Hilarious

If ever anybody is in need of some entertainment, do switch on to a cricket telecast which has some commentators from India doing duty, especially the likes of L. Sivaramakrishnan, Arun Lal and the guru of them all, Ravi Shastri. You might not be interested in the match at all but these guys, I promise you, will liven things up so much that you will become a cricket fan just to listen to them. And then there will be the guys in the studio analysing the game during breaks -- if it is Doordarshan, the panel will be extremely interesting. K. Srikkanth trying to look scholarly, Venkatesh Prasad doodling on a writing pad as if he is making some important notes to come up with his profound views, Mohinder Amarnath speaking half in Hindi and half in English. The list can go on.
The India Pakistan series now underway offers limited fun as only Arun Lal and L. Siva are on the commentary team.
Here is a gem from Arun Lal during the second test, which was a big bore as a match. With him in the commentary box at that time was Waqar Younis. Shoaib Akthar had just bowled a beamer at Dhoni, when Waqar said that was not a done thing. Arun Lal pipes in and says that probably Shoaib was trying to bowl a yorker and the ball slipped from his hands. To which, Waqar says that the way Shoaib gripped the ball was not for bowling a yorker and even this does not stop our resident expert (And Waqar was known for his toe crunching yorkers!). He repeats his theory that Shoaib was trying to bowl a yorker and the ball would have slipped. And, goes on to add that the ball could have hit Dhoni anywhere, on his face, on his eyes, his teeth and so on. I wonder where the eyes and teeth are for Arun Lal, if they are not on his face.
L. Siva is another act. His voice will rise in excitement and you would immediately look up to see if something has happened only to be disappointed. When Kamran Akmal hit a century, this guy comes out with a profound "They stand up to celebrate" when the Pakistan team rose to applaud the wicket keeper batsman. And, when Kamran Akmal hit a lovely offdrive, this guy says he has a few hundred fans now and will have a few million in a few years.
As I said, Ravi Shastri is the guru of them. Unfortunately he is not there doing the commentary now. His favourite when anybody hits a boundary is that "went like a tracer bullet". Wonder where he picked up that from? When a Kumble ball went down the leg side beating the batsman and the wicket keeper, Shastri came up with this rather ingenious and wonderful "that took off like a Jumbo Jet". The ball had shot through without rising much!
Shastri is at his rapturous best when the great Sachin Tendulkar is at the crease. Once when Sachin had hit a boundary on the off side, Shastri could not contain himself and after waxing eloquent about the little master, said he beat seven fielders on the off side to hit that four. But, the seven fielders were spread out from Third Man to Long Off. I wonder how a batsman, however great he is and even if it is Sachin, can beat all of them with one stroke. I am told Shastri has a great fan following. Cricket writers of the past (who unfortunately still continue to write) like Raju Bharatan (and I think K.N. Prabu too) rate Shastri so highly as a commentator. Wonder how they make their assessment. Probably because Shastri is from Bombay!!!
Long Live the Indian commentators. They make even the dullest of matches like the one at Faisalabad interesting. May their tribe increase.

The services sector in India

The growth of the services sector in India is one thing that constantly amazes me. I wonder how and why that happened. For, we are not a nation that is known for the quality of services provided. By services, I am not restricting myself to just the IT and IT enabled services sectors. I am referring to the whole gamut -- petrol stations, departmental stores, restaurants and what not.
Just step into any departmental store or any one of those swanky eating joints that seem very popular with the younger lot. At these eating joints, you are greeted with a perfunctory "Have a nice day, sir" and with that ends all semblance of nicety. It is a fight afterwards -- to order your food, get back the correct change. Most places, the biggest culprits being the petrol stations (which must be making a lot of money this way), short change you. They conveniently round off the bill to the nearest half a rupee -- say, if the bill amount is Rs 24.25, it gets rounded off to Rs 24.50, this on the billing machine -- and after that the person at the counter further rounds it of to make it a whole number, in this case Rs 25! No explanation offered. It is taken for granted that you do not mind losing the 75 paise. It is another matter altogether that you cannot get anything with 75 paise. But, the point is that being service providers it is their job to give back the exact change or at least have the decency to inform you that they are running short of change. Uniformly, every establishment is guilty of this -- there was a leading department store in Chennai that used to give its "patrons" chocolates in exchange of one rupee of change that it was supposed to return. Another, a leading sweet meat shop, would round off the bill saying that the money would go to charity! Who are they to offer somebody else's money to charity.
Not one of them even thinks that giving back the exact change is their duty, as they are the service providers.
I remember the autorickshaw and taxi drivers in Bombay giving back change -- that too they used to go by the meter -- some years ago. I don't know if they still do, as I am sure tales of their counterparts in Madras would have definitely influenced them!
If this is on small change, step into any of banks or offices that have a large interaction with the public. Invariably, the people posted at the front desk or at the counters in banks (the private sector banks are the most guilty on this count) speak in a language that sounds foreign to you. Something about you pay peanuts...
Or, at the agency that handles the visa applications for a number of consulates. The waiting hall will be crowded and there will be only one person at the counter, when there are seven counters, and one at the enquiry desk. Probably the consulates themselves demand only this kind of service.
It is because of all this, I am convinced that if the services sector in India is booming, as we constantly read it is, it must be only because we are bloody cheap and nothing else. Or else, do we have two quality levels in services too, like we had for manufactured goods in the 1990s -- a good one for the export market and a not so good one for the domestic market?