Kerala Trip -Filled with Moments of FALSE

Our kerala trip was filled with many a moments of bad customer service . The first moment happened right at the airport when the guys happily announced that one of our baggage was still stuck at Chennai (and we were in Cochin ) . It was a travel bag and all of my husband's clothes were in that bag. The only comfort feeling was that he had anticipated this and had just one set of clothes for each of us in the hand baggage .May be that was the reason the usual fussy customer (my hubby) sounded cool when the jet airways representative told us about the missing baggage and that it would be sent to the hotel in a few hours .They were expecting it to arrive by the next kingfisher flight. We were too tired to talk anything more and we took the drive to munnar as planned .By the time we settled down at the hotel , we had forgotten about the missing baggage .It was already evening and there was not even a courtesy call from Jet airways to inform us the status on the baggage.I told sujay to call them up and we were pleasantly shocked to hear the response .The duty manager was telling us that bag is still in chennai as kingfisher did not accept it , so it has to wait for the next jet flight .He then enquired what we were supposed to do and what about the compensation .That guy was rude enough to say , baggage loss is bound to happen in air travel and company can compensate only if they do not deliver it beyond 24hrs. We told him , it is going to reach us literally the next day (as estimated time to receive the bag was 01.00am) .Finally we gave up on this call and were telling each other how jet airways have gone to dogs.That is when my hubby told me that even in the flight he asked for coffee or tea (it was a morning light -departure at 06.30) and the flight attendants told him that only vegetarian meal is available .Do they expect the customers to have a meal at 630am ??

Now , the second moment - Nothing could have been worse than the services at Waterscapes -shame on kerala tourism for running a hotel like this . Forget getting Big B as an ambassador and better buck up on your service else your tourists will only drop .If you want to experience the worst holiday in life -Stay in waterscapes . We checked in to the room and from that moment -my 7 month old baby was only crying .As the A/C in the room literally did not work and the weather is kumarakom is twice as hot as how it is right now in chennai ...can u imagine our plight ?
We called the reception to complain -Staff there only speak malayalam and they do not even make an attempt to understand our english .We try all the sign languages and the Malayalam accent tamizh to tell them what we want .Comes an A/c technician (after half hour ) who just checks the machine and tells us " It's working " .He just leaves ...we wondered if this is how all the rooms were.We asked for a room changed immediately and left for sigh seeing .We instructed them to leave the A/c on .When we came bk to the room , we thought everything was fine until it dawned and became the next noon .I had to remove all the clothes on vihaan so that he could feel some air .His hair was wet because of the sweat.It was HORRIBLE !!! And every time we called the reception -they understood nothing and once the guy just hung up the phone.

Sujay and i went up to the reception , blasted them and called for the manager .There he came justifying this is how it is as kumarakom weather is bad .We told him the previous night we had dinner at Taj and we did not feel this way at the restaurant. He then offered a room change .Again we were going out , so we told them to shift ....story repeats ..when we were back ...the room was just HOT. Sujay was at his worst temperament and told me i better agree to shift to TAJ. I did not have a choice as then i cud not see the money being more important (as we had already paid for this hotel) than vihaan's sweat. We then moved and what we experienced from there was just ROYAL treatment. It was like as if all the bad experience was compensated with the TAJ experience .

For the TAJ experience , follow my next blog !!!

Child labour -We can change it !!!!!

Have heard so many politicians say that they want to do service to the poor wonder if even 1% of the population is doing anything .As often i see some unpleasant situations around me and feel helpless to change the situation .At least people in power , if they put their mind to it can make a difference !! so , shud i get into politics or something -but ppl i know have always told me it's a mess and u will become one if you get into it !

So many young children coming with those glass cloth or ear buds -trying to force you to buy and the moment u buy -another three or four follow them and insist you buy from them too. What pained me was when this small girl kept saying she was hungry when sujay n i were sipping in to the elanee by the road side. Sujay bought her one and offered as she was hungry .Felt great to see him do that (i was thinking about it and he just did it ) .This cunning elanee lady asked him if it was for that girl and she will give it to her later -as we were done with ours and were waiting for the lady to give it to her .Sujay strongly told her that it's okay for us to wait but he wants her to give it to the girl before we leave .When we were done - i saw another girl on the other side trying to sell her duster and ear buds .And there were also two more ladies and what is worse -one of them was pregnant .My favourite question popped up on my mind , how on earth people plan kids when they can't afford a meal for themselves !!!! bang came sujay's usual reply -that is their only entertainment that they can afford ...again my question : i wonder if they have ever heard of condoms or know that they can use some protection ...well even when the most educated , socially aware are not taking precautions , how can we expect them to do that . If people who plan kids are not responsible enough to think about their children's future , who will ? I know all of us can think about contributing to the poor etc .But won't it help instead of making them dependant on others financially -attacking the root cause will solve the issue to certain extent .The children born under this circumstances grow up in to individuals who are more vulnerable as they wud even rob or steal to afford a living as parents force them to work (this road side selling) at this tender age when they shud be out playing or studying.

