Flipkart vs Seventymm: Dev Anand, ''Kala Pani''

Eulogies poured in after Dev Anand's recent demise at 88. I had to change my opinion of him: from that as an actor with laughable mannerisms who never liked to age or die, to that of someone who had some rare intelligence for Bollywood actors and a combination of business acumen and

talent for acting, directing, and knowing what makes a movie click.

In '60s, Dev Anand stormed Mysore when he came to sign up for movie rights to R K Narayan's 'The Guide' . I heard stories how his fast talk had made the writer sign up in a hurry and get a raw deal. I also heard how from Hotel Metropole in Mysore Dev Anand cast a roving eye for beauties from Maharani's College across the road. 'The Guide' itself was a huge success albeit with an ambiguous end.

I therefore read up more about Dev Anand and how after being cast opposite superstar heroines he finally attained his own star status with his role in 'Kala Pani' in 1958. I decided to get the movie DVD and watch it.

My attempt to get the DVD from Seventymm.com (where I regrettably took a 90 day membership for rentals) was a failure. This company has proved to be one of the worst in customer service. Not only do they have almost no good movies for rental immediately, they also do not update you when you make wish-lists. They further claim they came to deliver the DVD and you were not at home (they never ring up in advance) and so you lose your turn. They send wrongly labelled DVDs and poor quality DVDs. They don't pick up returns. They don't answer calls to Support well. All in all something totally avoidable.

In contrast, my experience with online shopping with Flipkart.com has been wonderful. I placed an online order with Flipkart.com for payment on delivery for this DVD. It came within 3 days. and my total cash payment was Rs. 92/- including RS. 30/- delivery charges!

Let me give you a great movie song clip on You Tube:

teaboy

The vicissitudes of corporate life warrant some vital measures to stay alive and awake through a torturous day, wondering how one could kill time a little more efficiently.

That is where the cup of coffee or tea, somewhat mandatory in an Indian office to be served piping hot at your desk at least twice a day, comes in. When the American CEO visited us in 1993, he was amused how religiously coffee, tea and cookies were served at every meeting and how it seemed somewhat more substantial a ritual than the actual deliberations.


Now do you remember your teaboy? I ask with no hyphens or capitals so I avoid giving any false sense of importance to this minion. He is but a minor underling in a pecking hierarchy where your own position is not really that high unless you are able to see the rumbling clouds at the top of the corporate echelon and are already talking to some head-hunters.

If you are, like I have been most of my life, a hard-working manager attacking competition and pushing useless products to skeptical customers, you may not have had much time to notice too many things in the office. You would also not remember when the teaboy changed but would surely notice that the taste of coffee or tea changed when they introduced a new coffee machine or tea brand.

So imagine when someone starts talking about the teaboy in their office, his life as a human being, and his own imponderable issues of dealing with money or health problems. Or when someone states how their teaboy's son got admission into engineering, or just starred in a vernacular movie. Then you start wondering, what is this life, so mechanical, so indifferent to our social space, and how our lives are ruled by Power Point pitches full of exaggerations, extrapolations, and obfuscations, in a pyramid of imbecility that passes off as corporate excellence. And the teaboy? He also dreams that one day, his bright-eyed son or daughter will also be a big executive, in a big office, big enough to ignore the teaboy there.

Uh oh. Is this my cup of tea?

"Time to dream" 2012 New Year Fireworks