is it urgent?”

Me: [For the thousandth time YES] “Yes. It is urgent. I need it today itself”.

Dalvi: [shrugging his shoulder] “Okay”.
He went to one of the cupboards in the room on which a list with paan stains was stuck. He looked through the list to find a register number, went to an unorganized rack full of dusty old registers, with papers so old, you touch them and they get torn apart. He then picked up the register number 55 and opened the first page from where he noted down certain number onto my application.

Dalvi: “Come back after 15 minutes. I’ll get this entry done on computer”

Me: [It’s now or never. Do it right now!] “I need to rush back to office. Please see if you can get this done right now”.

Dalvi: “Hmmmm”.
He walked to another room where the smoldering lady I mentioned earlier was seated. This time the lady was in a better mood I guess. She took the application and made the entry on the computer. That’s it! My BC was finally in the electronic form. Yipppeeee! Now it’s just the matter of getting print outs.

I ran downstairs to join the queue, which I feared to be long again and would take another 45 minutes to get pass through to the counter. I don’t know if it was by god’s grace or was it just because I took a bath in the morning, but it was my lucky day. There were just two people in the queue, so my turn came in just 10 minutes. I handed the application checked the name, address, etc, paid him the printing charges and Taaaadaaaaa!!! It was done. I could not believe how much the BMC crib about the work load, which, if they do in a systematic way, could be done in minutes. They have been prone to piling up the work and then do it in one go on the last day of the month, 'coz that is when the salary arrives and they need to show their superiors that they do work their asses off.

So, to summarize, do not believe in the dates that BMC officials give you. Any BMC work can be done within a day. You just need to push the tempo by using your own work around.

Note: There is also a process of legalization of your BC. For this you need to visit the Ministry of External Affairs and get this done. This will just require one visit to the office. For people who work in corporate offices, they can get the legalization done through their travel desk authorities avoiding the hassle of doing it personally.

Hoping to tumble over many such experiences and enlightening mankind about how to overcome the lethargic attitude of the Government and BMC officials.

Adios!
Chandan

1:07 PM | Category: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 comments