On one of the fine drizzly rainy misty weekends of Bangalore I walk into a fancy music and books outlet. One of those huge places which have rows of CDs/DVDs/Books all expensively priced with pretty looking customers carrying pretty looking baskets filled to the brim with pretty looking CD and Book covers.

Everything pretty all around, I walk into the store through the white metal detectors, wiping furiously my slush stained shoes on the black porous wired mat below. We don’t want to disturb this pretty scene now, do we?

I walk through the aisles of books and movies, occassionally catching a pretty face or two – on the covers of these of course.

A couple of kids come running from behind, overtake me from both directions as I amble along, and run to someone they call “Daid” in a heavy American accent. Both of them have a few game CDs in their hand, with a lot of blood and gore and monsters on them.

“We don’t have this one Daid”, the older looking one drawls in a squeakish manner.
“Yeaaah”, the younger one concurs.

Daid looks at the heap of CDs and nonchalantly slides them into the pretty basket he is carrying. The CDs find their respective places amidst a pile of books and settle down comfortably. The kids rejoice, jump a bit and run along to some other corner of the store. More blood and gore there I suppose.

I haven’t been listening to much music off-late so am pretty (that word again!) clueless about what is good these days and what is not. After much thinking and walking up and down various genres, I settle on a couple of old Hindi songs CDs. The rain outside continued to pour and the sound of the pattering would occassionally find its way into the store thanks to some customer walking in.

Armed with just two CDs, both in my hand and not in a pretty basket, I walk up to the cash counter and wait patiently behind a lady who is carrying a pretty bag and a pretty basket too. While the cashier is summing up her purchases, along comes her kid with some fancy looking Playstation CDs. She doesn’t bother to look at them, unlike Daid, and passes them on dutifully to the cashier, who sweeps his bar code reader on them. The numbers tumble forward on the cash screen and the lady dishes out her credit card. I am still waiting with my two CDs in my hand.

A cashier at the other counter finds himself free and gestures me towards him. Feeling like a rather low-value customer, I walk up to him and lay down my CDs on the white counter. He picks up the first one and sweeps the bar-code reader on it. The numbers appear in green on the cash screen. He picks up the second one and sweeps the bar-code reader yet again. But nothing happens. No beep, no numbers increasing. He repeats the act. Nothing. He then looks closely at the label on the CD and keys in some numbers. Again, nothing happens.

He looks at me for a moment and then calls another cashier. The other dude comes around, sweeps the bar-code reader on the CD, then peers into the reader, taps it a bit and tries again. The thing refuses to read anything anymore.

Then, taking me by complete surprise, the cashier announces, “Sorry Sir, we can’t sell this. It is not present in our system.”

“What?” I ask out of disbelief, and the cashier thinks I hadn’t heard him so repeats himself.

“You are not selling me this CD because you don’t have it entered in your system? You are willing to lose a sale for this?” I ask back in further disbelief.

“Yes sir, we cannot help it.”

I laugh it off in a rather smirking tone, but no expression registers on the cashier. He is waiting for me to get the hell out of there and service Daid who is right behind me now.

“I think this is quite absurd. You are losing a customer because of your system. Just write down the code for now on paper and enter it later,” I suggest to him.

He looks at me for a moment and then disappears into a door behind the counter. Daid grunts a little. I prefer to believe it was because of all the blood and gore his kids are excited about.

The cashier returns and tells me, “That’s a good idea sir. I will write it down on paper”.

He jots down some digits, gives me a hand-written receipt and collects the cash. He then starts packing the two CDs in a small white plastic bag when I butt in to tell him that I don’t want the plastic bag. He looks at me for a moment as though there was something definitely wrong with me and then gives me the two CDs without the bag.

I take them in my hands, walk towards the exit, still wondering how a store could be so dependent on technology that its main focus of selling would be overshadowed.
In the background I hear the noises of Daid’s two kids who seem to be on a morphine-influenced drive up the technology curve.
I think to myself how even essential childhood fun is now being served by pixel-image creations magically served by bits and bytes. Are we just going to have more and more people who are comfortable to replace common sense with technology?

I walk out to my car, dodging the drops of water falling gently and eagerly play the CD that the store had refused to sell. The music submerges all random thoughts and I am finally able to smile at life through the fuzzy wet windscreen.

“He has been given the red light on the top anyway. Isn’t that enough?”

A question that made the two of us, an auto driver (the orator) and me, chuckle through the light rain that splattered across the gaping windows of the auto rickshaw.

