Narrow Bridge Ahead

Sharing my frustration as an Indian citizen makes me feel light, I wish you also feel the same in every line you read, when you walk by this "Narrow bridge Ahead”.

This time I am at a BeSNL office where I had to go last October to get our broadband connection fixed. That day sharp at 11:30 AM  I reached our nearest bsnl telephone exchange building to file this broadband complaint. You know that government offices start work only after 11am or so and that too if they wish so. So in a sense I gave them 30 extra minutes to do their early morning initialization, I really did this calculation, everyone does in India. 

I took it as a challenge else I don't work when I am vacationing at home. Getting this stuff done at besnl office would be a tough job I knew it from the beginning so I was prepared. One has to master this art of talking to government officials. Any plain SR, complaints numbers just don’t work. To explain problems you remind them that your telephone connection exists somewhere on this planet and when can his highness (Line Man) visit it.

That whole building was silent like hell; nobody was there in office, no one to help poor victims.  I was amazed, that’s unusual such a populated, polluted country and empty office, no human smell, for a moment I thought I was in Siberia.  The office however was open, so I entered the first room, lying there was one big table, two chairs , several connected disconnected telephones, hundreds of meters worth of telephone wire, big iron rack , yellow , red colored blinking LEDs indicating that exchange was still functional.  First, I thought maybe it was some holiday which certainly wasn't, just a week back it was Dushera and still more than week for Diwali to come. I entered the second room, which too was a big hall, smelled like a dampen hideout , cobwebs ruled it's corners for years and it perfectly the room waited for Diwali .Surprisingly it was a recently built government exchange building which now looks like a malnourished poor Indian baby , who didn't  get enough of cement and steel in those nine months when they were raising it. 

At one corner, I saw one 8-9 yrs old kid sitting on that office chair, busy with some comic book. I thought of asking the name of the comic book, but I didn’t, so I asked him,"bhai do u know if anybody in the office today? I have to file a complaint for broadband who will take that? He replied from his comic word, "Papa is coming in five minutes" rudely in Hindi.

Then all of a sudden, I heard a loud bang, like someone slammed some door badly. I came out and found it was precisely the door of that filthy looking toilet next to the first hall and saw this man standing next to this filthy washbasin, washing his hands. His looked sleepy but relaxed, flamboyant like of any government employee, dressed in his space suits (I mean pajama and undershirt/baniyan) confident, his mission was accomplished. His every day's first job in office was done well. It took me a fraction of second to understand his daily routine in office every day, such a bloody idiot he was looking, how can such people are eligible for salaries, is he the in charge of this building ? I didn't see anyone else,damn what will happen to this office, to his children , to this country, how can he teach anything to his children.

I saw his face, I recognized him immediately he was our area's line man, "RatanLal”, submerged in that basin he asked me, "What’s the matter, why have I come?  I said, Uncle, our broadband isn’t working properly for 4 days. He said, “What happened did you check if all wire connections are okay” as he wiped his hands with his pajama, I said yes. 

He then said, did you bring your modem here, I said no. Get your modem quickly, he ordered, "I have to go in another 1 hour". So in no time, I went back to home in my bicycle and handed him the modem. The idiot then said did you bring the Power adapter too? I said, No, you only said Modem, you didn’t mention adapter.  Don’t you have one here in exchange, it’s an exchange, and how will you troubleshoot it”. To this he added, if you want me to check it, you will have to get the adapter else it’s your wish, I got furious but ignored my anger, went back home again, brought the power adapter gave it to him. He finally tested the modem and claimed, it’s no problemo. He said, there might be some problem with the computer; everything is fine with the modem. I showed him the connection LED in modem which is not blinking at home , so I politely asked him if his highness can do some basic check, may be some problem at their end, may be some problem in the wire ,a loose connection may be ,  to this the fella started shouting , you don't believe us, you are genuine only we are liars , we are your enemies , I have knowingly broken your connection , blah blah…. Now go wherever you want to go I will not check your connection. Go to even SDO office, file your complaint there, I will not take your complaint now, that Lion/Line king said.  He challenged me openly that he will not fix it now; he had screwed up my day by that time anyways. 

Back home, I shared this whole incident, I was advised that I didn't do the correct thing in having this argument with the lion king, you should never have fights with Line men, they can do anything, they can even disconnect the line completely. One such powerful line man told me ,they can even increase the telephone bill by doing fake STD/ISD calls from your number without you noticing it. 

I then went directly to the SDO office, fortunate to found the Assistant Engineer there, in his 50's he looked to be a calm man, he at least asked me to sit down. I used a different tactics with him, I started speaking in English, I gave him my introduction as an educated computer engineer :) , that's exactly what I told him that Sir, I am an educated computer engineer , who's in IT field for almost 6 years, I know what is customer service. I told him that it had been my worst experience as a BeSNL customer; the line man at the exchange didn't take down the complaint, shouted, refused to fix it and finally disconnected our telephone line completely. AE sahib listened to me completely, called the line man on phone and politely asked him for a cease fire. He literally urged and requested the Line man to visit our place and see the broadband issue. Three days and after a million telephone follow-ups, finally a 3^rd party outsourced field engineer came and fixed the broadband connection.  

I'm sure the "RatanLal" never cared about his yearly performance appraisal if they have such a thing in place, he probably might not even know what is performance. All what is expected from most of the government employees like him is to stay alive, minimally active at work, dump the assigned work for the heck of it without bothering its urgency, quality and that's enough to get salary lifelong. 

Long ago, in British India there was one Railways bridge over a river in a village; it did have a “Narrow Bridge Ahead” sign board warning in place enough to warn the stupid, uneducated villagers to not use this bridge for river crossing. Poor villagers thought and expected that infrastructure in villages will improve after Independence, when they will have their own governance. Many years after independence, new government understood poor villager’s demands and took a substantial patriotic step and replaced the old “Narrow Bridge Ahead” English warning message by national language सावधान !! पुल आगे संकरा है !  that's it. 

There are still thousands of such narrow bridges in India, leaders and government are just busy doing scams, fooling citizens ,stashing money in European banks as British did for centuries. I don't expect any Indian to expect India to expect it coming out of all troubles you know what I am saying sooner or later.

 ~bd


Disclaimer:

The characters in this writeup are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental , but the experience is real.