(22 Oct. ’12)
My gas distributor and
I have a problem with timing. When I book a cylinder, he doesn’t have a refill
available… for weeks. When he eventually gets one for me, I’m not at home
because he’s forgotten to inform me that the truck is coming on an ‘off’-day. Let
me explain that: earlier, there was no booking a cylinder. If yours was over,
you kept watch by the window. When you saw a gas-truck come by your village
road, or heard a neighbour alert you, you waylaid it, paid off the driver and
dragged the filled cylinder into your house.
Then someone like me came along and insisted on booking one. WTH,
thought the staff, she’s increasing our paperwork. The truck which was supposed
to visit my neighbourhood on Tuesdays, came at any day of the week, but if you
asked, the answer was: “It goes (to) your side on Tuesday.” So a resigned me got used to poking my head out
of the veranda every time I heard gears grating. Sometimes it was a vehicle
off-loading small black stones or sand for construction, at other times it was
a fridge or washing-machine being delivered, and sometimes it was the gaswala.
I complained to the company about the mismanagement of service. It
worked. The distributor treated me like a VIP.
I got my refill brought to my house in his private car!! There must have
been many more like me, country-wide, for the company started IVR bookings. And
one could track the delivery trail. Didn’t help at all in my village in North
Goa. We still had to (have to) pester and prod to find out when one should take
a ‘Casual Leave’ (love this term) to be home when the precious fuel arrived.
Last week there was panic in the colony. “The gas people aren’t taking
bookings, they want documents,” someone shouted. Everybody rushed to the
distributor and found to their horror, it was true. Ration cards were dug out,
only to discover that names of present family members were missing. Connections
were found to be in the names of ancestors dead the last thirty odd years.
“What a hassle,” one lady cribbed. “I’ve given my address as the ancestral
house, but I live here, two kilometres away.” So, I suggested, change the
address. Where was the problem? “I want to keep the gas connection ‘alive’
there as proof of residence.” “Then apply for a second connection here, maybe
in your child’s name,” I suggested. “I have one connection each for all my
children. When they get married, will be useful, no?”
So I learned that some people store gas-connections to be given as
wedding gifts. Is the assumption that the in-laws side cooks on wooden sticks?
For the first time since I came to this village, I felt bad for the
staff of four in the distributor’s office. I’ve always had a silent suspicion
that they siphoned off domestic cylinders to bars, restaurants, shacks and we
uninfluential, not-willing-to-bribe types had to pay the price by
waiting-chasing-grumbling. Of course, the fault lies not with them but with the
distributor who believes, like the government of India, that professionalism is
a western concept that will corrupt our bad old customs.
I felt bad for the staff because they were suddenly faced with hundred,
no two hundred or more customers (“where did
so many people come from?”) who initially stood patiently in a queue, then,
as the sun got hotter, chewed their brains for comfort. The staff’s brains, the
customers’ comfort.
I was warned by a concerned acquaintance that if I didn’t submit the
documents by the end of the month, I’d starve. “I love my micro-wave oven,” I
thought. And a newspaper advertisement said the most modern way to cook was to
use an induction stove. But as an Indian who has lived only in India, I
panicked. I took the documents for Xeroxing where the person at the counter
pointedly asked: “For KYC?” It’s like breathing: everyone ‘does’ KYC.
After many minutes of standing in the queue, I read a notice pasted on
the wall: submit documents only if you have multiple connections in the same
house. Words to that effect. I confirmed that was true, and returned home,
satisfied that I didn’t have to do anything more.
This
morning, the lady who lives across the very narrow street said. “Never mind
what they say, if you don’t have a KYC compliance stamp on your book, they’re
not going to give you a cylinder.” She maybe right. These things happen.
Tomorrow, I will keep shut my keyboard and monitor and join the queue again.
Never mind the official notice, in Goa things work differently.@@@@@
No comments:
Post a Comment