chaikidukaan.com

Blog

  • Blue Umbrella…

    चाचा, छाते को लेकर कोई फायदा होगा क्या?

    अबे, ये इन्द्रधानुस को देख के कोई फायदा होता है क्या?
    ये पानी में सोट्टी सी कागज़ की नाउ तैराके कोई फायदा होत्ता है क्या?
    वो पहाड़ी के पीसे सूरज को डूबते देखके कोई फायदा होत्ता है क्या?
    और तेरे जैसे निखट्टू को काम पे रख के कोई फायदा होता है क्या?
    …
    आत्मा की सांति में नफा नुस्कान नहीं देखा जात्ता !!!
    …
    कुछ पिछले ही जनम का संबंद है !!!
    छत्री और खत्री का !!!!

    This is just one of the many dialogues that will keep you hooked to the Blue Umbrella… a movie which revolves around an old man’s love for the blue umbrella a young girl Binya, in his village, got from the tourists, how he tries to buy her into giving the umbrella to him using all he could and more… The movie is based on a novel by Ruskin Bond and is directed by Vishal Bhardwaj.

    I am not going to discuss the plot of the movie here because it has its own climax and how it unfolds, however I should mention that Pankaj Kapoor as Nandkishor Khatri, is at his amazing best with the simplest of scenes and dialogues that you would like to remember… The accent of Nandkishor Khatri is something to notice (well you will, without me mentioning it anyway). I am mentioning it specifically because I loved it !!! I LOVED IT…

    What adds to the beauty and simplicity of the movie are the songs which have been written by Gulzar… every song is a gem in itself…

    मेरा टेसू यहीं अड़ा,
    खाने को मांगे दही बड़ा,
    सूख गया मेरा टेसू,
    एक टांग पे खड़ा खड़ा…     is one of my favorite songs ever, and needless to say the movie is a favorite too 🙂 Do I have it in MP3? yes I have 🙂 Do you want it? You know what to do

    Chai ki Dukaan highly recommends this movie !!! Go get the VCD/DVD and watch it with the entire family !!


    बिल गेट, अरे नंदू, बिल गेट…

    अरे पता भी है कौन है?

    अरे पता है… बिल गेट एह … इंडिया गेट के पास है… पीछे की तरफ्फ़ पड़ता है …

  • Face Value…

    We got two ears and one mouth …

    3. So that we speak less and hear more…

    45. We might get to hear twice what we speak… so speak nice and you get to hear twice as much nicer things and speak foul and be prepared to hear twice as much crap…

    2. We can control what we speak, but cannot control what we hear… so manage what you do, and don’t worry about the rest… what has to come to you will come to you…

    5. I can’t think of anything else right now….

    p.s. and this completes 700 posts on Chai Ki Dukaan…. thanks !!!

  • If i was a flower…

    If i was a flower growing wild and free
    All I’d want is you to be my sweet honey bee.
    And if i was a tree growing tall and green
    All I’d want is you to shade me and be my leaves

    If you were a river in the mountains tall,
    The rumble of your water would be my call.
    If you were the winter, i know I’d be the snow
    Just as long as you were with me, let the cold winds blow

    If you were a wink, I’d be a nod
    If you were a seed, well I’d be a pod.
    If you were the floor, I’d wanna be the rug
    And if you were a kiss, i know I’d be a hug

    If you were the wood, I’d be the fire.
    If you were the love, I’d be the desire.
    If you were a castle, I’d be your moat,
    And if you were an ocean, I’d learn to float.

    All i want is you, will you be my bride
    Take me by the hand and stand by my side
    All i want is you, will you stay with me?
    Hold me in your arms and sway me like the sea.

    I have been thinking for a while, that life is missing something called Simplicity… and then I was reintroduced to it, thanks to the soundtrack of Juno….

    Juno is a movie about how a teenage girl deals with pregnancy… a very well made movie and worth a watch….