haven't we heard of even some terrorists confessing they did not have money and they came in to this because their parents will be paid 10k -imagine their life was worth just that!

i think even ajmal kasab in his one of the earlier trials confessed something similar

how can we change this ..i feel responsible to do something about it and i wish many other

people think abt it too.These days suddenly i get so affected when i see some children doing a lot of labour work .I witness atleast 2 or 3 of them in my daily life .Saravana bhavan has small boys -they shud be 15 or 16 clearing tables for u .And these small time shops -near my house the mahalakshmi stores has a boy who will be just 12 or max 14 -he comes home to deliver stuff and my mom is too generous to tip him on his every visit as she feels so bad for him .Even my medical shop that delivers medicines home have small boys working for them who are actually from the owner's village and they are given food and accommodation (as this kind of labour fee is economical for a business) and some meager wages.

We are doing a campaign for tigers -Just 1411 left ...this campaign is all over for which we can hardly take any action ( u see , i don't live in a forest or jungle -how am supposed to save them yaar?)

but don't u think at least for child labour - we can influence certain people not to do that or even we can oppose ppl /companies doing it ?? Can't some awareness campaign be done about child labour . Don't u think children -the future of india is more important than the national animal of india?

There used to be the advertisements on CRY airing on TV , but they only say -contribute .But no one tells you how we can eradicate it or voice against it .As not all the time can we afford money -and even if we want to offer financial help , we would want be sure , it's been used for the right situation .And in this case,we don't know if it's actually helping the person we may want to help .

These are all just questions with no answers .

I have just one simple solution .If all of us can put our mind to it -WE CAN CHANGE SOME % of the children from this issue. Am sure all of us have maids coming home for domestic help.All probability they need a lot of help with their children's future .If we can offer to help one of the maids who works very good for you and has a small child who is school going age -am sure ,they would be damn happy that their children's future are taken care of and may become even more responsible with a little bit if support like this .Already , many of the house maids that i have come across are so sure of wanting to give their children good education and they are slogging for it with so many difficulties lying ahead of them.

We need not pay them the money directly , but we can offer to pay their child's school fees directly .I dunno it's just a thought ..let's see if it can work !!

All of you -Welcome to pour in your thoughts as well!!

என் தாய் மொழி தமிழ் பற்றி

On my recent trip to munnar ,we stayed at the tea castle . The security guard of the hotel was delighted and his face glowed when i asked him a few questions in tamizh.
He was like " madame , neenga tamizha?? " .I was like very produly "ammam- neengalumaa??" He was so happy to interact in tamizh and he told me he mistook me for a north indian and assumed i wud speak hindi or english .He also added that even if people knew tamizh -they preferred to speak in hindi or english .I was thinking in my mind ..is it a good trend or should we actually feel great to being a global citizen. There is no harm in being more westernised and talking english but the problem lies in loosing the passion for our mother tongue.Am not asking for a a dharna and attacks like the shiv sena's do going about promoting marathi .but i ask every one of you -a tamizhan to realise -where is your interest gone is peaking your mother tongue .As many of the people i met in this vacation came up with the same kind of surprised face when they heard me speaking tamizh .The tea estate workers at munnar too could not help but rejoice that they met tamizh speaking people after a long time and the irony is many visitors who visit munnar are from CHENNAI !!! and can u imagine that they don't speak tamizh..(i assumed that it was foreigners or people from the north ) well , this made me think of a lot of other things ...
Developing a passion for your mother tongue cannot be forced into people by the government . But they can be developed from one's childhood .I think my passion towards tamizh is firstly because am born in this land and i studied this language from school .But the biggest mistake a lot of parents do here in tamiz nadu is that , they enroll their children in hindi or french classes and where can u expect your children to grow up in to people with a passion for your mother tongue .
Also , my father always read out one thirukural to me everyday .I cant tell you how much value that has added to my life and my outlook towards life .Everytime something happens , i remind myself of the kurals that i have read about.I remember travelling in government buses during school days and memorising every thirukural written on the CHERAN bus.Also i hate it when some tamilians think it's a FAD to speak English and that is their identity of being westernised .I feel being western is more to do with your outlook towards life and people and not the dress you wear or the hair cut you have or going pub hopping n getting sloshed .The west have taught us many a good things .But why is that we want to copy all the wrong things ??
Why not the good ones ?? Most of them speak only their mother tongue at home !!!!
Am not saying boycott English ..English was my favourite class in school ..i loved the non detail part all the shakespear tales etc but that did not make me loose my passion for TAMIZH .And that is what am trying to blog about.And how can i forget the hypocrisy of the politicians .They have so many rules in the tamil nadu government ..like movie title names ( and that is still just name sake and merely to get the tax benefit -The Boss became SIVAJI ,THE BOSS -still it had english !!!)
top ranker's recognition only for tamizh students etc ...but they harp about boycotting other languages when their own grandchildren are studying overseas .why all this fuss when your own is not following what you preach??

