a 'dramatic' evening

Yasaswini and me went to a tamil play today evening. Put up by the company recreation club,it was the latest of skits by the 'crazy mohan' troupe. I have so far never seen any of his dramas live. One sees so many of them on the tv, that it appears very familiar territory.
The names of lead characters are always madhu and cheenu and those of the lady is always janaki and mythili. The plot is simple and laced with good clean fun and pun with words.It is almost like being with a group of friends in a marriage function, cracking jokes and letting time pass swiftly by.
This time the theme was about madhu contemplating marrying a christian girl, who was his next seat neighbour in a typewriting class. I remembered my time in a typewriting institute , and recall that it was the only place where girls and boys could meet and it was a hot bed of romance.So you can see the story set in a time when madhu and cheenu were in their teens;a real blotting paper memory.

I enjoyed being asked to come on stage and offer felicitations to 'crazy mohan'.

Two days after

Had a surreal feel of good old besant nagar beach today evening. The whole place had a placid, peaceful and silent feel;resembled the house the day after a marriage;everything is so peaceful,all inmates are tired out but happy;life moves at a slow pace.
There were fewer shops selling 'mulaga bajji', one could see the shops nicely wrapped up in bright yellow polethene bags and tied securely and standing like sentinels every few feet of beach area.There were no frenzied kids around; yes i think this was the real difference; i think the kids have had their share of fun and frolic and excitement , last three days of diwali weekend that they are quietly sitting in front of the tv, dropping off to sleep.There were lots of young boys and girls around; much more than what i have seen for a while. There used to be many senior citizens, coming there regularly,but today it was the youth day out!Of the quiet gentle kind, not the revving up bikes and vroooming from one end to another or blaring loud music on their funky cars!
No firecrackers, thank you; saw a lone rocket lighting the distant horizon, with some gentle fire display, no sound!Ice cream wallahs had taken off to their native place, to rest and enjoy good family time and recuperation.
The merry go rounds and all other distractions for kids were conspicuous by their absence , no baloons of all hues and shapes.But did spot the good old ground nut chat shop and picked up a small helping.
The weather was just tailor made; rains in the morning had cooled the place and sky was laden thick with clouds for tomorrow, while right now, the gentle wind blowing and inky black sky kept my spirits soothed and happy.
Fun and frolic is good; it is also good to slow down and unwind; and this time the beach and the monsoon seemed to do it with me.

chikungunia, salesman and process controls

Diwali shopping is a must do.Earlier it used to be a single event and all of us will get our clothes in one shop. Over the years it has become staggered with each one preferring to shop for their attire at their own convenient time.
So it was that I was left with shopping for athai last weekend.Athai has been expressing her desire that she would like to choose her clothes, a chance to have an 'outing' as it were. Nalli has opened a showroom in Adyar, so it saved us the nightmare of going to Tnagar at this time of the year.But the pleasure was short lived. It had ease of reach and ease of parking, but the shopping experience was not at all pleasant.
Let me explain. We asked directions for the counter selling nine yards sarees. We were shown the first floor(it left me wondering the trouble elderly ladies who are the customers of nine yards sarees have to undergo when the same easily be housed in the ground floor)and with great effort we reached there. The salesman, showed an entire rack and said we could choose what we want. Athai kept making very fine specifications; it should be very soft and thin; should not have zari border; and the threadwork border should be very minimal; it should be a plain saree, no 'butta' or 'kattams'; the colour should be coffe powder brown, black or chocolate colour. The salesman had no clue and kept popping up whatever saree he could lay his hands on. I did not realise that he has no clue about the job till he showed us the next cupboard of embroidered polyester sarees and said that they are also nine yards sarees!He did not know the first thing about sarees being in two different lengths!
In the meantime Amma was busy selecting a silk skirt for her 'pethi' and was looking for a matching blouse. The salesman there was totally at sea and kept coming up with colours which even mommie could see was nowhere near 'matching' the skirt colour, and that required some effort; mommie knows only 4 or 5 colours and would insisit on matching shades which were far from matching!(In fact mommie had to come back and choose a different skirt as the salesman insisted he did not have a dark green colour blouse)The high point was when he showed a cloth which was silk/polysilk and amma wanted only a cotton or 2*2 variety and the salesman said that the silk cloth was 2*2!Utter blasphemy!
Being a salesman and not knowing different lengths of sarees, not having a clue about colours and textures was appaling but i was willing to forgive as they obviously appeared new to the job and would learn. But they utterly lacked any interest in serving customers; we were tossed about from one counter to another and also from one end of the shop to another for no apparent reason.And there was no shortage of salesmen; in fact i felt there were more salesmen than customers!
I asked for the manager, and was told that they dont have a manager but only a supervisor; I said i want to speak to him. He was the person sitting next to the cashier and ostensibly jobless and not adding any value to the cashier's job. I asked to speak to him separately. He confirmed that all of them were new to the job and the experienced staff are all down with chickungunia.He kept saying that they have few salesmen, and i kept telling him that they are way too many. He kept maintaining they are too few. I realised the futility of the exchange and walked out of the shop.
I was amazed that with skillsets that require at best a 2 day orientation to be a salesman in a cloth shop, they were let loose with no clue about their job. I felt they were from deep down mofussil area, and the shop management just drove down and picked up unemployed youth from there and dumped them in the shop.When the supervisor is sitting next to the cashier and obviously doing nothing, he could actually be training them on the job.The place was hardly crowded and the diwali crowd had still not manifest itself.
I was sharing my angst with Shyamala and the quintessential IT professional that she is told me that they have not documented the processes and hence cannot attain cmm level5!or even an iso!
And i am told 'retail' is the next big wave!where is our preparedness to meet the wave, anybody?