The Great Indian Dis-service

It's a known fact that we are moving from a capital to a consumer market. And as a marketer, I preach that on a day-on-day basis. Every brand, no matter how big or small needs to centre itself around its client. However it pains and at times disgusts me to see some national, trustful brands take this ideology and throw it in the trash. Like my personal experience with the country's largest retail bank, the State Bank of India , that works like the union of a plastic cookware factory. It's chaotic, clueless and contemptuous. Banking is probably as service-driven as a category can be.. and yet this bank, which boasts to be the banker of "every Indian" continues to function like its in the 17th Century servicing peddlers and merchants. I would ideally never bank with SBI, but out of sheer desperation and lack of choice, I had to open an account with a small and obscure little Personal Branch with the total manpower of 4 people. Although you never have to stand in line and the place doesn't smell like a public lavatory, the only hurdle is that with lack of people, comes lack of products and services. Although PPF is now made mandatory in all branches, my little princess doesn't have the hands and legs to service it. And there fore I had to dejectedly walk-into one of the more "experienced" and "wholesome" branches, where I was faced with annoyance and irk by the "general relationship manager". She wanted to have no relationship with me and she was very disgusted with the fact that I had come to the bank at all, leave alone seek her assistance (read : give her more work). She had the nerves to tell me she doesn't know how to do my job and that i should figure my life at some other branch since she doesn't intend to dispense any time or efforts on me. Basically she admitted to her own incompetence but I had already had it by then as I stormed out, huffing and puffing, feeling helpless. I now have to go begging at some other branch, where I know nobody, and hope someone has pity in me and helps me with my account. Yes, I pleading a bank to allow me to give them some business! Well, I am rolling with the punches!

Marriage: the dark side of the moon

I, very recently met someone who had just gotten married  too, and moved to the States with her husband and she told me “I feel I have a live-in boyfriend”. WoW, now I want to know that feeling.

From a very young age, I was against this hallowed institution. Among everything, I don’t understand why a woman has to leave her life, her belongings, her life-choices and in some cases identity, to move into a stranger’s house and make it her own. She has to go through a sea of change in just about every respect while for the boy, it’s a few days of festivities and then getting on with his usual life. Marriage is a charm indeed , but that charm is only discovered in freedom and individuality. You need to be allowed to be who you are in order to feel the bliss. Otherwise it is a stifling rope around the neck, only getting tighter with every passing year.

I have had the good fortune of living with my in-laws from the initial months of the marriage. Although this is teaching me the sunny-side of happy housekeeping, it makes you enjoy marriage in moderation, within limits and with obvious & understandable restrictions. I sometimes feel like I still haven’t seen the “husband” side of my husband because he still living his “ghar ka baccha” role out.

People keep asking me “How does it feel to be married?” “Does it feel any different?” Although my answer to them is politically correct always, I still don’t know what the feeling is because there is so much more to be felt.