If they had true passion for the language -they would have acted in many other ways to promote the language .Just doing a chennai sangamam is not the way to promote your tamizh language and culture .If you think , there are many other ways too!!


And SAD is the word to read some of the tamizh ads or articles .That is the plight of our TAMIZH NADU -at least ,chennai !!!

And lets take a look at some of the TN/chennai's varied fields and evaluate their TAMIZH background/knowledge

Superstar -Fron Karnataka (atleast he speaks very good tamizh)
CSK captain -From Jharkand (can he speak TAMIZH??)
No 1 heroines in Tamil Films -From Kerala or Andhra(and the chennai ones also cant speak or dub in TAMIZH)
Top Singers -From Bollywood (who kill the tamizh pronunciation & the language )
Music Directors - Most of them from Kerala /Andhra
Top Business Men - You can count the TAMIZH guysssss

I don't think this will be the situation in anyother state !!
I dont know if we should hyprocitically say Chennai is more INDIAN -we dont bother
about the native or background of the people who represent us ...I dont think that can come from many of us -can it ?? Am not saying we should become like the Telangana but lets not be the reason for TAMIZH and TAMIZH culture to disappear
from taking any leads in our own state atleast !!

What more people?? When we speak about this ..all they will have to say is
வந்தோரை வாழ வைக்கும் தமிழ் நாடு . But let them live here happily but not kill our language and our traditions .They also tend to takeaway the opportunity of many more capable people from the very own land and let us not LET THAT HAPPEN !!!

What makes news?

I was having my tea and a colleague of mine asked me -did you see the news on the sex scandal of swami nithyananda? I was wondering what was that all about and ignored the subject completely .Only this afternoon , i realised that it has become headlines for many of the television channels .Also heard about the video which shows him in a compromising position with an actress etc .Why the hell the TV channels show such videos on TV which is meant for all category of audiences.I wonder how many of them are so selfishly motivated to spread these news which are of
least importance .If they were to say , they are educating the innocent public about
dangerous men in swamiji avatar-is this the first time that this is happening?
How many times have we come across the same type of news.

I clearly see ,the Television Channels are only concerned about their TRP ratings.
They just want more and more people to watch their programmes .This is so evident when i realise that Ashaji's comment on "mumbai belongs to all " has not become a headline on all of them as you see she is not hot or is not as famous as SRK.Also wonder why there was no repeat telecast of what is happening in Shimoga ?? Because it's not a terrorist attack or is it because it's not mumbai?? huh !!

Most of the television channels these days want only-TRP ratings -THAT'S IT

Gone are the days when media played a role on being the face of the common man and showcased what is happening in the society without taking a side and wanting justice

Cadaver?

Have you ever heard this word before ? Am sure most of us don't know what it means.
Well , a dictionary meaning would be dead body but medically a cadaver can give back life to so many people .it's just that we are not aware and even the government has not created much awareness on the same .

I was curious to know more and read a little bit .On reading i understood that a cadaver body can actually give back so many people a healthy life .All of us generally think that only our eyes can be donated .But the heart, eyes ,liver, kidney
and even skin can be donated to another person to save their lives .If we had a proper organ donation policy in place , am sure there can be many more lives that could be saved today .For the number of road accident death that happen - we can save nearly about a 1000 lives everyday (in India alone).Just that none of us is very much aware of this program .Also the less awareness , the more reactive we will
become when we are in that situation when we have lost someone as that moment , we would not be able to think of offering a closed one's body for an organ donation.
But if we understood in depth of how a heart transplant or a kidney transplant can entirely change someone's life,we may come forward to do so .

Hope cadaver organ donation becomes a much more known topic to everyone soon.
Am doing my bit by blogging about it right now :-)

Also professionaly i have some plans on the same .Crossing my fingers that it should take off well and get implemented as i have it on my mind .

Once am successful in enrolling myself for an organ donation program - i shall blog about that too !