    What this post started with, is a song from the movie that I had been searching for a while now… “All I want is you…” by Barry Louis Parker… while most of the songs from the movie are beautiful, simple and easy on your heart and ears… another one that I particularly liked was “Tire Swing” by Kimya Dawson… In case you are fond of acoustic guitars, please find time to listen to So Nice So Smart by Kimya Dawson again… very nicely executed chords on the acoustics… I am really happy to have the entire soundtrack with me today… listening to it is really making me feel nice 🙂

    I think you should also hear these songs by clicking

    Here for All I want is you

    And

    Here for Tire Swing

    If you like them, write to me and I would mail the MP3 to you

    Needless to say “All I want is you…” is added to my list of favorites 🙂

  • Jet Lag and the BPO… there is a link somewhere…

    I did not really know what Jet Lag was… I thought it would be some sort of strange feeling that you have in the stomach when you reach a place faaaaaaar away from your place…

    Now I know what Jet lag is… It’s your body thinking you are in a different part of the world, while you really are somewhere else… Something like hardcore day dreaming!!! I thought it would be really tough to manage the sleep etc, however I feel quite ok right now and it’s almost 5 in the evening here… I am feeling only as sleepy as I do any evening at 5ish 🙂

    However there is something that I think has really helped me here… and that has been my BPO Experience… for your convenience, lets call it the Call Centre Experience…

    My shifts used to change every 3-4 weeks and I have worked at almost all hours of the day during my 3 years of Call Centres… and that really helps even today when I want to either sleep early, or wake up early, or not sleep at all, or sleep longer…

    In addition to this, I this is how I feel that working in the BPOs has helped me immensely…

    1. When you go through voice training, you are told that people can sense emotions when you are on the phone with them, and hence keeping your cool and maintaining calm is very important when you are talking to a customer… Over a period of time, I guess that becomes a habit to ensure that you have better phone conversations….

    I usually don’t shout over the phone anymore, and my conversations are much better as compared to what it used to be before my calling experience…

    Basically I have learnt to be more sensitive towards conversations which are not face to face…

    2. My experiences with the customer service / technical support are better thanks to me spending a lot of time on the other side of the phone as well

    3. The body can be aligned to any time food, any time sleep in quick turnaround time

    4. I can understand the accents of a larger group of people than usual and my conversations with people from Europe and US are better than average…

    5. My accent is on an auto-modification mode now… If I am talking to someone from the US I can talk like them and ditto in the UK too…. the bottom line is the MTI (Mother Tongue Influence) is less than average when I speak with people from various backgrounds… Have received many kind hearted compliments as well over the last many years thanks to this…

    The above points are just of the few things that make you a better person. I am not giving the entire credit to the BPO industry, however for me personally, the changes have happened because of my time there…

    Given a choice I would make calling necessary for everyone for at least 6 months when they start their career… If not anything else, it would at least make people realise what kind of hardships someone in a BPO goes through in terms of work, and its not only a life of night outs, drinks, smoke, and sex….

  • Ajeeb Desh hai ye….

    Bhari Dopahar mein andhera…

    aur Raat bhar Suraj !!!

    ab koi kare to kya kare !!!

  • Amreeka Discovered Again…

    • The land of the Eagle….
    • The land of shorts with formal full sleeves shirts…
    • The land of polo neck t-shirts with formal shorts and shoes…
    • The land of sports shoes…
    • The land of large man and women…
    • The land of loooooong cars, huge SUVs ( now I really know why they are called trucks) and larger than life trucks ( what are they called here?)

    • The land where being on the road feels like being in the mirror…
    • The land where the flag can be worn anywhere in any form…
    Flags at the O’Hare Airport, Chicago ( seen in the background is our Tiranga too)
    • The land where flights and flight attendants and amazingly casual about things…
    • The land where there can be a thin line between being rude and being to the point…
    Welcome to the land of Amreeka !!!

    The flight was long by any standards… took a total of 15 hours from take off to landing… pathetic collection of movies, and not even average food with ultra casual attendants most of them over 40 yrs of age… so was American Airlines !!!

    anyway… when I reached the Chicago O’Hare Airport I could not get any information about my connecting flight except that I should go to terminal 3. I did, checked in again and realised that non of the display boards had my flight number out of the about 60 flights they were displaying… Felt a li’il strange and manage to find an agent ( here the people who are associated with the flight, but are not Crew members are called agents) and after a couple of understanding and misunderstandings I was told that the flight was cancelled and I was moved to the next available flight… It added about 2.5 hours of waiting at Chicago with nothing much to do… If it was not for a few lovely words and I had read and heard when I left Delhi, I did not have anything much to think about either!

    Anyway, I reached alright… hungry, tired and with a backache 🙂 as expected from the long flight !!!