It was a Friday evening and since I had not taken my car to office, I was on the lookout for an auto to head back home. A 20 minute long wait under a light drizzle ended when I finally spotted an empty auto who agreed to take me home.

“Quite difficult to get an auto today”, I muttered.

“Holiday sir. Today is a holiday, that’s why”, the driver replied.

That explained it. The day was off since people were celebrating the festival and hence there was a shortage of autos.

After a brief while during which I made a few calls, the driver said, “People here are so engrossed in celebrating festivals. There is absolutely no sense of service to customers”.

I didn’t quite get that and said so.
“About there not being enough autos, sir. What if someone has an emergency? What will they do? In the meanwhile these auto-drivers would be drinking and smoking, all in the name of the hubba (festival)”

I was surprised to hear him say this about his brethren. But, the best was yet to come.

“You should see the auto drivers in Mumbai. They are so disclipined. You don’t even need to ask them whether they are willing to go somewhere. You just sit in the auto, and off they will go.
However, here all these guys ask for one-and-a-half, 10 rupees more all the time. And most of the time they refuse to take commuters anywhere. They have absolute no sense of service.”

Having experienced the Mumbai auto drivers, I readily agreed with that fact of his. And Bangalore auto drivers are indeed notorious for not being all that commuter-friendly but are yet to catch up with their Chennai counterparts.

“Sir, there are 2.5 Lakh auto rickshaws in Bangalore alone”, he continued. Do you know why there are so many?

“Poor bus service?”, I ventured.

“No. That is there yes. But most of these kids fail their 10th standard. Then they hang around doing nothing for a year. When the pressure at home mounts, they catch hold of some auto owner near their locality, rent it out and earn some 50 to 100 rupees. This has become a culture of easily being able to make some money in a day.”

“These auto drivers just want to idle away their time at auto stops. And we all get branded as being rude and irresponsible”, he continued.

“Sir, the government is also being quite stupid.”

“Why?”

“These Tata Indica cabs cost around Rs 4.50 per km to run and for us auto rickshaws cost only Rs. 1.50 per km to run when on LPG. Yet, we are charging Rs 6.00 to customers like you. Isn’t this unfair?”

I always thought it was unfair.
“But, wasn’t it the auto association members themselves who wanted Rs. 6.00?”, I bring out the old angst against these people who always hold the city under ransom when their demands are not met.

“Yes, and those are idiots. If I am charging you Rs. 6.00 per km, should you not expect the same kind of service that a taxi driver gives you? The same kind of respect? These auto drivers don’t treat customers well and yet they want Rs. 6.00!”

Good point, I told him.

“Sir”, he continued, “auto driving has good money. We guys can easily earn more than government kelsa (government job). In fact today I put Rs. 150 worth of gas and have made a collection of Rs. 530 since morning. It is important to plan well at this age. Only good planning will help us in the future.”

“Yeah”, I mumbled, finding it difficult to believe that an auto driver was actually speaking against a fraternity that is held so close by many of his peers.

The rain continued to fall across the gaze of street lights which adorned the middle section of the sky. The vehicles were doing their usual honking and smoking bits.

Around this time, while we were waiting at a traffic signal, a convoy came and halted right alongside us. The Honda CRV next to us contained the former CM of Karnataka, Mr. Dharam Singh. The reason why I use the word contained is owing to the size of this occupant, who resembled more of a cargo shipment rather than a passenger.

“All these people are crooks, sir. This white car of his is because of our money. What did this guy have before getting into politics? And now they roam around with our money”, the auto driver suddenly had his face dropping down in disgust. The earlier enthusiasm of talking about setting the auto rickshaw system right was gone and was replaced by a sense of despair.

“Shouldn’t the traffic cop at the signal give way to us? How come this guy is also stopping at the signal along with us?”, I asked more as a question to myself.

“He is in the opposition now, sir. Why will the traffic cop pay any heed?”

“Still, he is the former chief minister after all. Shouldn’t there be some respect shown?”

“He has been given the red light on the top anyway. Isn’t that enough?”

As he said this and turned around with a flash of a smile, we both broke into laughter.
The rain continued its drumming as we found a strange sort of comfort in the collective sarcasm of our laughter. Our sarcasm knew that in spite of all our remarks, it was always going to be us at the receiving end of the much talked about system . Yet, we were laughing at the irony of it all. And the rain seemed to pretty much nod in agreement with its repeated pattering.