Category Archives: Rant

Rant

Why you should not bargain with poor people

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Bargaining is an integral part of the Indian psyche. An Indian has an intrinsic urge to get the best deal out of every situation. They bargain in stores, hotels, taxis, airports and even Restaurants. While some of the bargaining is pardonable (when dealing with situations where the price is not justified), one should not bargain with poor people e.g. Rickshaw-wallahs, auto-wallahs etc. (unless he’s trying to rip you off, of-course)
I will provide an example. A middle-class woman takes a rickshaw from Point A to Point B, the rickshaw puller asks for Rs 20/- for his labour. The woman’s internal instincts take over and she haggles with the rickshaw puller for ten minutes, saying that Rs 20/- is too much and Rs 15/- is what he deserves. She would prefer to waste ten minutes of her time, just to save 5 rupees.

Now I ask this- What is 5 rupees for a  middle-class woman? Not much. Now, what is the same amount for a poor rickshaw-puller who works 14-15 hours a day just to bring food to the table? Certainly much more than what it is to the woman.
Now consider the same woman, in a mall, shopping at an expensive retail store. She wouldn’t bat an eyelid putting down a few thousand bucks for some dress manufactured at a rich designer’s factory, with a manufacturing cost 1/20th of the retail price & not worth it.  It is obvious that the rickshaw puller works 10 times as hard as the designer, but earns less than .0001% of the latter, just because he was born in a poor family and not provided the means to earn anything more.
Also what I don’t agree with is people giving away 10-20 rupees easily to a beggar but not to a person who works hard.
I find it shameful that people haggle for petty amounts with the poor, especially when giving away 5 to 10 bucks would not matter much to the giver, but would mean a lot to the recipient.
Because of such attitude, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. Just because labour does not have a price tag, doesn’t mean you can decide what it costs.
I would request everyone in such a situation to think if haggling is worth it. If it is going to make a poor man happy at almost no expense on your end, don’t bargain.

Rant

The inscrutable Haryanvis

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This is not aimed at 1 particular Haryanvi, but all of them. Also, I have nothing against them, many of my friends are Haryanvis.
I witnessed a curious scene today morning. I visited the local Puncture repair shop to get my bike tire fixed. While the guy was working on my bike, a Maruti SX4 stopped near the shop with 1 flat tyre. 2 Haryanvis (wearing traditional garb) stepped out and instructed the puncture-wallah in Haryanvi to fix the tire. Let me describe the car in more detail.
It had silver license plates with the numbers written in golden. Completely incomprehensible unless you look at it from just the right angle. Also, there were no alphabets, only numbers. All the windows (including the windscreen) were covered with pitch black (illegal) film. While the door was opened for a few seconds, I could see that the upholstery was bright red in colour.
With the car out of the way, let me describe the folk in detail. They talked in loud voices in Haryanvi, were wearing a lot of jewellery and looked completely un-educated. It was obvious that they were one of the people who had sold their farms at exorbitant prices to the government, had a lot of money and didn’t know what to do with it.
After instructing the Puncture-wallah, they opened the car boot. One of them asked the nearby shop-keepers to bring out a couple of plastic chairs and had them set up on the pavement. The other got out a huge hookah from the car boot. The Hookah was one of the biggest I had ever seen. It was set up in between the chairs. The base was heavy and stationary, the part above it was rotating, to facilitate passing the pipe between multiple people.
Within 5 minutes, the Hookah was lit and the Haryanvis bubbled away peacefully while the puncture-wallah toiled. I have nothing against smoking the Hookah (having tried the non-tobacco version at a Cafe Coffee Day outlet once myself), but what I failed to understand was the desire to have it right there, on the pavement next to a busy road, while the puncture was being repaired.
In sometime, the work done, the puncture-wallah asked them for 400 rupees (he had installed a new tube). The Haryanvis started abusing him vehemently, threatened him of dire consequences, gave him 300 bucks and sped away. While reversing, the car emitted the tune of a popular Hindi song and everyone around them laughed. After they were far away, the puncture-wallah abused them and their mother and sisters vehemently in return.
As for me, I had a good laugh early morning.

Rant

The Great Indian Elevator (lipht) paradox

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One thing I have noticed since a long time (albeit with much frustration) is that Indians can never operate the Elevator (also called lift or lipht) properly. 99.9% times, people press the wrong buttons and mis-use the elevator. A few common scenarios
1. People press the DOWN button to call the elevator down, the UP button to press the elevator.

The UP and DOWN buttons are used to select which direction you want to go. If you want to go up, just press the UP button irrespective of where the elevator is. The next elevator going up will take you with it.
Most of the times, these people end up stopping the elevator going down (when they need to go up), get on the elevator, crowd it up un-necessarily and then the elevator stops again on its way up.
2. People get on the elevator even if its not going the same direction they want to go.
This just crowds up the elevator. The elevator is NOT a joyride, wait for your turn and then get on it.
Sadly, such behavior is not only exhibited by un-educated folk but also well earning people. This is just something that Indians are not capable of.