    The balcony at my Inn…

    I had talked to a guy here a couple of days back and he was kind enough to come over and take me to a super market to get some bread etc and then show me around a few restaurants and my office which thankfully is just about 5-6 minutes away…

    I am happy that subway tastes the same in India and London and now Minneapolis too… Just stuffed myself with a footlong and two laaarge glasses of Nestle Iced Tea…

    Back at the hotel room now and trying to pass sometime so that I sleep only when its evening here… That would help me wake up properly tomorrow morning! Maybe !!!!

    Lamps in my Inn Room…

    I will crash now, Just can’t keep my eyes open anymore…

  • …

    Off to a destination tooooooooo far away in a few hours from now…

    I wonder how I am going to manage this 15 odd hours flight !!! Phew…

    Here is what I think I would be doing…

    ~ Finish The Kite Runner
    ~ Watch atleast 3 movies
    ~ and I don’t know what !!! that makes it sound more exciting 🙂

    I was thinking about something for a while now… I did something about it too a few days back, and I realized that I was terribly late… has made me feel very helpless before I am to go !!! and I am sincerely hoping that it turns out to be for everyone’s good… I think it will !!!

    Chalo ji… Chai ki dukaan would be closed for this weekend now !!! or may be not 😉

  • bright evening….

    The day ends at a very bright note…

    Sign : Getting a parking space, just for my car in a parking lot, which was 300% full of regular capacity !!!!

    Uncle God… funny ho tum ! bahut zyada !!! but I guess, thoda late hi sahi, kuch to kar rahe ho !

    Its too hot and I just cannot eat food now…. sleeping without food tonight…

  • for the lack of Ctrl Z…

    There are times when one sentence we have said or how we acted in one moment can change the course of our lives !!!!

    We usually don’t realise it when we are saying that sentence or doing what we did, but it comes to light after a while, and obviously life does not have a CTRL-Z on its keyboard…

    I see that my life has changed and taken a different track because of what I have said at times, and what people have said to me… I should not regret it, and let it be, however I am just human 🙂 I am feeling bad about a few things today !!!

    On second thoughts, thought the faith is a li’il shaky right now, it still exists in you, God Uncle!!!! I don’t know whats happening to your sense of humor because I am not finding it funny for a while now!!!

  • The So Called Bad Did Me Good !!!

    Unlike a lot of studious kids around, I never could study late nights… My logic was, I am sharp enough to do what others do in double the time… why study more? And that’s why I used to choose what I want to study wisely… here is how

    Pick up the syllabus and start dividing into sections

    – Most Marks
    – Difficulty Levels
    – Current Understanding

    I would first finish the ones with high level of current understanding, less difficulty level and more marks, gradually moving towards the ones which were least in value, highest in difficulty and I had no clue about…

    At the end of my preparation, I would have left some 10-20 percent of my syllabus and I would have no clue about it either 🙂 Peers would talk about a few topics and I would always give them a blank look: P

    Once I get the test paper, I would quickly browse through the things once again in the manner I mentioned above and just ignore a few questions…

    Relaxed preparations/ relaxed examinations… a decent 80+ percentage consistently… life was good!!!

    And then came the final year of college… My only option for survival in this big bad world was to get through MCA or a similar different masters 🙂 I had not attended even 20% of my classes in graduation, thanks to my attention to Theater and Drama and Stage during that time… but this was scary now… If I would not crack a competitive exam, my father would throw me out of the house…

    Started coaching for MCA near my college, and by and large I used to sleep in the class… What else do you expect from someone who studies, err, is there in the college the entire day!!!

    Anyway… so studies were a must now… and the course was too large… and I was not a night person… So what to do… and hen a miracle happened…

    My cable guy started showing a channel called TB6 during those days, and I one day accidentally realised that there is a soft porn program “some diaries something” at 0330 hrs every night…

    So here was the deal now… I would study from 2200 hrs to 0330 hrs every night, and then carefully switch on the television, and watch the 30 minute program on mute… We used to live in a 2 room flat then, and switching on the old TV, reducing the volume (we had a non remote TV ) were all works of ART!!! There were nights when I used to study like crazy till 0330 hrs, switch on the TV and see some irritating non- understandable Russian drama too, only to hope for my awaited program to start, and finally go off to sleep around 0400 hrs…

    Whatever said and done, that half an hour of uncertain television ensured that I get top ranks in 9 out of 11 examinations I gave!!! It was amazing…. missed the first two, but after that every result brought only a smile to my face and a potential future to my life!!!

    Thank you TB6 🙂